Today I am up to my eyeballs in alligators.  We are leaving Wednesday for Philadelphia, where I am hosting Jennifer’s baby shower.  That is all I should have to think about.  The baby coming  is the most important chapter of our lives.  But being so far away is a true disadvantage. Jim and I haven’t seen our daughter pregnant yet, which seems so wrong.  I have wanted to go there several times, but she works, and maybe the idea of having me there, waiting for her to come home every evening might  be too much for her.

Carlos and friends of theirs have posted pictures of her.  It takes my breath away.  All I can do is say ‘Thank you! Jeni’ for not wanting me to be in the delivery room.  Oh my Lord, there is no way.  My Greek would really come out. I can see myself wailing, fainting, rolling on the floor. I repeat, No way!  She is going to call us when the doctor says ‘it’s time!’ and we will get in the RV and drive twelve hours to see her.

During this trip for the shower, my cousin Jim and his wife Cindy are staying at the house to keep watch over the sheep.  Our sheep sitter is getting married on Saturday; congratulations, Sarah!  She’ll be here when we go east for the birth.  Jen is due at the end of August, beginning of September; our plan is to stay there for as long as she needs us to stay.  I can always go back and forth to Philly, too.

Blue Coast Studio Tour is the first weekend in October, and I will have to bow out of participating in it this year.  It was a really wonderful experience being part of the tour.  It forced me to set up my studio and to have a routine of producing goods for sale as soon as we moved here.  Finding out that I no longer wanted to weave was the most intense outcome of joining the group.  I felt totally cleansed selling my weaving equipment.  Of course, I have replaced the volume of it with knitting machines that are laying dormant right now while I write my books.

What are you passionate about?  I love hearing what it takes to make my friends happy, what drives them to move forward.  Passion comes from within, I am convinced.  There is something inside each of us that blossoms when it is exposed to just the right element.  Many years ago, when Jennifer was an infant in the stroller, Jim and I went to a craft show in Howell, Michigan.   Sitting under an umbrella was a young woman, spinning on a Country Craftsman spinning wheel.  She had a big peg board display where her many lovely skeins of naturally dyed handspun were hanging.  Both Jim and I were drawn to the colorful presentation.  Ever since then, the one constant in my life has been spinning and dyeing.  I haven’t had a pair of knitting needles in my hand, or thrown a shuttle for months, but I made time to sit with friends and spin twice this week.

Passion also possibly comes from satisfaction.  If you feel you have done something worthwhile, and the outcome was positive, passion may grown from those things as well.  Anticipation may also breed passion.  Everything I have wanted to do, having children, going to nursing school, opening a knitting shop, writing a book, were all things that evoked passion in me.  Not all of them resulted in passion; I hated nursing, loathed running a knitting shop!  But getting there was so wonderful, thinking about it, planning it, hoping for it, that was worth the disappointment. I felt cheated when I realized that nursing was so much more than standing in the third position of ballet with a clipboard.  I don’t think I fully understood that people’s lives would be in my hands, that I would see doctors make horrible mistakes that would result in maiming a human being, or worse, taking their life.  And I saw nurses doing that, too.  I finally was able to take a sigh of relief this year; it has been seven years since I left nursing and I haven’t received a summons regarding testifying, or because of my own negligence.  No one sets out to hurt someone intentionally.  But the result is the same.  Oh God, I am so glad I don’t have to be a nurse anymore!  My heart definitely couldn’t take it.

So what is it that drives me now? I am excited about the baby.  He is a shadow still, but soon he will be flesh and blood.  Jim can’t even imagine him.  When he holds the baby, hears him cry, then it will be real.  What if the kid doesn’t like us? No one talks about that!  Babies have that sense, don’t they?  Please, let the baby like us.

Queen Anne’s Lace and Mullein is in bloom around here, and that always makes me want to get the dye pots out. I will do it as soon as we get back from the baby shower.  I have a couple of Kilos of silk roving and silk and cashmere blend yarn that I got from China that is calling out to me.

And my books.  They take a lot of time.  Pam of Babylon is going to be reprinted soon without the twenty or so punctuation mistakes and one misspelling.  Only one person complained about it, but I love Pam so much, I want her to have a perfect book if that is even possible.  The two sequels are in progress; Don’t You Forget About Me and Dream Lover.   I am passionate about writing, and I think it shows.