Is It Really Wednesday?

TIME, time, time! Trying to take it one day at a time is a good thought, but often it seems they are rushing by two or three at a time instead.
Monday night I caught up with a writing buddy in the vegetable aisle of a local grocery store. Stuck without my trusty digital camera I had to make do with taking a cell phone photo (actually a stranger pitched in and took it) and then e-mailing it to myself. Here we are, CJ and I. After a good talk together by the lettuce, about how life goes by fast and doesn't always turn out the way we'd planned, she has inspired me to send out some of my writing. And maybe even check in with some of my story characters that have been sitting on the page waiting to see how their lives turn out. Thanks, CJ! (Let me know if you are a "lower case" cj.)
I have also been visiting a friend who is very ill. She is 98 years old and as her nephew says, she has "had a good run." In her years as a teacher she gave so much of herself to all her students. She will live on through every good thing we do.
Her nephew, Dennis, and I were in the same high school class together and he is lucky enough to live in Alaska and sent me this photo which he took in his back yard. (Big back yard!) He put out a salmon carcass hoping to invite a bald eagle and got one. (Look sharp!) A loon paddles in the background. Can't you just hear its lonely cry? There was also a fox running around, but Dennis wasn't quick enough to get a picture of that fellow.
So much has been going through my head regarding living and dying, celebrating and mourning, and I've been considering how I spend - or mis-spend - my time. Sometimes it doesn't seem my brain is big enough for all the thinking I do, so maybe it's time to slow down. Any suggestions on how to do that? Maybe meditation.
Here is a journal page I have begun. With matte gel medium coating the picture, I stuck it face down on the book's photo of two boys fishing in a stream. My mother used to tell us that she always knew where we were. I wondered how that could be when she was always at home and we were traipsing through the woods and all over, up and down streams. So when I found this woman's photo it just seemed to belong watching over these boys.
One more photo and then I'm off to bed. It's newspaper production day tomorrow and there are plenty of loose ends to tie up bright and early.
Here is a calla lily after yet another of our Oregon rainstorms. I hope you are dry and warm tonight with someone you love close at hand - femminismo
p.s. Happy Birthday to Pat who doesn't have e-mail ... or, as far as I know, a computer!