Pieces from my scrapbag on an early June morning..

I love 'old'. I loved it as a child when I had little idea what it meant. I loved the color of faded old red brick, old tippy-weatherworn cabins and fences, old trees and old buildings with ivy.

I liked old people, old places and old advertising signs....there wasn't much that I didn't like if it had age. Maybe that's because I had my Gram Flint(Lottie) to hold my hand, brush and braid my long blond hair and tie my dress ties.

Or maybe that is the foundation where my life was meant to be built. I thought I wanted to be an archeologist, and I might have been with encouragement and guidance. That dream is one that I didn't build a foundation under, but it lives on in love of Egypt. The movies I've seen, Hidalgo, The Mummy, StarGate(the movie, not the series), Lara Croft, Tomb Raider and such. Even the Indiana Jones series, except for the snakes...LOL.

I don't 'obsess' about Egypt. I just love camels, the sand, the bare bones-ness of the vista, the 'feel' of what it is like in that sun'n'sand place. The harsh realities, the incredible truths. I feel that way about Ireland also. The 'bareness' of the land along the mid-Atlantic coast, The Barren Region...all rocky and windblown, with only serge and heather growing where it can. It's the oldness...the age of it, that 'gets me'.

And the desert Southwest, particularily New Mexico....again the bare-bone survival that accompanies the age of the place. It speaks to me. Endurance, survival, tradition.

Now then, is that the piece from my scrapbag? Well, I suppose it might be....one is never sure in journaling, where the thought is going..*S* And this is a journal *VBS*.

But..............I awoke before 6 this morning with a thought echoing through my semi-conscious. I had been dreaming about my middle son, some very convaluded, tanged saga alternating between something about his birth parents, and a syringe I had found in his room. A disturbing dream from the standpoint it was confrontational, and I really don't like that feeling.

In my mind, I moved away, shifted position in bed, and was confronted with the faint smell of black cherry pipe tobacco in my pillow. The tobacco more than the smoke. You can deduce why the scent was familiar, right?

I tried to move away from that 'head' thing also, but it would not go. He's been out of my life since 1994, there is NO tobacco smell in my life, thank goodness. The furniture has been replaced, quilts washed and re-washed over the years...trust me...no scent remains. Except in memory. And I didn't like it....at all. So I rolled over again to get aways from it, and thought about getting up. When I opened my eyes, it was as if he was laying on the other side of my bed....ug!! Reject that image and roll the other way....nope, now I see his hairy back where the dresser sits.

What the heck??????? And then the "A-HA" moment.............the flash of enlightment, I DON'T want him (Fred) in my life, no matter HOW I feel around the time of our anniversary (May 30th).

And then, from my good friend Cher, Marathon Quilter, at http://cherzoe.blogspot.com/ came the words...."It IS what it IS".........and the Universe added.........."not what YOU want it to be".( I reject Fred and his way of being in the world in more ways than I could list here.) What I realized is, I don't want him, I just don't/didn't want to be alone in the way that I am (at this time). Things frighten me. If I remember, I laugh and dance away. If not, I hide behind things, like Fred....for way too long.

And then Part 2..of the "A-HA" moment, "if you ALWAYS do, what you have ALWAYS done, you'll always get what you have always got". And I'll add the words of Dr. Phil, "and how's that workin' for ya?" *VBS*....see ya!

Oh yes.....the picture.......from the little book The Quilter's Companion", a complilation, by Linda Seward(Colliers Publisher)1994. Picture is of an English Honeycomb Quilt, made about 1840 from dress fabric.