This Story Has Been Told

The last page has been turned at Sage & Thyme. The story as it was has been told. I've no more words to say in this venue.

I've moved. I've started a new book.

If you care to follow where I'm going, please join me here.

On The Road I Have Yet to Travel....

This is a sketching journal that I altered for myself last night.


I was sitting in the darkness for earth hour last night, trying to read by candlelight. I gave up on the book and used the hour to reflect and think about where I am, what I want, what I'm doing. I believe the book "helped" me to do this. Susan Vreeland's "The Forest Lover" is about Emily Carr. I have never been a fan of Emily Carr's work. Her impressionist style, her depiction of the native forest, the totems has always seemed dark and filled with doom. Which is some of what she was trying to convey - the death of a culture, at the same time she was looking for the vibrancy in the nature surrounding her. The woman travelled, at a time in history where women did not travel alone let alone to places in the back and beyond -- that were uncivilized in terms of our culture. The thought kept running through my mind that this woman lived her dream. She chased it, she pursued it and she was persistent.

And it came to me...I'm spending so much time sitting here at this computer talking about and writing about life instead of being "out there" and living it and doing it and being it. In fact, I haven't been true to myself. So me, myself and I decided it's time we did something about that.


So I will be traversing the road I've yet to travel, making discoveries along the way. I expect I will be here from time to time to journal and talk, to think out loud. I may not be visiting on a regular basis. And I may be there and not leave a comment. I'm making no "plans". I am living truly "in the moment" where my dreams will take me. Closing comments on this one. If you need to reach me, you know where to find me.

Random Nostalgia

Ivory soap -- 99 44/100% pure -- it floated in the bath. I didn't care for the smell but it was fun soap to use in the bath. I even had it dragged under my teeth once or twice for using "bad" language.

Ivory soap flakes for the laundry -- I remember that smell very clearly. And how "sticky" those flakes were. My mother used this one almost religiously.

Sponge toffee -- oh I love me some sponge toffee. One of my favourite treats to buy as a kid -- it would just melt on your tongue..and even that hard part, like the heel of a loaf of bread -- even that part was ggggooooooooddddd!!


With the advent of the Crunchie bar -- I knew I had found heaven -- sponge toffee and chocolate -- matter of fact, it was so much on the brain today I treated myself to one while grocery shopping.

What does any of this have to do with anything? Absolutely nada. Rien. Not a thing. Just thinking out loud.

Where Life is Full

I look at this image and I say that the glass is half full. I would never dream of it being half "empty". I was raised in an environment that viewed the world as empty, I lived within a world that could have given me that same perspective. My mother, bless her heart, lived within that vision -- she was surrounded by words that constantly told her this was so. At a time when she herself was drowning, she threw me a life line by making sure that I knew that the world was full, whether she believed that or not, that when the liquid in the glass lowered, it was still half full. I believe that both of my parents wanted to believe that the glass was half full, yet here were two people who through life experience allowed themselves to remain empty.



Optimism vs. pessimism. Is this the way we are born, our nature vs. our nurture? I believe it is our nature because for all of the times I have been surrounded by those with pessimissitic natures, I have never succumbed to that belief.



Life is like that. It starts out full and as the years pass, we lose a little each year in time, but with the experience, the joys and the sorrows, the pleasures and the pain, we see the water in the glass decrease, yet remain "full" in so many other ways. I don't look back at what I have lost or what has been used already -- I look to what I still have to savour and enjoy. Life for me, will continue to be "full" until the very last drop has been drunk.

....Where Strength Is Born...

Isn't it "funny" how thoughts will come back to you of specific instances or situations. Something that at the time appeared to be one thing, and yet looking back you see so many other angles to it. As children, because we don't have the knowledge, life is so one-dimensional.

I keep thinking about a situation that took place when I'd have been 4-5 years old. My father was a very unhappy man. He led a very unfulfilled life and I believe that he was emotionally crippled. At the time of my childhood, he just seemed frightening, demanding, controlling and abusive. I know much more about my past now, the things I'd hidden from myself, but obviously at the time I was very aware of what was going on.

For some reason, most likely just because I could, just because I wanted to -- pay back, retribution, my own need to "hurt", I took his rubber galoshes, those ones they always refer to as "toe rubbers" and hid them in the laundry hamper. Not because I didn't want him to leave (though there was always that push-pull within my heart of wanting him to leave forever and fear of what would happen if he did), but because I suppose I know I had taken something from him that he needed, much as he had taken so much from me -- without permission.

I remember very clearly my father needing to go out (who knows where) and being unable to find the toe rubbers. He looked everywhere, my mother looked everywhere and both continued to ask me if I knew where they were (my sister would not have been old enough to be responsible for this). It was obvious that the only other person who would know, who would be responsible for this mysterious disappearance would be me. A frantic search continued because of course all of this made my father late for wherever it was he needed to be. I remember a very wild sense of exhilaration and victory!

I stood my ground of innocence and lack of knowledge -- for a very, very long time. My mother finally convinced me to "come clean" but by this point I was afraid...because I expected, quite naturally, that there would be retribution. She retrieved the rubbers and off went my father.

I don't recall whether or not there was a punishment for this. Neither of them could understand, so they said, why I had done this somewhat "crazy" thing -- I recall them saying that it was a little prank but why. With what I know now, I didn't need to tell either of them "why". I believe they both knew. That was me, standing up for myself. Me being too strong willed to "control" and letting them know -- it would take much much more than either of them to "break me".

It makes me realize that what some might consider stubbornness to me is really strength of character and purpose and a will that will not be beaten into submission. It would still take more than either of them to break me -- not even cancer was capable of doing that. And for all of the "bad" that my father heaped upon me, it was a blessing in disguise because it truly made me the person that I am today.

The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters

Feeling a bit "icky"yesterday (sinus, flu, something just not right), I spent the afternoon curled up with a book which I found hard to put down.

Elisabeth Robinson wrote "The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters" in the form of letters, emails and faxes and told a wonderful story of family, friendship, marriage, flaws and failings, hopes and dreams, death and dying. I chose the book because I loved the cover...and discovered treasure within it's pages. I read it as the older sister and found so much truth, which brought more understanding of my own younger sister. Things I wish I had known "then", but that we generally don't know and can't know until "now".

The last letter in the book is from younger sister Madeline to older sister Olivia and it brought much needed tears to my eyes.

It amazes me that reading a book can touch my heart and bring forth tears...much needed tears. Tears are not always for sadness or for joy. They are for cleansing and it seems I have needed cleansing...and still do.

A Little Golden Nostalgia

I was reading the latest edition of Mary Englebreit's Home Companion yesterday afternoon and there was an article about a man who collects Little Golden Books. What a jolt of memory! I put the magazine down and finished my tea thinking about all of the lovely Little Golden Books I had as a child.

It seemed like every time we went grocery shopping (which would have been weekly), or perhaps once a month (but it seemed like more often), I would be allowed a treat. There was a rack in one of the aisles at the A&P that held the lovely Little Golden Books and that was where I would stand and browse and think about which lovely would be going home with me that day. My sister would be choosing candy, and I was choosing words. My love of books, words and reading began at a very early age. And continues to this day.

I had a wonderful collection of these books though it's any guess which landfill holds them now. So many lovely titles and yet this one, that I found at betsyvintage.com was one of my favourite stories -- and still is to this day. It's such a simple story, yet so true, so meaningful.

I loved the golden spine, I loved the fly leaf where you could write or print your name in the scrolled box. And the price!! 25 cents!! Oh my, those were the days!!