The Inherent Dragonfly A journey of discovering hope, change and love within myself.

  It was a Saturday evening around 6 p.m. My husband and I had finished feeding the horses at the barn.  We were walking back to our car when I witnessed the sky painted in beautiful hues of pinks and oranges.  My husband was already in the car ready to head home for dinner, but I decided to take my camera out of my pocket in attempt to capture the beautiful scene before me.  As I lift the camera to my eye, a deer ran across the foreground of my shot.  I snapped a few photos as he ran across the end of the driveway.  I could try to be poetic or say something thought provoking. I decided to let the photo just "be" and speak for itself.

  I am getting the reputation of finding a purpose for old and sometimes broken stuff.  I don't think this thrills my husband as our garage has been full of projects for the majority of fall and winter including a cedar chest, a tree coatrack and 2 very large mirrors that I was gifted from someone on Nextdoor.  It took me a lot of time to decide how I wanted to move forward with the mirrors, over five months from September to January. Travel followed by the holidays kept me busy, but when the calendar eased, my mind still could not think of what to do with the mirrors.   Nourishing my spirit and my creative side can be daunting at times, but then a fresh wind hits my face and I have been recharged. This is what happened to me when I was wrapped in the warm weather of the western Caribbean on a recent cruise. I had little to know motivation the month of January. I was tired from the holidays and the weaning of my Ocrevus infusion. Then I received my infusion and expec...

My word of the year is maintain, but that doesn’t mean I stop living and live a dull life in 2025. I will still live and grow in incremental ways. “Degree by degree” to quote my previous pastor. Instead of having a specific landing point, I create new paths with no specific destination. One of the ways that I lay the path before me is to set mini goals. Recently, I set a goal  while on a cruise to the Western Caribbean I would try something new everyday. This goal began prior to the cruise which I noted in a previous post . I don’t feel compelled to go into depth with my ventures, but I did want to make note of them to remind myself that the steps into the unknown can be large or small, adventurous or quiet. New Adventures on the High Seas Day 1  I attended my first "wine share" on board a cruise ship with other guests that I connected with prior to the cruise through Facebook. Day 2  I drove a 4 wheeler through the jungle of Cozumel. Day 3  I sat in the Caribbean s...

Several people have asked what I plan on reading this year.  Here it is the end of January and I am still trying to gather my thoughts and create a reading list.  I buckled in the last few days and created my 2025 reading list. I typically will choose 25% of books from friends' recommendations, 25% from favorite authors, 25% from popular titles and 25% from recommendations from libraries and online book clubs or apps ( GoodReads , BookBub , Storygraph or the Reese's Book Club ). Now that I have moved over to Storygraph, I am not seeing my friends' recommendations as readily. The recommendation list from Storygraph seems to connect with my interested well, but the truth will be discovered between the pages of the books.  My list includes 45 books that I may read, but I may switch them out for a different suggested favorite. As always it will depend on availability. Click on the book title to read a synopsis on Storygraph.  The books are in no particular order.( Sorry...

 I was a bit hesitant to visit New Orleans prior to our cruise out of Port Nola the end of January 2025.  I had only been there once many months after Hurricane Katrina to help with relief work and felt very uncomfortable by the crowds, loudness and general "free spirits" that roamed the streets.  Bruce had never been, so I made arrangements to have 2 days in the Big Easy.  We had done a food tour in Florence and loved it, so I thought it would be fun to try the local cuisine.  I had done a ghost tour in Gettysburg and loved it, so I signed us up for that too.  Surprising to us our flight arrived on time and we were in New Orleans by 12:30 p.m. with the whole day ahead of us.  We had booked 2 nights at the Hilton Garden Inn near the port.  We had an Uber pick us up from the airport and drive us the 25 minutes to the hotel.  To all of our surprise, he tried to drop us off in the middle of a residential street, not the hotel.  We double ch...

I have been excited to get to my keyboard for the several days.  Now that I have my keyboard and have quiet time, I can't remember what I wanted to write.  Such is my life.  When this occurs, I just start typing hoping the memories and the words are triggered that I was hoping to record.  My life is like that sometimes.  Some days I just need a kick start to get moving.  The winter months are worse, laden with inaction. I remember how I was looking so forward to being unbusy after Christmas.  I have decided to forgive myself today for hibernating in my home yesterday and today.  I will eventually go back into the world - back to the grocery store and back to the YMCA, but for today I choose to hibernate, at least for now.