see "kickin ass with power tools" below

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The Summer Day

Total coolness. Got an email from this writing list I'm on and went to read an article and got intrigued by the sidebar that had the title "Fooling around with poems" and had to click on that link (http://writingtime.typepad.com/writing_time/fooling_around_with_poems/index.html) as I'm trying to write a poem a day for a yr ... or as often as I can ... and found a very cool short paragraph about one woman's experience with a fave poet (Mary Oliver) reading her work to a SOLD OUT audience of 1800!!!! Pretty cool for a poet.

So had to check out her poems and found that the last 2 lines were a quote that I have tucked away in my quotes folder and have blogged (on this blog) AND had as my email tagline a few yrs ago when I did that crazy 6 wk travel thing around the world to 7 countries on 4 continents ...

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?"

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver
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kickin ass with power tools!

Girls... you do not need a man to do the work for you. You may, or may not, need a man to explain the power tool(s) to you, or lend them to you, but you can use them on your own! Embrace the power and BE empowered!!!


My dad gave me an electric sander recently. I love power tools, but I have a healthy regard in the form of fear of them! I wrongly had a belief that I had to have a man with me to use them. I took my time before I tried my sander out on my own (and I never actually used it when my dad was with me, so not only was I trying it for the first time, but I was going against my wrong belief that I was trying it for the first time without a man beside me). As soon as I fired that baby up, I fell in love! Suddenly I wanted to sand everything in sight!


I found a kick ass deal at a 2nd hand store on a wooden desk and my friends graciously drove it out to me in their truck.... I then sanded it down and painted it. I had so much fun, I looked around my house for more wood to sand and refinish! I chose the 2 tables in my living room that were boring and refinished them in black and antiqued gold... Then I began on chairs. I have a kitchen table with 4 chairs waiting on my patio for the rain to stop so that I can go outside to work with them and transform them into my kind of art!!!

and now for the visual mixed media presentation of my pieces de resistances:

I've got quotes and inspiring words on the chair above.

I got this wicked chair unpainted so didn't get to sand it down before I painted & antiqued it.

the desk! with another second hand store treasure: an antique china tea cup for $9.95!

my living room vignette

If it ever stops raining during the summer, I have a puke green pine table and 4 matching chairs to sand and refinish... pictures to follow when the project is complete!

the haunting

a ghost in the present

reminding all of what was ...

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fields of alfalfa -- green stems, blue tips

setting sun

storm clouds

smell of rain

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as the developments creep ever closer and the traffic flows ever faster

the decrepit barn stands, sags, stands still

like an old man who is too strong to die,

yet out of place in this modern world

this post-modern eclipsing of family values & religion

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a train whistle pierces the silence

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the barn and the train tracks

singular, solitary reminders of a past way of life

rural Canada

linked to urbanity by wood and metal,

the long awaited train tracks

the history of what is, and also what could have been

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now the highways run parallel and the internet cables run soundlessly

linking rural and urban, neighbour and stranger...

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yet people are still lonely

on the prairie, in the city

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and aged wood is valued.

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photo: original colour, not photoshopped

alive in the darkness

"Anyone or anything that does not bring you alive is too small for you."

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~ David White

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photo credit: palm tree trying to obliterate the moon in a cloudy sky in the Caribbean

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