This is the year of (continued) --

This is the year of:
*Someone breaking into my car, smashing the window, ripping out the radio
*Esther giving birth to her daughter, Ella
*Christina giving birth to her daughter, Sylvia Golden
*Questioning, for the first time, if owls are in fact my totem animal (and deciding they are)
*Ollie having seizure attacks
*Going to the Maryhill Museum with Mom and Glenn, and the exchange of peacock feathers, and the dancing troupe at the Oregon Stonehenge
*Gretchen taking a stand with herself, and making a decision that strayed outside her people-pleaser comfort zone
*Deciding I don’t always need to be a people-pleaser, either
*Julie opening up her heart, her vulnerability, to her friends
*Kevin falling in love
*Missing Michael, and our melancholy goodbye, even though we’ve only spent a handful of actual hours together
*Marieke getting married and moving to Scotland (again!)
*Seeing Jacki, and meeting her son & daughter
*Vampires
*Saving Dewey
*Nancy’s second surgery
*Brad and Tara’s trip to Fiji
*going to the Beltane Celebration on May Day, with Mom and Brenda, at 6:00am up in the Rose Garden, and dancing as part of the garland ritual
*getting my poems in the right order
*reading Scott Heim’s We Disappear, and finding mysterious (and refreshing) connections between it and my own fiction, as well as my own life
*Aurora giving me the lovely White Rabbit art piece, made from a Tic Tac box, with “Eat Me” star-art inside
*Having coffee with one of my new favorite artists, Nicole Linde of Brittlestar
*Last Thursday art walks
*Eileen’s sister dying of cancer
*Eileen’s other sister being diagnosed with cancer
*Lynn being diagnosed with cancer
*B and Jeff visiting
*Mom’s deepening friendships with Janelle and Brenda
*Watching the Six Feet Under finale with Aaron
*Jordan getting his dog, named Brooklyn
*Seeing The Strangers and deciding it’s one of the scariest movies ever
*Seeing Carly again
*Seeing Tommy (Ishtar) again
*Taking a nap under that tree in the park that one day, with the sun bathing me
*Getting my Iron Maiden Vans so the Skull Twins have friends
*Getting the Green Man mask at the Oregon Country Fair
*Losing my ring that Mary gave me from our trip to Turkey
*Climbing up into Julianne and Marlo’s tree house
*the prettiest, crispest autumn I've experienced here in Portland
*My next novel slowly starting to take shape in my heart