And Out Again

Many thanks to the Deepwater Journal women for postings while I grieve. All of us need backup when our shoes are untied and there's wolves lurking on the grounds.

I'm actually up a bit. I had a 'visit' from Zebo last night. I heard him barking at the back door. It was the plaintive one he does that said, "Oh, please, please just open the door and let me in! I'm a good boy and I don't chew on your shoes and shop through the garbage can!"

I did manage to get SOME work done the past few weeks, albeit a bit close to the wire. I felt like a calf roper on a timer! Finished an Edwardian costume for Mrs. Darling in Peter Pan Friday night with a whole 30 minutes to spare before show-time. I've never let an actor down in over 40 years, even if I have to stitch them in at curtain! I'm rather proud of the costume - a teal peau de soie skirt with a pleated back held out with a bustle pad and black soutache trim at the hem, a silk blouse with a vintage applique at the squared neckline, pintucks down the front, 8" long lace cuffs, and tassled points. Then I made a shawl from Italian suiting in shades of teal, black, dull gold with long fringe for a scene change appearance. Took no pictures as usual so you'll just have to believe me.

For those of you who clicked on the Peter Pan link above, you have already spent some time with a character I met online years back who relieve believes he is Peter Pan. Enjoy his fashion pages. And before you write him off as a complete nut, read his life philosophy and mission statement. Now. Those of you who didn't click on the link will be just a little bit more curious.

All of us have a little Peter Pan in us. In me, it's the voice that wants to escape when I hear about wars, and crimes against women and children, and disease, and graft, and pollution, and Global Warming and the real life that blows up at my door like flotsam and jetsam. I usually come back after a bit, but escape to Neverland is always an option when faced with the spector of stark, hard reality.

My Neverland is often the Computer where I live a Virtual Life while waiting for realities to subside into a handleable level. Sometimes, Neverland is in a bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz. Focusing on 'should haves' and 'could haves' in the past is another trip to Neverland. Escape with friends is the more pleasant of all my Neverland trips. There, I can be someone important and meaningful and interesting because my posse sees me that way, bless them.

I'm right here in Neverland this minute as you read this. Ernesto is knocking on the back door of Florida and my Gulf Coast home outside Tampa. We do this thing in Hurricane Country where we collectively mind meld and try to send the destruction anywhere but here. This is my guilt over Katrina, ya'll. The crazy part of my bent psyche said that I had a part in turning that horror over to those poor people in NOLA and Alabama and Mississippi. That's very Napoleanic of me, but survives as a shard of the guilt I was brought up with. My little child's mind believed that every calamity that befell my family and my small world was due to some shortcoming of mine.

Is all this confession too much information? I have a tendency to do that. Doris Weatherford said I didn't have a presumptuous bone in my body and was truly guileless. I can read that either way and contemplate that proclamation often. I had professors in University that told me on the Q.T. that I shouldn't be SO truthful and forthcoming. I still wonder exactly what the ramifications of that meant.

It all falls into part of Neverland, however. So now that you know how Peter Pan has touched my life. Now that Peter has flew in and back out the window, I'm going to focus on Peter's quintessential promoter and usurer, Disney. I have pirate skirts and bodices to make for my beautiful little Pirate Jenny in California. She and her Captain Sebastion can be seen cavorting around the Burbank Disney lot in pictures on my Deepwater Trading Company website gallery .

Thanks once more to beautiful Martha and Robin who took up the slack for me on this particular trip to Neverland.