About

I am me, mother of two adult children and grandmother of two. My son taught elementary grades in California and international foreign schools in China, South Korea and Oman for several years. When he returned to the U.S. he pursued his career in photography for awhile, and is now teaching in Southern California.. My daughter taught elementary grades in an international foreign school in Thailand, after teaching for three years in South Korea. My daughter is now in northern Oregon. At home, I have a spoiled dog; Shasta, a yellow lab who was born March 31, 2009 and came from the Humane Society to live with us in April of 2010. In May of 2019, I inherited two of my daughter’s cats – Nong Saio who is from Thailand, and Queso, who is from South Korea – you’ll note his Korean name :). She brought them home with her when she returned to the U.S. but when she married they had too many cats and had to do a population reduction. Hey Mom!

I have 5 acres of land, so I keep busy during the spring, summer and fall with yard work, although as the years pile up I am less interested in doing as much.  I am a person of varying hobbies, playing with Photoshop Elements and digital scrapbooking, knitting, reading, alcohol ink painting as well as painting with acrylics. A few months ago I took up weaving on a rigid heddle loom, and that is my current obsession. I began to blog in the fall of 2009 as a way of posting pictures and keeping up with friends and family when we traveled back to Minnesota to visit my brother and his wife. Then I found several blogs by people whose writing style inspired me, and I was hooked.

In the summer of 2007, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and subsequently had a mastectomy, followed by four months’ chemotherapy treatments. There are residual effects; I lost my hair and was on a medication that completely blocks the production of estrogen for five years, so my hair will probably never again be what it was. It’s very thin and very fine. Husband was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer early in December, 2008, when he was give three to five years to live. He died December 25, 2013, going beyond the five-year mark by 17 days. The last two of his years were shells of what his life had been, and were filled with pain and his regrets that he could no longer live as he wanted to. He is now at peace, he is now able to be himself again. I have realized how short life can be and I’m not a spring chicken anymore, so now I spend more time doing what I like to do and less doing what should be done. I appreciate this life, and all of the good things it gives me.

Thank you for visiting my site. I hope you enjoyed your visit and will return.

© Carol J. Lanctot and Wanderings of an Elusive Mind, 2009-2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Carol Lanctot and Wanderings of an Elusive Mind with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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