It was a very hard summer and the very little energy I had needed to go to work for Patreon. I have, for the last 6 months, added a 45 minute podcast that I do every Sunday night called “Touch With Voice,” have showed my artwork in stages so that my Patrons can see how I work, and more. My book is well underway as is the art that will be in the book, and my Patrons receive a free art download every month. The one at the top of this post was last month’s download and will be in the book.

It is an interesting time of life. Though I have been in a downward spiral for 4 1/2 years, I believe I hit bottom over the summer. I’m not going to get better but things seem to be levelling out a bit, or maybe I’m just getting used to being so disabled rather than fighting it. I really can’t go outside because I am so fall prone any little miniscule stone underfoot can send me flying. It is all rather peculiar as well as painful and more than “kind of a drag,” but finally, we all have choice. I have chosen to make the best life possible for myself right here at Dragonfly Cottage. And there are more and more exciting things happening indoors.

In the last year my life was kind of turned upside down when the room I always called my Cozy Room, right next to my studio where the fireplace is, had to have all of it’s contents moved to the Master Bedroom which I never really used because I can’t sleep in a bed but need an oversized recliner chair. It was too hard and too far for me to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night as they are at the other end of the house, so my whole house has been switched around and rearranged and my social worker and others who are here to help me have walked me through every room of my house with an eye toward what might need to be changed so that I can move more safely, as well as where “grab bars” might need to be installed. They are a Godsend. And so much else has been, and is in the process of being, changed further still. I am going through the process of becoming part of the PACE program which takes care of your every need in so many ways I recommend you look it up online. It is for senior citizens over 55 and their number one goal is to make your home safe so that you can stay at home with many in home services. It is not only a true miracle, it is a government program and they are not allowed to advertise. YOU have to go looking for it. And this is one of the things I will be addressing in my book, the fact that there is a great deal of help and unbelievable resources for the elderly that no one tells you about. There are people suffering and struggling who have help available that they don’t even know about and this makes me angry. In my book, which is an illustrated diary of sorts there will also be a whole section at the back of the book for resources.

Too, what has changed about my book, the biggest thing, is that it will still be the book I intended to write but in a much more expanded way. You see I was 65 when I started to become disabled. I will be 70 next April. I had thought of it as a book for senior citizens coping with growing older and getting the help they need and learning how to deal with this new phase of life. But recently I had a revelation.

Long before I became disabled, and Covid put people in lockdown, I never left my house, or rarely, because I am seriously agoraphobic. It’s gotten much worse in the last 20-30 years. I could take anti-anxiety medication to leave the house to go to the doctor, or get groceries or meds, but that was it and I wouldn’t have made it without the medication. Now I am so badly disabled I can no longer drive and sold my car over a year ago, only having driven once the year before for a doctor visit. Any visits that can be done online via telehealth I do that way, and my groceries and meds are delivered to my house, and oh, so many more changes. And it really takes a lot of time to figure things out and implement them and you are always continuing to do this. Much of this has been researched by my daughter Rachel, and she comes over to be with me while I have appointments to be approved for PACE for example.

What I came to realize was that the biggest part of what I have to say and share is not only the resources for help but how to cope, even if you are not old, but may be a younger disabled person, a shut-in, or in any situation that means that you never, or almost never, leave your house. And there are many reasons and people at any age might have them. So my focus includes all of this but more is about creating a beautiful, magical world for yourself right where you live. I discuss these things and much more with my Patrons along the way.

The painting at the top of this post is the post’s title as well. When I have a painting to fit into the book it may be a fable or an example of creating a life you can live just where you are. All of the paintings are based on me and my little one-eyed chigi (chihuahua/corgi mix) that I adopted almost 5 years ago. They are versions of us doing various things. In the painting above she opens her windows so the little bird who has a nest just outside her window can fly in to visit, and she likes to nestle in the woman’s hair and they chat. This is not too far from the truth because I pretty much live in my studio which has windows all the way down 2 sides, opening onto my deck and the back yard which is fenced for Molly. I can hobble about using my rollator walker onto the deck but I can’t go down the stairs or into the yard. But I am out there almost daily because I have 5 squirrel proof feeders hanging just outside the windows and I made a large squirrel feeder which the possums and raccoons also eat at at night. My little animals indoors and the wildlings outdoors are my family, and I watch the birds, all kinds of birds, coming and going to the feeders all day everyday. It is a great joy to me, and I take very good care of them. I may end up in a wheelchair one day but I should still be able to make it out onto the deck for a little fresh air and sunshine. Eleanor, who helps me in the house 2 Saturdays a month, blows off the deck and refills all the feeders every other week, fills the squirrel feeder and washes and refills the big pot of water I keep out for all of the little ones. There are a few plants on the deck but fewer and fewer because I can’t take care of them. I have 2 hoses, one in the front and one in the back but neither will reach my deck unless I were able to go out half way around the house to turn the water on and drag the 100 foot house up onto the deck which I haven’t been able to do in years now. Eleanor helps keep up with outdoor things and the garden in front and this still is one of the things about being so disabled that is so hard. My heart is just broken over not being able to garden anymore, but I am learning to grow and propagate plants indoors and gracious, there’s practically a forest in here now! The greatest gift I can get now is a plant or rooted cuttings to grow on. I am learning so many kind of things.

But back to the Cozy Room. I am SO excited! It’s been empty for over a year and it made me so sad. When I was looking to buy a house back in 2009 the realtor asked me what were the main things I wanted in a house. I said, a fenced yard for my dogs (I moved in with 5!) and a REAL fireplace. (No gas!) Well now there isn’t even a chair to sit in in there. EXCEPT, I all of a sudden had a vision for that room. I lost all my big fiber equipment, looms, spinning wheel, batt maker and more in the fire in 2014 but by the grace of God I stored all of my yarns and fibers, spindles and small fiber equipment like little looms, knitting needles and crochet hooks, my beloved spool-knitters made by Noreen Crone-Findlay, and more in my one car attached garage which was all made of concrete block so it was saved, but I was so depressed after the fire, having lost a 15′ piece of fiber art I had been working on for months in the fire, I just didn’t have the heart to do any kind of fiber work. I closed my etsy shop, and I know it’s funny, or rather odd, but I had been making fiber art to SELL. I couldn’t do that anymore and I can’t do that now because it would take too much energy and I’d have no way to pack and get things mailed, BUT one day I realized, living on social security and not having disposable income, that the magic I was making in my house had to come from things I already had or really, really cheap things on eBay, or some where I could get something cheap. I’ve gotten plant cuttings a couple of times that way but mostly this is not the eBay I fell in love with more than 20 years ago and got what I needed there. The prices are exorbitant and THE SHIPPING!!!! 😶 I was looking for something the other day (I mostly “window shop”) and I found the most marvelous little thing for $5. I could swing that. BUT THE SHIPPING WAS OVER $17!!! I nearly fainted. No way can I afford that kind of shipping.

So, anyway, Eleanor is going to help get my fiber things from the garage into the Cozy Room, and I have been looking for a very long time for a recliner for that room (I have to be able to keep my legs up) but they were all too expensive or the shipping was outrageous or the cost of having to pay someone to put it together was over $100. Ridiculous. But I have been looking and looking and over the weekend I was talking to my neighbor who is so good to me. She said, “If you can find a chair you can afford my husband and I can get it in the house and put together for you.” I nearly cried. And I set to looking. And right now they are having “Black Friday Sales” with having up to 70% off on the recliners and I had a little money put aside for emergencies from selling my car last year and I found a chair that is so much nicer than anything I would ever have been able to afford, oversized, soft and cushy, with heating and massage (!!!) and it is a “power-lift” recliner which I hadn’t even thought of looking for because they are so expensive, to help elderly or disabled people. It lifts you right up to a standing position. The cost on the sale $350!!! Free Shipping! And my lovely neighbors will get it in and assembled for me. Talk about a gift from God. I am still in shock.

So it will be a cozy fiber room with all sorts of fibery things in there and I will be able to use my fireplace! Holy honkin’ hallelujah it’s a downright miracle! I am going to have a chimney sweep clean and check the chimney for safety. You only once have to live in a house that burns down and lose almost everything not to be overly careful about this sort of thing!

I will just be doing fiber work for the relaxation of it, to make gifts, and MAYBE one day have a few little things to sell, but that is far off in the future because the shape I’m in now means that you never know what the morning may bring. There’s times I can hardly get up out of my chair and it takes a few times. And I have taken bad falls 3 times in less than 3 months that brought EMT’s and Firemen to my house to help me (I wear one of those emergency pendants and can’t take it off, a Fall pendant.). You never know what you will wake up to. Sometimes I have been frighteningly worse. Sometimes far less so, and I have to have 2 rollator walkers in my house because there are a few steps from my kitchen down into the Cozy Room and my studio where I pretty much live. The PACE people said one of the things they do is if I have to go to a wheelchair they will not only get me the wheelchair but build ramps where needed. I mean really, if you, or someone you know, needs this kind of help, please look at that link. It’s in every state in the country.

And so now I sit here, writing to you, wishing it hadn’t been so long but doing my best, at my work table which is an antique 9′ long farmer’s table made of pine and so heavy it took 4 men to get it in here when I moved in. Someone found it under some hay in an old barn and said, “If you can get it out of here, you can have it!” So it’s here with my desktop computer, tons of pens and art supplies, journals, notebooks, and books everywhere around me, and my little Molly who really is an emotional support dog for me. I kind of hit the jackpot — mental health issues from trauma in youth that marked me for life and got worse and worse along with being ridiculously disabled. There isn’t a base I haven’t got covered (I hope!!!).

But you know what? Like everybody on this earth, I have my good days and my bad days, I am deeply grateful for everything I have, my 3 children and their spouses are healthy, and my 5 1/2 grandchildren! (One is still in Mama’s tummy.) And I allow myself the really bad or sad days, like last week my little blue parakeet Teddy died and it broke my heart, but this is life, these things happen and they will continue to. And Franny, his little mate, seems to be doing well.

I am so very deeply grateful for my Patrons at Patreon whose support paid for me to get this blog post up to you. I know it sounds crass and I’m really sorry but as much as I would love to just give everything away as I always have, I live on social security and have a lot of medical issues so most of what I do is on Patreon and it is a Godsend for me. Thank you, again and again my dear Patrons. You are my people, you are my family.

I just used up “my last spoon” 3 paragraphs ago and I need to stop here but I hope you are all well, I hope if you like me are in the part of the world where it is autumn you are having a beautiful autumn (always, since I was little, my favorite time of year) and if you are in the opposite hemisphere where you are coming into summer, bless you and enjoy your sunny days.

I am sending you so much love, always and always. I miss you.