Traveler

A few years ago, my friend Steve wrote a book called "Traveler". He's given me permission to republish it on the web. I've created a separate blog for it and plan on posting a chapter everyday. This is one of my favorite books. I hope you enjoy reading it too. Click here Traveler.

Baby

This is Baby. He's a very special cat that once belonged to a good friend of the family. When Sherry died of cancer this year she left behind one lonely and confused kitty. Baby spent some time at my parent's house but their other cats bullied him constantly leaving him scared and traumatized. So, now he lives with me. He's doing really well so far. He's a bit on the skinny side because the other cats would try to attack him sometimes when he ate but I'm hoping he will feel safe now and begin to thrive again.

Jerome

Last weekend's trip to Jerome didn't go as planned, but then does anything? Because there was a forecast of cold temperatures and thunderstorms for Friday, we decided to wait a day and go up on Saturday morning and come home that night. It was still good though. The weather was beautiful and not a drop of rain all day. We did our usual routine...toured the shops and art galleries and ate dinner at the Haunted Hamburger. One thing different this time was our stroll through the scrap metal yard. It all started when Malo was talking to someone in the art gallery about his quest to find more metal garbage can lids for his art projects and they mentioned there was a scrap metal yard about a block down. So we went and well, maybe I need to get out more but I thought it was really cool exploring the stuff people got rid of. I was especially intrigued by this huge pile of old bikes. Malo was ecstatic when he found two garbage can lids. Another man's trash is another man's...artpiece.






Garbage can lid art

He Will Catch You

A two-story house had caught on fire. The family - father, mother,
several children - were on their way out when the smallest boy
became terrified, tore away from his mother, ran back upstairs.
Suddenly he appeared at a smoke-filled window, crying like crazy.
His father, outside, shouted, "jump, son, jump! I'll catch you."
The boy cried, "but, Daddy, I can't see you."
"I know", his father called, "I know, but I can see you."

Getting Away

Got another Cottonwood/Jerome trip planned for this weekend. This time we're taking advantage of having Veteran's Day off and going up on Friday and coming back Saturday. The weather is nice and cool up there so it should be a nice get-away for us. My roommate is going to bring the video camera from church and shoot some video for Malo's spoken word project. We hope to get some footage in a graveyard and some alleys, old buildings, etc. Hopefully we'll be able to hang out with Greg and Debbie while we're up there. They're pretty busy with the group home kids though so we'll just have to play that one by ear.

I think I'm starting to feel the depression and anxiety I get around the holidays. I was thinking back to this time last year and my life was total hell. Sherry was dying, my aunt fell and broke her hip, and my grandmother was in the hospital. It was a really stressful time for me and I think that's where the anxiety is coming from now. The holidays at my parent's house this year will be pretty strange. Sherry won't be there, my grandmother and aunt are both in a nursing home permanently now so they won't be there either. It will just be my parents, brother and I...how awkward. But things are going really good in my life right now and I'm determined to keep my focus on that.