I am 98% finished with reconfiguring my office space. It feels better in here already. What a huge difference it makes to have a blue background behind the monitor instead of the brooding brown background that blocked my view of the blue walls.

BEFORE:

 

 

AFTER

The little “angel doll” beside the desk is a “music box” I got Mom after she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

I cherish it and it’s the only “doll” I’ve ever wanted (because it was hers)!

The image below shows the desk that Dad built for me with love and attention to detail, which is 100% why I keep it. 

 

And below is a little porcelain lamb that I bought Mom when I was a child, which she kept all her life and gave back to me to have at the end.

*sigh*

Reconfiguring my den has put me back in touch emotionally with why I surround myself with “historical artifacts” of my existence.

 

There was a Family Circus cartoon eons ago that showed a little boy or girl up in the attic with their grandmother as she was going through a trunk of her treasured memories. In it, the child asks her, “Why do you keep all this stuff?”  and the grandma responds,”To prove to myself that it wasn’t all just a dream.”

 

Yeah. Eggs-ack-ly.  Sometimes I have to pinch myself at the good fortune I’ve had all my life to come into contact with  just the right people at just the right time (including my perfectly imperfect — but fiercely loving — parents, both of whom lived for us kids and would have died for us) to realize so many of my fondest hopes and dreams.

 

Just looking at the photos on my walls makes me smile!

Not all of these are on my walls, to be sure! There would be no wall space left — and there’s very little now!

At Gentle Jungle late 19970’s

(below) At Shamabala with Tippi Hedron, early 1990’s

(below) In Spanaway with Jessie Haire atop Fancy, her horse, about 1959 or so…

Two fawns I raised after the Mt St Helens Eruption in 1980

With Natasha tigress at Shambala early 1990’s

With Dreyfuss at Cougar Mountain  1978-1979

With Sneakers (the first serval I ever met) at Gentle Jungle late 1970’s

Sneakers the serval and me asleep during graduation week at Gentle Jungle

 

(above) With Zamba at Gentle Jungle

(below) With Darwin (Doc) at Gentle Jungle

With a trained stunt bear at Gentle Jungle

With DeForest and Carolyn  Kelley (my So Cal “parents”) 1991 photo by Bill Dow

It still boggles my mind…and yet… it seems like only yesterday when I look at and remember those happy days…

 

Barbra Streisand singing The Way We Were always goes through my mind whenever I reminisce…