At one a.m. the phone rang. My heart just about exploded at the sound and the first thought that ran into my head was someone has died. My husband reached out his hand and started pounding on the alarm clock. I thought he was trying to grab the receiver, but had to wonder if he really knew what he was doing when the phone suddenly stopped ringing. “Robert, why didn’t you answer the phone?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he grumbled.

“But it could have been an emergency!” I panicked, thinking we had missed a very important call. As the sound of my heart pounding in my ears subsided, I could vaguely hear my brother’s voice upstairs and wondered who he was speaking to…the cat? A few moments passed, and then I could hear him walking down the stairs and through the kitchen.

“Robert,” my brother said from the bedroom doorway. “It’s the police.” Robert shot out of bed and grabbed the phone.

Since I was unwilling to leave the warm cocoon of my bed, I could only hear snatches of the phone conversation. ( Robert paces when he talks on the phone, so it was only when he came close enough to the bedroom that the words he was saying became clear.) I heard him say ‘where,’ ‘insurance,’ ‘impound’ and pieced together the startling news that our car had been found at long last.

Later, Robert told me that our car had been found in Edmonds, not too far from our home and that it was in one piece and drivable. He also told me where it had been impounded.

This morning, he called the towing company and found out that one of the windows had been broken. The tow truck driver told him that there were signs around the window of the door having been pried open and that when he had attached the car to his truck, the window “popped” out, making a noise similar to that of a gun shot.

It’s too bad it’s not in perfect condition, but I’m grateful it was found at all. I had completely given up hope. Even though we’re going to have to pay for repairs and re-keying the locks, it’s still going to save us a wad of cash–and time. We won’t have to go car shopping this weekend

Oh look! Becky put up the design I made for her for this month’s Design Trade. The design is her tenth skin called ‘Swan Song.’

I sure haven’t had a whole lot of interesting anectdotes to relate recently. Mostly, it’s because I’m in an unusually productive design phase right now and I’m expressing myself with visual rather than verbal art. I know this phase will end eventually (wish it wouldn’t though, because it’s soooo satisfying to create beautiful things) and I’ll get back to the normal blogging routine–so bear with me until then.

Anyway, I just finished off my design for this month’s Design Trade. I really, really like it and hope the recipient does too–since she’s a wonderful gal and deserves something nice! If she doesn’t find it utterly gorgeous, I know a certain blog which will be using it as a skin–hehe!

I also put up two new skins! The first one is a gift from Becky. I’m thankful she didn’t think I was a real nerd for begging her to make something for me. I *am* a nerd, but she’s nice enough not to actually call me one :laugh: You can view her design by clicking on “In the Country” over there in the sidebar.

The second skin I put up was from Dianne for this month’s Design Trade. She sent it to me early–yippee! It’s the lovely “House of Clouds” skin.

OK, now I need to get started with some paid projects. It will be nice to make up some of the money we’ll be needing to pay for licensing, etc. of the car we’re going to have to buy shortly. Still no word of our stolen car, so I’m assuming it’s gone for good. *sigh*