So Many Gratitudes

It was a bit scary yesterday as the  skilled and personable techie, Craig,  added the radioactive juice to my i.v. to see if I had any blood clots ready to pop. "You'll feel flushed and then you may get a headache" he confided, "but the whole process will only take four minutes". This was after fifteen minutes of being scanned with my arms in a swan dive position, by a big rotating camera in another room. Guess what? No blockages, no naughty gremlins ready to jump out at me. The whole process took about an hour an a half, and yes, was followed by a headache. However Craig confided, "We don't know why, but the headache is alleviated by real caffeine....would you like me to get you some from the nurse's lounge because whats in the waiting room is decaf.?"
Wow, it really worked. Later the cardiologist met me and my dear driver, Joyce, and we celebrated the good news together: no need for an angiogram and a stint.. I'm still on oxygen part of the time, and now I return to my dear pulminologist to see if we can figure out what's ailing in my lungs. But this is terrific news and my first gratitude.

My second gratitude is that we have had a little rain. Not enough, of course, but sufficient that plants once brown are starting to flirt with green. The photograph on the left is of Hood Mountain taking on its winter color. I can see the mountain from my back deck, but not this much of it until neighbors trees loose their leaves, a process just starting.  I took this photo standing in the middle of Oakmont Drive about three blocks away. When my hiking friend Jamie from Colorado came out to nurse me after my broken hip she climbed this landmark, imagine.

My third gratitude is for all the friends who have helped me make this transition to Santa Rosa in the last two years. Friends, both new and old, are what make my world go around. I'll be spending Thanksgiving in Hayward with my dear old friends Stace and Andrea, and Jac from San Leandro (and Belgium and France) will be joining us, as well as the usual gang. For Lee and I, Thanksgiving would have been our 58th anniversary. How lucky am I!

Not that I'll ever run out of gratitudes, but a special place in my heart is reserved for my art buddies. They prod and poke and inspire me to keep painting. Right now I'm playing with abstracts. I'm pretty awful at it, but it is creative and playful, something I want more of in my life. Below are three I presented to my Oakmont Critique group last Monday. They see things in them I don't, but I'll hold off adding them to my scrap pile until the radioactivity gets out of my system.

 Maybe this is what my stomach will feel like next Thursday after the second piece of pumpkin pie. They are created by holding stretched paper over the sink and dropping watercolors on them, in a variety of patterns. Then the artist fills in the spaces to try to make a painting. I just let my imagination go. One has no choice but to be playful.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.