Well, here I am, on the WA coast. I wish I could say that I'm right off the open ocean, but it appears that the water is a part of the Puget Sound. Still, it is fantastic to be here. I am deeply in love with the sea, the fog, the overcast skies and diffuse light....

The reason I have the opportunity of being in this lovely place is that I am attending a Quaker Women's Theology Conference. This is a bit of a surprise even to myself. I don't particularly consider myself a Christian, which is what's great about the PNW quakers. Traditional doctrine does not apply here, and we are all allowed to (even encouraged!) to perceive the divine however we want to. In my case, I guess I would have to say that to me, the divine, or what people call "G-d" is nature/science/the processes and balancing of nature and science and evolution. I have yet to see anything in nature that I could call truly ugly or evil...if I look at it long enough, deep enough.
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Otherwise.....I took a hiatus from blogging due to the custody battle, which I lost, based partly on the fact that I have Asperger's, and that I blogged so openly and pretty much said whatever I wanted to. I thought that shutting the blog down would be a protective measure, but in fact, people called as witnesses can lie under oath with impunity as long as there is no solid way to prove they're lying...which is harder than one might think. Silly me!

Also, I have changed my major. I still and always will love plants and sustainable agriculture, but I just do not have the endurance for the higher math and 3 solid years of hard chemistry. Art has always been my first love, and I'm sick of listening to people who say that you can't make a living at art. They're wrong. Besides, boatny jobs are even harder to find than jobs in the fine arts.....and I am actually *good* at art, whereas the Chem classes were horrible.....

Life is certainly fraught with change and surprises!