I have been cheating on you. With another blog.

After my recent trip to Sicily,  I started my new travel blog, at Garden Nomad.net.

I'm excited because I love to travel, and wanted a place to ponder and write about travels, adventures, food...food adventures, travel food, food.

I'm still keeping this blog, tho she has been neglected for a while, because it is my "kitchen sink" blog. Where I can come to talk about anything.

And I do have garden posts I am planning in my head, and art and painting posts I want to make.  (Fluid acrylic painting is kind of new, and cool.)

But first let me talk about writing this last Garden Nomad post. Because writing is what this blog is about too. It was brutal.

I started out thinking I was writing an article about arriving in Palermo, with a little history, food, art, and photography thrown in. I was mistaken.

What happened was, all the grief journey and emotional stuff poured in, into my article and into my life.

Well, it is always there, and will always be a part of me. No surprise.

But it was really hard to finish, to blend into a cohesive whole, all of that. And so...I stopped.

Queen of writers, Procrastination, reared her head. I slept too late, played scrabble on my phone, scrubbed the floors, fought with my love. And while I went back into the computer file and sometimes did a little this and that, it was like a cat, hunched over and retching, tortuously retching, trying to get the thick mat of accumulated hair out.

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible."
            -Nabokov

Grieving Mom

It has been a really long time since I wrote a blog article.

I thought about sharing all of my thoughts and processes of grief much earlier, both because I heard and read that writing was a very good tool for healing, and because I thought sharing my feelings and experience might help others who had suffered terrible loss.

Obituary for Ian Patrick Barnard Kent

Ian Patrick Barnard Kent, 27, left this world on Saturday, September 27, 2014, in Garland, Texas.

Ian was born on January 14, 1987 in Fort Worth, where he lived most of his life. Ian was beautiful and talented. He had a good ear for music and a lovely singing voice. He played baseball for many years and had a great throwing arm. He was a cub scout and a boy scout. As a child Ian drew pictures and many cards for his parents and drew and wrote comic strips. In middle school his poem about Dr. Martin Luther King was selected for publication. He played the drums as a teenager, rode a skateboard which he continued to enjoy as an adult, and enjoyed playing disc golf. Ian had a kind heart and was a compassionate pet owner. During the below freezing temperatures the past winter, Ian rescued a stray kitten, “Kitty” whom he loved. Ian was an active member of the recovery community in Kerrville, Texas, where he sponsored other young men in their journey to wellness. As a young adult Ian was surprised to discover a passion and talent for dance and choreography. He taught dance to grade school children in an after school program and performed in dance troops in Fort Worth and in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, where he majored in dance at SRU before his back injury. Ian was sensitive and kind, playful and mischievous. He was a loving brother, son and grandson.