Choices are sacrifices

Notes from 2011 (I still like ice cream and coffee and altitude.)

Choices are sacrifices ... It means giving up something you want for something you want more.

I'm not a big TV watcher ... I like to read, or maybe do a suduko while a program is on. My husband enjoys relaxing with a show ... During the last several months we have "seen" several seasons of Mad Men (ummm ... not really a fan, though I do think it's well written), Flash Forward (Sci-Fi, I liked the concept), Burn Notice (strong character development of weak characters ... Stuff gets blown up often, predictable, but okay), and one I will actually watch ... White Collar (FBI guys team up with a couple of interesting Con men to fight crime). We watch them on NetFlix or purchase them at iTunes. That line above is from one of those shows. I thought it was interesting enough to stop flipping through pictures on Pinterest, or stop Stumbling through articles on topics of interest ... and tap it out on my little yellow pad.

Choices are sacrifices.

That seems right ... This or that with frequently unknown penalties and/or pleasures. Life is a series of almost constant choices.

Giving up something you want for something you want more ...

Well, that's pretty great ... like you're a winner either way.  
I don't think that's very realistic.
 How 'bout "something I don't want for something I want even less".

How do we know to chose. We can't see very far in to the outcomes of choices.

I am hungry for ice cream ... I want it to taste like coffee and altitude. That flavor is unavailable.

O'Donohue on Memory

“Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence."

"On its outer surface time is vulnerable to transience. Regardless of its sadness or beauty, each day empties and vanishes. In its deeper heart, time is transfiguration. Time minds possibility and makes sure that nothing is lost or forgotten. That which seems to pass away on the surface of time is in fact transfigured and housed in the tabernacle of memory.” John O'Donohue

First ever.

Scrap squares bound with a butterfly stitch.

I finished attaching the binding today and have just the handwork left.

Two others are away to the longarm.

I have two left to do, starting one tomorrow.

Palo Duro Canyon

Some of the comments on this photo, snapped on recent campout, observe that the fire looks like a barking dog. Or a coyote. I didn't see coyotes, but I did hear them barking off somewhere in the dark distance. I saw deer tracks in the mud covering the trails and I saw wild turkeys who seemed tame enough wandering the camp sites. I saw a tarantula who was the size of my palm and I heard something scratching in the gravel of the campsite. By the second night I was too tired to notice. 

Turns out I love tent camping. Nobody could be more surprised about that than I. I like that you not only get to see things differently then you do from your usual places or even a hotel balcony, but that you are immersed in what is going on around you. I sleep well. Mostly. If I do wake up during the night it's because I sense my dog is contemplating licking my face or something about the cot isn't quite right. I don't wake up with my heart pounding. I probably feel safer out there than I should, but the camp grounds are invariably full of airstreams and fancy pop out RVs pulled by big trucks driven largely by men who discretely indicate their willingness to have served the country. 

I like it out there so much at dusk when the hush falls and just for those very few moments darkness is barely an expectation. it feels like just a second later it is dark. Velvety dark and ten degrees cooler. I love it when the night insects begin to call and I listen hoping to hear an owl as well. Then the stars. I'm always looking for "the first one", but it seems like a few appear together, and more later and later, and I wonder if that's the Milky Way or just a high veil of stratus crystals. I think about that dust mote and the Pale Blue Dot. We leave the top off of the tent and I enjoy waking to notice where the moon has flown to while I snoozed.