Home is Where the Heart Is...

So. I have a couple of friends who are really encouraging me to do some watercolor journaling while I'm here, and yes, I did actually bring quite a few art supplies along with. Patrick and Rhonda, does doodle blogging "count"? Just getting warmed up.

Already I feel like I am behind in keeping track of this adventure and to a certain extent days are running one into another. Help! Could time stand still for a minute or two while I get caught up please?

Officially, I have been really, badly homesick one day since I arrived here. That was the Sunday it was snowing like crazy in Vermont and the rest of New England. I was here, sweating my brains out...not because it was necessarily too warm (even though it truly has been unseasonably warm here until the last few days) but more because it was/is damp. You know how Charlie Brown's friend Pig Pen always has the dust and dirt surrounding him? If that was me I'd have droplets of water surrounding me... a fine mist... like I am my very own little micro climate, with 117% humidity... or more.

Wait. Where was I?

I was homesick. Really, really homesick... because I wanted to look out and see snow falling and then look again in a little while and see it sticking to the ground and then look out and see a blanket of white.

I started thinking about "home" and then... how I don't really have one anymore.

That was a sad thought.

Melissa was working on Halloween costumes for the girls that day, and the girls decided to do some sewing too. It has been years since I did any hand sewing myself just for fun and so I joined in the sewing bee. It was a great diversion from the homesickness. Mel does counted cross-stitch and so has little bins full of the leftover embroidery floss, in a rainbow of colours. The dining room table was covered with remnants of cloth and felt, pins and needles and loads of other sewing paraphernalia.

One of the girls was finishing a heart shaped ornament, Melissa was adding heart motifs to one of the costumes...hearts seemed to be the theme of the day and that's what I decided to make too.

It was wonderful to just go for it... no pattern... just deciding what stitch to do here... what colour to use there. With each stitch realizing more fully that the old saying is true - that home really is where the heart is.

And for now, my heart is here.

My cozy little room faces west. The afternoon sun streams in. My bed is one of the fancy kind of air mattresses and that thing is so comfortable it is crazy... some of you know how I felt about leaving my bed back home. Like, at the end of a long day, it was my best friend. It is a blessing to have such a cozy room here. It was the girls playroom- and they gave it up for me. If that's not love, I don't know what is.

The view out my window is mostly consumed by a big ole tree. I think it might be a chestnut but I haven't gotten around to figuring that out for sure...

You can see my handmade/homemade heart hanging in the window... home sweet home.

susie...