Strange Days have found me

Howdy Ya'll,

So, this has been a rather bizarrely typical day. It seems the older I get, the more surreal life gets. Even something as benign as Googling "strange photos" to see if I could find pictures I'd like to accompany this post. The first and only picture I was drawn to is the one you see up top. Turns out it is the cover of the Strange Days album by the Doors. I'm a huge fan and was actually trying to think of the words to that song, just before I settled in to write this... That may not be the strangest thing in the world, but if you were in my head when it happened, you would think so. Like some invisible cosmic string attached to my brain, making manifest the exact thing I'm thinking about without too much effort. It just happened. Wish I could do that with money! Ha! Now THAT would be a trick!

Back to strangeness. First off, my mom is in the hospital. Which in and of itself, is not very strange. She is 86 and in poor health. She is in and out of the hospital a lot it seems. Just when we think she is leveling off, something else crashes. So I have to be ready to fly up north at a moment's notice. We are scheduled for a visit mid June, but we may need to go earlier if mom takes another bad turn. And with my mom's health, nothing is easy, rational or predictable. Even her doctors claim that she is a medical enigma! So there you go. This always puts my mind in the jiggly space. The space where nothing is defined really and everything is hanging.

Today was especially just slightly off and normally I get frustrated by such things when they add up, but today.... I wasn't. For some odd, out of character reason, for which I am unaware, I found it all slightly entertaining and humorous.

After what seems like months of misbehaving and becoming aggressive to his mommy, my son was a perfect angel from the moment his eyes opened. (Just last night the hub and I were having the serious "What are we going to do about THIS" talk) I was literally in tears over it, so I wasn't going to look this gift horse in the mouth! Alright then, off we go into our day. After eating ALL of his breakfast, incident free, I set Harley up with a video so that I can do my morning rituals and chores in peace. (Yea, I know, but at least they are cartoon characters who are well behaved and have a decent vocabulary...) Ok, so I find out that one of my good friends has just had a "procedure". This is always odd to me, because they used to be called surgery or operations... anyway, choose your word, she had one. Just a minor one, but still. So we decide to draw her a picture and make fun snacks and a yummy protein smoothie to take over. But after we do our "together chores", which include the post office and feeding the buns.

Before leaving for the post office/bun expedition, I look for the phone number of the post office to see how our post mistress takes her coffee. I thought I'd bring her a cup. She's a good friend and a great post mistress who was in need of a treat this week. I keep the number on a post it above my computer... It was gone. Mysteriously. This is very strange because I've kept it in the same spot forever, but ok. It's not far, we'll go get the mail, find out what she wants and come back. No biggie, just strange that the number wasn't there. To answer your question, the reason I didn't look it up is because our phone books are a million years old, and frankly, I don't see very well anymore. So we get to the post office and get the low down on the coffee and tell our friend that Harley has made some Applesauce cake and we will bring that to go with the coffee. When we get home, we find that daddy has eaten all the applesauce cake and neglected to mention it to the rest of us. Not to worry, we had some fine Ginger cookies to make up for it. So, off we go again to the post office. It was fun to bring treats to our friend. It felt really good, although, having to make the trip twice gave me a slightly instinctive feeling that the rest of the day was going to follow suit. Boy howdy.

So, flash forward to loading up the car with our home made drawings and snacks to take to our friend in town. We live a ways from town, so I give Harley a cereal bar for the ride over. . (btw, he's had a slight allergy cough the last few days, but nothing too bad). Harley is happily scarfing down his cereal bar in the back as we pull on to I 10. Suddenly, he begins coughing and then I hear nothing. I look in the mirror and his mouth is opened, but nothing is coming out... then after what seemed like forever, he begins to cough again. whew. I hand him some of my lemonade to clear his throat. That seemed to work, except that he wasted no time shoving half the bar into his mouth again triggering his ultra sensitive gag reflex. So now he is coughing and I can tell by the open mouth, nothing coming out, watery eyes thing that puke is definitely in our future. And honestly, that's all fine, except the thought of taking the damn car seat apart, washing it and putting it back together, not to mention riding around with the smell of vomit in my car was just not on the agenda for today. (Now normally, I don't leave the house without several things... most of which live in my car, but for some reason today I had none of those things! Those things being: A snack bag, butt wipes, a towel, a roll of paper towels and a change of clothes for Harley. It was only a quick trip today, so I did not bring the snack bag containing most of the other stuff, and the hub took the towel out when he borrowed the car and well, I ran out of paper towels at some point. ) Anyway, there I am going about 75 down the highway and groping for any kind of receptacle or paper product or just SOMETHING to catch the puke. Proceeding to rifle through my console, all I came up with was one lonely napkin. I then hold it under my son's mouth as we are whizzing down the highway. And I was thinking in that moment, how strange and absurd this was, but I was still doing it! Trucks zooming by, me driving and stretching my arm to the back seat with one stinking napkin. As IF! I just started cracking up and pulled over.

Luckily, Harley's school bag was still in the car from Monday... (I know, Monday was Veterans Day, but that's another post) Anyway, his bag was still in the back and had a change of clothes! So I ended up taking his clothes off and wiping the puke up with them. Put on with the new clothes, a blanket on the car seat, a few more sips of lemonade, and we're off again!

"I puked Mommy!"
"Yes, I know. It's ok"
"Why did I puke mommy?"
"Because you were eating and coughing at the same time"
"But why?"
"I don't know, maybe you can ask the Great Spirit"
"ok"

We finally get to my friend's house with no further incident. Harley is all excited because he gets to play with his favorite cousin! Only nobody appears to be home. Not even the dogs... This is TOTALLY strange. I figured she must have passed out, and must need the rest. (Not strange) A house with 3 dogs who usually begin barking before you've gotten as far as the porch... not barking today. (Very strange). So we leave all the goodies ,save the smoothie, which seemed like a bad item to leave on a porch in summer. Then we turned around to come home.

I almost forgot to pick up my prescription yet again, but miraculously remembered before we past the Publix. There continued to be many more games of phone tag and poor timing all day, but I think I've gone on long enough.

Happy strange everyone.

Oh.. The Gods are Definitely CRAZY!

Howdy,

I'm not sure if you've seen this movie, but it IS a must see. One of the best movies ever, and I'm pretty sure, the only one of its kind. It approaches the heart of humanity and our struggles in such a profound and hilarious manner, delivering the most important of messages without being preachy. Brilliant! As usual though, it's likely that only "choir members" will be viewing...

I think a lot about how most of us live in the world today (me included). Not to be a bummer, but it really frightens me. For instance, I had a thought the other day about the earth. I was looking at all the concrete around me. Not only the road ways, but the buildings and etc... What I was thinking about in a very very new way is that these particular locations covered in cement, will likely stay that way for a long time to come. What about the earth underneath? If we are too believe (and I for one, do) that the earth's surface to her, is much like our skin is to us, what are we doing to her? What if we walked around with dried up cement on our skin? What would that do to our bodies? Not being able to expel toxins properly would most definitely cause health problems to our skin, and it would also adversely affect the functioning and health of every other part of our bodies as well, and likely kill us. (makes me think of tar and feathering...) Not to mention the heat. All that unreleased heat building and building. I never thought about it like that before. Then I thought of all the pavement everywhere, and I swear I could feel the earth crying. I cried too.

I wish that we could all go back to tribal life sometimes. Or at least slow down progress till we can understand how to live respectfully within our environment instead of despite it.

Paying Homage to the Abundance Gods

I had a mightily abundant week recently. I hope I can remember enough about it to really do it justice. See, I was going to write about it at the end of THAT very week, but somehow life got in the way... or I did. At the risk of sounding like one of those New Age flaky gurus of late, I am trying to change my relationship with money. It was a concept that made a lot of sense to me, and I'm going with it. I mean, when times are tough, I have no problem whining about money and how much I hate it's invisible power of all of us... so at the very least I think it should get equal billing when times are good. It's a start, right?

Too much time has passed for me to be able to catch the essence of how that week felt and went down, but this is how I remember it. Like many of us, I've been in contact with the Great Spirit about what I can do to create more abundance in my life. I mean, we are getting by, but lets face it, we all want to have enough to not live month to month... that is the kind of abundance I'm referring to. I had begun the practice of changing my relationship with money and how I think and feel about it, treat it, and etc... about 6 months or so ago. (Well, that's not entirely true. The seeds were planted in my brain about a year and a half ago) In any case, if any of this is actually working and I think it is, because well, everything begins in our heads first, and that's no lie. Perception may not be 100 percent of reality, but it's damn sure close. Anyway, I've been working on all of those things and doing my mantras, accepting where I am/we are (I"m married with a child), being grateful for all the wonderful resources and blessings we enjoy now, being as generous as I can with others, etc etc etc.... Ok, so I am doing my part spiritually and otherwise so that the forces that rule the universe will become activated and begin the financial prosperity ball rolling in our direction. I kept up these disciplines and eventually, the expectation of any return sort of faded away... I am now in the habit of being grateful and doing my mantras and etc regardless though. Can't hurt, might help.

Well, we got little trickles here and there. An unexpected gift from my mom here. A refund check there. Nothing really big or really consistent. Over time, I noticed that although we were still struggling... we weren't broke yet. Nobody came to kick us out of our house and my hub kept getting enough work for us to squeak by for another month. This was not the plan, but we were being sustained and it was ok. I was, and still am, grateful for that. For the last 3 years we have not been sure what, if any work we will have from month to month, sometimes week to week.

So a little more time passes, and the same is happening... only this one week in particular was different. After abandoning my home based book sales business some months ago, I got a call from a neighbor who wanted to buys some books! Great! So, she did and we had a nice visit. Then I get a rebate check in the mail that I had completely forgotten about. This was not incredible news because it was owed to me, but it was like finding an extra 10 or 20 bucks in your coat pocket from last year... so this is also good. Next I get a wonderful thank you note in the mail from a friend who I did a favor for eons ago. In with the note was a gift card to Kohls. YAY! More thanks than I expected or needed, but I'll take it! By the end of that week, I had fresh veggies and home made soup from my friend Ms. Moon. Now if you've ever eaten a garden grown veggie, you know what a great gift that is... and the same goes double for Ms Moon's soup. (To this day, any time I tell my son we are having soup he asks, "Is it Ms Moon's soup?") She has raised the bar way higher than my arms can reach... poor Harley! Anyway, not only did we get the hottest most incredible mustard greens on the planet, we got some collards and a few herbs to boot. She also gave me a ticket to see her wonderful play at the Monticello Opera house and also provided me a charming escort who bought me 2 beers! And if that wasn't all, we got to meet Mr. Perkins, the Opera house's own resident inhabiting spirit/poltergeist. He flickered the stage lights, then turned them off... just long enough to get our attention, then back on. Mr. Perkins, you rascal! Oh yea, and also my son and I were excited to go to a garage sale that week, and when we got there it was over... BUT... they had a freebie table so we got lots of old extension chords and a couple of books for the hub. Turns out they were the BEST presents I ever got for him. (He has a nasty habit of either guessing his presents or being so particular about them, I always know he is going to return them) I tried to get him a blue tooth once... I'll spare you that story.

So it doesn't end here. One of my best friends that lives about 5 hours away was on her way to a conference and was stopping by to see us for a few hours. I have very few friends here in town anymore so this was like finding a coca cola in the desert as they say. I was sooooooOooo excited! We had a great visit and lunch. And SHE came bearing gifts! Her hub makes the absolute BEST salsa in the world. I'd put it up against any other, easily. I got 2 jars of his April Fool's batch of salsa. Pure heaven. Then she also brought a beautiful new cutting board and some mukluks. Also, for Harley, she brought a home made drum. He LOVES it! The best part was just visiting though. It was just odd that it happened on this week, and that not only did we get a visit, but gifties on top. AND SHE wanted to buy books as well. (So bizarre!)

I'm thinking there was even more that floated in, but I just can't remember now. I wish I were more organized and disciplined. I absolutely knew as it was happening that I should write this stuff down, but I guess I didn't think the list would keep going! Who am I kidding? I'm a slacker. But I think the important thing is I am now not only recognizing, but celebrating abundance and prosperity in all it's forms. I am doing my best to live in a state of gratitude and it feels really good. So this is my tribute to the Abundance Gods.

Praise be!

Selah! ... And thanks for all the fish.