Sadness, Working Hard, Lee (the hurricane that wasn't)

After the surprise cancer diagnosis early last week, my nephew passed away over the weekend. I received word on Thursday that my brother, sister-in-law and niece had travelled to Pittsburgh overnight (by car, my brother is not one to fly anywhere, likely a result of having spent too many years in the air in the Navy) as they had been notified that there was little time left. And Sunday morning I received word from John's brother that he had passed. (Marvelling here at how information is relayed these days - both of these updates came via Facebook Messenger.) The family is back home here in Maine now and are awaiting the body so they can plan a funeral. In the meantime, I have been working on new inventory and realized this week that it is time to shift to holiday mode as I have 4 shows in a row in Oct.-Nov. and will have little time then to create. So today I'll straighten up in the studio, put away the fall fabrics and pull out the Christmas. It will be a fun, fast and furious time for the next few weeks. We experienced little to no damage from this past weekend's brush with Lee - a couple of dead branches on the ground, lots of leaves on the ground and deck, but little rain and just a momentary blip in the power supply. Others in our town lost power for a few hours, and communities on the coast and especially Downeast had serious damage. All in all, we dodged a bullet here.