Firstly….

Thank you for all your wonderful and heart-touching comments on yesterday’s blog.  You definitely reminded me of a point worth mentioning: the folks on the home-front deserve our help, encouragement and understanding also.  My hat is off to everyone who ‘holds down the fort’ back home, while their soldier is serving.  Having lived in Port Orchard, WA for many years, near the Naval installations at Bremerton and Bangor, I’ve known a lot of Navy wives, especially, and also extended families, of course.  Debbie Korrell and Harriet Vick, this means you, among others.  Military wives–and these days the term would more accurately be, ‘military spouses’–are a brave, independent lot.  They routinely look after families, hold down jobs, and keep their chins up from day to day, and that’s called courage.
I’ve been learning more about gemstones, pouring over books, checking out e-bay, gluing bails (the little hooks the chain goes through) to stones like Picture Jasper and Malachite and Labradorite.  Picture Jasper  has a lovely, landscape look, as its name suggests, and serves to ground a person–which is why, I’m wearing Picture Jasper today.  Malachite aids in achieving goals, and Labradorite, as I’ve previously mentioned, allows one easier access to their own personal magic.  🙂  I’m amassing quite a collection, thanks to e-bay, where one can purchase just about any kind of mineral.  Some of the things I’m learning seem over-obvious–once I’ve learned them, that is–for instance, that gold is the metallic symbol for the sun, and thus daytime, and silver, of course, suggests the moon.  I mean, duh.  Still, I felt that little thrill of discovery when I grasped the concept.  🙂
I’m reading Amy Tan’s new book, “The Valley of Amazement”, and it is WONDERFUL.  I loved “The Joy Luck Club”, but a few of the novels she wrote in between have fallen through the cracks, so I might be checking those out.  I was up too late again last night, listening to one of Ann Rule’s true crime books, “But I Trusted You”, and thanks to Ms. Rule, I didn’t get nearly enough sleep.  The night before that, Amy Tan was the culprit.
One of the things Amy is famous for, besides brilliant writing and being a member of a band called The Rock Bottom Remainders, which includes such luminaries as Stephen King, Dave Barry, and Ridley Pearson, is her established habit of traveling everywhere with her two Yorkies, brave little dogs who perform a sort of advance reconnaissance mission by checking out hotel suites before their mistress enters.  (Ms. Tan has had some scary experiences on the road and elsewhere, so she’s a bit tentative about new spaces.)  That fact inspired my original dog-plan, which was to get two Yorksters of my own and take them everywhere, even though I’m not actually paranoid about hotel suites.  Perfect, I thought.  The little buggers would fit under the seat in front of mine on airplanes, and since I meant to start them out young, they’d be seasoned fliers in no time.  I’d make sure to book rooms only where pets were allowed, and enjoy their companionship.  Alas, a beagle puppy in a pet store window spoiled the whole plan!  One look at Sadie O’Grady Potato Lady, and it all went out the window–including my reluctance to buy pet-store pups, lest they be from a mill.  It was love, and so what if a beagle wouldn’t fit under an airplane seat?  (I certainly wasn’t going to consign any pet of mine to the baggage compartment.)  Six months later, Bernice, an actual Yorkie, joined the family.  She didn’t travel with me, either, because she’d be scared without Sadie.
Which begs the question, “Who’s running this outfit, anyhow?”
🙂 
Make it a good one, my friends.  And be sure to comment–there’s another contest running this week.