No, I am not speaking of the ominous villain in Doctor Who (I love you if you get that reference), but I am speaking of the strange periods of silence I've recently endured.  Times in life where one desires no company other than a spouse, no conversation other than with beautiful films, and more sleep than most people dream of.

Perhaps this silence is due to my being sick for almost 9 days now.  I've left the house only 3 times in that stint, and just when I thought I was getting better, I woke up this morning with what I can only guess is a different cold.  How festive.

Despite feeling strange, solitary, and rather disabled, I've been enjoying the energy, the Feng Shui, of being in a house that has been lived in so well.  I've cooked several amazing meals, had countless cups of tea, snuggled with Joel any old time I wanted, stewed cider, and baked an apple pie.  I suppose I am saying that I am thankful for being ill in that it has demanded sleep and nourishing food and soul-giving solitude.  I am thankful for a body.

Let me explain.

The Universe and I have been at odds lately.  We've been in discussion about endings.  I am fighting this impossible battle between the biological need to survive and the inevitable truth that we all die, and must.   The human race will most likely be entirely wiped out in the next million years, with nothing to offer the cosmos or other lifeforms elsewhere (except The Voyager, Joel comforts me).   Moreover, I suppose the real struggle is that I cannot control either. I wish I could be obsessed with beginnings, but instead I've been struggling so much with the fact that life ends.  Just when bliss introduces herself to me with a jarring handshake, she slips through my fingers because I think of when it will end. I am trying to accept that this issue has been brought to me to examine and chew on, trying to see its essence instead of its shadow, but I have a distrust of the temporary.

Simply stated, I am trying to reconcile death with life, and it seems everyone has some sort of lovely answer for how they have arrived at their own particular version of peace. I suspect that most deal with it by ignoring it, or praying a lot, or distracting themselves with the busyness of life.  I bring up this comparison to others because I believe our notions of personal happiness are based largely on how we see others living and what they chose to pour their precious lives into.  I am clinically depressed, so it makes sense to me that I would wonder why everyone is so darn happy all the time, expressing how they find certain weather patterns, particular bowls of fruit, or long vacations nothing but entirely rewarding, afraid to express anything negative because of what that might mean, or what others might think.  In the end, when we do not take the time to express all parts of life - the good and the bad, and express both with tact and love - I feel we are performing a great disservice to those in our care, who listen to us and glean inspiration from us.  If we are only expressing good, those who feel badly about life will feel ashamed that they can't just feel good like so and so does all the time.  This is a complete rabbit-trail, I might add.  All of this to say that it often feels as though I am the only one thinking about the inevitable end of the Universe, and balancing the desperate desire to stay alive with the intellectual acceptance of death.  Of course I'm not.

Back to feeling thankful for the human body I have.

Therefore, in the midst of this very confusing mental dialogue, I find it especially rewarding when I am made newly aware of the awe of the human body, decaying and fleeting though it be.

At 6:00pm tonight, Joel and I will have been married for 9 years.  When this union took place, the technology available to us wasn't able to produce a slide show that included both music and photos.  As it happened, we pressed play simultaneously on both the pictures and the songs - how antiquated!  Because I've wanted to redo the slideshow in modern format for record keeping, I've now made a movie of our wedding slide show.  This was played at our reception, and I used all the same music and photos as I did then.  It is a bit long, but if you chose to sit through all 11 minutes of it, please enjoy.

I had to laugh when I realized that if we ever broke up, the first person I would walk to talk about it with would be none other than my Joel.  I'm going to take that as a sign.

I love it when Jennifer and Olive come to visit.  Since they moved back to California in April, much to the family's sadness, Jennifer and Olive have been able to get back up about once a month to ease our pain.

Add one (or five) of Jean's pumpkin cookies, and you have one blissed out madame.

Last night, Miss Olive joined in the festivites.