February 2020

A Valentine’s Day Down the Drain

by amysaxons

It was a Valentine’s Day we will remember for all the wrong reasons.

I started writing this from a Hilton Hotel this morning, but not because hubby and I had planned a romantic getaway. After I took a bath last night the tub drained as usual until it got about half way done. All of a sudden it simply stopped and wouldn’t budge no matter what hubby tried to do. Next thing we knew the toilets wouldn’t drain…not any of the three in the house. Hubby went to look at the hot water heater and saw water all over the floor in the mechanical room. We called our friend from church who is a plumber. Thank you Lord for creating such good people!

The back story is that about 10 months ago Suddenlink, the only cable company for our town, put a cable in our backyard and left it laying there until yesterday. A contracted company came out two weeks ago to do the initial digging before the cable could be buried. Despite spray paint all over the grass painted here and striped there marking the lines, they still managed to bore through the main sewer line going out from our house. Our plumber friend figured this out in the pitch black last night in sub-zero weather–how the contractors doing the work in the middle of the day didn’t notice their blunder is beyond me.

Yep, that sucker is b-r-o-k-e-n.
The red tube is the cable they buried yesterday. They couldn’t have hit the middle of the sewer line any better even if they were aiming for it!
You can see the shattered pieces of the sewer line interspersed among the muck they shoveled out of the hole they dug.

Hubby tried to call Suddenlink last night to tell them about our emergency, but ended up on the line with someone in who-knows-where who was not only completely unable to help but also nearly impossible to understand. One of the significant difficulties my MS has created over the years is a severely dysfunctional bladder. No running water left us with little choice but to get a hotel room around 11:00 last night.

Several phone calls this morning and a sprinkling of “No, this needs to be taken care of today so let me speak to your supervisor, please”-es later, and with our plumber supervising the contractor operating a backhoe who made the mess in the first place, and VOILA, we can flush and run water again.

I guess it’s good this happened before and not after we close on our current home in just a couple of weeks. The buyers, not knowing about the cable fiasco, could have thought we were perfectly happy selling them a lemon.

As for my MS, in case you were wondering how the effects of the work and accompanying stress invariably associated with moving has affected me, I can tell you that it hasn’t been pretty. Layering major plumbing issues that required a backhoe to dig up half of the front yard has not really helped the situation much. Random painful muscle spasms, difficulty walking, extreme fatigue, poor coordination, tingling extremities, and incontinence have become more frequent than I care to admit.

To balance all of this out though, today is a day of much gratitude because it marks exactly one year since I retired from all work. There is no way I could have continued working even a few hours each week. Adding to the excitement, the first full dose of my new MS disease modifying drug Ocrevus is less than two weeks away, just three days after our move to the new house. I’m not sure how my typically boring, run of the mill life has turned into the beginnings of a pretty good sitcom plot, but I’m happy that hubby and I have been cast together and can find some humor to laugh at this, our crazy life.

February 2020

Undone

by amysaxons

We placed our house on the market three weeks ago and every day since has been like living in some alternate reality.  The endless cycle of picking up, putting away, wiping down, and clearing out in order to hide the fact two cats and their humans live here had grown old by the second day. I’ve seen vlogs of people on YouTube who want you to believe they happily clean their house every day and offer advice on how you could learn to love to do the same. I like a clean house and I’m no slacker when it comes to actually doing the deed, but there is no way I want to adopt some ritual that forces me to scrub the toilet every morning in order to feel joyful.

Nevertheless, with the knowledge people could be coming over at the drop of a hat to see the house, I found myself in a state of constant tidiness not too far removed from the feeling you get just a couple of hours before hosting a dinner party. You have ten things to do at once and the pressure is on to get it all done before the first ring of the doorbell. We don’t host dinner parties anymore thanks to my MS. I don’t have the energy to clean, cook, AND be charming anymore. Most days it’s a struggle just to do one of these through to its completion. So, it wasn’t too far into the first week my prayers grew in fervor for God to intervene and make some way for me to survive this part of the process.

We had two open houses and several showings the first couple of weeks which resulted in one low-ball offer that was $40K below asking price and begged to be rejected. However, we received and accepted a second offer this past Monday, but it was contingent on the young couple’s house selling first. It was such a great offer we thought it was worth giving it a chance. For better or worse, a contingency does not stop your house from being shown, though it usually slows things down to a trickle. So, we were absolutely flabbergasted by the number of people who crawled out of the woodwork the day after Zillow and Realtor.com listed our house as “Contingent”. Our hearts and hopes soared that maybe something would come of it all, but my MS was absolutely seething and out to take revenge because I was not complying with its dictatorial demands for rest.

My prayers took on a begging tone asking Him to help me survive and to get another offer that would press the contingency to a precipice and conclusion. With each passing day my appeals intensified to the point they became more like chants than well-spoken prayers.

In addition to keeping things tidy, it grew harder and harder with each passing day to pack up the cats and put them in the car, move the litter boxes to the garage, stash the scratching posts and then drive somewhere to wait until the coast was clear before reversing the process when I got home. By Tuesday of this week I had become so tired I couldn’t walk or be up for more than five minutes at a time. Matter of fact, my energy didn’t even last long enough for the water to boil in the electric kettle for a cup of tea. The situation was dire!

That’s when it happened, right at the intersection of I Can’t Do This Anymore and God, Please Help Me. We got a full price offer on Friday that ended up being the one we got to keep. The young couple who made the contingency offer on Monday was not able to buy our house until theirs sold so they, unfortunately, fell victim to the standard kick-out clause when we got the second offer.

Our realtor, in the business for years, told me that she had never had a house with a contingency offer all of a sudden get so many people wanting to see it. She was still turning down requests to view our house over the weekend well after the ink on our contract was dry Friday.

My emotions have been all over the place through this whole experience. Excitement and anxiousness mixed with a healthy dose of hope, anticipation and nervousness. But when I saw the final full-price offer I thought I was seeing something wrong. I even looked our listing up online to make sure I had remembered our listing price correctly. Sure enough, I had seen it right the first time. That’s when I started sobbing uncontrollably as a flood of relief and gratitude to God completely made me feel undone by Him. Although I had begged God to intervene on our behalf with continuous pleas, I couldn’t take in how mightily He had answered. As the reality of it all slowly dawned on me, my continuous chant turned into millions of Thank You-s and You’re so good to me-s. I couldn’t stop saying it over and over as tears of joy and thanksgiving fell unashamedly down my cheeks. The fact that, once again like so many other times in my life, He had heard my prayers and intervened on my behalf, left me feeling completely and utterly undone and humbled before Him.

I am writing this in the middle of the afternoon while reclining in bed waiting for my MS to wear out its retaliation for doing too much this week. Let my MS do what it may, I don’t care. I am glowing in the ceaseless cascades of my Father’s love for me. I’d spend every hour of every day left in my life stuck here lying in my bed if I had to just to know and to feel His tender, caring, kind, reassuring love. Thankfully, I know I won’t have to do that. It is His nature to be just that good to me!

~ See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1)

January 2020

Waiting Is the Hardest Part

by amysaxons

As the new year began, Hubby and I put our house on the market. We had been talking about it for a couple of years but never seemed to have the drive to get the house ready.

I turn 50 this year (😳) and have never lived in any other town than the one I was born and raised in. Hubby had lived in a couple of different places before we met and married. However, once he moved to my town it felt like home and we settled into 14 years of happiness here together. Suburban life is great but the everyday traffic and effort to get anywhere of consequence has gotten old. Not only do we work in the city, but we also go to church, do our banking, get groceries, go shopping, go to parks, exercise, and… pretty much everything in the city.

Over the Christmas holiday, we pushed and worked ourselves to the bone thinning the herd of things we had accumulated over the 12 years we have lived in our current house. Trying to do all of this with MS was a challenge every single step and hour along the way. There were days I couldn’t do anything at all, but most days were chopped up into various lengths within what felt like a never ending work-rest cycle.

Anytime we weren’t decluttering and purging we spent scouring real estate listings online. We went to several open houses within our target zone in the city but always kept coming back to the same house we had seen on the first day we started house hunting. It had been on the market for a few months and the owners had reduced the price to a point we felt like we could put in an offer. Since it had been on the market for a while we were sure the sellers would be interested in negotiating with us. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the very day we put our offer in, two more offers were submitted and the pressure was on to make sure ours was the one they accepted. It was an anxious 36 hour wait before we found out whose offer they settled on. I’m very happy to say we got the house! It’s everything we needed and were wanting and we hope we never have to move again.

We listed our current house and are praying it sells quickly, although one never knows about these things.  The weather has not been very cooperative so far.  I suppose January is not exactly the best time to put a house on the market–it just worked out that way for us.  We have had a lot of interest, but no offers yet.  It has proven to be a challenge to keep the house in a state of constant cleanliness and overall tidiness.  I’m so glad I can stay home and work at it as my energy ebbs and flows.  As you all know, I love our cats right up to the edge of being kinda freaky.  Whereas before I didn’t really care if they left pieces of litter here and there until I could sweep the floor every few days, now I’m virtually following them around with a dustpan and broom everywhere they go.  I clean the kitchen countertops at least five times a day trying to erase the evidence that we let them get up there in the first place.  I’ve even shaved (yes, really) the places on the couch where tell-tale signs of cat scratches made it look like we let them use it as a scratching post 😬.  Even though they increase the workload, which drains my limited energy all the faster, they’re worth it, but I don’t want to keep it up indefinitely.

I keep finding myself thinking of the old adage “a watched pot never boils” because it coincides perfectly with our current situation at the moment, a watched phone never receives a text that someone wants to look at our house. It’s become a daily exercise of faith to wait this little while without knowing the future regarding when our current home will sell. This has spurred me to think back across the span of my entire life, especially the parts that were hardest, and to see clearly how God worked for my best interest in each and every circumstance. I have absolutely no doubt that He is working to bring the right buyers to us at the right time, not a moment too soon nor a moment too late. Waiting for things to happen is indeed the hardest part while still clothed in this mortal flesh, but it only serves to heighten the ease with which one can find peace and hope for a future with Christ once we no longer need a fixed address on this earth.

December 2019, January 2020

Ringing Out the Old and Ringing In the New

by amysaxons

As December slips into January, there is a distinct sense that, like a snake who sheds its skin, one can somehow shed themselves of their outgrown (sometimes quite literally 😉), unwanted self for the skin of a fresh, new hope and beginning. I suppose some people might feel this way on their birthday, but birthdays are typically associated with wishes, not resolutions.

This past year started with one of the largest, deepest dives into the underworld of MS that I have experienced thus far. There were times I felt like I didn’t have the breath to hang on until I broke the surface for a life-infusing gasp of even a few good hours strung together. I wrote about this experience back in February in my very first blog post, The Ocean. As hard as it was to get through, the benefit was intimately feeling the presence and comfort of God in profound ways hitherto unknown to me. I didn’t make a resolution for 2019 to be a year of spiritual growth, but as a direct result of how hard it was, it turned out to be exactly that. 

Resolutions denote a need for a change and a conscious effort to make the change happen. I’ve made a few New Year’s resolutions over the course of my life with varying degrees of success. They have always been about things over which I have control, like losing a few pounds, exercising more, being more circumspect about what I say, reading more and watching less TV…the usual stuff.

This year, 2020, marks my 30th anniversary of living with MS. After my initial diagnosis, and except for a couple of relapses, the first 10 years were relatively, blissfully easy.  I had absolutely no concept of what it would eventually be like to live with MS as my daily parasitic sidekick. Sometimes, even now, it still surprises me by how far down its tentacles have reached into my life.  

Most gratefully, as 2019 progressed, I recovered enough to have some good days sown in among the bad. This too was a lesson from God about gratitude and hope.

The lessons learned and the spiritual growth God has blessed me with will serve as a lifeline, like pure oxygen, to whatever the New Year throws at me. So, I resolve to take each day of 2020 as it comes, resting upon the One who created time but is not bound by it.

I hope you take the time to look back over your experiences of 2019 with a view to how God has worked in your life. If you don’t see Him there, then there’s no better time to invite Him to share not only 2020 with you but the rest of your life! Get in contact with me and I will gladly help you get started.

May God be with you in the new year, my friends!

December 2019

Merry Christmas

by amysaxons

As daylight fades, I keep catching glimpses of the twinkling lights of our Christmas tree when I swivel our rocker-recliner just so. Somehow, the lights illuminate tidbits of childhood Christmases past, as if they were photographs: Grandma Lois hanging our presents on the tree like her parents did when she grew up in North Dakota in the early 1900s; our stockings hung on the mantle containing an orange stuffed in the toe; cutting out and decorating sugar cookies with Mom and my sisters; stringing popcorn with a needle and thread to hang on the tree; putting together 1000 piece puzzles with everyone; playing hand after hand of Dummy Rummy with our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins; and playing my favorite carol, “Silver Bells” over and over from the only Christmas album my Dad had through his furniture-size stereo.  Of course, I was always excited to see what presents I got and can remember some special gifts, but my best memories are always of the special traditions and people who shared their Christmases with me.

Although many of these special people in my life are now gone, they live on in my memories. Todd and I have made our own Christmas traditions and have found joy in sharing our families with each other. The way Christmas looks through these 49 year old eyes is very different from the way they innocently gazed in wonder and excitement when I was a child.

Gratefully, although I didn’t know it at the time, I was learning the most important lesson of the holiday; it’s the people that matter. Grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, in-laws, friends…whoever you share this season with. And, just as it should be every single day of our lives, not just the 25th of December, it’s about Christ and the gift He gave so that we might have life…Himself.

Merriest of Christmases to you and yours!
❤️

December 2019

Life On the Boil

by amysaxons

Somehow, every time I steam vegetables on the stove I manage to get busy with other meal prep work and look away at the exact moment the water starts to foam and boil over. It leaves an icky, mucky mess on our glass stovetop that requires a lot of elbow grease to clean up.

The entire month of December can sort of feel like this, too much to do and not enough time and energy to do it all. Pageants, musicals, parties, decorating, cooking, shopping, wrapping, organizing, traveling… the list is endless and it comes on top of our usual work, church, and family duties. In an effort to create and maintain memorable traditions with our children, family, and friends, it seems we overextend ourselves. Stress begins to boil over, taking away the joy of the season and making us feel like a mess on the inside.

These days, Christmas or not, many people choose to live their lives set on a constant boil.  Every spare moment of time is filled with activity and on the go.  I don’t want to leave the impression that it’s wrong or bad to have a full calendar. I suppose I used to do that too when I still could.  It felt good to be busy with school and church activities, going to the movies or hanging out at a friend’s house, attending concerts, having dinner out, or just riding around town with my best pals.  It was fun being away from home and it felt as if I was seizing the opportunity to really get my money’s worth out of every moment of life.

I don’t want to go back and change much about that time in my life, except that I wish I would have weeded out some of the empty, self-indulgent things I did in a mindless effort to keep life bubbling away. Instead, I would have benefited from some unfilled moments so I could study, reflect, and work on my relationship with God.

Thanks to MS, I rarely live life on the boil anymore. Most of my days are somewhere between a long, slow, gentle simmer and stone cold. Amazingly, just as with food, there is as much nourishment and fullness in life whether it’s served hot off the boil, warm from a good simmer, or cold straight out of the fridge.

On most days, I am glad life has slowed down. It has allowed for me to boil life down to the essentials instead of life boiling me down. Yes, sometimes it’s true that I would like to have a bit more boil and a little less cold, but the joys of life can be savored either way.

My wish for you this holiday season is that you purposely carve out some quiet time to grow your relationship with God. You likely won’t find Him in the chaotic, hectic, hubbub of festivities, but in the quiet stillness of a holy night about 2000 years ago.

November 2019

If Only… NASA, Amy, and Youth

by amysaxons

Sometimes the difference between an intricate, highly complex machine working or blowing apart is down to a simple, small component’s integrity at one single moment in time. NASA learned this lesson the hard way in both the Challenger and Columbia disasters. In both cases, the defective components were made months and even years before either shuttle was assembled.

As the symptoms of my MS have progressed, I am reminded of how “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14) each of us truly are. Despite billions of dollars worth of research, centuries of learning about the anatomy and physiology of the human body, and life-long careers devoted exclusively to trying to figure out what goes wrong to make MS activate, there is still so much we don’t know. In the early 1600s, German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler was correct when he described his study of planetary movements as “thinking God’s thoughts after Him”. This statement is true in every avenue of mathematics and science, especially in the study of biology.

Somewhere, somehow, some way, long before I ever had any symptoms of my Multiple Sclerosis, all the viral, environmental, hereditary, and biological elements were just right to kick this disease into action in the biological petri dish that makes me me.

My immune system got all confused and started destroying itself. Thanks to MRIs, I have seen for myself the white smears and dots scattered across my brain and spinal cord where tell-tale signs of damage can be easily seen. It remains inexplicable how it happened, but that doesn’t stand in the way of it being true. All my progressive, worsening problems with balance, walking, incontinence, dropping things, quick and excessive fatigue, tingling, and slow processing are all due to these white globs that made their initial marks nearly thirty years ago.

It’s staggering to imagine that such small blobs etched out so long ago have created the big problems I deal with every day.

Hmm, I feel a life lesson coming on. Sometimes it’s the little, but wrong, things we allow ourselves to do early in life that eventually turn out to be our undoing in the end.

If only someone would have checked the integrity of the O-ring on the right solid rocket booster before the Challenger took off, seven lives would have been saved. If only one day we could figure out what causes MS and how to stop it before other people’s neurologic integrity becomes comprised and they end up going through a progressively worsening disease process. If only we ourselves strove to live Godly lives and to teach the young how to choose right, so many lives would flourish and God would be glorified. If only.

November 2019

Sister Trip on Mom’s Birthday

by amysaxons1 Comment on Sister Trip on Mom’s Birthday
Sister Trip on Mom’s Birthday

This past Monday was my Mom’s birthday, it was the fourth year my sister Susan and I celebrated it without her.  It’s always a tender kind of day for both of us, one that’s full of sweet memories hemmed in by missing her.  

This year Susan flew from Texas and I flew from Missouri to spend Mom’s birthday together in Florida.  Mom always loved that we were close as sisters and she would have thought this was an excellent idea! It certainly was, ummm…, an interesting experience for me flying solo. I was drug backwards through two terminals, in and out of three elevators, and on and off the sky train to get to my connecting flight to Orlando via Dallas. 

img_20191102_101233_exported_466_1572707906458  img_20191102_104455

We stayed at my sweet mother-in-law’s vacay house near New Smyrna Beach.  We filled our days with lots of reminiscing, stories both old and new, lots of laughter, and, of course, exceptionally good food!

 

We got sand in our toes and sea breeze in our hair the first full day.  The tide was in and the waves were white-capped one and all. That afternoon we discovered the scenic, old downtown sidewalks and stairs into nearly every store were not meant for me (or anyone else with limited mobility) to peruse, so we went back to the house and lounged the afternoon away.  

 

Mom took us girls to Epcot over spring break in 1988.  How can it have been that long ago?!  Yikes, we’re getting old!! Susan has been back since then but I haven’t.  So, we decided to go on Monday, November 4th, Mom’s birthday. Mercy, we enjoyed ourselves and know Mom would have approved of all the sights, sounds, and tastes!  We lucked into being there during the International Food and Wine Festival. We ate our way around the world and let our inner gluttony rule until we had made a full circle of the park.

As good as the other days had been, I think our last full day was probably my favorite.  We found a beautiful, quiet, out of the way, public park with a pier jutting out into an ocean inlet.  We sat and soaked up the Florida sun, the sounds of the leaves rustling through the palmettos, and the peacefulness of our surroundings since no one else was there.  

As we turned around to walk back along the pier to our rental car, we noticed a common egret perched on the wooden rails. It looked straight at us and then serenely continued to preen and go about his business as if it knew we were harmless.  Susan and I quietly inched our way closer taking picture after picture until we were no more than three feet away.  Egrets are very common shore birds in Florida and someone else residing there might have hardly noticed his presence. However, we were mesmerized by him and thought he was anything but common, as his name implies.  His feathers billowed in the wind and his black legs and toes were a beautiful contrast against his white body. And his eyes, his eyes! I’m positive he not only saw us but appraised us as he stared our way. We three stood in our strange, small huddle for several minutes with him posing and us snapping picture after picture. He was the one who had called our meeting together by his mere presence so it was only polite that he should be the one to adjourn it.  With a deep bend of his knees and a long stretch of his wings he was in flight, soaring over the waters and away from us. Susan and I talked about him and what a fascinating creature he was, but we were just one side of the experience. I’m back home in Missouri now but find myself thinking of him. I wonder if he thought anything at the time of the two women held in his charms and if we left any sort of lasting impression on him that he remembers now.

Much like the memories of our Mom, his brief encounter with us will linger and live on inside us.

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October 2019

Changing Seasons

by amysaxons4 Comments on Changing Seasons

A chill in the air, pumpkins, bales of hay, colorful leaves, small town festivals and fairs, costumes and candy, long sleeves, and warm bowls of chili.  Autumn is my favorite season and I am not alone. More poems have been written extolling Autumn’s winsome ways than any other season. One of my favorite childhood memories is playing with my younger sister for hours in the leaves.  I would rake “roads” out of the leaves in the backyard and she would “drive” her Tonka Truck through them all with Ken and Barbie dressed up in their warmest outfits in the driver and passenger seats.  

It wasn’t until I was older that I understood how the changing seasons reflect the stages of our lives.  I am now in the early autumn of my life as the big 50 lies in wait to spring upon me in six months time. I miss the never ending energy and gusto of the spring of my youth.  I fondly remember the excitement and first-time experiences of living through the summer season, too. All the “adult” things like the first job in my chosen profession, buying my first house and my first car, being entirely responsible for budgeting my first paycheck…and so on were exciting times.  During the first two seasons of life the sun hardly ever seemed to set and youth had enough vitality to live the long days to their fullest measure.

Now, in the early autumn of my life, my energy wanes like the shortening days, with fewer productive hours to get things done.  There are not nearly as many firsts to experience, either. However, what has been lost from the previous seasons has been made up for in privileges only afforded to those blessed with long years.  I have lived long enough to have naturally accrued some wisdom along the way.  

I’ve learned how to tell the difference between what is important and what is not, and the truth from a lie.  People are more important than things. I can look back and see how God has led me through the fires and floods to safer, higher ground.  And I have learned having fun is different than living a life of joy, the latter being so much more important and meaningful. Chasing after experiences does not equate experiencing life to the fullest.  The fullest life is one that surrenders self in order to experience the indwelling of the living God, Christ living in me and me living in Him.

As the trees change to autumnal colors and I find myself purposefully traveling roads with hilltops that afford me a larger breadth of view so I can soak in all the beauty, I look back over my life to see the distance I have travelled.  Not all the views are beautiful, I’ve not lived perfectly, just humanly. However, I can see and feel the hand of God lifting me higher and higher until the dead and barren patches are covered over with His forgiveness, mercy, grace, and loving-kindness.  He calls us all to live, move, and have our being in Him (Acts 17:28). He really does make all things beautiful in His time (Ecclesiastes 3:11)!

God’s blessings,
Amy  

October 2019

I’ve Become a Little Sew and Sew Thanks to Information Overload

by amysaxons3 Comments on I’ve Become a Little Sew and Sew Thanks to Information Overload

Hello Friends, happy October to you!

It’s been three weeks since I finished my Ocrevus infusions and, thankfully, I have returned to my normal MS baseline. I’ve had quite a few people ask me if I have noticed my MS “getting better yet”. Sadly, the answer is no. There aren’t any cures for MS and there is nothing to take away the damage that has already been done. The purpose of Ocrevus, and all the other disease modifying drugs, is to try to stop any further damage from occurring. There are many researchers working hard to try to figure out how to not only stop MS from progressing, but also how to repair damage to the nervous system in order to reverse the debilitating symptoms of the disease. This is a pretty good segue into the information overload mentioned in the title.

Perhaps you are like me and have had to take breaks from social media and the constant barrage of local and international news for the sake of maintaining your own sanity. Well, about a year ago I signed up to a couple of daily MS research news outlets. They arrive in my inbox each morning and present several summaries and links from around the world to everything ranging from research proposals to current studies in mice (poor little mice, they’ve born the brunt of forward thinking MS flops and successes), comparisons of a current MS drug against a possible new drug, clinical trials in all manner of stages, forums about MS, and even articles by fellow MSers about how they live and cope with the disease.

I typically do like to be on top of all the latest MS information, but here lately I’ve been feeling like it’s all too ivory tower. Down here in the trenches, at least in my trench, it’s muddy and wormy with the walls always caving in and needing constant repair. I’m covered in the dank, earthy stench that never leaves my nostrils, even when I dare to raise my head in an effort to try to go over the top, despite having trench-foot. To top it all off, a hail of bullets marked MS come flying over my head intermittently keeping me in a state of constant vigilance and exhaustion.

So, at least for now, I’m going to lie low down here in my mucky but familiar trench and try not to worry about what the people in the ivory towers conjure up for the next move. I’m not giving up on it and I’m glad someone is in the ivory tower, I just need a break from it all for a while.

To that end, about a month ago, I dusted off my sewing machine, turned the music up, and started stitching away! My Mom was a wonderful seamstress and even owned a fabric store when I was young. She showed me how to sew but it didn’t come as easily to me as it did for her. I took a sewing class in high school and had a few lessons through 4-H, too. I’ve sewn a few things through the years as an adult but never really thought of it as something I could get into as a regular hobby. That is until now. I am thoroughly enjoying myself and looking forward to each new day to get stuck in to some new project! The first one was this little sewing catch-all.

I used the leftover material from the catch-all to make some cute bowl huggers for the microwave.

While it is true that some days I am too tired to sew at all and other days I have to take breaks after just a little bit of sewing exertion, just being in my little sewing space brings me joy. For example, looking at all this thread…

…and ALL this fabric with cats ❤️ brings me inspiration for new projects to try when I eventually do have energy!!

I finished up a couple of these boxes yesterday so I would have a better way to see and store my fabric.

I’ve made several things for others, too, which has given me joy and purpose. Fair warning: If you get a Christmas gift from me this year it’s probably going to be homemade. But don’t worry, not all the fabrics I’ve been stashing away have cats on them 😉.

Signing out from the trenches and hoping you’re upwind from me!

Amy