On a foggy June morning....

From a few days ago before I did too much hand-sewing and angered my right shoulder.

Our granddaugthers are here for the week, and we've already enjoyed some marvelous summer weather. This morning is a June Gloom extravaganza, lol, but in a few hours that marine layer will lift, the sun heading high into the near-solstice sky.

Currently it's myself and chirping birds, fog beginning to rise upward, a few cups of black half-caff tea ingested. I've not written much about giving up almond/oat milk in tea, but after the last week to ten days, I've managed what I never thought possible.

And maybe that sums up our lives, going about this and that, wishing for a dream to become reality or to shed that which hinders, then a week to ten days pass, a few months perhaps, and there we are in that long-considered yet didn't think we could achieve life. Huh. Pretty weird.

But good! Why did I give up a milk-substitute in my tea (but not my coffee, lol)? Because when I visited my daughter at the end of May, the almond milk didn't seem right. It was fragmented in my hot beverage, and while the taste was adequate, the look of it was...not the look of tea with milk I knew long ago in Britain. That's where I began drinking hot black tea, using real milk, and nearly thirty years later I'm in Humboldt County and milk alternatives no longer soothe my soul.

Yet I am a writer now, like I always wanted to be. A grandmother even, which I vaguely assumed would occur. I sew quilts and keep chickens, neither of which were on my docket, haha. I live in a place where the temps are kinda like England, yet Redwood trees and banana slugs don't at all resemble a place where at the time of departure claimed a quarter of my lifespan. It's been nearly twenty years since we left, and those eleven years of UK residence continue to shrink with every passing day.

I've been reading through private blog posts I wrote when we packed out of our British life, and while I'm grateful to have written them, I'm reminded how the past is just that, and dwelling in the present is better. Yet tomorrow this post will be the past, does that mean it's irrelevant? Does having put milk in tea matter a single whit? All the books I write, quilts I sew, what is their significance? I can't measure that, all I can do is keep moving forward in love. For if something is accomplished in love, its purpose is far more than I can fathom.

That's where I am right now; keeping my heart open to unexpected occurrences, keeping a loving eye on granddaughters, on my hubby, and prayers for the rest of my beloveds. Keeping almond and oat milk out of the tea, but using it in coffee, maybe the sugar makes it palatable. Sweetness matters in how we treat others, ourselves, and in accepting where we are on this planet, blips here then gone.

As long as there is sweetness, kindness, and care for others, no milk substitute is required. Have a great week everyone!