Shipwrecked & Comatose

How often do your hear, or even say, the phrase "Everything happens for a reason"?  How about, "It's God's plan"?  Why do we want so badly to believe this, and what good does it do? How often has something bad happened to you and you comforted yourself with the belief that it must have happened for a reason?  Did a "reason" ever make itself known to you?  Did God reveal His magical plan?  Perhaps you simply picked yourself up, dusted yourself off, found a way to move forward, and just went on with your life.   Maybe no reason truly manifested itself, but you found the strength to move on, and eventually life improved, because life can potentially improve. It's an interesting subject for me to be thinking of right now because my life is currently at such a crossroads.  I was laid off my job of 13 years.  After doing the same thing for almost a third of my life, I have to figure out how I'm going to make my way in the world again.  In

I took off some time from work yesterday and used it to get my garden planted. It's not much of a garden.  All I have is a small balcony with some pots and window boxes.  The balcony looks down over the river, giving me a decent view of trees and water and wildlife (ducks, geese, swans, egrets, cormorants, and catfish) but it's not a very attractive space itself.  It's a concrete slab surrounded by metal railing.  It always could use some decoration.  I plant as much space as possible.  I like to use a variety of colorful flowers as well as my favorite cooking herbs.  On the floor I have pots of rosemary, thyme, sage, basil and mint.  In the boxes I have petunias, marigolds, and lobelia. I think I love shopping for plants as much as I like planting them.  I love going to the nursery and making the rounds though the greenhouse.  I love being surrounded by the scents and colors of all of those flowers.  I like to browse through at a leisurely pace, checking out every f

I came up with this look in one of my roundabout ways when someone gave me a sample of this and a trial of that.  I started using the products, some of which were colors I don't normally use, and found I liked them. Last summer I was looking for bronzer bought a "shimmer strips" compact.  When I used it as a bronzer, I realized it looked ridiculous.  I want to look tan in the summer, but tans don't shimmer.  It looked quite fake.  I realized it might make a pretty shimmery but subtle eyeshadow. The look starts with a base of tinted moisturizer, which gives my skin a dewy look and gets that "glow" thing started.  I also use a dash of concealer under the eyes.   I use the peachy color on the lid with the white as a highlighter.  The very dark color at the bottom gets smudged into the outer corner and also applied lightly under the lower lid. Blush is a tawny cream blush and then I use a very neutral lipstick.  The color is barely different from th