Naked in the Closet

The search continues

2010-03-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

So what have I figured out in a week's time? A fat lotta nothing! lol No, no, let me try to think more objectively for a moment...

1. Despite my love for and knowledge of animals I probably shouldn't work in any field having to do with them. My guidelines on how they should be treated and kept even at a minimum are strict and SOMEONE will always fall short turning things quickly into a big mess.

2. I've done retail type jobs to death and though I seem to be good at selling it just doesn't hold my interest. It becomes too much of a grind. It starts out great as I learn the products! My whole sales technique is to learn the products inside, out, and compared to others then simply tell customers about them honestly, the good, bad and ugly. I don't do pressure sales, period, but I do like partnering with a customer to help them find what's really right for them. I think I need something more mentally stimulating. Plus in sales it doesn't matter how much you sell, there's always a push to sell more and more and more which starts nudging you back towards the high pressure approach. What on earth is wrong with gaining in customer loyalty and satisfaction to count on word of mouth bringing in new customers for that sales growth? It's slower. That's it! The bosses want bigger profits and they want it now, now, now even if it means having to stay on that treadmill because you lose out in customer loyalty and satisfaction in the long run.

3. Working in restaurants seems to be even worse than retail, mentally void.

4. I tried a few plant nurseries thinking that with all there is to learn about gardening/landscaping and such it'd certainly be mentally satisfying enough but if someone mistreats a plant somehow I just don't get quite the same kind of hacked off as I do if it was an animal. Unfortunately there was so much to do simply maintaining the stocked plants that I never really got that mental stimulation and it too turned into a grind of water, pick off the dead bits, repot this, find a way to display that...blah.

5. I did daycare once and in some ways I simply loved it, especially when I was switched over to the babies that were about 12 months old! No matter what kind of bad mood I'm in nothing can magically turn it right around instantly like a baby! That particular job ended up having the same drawback as working with animals did, though. I could not, would not abide someone not treating those children as I thought they should be treated! No one at that daycare seemed to agree with me but I still say that keeping a boy in the 2-3 yr old room in a playpen all day every day so you don't have to deal with him is abusive.

Two ideas that I keep coming back to are nursing and psychology. Psychology I've kind of put on the back burner just because I don't know if I'm ready to go through quite that much school at my age! Nursing, on the other hand, would only take a minimum of 2 yrs of school and opens up realms of possibilities. Home care? Pediatrics? Pallative/Hospice? I volunteered for a Hospice for awhile before I moved away and found that caring for someone that is dying didn't bother me at all. I would feel pangs of sadness, of course, but I also felt great to be able to give some joy and comfort to people like that. But would it really fulfill me?

What about Ob/Peds? It would be a huge, awesome thrill to help babies come into the world, care for them, help new parents learn what to do, and all!! That just sounds like the best thing in the world to me!! But could I handle the dark side of the job where we lose a baby? It might help exorcise my own demons about the loss of Jonathan and who could sympathize with a woman who's just lost a baby better than another woman who has also lost a baby? But it might just rip that wound in me wide open again every single time. I just don't know which! What would I do if I didn't approve of how someone was handling a baby? What if I did something accidently that lead to the injury or even death of a baby??? Could I handle that??? It sounds like a possible minefield to me!

Pallative/Hospice type nursing wouldn't hold the same kind of risks for me but it wouldn't compare to the possible joys of Pediatric nursing either. Surely the joys would make the risk worth it? In that it would be similar to my days of animal rescue, at the sad, hard times you hold tight to the good times and remind yourself that you can only do what you can do, you have to hold on long enough to reach that light at the end of the tunnel because there'll be more there that really need you. Or am I just in the wrong ballpark completely with this? Am I idealizing the role of a nurse? I know that a lot of the job would be the mundane, dirty, hard stuff like changing soiled sheets, giving meds, paperwork, getting barfed on...but ANY job is going to have it's less than fun and pleasant side! Maybe I should push the idea of nursing aside and think about other options but what? Am I simply asking that to put off making an actual decision?

Searching

2010-03-02T09:06:00.000-08:00

What am I still looking for? I'm content with what I have in life so far. A family, home of our own, my horses, those are all the things that I really wanted in life but there's something still missing. I've searched my heart and mind more times than I can count and sometimes I'm not sure but sitting here at the computer right at this moment it's clear that there's something else. And it's not the usual "I want/I need" type of thing because I could easily list loads of those! I'd like my van fixed so that we have two working vehicles again. I'd like to go to Pagan Spirit Gathering this year. I really want to do some more scuba diving. I need to figure out why these things from my past still hurt like they do, get some closure and put it behind me. But no, I think there's still some fundemental element that I need to be fulfilled. I believe what I'm looking for is a job!

So what's stopping me? I don't just want a job. I want to really do something that fills in that last spot in me! But what? That's the biggest thing holding me back, I think, not knowing what job to do! All my life right up till college the only thing I wanted to do was be a veterinarian. After working in a pet shop, running a rescue, and all the other animal related things I've done in life I'm actually grateful that I didn't become a vet! Having such a big part of my life subjecting myself to seeing an endless parade of animals suffering from ignorance, abuse, and neglect just might have ruined me. As much as I love animals and as qualified as I am to work with them in a variety of fields I really think that it's best I don't include them in my professional life.

There's things now and then that grab my interest, becoming a Bradley instructor , scuba instructor, certified hypnotist, pet sitter...that list is darn near endless but my interest in them fades out. Since I don't have to work at all in order for us to stay afloat financially I want to find something that I love! I want to be one of those blessed people that get up in the morning feeling happy that they get to go into work! So what would I enjoy that would hold my interest long term? I think it might be people.

People are endlessly fascinating to me but they also scare me to death and I worry that I don't get along well with them. I don't know why though! For instance, we've now gone to this new church in Austin three or four times and everything's great so far. We've met quite a few very friendly, interesting people which I've enjoyed immensely! I like them just fine and they seem to like me just fine but I know that the longer I'm around these same people the closer I get to a day when I don't like them and they don't like me for some reason. Maybe I'm too strange. Maybe I don't accept other's shortcomings easily enough. Maybe I'm not confident enough in myself. Hmmm this is something I'll have to really think about. I'll letcha know more about it next Tuesday.

The dance

2010-02-23T13:27:00.000-08:00

I've only just realized it's this dance I do, tell some secrets, maybe get brave enough to peek out of the closet, then, scared to find myself so vulnerable, run to bury myself back in the deepest, darkest corner of the closet I can find. When the world doesn't end I start to wonder why. I get curious about what's really going on out there. So I creep forward to nervously peer out again. In times past I just might decide not to look out of the same peephole. I'd see what the view from a different one was like. This time I recognized the steps in this dance and thought I'd use this peephole again to see if I can see any of the same people. Eh the bottom line is I missed some of you and thought I should at least drop in an update instead of running away =)

Son #1 is grounded for bad grades which is really unusual for him. He's normally the type of student who's worst grades are usually Bs so the first time we let him slide with a warning to fix it. This time we had no choice.

Son #2 has dodged a bullet labelled "sexual harassment" only because he's never been in Trouble at school before and the girl's dad isn't pressing charges. You know, I fully understand that they were all just messin around writing and drawing on each other and the girl allowed him to draw on her back but did he have to draw a penis and balls with an arrow pointing down at her butt saying "insert here"??? I know, I know, all he thought was it would get a few laughs from the other kids and the girl wasn't upset about it but it was still wrong on many levels. Needless to say he's grounded like we've never grounded a child before this.

Son #3 is STILL grounded for bad grades!

Thank the Divine, Son #4 is, at least as of this very moment, not in trouble!

Son #3 is facing heart surgery. He's had SVT for some time now but a week or so ago it acted up twice in one weekend while they were digging a fire pit outside and the second one we had to take him to the hospital to get his heartrate back down. Since it seems to be getting worse instead of him growing out of it they did an exam and tests to see if this surgery is an option. We're coordinating with the doctors right now to get it done as soon as we can. They'll run a line up the artery somewhere around the hip/groin area up to his heart and simply burn out the extra nerve that's causing the problem. His mom tried to block having it done but quite frankly we just ran right over her on this one. Of course there's SOME risk, there always is no matter how tiny, but it truly is a very small risk and in return he may never, ever have to deal with his heart racing painfully out of control like this ever again. HE wants it done! We think it's worth it.

Me? I've just been doing a lot of the usual, really. Exercising, taking care of critters, wrangling kiddos, cleaning house, playing World of Warcraft... The horses are coming along nicely! I thought poor hubs was going to have a heartattack yesterday when I casually announced that I was going out to ride the gelding. After some initial nervousness though everything was just fine just like I knew it would be and it was a fun ride.

Today it actually snowed enough and stuck long enough to do something with it! Two snows in one winter??? So much for global warming. Hubs and I made loads of snowballs at strategic locations, waited till the boys got off the bus, then started a massive snowball fight. After we started to make a snowman but someone put an odd lump of snow on him so he became a snow-woman. Son #1 then went off to make a snowman he could pummel to bits while I started on a whole crowd of little snowmen in a tribute to Calvin and Hobbes. Hubs went off back to show Son #3 how to make a snow fort and Son #3 decided instead to make a snow angel on the trampoline. I'll have to go out later to finish my C&H tribute but we were finally frozen enough to run inside for awhile to warm up with some nice hot cocoa. *sigh* I may hate the cold but I love the memories you can make with it. The only thing missing is my other two boys.

My first fail

2010-01-26T10:29:00.000-08:00

Today I'm making this short and sweet for ya! I stumbled over this website a few nights ago and got so hooked into it that I stayed up hours past when I'd planned to go to bed because I wanted to see every single picture. They're cute! They're cuddley! They're downright hilarious! Today I give you My First Fail.

My birthday weekend

2010-01-24T20:46:00.000-08:00

My birthday isn't for a few days yet but since this was a child free weekend we kinda considered this my birthday weekend anyway. Saturday I really did a whole lot of nothing! Most of the day I played, yep, WoW but I did cook dinner. When I was growing up my father made a tuna casserole that I really crave sometimes. It's just a warm, filling, comfort food for me. Unfortunately all four children uncharacteristically agree on this one thing if not many others and that's they HATE tuna casserole! Now hubs and I are the sort of parents that choose what goes on the dinner plates and the children can like it or lump it but we don't go out of our way to torture the poor things either so tuna casserole is something we save for when the boys are all away. With all of them at their other parent's houses this weekend that's exactly what we decided to have and it was so good!

We had planned to go to this UU church in Austin that we've gone to the last two or three Sundays again this morning expecting a newcomer's orientation but I also wanted to go check out the Wildflower UU church. When we looked the newcomer's orientation wasn't listed on the website of the church we've been visiting but the Wildflower church was having one so we instantly decided to give the Wildflower's a go. Despite mixed feelings about the whole day I'm really glad we did!

The day started out really rough! I got up a bit extra early because I was in the mood to go out as an actual girl today, dress up a bit, curl the hair, the whole thing. First I just couldn't feel good about any of the clothes I tried out. I've always been a very tiny woman so with this extra weight around my middle right now none of my clothes fit right! But I persevered and found something that I thought was good and went off to put the now hot curlers in my hair...only to find that it's been so darn long since I played with curlers I've lost the knack of it somehow. The darn things just didn't want to stay in place, bits of hair kept unwinding itself to stick out every which way, and as I'm struggling with this it was time to wake hubby up.

It should be pretty clear by now that I love my husband like crazy but perfect he's not and one of his faults is he is a pain to get up earlier than noon! He sleeps through alarms so I have to wake him up myself and I like to wake people up nice and soft. It's nasty to get jerked or startled out of sleep suddenly! So I woke him up and after a little bit of gentle coaxing for him to wake up, wake up, no, REALLY wake up went back to fighting with curlers but stayed alert because he has a habit of falling back to sleep. When I didn't hear him get out of bed in a few minutes I gave a slightly frustrated "sweetie, PLEASE get up!" to which he snarled back " I AM up!!" Oh boy. It was like he flipped my bitch switch from zero to "she's gonna blow!!" all at once! He stood in the bathroom doorway for a minute while I ripped the curlers back out of my hair growling under my breath. He apologized which I really did appreciate deep down but at that moment it was going to take me a minute to come back down so I gave him the bathroom, went to just tie my hair back in a tail, and change clothes to something plainer and simpler. By then the angry had gone out of me and I started crying!

I went back to the bathroom, softly told him to come back to bed, stripped and climbed back into bed cuddling down to comfort myself. He came over to me and knelt by the bed to pet my hair concerned about my sudden turn around. I told him that it simply wasn't worth it to me. I wanted to have a nice weekend with him and if that meant sleeping late together then doing whatever around the house that's what I'd take. I was tired and frustrated and scared about going to a new place anyway and just wanted to go back to sleep but I also reasoned that the church wasn't going anywhere so we could try again next week. But he kissed, petted, coaxed and pleaded with me asking me not to let one buttheaded moment from him spoil the day until I gave in.

We got there a few minutes late after an hour and a half drive but settled down to see what we'd see. The group was much larger than I'd anticipated but otherwise pretty much what I expected to see. The reverend was an extremely striking woman, very slim with short cropped hair and an easy magnetism with a generous dash of a sense of humor. I really liked her. Just after the service we called ahead to the house where the orientation was being held to make sure that they had room for a pair of sudden drop ins but they assured us that it was a case of the more the merrier. We were sure that'd be the case but thought it would be more polite to call ahead just to be on the safe side since we hadn't been there before to sign up in advance.

It was a very lovely house where we were welcomed warmly, pointed to refreshments, bathtrooms, and told to make ourselves at home. Just glancing around I felt like a little kid wanting to explore everything! I noticed right off several things that indicated we shared some common interests with a sunroom full of new plants coming along, a loom with a partly finished weave on it, display shelves full of rocks, shells, and fossils, and lots of books including some on foreign languages. We chatted, my social phobia kicked in pretty bad making me feel extremely awkward and like I was running on and on to avoid uncomfortable silences, but I enjoyed it nonetheless and tell myself that no one but me probably thought me a freakish blabber mouth. There were several people there in particular that caught my attention in some way as someone that I might really like to get to know better. Overall we really felt like this group might end up being a better fit for us personally than the other church so we'll definitely be going back at least a few times to explore how we and they may fit into each other's lives.

Then we went to the mall where I bought a dress I think I really like and a few pair of fun earrings. I'm trying to relearn how to be a girl and social! When we got home hubs asked if I would put on the dress to show him while he went to feed the horses. When he saw it he had his doubts for a minute. I adjusted it thinking it might need a blouse of some sort under it to be considered decent enough by the social standards which had my confidence starting to sneak out on me but it's a dress that fits with ties behind the neck and one in the back so shifting everything around, tightening this and loosening that, I managed to cover more of my chest and the top of my panties while keeping it secure and comfy. When he drew me down on the bed with him for a little cuddle we discovered a bonus too, it's a very silky but light, thin material so the more he petted me the more he wanted to pet of me which heated up rather quickly!! The dress didn't stay on very long then we had a nice nap snuggled up together. So there were some ups, downs, and bumps in the road today but I'd call the whole weekend a success.

Random thoughts

2010-01-23T09:24:00.000-08:00

We are childless for the entire weekend! That's a good and bad thing for me. On the one hand I miss my babies to the point of almost physical pain but on the other hand it is really nice to have all that responsibility lifted from me for just a little while. So I'm both ok and a little depressed at the same time.

Normally on a Saturday I'd be doing laundry while playing WoW because the game has a little alarm clock so I can relax between loads without losing track of time. Not today though. Today the silly breaker won't stay on so I'm stuck until the hubs makes a fix that'll stick! We've replaced that one breaker several times over the almost two years we've lived here. The wiring in this place is just weird!

My father sent me a card with a little birthday money in it. He was hell to live with, drunk, volatile, verbally/emotionally abusive on his best days and sometimes physically abusive. I cut little holes in the side of my matress to hold a few knives and practiced drawing them sometimes just in case he got really crazy. Our bedrooms didn't have locks on the doors but I discovered that if I pushed sneakers under the door really tight it made it hard enough to open the door that it might buy me a few seconds. Isn't that crazy? A child self teaching tactics like these? But these particular problems of the past are easy to talk about and don't really hurt or make me angry anymore. I've dealt with these, carefully sifted through them, reached my conclusions, and buried the bodies. All I have left is the memories. It was awful at the time and left me with quite a lot to work through in my early adulthood but no big deal now. It's just what I had to get through to get where I am. I'd never, ever live with my father again but I've reached a peace when it comes to him where I've forgiven him the past. Now I can admit that for all his faults and problems there are some things I can really count on him for, not many but a few, and one of those things is he never forgets my birthday. I love you, Dad.

A visit to the dumps

2010-01-21T10:30:00.000-08:00

Here I am, depressed, and I don't really know why. Yesterday was actually a great day for the most part! I decided to have a day off, just play WoW all day, had some quality time with hubby that left my legs shaking (have I mentioned lately how much I love that man??? lol), and one of my favorite dinners, spaghetti. After dinner we were playing WoW when I decided I'd join some of our guildmates for a series of attacks on the enemy cities just for funsies. It started out fun but along the way I got killed, reported that I couldn't rejoin the group because an enemy had me staked out, and they simply left me behind. Just a game...no big deal...what else do you expect on that game...but my recent bouts of loneliness took the opportunity to jump me.

I have no friends. No one really cares except my husband and children. Considering my social phobia, being Pagan/bi/and another secret that I haven't yet named, and that our local community is very Bible Belt-ish I'm not likely to make any friends.

And this leads me in a downward spiral dropping me in an unelegant heap face down in the muck of The Dumps. Jan. 27th I'll be 39 years old... I already feel like I'm having the first symptoms of menopause. How lovely! I had to have Panic Disorder hit me unusually early in life and now I may get to experience menopause earlier than average in life. No friends... No career and not likely to ever have one... I feel fat and dumpy from this persistant extra 50 lbs... My skin is breaking out like crazy... Instead of my usual patient, unflappable self I can go from happy to dark and sullen in the blink of an eye...

Blah, blah, blah, whatever. I'm gonna go play WoW. Hope your day is going way better than mine :)

This and That

2010-01-18T18:02:00.000-08:00

I don't really have one cohestive blog post right now but I do have several things running through my twisted lil brain so I figured I'd just toss em all together! First, true to our New Year's vow to improve ourselves including spiritually and socially we've been visiting a new UU church for the past few Sundays. It's a nice place, friendly people, and I'd really been looking forward to their Morals and Ethics discussion group. We made it to yesterday's but I have to admit I was a bit stunned at the direction the chat went. We were presented with a story of an 80 yr old woman and man, both widowed with children, who got married then after one year the man needed to be admitted to a nursing home. The woman went into the marriage with a good bit of money while the man had none. Medicaid would only pay for his expenses if they had used up all their own money first so the question was should they get divorced. The general opinion of the group was she should divorce him to protect her money! Wow. That bothers me.

Training is going so nicely with the horses and dogs!!

Since Son #3 is still grounded he doesn't have a whole heck of a lot to do except sit in his room and read. On the one hand he's got a book that he's enjoying (it's about a dragon which he's just mad about!!!) and getting some great reading practice in. On the other hand he's feeling a bit shut away from the rest of the family which we don't want. Today I wanted to keep up his grounding, of course, but still get the poor kid out and with us some so since it was such a pretty day he came out to help us with outdoor work. Then he tells his dad that he needs more lunch money. His dad did a little calculating and said the kid should still have a good bit in his lunch account. So Son #3 comes clean. Along with buying lunch he's also been buying up a load of extras like ice creams, chocolate milks, and whatever other junk food they offer. This isn't the first time he's done this and we've told him that he's not allowed to do this! If he wants something extra every now and then that's fine but he needs to ask us for the bit of extra money that will cost before he buys it so that we can keep track of what we're spending where. What is with this kid and the lying, sneaking around kind of stuff???

And for the best surprise of my day today Lauren from
The Lauren Daily Experiment has gifted me with an award!!

That's a really cute one too. It reminds me to keep on learnin to make lemonade with those lemons! lol Thank you so much, Lauren! And now for the award rules:

*Put Lemonade Stand logo on your blog or within your post.
*Nominate 10 blogs you really enjoy
*Link the nominees within your post
*Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog
*Link to the person from whom you received this award

Which I'm off to do right now so adios, amigos!! Vaya con Dios! Hasta la pasta and all that groovy jazz!

A scene

2010-01-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: To any that identify themselves as hippies I can assure you that no actual hippies were harmed during the enactment of this scene. Also my second son actually does not think these terrible stereotypical things about hippies. He simply thinks it's funny to poke fun at Son #4's tender heart by spouting various outrageous things sometimes in the time honored tradition of brothers torturing each other for amusement.

I adore my children! They can crack me up with nothing more than a look but some of my favorite funny times with them happen when they're just playing, being themselves. Today is Saturday and so of course I'm in the laundry room when...

Son #2, marching through the hallway militantly: Down with hippies! Make war not love!

Son #4, wandering along behind him: There's nothing wrong with hippies! They can be really nice people too!

Me: So what's wrong with hippies?

Son #2: They're dirty, stinky, tree huggin, commies!

Son #4: Hey I don't stink!

Son #2, picks his march back up heading towards the bedrooms with Son #4 still following and protesting

Son #2: Make war not love! Make war not love!

Suddenly there's a ruckus, scream from Son #2, maniacal laughter from Son #4, Son #2 comes tearing past the laundry room screaming "Make love not war! Make love not war!" with Son #4 in hot pursuit holding a toy knife aloft cackling happily.

Son #4: Mama! I'm a hippy murderer!!

They collapse at the foot of the stairs, Son #4 giggling as he repeatedly pokes his brother in the stomach, Son #2 twitching and moaning as if in death throes.

Me, stepping over them carefully: Just give me a second to get past your murder scene so I can get upstairs, sweetie.

Once upstairs...

Hubby: What are they doing?

Me: Oh Son #4 is just stabbing Son #2 to death.

Hubby: Oh. Is he at least using a good, sharp knife?

Me: No. He's using a Bionicle piece.

Hubby: Ouch. That's gonna be a slow painful death.

A surprisingly ok day

2010-01-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

We had our game night last night. There's three people that come over to play with us and we generally have a good time. I may've mentioned before that roleplay games are like an adult form of pretend. You pretend to be a character that you've made up according to certain rules, your gamemaster (or Game Orginizational Director as my husband likes to think of it *smirk*) thinks up the entire world and other people in it, then manuvers you into whatever interesting situation/adventure that he's made up all according to certain rules. It's playing pretend, creating entire stories together, and doing crazy things that you would never do in real life! Some people think it's silly, childish, and geeky but we enjoy it.

Tired out I drifted off to sleep quickly only to have hubs wake me up about an hour later. He didn't feel well and it was scaring him. By his check his blood pressure was just fine but he was afraid that the machine was off so he asked if I'd take him to have the folks at the little local hospital check it just to be safe. To make a long story short everything was just fine and as a matter of fact the reason he felt so off is his blood pressure was actually trending on the low side. He has a very bad family history of heart problems and quite a few personal risk factors besides so he tends to worry himself a lot about some pains and pressures. We've reduced his risks with quitting smoking (which I'm HUGELY proud of him for because it was particularly hard on him!!), slowly starting to get a little more exercise, and improving our diet some and we'll keep right on improving things a little at a time to lower his risk just as much as possible.

We didn't even get home until about 7 am but the great news is we put our heads together and figured out what the problem has got to be! When he was put on his current blood pressure meds he was smoking which added to the problem. Now that he's quit smoking the meds are making his pressure on the low side giving him uncomfortable symptoms. On top of that add that the 7 ribs all on the left side that he shattered less than a year ago are giving him different twinges, spasms, and pains with his deep seated worries about heart troubles and you get what we've been dealing with! It's such a relief when you finally figure something like this out! You go from feeling yucky, scared and helpless to getting some control over it so you feel less scared and know what your next step is going to be which will make you feel better! And by lucky chance he already had an appointment tomorrow for a checkup with his regular VA doctor. The wonderful nurse at the hospital gave us copies of his lab work and the read outs showing all the various blood pressure readings, heart rate, etc. so his doctor can see in solid numbers exactly what the meds are doing to him. It should be an easy tweak of the meds and my sweetie will be feeling much better!!

Exhausted we, of course, fell right into bed to try and catch up on a little of our missed sleep. He fell asleep very quickly and it didn't take me all that long. Unfortunately the critters, all thrown off by the weird change in our usual schedule, wouldn't let me stay asleep! The cat paced up and down on me, the dog's whined a little once, and the birds decided it was time to have a nice scream session a few times. Finally at 1 pm it was time to drag ourselves up to go get Son #1 from school early. His grades have been so good that he is excused from taking exams and allowed to come home early if he wants and of course he wants!! I felt like I'd been beaten with a bat and had a nasty headache so I decided I'd get done what I really had to get done then take a lazy day off as much as possible. I took a few aspirin, watched a show while I drank my coffee, and to my surprise felt good enough that I thought I should take advantage and do something useful!

I decided since I was just thinking about it yesterday I'd take one of the dogs out for a training session and chose our female heeler, Misty, because she'd likely be the easiest and most fun. She's incredibly smart, high energy, and hugely eager to please which is great for training if you ask me!! Sure enough she did great!! Half way through the session our two chickens, Spunky and Chickie Dee, came running over to see what we were doing. They boldly demanded and outright snatched a few bits of the ham and cheese I was using to reward Misty but also provided a little distraction which can be good sometimes in dog training. You want the dog to be able to overcome distraction in order to focus on what you want and doing it! Afterwards we walked up the driveway to do a little litter check beside the road and before we were done Son #3's bus dropped him off. Seeing a person arrive in front of our home Misty gave a little quiet growl but when I released her and she got close enough to realize who it was she was all happy wiggles. She cavorted around him for a minute then excitedly dashed back to me as if to inform me of who it was.

Misty came into our lives when hubby found her in the WalMart parking lot. He said the poor thing was dashing up to every person she saw in a way that translates from dog to human as "omg please help me I'm lost and scared and I don't know what to do!!!" Being animal people he brought her home to keep her safe while we looked for her owner. It turns out that the next day we just missed her owner at a local vet! We'd gone to the vet seeing if they recognized her so we could find her owner and her owner had just been there seeing if anyone had found his dog. She was in good condition and very people friendly so we knew that she'd been loved and would've been happy to return her. Unfortunately though we kept checking around, left our phone number, and everything else we could think of to contact her owner we just never managed to hook up with him. I'm still rather sad for him, I'd be heartbroken to lose one of mine, but she's a great dog and we're happy to have her with us. She is definitely my husband's dog!! She just loves everyone but you can tell that he holds a special place in her heart and he responds in kind.

When I brought her in I let Misty run upstairs to see her most beloved and tell him what a good girl she was which seemed to please them both a lot. Then he and I went out for a little walk around the horse pasture since it's such a wonderfully warm day! We looked to see how the neighbor was doing on building their home. It looks like they're close to pouring the foundation so they've still got a little ways to go. Both the horses followed us like puppies swearing up and down to hubs that I was a big fat liar and had not fed them like I claimed! Fortunately he tends to believe me over them so they had to be satisfied with some pets and horsey cookies. So in some ways I really expected today to just s-u-u-u-u-u-CK but I'm happy to say that it's actually been a fairly nice day after all!

Life in the menagerie

2010-01-11T11:50:00.000-08:00

I'm just kinda laughing at myself today thinking about how much I do and how much of it involves our various animals. Without them I think I'd have so much time on my hands I'd either get something truly amazing done or go insane! Well, ok, insane-R. But really I can't honestly imagine my life any other way. Sometimes they're a pain and certainly a load of work but I believe the benefits they bring to my life far outweigh it all.

It's been just too cold for me to train the horses every day but I'm pleased that I have been out and done a few sessions with the gelding. I've worked with quite a few different animals doing whatever you care to call it, training, molding behaviors, teaching cues, and I feel that while there are some obvious differences in methods depending on the type of animal there are some basic beliefs and such that are common. One of the biggest that quite a few horse trainers locally seem to disagree with me on is that training an animal should not include pain. I feel that a trainer who has to resort to hurting an animal to get a sought after response is a poor trainer. That's exactly why I'm just getting in there and training this horse with no horse training experience all on my own. And with just a few sessions I have to say that I'm very pleased with the results!! I still have to help him get the idea of what I want him to do by waving or flicking the string at him but he really seems to be starting to understand that when I point left I want him to walk left at the end of the line, switching hands and pointing right means I want him to change direction to go right, whoa means to stop and face me, "up!" means to stop dragging his feet and pick up his pace a bit, clicking with my tongue means I want him to trot, and "easy" means I want him to slow down. Plus I'm having a lot of fun really working with an animal again like this, figuring out together how to communicate, and the excitement of seeing them start to understand.

One of the next things I want to add into my schedule is some real training sessions with the dogs too. They're wonderful dogs, we love em dearly, and since we're very critter friendly people their little idiosyncracies don't bother us usually but it can be a little chaotic and embarassing when other people come over! It's something I've heard and have learned is absolutely true, professional dog trainers often have some of the worst trained dogs! lol The problem usually is that when you've been training dogs all day every day for a living you just don't feel like doing it when you get home. I don't have that excuse though! My dog training procrastination comes from the fact that it's not challenging anymore. I speak dog and know just what to do to teach them a cue while training a horse is something a little familiar but still all new. Ah well naughty me! Maybe I'll ground myself to my own room...wouldn't that be great??? lol I'll just have to think up some way to make it fun again.

And something that will never change about my life is dealing with the obstacles of living with cockatoos. Folks, lemme tell you something with all sincerity, the larger birds, amazons, cockatoos, macaws, etc. are NOT domesticated animals. They are still wild animals and therefore can be unpredictable, dangerous to some degree, and not whole living in captivity. They can certainly adapt to some degrees to living with people, some better than others, and made more people oriented by being hand raised by people from the time they hatch but they are still ruled by certain instincts and desires that we interfere with that leaves them at times frustrated, unhappy, unfulfilled, neurotic, viscious, and self destructive. Hand fed young birds usually start off very cuddley and sweet making them very appealing but when they reach sexual maturity all they know is they have the overwhelming urge to mate. If that means tearing through someone to get to mate then that's what they'll do because that's how nature has programmed them. And what's more natural to a BIRD than to fly free??? But they can't do that when we make them pets. I love my two umbrella cockatoos dearly and do everything I can to enrich their lives but a part of me just weeps for them because I do love them so much. I wish they'd been born wild and free even though that means I wouldn't have them in my life. It's on my mind particularly today because Lilly nailed me GOOD this morning.

We rescued Lilly from life with a woman who didn't have time for her anymore and her husband who was openly hostile and abusive towards her so she was just stuck in a cage too small for her without anything to do. That's the exact equivalent of taking a baby and for the first 2-3 years of her life giving her all the love, attention, and mental stimulation you can then suddenly locking her in a cage with very limited movement, ignoring, yelling at, sometimes even throwing things at or hitting her, with no toys or anything other than watching others move around day in and day out. It's horrifying and leaves scars! As a result Lilly hates males with a passion! From the first time I saw her she climbed right up on my arm happy and excited but if any male gets too close she lunges out doing her level best to tear a chunk out of them. She even leaves my arm to chase after any male she sees to try and get them! This morning my husband went to kiss me, I put one hand on Lilly's head to control her momentarily, and in complete frustration she bit the daylights out of my thumb! These birds have beaks that I've seen go through a coconut shell like it was tissue so I know she didn't bite as hard as she could've but I've still got two nasty holes, one on either side of my thumb. You really can't discipline a cockatoo, anything you do just makes them angrier and therefore tougher to handle next time, but when one of them gets too out of hand like this I put them back in their cage to "cool off." It's just one of the things you have to accept when you bring one of these birds into your life! If you can't take a bite then you shouldn't take a bird into your home in the first place.

I wouldn't have things any other way though. I'm an animal lover and I understand the good, bad, and ugly in each of my critter babies. They're family. It's not always easy living with them but it's not always easy living with my husband and children. My husband and children even claim that it's not always easy to live with me! They're completely wrong headed on that score but I just chalk it up to one of the things about them that I've learned to live with *snicker* They've got some bad habits but who doesn't? In reality if I could put everything it takes to have them on one side of a scale and everything that I get back from them on the other I know that they give me more than they take. What else could I possibly ask for from them?

Mistakes

2010-01-07T14:53:00.000-08:00

There's loads of mistakes I've made as a parent but there are a few things that I feel I've handled darn near as perfect as it gets of which I'm pretty proud! One of those things is I've been scrupulous about putting the blame on the deed instead of the child. An action may be a dumb thing to do, have negative consequences, or be bad but I have and continue to stress that they are good, smart, wonderful children who sometimes make mistakes just like everyone else. It's a reminder that we can all use no matter what our age. That guy that really cut you off in traffic earlier today is not a jackass. A jackass could never learn to drive a car at all, forget the mental capacity because they don't even have the physical capacity! Cutting you off may've been a jackass thing to do though. See the difference? Some people say "Ah it's just words, the world needs to be less touchy!" and in some cases I do agree with that. I don't bristle in Pagan indignation when someone wishes me a Merry Christmas and is one example of something I think some people just need to chill out about. But when it comes to the difference between calling a person a name and putting a label on a person's actions I do think it's a very important distinction!

This is on my mind right now particularly because one of our boys is in Big Trouble. We've got four boys so to avoid giving out names I'll just number them in order of age. We have to really stay on top of Son #3 when it comes to his grades for various reasons but the bottom line is he's plenty smart enough he simply doesn't do enough. He puts in what he thinks he needs to and normally does quite well with A/B report cards. In our house we tell them that of course we would be thrilled to see straight As but we're also very happy with As and Bs as long as they've done their best. When a C pops up we raise an eyebrow, ask what the problem is, and after considering the bigger picture may even hand out a punishment such as no electronic entertainment for a bit. Ds and Fs we start to get serious about! No one's perfect and it's easy to see how a child with an A or B could make a mistake or two and have their grade suddenly drop to a C but lower than that tells us that there's more going on than a mistake or two!

Not so long ago Son #3 had a bad grade and hid the report card from us until his teacher forced him to call us from school. A D or F on a report card will definitely get a child grounded in our house but to lie about it on top of that...all I can say is that's one of those times that you tell the child to go to their room for awhile to let you cool off and think because you don't want to rip their little head off! He just brought another report card home with an F on it. We asked what happened and he said he didn't know. That's not an acceptable answer for us and the boys know it so we told him very firmly that we expected him to find out and let us know. The next day I was in our closet hanging up some clothes when Son #3 got home and I asked...

Me: So did you find out what happened in English?

Son #3: Uh yeah, I got a zero on a paper and it counted twice.

Me: What kind of paper was it?

Son #3: Umm...I don't know.

Me with a serious, displeased look: Now you know that we expect you to find out these things, ask if there's any make-up or extra credit you can do, and so on. When you make a mistake you try to make it right somehow, right? Was this a paper that you did in class or as homework?

Son #3: We did it in class. It was one of those things where you read something and then answer a bunch of questions about it.

Me starting to feel suspicious at his fidgeting and strangely reluctant answers (not to mention the problem with his last answer????): How did you get a zero? You mean that you didn't get even ONE answer right?

Son #3 starting to sweat bullets: Uhh oh no I mean I didn't get a ZERO but I got a really low grade!

Me turning to stare at him tapping my foot: Ok I'm getting a funny feeling here. Is there anything you want to tell me before your dad gets home?

He broke down completely and told me the whole story. It turns out he's known for several weeks now what happened. He had a book report to do and "kept forgetting and getting distracted." Uh huh. And when I asked what the distraction was? Video games, of course. As a matter of fact, failing to do a book report then lying to us about it is exactly what happened the last time he brought home a failing grade! So I took a deep, deep breath and with the calmest, softest voice I own told him to grab a quick snack, go to his room to do homework, and not to come out of his room until I called for him. I would tell his dad, quell any knee jerk reaction his dad might have to rip him limb from limb, then call for him when it was safe so we could all talk about the situation.

I can only conclude that this sort of thing is a result of that bit in the brain that doesn't develop until later in life, something in the frontal part, I believe. It's supposed to be why they don't always make logical, well thought out decisions and show a decided lack of good judgement at times. At least that's what I'm telling myself repeatedly!

Magic, Love and New Beginnings

2010-01-05T18:05:00.001-08:00

So four days later I get to finish telling you about the important part of New Year's! I've mentioned before that my husband and I have a few things to overcome within ourselves individually. I deal with depression and a few anxiety type disorders and he also deals with depression and anxiety type disorders, mainly PTSD from his experiences in Desert Storm. It's normally very tough for him to feel like he's physically fit enough to do most things but he can't shake the intangible damage inside. In *some ways* mental damage can be harder to live with than physical damage. If he'd come home paralyzed no one would think twice about it but because he appears just fine physically people often assume that he's just an unemployed deadbeat. Even if they know about the PTSD many people that haven't had to deal with mental illness can't understand why you can't just get medical treatment to fix it and get back to life. It tears me apart inside but sadly these attitudes are so prevalent even today that he even buys into some of it himself which only makes things that much worse!! New Year's evening he was telling me that he felt bad. He says he feels useless, out of shape, terribly lonely, that he's falling behind on things we said we wanted, and so on.

Thankfully though I'm still getting over this awful cold or whatever it is that's been trying to kill me off I've been in a decent place within myself so that I could help him. It often works out that way between us which is a blessing in our lives, that we each have someone who truly understands what it's like and is usually in a strong place where we can help lift the other one up. First I dismissed his self denigrating remarks! Just late last April he was thrown from a bucking horse and broke almost all the ribs on his left side. He not only broke the ribs he broke them BAD! The doctors were amazed first that they used an ambulance instead of getting a copter for faster transport to the closest major trauma hospital and next that with all the jagged shards of rib flung all over inside of him he somehow miraculously didn't shred his lung! They warned us that it would probably be at least a year to heal and another year until he'd learned to live with the new aches, pains and twinges that he was going to have from it for the rest of his life. So everything he had to complain about is nothing more than the natural result of healing from such a bad injury!

The next step was to figure out together what WE are going to do about it. I've always believed that if anyone in my family has a problem our whole family has a problem! I normally don't do New Year's resolutions because too often the goals tend to sound great when they're made but in the long run turn out to be pretty unreasonable for one reason or another. Instead of becoming a tool for self improvement I end up feeling guilty and "not good enough" yet one more time in a lifetime full of those negative feelings! But I felt that my wonderful husband needed some kind of goal just then to shoot for so I broke my rule but tried to do it wisely. I simply vowed that in 2010 he and I both would try different things to improve upon these things that were bothering us. And that's the key, my friends! Set a goal that you know you can achieve to help build your confidence and give you some momentum with which to achieve more! You have to build some things up one step at a time starting with one humble step.

We haven't done TOO much, it's only been four days after all, but we've already taken some steps on our road of improvement that I feel pretty darn good about! For social opportunities we've decided to give the Unitarian Universalist churches in Austin a try and visited one of them Sunday. I've had nothing but wonderful experiences with UU really! The people that gather in UU churches tend to be, in my experience, some of the most open minded and accepting people anywhere who share several things in common with us. I've been conditioning our tack in preparation for some serious work on the horses with or without a round pen. My poor sweetie admitted to me that since his injury he's been a bit scared at the thought of getting on his horse. I decided right then that I was going to go out, work on the horses on a regular basis, get up riding, and simply show him by example that what happened to him was a chance accident that doesn't have to ruin his enjoyment of horseback riding. We both miss our scuba diving horribly! Our last dive was the 2008 annual Christmas Dive a local dive club does each year! It's far too cold to do any regular diving right now but we did check into a new dive shop in Austin and have plans that when the weather turns warm enough again we'll pack our gear, go to the UU service on Sundays then hop over to Lake Travis for a little diving (maybe even a little more socializing at the same time if we dive at Hippy Hollow!!).

We're talking about and planning lots of different things along the same lines but the important thing is we're exploring what will work for us, not making unreasonable promises to do everything we discuss and try on an ongoing, regular basis! So really if you look at it we've already fulfilled our New Year's resolution just with the very small things we've already done! We want to keep that momentum going, of course, but from here on out it's all gravy! lol There's my "love" and "new beginnings" I promised to tell you about from New Years. The "magic" part I'll just leave you to wonder ;)

Happy 2010!

2010-01-01T12:20:00.000-08:00

Last night was what it's all about, magic, love, and planning new beginnings. This time of year is pretty hard on my husband because this is the same time of year he shipped overseas into a nightmare that would follow him the rest of his life. So we figured we'd kick back and stay up most of the night watching movies together to take our minds off everything. Just for you guys and to make up for the sheer SUCK of my recent posting history here in the Closet I'll start ya off with some movie reviews.

First we watched Righteous Kill which we thought was really great! It got under my skin especially deep because I can have a very strong sense of justice sometimes. I want to see the "bad guys" get what's coming to them and it seriously gets to me if they don't! That's something my husband and I share! In the movie two cops, partners played by Al Pacino and Robert Deniro, have been on the force together for a very long time when they catch one case that becomes a turning point for one of them. A little girl has been brutally murdered by her mother's boyfriend but he's going to get away with it. Unable to cope with the thought of this monster going free the partners plant evidence to make sure the guy is convicted. For one cop justice has been served even if it needed a little push. For the other cop this only opens the door to the possibility that he could do more good on the job serving up his own justice to villans that slide through the court system while using his status as an officer to shunt suspicion away from himself becoming a serial killer. Definitely two thumbs up!!

The next one we watched was Jennifer's Body with Megan Fox. I really enjoyed this one too but I think you probably have to be in a certain mindset to appreciate it. It was pretty clear looking at the synopsis that this movie should've been a typical second, maybe even third, rate "horror" depending heavily on gore and T 'n A. Jennifer is your usual high school cheerleader, popular and smokin hot! Her one obvious idiosyncrasy is her BFF, Anita aka "Needy", who doesn't fit with the usual high school Beautiful People. Needy is sweet, shy, and somewhat nerdy with a great boyfriend in the school band, Chip. One night Jennifer and Needy go to a local dive to see a band from the city, Low Shoulder. After the bar burns down Jennifer gets in the van with the band despite Needy's pleas not to go with them. Later that night an all new Jennifer visits Needy who's home alone. Jennifer's new look comes straight from Hell's best boutiques, blood spattered, ravenous, unnerving screechy noises, and projectile vomiting some truly nasty black goo! But the next day at school Jennifer seems to be back to her old self, if a trifle more insensitive than usual, leading folks to believe that Needy might just be blowing things out of proportion. As the movie goes on Jennifer kills, Low Shoulder experiences a huge upswing in popularity (that seems almost, dare we say, *magical*???), Needy tries her best to figure out what to do, and Chip really pulls his head out of the sand a little too late. If you liked the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer you might like this one since it mixes psuedo-horror with a small sprinkle of over the top campy comedy relief though Buffy did it better, in my opinion. And just a little heads up, whatever you might think -- hot babes in a bad horror flick definitely equals at least a tiny bit of T 'n A -- there is not one single T or A shown in this whole movie!! If it had I might've thrown in another quarter to half a thumb more based just on how scrumptious Megan Fox is but as it is I'll give it a tentative one thumb.

And last we watched Paranormal Activity. I'd heard really mixed reviews about this movie but in the end this one turned out to be a true gem for a horror hound like me!! It's insanely simple with only four actors in the whole movie and only a teensy tiny bit of blood at all but the suspense and fear factor ratchets up steadily! A young couple, Micah and Katie, buy a new tract home only to find that a frightening presence from Katie's past has followed her so Micah decides to capture it on film. The whole movie is done as if taped with the camera that Micah buys for this purpose. Katie brings in a psychic hoping for help and explains that she has had the same unnerving experiences when she was eight years old, again at 13, and moving hasn't seemed to help. Katie has a healthy fear for whatever it is that's been terrorizing her. Micah starts off openly jovial and disrespectful about the entire thing. Micah's off the cuff idea is to find out what the entity wants and give it to him but the psychic warns him that what the entity obviously wants is Katie! As the movie progresses it becomes clear that Katie is going downhill fast and seeing this along with his own investigations going no where leads to Micah growing more and more frustrated, angry, and maybe even scared? Clearly ignorant in these matters Micah only makes things worse at every turn committing pretty much every mistake a person can make when dealing with a hostile entity leading to a disasterous conclusion. One thing that really makes this movie a treasure for me is having a fair amount of knowledge about hauntings I can really appreciate that most, if not all (depending on what you believe), of this movie is entirely plausible. This movie now holds the coveted spot with me of being one of the only TWO movies EVER to come the closest to actually scaring me (and this one blows the other one away)!! I'm borrowing hubby's so I can give this one FOUR THUMBS WAY UP!!!!!

Now I'd PLANNED to get to the more personal parts of this post but honestly two of the kids come home tonight leaving hubs and I little time left alone together and throughout this whole post he's been teasing me to distraction! I promise to fill y'all in on the rest of our time last night but right now I'm going to do my best one more time to kill him with a huge, goofy grin on his face! After all, a girl's gotta have her priorities!

Is it over yet?

2009-12-31T00:03:00.000-08:00

Last night we unexpectedly had two friends over visiting for one of our Game Nights but told them right off that I was feeling awful. One of the poor things had the very same ICK as I do so we all decided to just hang out together and chat instead. My dear, sweet, wonderful husband filled me and our sick friend up on scalding hot rum toddies! So by the end of the night my hubs was off driving our well friend home while I made up a bed on the couch for our sick friend to stay the night since he was too full of toddies to drive home and much too cozy in front of our fireplace to go home to a chilly house.

Determined to get a few things done I got up at a fairly decent hour this morning and after a nice, warm bath felt like I might grudgingly live through another day. But I made a mistake! I sat on the edge of the bed to put my shirt on! Though the bath made me feel less like every joint was being sawed apart and more like I'd just been very lightly worked over with a baseball bat I felt heavy and icky and the softness of the bed was just too much. The next thing I knew I was screaming myself awake from another nightmare, rolled over to see why my husband hadn't shook me out of it like he usually does, and found that it was 3 pm! Ugh! So I shoved myself out of bed, still clothed, and started dashing around trying to catch up on everything I'd planned to do today.

Until my husband talked me into sitting in my comfy chair with my laptop. A whole day wasted on sleeping and World of Warcraft??? *sigh* Yeah. But I have to say I do feel somewhat better this evening and hope to get some good sleep and wake up feeling better!

Yuck

2009-12-29T12:08:00.000-08:00

All my children are gone. Two went to their mom's and two went back to their dad's. All the gift giving, treats, and wonderful happy time spent with them is over for now. Something has gotten hold of me. Just a cold or other icky so I'll live, no worries, but with the way I feel at the moment I'm not positive that's a good thing. And it's been a nightmare intensive period of time. They seem to go in cycles where I get lots of them for a bit then they slack off for a week or so. Right now I'm so flippin sick of waking up screaming! I can't tell you how fed up I am of seeing my children tortured or killed in a variety of colorful ways and babies that are somehow wrong/sickly/fragile dying no matter how hard I try to protect them.

Sorry guys, this post sucks but that's about where I am right now, Sucksville, USA. Sick and exhausted. It'll get better eventually though! You know that and I know that :)

Unthinkable

2009-12-24T14:24:00.000-08:00

Who would've thought it would snow in central Texas on Christmas Eve? It has though and I have the proof!! These pictures were taken at great risk to myself! Only for YOU, my beloved readers, would I brave these trecherous conditions just to provide you with these incredible rare shots! I give you...SNOW IN TEXAS!!!

I gave the horses a doggone bale of hay split between them so they wouldn't have to venture out of their shelter today. Thank goodness I leave them uncut for the cold so they're really shaggy right now! After surviving the horrors of this blizzard I moved the dog bed right in front of the crackling fireplace to warm the poor heelers back up and made some amaaaaazing hot cocoa. I even put a few generous shots of rum in it to make sure it was nice and warming! So cuddle your loved ones tight cuz it looks like this winter is going to be c-c-c-c-c-c-oooooooold!

To touch

2009-12-23T21:09:00.003-08:00

When a woman gets pregnant there is this strange phenomenon where everyone wants to rub her belly. Ok, in some ways I can certainly understand this. I admit that I too get urges to rub a pregnant woman's belly or ask to hold a perfect stranger's new baby (but I don't just do it). I think most people are touched and excited in some ways to see these awe inspiring examples of innocent new lives coming into our world and simply want to connect (maybe even REconnect???) with that somehow. I truly do understand that! But there are some people in the world that for whatever reason are not comfortable with being touched and who has the right to judge someone for that?

Growing up my parents weren't very snuggley-wuggley touchy feely sorts so I was probably "touched" in anger more often than with love. It wasn't until I found Wicca and joined an open circle as a very young adult that I really realized just how much this affected me. This circle was a group of generally wonderful, open, warm people. Their usual greeting was to give great big hugs and going skyclad (naked) wasn't out of the ordinary. At first I was VERY uncomfortable with this but I had to admit that I liked it too! It wasn't very long amongst these folks that some startling realizations hit me -- being naked, intimate body contact, both at the same time -- NONE of it had to equal anything sexual! That may sound a bit silly to some people but before I wasn't familiar with touching others very much outside of romantic or sexual types of contact so it was hot-off-the-press news to me! I quickly grew to really love the people of that circle, learned to be comfortable with social nudity, and couldn't get enough of hugs, holding hands, standing around with an arm draped over a hip or shoulder...just touching and being touched in ways that I should've been by my family growing up.

Only a few years later I had moved away and was pregnant with my first son. I was the first child in my family and my husband was the first in his to give our parents a grandchild and each of our grandparents a great-grandchild. Needless to say there was a LOT of excitement and anticipation on both sides of the family!! Most of them either seemed to know that they weren't familiar enough with me to touch me and a few I was fine with them rubbing my belly except one. My husband's grandmother was polite enough to me but it was clear that she didn't feel I belonged in her family. More than once she would smile in my face then speak badly of me to others which is a practice I've always held in contempt. But for some reason while I was pregnant she thought it was perfectly ok to fondle my belly in the most intimate of ways!! I asked her not to, had my husband ask her not to, but she went right on doing it or even did it then backed away dramatically saying "Oh! I forgot that you don't like to be touched!" in a particularly snotty way.

Almost every time I managed to leave as fast as I could to hide the tears of anger, shame, and mixed up sickly hot emotions. I felt like a freak. I told myself that *normal* people would handle the situation with so much more social ease. I imagined his family still out there sneering at how awkward, inept, and ungrateful I was to treat them as if I couldn't even bear for them to touch me when they had been so nice to welcome me into their oh so proper family. I didn't know what to do. I felt downright violated! I thought I was wrong maybe but I still felt justified! Finally in desperation I told my husband that if she grabbed me just one more time I swore I would grab her firmly by both shrivelled breasts and loudly ask how SHE liked being felt up! I don't know what he said and I don't care. All I know is that she did stop which made it so much easier for me to relax and at least TRY to be social with his family.

Years later now I realize that I wasn't right or wrong. I was in the spot emotionally where I was at and I didn't have to explain or justify it in any way. It was still MY body and I had the right to accept or not being touched by anyone. It wasn't my fault that his grandma decided to take offense to this instead of behaving like a rational, mature adult and simply talking to me about it. I had nothing to feel bad or guilty about.

Also I have to happily say that all of these experiences helped me be a better mother! From birth I have been just as "touchy" with my children as they could possibly stand! I've taken every opportunity to maintain loving contact with them. They're now 12 and 15 yrs old, a time when I've heard many boys start to want nothing much to do with their parents, and they still run to give me long, happy hugs in the morning, don't hesitate an instant to come lay against me, put a head on my shoulder or lap, stop on their way by to give me a kiss, let me nuzzle their sweet necks, stroke their backs, and just generally pour out all infinite love I have for them. Maybe I still would've been just as demonstrably affectionate with them without my past experiences, there's no way I could resist being completely in love with these two wonderful scamps, but at the very least it makes me realize just how very important these touches are in their lives now and in the future. If I had to go through hell to learn this and benefit my babies then it was all worth it and I'm so thankful for it!

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-22T17:39:00.001-08:00

I've been trying to make a post for the past three days but everytime I start one I have someone or another that swears if I don't come see/help/referee/fix/etc. it will result in the end of the world! It's so wonderful having all my boys home with me but it can make things a little busy for me. Especially since hubs tends to go hide upstairs on his computer more when all four boys are home. He loves them as much as I do but they are normal, active boys and their high spirits can sometimes be a bit much for someone with severe PTSD.

I'm extra pleased with my boys right now too. Sadly my father hasn't embraced my husband's two boys as his grandsons so when he sends my two boys cards with money in them and not the other two it always makes me feel a little awkward and bad. On the one hand it's not fair to Tom* and David* but it would also be unfair to force Steve* and Chris* to give up some of their money just because my father isn't a better person. They solved the problem nicely all on their own when they bought Monopoly, Twister, and lunch for everyone! Not only was it just incredibly sweet but we've all had so much fun playing those and our other games together!

One of our gamers made homemade ziti for us one night which was delicious! The kiddos and I have snuggled up together under a big dryer warmed blanket. Then this morning we watched the boys open their presents which is one of my favorite times of the whole year! They've been busy most of the day with video games, a punching bag, a ripstick (it's like a skateboard but all the new rage with my kids), flying micro copters all over the place freaking the birds out to no end, and making candles. Which means I've been busy most of the day answering questions about video game installation, taping hands and demonstrating how to throw a punch, insisting that children wear all kinds of helmets and pads, trying to calm screaming birds, and cutting wax, dye, and scents!

On top of that I decided that we needed gingerbread men. Only the youngest wanted to help me cut out and bake the cookies but they all came running when it was time to frost them! I tried! I really tried to supervise where all the frosting was going but these kids are starting to get HUGE! Heck the oldest is probably twice my size already! With all four of them crowded around the table I couldn't even see the cookies much less where the frosting was going! But in typical ravenous teen boy fashion they slopped frosting onto the biggest of the cookies then backed away munching happily for a moment letting me dart in to run a little damage control. By the end of today with all the candle and cookie scents everyone says the house smells absolutely delicious though!! All in all I think this has been one of the greatest, delightfully messy, noisy, fun Yule's we've had so far!

I wish all of you a holiday full of fun, love, laughter, and magic too!

Just a day

2009-12-18T09:27:00.000-08:00

Nope. I'm just not in the mood today to wrestle my inner demons on here, challenge beliefs, or even think too hard! Last night we lit up the fireplace for the first time this year and this morning there were still lots of toasty warm coals burning away on some large chunks of wood. Ahhhh! It's sooo nice sometimes to wake up to that comforting warmth! Also last night I treated myself to a completely unhurried warm bath and played with my lovely new body scrub, lotions, and such. My darling husband even scrubbed my back with them for me which was wonderful! Then I stripped down the bed, put on fresh new sheets, and just laid there for awhile savoring the little currents of air from the fan, lazily stroking here and there to enjoy the warm silky feeling of my skin.

Unfortunately I didn't sleep very well, more nightmares waited for me about a sickly baby and other odd things, but that's not out of the ordinary and hasn't left me feeling like the walking dead today. My skin still feels just heavenly, there's this warm little fireplace, warm sweet coffee, and the children's vacation starts today! All my boys will be home with me for at least a week!! Ahhh I can already feel some of the tension melt out of my shoulders just thinking that they'll all be here where I can take care of them. We must make our traditional gingerbread men and turn the monsters loose with tubes full of icing to decorate, hopefully JUST the cookies! lol I'll make the really good homemade hot cocoa with lots of little marshmallows, wrap them up in the morning with fluffy blankets toasty fresh from the drier, and they will get their presents from us and their grandparents. Watching them get presents is the best part of it all for me!

I hope your day goes as divinely as mine has so far!!

Taboo for you?

2009-12-17T19:56:00.000-08:00

From an early age I could appreciate a pretty girl as well as a good looking guy. It didn't even occur to me for many years to concern myself over whether the person I was attracted to was a girl or boy! As a matter of fact none of the outside counted for as much as what they thought, felt, and who they really were. So I had no problem identifying my sexual orientation but as for sexual practices...well at some point in my life I wanted to explore my limits from one end to the other and everything in between.

It was very interesting to me to learn the great variety of things there are to do out there and that one person's ultimate fantasy was completely out of the question with others. It was also fascinating to note my own reactions to each at different levels! Some I wanted to try while others were not at all appealing. But even the things that I felt I never wanted to try I wanted to understand why I had this immediate reaction and why others found it stimulating.

Some of the more interesting things I discovered? There's lots that most people have at least heard mentioned but have you really considered them as acts that some honestly enjoy? Even if it's something that's not right for you can you accept it in another? I know a couple in which the man enjoys women's clothing and wearing diapers. On one hand I'm still wrestling to understand this but in trying to think of it objectively who does it harm? If there's no harm to anyone why would it bother me at all? Is this some flaw of my belief system, is it simply societal influence, or what?

Did you know that there are adults in America who have had sex, even had children, without allowing their partner to see them fully naked? I came upon this discovery by accident when I asked another military wife who was pregnant if she liked her OB-GYN. She seemed almost offended and replied, "I don't want some doctor poking around there until I deliver and really have to! Even my husband doesn't see my junk!" I still can't really understand this one (forgetting the fact that anyone would call such wonderous bits of anatomy "junk")! On a mental level I can understand that it's almost certainly a problem of having low esteem, poor body image, or having some belief that the genitals are somehow dirty but I just can't understand it on any other level.

I found some that I'm not entirely sure how to categorize at all such as people that become aroused by the fantasy of being swallowed whole (i.e., like a snake would) and others stimulated by objects being inflated (i.e., watching a pool toy being blown up). Once again I feel that my initial reaction may not be what I'd ideally wish so I have to fall back on one of the cores of my beliefs, is this harmful to anyone? I myself occassionally indulge in fantasies that are rather violent that in fantasy I can find stimulating but would never, ever, EVER wish for in real life!

If nothing else it just goes to show that the mind is an important sexual organ too! What do you think? Are these things that come to you naturally or do you have to examine your options like me?

The best laid plans

2009-12-16T21:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I promised I'd post or die trying! I was also hoping to spend the day happily reading other people's blogs, catching up with what's going on in their worlds, and generally taking it somewhat slower today after several days of hard work. That plan was sent right out the window with the blaring of the alarm this morning. It turns out the husband wanted me to go with him to his dentist appointment so we could finish up Yule shopping afterwards. He said it'd be ok if I didn't go with him but I could tell that he really wanted my help picking out presents so...ah I have trouble resisting my husband when he gets that look! And there was no reason I couldn't write up today's post in my notebook then type it in when we got home.

So after his appointment I had a whole post ready to go about personal responsibility, he had some dazzlingly clean teeth, and we were off to spend some money on the kids! As we walked into the mall I accidently caught the eye of a saleslady at a kiosk and she had That Look that we all know! It says "I WILL accost you, a polite brush off will NOT work on me, and I WILL do my level best to seperate you from every cent in your wallet." She was cute and knew just how to make us stop long enough for her to get into her pitch. She simply stepped squarely in front of my husband, talking to me with a nice, warm smile, handing me a sample of something saying, "Come, let me show you something." Ah well, I figured there'd be no harm in letting her practice her sales speech, demo, then give a nice "no thank you" and leave with the little free sample. Oh how I underestimated this little sorceress!

She was selling skin and body care products with minerals from the Dead Sea in them so I actually thought that it would be fairly easy to say no at the end. I would like to be a girly girl from time to time, do my hair, put on a little makeup, wear a sexy lil dress but in reality when??? I rarely leave our property at all and I just can't see getting all dolled up to scrub a toilet or brush the horses so trying to sell me beauty products is near impossible anyway. Add in the normally RIDICULOUS price these sorts of things usually sell for and it makes it even easier for me to resist. I explained to her that I simply didn't have occassion to pamper myself with things like she was selling, I care for the house, a good number of animals, and live with five males but she expertly turned it around on me.

I had this pretty little thing with long, brown hair, gorgeous soft brown eyes, a pert little nose, and rosy full lips telling me in a firm throaty voice with a seductive little accent that all these things are part of what's so fun about being FEMALE and it was even more important for me having to deal with so much that ruins my nails and skin. She held my hand buffing a nail, rubbing scrubs, peels, lotions, and such into my hand and forearm, gently playing with my hair putting little waves and curls into it weaving her spell with expert ease. But my children won out and I'm proud to say that I kept saying that I simply couldn't do it, that money would buy just one more toy...when my husband wordlessly handed her his bank card. As we walked away he said, "merry Christmas, sweetie." I thanked him and said I only had two questions. First, what had made him do that? He laughed and said he just couldn't resist how I was just melting like warm putty in the salesgirl's hands! My second question was that of course if I got a present he should to so what did he want? He thought for a bit, hemmed and hawed until we were in the privacy of the truck then replied that he had to wait until we were alone because everything he could think of involved me in various forms of undress! Gods, once again, thank you for this man!!

We arrived home to find several people there because one decided that he was going to make homemade ziti for all of us. Lots of marvelous food, talking, laughing, and a few beers later I found myself looking back over today. It wasn't at ALL what I'd planned and it left me 56 minutes to compose and put up this post but I gotta say it was a GREAT day!

P.S. Not only was I simply twitterpated by the salesgirl, not only was she and oustanding salesperson, but her demonstrations proved to us that these products are honestly great! I'll be the guinea pig and let y'all know after a week or two of using them what I think about the products we bought today. In the meantime if you'd like to take a look go to http://www.obeyyourbody.com/

Alice down the rabbit hole

2009-12-15T19:48:00.000-08:00

That's what I feel like, I fell down the rabbit hole the last few days. There's been some adventure, some things have been good, some not so great, but all in all it's been life as usual just busier than normal. But I won't even bore you with the list of chores keeping me busy since Saturday! One interesting thing is we have solved the case of the loose cockateil that is defying the odds of survival. Yesterday my husband called me outside to see a really sweet pup he'd found out in our pasture. He was clean, well fed, and had a nice new collar on so we figured someone might've just lost him. We put a leash on him and started to go door to door to see if anyone knew where he lived. Fortuantely the first house we checked, the older couple right next door who had let all their cockateils loose, turned out to be where the pup belonged.

We chatted with the old guy for a few minutes and found out that the reason the last cockateil I saw outside, the one I couldn't catch and was so amazed at his survival, was surviving so well is because the couple put a cage out on the back porch. Every evening the cockateil comes back to his cage for food and water! Sadly we also had to hear that one of the cockateils they turned loose, dying of dehydration, had tried to get a drink from their pool and drowned. One major mantra of animal rescue, even if I'm officially out of the business, is you can't save them all.

Also my husband is outrageously proud of himself right now because...get ready for it...he found some gadget that makes s'mores in the microwave! Yep, I'm totally serious! lol The kids love to make em, of course, and have come up with all sorts of ways to make em and some have been a bit more of a mess than others. So tonight he keeps asking me, "do you want one? You SURE? I could make you a s'more!" Finally he admitted with a bashful smile that he didn't want to eat one but he really did want to see his new little toy work! Wow I do love that goof! lol

I'll be back tomorrow for a serious session of catching up on putting a post up here and seeing what's been going on with all my bloggy buddies, promise!

Spice it up Saturday with a secret!

2009-12-12T12:01:00.000-08:00

The warning that this blog may contain some adult content is up and it is GO TIME, baby!! It should be pretty obvious that I've had several things to work at and improve all my life but it does make me extra thankful for the things about me that have come fairly easy. I've already mentioned in a past post that I have been blessed with a healthy reproductive system and now I can say that I believe I also have somehow developed very healthy sexual attitudes too! That doesn't mean that there's been no obstacles developing these attitudes and I can only say that these attitudes work for me, not that I endorse them for everyone else.

It's no secret by now that society favors heterosexual couples where each partner is more naturally attracted to certain attributes in each other that should produce overall improvement of future generations (i.e., women with large hips and breasts and strong, virile men) produced after the parent's monogamous union has been sanctified by the church. Generally speaking this seems to be what society believes to be the pinnacle of perfection for which we all should shoot. I would dearly love to spread some type of magical potion through the entire world which would make it impossible to lie or even waffle in any way, shape, or form then have each person fill out a questionnaire all about their sexual activities and attitudes. What do you want to bet that very, very few of us are reaching this goal of perfection? Now what do you want to bet that there's an awful lot of people condemming those that aren't reaching that goal who have simply not been caught yet falling short of that goal themselves? I'm here today to tell you I fall short of that goal in just about every way possible!

*deep breath* It's time for another secret, one that I almost told in one post until I decided to tackle a different subject, one that I hope is neither some kind of big let down nor terribly repulsive. I'm bisexual and not just a little. I'm VERY bisexual. In 1948 Afred Kinsey and colleagues developed a scale, popularly referred to as the "Kinsey Scale," in an attempt to "account for research findings that showed people did not fit into neat and exclusive heterosexual or homosexual categories." Basically while interviewing people about their sexual histories they found that though a number of people identified themselves as exclusively heterosexual or exclusively homosexual "many individuals disclosed behaviors or thoughts somewhere in between."

The scale ranges from 0, for those who would identify themselves as exclusively heterosexual with no experience with or desire for sexual activity with their same sex, to 6, for those who would identify themselves as exclusively homosexual with no experience with or desire for sexual activity with those of the opposite sex, and 1-5 for those who would identify themselves with varying levels of desire or sexual activity with either sex.

By this scale, dear friends, I am right around a 3. Yeah, torn almost exactly in two between being attracted to men and woman but very slightly preferring men. This puts a number of bumps into my road of life. First off, society has problems with anyone who doesn't identify as "by gawd, I'm straight and I'll fight anyone who so much as thinks otherwise!" (Whew, settle down now in-bred corn-fed! Even if someone DID think otherwise it wouldn't make you suddenly start craving a "tall cool one" in ways other than drinking a beer! It's pretty hilarious how they seem to think it's contagious somehow! lol) Then there is the problem of not identifying more strongly one way or the other. I can't tell you how often I've admitted this to a guy who almost invariably gives some form of the reply, "that's HOT!" As far as fulfilling HIS fantasies of having more than one woman crawling over his naked form a bisexual woman is hitting the jackpot! But once you settle down and promise forever to someone being bisexual is suddenly just WRONG. I've never understood this and probably never will. Do they really believe we can just turn it off somehow??? I'm just one more person out here telling you if you are gay or bisexual it's not something you can change! You can choose not to act on your impulses but you will forever feel that attraction to people the same gender as you!

Sexuality in general, my sexuality in particular, are subjects that I feel very strongly about! I also find them one of the more fascinating facets of human psychology because so many people do have such strong opinions and knee-jerk reactions yet there's such a huge diversity in what is deemed right, normal, and acceptable. The best way to sum up my overall opinion is whatever two or more consenting adults do, as long as they aren't harming anyone, is no one else's business. Unless of course they decide to share it with someone or a few people or whoever happens to stop by the blog to say hello!

Stamping out stagnation

2009-12-11T13:12:00.000-08:00

These last two days I've been having a lot of fun playing the little flirt but today I've been thinking on Jon's last post, Resisting Stagnation. It really is seductively easy to fall into a routine in order to get everything done that we need to in today's busy world. Routines can be comfortable but before you know it that routine has somehow turned into a rut. Ruts tend to limit us to a point where we aren't flexible enough to handle anything new that might come up in our lives. I'd even go so far to say that if you have allowed yourself to become stagnant you aren't really living! You're surviving, existing but to really LIVE a life you've got to be willing to stretch, explore, and grow! We ALL do it but I do agree with Jon that it's something to guard against and if we find ourselves in a rut we have to fight free.

My contribution to stamping out stagnation today is one of the core beliefs of many Wiccans and Pagans, the Rede. Trying to get all Wiccans and Pagans to do things the same way is as useless as trying to herd a massive group of cats so I don't speak for all but when someone learns from me the first thing we thoroughly explore together is the Rede. Whereas Christianity has the 10 Commandments Wicca has only the Rede and it says "an it harm none do what ye will." Well heck, that makes things really simple doesn't it! As long as I don't hurt anyone I can do whatever I want!! That is what many who come to our religion think but I challenge practitioners to go further to test the bounds of this deceptively simple rule.

The logical place to start seems to me to be defining "harm." Is it anything that causes physical pain? Maybe it's anything that causes actual injury! Then what about mental/emotional/spiritual pain that leave no measurable injury that can be pointed to but does it count as "harm?" If I sliced the front of you open with a sharp object have I harmed you? What then about a surgeon who makes the exact same cut into the abdomen of a patient in an attempt to heal? Is it ok to harm some but not others? When we breathe we kill thousands of microscopic creatures but does the Rede ban harming yourself by not breathing? If we accept that killing these creatures in order to continue our own lives is still abiding by the Rede we must then ask what creatures are ok to kill and which aren't? Where's the line? Most of us have come to rely on our technology to live our lives but much of this comes at the expense of certain types of living creatures. So are we obligated to learn to live without as much technology as possible? How do we decide what we can and just simply can't live without?

The Rede is actually much more complex than it appears at first but in our struggle for self improvement it is something that I feel must be examined this closely. If we are to truly live by the Rede we must build upon it a practical working moral and ethical structure that forms how we live our lives. It's how we decide right from wrong and should be our touchstone for all aspects of our lives. I hope I helped you to stretch a little today :)

The Tease

2009-12-10T22:29:00.000-08:00

Looks like you guys are all on board with this whole shift in the Closet to a more adult oriented place to be, some a bit more on board than others even, but in true sadis...I mean...well ok, sadistic fashion I'm arbitrarily choosing Saturday as The Day Naked in the Closet Goes XXX!! Mmm, maybe not quite that far but we'll definitely feel a bit more free to get a bit SPICY from time to time.

For now I'll just warm ya up a little with a few slightly tamer tid-bits starting with THE book that I highly recommend to everyone who has had or ever plans to have sex!
This lil gem is put out by Goofyfoot Press. Since getting this book long ago I learned that "goofyfoot" is a surfing term that simply means you lead with your left foot on the surf board (uh unless I'm getting my feet dyslexic again lol) instead of your right as most people. It's kind of picked up the meaning "to be a bit off" or "different from the rest" which is one good way to describe this book! It's jam packed with up to date information on anything you want to know about sex and more but delivers the facts in fun and hilarious ways that also just make it an enjoyable read. Just a few titles of the *71 chapters* gives you some idea what you're in for:

Orgasms, Sunsets & Hand Grenades
Intercourse -- Horizontal Jogging
Better Mating Through Internet Dating
Techno Breasts & Weenie Angst
Kinky Corner
Gnarly Sex Germs
The Dirty Word Chapter
Sex on the Interstate

When I'm not giggling my way through it's pages I keep this on the family book shelf and have pointed out it's location to all four of our boys. They know if they have any questions, concerns, or just want a conversation they can come to one or both hubs and I but they are also free to read this book all they want, no questions asked. Our biggest bookworm plucked it off the shelf and immediately nestled down on a comfy corner of the couch and was soon laughing and sharing passages with everyone else. More than once I've spotted it in their rooms but have casually not let on that I've seen it. Hubs and I are parents of the opinion that sex is normal and natural, there's nothing shameful or dirty about it in the least, and education is the way to keep them happy and healthy. If for whatever reason they don't talk to one of us about something to do with sex we are perfectly happy and comfortable telling them that they can trust the information in this book. Considering how I feel about my kiddos there is no higher praise for a book than that!

Sex in the Closet????

2009-12-09T11:04:00.000-08:00

Bwahahahahaha!!! That's right, duckie -- S E X !!

This is actually just a quickie (heh that's what she said) to let folks know (more than one...kinky!) that I have indeed discovered how to set my blog up for adult content (heh heh huuh heh she said "adult content") so when one of my most talkative (no ball gags necessary) followers (but collars and leashes can be fun) comes over (care for a roll in the hay?) they won't be shocked (OMG that's not natural!!) by the adult content (heeehuuh heh heh she said it again) warning that precedes my blog coming up (do I really have to hand you the obvious sexual innuendo contained in those last two words????)

So in a few days or so brace yourselves as Naked in the Closet gets dirty!! lol

Randomness

2009-12-08T18:37:00.000-08:00

That's whatcha get today, randomness. It won't be a post with one cohestive subject. It'll just be whatever falls out of my brain (ew), ok? Ok.

I like to smudge the place a bit after a big cleaning like I did for the in-laws visit last week. Sage can go stale??? UGH!! My family needs to tell me these things! I can't smell for heaven's sake! So just before the in-laws arrive I light a little smudge stick, add a pinch of sandalwood to the burning end just because I believe it will smell nice, and hear from upstairs, "What's burning?!"
"It's just a smudge stick!" I yell back.
He replies, "Oh. It's pretty stale!"
Who knew?

This is my dog Hudson named after Rock Hudson because of his good looks. Isn't he handsome? And so sweet! Look how careful he's being with the little dog :) He is everything I dreamed of having to show and breed in Great Danes! The little dog was a rescue that just never really found a home other than ours. We named him Sir Didymus after the character by the same name in Labyrinth because he's a lot like him, lotsa big yap without a lot of bite usually. He can be a really scrappy lil guy when he's pushed though and dead loyal to the end!

Now THAT'S what a Great Dane head in profile should look like!! See that all you out there breeding Danes with delicate, bitchy heads??? (fyi, "bitchy" when used this way is not a curse word but instead is a term used to mean "looking like a bitch" in the sense of "female dog" because for showing and breeding purposes a female Dane is allowed to be a bit more slender and delicate but the males never should) It's a Great Dane, not a damn Greyhound!

Is there a way to change the rating of my blog to have a warning about adult content? Last night as my love and I lay basking in afterglow the random thought suddenly struck me that I'm not going to be able to post properly about sex on here because I'm fairly blunt and earthy in that area (meaning maybe not suitable for all children of all ages). Not that I'd get straight out vulgar about anything but...ah well I'll leave it at that for now *smirk*

Which reminds me of the time I was at the stable. The trainer (barely more than a kid) and I were watching one of the mares, a particularly snotty lil wench who seemed to be in heat year round, flirt with a horse tied nearby. Later the trainer was telling the owner of the stable and said, "She had a lot of stuff draining from her boo boo." The owner and I exchanged puzzled looks while the trainer looked vaguely embarrassed and helpless for no reason I could figure out. I was just really worried because I hadn't noticed any injuries on the mare! Suddenly the owner burst out screaming in laughter, "You mean her VULVA?! Say it with me, VULLLLLL-VA!" The trainer seemed a tad offended when the owner and I almost collapsed together laughing but c'mon! It was funny and only made funnier by two grown women leaning on each other, laughing hysterically, every once in awhile screaming "VULVA!"

Do you know that I didn't get to go scuba diving at all this year!!! Granted my dive partner is my husband and he's been laid up for most of the year with horrifically shattered ribs so that's just the way the cookie crumbles. But if I'm going to be selfish and vent this lack of diving is KILLING me!!! I think everyone should scuba dive to recover from the stresses of life!! I could really just anchor myself to something and fall right asleep if it wasn't an insanely dangerous thing to do. Ah I can't wait for the return of warm weather!!

I really wish I could figure out what to do with my life. It's not that I don't have any ideas but that I have quite a few ideas with no solid way of choosing between them! Wow maybe I'll blog all about it sometime then put up a poll and let all of you choose my career! That's so crazy I may have to do it just for the sheer lunacy of it! lol

I've been super naughty and I know it. I said quite a few posts ago that I was going to tape a hypnotism script to use on myself and let y'all hear about it. Maybe I need to set a more definite goal than that and have like Self Help Saturday or Fixing Me Friday or something because I notice in blogs that you need some kinda title like that!

Speaking of which, I've really wanted to do another Making a Difference Monday but the shameful truth is I just can't really think of any good deeds in particular I've done. My life is really rather boring and routine in most ways. I rarely leave my property and when I do I generally try to go as unnoticed as possible to avoid interacting with the scary humans out there! Sure the horses and dogs think I'm a hero doing even better than good deeds just for feeding them but it just doesn't cut it for me. Hmph. Something else to figure out but not right now!!!

Nope, right now it's 10 pm and I'mma be even more naughty! (Get yur mind outta the gutter! Hm although that's REALLY not a bad idea...) Will I play WoW half the night? Seduce my husband? Have a forbidden late night chocolate fest? Read? Crochet? Have a sinfully long soak in my fabu-wonder-ous old claw foot tub? Maybe I'll combine more than one in seriously WRONG ways? Vote for your favorite and maybe I'll do that some other night!!

Losing Jonathan

2009-12-07T13:21:00.000-08:00

Today I was all set to heave a skeleton out of the closet up on the stage for you. It wasn't easy talking myself into it but I thought jeez, this one is really not a big deal! For goodness sake, it's almost the "in" thing to be these days in some ways!! And now that you've hemmed and hawed so much about revealing further secrets because they're SOoooOOOooo awful you're gonna tell them and they're all gonna be like, "That's IT???!!!" But this morning I was working with the birds, had the tv on for a little background noise, and just as I was finishing up with the birds a show came on about a couple who lost their baby. It set the stage for me to tell a completely different kind of story than the one I was going to post.

Before I tell it though I feel the need to say a few things in no particular order. This post is likely to get a little long but it's the type of story that must be told from one end to the other leaving out nothing in between so that's how I'm going to write it. This isn't one of my secrets but it is a post that I knew I'd make one day and I've been dreading just as much as those secrets because it just hurts that bad. As a matter of fact I've never been able to think about, much less try to tell, this story without a lot of tears. Heck, I'm misting up right now even getting this close to telling it! So you may want a tissue. Anyone with a penis that cringes when someone so much as says words like "menstruation", "uterus", or even "PMS" brace yourselves with a stiff drink cause this is one of those "women's junk" stories. And if you are someone who is in a place -- in your life, where you're at emotionally, whatever -- where reading a no-punches-pulled story about the death of a child will harm you please skip this post!!

To begin I have to explain to you that unlike some unlucky women I have an exceptionally robust, healthy reproductive system!! My periods are a breeze with no PMS, very rarely I may have some very light cramps but usually nothing, they're regular enough you could practically set your calendar by them, they last exactly how long they should on average and I bleed exactly how much I should on average. I get pregnant with no problems during which I'm hyper careful to eat right, exercise regularly, rest up if I feel at all tired, go to every doctor's visit, and rabidly avoid medication (even though the doctors said it was ok), cigarettes, or alcohol. In both the pregnancies that gave me my I-love-them-beyond-all-reason boys I never had morning sickness, carried them with ease, gave birth in routine ways (one c-section after 25 hours of no drugs labor, the lil stinker, then one just about by-the-book-perfect VBAC)...heck I didn't even have weird cravings!! Then I went on to have perfectly healthy children that I breastfed with ease. To tell you the truth, in both pregnancies I felt BETTER than normal!! During the end of the second trimester of my first pregnancy we moved and I was lifting boxes, rearranging furniture, and joyfully nesting away while everyone around me had complete heart attacks every time they caught me doing it! I swear to you, my uterus has a big, bold, red S stamped right on it!!

During my Year of Hell I got pregnant for the third time. When your whole life is swiftly spiralling the toilet and your entire future is in question is maybe not the smartest time to get pregnant, I admit but...how can I explain without giving excuses? I made mistakes, maybe some not so smart choices, and I own those but I also want to give the weight to where I was at in life and in myself that it deserves because it was an awful time. I was truly in the fight of my life, a fight to even have a life! If I won the battles I was in I felt that things would be ok but if I didn't I honestly couldn't see, couldn't even conceive of a future. In all the chaos, anger, and pain I wasn't as careful as I normally would've been about where I was at in my cycle or in taking my birth control without fail. Because of that I probably had no business having sex at all but I can't tell you how unbelieveably precious it was to me just then to feel warm, loved, safe, and wanted even if for a short time!! For a few moments in time he was my rock in the middle of the storm that I could cling to and recover my breath that I desperately needed! And I also have to admit that there were times, especially all alone late at night when the ugly voices were at their very worst, that I drew a great deal of comfort curling up around my still flat belly knowing that this was one person that I selfishly had all to myself to love, who needed and would one day love me completely, and no one could take him away from me for even a second during those nine months.

Because my cycle is so regular I found out quickly about this pregnancy and as usual started doing all I could right away to give this baby the very best start in life that I possibly could. This time I asked the doctor if I should continue taking the Paxil for my depression because I didn't know if the risk of harm would be greater from the medication or the increased strain and stress on me, and therefore the baby, during a time of already incredible turmoil. He assured me that not only was it perfectly safe but that I was very correct that the added stress of stopping the medication could well do the baby and I real harm. Even so I was a little worried about whether I was doing the right thing or not but I chalked it up to an unreasonable distrust of doctors. The first time I heard my baby's heartbeat and heard that everything was just fine I relaxed a little. When I started my fourth month of pregnancy without a hint of trouble I pushed the worries aside. Women who are going to miscarry usually do in the first three months then more and more rarely as time goes on. I had a shining medical record in this area, loads of doctors, studies, and statistics telling me everything was fine, and that strong, steady heartbeat as proof that I could look forward to having another wonderful little person in my life. It gave me something in my future that I could be happy about.

Early one morning in my fifth month of pregnancy I woke up as usual and stayed cuddled under the covers for a bit still drowsy when suddenly, right out of nowhere, I felt a strange, distinct "POP" deep within that startled me into complete alertness. It didn't hurt but felt almost exactly as if someone had thumped me very sharply or had somehow snapped me with a rubber band. I lay tense for a few moments with a sense of great unease but when nothing else seemed to happen I sat up. Right away I felt a very warm rush of wetness. A little more alarmed but telling myself that I was just being silly I went to the bathroom as normal. When the paper came out with a little blood I told myself that even though I hadn't had spotting in my other pregnancies each one was different and a little spotting certainly wasn't unheard of in a perfectly normal, healthy pregnancy. But leaning forward to stand up there was another small wet rush with a little more blood, a small ache began deep inside, and the reassuring voice in my head started to sound frantic. I hesitated to wake my friends but thought better safe than sorry as I wadded up a towel to hold between my legs. Bless them they weren't the least concerned at being awakened and bundled me straight into the car.

I huddled in my seat, arms wrapped around my belly as if I could somehow protect the the little life there, with an ever growing pain inside, a towel inside my pants that felt increasingly wet and tears coursing down my face. The reassuring-voice-turned-frantic had changed to screaming desperately over and over in my head "they do such miracles in medicine now days, this is nothing at all to them, the doctors can fix this, the doctors can make this all right again, everything's going to be fine." It tried with sheer volume to drown out the note of pure fear in my mind but couldn't quite blot it out. I was as scared as I ever had been in my life.

He helped me inside and even threw a fit when the nurses told me to wait in the waiting room until they brought me back. A nurse calmly asked a few questions and had me take down my pants to see the towel within. I had to grab the chair, my legs gone weak, when I saw just how bloody that towel was but that voice in my head just kept right on screaming. Despite the voice's efforts I feel like I somehow started to drift away from reality about then, only a little bit, just enough to soften the edges of everything but leaving me in control of myself. The nurse sent me to the bathroom for a urine sample.

I remember standing in front of the toilet staring dumbly at the little cup and sterile wipes for just a second before taking my pants back down again and sitting. When I reached under with the cup to catch the stream something was odd but I couldn't understand what. It was like something was just out of place somehow. So I carefully set the cup aside and felt to see what was going on and found a strange weight dangling on a cord that lead inside me. Bewildered I pulled and with an easy little "snap" I pulled the weight up to see what it was and the voice in my head quit screaming. I remember best thin, fragile arms ending in such perfect little hands and fingers only so tiny, a head too large for such a small thing with two little dark circles for eyes, and the whole, warm little weight fit easily in just one of my own small hands. It took a second-forever to register that this was my baby. After a few more seconds-forevers a voice, startlingly clear and bold with the finality of a door slamming loudly in the silence of my head, said, "It's over. There's no way the doctors can fix this now."

I cuddled him to my chest to keep him warm, covering him protectively under my chin for who knows how long while I thought. What should I do? I very distinctly asked myself, "Should I start screaming? Is that the appropriate thing to do now?" and imagined nurses rushing in telling me exactly what to do and ending this strange detatched, calmness. It seemed like that would be a relief of sorts, not having to figure out the right thing to do next. I was so very, very tired of trying to puzzle out what the right thing to do next was in my life just then. But I reasoned that if I could consider calmly whether to scream or not I probably shouldn't. After all, you can't PLAN to scream! That kind of calm thought process precluded screaming. When people scream it's because the scream just comes out without thought. I didn't want to leave him but I told myself I had to because the people outside might be starting to worry about me. I took a few paper towels at the sink, folded them carefully, put him down on it, then gently covered him up with another like tucking him into bed before reluctantly leaving. There was a wheelchair waiting there for me and I told them "someone should check the bathroom" before sitting down.

As I sat there it's as if I started to thaw out somehow. First I felt tears running down my cheeks then it's as if I came awake all in a huge, overwhelming rush of agony! I half lunged up out of the wheelchair before hands held me down as I started screaming "My baby! My baby! I have to get my baby!!" Arms went around me and held me close as the screaming slowly dwindled down to wracking sobs of "I just want him back! I just want my baby back!" I can't explain the feelings. There just aren't words to say how hugely, crushingly, bereft I was. It's like a mountain sitting on me, physically, mentally, and emotionally to even try to remember it clearly enough to explain it. Bigger than huge. Blacker than black. Despair with no end.

Then my memory starts to come and go about precisely what happened for a little while after that. The prick of a needle almost passes without my notice. I only remember it because it struck me as odd that I just barely felt it at all. I was on my back on an exam table. There was a warm hand on my shoulder and a male voice saying, "I'm so sorry." I turned my face away from him and felt tears still streaming steadily from my eyes. People were moving around, talking, doing things between my legs. A small noise escaped me. A gentle male voice from between my legs said "I know, sweetheart, but we're almost done." I dully thought to myself, "I don't care. Do whatever you want. It doesn't change anything." I may have fallen asleep? Maybe more than once? I have no idea. I could've been there for minutes or days.

The next thing I remember is being wheeled to somewhere else. A nurse came in and asked me that question that every woman is asked, is there any way I could be pregnant or even suspect I could be pregnant? That's when I know I came completely awake and aware and stared at her for a minute. Did she really just ask me that??? Didn't they have paperwork or even mention about why I was there and what had happened up to that point??? A white hot fury shook me then completely burning away all the sadness in an instant! I didn't recognize my own voice as I visciously snarled at her, "NOT ANYMORE!!!" I sat there glaring at her, tensed as if I'd leap at her any minute. A shock of realization hit her eyes then and all the anger just flowed back out of me. There might've been a flash of sympathy in her face before she stood up and quickly left the room without another word. I don't know. I didn't care. I fell back wearily into my drowning pool of emotions and blessedly spotty memory. My regular doctor got between my legs and examined me. He said some words of it wasn't my fault and sometimes these things just happen. Then my memory of that time fades out.

Nothingness.

As empty as my body.

How does she do it?

2009-12-05T09:09:00.000-08:00

If you ask me Cinerella must've had a little magic of her own for that place to have been so sparkling clean and contrary to what anyone might think there is no spell in existence that will work a Fantasia on your house! For a Witch to get the house clean we have to use good ole elbow grease just like anyone else. The only example I had for how to clean house was my mom. She worked full time and did pretty much all the cooking and cleaning. She was really obsessive compulsive about it all too! At dinner you hardly dared get up for a drink because you could return to the table to find your plate gone and don't you complain about it!! That was a sure fire way to get everyone all riled up!

Me: Mom! I wasn't done! I only got up to (insert anything you like because it doesn't change what comes next)!

Mom: (looking totally hassled, frustrated, and fed up) Well I didn't know that! I guess I'm supposed to stand around ALL night waiting to make sure that you're REALLY done with your plate before I can wash it! It's not like I have anything better to do, right? I mean, that's all I'm here for isn't it? To cook and clean for all of you?

From there you can guess that the best thing you could really do is be quiet and make a stealthy escape as soon as possible. She tried to get us to do some chores a few times but we could never get it just like she wanted it, perfect.

I decided early in life that I was NOT going to make myself miserable like that. Two things I really wanted in life was a nice little home of my own and a family to go in it. That was part of my dream so why would I want to spoil it by trying to keep it so sterile that everyone's afraid to move lest they shed a skin cell on something?! My home is for LIVING IN! Yeah the cat boxes need scooping again, there's more seeds and bits on the tile from the birds, there's dustbunnies hiding behind the bowflex, the couch cover needs washed again...who cares?! There is no strange, unidentifiable something lurking in a corner haboring dreams of using it's toxicity to off us all in the quiet of the night. Nothing is growing fuzz unless it's supposed to be fuzzy. Ok with so many people and pets sharing a space there is an off smell here and there from time to time but it's always tracked down and thoroughly eliminated. Really if you can't handle an odd smell why on earth would you share your home with FIVE males and a large, gas prone Great Dane??? When you die there isn't someone at the Pearly Gates ready to do a white glove test on your home to determine if you're worthy of Paradise! At any rate I'm happy with this piece of my life so I don't need to fix what's not broken, right?

Short and sweet

2009-12-04T10:40:00.000-08:00

The minutes are slipping away until the in-laws come to visit and I still haven't scooped the cat boxes today! AAAAAAHHHHHH! So for the moment I'm gonna keep things quick then hope I get the chance to spend a bit more time a little later on. I haven't found a new blog to follow in a while so I decided to click a link from one of the blogs I already follow and see what I'd find. Silly me I clicked on...

Have you seen how honkin big this list is??? lol Needless to say I just can't go through all the blogs on this list today so instead I thought why not sign up? Then I can take the rest of my life to browse all these blogs if I really want to, right? I don't want to dash willy-nilly through them! I like to take my time, savor the experience, and delight in the anticipation of the blogs still to read. Plus, hello! Pagan here! lol And on the whole some of the most wonderful people I've ever met have been Pagan. I really think that there's something about a religion that a person can tailor to suit them while still sharing at least some beliefs with the whole, a religion that's positive, loving, and accepting, that really brings together some of the best and most interesting people. So I haven't read your blogs yet but believe me, I'm looking forward to reading them, learning more about everyone, and seeing some friendly faces!

What would you do?

2009-12-03T20:05:00.000-08:00

I'd like to try to give this story as objectively as possible to let people answer freely so I hope you'll forgive me if this comes out on the unemotional side.

My son's step mother called me tonight to discuss something with me. She said that there's been rumors at my son's school that someone plans to bring a gun to shoot teachers and students tomorrow. My son says he's scared and doesn't want to go to school tomorrow. Points to consider that were brought up in our discussion:

Many parents have called the school and have been told that this rumor has been thoroughly investigated by them and police. They are assuring parents that this was just a rumor spread by someone wanting to stir up trouble.
There's been no incidences at this school having to do with weapons but there has been an increase in serious fights.
My son has a good attendance record and good grades.
Giving in to these kinds of threats gives the perpetrators power which could increase the number of incidents.
Allowing my son to stay home from school may send him the message that it's ok to live your life in fear.
My son openly gripes about school and has been known to wiggle out of a day here and there. It's possible he could see this as a way to get out of going to school in the future.
Where do you draw the line between protection and over protecting?

Would you keep your son home from school or not? I'll reveal which way I decided after folks have had a chance to have their say :)

P.S. No matter which way you lean on the subject I would really appreciate any prayers, energy or anything else people care to send for the protection of the teachers and students of my son's school tomorrow!

Pot Pourri

2009-12-03T11:12:00.001-08:00

Nothin fancy, revealing, or particularly heartrending going into the blog today. Nope, today is all about zoning out while cleaning to let Conscious Mind take a hike so Subconscious Mind can ponder and sending supportive, healing energies to poor Jon as he recovers from the horror of The Dentist. So for my post today I'll just toss out this and that about me that you don't know.

Throughout my childhood the only thing I wanted to be was a veterinarian.
Now that I'm an adult I don't know what I want to do for a career!
When I'm in a mood for it I love liver and onions.
I spent my first days of life in a Catholic convent.
My favorite colors are blue and green.
I'm an Aquarius.
I love swimming!
One son says I'm a "pimp" or a "straight up g" and assures me that those are compliments.
In school I was a long distance runner.
I actually love fighting, tried and enjoyed Tae Kwon Do and fencing, and would really like to get back into one of them.

A fond memory

2009-12-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

A memory from high school came to me yesterday that made me smile. I wanted to post it up sooner but then hubs asked me to help with something and I got all off track and...well you know how that goes. It also hit me that my in-laws will be here Sunday and I have so much to clean!!! lol They are so great that I don't want the house to be some dog smellin wreck when they get here! I fell completely in love with them the first time they asked me what my two sons like, clothes sizes, and if they already had a college fund started because they said "they're our grandsons too now, you know?" That is just one of the sweetest, big hearted, kind... I could gush on about that forever but it's also wandering off on a tangent, yes? lol

Growing up my best friend's family were from Europe. Her mother taught French at the local high school so from early on I was gentley prodded about it. "When you get to my school you will then take French from me, riiiiight?" Eh, I didn't care which language I took as long as I took one to look good on my college applications. Besides I loved Tina's* mom! Being at their house was a welcome escape from my own and Madame was a mother figure I admired.

Sure enough when the time came I took up French class but I learned more than I thought I would. Not only was learning a new language fun but it was practically effortless for me! In some ways it wasn't always easy, being asked on a weekend if I was over visiting because I'd finished my French homework or spoken to a bit more personally than others in class, but I could tell that she was proud of how well I did in her class. The one time I forgot an assignment all I got was a very sorrowful look and, "you disappoint me today." She assigned me a chapter to translate from French to English to make up for it. I translated it but went so far as to make copies of the pages adding my translation in the exact same place on the pages where the French words were! She smiled at the extra effort and I knew all was forgiven.

I loved it so much not only did I sign up for French II my senior year but I also decided to try Spanish. It was a little odd, the only senior sitting amongst all the lower classmen, and it probably didn't help matters that the teacher singled me out commenting that I was taking both French and Spanish, which was unheard of, but I was strangely proud of it. Normally I wouldn't dare do too well or too poor in school, afraid of drawing undue attention from my parents, but in French and Spanish it was almost like I didn't have a choice! It just came very naturally to me and I found that it wasn't at all confusing to take both at the same time. On the contrary, one only seemed to compliment and strengthen the other for me. Plus I could tell that this teacher was every bit as delighted by my progress in Spanish as Madame was of my French and it was very rewarding to have an adult pleased with me without fear of possible fallout.

In Spanish I sat behind a sophmore, Lacy*. She seemed to be an indifferent student, more interested in the social aspects of school than the academic, so I got various looks intended to insult and hurt which just rolled off my back. If I returned her gaze at all it was with a bland, blank look. At some point I noticed that her looks got longer and more and more she seemed to be studying me like a scientist might examine a strange new bug. Finally one day she turned around and boldly announced that not only could she but she would beat my grade in the class. Far from being upset by this pronouncement I calmly told her, "good, I hope you do." She was a bit taken aback at first, expecting a different reaction I imagine, but slowly a smile grew on her face as she realized that I was serious.

From that day on we became friends of a sort. We didn't associate outside of class but neither of us snubbed the other in the halls either. In class we were a kind of magic! We talked when we could, helped each other, competed in a friendly fashion...we had a great time and both of us were just swimming in A's. A few times when we were a little too chatty I sense that the teacher went a tiny bit easy on us for it because she knew exactly what was going on and was loving it!

Towards the end of the year she told me in all earnestness, "You really helped me. I wouldn't have done half this good if I wasn't trying to beat you." We both teared up and hugged and when the school year ended never saw each other again.

Even after all these years I get a little misty thinking about that. It's so gratifying to me to know that for one person, maybe for just a very short time, I made a real difference in her life for the better. That's just one of the best feelings in the world to me! It makes my heart swell with love and happiness, I feel energized and ready to tackle the next challenge! I know I have more of it inside me and I really want to find a way to make people and this world better. It didn't bring me money or fame and I don't care a thing about that. I absolutely do not ever want fame, that would probably be like torture for me, and though money would be nice I already have enough for my family and I to be comfortable and that's all that really matters. What I really want most right now is a career filled with more moments just like that where I help in some meaningful way, big or small. Think Santa has one in his bag for me?

*of course I changed their names!!

Compromise Me

2009-11-30T10:19:00.000-08:00

For some reason I've really struggled these last few days to decide to come make a post. Trying to screw up my courage I started with the parts of me that were a bit easier to talk about but I'm coming closer to the skeletons that hide deeper in my closet. Even now I find it hard to keep typing as my mind scrambles away from them telling me to post about the last handful of days, talk about the pets, explain the world that is Warcraft or any role play game but for heaven's sake get away from the back of that closet!! *sigh*

Recently I said something to the effect that I'm ok with being in the closet right now because I've been brave and open in the past but now is my time to lay out and heal. One day I will be called on to come to the front again so I'm content with all of that. The truth is I really want to believe that but in this case I say it only in an attempt to believe it. On this point the ugly voice in my head jeers at me, "coward!" I believe it and I feel something inside me crumble away admitting that.

When I first found Wicca I greedily soaked up information from any source I could find. Some people explore the different pantheons, sampling to see what works and feels best to them, but some, like me, are claimed. During this period of learning I began to feel as if there was a presence at my back, one hand on my head, one on my shoulder, and the name "Freya" whispering in my mind. Of course, Conscious Mind had to get in the way! C.M. got busy telling me I was being silly, all I knew about Freya was she had something or another to do with Vikings, and what on earth did Vikings have to do with me???

Eventually I did learn more about Freya and the Nordic pantheon and for some reason I can't explain it all just felt so RIGHT. Not only that but I admired a lot of their ways and ideas. The people lived hard lives and they became tough from their trials. There was no time or room for sitting around worrying! In their minds the gods had each of their lives mapped out already so what use was worry? When a battle came along you ran to battle and fought with all of your heart and soul because you never knew the hour of your death. The Valkyries, lead by Freya, would scour the battlegrounds searching out the very best warriors and heros to take to their great reward, Valhalla. Everyone else would find themselves facing the goddess Hel in a grim underworld.

This was something I could get behind and would lift me up from the day I accepted Freya. Except for being in the military there are no more big battles like in the days of the Vikings but I reasoned that the gods wouldn't hold that against anyone. There are still battles to fight in our world against hatred, illnesses, within ourselves, and more. So my goal was to work hard and fight hard and never give up! I did just that for years fighting and working within myself to overcome my illnesses and in the world living openly as a Wiccan to do my part to prove that there's nothing to fear from us, teaching those that wanted to know more, doing anything that came my way with my heart and soul. It worked! One day I simply realized that, at least in myself, I was exactly where I'd been struggling to be, healthy, proud, happy at last for about a year.

Then my world shattered around me. I'd had one year of bliss followed by one year more or less of pure hell then a few years later here I am like a whipped dog hiding from the world. I've lost my faith. The bright, shining, heroic heights that I aspired to are tarnished and dull. I don't know how to put myself out there anymore. I don't feel the solid support of a presence behind me anymore. Those great heros would've leapt to the very back of the closet, grabbed the biggest, scariest skeleton they could find, dragged it out into the daylight and whipped it's butt for all to see! This blog is like a teeny tiny step on the path leading back to that one wonderful year and still I shy away from the contents in the back of my closet. *sigh* Still got lots of work to do, my friends.

Curve Ball

2009-11-25T09:51:00.000-08:00

This one comes to you straight out of left field! When I woke one morning a long time ago I had half a scene stuck in my head apparently concocted from part dream, part joke I'd recently heard. It was one of those things that will annoy the living hell out of you until you put it down on paper so I did. This comes with a few little disclaimers, explanations, and what nots...

This is not meant to offend, upset, or in any way, shape, or form rile up anyone of any religion. If you can't take a joke, even about serious subjects, you should probably stop reading my blog altogether right now.
This is unedited, given up to your tender mercies as fresh and strange as the first day it made it's way into words. I started to edit it then mentally smacked my hands away. For some reason I like it this way all rough and unpolished!
In my dream I was a deity known as Lady Chaos who was responsible for making sure things didn't get a chance to stagnate. If things got too quiet anywhere it was my job to shake things up a little bit, maybe even create a tiny bit of careful destruction to make way for new growth. This is written from "her" point of view.
If you've ever read "The Tao of Pooh" then you already know that this seemingly bumbling, simple minded little guy is actually a genius deity disguised as a stuffed bear. You shake your head in wonder saying, "Pooh Bear is a GOD??!!" But of course!! lol

One day a few of us Divines were sitting around discussing the state of the world. We all pretty much agreed that it was high time that I did something to kick up some new excitement but what? Setting Dubbya up then knocking him back down was hilarious for awhile. Some of the things I made that poor schmuck say and do were so outrageous we were shocked that no one caught on it was me planting that load of crapola in his head! You humans can be so darn easy sometimes! But jerking him around was just getting so yesterday! We all started going through the usual list of hot topics guaranteed to get at least one group of humans or another frothing at the mouth. Politics? Nah. Like I said, I'd kinda had my fill of that for now with Georgie-boy and I'd probably stirred up enough trouble with the whole upcoming vote for the moment. Sex? While your sexual antics (hah, more like anti-antics with some of your crazy ideas!) are as funny as a weiner dog with a hot dog tied to the end of his tail I already had some projects in the works in that area and wanted to see how they panned out first. Pooh had been laying on his back making urpy noises like a balrog with a bad sinus infection (that bear just can't hold his liquor!) when suddenly he rolled up like some weeble wobble gone wrong to a sorta sitting position.

"You haven't done much regiloush...resigious...religioush..."

"Religious you lightweight pansy-ass fuzzball!" roared Odin laughing as he snatched the mead horn away from Pooh knocking the bear back over.

"Thash what I shaid." Pooh replied smugly.

Now that subject certainly held some interesting possibilities! Sidenote: You might think that the last one I pulled in the area of religion was that nasty business with the Catholic church priests and those children but you'd be dead wrong. Yeah sure, I really love my job stirring things up among you mortals and all us Divinities think it's just the most amusing thing since you guys decided to venture down from the trees that an order that's looked down it's nose at so many other religions has been exposed as having such a repugnant skeleton in it's own closet but there's some lines even I won't cross. Doing that to children is just wrong, period, and for any of you who care yes, all the guilty parties in that whole sick fiasco will find themselves in a very special hell one day. The SPECIAL...hell...

Coyote suddenly got this evil little gleam in his eye that told me that he had something good in mind."Did I tell you about the human who was joking about the Rapture? He said what if the Rapture had already come and all the humans left simply didn't realize it because they chose the wrong religion? So he starts calling all the different places of worship asking about it but when he calls the Unitarian church there's no one there! He was just howling about it saying 'Noooooooo not the Unitarians!!!" Coyote was gasping for breath as he collapsed in giggles.

Man, you just have to love the tricksy Divinities! I get some of my best ideas from them.

So what do you think my little poppets? Has the Rapture come and gone already? Just how sure are you that you picked the one and only "right" religion? What makes you so sure that all the other religions claiming to be THE one and only "right" one are wrong? I think I'll just plant that little kernel into a few key heads then sit back to enjoy the show. Sweet dreams.

Standing before you in red faced shame

2009-11-24T09:33:00.000-08:00

Beloved readers, the dear, sweet Magaly has given me a lovely award for my comments! I didn't know it was award worthy, though I won't argue with Magaly. If she says it then it must be so! Here it is:

Wherever this award originated from my compliments to you! I want to giggle everytime I look at it. Just some big ole mouths walking around yelling "blah blah blah blah" to the world! Priceless!

But now I must tell you all the shameful truth and pray you won't turn from me in utter disgust for I do love you all so! I have failed to decipher the magical incantations that will give my awards a place of honor on my page permanently. I know, I know!! I'm a computer dummy!

If anyone is left reading this would you, could you please tell me how to do this???

Blood on my Hands

2009-11-23T20:14:00.000-08:00

Today when I awoke I took the time to luxuriate in the cozy softness of bed. My little white cat was curled into a warm ball under my chin but her eyes opened to slits and she rumbled a small complaint. Her Highness was displeased with my waking movements! I took the time to think back over my life so far, the pain of where I've been and the goodness of where I am. A soft smile curved my lips as I looked at the sleeping form next to me who's a large part of everything good in my life right now. My eyes misted up a bit and my chest ached as my love for him overflowed the bounds of my heart. Gods thank you for my husband!

I walked down the stairs and heard the familiar scrambling of dogs on tile on the other side of the baby gate vying to be the first to greet me for the day. I stopped for a moment to chuckle fondly at them, each one wagging, wiggling, and jumping in delight while grinning at me madly in their doggy way. Hiding my smile I stepped through the gate composed and serene, the thrashing mosh pit of furry bodies respectfully parted around me. The cats may believe I am their servant but my dogs know me as the Supreme Ruler of all I Survey so I must not disappoint them! I said a soft hello to the birds on my way to the kitchen which they returned with various calls, stretches, and wild wing flaps. Coffee pot on, shoes on, so outside I went.

Walking toward the horse pasture I noticed the array of small butterflies. Not long ago the air was filled with the ones I believe are called Painted Ladies. This morning the cool air was alive with wings of a striking, yellow/orange color like beautiful Fall leaves playing in the breeze. The horses usually anticipate my arrival and this morning was no exception. As I gathered up their rations of pellets and hay I paused to watch them running to meet me. Glorious and gorgeous, moving with such power and grace but making it look completely effortless. They stopped just short of crashing through the fence and made their usual sounds of impatience clearly telling me to hurry.

As the feed hit the horse's buckets the chickens and turkey came running to gobble up the bits the horses dropped. I smiled at them with a little twinge of sadness, gave the horses a final pat, and continued on my morning rounds. The dogs were next and they knew it! Just like every morning they were in a frenzy of anticipation! I gathered their bowls calmly whirling with lightening speed to fix any that got offensively eager with a glare that left the troublemaker looking suitably chastised and acting calmer.

They watched me carefully measure out their breakfast. My Great Dane, unable to contain his excitement, went galloping down the fence with the female Heeler fast on his heels and the little Manchester trying to catch up. When I came back out they dutifully contained themselves and took their places in the grass. They waited while I wet each bowl with a little water and put each of their bowls in their own special spot. The male heeler decided to test me a little but I caught him putting just one paw on the pavement, whirled, and glared at him. He quickly withdrew the paw with a sheepish look of "yeah, ya caught me." When all the bowls were down I turned to look at them critically and they looked intently back at me. Yes, they were being very respecful so with a bright "OK!" they each broke position, raced to their own bowls, and started joyfully gulping food.

Then I spent an hour in quiet contemplation as I sipped my coffee. I remembered how small and pitifully ugly that little turkey had been when we first brought him home the past Spring. At first he and the little red chick were too small to be outside so they lived in a cage inside. They were so messy that several times a day I had to let them out so I could replace their paper, food and water. That turkey was the first to leap out each time as if he truly enjoyed the little outings. He'd walk around the room looking at everything, tasting many things, then would suddenly race across the floor flapping his bald wings furiously. He left me in stitches when he'd just as suddenly come to a stop and peer around as if he fully expected to be soaring through the air and was a bit confused about why he was still firmly planted on the ground! There was a time not very long ago when we almost lost him. He'd fallen into the horse's trough sometime during the night. When we discovered him on our way to feed the horses in the morning he was barely able to keep his head above the water. He was completely exhausted and horribly hypothermic. The poor thing had struggled so hard the tips of his wings were raw. We wrapped him snugly in a big quilt, checked him often, and waited. We were so relieved when he was able to stagger to his feet that evening and apparently completely recovered the next day. Coffee gone it was time to wake my love and get to work.

I held the bowl as he ate his favorite tidbits, lunchmeat, cheese, bagel and cream cheese, and finely shredded apple. I opened myself to him and the Universe and willed my words and feelings into being. He was a good turkey. I was very sad to see him go but I was also thankful for the time we had with him. I thanked him humbley for his sacrifice so that my family could eat. I promised I will never forget him. My husband carefully grasped his neck cutting off the blood flow. He gave one great jump and powerful flap then went quiet. When sure he was unconscious so that he would feel no pain we finished our grim work. I felt a bit sick, my guts tight and uncomfortable but it became easier as I worked plucking feathers, gutting, and meticulously cleaning, as he looked more and more like meat. I'll miss him.

People just don't understand. My father can't fathom how I can raise this turkey from a baby then kill him for his meat. I can't begin to tell you how many say I'm no animal lover if I can do that. They call me cruel, murderer, monster. If it bothers me so much why do I do it? It's precisely because I DO love animals so much that I do this! I wish I could raise/hunt/fish ALL of our meat! I wish everyone could! I've seen how meat gets to our grocery stores and it makes me sick! It may be making us all sick in ways we don't even realize yet, who knows? In order to wring maximum profit out of them many animals are kept in horrid conditions, abused in sickening ways, pumped full of chemicals and hormones, then slaughtered sometimes quickly but sometimes slowly, torturously. I can't unlearn what I've learned or forget what I've seen. When I buy meat I'm far too conscious of the fact that I am paying people to torture innocent animals. Buying it is much easier in many ways but maybe the taking of a life, even the life of a "simple turkey", SHOULDN'T be so easy! Perhaps it's only right that we do feel at least some discomfort. This turkey had people that cared about him. He had a snug nesting box in a sturdy chicken house. He had access to good food and clean water round the clock. He was freely given fresh foods and snacks. He ran in the sun and ate all the bugs he could find. Then when the time came great pains were taken to minimize any fear or pain as much as possible so that he could pass over peacefully. It may be hard and uncomfortable for me but it means one less animal suffers. It seems to me that it's more right that way than the other.

*Please understand that I realize that some people simply can't do this for one reason or another. I hold nothing against those that can't but I do encourage you to see what options may be available to you. There are businesses and others who raise animals then butcher them in more humane ways. If enough of us refuse to pay for animals that have been abused they will eventually be forced to adopt better husbandry practices. Even if you can only start small isn't it worth it?

Be a Warrior

2009-11-21T10:03:00.000-08:00

I've been rereading one of my favorites, Wiccan Warrior by Kerr Cuhulain. It's not your average Wicca book! As quoted from the back of this book:

Being a warrior is not about fighting. It's about freeing yourself of limitations so that you can be truly creative and effective in life. In the current Wiccan community, many archetypes present themselves: Maidens, Mothers, Crones, Healers, Magicians -- but rarely Warriors. Wiccan Warrior is the first book to show Pagans how to access the Warrior archetype within. It demonstrates how to follow a path that is essentially the Wiccan Reded in action: "An' it harm none, do what thou wilt."
Written by a Wiccan police officer and martial artist, Wiccan Warrior combines personal insights and real-life anecdotes with ritual, magick, energy work, meditation, self-examination, and self-discipline.

I thought this was a good book for where I'm at in myself right now. I've pulled a phrase from this book and modified it slightly for my own use, "I will cause positive changes in conformity with my will." It simply tells me that if I want to make a change, any change, all I have to do is decide to change it which is something I've taught to my boys for years. Already it's helping me make small changes for the better. I'd rather not be doing laundry today but I want clean clothes for my family and me more than I dislike laundry so guess what I'm doing today? lol

Yes, sometimes things can be just that simple and it's good to be reminded. Thanks, Kerr!

Rescuing Ms. Daisy

2009-11-20T11:28:00.000-08:00

When we first moved here we introduced ourselves to the neighbors, of course, and were pleased to find that everyone seemed very friendly. On one side of us is a married couple getting on in their years some who happened to breed cockateils. I thoroughly disapprove of hobbyists breeding any kind of animal when there's such a huge surplus of them suffering for want of a good home as in our shelters and rescues but, determined to be a good neighbor, I made sure to mention my extensive experience in handling pets including birds and that I'd be more than happy to help with them if she needed me. I've handfed countless numbers of chicks, cared for, and done routine grooming like clipping wings and nails.

So when I was working out back one day this last summer and saw a little cockateil perched on the side of our pool trying her very best to reach the water we immediately assumed that one of the lil guys just got loose from them. Hubs went over to tell them we'd found their lost little one while I tried hard to coax her into grabbing range. He came back with a cage and a vaguely disgusted look.

"They didn't lose her. They let them all loose."

I was shocked for a moment. They seemed so nice and well educated. "What do they want us to do then?"

He looked like he was bracing for an inevitable explosion and said, "They said not to worry about it."

Apparently they didn't want the burden of caring for them anymore and simply let all dozen or so of them fly off!! (insert a long stream of language foul enough to incinerate the hair in people's ears) There are only three fates for animals that have been dumped off, they are recaptured, die (all too often in horrible, painful ways), or live. Feral animals are a danger to people they come across, other animals both wild and domestic, can spread disease, and are often destructive to the environment. Some states are learning this the hard way as quaker parakeets turned loose have not only survived but are managing to increase in numbers. One problem with this is they like to nest around phone and electric lines and are interrupting people's services. They clearly can't stay, they can't all be caught, and people have fits when someone is sent out to kill them (but just as loud if they lose phone or electric, I'm sure!) And this type of thing happens more often than most people realize. Florida has numerous types of non-indigenous animals causing all sorts of problems. Australia has a huge problem with feral cats killing off large numbers of native species. Heck even the bane of all Texans, the fire ant, is an introduced species, not native, which is why they spread so rapidly and are incredibly hard to get rid of, they have no natural predator to keep their numbers in check.

We stayed out in the heat for hours trying different methods of catching her. For a long time she wouldn't fly away, she was clearly desperate for that water, but wouldn't be caught either. In the end she did fly away and we trudged inside with heavy hearts. The odds were against her survival but we left the cage out there open hoping she'd recognize it as a source of food and water. My sweet, darling hubs even overflowed the pool thinking that if she did come back to it she could at least reach the water.

At least a week passed during which I scanned the skies, checked the pool, and kept my ears perked for a piercing little cockateil whistle. I feared she was already dead until one day one of the boys came through the house shouting "She's back! That cockateil is back!!" As we all raced to the back I prayed feverently we'd catch her this time. Once again she was perched on the edge of the pool trying to get a drink as the water level had fallen fast in the Texas heat. And once again we tried various methods of capture that were just not working. She was habituated to people enough that she would let me edge to within an arm's reach of her but if my hand crept out to bridge that last distance she'd simply fly to the other side of the pool.

Finally I told the boys and hubs that it was clearly not going to work. It was time to attempt a riskier ploy, to get as close as possible then make a sudden grab for her. They lined up all around me, tensely watching with nets and blankets to toss over her if she should get past me. I inched over to her talking softly, trying to look very calm and casual...closer...as she flicked her head to one side to check her escape route, as she was about to fly again, I made a desperate leap reaching for her...and missed. My heart plummeted even as I noted that my grab had unbalanced and panicked her enough that she'd flown into the middle of a nearby cedar instead of skyward. My leap turned into a frantic lunge to the cedar. Surrounded by the dense foliage she tried to scramble away in a frenzy as I plunged recklessly through sticks and needles and...clasped my hands around her! I had her! She was safe!!

Not at all grateful for being rescued from almost certain death she screeched loudly then sank her beak into my hand, grinding it back and forth to make sure that I understood just how furious she was. I don't know if the tears in my eyes were joy or pain but I held on until I popped her securely in her cage. The boys promptly named her Daisy in keeping with the theme we've started with our two umbrella cockatoos, Jasmine and Lilly. Daisy ate and drank until I feared she'd burst then hunkered down comfortably for an incredibly long sleep.

That would be the end of the story except I've found another one! When I went outside yesterday to do my doody duty like I said I would in my post I left the back door open to air out the house some since the air was comfortably cool. Daisy, having settled in better by now, decided that it was a fine time to start yelling happily at the world but this time she got a reply! Startled I looked closer at the small bird flying overhead and sure enough it was a cockateil! When he perched on the fence I got a better look at him. He's a large, handsome bird who looks like he's actually done quite well for himself somehow! My attempts to catch him failed. Daisy decided to stop yelling and his calls got fainter and fainter as he moved away. By the time she started calling again there was no reply. The weather has started to cool and every day he's loose his chances of staying alive grow smaller. He may even be a bird who escaped more recently from someone else, who knows? I'll keep trying but if anyone has a spare good thought to send his way I'm sure it wouldn't go amiss :)

Thoughts in a Blender

2009-11-19T10:24:00.000-08:00

I feel like the only person in the corral trying to catch one of dozens and dozens of greased piglets and some smartass has tied my shoelaces together! There's too many thoughts whirling around in my head. There's way too much that I want to do and say in my life (Need to? Supposed to?) that it really frustrates me that I'm not busy doing and saying them! So spilling out of my head in no particular order and displayed for all to see (sounds fairly icky!) are my Random Thoughts!

Maybe that's the best place for me to start my hypnosis experiment, energy and motivation. Wow. It's so easy to do this for someone else! They want to change A, B, and C so we talk for a bit to figure out what they'd like to replace them with and voila, I have a logical starting place. Well think of it this way, what would it hurt to start there? Hmm. True! So need to work up a script within the next few days or so.
Dogs need walked and could really use some training! It's just crazy that two excellent dog trainers have a pack of dogs that are actually pretty rude. I hear that's pretty typical of dog trainers though lol The poor things are bored and out of shape.
When are we going to finish the kid's playroom??? It's been forever and a good bit of it is already finished! Just need a couple of doors, windows, bit more drywall, putty and sand the seams, paint it, tile it, put in furniture and poof, done.
But we still need to retile the roof too! We got the insurance money to do that with ages ago but it's gone now. It worries me.
Not to mention that the truck needs transmission work and that's gonna eat us for lunch too! But since hubs hit that deer in my van it's out of commission till we can get it fixed so that truck is our only transportation so it's gotta come first.
We need to finish the horse's loafing shed really soon too before it gets too cold.
Heh and just when are we going to put in a round pen so I can actually train the horses so we can RIDE them finally?? Right now they're just big spoiled rotten pets that aren't allowed in the house. Dangit I wish I could use that ground auger by myself so I could just do it and be done.
You promised kiddo K you'd crochet a blanket for him like you did kiddo B too! I bought the yarn (a really silky soft dark green color) but I have to find the time. Basic crochet isn't hard to do but it can be pretty time consuming!
I'd like to sew up my dress already! Ugh I wish I knew if the sewing machine is just being a pain or if I'm not remembering how to work it right after all this time! Oh I know, look it up online!! Heh.
That dog yard is outta control too! You need to scoop it! Ugh bleh yuck! Why am I the one who gets stuck with all the POO in our lives???
Which reminds me the cat boxes need scooped too!
When am I going to get to try that apple pie recipe? It sounds like it's just to die for even without any chocolate in it!
You need to finish those wands at some point so you can sell em off. I wonder if it's even worth it? It's taken me most of a year to get around to doing just three of them (but when you think about it I don't have a lot of actual time invested in them right now either)! What am I going to get with the money from that??? A big tub of chocolate ice cream. So I've either got to get going to make a lot more of em faster or...what? I dunno. Make gifts or something out of em.
Are we going to try geocaching with the boys this weekend? It's kiddo M's 16th birthday so will he even want to go do that??? Hmm it involves effort so probably not. We'll have to have a cake of course...will I have to bake it or is hubs going to buy one? Gotta ask. And presents and find a good time to take him into town to spend his gift cert from the grandparents.
I really need to get out there, give turkey-boy a nice farewell snack then whack him for Thanksgiving dinner! Wow it just doesn't sound right no matter how you phrase it, does it? I'll have to blog about that one day. I love animals so much and I truly believe that raising/hunting/fishing it yourself, if done right, is so much more humane that I do it when I'm able.
Dogs all need baths again (and grooming, nail trims). Horses too before it gets too cool to do it!
All the bedding needs washed along with the regular stuff and last week's stuff that kiddos so...beepbeepitybleepinbeep...ahem, KINDLY hid until this week. I could just beat them for that! Normally I'd make THEM do laundry for that but it's kiddo M's birthday and I just can't make him spend it doing laundry! Whatta sucker.
What I really want to do today is just veg out in front of WoW. Anyone else here a World of Warcraft player? If you click that link I am NOT responsible for anything that may occur because of it! That is a very addictive, time intensive game so ya gotta be able to say no at least often enough to fulfill basic bodily necessities like sleep, food...you know! It's wicked fun to play when you have a minute to just mess around.

AAARRRGH!! Ok, ok, enough...too much!! I'm off to pick up poo I suppose. O h . . . j o y . . . (If you want to have animals then that's just someth... I know! I know! Shuddup already!)

I am my own guinea pig

2009-11-18T17:49:00.000-08:00

You're getting sleepy...sleeeeeepy... No? I'm still working on hypnotizing people online but one thing that some find interesting is I can hypnotize people in real life. WOW!! EXCITING!! Heh, not really when you know how it's done. Remember the last time you were just staring off into space not really thinking anything at all until you suddenly snapped out of it and realized that you had "zoned out?" You were in a hypnotic trance!

If we don't keep it occupied with something our conscious mind yammers at us constantly like a used car salesman on crack. It yaps on and on so much that half the time we don't even realize we're paying attention to it. In hypnosis we try to distract, bore, or otherwise get the conscious mind out of our way so that we can talk to the subconscious which is a much more reasonable creature! We can change many different things in a person faster and easier with hypnosis because we don't have to fight through doubts, cynicisms, and skewed beliefs of the conscious mind. The subconscious mind simply accepts and records.

Some people fear that they will be forced to do something against their nature or beliefs. Who could blame them? Putting your mind into someone else's hands is extending enormous trust and willingness to be vulnerable to them. But actually hypnotism can never make someone do something that they otherwise wouldn't be willing to do. No one has ever been trapped in a trance state. No one has ever been forced to give up valuable secrets under hypnosis. Hypnosis is safe and effective. I've even used it on one of my own children to help him past a problem sleeping at night. It can be used to help lose weight, stop smoking, control pain, increase motivation, ease anxiety and depression, even develop psychic awareness!

So why haven't I just done it to myself (and oh yes, that can easily be done with the help of a relatively inexpensive little taperecorder)?! I've been mulling that over for awhile now and have come to the conclusion that I'm scared it won't work. I'm so tired of pinning my hopes on something that turns out to be ineffective plus my mind keeps saying (you know, that good ole conscious mind) that I didn't use it to get the one year of wonderifical so why should I have to now? Conscious Mind can be such a jerk sometimes!

Me: Listen C.M., I just said that it's safe, effective, faster, and easier. Even you didn't object so it must be so. Plus it won't cost us a dime because we can do our own scripts and already have a very nice little recorder to use.

C.M.: Well yeah but you know that every time you get your hopes up and fall it hurts and you end up lower than when you started. Can you really afford that?

Me: But what if it works?

C.M.: What if it doesn't?!

Me: Grrr! Ok what if we simply try it as an sort of experiment? I don't believe it will work or that it will fail. I simply create then play the tape and objectively record the results. It's not my goal to predict the results either way.

C.M.: Wellllll...

Me: Hah! You can't think of a reason not to when it's put that way, can you?

C.M.: I wanna go play video games *pout*

It is a bit too late to tackle the rest of this project tonight. I'll have to figure out what to work on first, develop a script, and record it when I'm sure of no interruptions. I think I'll pick this back up tomorrow sometime. Wanna watch me play around in my own brain??? Keep reading! lol

Look at me, Mom!

2009-11-15T13:54:00.000-08:00

An award? Me? Wow, I'm really, truly at a loss for words right now! A few folks now have said in their comments that they like my writing and I'm touched, flattered really. My mom was an English teacher at a Catholic private school when she was young. She did her best to instill my siblings and I with a love for reading and how important it was to speak properly. The love for reading certainly took root in me! We've lived in our present home now over a year and I still have books boxed up (despite my husband putting floor to ceiling built in bookshelves on one entire wall of our hallway and six other stand alone bookshelves) because I haven't decided how to make room for them all yet! I have an incredibly hard time letting go of them and heaven help the one I catch abusing or endangering one of my books! In school English and Literature type classes came very easily to me and in my high school and college years I found that this gift for language extended to foreign tongues as well.

To tell the truth, though, I don't consider myself that great a writer. I tend to put writing into different categories in my own mind. Quick notes can just be little more than nonsense scribbles as long as whoever it's for understands it. A personal journal that's really written for my eyes alone is a step above a quick note meaning I pay a bit more attention to the quality of writing simply because I want to be able to really remember the experiences when I go back and read them even years from now. This blog I'd place a bit above the personal journal because my aim is not only to write for myself but to share these thoughts, feelings, and events with others. You have to be a little bit more clear and concise if that's your goal but I'm still not as careful to be as grammatically correct as I would be writing a college thesis, for example. This is my style and I'm happy to know that there are people here who enjoy it.

Apparently this award comes with rules and I don't know if I'll have time to complete them all today but fear not for I have a plan! For heaven 's sake stop all that silly rushing about diving for cover!!! You all have got to stop listening to my husband!! Ok settle down now... THE PLAN is I will give the list of rules below now then come back and edit them each to completion until all the rules have been adhere...until to the rules I've adherr...(see there's that grammar thing again)...until they're complete! Here we go!

Thank the person that gave you this award - That would be the lovely lady who writes her own wonderful blog, Dreamfarm Girl. From the very bottom of my heart, thank you! This really does mean a lot to me.

Copy the award - Uh oh. I'm only on number two and I'm already stumped! It's ok, breathe slowly, you've figured out tougher things than this...

Post it on your blog - ...don't freak out!! Yes, I KNOW if you're stuck on number two there's no WAY you can complete number three but running in circles screaming scaring the animals is NOT going to get it done!!!

Edited to add: I'm so sorry, dear ones, but so far I've failed to comprehend how on earth to get this award posted to my page properly *sob* and I'm running out of time before company arrives! Hopefully this will do until I catch on:

Tell your readers 7 things they don't know about you - Doesn't it count that I've been doing that all along??? No. Well ok...

I'm a scuba diver.

I'm a gamer geek.

Despite my love for animals I also love hunting, fishing, and raising my own animals for meat.

My totems are Black Jaguar and Horse.

I'm a complete chocoholic.

I'd love to show off my bellydancing skills to others but I'm just too darn shy and self conscious.

I can't smell.

Give the award to 7 bloggers - Ok! I'll get to that right after I finish this.

Edited to add: The seven fabulous blogs I've chosen to forward this award on to are:

Pagan Culture

I do things so you won't have to

From the Inside...Out.

Carnelian Chronicles

Breeze Daze

Carrotspeak

Excerpts from the Life and Mind of Kristin...

Some of these I'm already a follower of because I like what they have to say, I like the way they say it, and honestly I like what I know about them so far. Being so new to the blogworld left me a little short on who to give this award to so I shamelessly ransacked the lists of the other bloggers I already knew I liked. I looked at quite a few that were wonderful blogs that just didn't "turn ME on," if you know what I mean but I'm very pleased to have found a few real gems. So thanks for leading me to some great new blogs to read too!

Tell the bloggers on their blog - And this will naturally have to wait until I complete the last step.

I went, I saw, I duly notified all seven!

Keep being awesome - Who me? I feel a bit awkward about that since I don't know that I'm all that awesome but I can promise that I'm constantly reaching for better in everything I do!

I kinda think Mom would be proud right now.

Would You Like to Watch?

2009-11-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

Want to see one thing that I'm really passionate about? This lady is one of my all time favorites!

Find That Cache!

2009-11-14T09:33:00.000-08:00

Nothing deep, dark, twisted or grim today because today I'm spending all day just having fun with my sweetie! Real quick though I wanted to share a website with everyone. Feeling a little cabin feverish? Bored? Well go find that cache!

They're Coming to Take Me Away...

2009-11-13T12:02:00.000-08:00

...ha ha, they're coming to take me away, tee hee... Maybe it's time to talk about my insanity today!

I had the day all planned out. This weekend all four children will be at their other parent's homes so my sweetie and I have two whole days to spend together! So today was going to be my day to play computer games and do my laundry instead of doing them Saturday like I normally do. Then I got the call. One of the kiddos is sick. Poor guy has the barfy stomach bug that's been going around and on the way home I realized how differently we all handle the various feelings of pain and sickness.

One of my secrets I don't really mind sharing is I've got depression, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and social phobia. I only consider my illnesses secrets because it's not the kind of thing I advertise either. I work hard to appear normal but I suspect I'm only partially sucessful which is why people just don't usually like me. These can make life tougher sometimes but I accept them better because they are legitimate illnesses that I didn't ask for or want. If someone decides they have a problem with this aspect of me I can simply toss a number of doctor's diagnosis at them with a negligent shrug. It's real, it's not my fault, so oh well if someone doesn't like it.

From what I understand GAD and PD symptoms normally appear around adolescence. I clearly remember my first panic attack happening the very first day of Kindergarten. I was all freshly scrubbed up in my nice new dress, rather enjoying the bus ride, looking forward to the day. When the bus stopped I walked up the aisle, down the steps, and froze on the last step staring at this huge, unfamiliar building I was expected to enter. I was so scared my stomach clenched, I started sweating and shaking, and all I could say was "This isn't the right place!" The kids behind me and the bus driver were all getting impatient which only raised my anxiety levels to near hysteria. After that I must've reached a level of such overwhelming fear my memory just checked out to lunch because I don't remember anything after that.

That was only the first of many, many panic attacks. They only increased in frequency and severity over the years until I developed a reputation for being a hypochrondriac or maybe even a slacker faking illness to avoid things I didn't want. I've often tried to explain just how it feels in an effort to get others to understand. Each time I just ignored them, pretended not to notice the looks or whispers, but it broke my heart every time. I wanted to cry and scream at them in rage that I didn't WANT to feel this way! It's NOT my fault!

Picture yourself the last time you just barely missed some kind of car accident. Remember how that adrenaline burst felt? Your stomach clenched filling with a fluttery feeling, your breathing came faster, your heart pounded. At that moment you have a deep rooted terror of something indescribably horrible, DOOM, even if it doesn't express itself consciously. It's an unpleasant, uncomfortable feeling but you quickly realize that everything is ok and these feelings fade away. For me that's only the beginning and it can start at any time for no apparent reason at all.

Instead of a quick burst of adrenaline it feels more like someone turned the faucet on full and left it on! Usually it starts with a fluttery feeling in my stomach which jerks my mind away from anything else. I become hyper aware of every little sensation in my body analyzing if this was just a simple case of butterflies or the start of an attack but it's that suddenly diving into myself, withdrawing completely from any outside stimulus, repeatedly checking myself in fear that keeps the attack rolling. Next my stomach clenches harder, painfully, as I get a strange rushing feeling over the back of my shoulders and up the back of my neck. It feels like thousands of tiny bugs swarming over, their bites a sickening mixture of sting and ice. My heartbeat and breathing speed up and I shake. All of these feelings get more and more intense until I'm vomiting and lose control of my bowels. It does not stop until I use one of the tricks I've developed to fall asleep. When I wake up I'm a bit worn out feeling but otherwise just fine.

In hindsight I can see that as the illnesses progressed I slowly drifted further and further away from the world and others. I can't say for sure if the attacks caused the depression and social phobia or if the depression and social phobia are the cause of the panic attacks. It could be either. Finally, one day in my 20s, I mentioned these things to a doctor who was able to give me names to put to these problems. With a diagnosis came the long fight to recovery.

Finding out that there really is no cure for these problems and losing faith in doctors as medications, chats with psychologists, even self help books failed to make a difference I threw in the towel several times. "Woe oh woe, why me? What awful thing have I done to deserve this?" But somewhere along the way I had an amazing paradigm shift. I don't remember how or why but I came to realize some things.

1. Why NOT me? Am I more special than anyone else in this world that my life should be perfect, without struggle? Everyone has things they have to learn to deal with. These are mine.

2. I'm fascinated by people. Why do they do the things they do? Why do they think the way they do? What makes them tick? Who could understand better, get into people's heads, and maybe even care enough to help along the way than someone who's been through the hard times, pain, hoplessness, and suffering?

3. True, there's no cure for my illnesses but that doesn't mean that I can't learn how to control them, live with them, minimize the symptoms as much as possible to try to lead a normal life.

Those realizations really changed my life. I wasn't instantly all better, it still took quite a few years of work, but there was one wonderful year when I could look at myself and say "Wow I've come such a long way from where I was! I'm doing better now than I ever have been in my whole life!" I was proud, hopeful, and happy. This was when I met the man I later married. I was on my way to everything I'd ever wanted in life and it felt so great!

I almost wish my story ended there, on an "up note." Unfortunately that year of wonderful was followed right up with a year of hell so bad it made my toughest days look like a walk in the park. But I am happy to say that the panic attacks have at least remained under control! Even going through hell has got to be at least the tiniest bit better without the panic attacks than with them, right?

Bloggin Blahs

2009-11-11T19:46:00.000-08:00

Isn't it too early in my blog to have the blahs already? I just wasn't moved to write anything yesterday but that's ok, a day off, cool. But this morning I got on here and had the same reaction, "blah." I can afford one day off, even two or three if I'm missing blogging for something good like spending time with the kids, but two days off for the blahs slides too easily into three, four...before you know it you just can't bring yourself to face it. I even visited the handful of blogs I'm following to see if that would spark some interest in commenting on their posts to get myself started. Blah. Not that they weren't good posts! There were some great, thought provoking, emotion stirring, touching, sometimes funny posts and a few sparks sputtered in my head but I just wasn't motivated to pull them together and put them in the comments. So I figured maybe it was just too early and my brain wasn't fully awake yet and if I tried later the words would just flow from my head straight out my fingers. Nope. Blah. I'm forcing the words out onto my screen and into being. Am I all out of stories already? Sheee-yeah right!! That's so not the case! I've got loads of stories just from the animal rescue alone, experiences, not to mention I haven't told all my secrets yet like I promised. Oh yeah, being Pagan is the very the least of my deep, dark secrets! Hmm... What do you do when you run into this problem?

Getting to the BOTTOM of the Lil Black Dress

2009-11-09T14:08:00.000-08:00

Is that title CHEEKY enough for you, Magaly? ;)

My mom and sister had closets full of fine fashion, spent hours laying outside to achieve that perfect tan, and heaven forbid that anyone should see them without their hair and makeup done! Mom took after her mom, my Maw Maw, and my sister naturally took after Mom. I much preferred my jeans, t-shirt, and comfy sneakers. My skin was a rich, golden tone because I spent my days in trees, riding bikes, walking my dog, or exploring the drainage ditches. Doing my hair consisted of washing and running a hasty brush through it. And me putting on makeup? Hah! Why? To sweat it off, have a dog lick it off, or cover it up with dirt?

When I got the word that my Maw Maw had passed away I was in my 20s and hugely pregnant with my first child. When we all came together to gather ourselves to make the trip to the funeral I tearfully had to admit to my mother that I didn't even own a dress appropriate for a funeral. My mom and sister shared a quick look that said "we should've anticipated this" and we all burst out laughing. It's amazing to me that in the midst of even crushing grief people can often find moments of genuine humor.

As I never had before I allowed these two to lead me from store to store, obediently trying on whatever they passed me, and found that I actually felt a small pang of regret that I hadn't participated in their shopping sprees before. I finally realized that even if I was completely uninterested in the clothes I had missed a lot of fun times I could've spent with Mom and my sis. Sure there were quite a few moments where we'd tear up, pause to support each other as a wave of sorrow passed over us, but there were also many times that we'd share a fond memory of Maw Maw, smile, remember good times. And what probably touched me the most is while I was ready to wear whatever complicated, frilly, where-the-heck-does-THIS-part-go thing they decided on they took who I was into account. Without me saying a thing they settled on a black, cotton dress with no decorations or frills, it just slipped on over my head and settled into place. A perfect dress for me.

For almost 15 years I kept right on wearing that dress until it just wore out so bad I had to reluctantly admit that it was time to let it go. You might wonder why I'd want to keep on wearing it considering that it was bought under such sad circumstances but honestly I didn't associate it with the loss of my Maw Maw. Whenever I took it out to wear it brought a small, fond smile to my lips as I remember the special opportunity it gave me to bond a little more with my mom and sister. I consider it a last lesson and gift from the kindest, most gracious, generous lady I ever knew.

I miss you Maw Maw.

The Hamster from Hell

2009-11-08T10:16:00.000-08:00

This one's for you, Kathryn!!

All my life I've been mad for animals of all sorts so when I was young I thought there could be no better job for me than to work in a pet shop.* One day I walked into the employee's area to find a shoe box on the counter with the words "Hamster from Hell" written on the side. I started laying into the other employees left and right!

"Oh you WEENIES!!! Holy smokes it's just a HAMSTER!! How bad could a cute lil HAMSTER possibly be?? Y'all should be ashamed of yourselves being scared of a wee lil hamster!! The poor thing has probably been traumatized half to death by some child then was shoved in a dark box and jostled around with weird sounds and smells to get back here. Who WOULDN'T bite after something like that! Jeez you SISSIES!!"

Completely confident I stepped up to the box and lifted the lid a bit. Sure enough there was the adorable lil guy standing up on his back feet. He was paused in the act of doing that unbearably sweet face washing thing they do twitching his whiskers as he sniffed the air peering in my direction. AWWWW!!! After all that he'd been through I didn't want to startle the lil guy so I carefully lowered just my index finger into the box on the far end from where he was to let him approach me and sniff if he felt calm enough instead of the other way around. I made tiny little "come 'ere lil fella" motions talking softly and soothingly to him.

This hamster did not approach tentatively. He did not walk over. He didn't even RUN over! This hamster performed a supernatural leap from his end of the box all the way over to where my finger was on the other end and sank his incisors all the way through the tip of my finger! Of course I began screaming, startled and in pain, dancing madly around the room, waving my hand around in the air frantically while this hamster hung on for all he was worth. He was like a tiny little banner sailing proud and fierce through the air declaring for hamsters everywhere "We are sick and tired of this and we just won't take it anymore!"

With difficulty I finally managed to fling the demon possessed little darling off. Another employee quickly popped the box over him and scooped him back up with a decidedly smug smirk on her face. I stood there, panting, wild eyed, dripping blood steadily onto the floor staring at the box in shock while others gathered around to ooh and aah over my horribly wounded finger discussing whether I shouldn't pop over to the hospital for a stitch or not.

Being the store manager after I staunched the bleeding and doctored my finger I had a call to make to the vet.

"Dr. XXXX? Do you perform exorcisms?"

*I always feel obligated to admit my ignorance at the time and so hopefully educate others that any pet shop that sells puppies and/or kittens (or any live animal actually) perpetuate the cruelty of mills and horrible breeding. I have since researched and seen first hand that these places make a profit at the expense of hundreds of innocent, hurting animals. If you really do love animals never make a purchase from any shop that sells puppies/kittens.

Tragedy at Fort Hood

2009-11-05T15:56:00.000-08:00

I'm guessing that most people have heard about the shooting at Ft Hood by now and if you don't you'll be able to find out easily as it's in the news. I have friends and loved ones there. Some of the people there have hurt me horribly. Heck my children are there sometimes! We've gotten ahold of a few friends there who, thank the gods, are ok. Others, including my children we don't know yet.

None of it matters right now though. Whoever has been injured or killed had at least someone out there who cares about them so there's a whole ton of emotion in the air tonight, grief, pain, anger, and more. For those people all I can do is say I wish I could make it all better somehow. I'm so sorry for what you're going through.

I keep telling myself that there's absolutely NO reason at all that the children should've been there today so I'm being perfectly silly to even worry but I won't feel right until I can talk to them. Please pray/send positive energies/spare a kind thought for the people that are hurting so badly tonight and for all those who are still waiting to find out.

Blog Progress!

2009-11-04T12:21:00.000-08:00

Yay! I've learned how to add some gadgets to my blog! I think that does make it a bit more interesting and visually appealing. There's still quite a few things I want to do but I'll have to figure out how along the way. Stay tuned!

Things That Go Bump in the Night

2009-11-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

All my life I've been searching for a movie (or even a book I guess) that really scares me so far with no luck. Whenever I say this I get "have you seen...you should watch...what about..." and each time I tell them "no, that one didn't scare me at all" or go buy the suggested title, watch it, and then tell them it didn't work. I've seen some great sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat movies (the more twisted and suspenseful the better!), plenty of slasher types (you know, the ones where something or someone is just killing everyone off left and right), gore fests (buckets and buckets of blood just don't cut it as my kids can top any stain a movie can come up with), creepy effects (think The Ring or The Grudge), startle-a-thons (the ones where something suddenly jumps out making you give a little involuntary start) but not one actually scares me!

The only one that's come anywhere close is When a Stranger Calls. This is a movie based on the old, well known scary story in which a babysitter receives a number of disturbing phone calls while on a babysitting job. A creepy voice keeps asking her if she's checked on the children who are supposed to be sleeping upstairs. She eventually calls the police who agree to track the next call to find the guy calling her so they can go pick him up. The police trace the next scary call then call the babysitter frantically telling her to get out of the house, RUN because the calls are coming from somewhere in the house she's in! The finale of the story is that a killer had gotten into the house somehow and already murdered the children in some gruesome fashion. He was hiding upstairs calling her to get her to go upstairs to check on the children so he could pop out and chop her up too. That one does give me the creeps a bit but only because it involves the children and I can't stand for things like that to happen to kids!

I've often tried to figure out just what is the ultimate in scary. I should find it and put it in a book or make a film or something! Wouldn't that just be too cool??? Unfortunately it's going to have to be about what scares others because the only things I can come up with that really, truly scare me in a hide-under-the-covers-and-try-not-to-pee-myself-I'll-never-sleep-again way are people (not even the murderous, zombie, brain eating types, just regular ole everyday people) and the thought of losing someone I really love. I can (and my all too active imagination often does much to my dismay) use those to come up with all kinds of horror that will frighten the beejezzus out of ME but I doubt others would find it nearly as horrifying.

I'm not acting brave or macho in some way it's just the simple truth.

snakes and spiders - I readily pick up reptiles and arachnids! I've cuddled a carnivorous lizard as long as I am tall under my shirt to keep him warm, I own a boa, and picked up countless scorpions, spiders, and big, hairy tarantulas to save them from being squashed by others less friendly to the "creepy-crawly" set.
ghosts - Many times I've actively tried and am now considering hypnosis to train myself to see spirits. I went to the home of a very well known spirit sensitive who assured me his home was haunted. My husband, also able to see spirits, backed him up saying he definitely saw the same spirits. There was even a ghost there that the home owner swore could be and had many times been seen by people who insisted that they couldn't see ghosts, never had and never would. I really tried! I even sat there making sure to hold myself in an open, welcoming frame of mind rather than risk being offensive with a demanding or challenging kind of attitude. Nada.
animal attack - Animals are probably the least scary thing in the world to me! I understand animals! I really get what makes them tick! I've worked with, communicated with, trained, and helped more types of animals than I'll bother to count right now. See the thing is that animals don't have a malicious bone in their body. They don't set out to harm anything or anyone to get some sort of nasty chuckle. If an animal attacks there is a reason for it even if the humans witnessing the attack don't know or understand that reason. I once got a call to come see if I could remove an aggressive Rottweiler from a neighborhood. I went to the location, my standard pocketful of lunchmeat, cheese, and hotdogs on board, and approached until this huge dog came charging out at me barking and snarling visciously. I simply stopped, stood with a neutral kind of air about me, and kept track of him with my peripheral vision never looking straight at him. He tried for 20 minutes to scare me out of that pose! He lunged so close snapping and frothing at the mouth that his nose brushed my pants but I never moved. He was just starting to calm down a tiny bit and stay close to me longer to sniff at my pants just a little when an Animal Control truck came roaring up disgorging a yelling, pole brandishing officer. The dog ran and we couldn't get close to him again. I really hope everything turned out ok for him.

What else is there? Demons? Possessions? Mutants? Headless Horsemen? Zombies? Nope, not scary. So give a girl a hand here? What makes you hide under the covers, fear putting your feet down on the floor, and wish you still had a nightlight?

Strip Tease

2009-11-03T14:00:00.001-08:00

That's what I consider this whole mad venture of mine to be, a strip tease, with an odd twist. Instead of a rowdy crowd waiting impatiently for the next piece of clothing to drop revealing the secret tidbit of delectable skin beneath I envision a very normal woman up on that stage. She could fit in anywhere, she appears to be your stereotypical soccer mom, and looks like she's got it all under control. She's apple pie, baseball, and red, white and blue all wrapped up in a sweet, comforting mom shaped package! Then she starts shedding bits of clothing that have been covering up the truth beneath...

Why she's not a typical soccer mom at all! She's the cancer hiding inside our society! She's the whole reason our nation is going down the toilet! Monster! Whore! Devil worshipper! And somehow the fact that she had the crowd fooled at first makes it so much worse than if she'd just come out on stage looking like the monster she really is. It makes them even angrier. Maybe they feel cheated out of what they expected to get? Maybe but that's not all of it. No, the bulk of their hatred comes from their fear. If she could look like one of them, if she managed to fool them into thinking for even an instant that she was normal, then deep down they fear that there might be far more of her monstrous kind out there successfully hiding! Why these monsters could be hiding in our government, churches, schools...they could be anyone!

Well I guess I've pussyfooted around it long enough and it's time to give my readers their first, solid peek at what's hiding beneath a bit of the clothes. I'm Pagan.

It happened in my late teens. I couldn't buy enough books to keep up with my voracious appetite for them! Then one day, quite by chance since I was looking in a different section completely, I found a book on Wicca. I sat in that bookstore for almost a half hour, tears pouring down my face, as I quickly scanned through the book to absorb the overall topic and feel. I felt just like that starving, shivering little child standing in the snow staring in the window at a family in a loving, warm home piling the table high with mouth watering delights but some kind soul had opened up the door and said, "Come in, sweetheart. There's plenty for all and we've saved a place just for you."

I studied and meditated, questioned and learned. I branched out to learn all I could about as much as I could in a quest for pure understanding. I learned at least some about Shamanic, Druidic, Buddhism, and more. I remember such good times in those innocent years. I even attended a protest in which people of a different religion came and shouted hateful, hurtful things at us while we sang songs about love and building bridges of understanding between us. The one thing I remember best from that day was seeing their little ones dressed in their (HOT!) Sunday best looking miserable and wilted in the heat. Worried for them I asked one of our leaders if we couldn't at least offer their children a bit of water? She put a hand on my shoulder and sadly said, "We can't. If one of those children got so much as a sniffle afterwards they'd say we put something in the water to harm them." I should've realized then. I should've run my butt into the nearest closet to hide my religion from the world but I was young and naieve. I was made brave on the notion that Wicca is a recognized, legal religion in a land that believes in religious freedom and protected by the Constitution. What a fool.

When I finally divorced my abusive spouse of more than 10 years I knew he'd play dirty because he knew exactly how to keep me under control married or not, through my children. I desperately wanted to snatch that control away from him and protect my babies. I was so idealistic! I really believed that if I marched into court and told the truth that was exactly what I'd get. I'll never forget the pure malice in his lawyer's voice when she sneeringly asked me my religion. I held my head up high as my lawyer objected on the grounds of my Constitutional rights. But it felt like everything inside of me just dropped through the floor leaving me an empty, shocked husk when the judge ordered me to answer the question.

People say that time heals all wounds. I say those that truly think so have never been wounded bad enough. Oh I share custody with my husband and have even managed to mostly fight my way free of him controlling me through the children after a few years! But nothing can ever replace the precious time I've lost with them. It's one wound that will never heal in me. You only get so many years, a limited number of hours to spend with your children and every minute is so precious! Every bit of time that slips away is time that can never be replaced! How do you cope when approximately half of even that limited amount of time has been torn away from you? Nothing can ever fix that!

The other is the wound they gave me when I stood up proud and true, innocent of any wrongdoing, but still they spat on me, ripped away my rights, shredded my confidence in people, my feelings of security in doing what's right. And one of the scariest things to me is they did it so easily! There were no courtroom dramatics, no great fuss, just a few words spoken and it was over. I sat there in front of all of them bleeding inside in shock, not understanding how it all happened.

So there's one of my secrets for you, as promised, but there's plenty more of them to come! Even more, there's worse to come still so keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, please secure any loose items, and hold each other tight!

Making a Difference Monday

2009-11-02T10:18:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's Making a Difference Monday!! Every Monday my entry will be about acts of kindness. This brilliant idea came from Carrie over at Carrot Speak. The whole idea is "to try and change the world one kind deed at a time." I really love it because we all know that sometimes this world can be pretty cruel! It's far too much for any one person to tackle on their own but Making a Difference Monday is about recognizing the smaller acts of kindness that any one person can easily do. It's our hope that one act of kindness will inspire another and another and another and so on making the world a better place. If we each do a little no one has to do a lot! I hope you decide to participate! If you do simply:

1.) Make your own Making a Difference Monday post, explaining to your readers these rules, and sharing the story of some small act of kindness you've performed in the past week. It could be anything...holding a door, helping a little old lady cross the street, or even just stopping at a red light when there's no one around to know the difference.
2.) Enter a link to your post in the Mcklinky box over at Carrot Speak: Making a Difference Monday.
3.) Link back to Carrie's post in yours so that your readers can find the full list of participants.

And what good things have I done this past week?

took some of my time off to counsel someone who needed someone to talk to
at our neighborhood Halloween b-b-q I played with an adorable little toddler so that his grandpa could finish his dinner in peace
the other day was a wee bit chilly in the house so I put our softest blanket in the dryer then wrapped it all around the children as they watched one of their shows (they just melted into it with little "oh that feels so good" sounds that just make you smile)

Ah it does feel pretty good remembering those!! So c'mon and join us and make sure you give yourself a big blankie-fresh-out-of-the-dryer hug for the good things you do everyday!

Happy Halloween

2009-10-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

Halloween is one of my two all time favorite holidays of the year. I don't have any particular fond memories of Halloween's past but I don't have any specific bad memories either. No, one reason I love Halloween so much is I'm able to act a bit more like a child with some of my favorite people in the world, my children. When I was young I did miss out on a lot of being a child being the oldest with two alcoholic parents. I've really worked out that issue from my past more or less but it is a marvelous treat for me when I can retrieve a bit of that lost childhood.

Our neighborhood does an extra special Halloween too! We live out in the country in a kind of big circle. The day before Halloween we all get together at one house to socialize and eat pot luck dinner then we all load up in little flatboard trailers for a hay ride around the circle. Since most of our driveways are so long everyone who wants to participate puts a little table out by the road with a big bowl full of goodies. We slowly go from one table to the next laughing as the stampede of children leap from the hay and their excited crows of delight as they discover what's in each bowl. They get plenty of candy but then they still have the option of going elsewhere on Halloween proper to trick or treat if they wish.

On the one hand I truly love our neighborhood but I also dread the pot luck part of the evening. I don't really know anyone there, though I've met a few of them two or three times briefly now, and feel horribly shy, scared, and awkward. But the hayride part of the evening and seeing the children's bright eyes and huge grins make it all worth any discomfort. I really work at these special times of year to make sure that my children will have fond holiday memories to look back on. Hmm, not that I don't work to make every day special but...you know what I mean!

Another reason this holiday is so special to me is because it's the day we call Samhain. For us this is a day when the division that normally seperates the dead from the living is at it's thinnest so that there's a greater chance of contact between us. It's a day for remembering and honoring those that have passed on like my brother and child (RIP my dear ones). Likewise it is a time to remember that the wheel of life is always turning and so to are the seasons as Winter comes like death to the world. This is the time when the Crone rules all. Her ways seem unbearably cruel sometimes, she's responsible for culling the weak and old, but she also teaches us that the old must make way for the new. She is the end all, be all of true tough love! Samhain is also the very best time of year to "kill" our vices, bad habits, negative feelings, and all within us that is not based and motivated by love.

This is why this is a truly blessed, magickal holiday and very dear to me. Happy Halloween and a blessed Samhain to you all!

Of Mountains and Molehills

2009-10-30T00:37:00.000-07:00

Today I counselled a young man who was very agitated about the state of his relationship with a young lady.

"I like her but I can't really like her because I have a really busy life and I've never been in a real relationship before and don't you have to give more time than I have to have a real girlfriend and I don't know if I'm ready to be in a relationship because I think it's all just moving way too fast but I do like her but I don't know what to do and I don't want to just sleep with her and dump her but..."

*shake my head in wonderment* Why do you youngins make it all so complicated? Listen, relationships can be easy as pie! You've been having them all your life! You have a relationship with your parents, siblings, neighbors, pets, teachers, friends, co-workers, and everyone else with whom you interact!

I hear you yelling already... "But a girlfriend/boyfriend relationship is different!"

Of course it's different but they're ALL different! You love your parents different than you love your friends which is different from the way you love a pet...are you starting to see? Why do you think they call it "FALLING in love?" Because it can be as easy as falling off a log! And there's a very good reason we use the terms we do for it, girlfriend/boyfriend...because that's exactly how it should be. Your significant other should first and foremost be the best friend you ever will have.

So please, take a deep breath and do try to let go of all this fluttering about! You just meet up with someone you like who shares some of the same interests as you. Become friends! Go have fun together! If things deepen into something more then let it happen easily and naturally. There's no rush so enjoy the ride.

Hello there!

2009-10-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to give a special hello to Kathryn for being my first follower! I can't promise it'll be pretty, I'm plum out of rainbows and puppies, but I can guarantee that it'll be REAL! lol Thanks so much!

Making a Difference Monday?

2009-10-28T17:50:00.000-07:00

As I was wandering through Blogs of Note for interesting reading I came across Carrie's blog,Carrot Speak, and one of her posts in particular caught my attention, Making a Difference Monday. In Carrie's own words:

I started Making a Difference Mondays as a way for me to use my once miniscule blogging voice to try and change the world one kind deed at a time. Each Monday, I'll post about something I've done to make someone's day a little bit better, and I invite you all to play along by doing the following:
1.) Make your own Making a Difference Monday post, explaining to your readers these rules, and sharing the story of some small act of kindness you've performed in the past week. It could be anything...holding a door, helping a little old lady cross the street, or even just stopping at a red light when there's no one around to know the difference.2.) Enter a link to your post in the Mcklinky box below.3.) Link back to my post in yours so that your readers can find the full list of participants.
It is with one person and one action at a time that we change to world. Why not try to change it for the better?

It touched me in many ways. This sounded just like the sort of thing I used to believe. I wanted to help the world be a better place in any small way because I had been in it. I bravely threw all my young, fragile hopes and dreams out there hoping to find others that resonnated with the same sentiments so we could become stronger together. I imagined we'd find still others out there along the way who hoped to make the world better, that with each good, kind soul we gathered in we'd become a stronger and stronger presence of goodness until we became a true unstoppable force spreading nothing but love to everyone we touched!

Now I compare that brave little soul to what I've become and it brings tears to my eyes. What a naieve pipe dream! The voices of fear and doubt creep into my ears saying it's better to not get involved, putting your heart out there like that only leads to disappointment and pain. But another voice that they can't quite drown out completely yet whispers that maybe when I first reached out if I'd found even one other brave little pioneer that would stand with me, maybe we could've made it come true. Besides, what do I really have left to lose?

So yes, tattered and torn as it is I've decided to throw my heart out there with hers, to try once again! Starting this next Monday I'll share those things with you. I hope you enjoy the journey and that something here may touch something within you too.

For more information please visit:Making a Difference Monday #10 at Carrot Speak

I'm Following Now!

2009-10-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

What can I say? I was drawn in by "Owner's Manual for Human Beings" hoping that I could figure out how to be one or at least understand them!! Go check her out!

Leap of Faith

2009-10-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

That's what this blog really is, a big leap of faith. Will they love me, hate me, or not notice me and which do I want? That's always the question with me. Love is too much to hope for, hoping for love and acceptance has brought me to the state in which I find myself. It seems like hate is the norm in the world these days and wouldn't it be nice to at least pretend to something a tiny bit less bleak? So I guess I'll settle for drifting through this world quietly dying inside as unknown as possible.

I know that no one must know the real me, the things I hide inside. If they knew they wouldn't continue to let me exist. Instead of leaving me huddled all alone inside my closet they would drag me out into the light of day, publically string me up for all to see and revile. It's happened before and has left me terrified of being discovered again. But it hurts so much to feel myself withering away in the dark like this. I yearn to feel the warmth of the light with aching desperation while just as desperately hiding from it.

So in this blog I'll strip myself naked for all to see while never coming out where you could hurt me again! Maybe this will let some small feeble ray of light to shine in on me inside the closet.