Of Flying Dreams and Flippy-Flops (Includes a bit of Quilt Content - yeah, baby!)

First of all, I want to send out big birthday wishes to my friend Bev. Happy Birthday, Bev! Hope it's great!! Yesterday, when I posted the poem I wrote based on flying dreams and the song "Born to Fly", Liz Elayne asked, "do you have these dreams? of flying? that you are flying?" I do! I don't have them as often as I'd like (they're my favorite dreams ever!) but now and then I fly in my dreams. One of the coolest dreams I ever had in my life - and it's one of the ones I remember most vividly - was the very first flying dream I ever had. It was one in which I literally learned to fly in my dreams! I had this dream when I was a teenager. I'd heard of other people dreaming of flight and I was envious of that, but up until that point I'd never had a flying dream. Then one night I dreamed I was watching TV and the program was a talk show. The featured guest was a man who had taught himself to fly - not in a plane, but just him, flying like Superman. He was telling how he did it and in the dream I watched the whole show, fascinated, and at the end of it I thought to myself "I get it! I could totally do that!!" I walked into the back yard and in this dream there was a meadow behind my house and in the meadow was a big, steep, grassy hill. Picture the kind of hill that would be perfect for sledding in winter - it was like that. I walked to the top of the hill, kept the man's instructions in my mind, then ran to the edge of the hill and jumped!....and immediately fell and rolled to the bottom. I climbed back to the top and did it again, and again, and again, until eventually one time instead of tumbling straight down, I sort of hung there in the air, suspended, straining against gravity for a few seconds - sort of like when Michael Jordan would go for a long jump toward a basket and it would seem like he'd never come down. So I kept on trying, and my hang time before I went back to the ground got longer and longer and after a little while I wasn't coming down at all until I did it on purpose. Instead I was rising higher and moving faster and eventually I was truly flying - just like in my poem, doing barrel rolls, turning somersaults, buzzing over the treetops, the wind whipping through my hair and making my eyes water. And I can't tell you how real it all felt. That was the really uncanny thing. I woke up that morning feeling so great! I felt like I'd really learned to fly! And ever since that night, I have occasional flying dreams. Sometimes they're just for fun and other times I've used flight in my dreams to escape from scary things. Either way, I love them. It's been a while since I had one, now that I think of it. Maybe tonight.... A couple of days ago, I mentioned that I sewed this week. It wasn't anything big, but I made 4 fabric postcards. Considering how long I've been in a sewing slump, that's pretty damn good! Two of them are on their way to Dara and Janet as prizes for a little contest they won (so be on the lookout, ladies!) and I don't want to show those yet. But while I was at it, I made two to send to Virginia Spiegel for the FiberArt For a Cause fundraiser in Houston this fall, where they can hopefully find new homes and help raise money for the American Cancer Society. They're today's Daily Art Thang: "Lemon-Aid 1: Summer Hummer" and "Orange-Aid 1: Fuzzy Navel" I thought I'd show you a pic of the backs too, as this is very typical of what the back of my fiber postcards look like: Once I post this I may (or may not) be disappearing for a few days. We're off for the mountains and while we plan to take the laptop with us, we're not at all sure we'll have 'net access where we're going. I'm kind of betting on "not." If we do have it, I'll post some stuff I have ready to go, but if we don't I'll catch up with you all in a few days. Hope you have a great weekend!