Making the Most of Maine Moments

My last full day in Maine and I tried to pack in as much as possible and I am still not ready to go. I was heading up to Northport to spend a couple hours with my Walkers/Dickinson/Pi Phi friend Jamie Kyte Sapoch when I got a message from Lynn Toms in Durham. Her sweet Wheaton Millie passed away from cardiac arrest this morning. I was in the middle of no cell service Maine and I finally got a signal to call her.
Poor Lynn could hardly talk because her heart is so broken. No one loves animals more than Lynn and Millie was the one she loved the best. I wish I were there to help ease the pain, but Lynn knows that I am sending lots of psychic hugs. If you know Lynn, reach out to her. The loss of a dog is almost the hardest thing to face.
After that series of sad calls I pulled into Jamie’s sweet house on the beautiful Maine coast. John, her husband and my Dickinson classmate was there as was her grown daughter Emily. Jamie and I went to sit in the Adirondack chairs right at the waters edge with big Maine pottery mugs of yummy iced tea.  

It was a great couple of hours of catching up, philosophizing, talking about life’s stages. Jamie has always been someone I looked up to since she was two years head of me in school and seemed to be just that much more with it. I realized that she is my only friend who I went to both high school and college with and was in the same sorority. Jamie has always been both fun and thoughtful at the same time and that is not always a combination that goes together. Before I left Jamie gave me a heart shaped rock. It was such a treasure I will cherish.
After our visit I returned to Belfast, Maine. When I was there on Sunday with Russ and Warren I went into a sewing and art store. They had a lot of quilting fabrics and I was immediately drawn to them. Since I had two men waiting for me I didn’t entertain the idea of thinking about making a quilt, but today I was alone and had plenty of time.

I stopped first at a little place called Daily Soup to get something to eat so I could shop without any fear of low blood sugar. I had a bowl of curried vegetable soup and it was divine. Just what I needed to counteract my Portland day of food. Then I was off to the Fiddlehead Artisan.
It had been a long time since I had done any quilting so decided to pick out a simple pattern just so I had a guide about how much fabric to buy. Then came the difficult part, deciding which of the fabulous fabrics I wanted to get. I spent over an hour, which I felt like was a very long time, until the shop girl told me that I was very decisive and she had a customer yesterday who took five hours. I might have lost my mind if I had taken that long.
Having this bag of fabric in the back of my car now gives me something big to be excited about going home for besides Russ and Shay. When anyone asks me, “What are you going to do when Carter goes away to college?” I can say, “I’m making a quilt.”
Jamie asked me if I was ever bored and I honestly had to say that there is hardly a minute in the day to be bored. There are so many friends to see, projects to do, art to create, food to cook, words to write and people to help, let alone trips to take and places to see. If I just work on all the things I have going already I will still not finish before I die at the ripe old age of 99.

Tonight is my last dinner in Maine and there is a crowd of a dozen people coming to Warren’s. It has been a very fast week as Maine weeks tend to be. I am already missing rocking on the porch on Clam Cove. Thanks to Warren for his enduring hospitality.