Fresh today
I'd been thinking about redesigning the journal for several weeks. Months, maybe, even. Weeks anyway. I liked the purple design, but it was beginning to annoy me. It was too purple, too curly. I don't know; I was tired of it. But I didn't have anything to take its place. I'd done a few sketches, worked out a few rough designs, but nothing really grabbed me. And I figured it wasn't important anyway, that the content is really the important thing, but as I've said, I have a hard time getting interested in the content if the design bores me.
I can't remember what I was looking at yesterday, but I suddenly remembered that I had always meant to try to work a design around coffee cups, teacups, some kind of cups. The symbolism pleases me--the ritual of preparing tea, the quiet contemplation of the tealeaves, the calming effect, the warming. The companionship inherent in sharing a cup of something with a friend, the serenity of sitting down at night with a cup of tea and a book.
So I started looking around for art to inspire me, and I found this image at Eyewire, and started making a design around it last night, and everything just fell into place. I showed it to Bob, and he said, "The only thing missing is a cat," and of course, that's right, and I started thinking, oh shoot, should I go back and look for an image with a cat in it?
I originally intended to wait and start using the new design on August 1, but it fell into place so quickly and I liked it so well that I thought why not start using it now? As always, if anyone notices any broken links or things that don't work right, don't hesitate to let me know.
One of my uncles died over the weekend and I spent today with my family, at the funeral. It seemed sudden--I had talked to him, I believe, on Mother's Day when I was out at my mother's house, and he called on the phone. We talked briefly and he said that he had been to the doctor and they thought he might have cancer, but they weren't sure yet.
He did have cancer of the throat, and as it turned out, he had probably had it for awhile, undiagnosed. It took him quickly, and although I hadn't visited him, everyone said that it was a blessing, because he had deteriorated so rapidly.
So, the funeral was today. It was in the little town where my parents grew up, about 150 miles or so away from me. It's a pleasant drive through the country, and I left early in the morning and got there around 9:00. I was introduced to a lot of people that I may or may not have ever met before--old friends of my parents' that they went to gradeschool and high school with, relatives that I hadn't seen for years, cousins and second cousins.
Afterwards, the "church ladies," as someone referred to them, fixed lunch for the family at the church, a pot luck, sort of, but one which we didn't have to bring anything to. I sat with some of my cousins and their children--always strange to see the grown-up children of the people that I always remember as children . . .
Memories:
- The American Legion color guard at the cemetary and, in the distance,
a trumpeter playing Taps.
- A little girl, my nine-year-old second cousin, with her arm around her grandfather, comforting him in the loss of his brother.
I keep meaning to mention this--someone recently wrote and said that they had stopped reading the journal because they were having trouble reading the small font, and for some reason their browser wouldn't allow them to increase the font size. This reader had come back to try again, though, and discovered that the mobile version, the version that I prepared for PDAs and that uses no formatting, allowed her to do that.
So if anyone else is having a similar problem, you might try that.
