Thankyou... with a cherry on top!

Imagine my surprise when I finally returned here to the land of my journal blog, as opposed to my crafty one which is still sadly languishing, to find a gift from Tamara whose blog Thyme for Tea inspired me to remember Paris in July.  

Not quite sure my blog fits the description, at least from my side of the screen, but thank you all the same.

AWARD RULES: a question to answer, some other blogs to foward the award to, and a thankyou. First the question: "If you had the chance to go back and change one thing in your life, would you, and what would it be?"  As I sat and thought about my answer only one thing came to mind.........  Despite a lot of things I would not like to REPEAT in my life (and there are quite a few of those!!)(wearing quilted brown velvet springs to mind for a start), there are few things I would change completely except this: I wish that I had been able to see the bigger picture of my husband's last year with us, to have been more understanding and perhaps less selfish, kinder and more accepting. 

Peter was slowly becoming less able to live the life he wanted while his heart and its various machines and medications struggled to keep him alive.  The rally driver was no longer able to drive, the mechanic was no longer able to do more than advise from the sidelines while his son struggled to teach himself to re-build his car, the photographer no longer had the strength to hunt out special locations, the engineer could only manage going into the office for a couple of hours each day.  Throughout this time I refused to cook the fatty salty things he loved, pestered him to get up, grumbled about rearranging my work to get him to and from his own and somehow think I lost my partner underneath the schedules and the medications and the ambulance rides and the maybe the desperation.  Now I wish I'd just curled up with him, lived the slowest life possible together, and maybe it might have been longer.  How could we know it wasn't something we could fix?  

Oh boy this takes me to places I didn't want to go just now, just ever.  But as I write I am trying to sit up, wiping my eyes for the hundredth time this week (it seems to be a raw time just lately) and taking heart from the fact that this blog has only a small audience and perhaps they will understand, and so it doesn't matter that my response has been more personal than perhaps it needed to be.  Maybe I should have written about regretting the brown quilted velvet instead?  I feel my mood lifting at the memory of that awful skirt.

Okay. Lightness.

Finding only 6 blogs that fit the bill is easier.  In no particular order, my 6 special blogs are:

1.  Nancy at Small World of Inchies and Twinchies - where tiny things are celebrated and wonders can be found.

2.  365 Cat Ladies and Friends - for lovers of cats and whimsy

3.  Lisa at The Craft's Meow - she has to be amongst the kindest and most thoughtful people I know, and we've never even met.  Such is the power of a blog.

4.  Electra at Wishin' I knew how to Blog - where you never know what you're going to find (and this makes two awards so that PROVES she's special!!)

5. Third Storey Window for intriguing things that get me thinking...
6.  Free Advice - still worth every penny - because I love Rosemary's sense of humour and pragmatism.


Now to thank Tamara properly for her kindness in bestowing this award on me..... I found your blog through Electra's posts and just had to take part in the Paris month.  It was a lovely time for me to hunt through the photographs and post some special moments.  Writing those posts gave me confidence to take up writing for pleasure again and I cant thank you enough for that small piece of motivation.