Westwoods

  In our saddened chaotic world, hope is a foreign word. It is rarely presented as just plain Hope. There is always someone who wants to dash reality over most of it. It's almost as if people have become afraid to hope. There is great scoffing about living in a fairy tale and making things glossier than they really are. I'm all for being real. I don't like pretty cliches and pat answers. I can usually tell when someone has actually been through the tough thing they are talking about versus parroting another's story. So I get the whole reality thing.    It's been over a month since I last wrote here. I've been painting and doing house projects and having friends over and doing Thanksgiving and Christmas.  As Bruce and I traveled today to his place of work, I recapped the past six weeks in my mind silently.  A lot of life can happen in six weeks. Some good, some not so good. Or at least it is sometimes difficult to call it good because well, it's often combine