We drove up the Outer Banks of North Carolina to the Virginia border – where no cars intrude and the wild mustangs roam free.  We were truly blessed to see ten or more mustangs on the beach this day.

How is it that 10 days passes so quickly?  This poem suits my mood:

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

     — Lord Byron

And so I am dragged back into the non-beach reality.  LOL!  For the last two days, my mind has kicked forward into to-do list hyperdrive:

• into CHA assignments to be completed.
• packages (current count is 8) in my front entrance hall at home; according to the dear lady who is staying there and the official puppy sitter. 😉
• packages (current count is 2) that were DIVERTED so that they would arrive at my in-laws; because I need to work on them before boarding the plane to Orlando!
• Bookings through the end of the year and 1st Quarter 2010.  Besides what is already posted, just watch the sidebar, folks!  Texas, Tennessee, Kansas, Oklahoma (or Arkansas) – here I come!  Booked these yesterday and today while filling out Day Camp forms for the kidoodles (for CHA week).
• Those five nagging things on my Outlook Reminder popup that I really need to get mailed out…

…and I know Liz is laughing because I don't even have a glimmer of a cell phone signal out here at the beach — and yet here I am, blogging and booking class dates.  I do hear you, Liz.  I am relaxing and unplugged (at least a little bit!).  But I miss chatting with ya.  Dang cell phone.

So let it at least be said at least that no traveling occurred lest it had beach or pool as its endpoint during the month of July.  At least until the 26th.  Pretty good for me!

And that we are relaxed, tanned and truly blessed for having this time together in the OBX.

Ah, my 'beach read' is "An Illustrated Life" by Danny Gregory.  If you know me well, you know that I dislike the word, 'NOT'.  As in, "I'm not creative".  And my own personal 'not', "I'm NOT an artist, that's why I stamp".  I'm tired of saying (or even thinking) that — so I'm NOT going to anymore.  It's time to draw… and what is really freaking me out right now is that I JUST visited his blog (while typing in the link above) having never visited it before; and see that he is addressing the attendees of Art & Soul in Portland.  I happen to be going to that show.  Weird. Weird. Weird how things come together like that when you aren't even looking for it and somebody inspires you and BAM there they are.

Ok.  That's a beginning and then end of my ramble.  Off we go…