My journey to self

Hailey 4 (2)

Two weeks ago was warm and sunny and beautiful. Then came the rain, it rained and rained until our flood plane filled and I was once again enchanted by the old stream bed, nearly killed by development but comes out when we get a good rain. So after about 4 inches I got my wildlife area back.

We've have Red Winged Blackbirds and a few ducks. The cat tails are starting to grow again and you can't walk across the yards in back to get to the other streets without getting wet. The boys next door are enjoying the water and life that comes with it, so do I.

This week I've taken a daily trip to the bottom of my yard bare-footed and reveling in the water a little more then ankle high and a bit chilly. Makes you feel free and child like again and that is a good thing being a grown up in the grown up world.

Now for the next week our tempetures won't hit above 55 and it will rain again about an inch or two for the next couple of days. Rain good, cool weather bad. It feels as though my veggie garden is not going to get planted until June again this year and I'm just anxious to get it planted. My gardens, flower and veggie are my summer refuge. My peace, my savior, my world for a couple of hours a day, the sun on my back, the Robins yacking at me to finish so they can get my worms. The exercise and more then anything something that feel good in my soul to be doing. I've missed them all winter and getting them going is just like a kid waiting for Christmas or a Birthday.

COME ON SPRING!!!!!!!!

Hailey 1

I love my little angel. She is so full of life, love and happieness! I had the privilage of being her babysitter for a couple of days last week and let me tell you...although I am still exhausted, I can't remember when I've had more fun or felt more loved!!! She was attached to my hip the entire time and in our little world no one else existed. We chased bubbles with her bubble maker, we made jewelry (she is wearing one of her creations in this picture), we played pirates and princess and the dragon, we ran and chased each other through the yard and the house, we colored pictures to hang on her windows, we talked and laughed during her hour long baths, we even napped and slept together. I don't know that there was anything we didn't do together.

She decided that I didn't need to live in my 'other' house any longer because I was moving in with her and she was going to allow me to share her bedroom (although with all her toys I'm not sure where I would put any of my things)! I ended up staying an extra day because she cried with all she had and with every bit of sincerety because she didn't want her Nana to leave her. I cried myself almost all the way home.

I love my Hailey Angel with all my heart.

I can't believe I am actually going to do this but... I've decided to go back to school. Part of this Journey to self thing I guess.

I never really enjoyed the corporate world and quite frankly didn't really fit in with all the madness. Nature, peace, tranquility, sustainability and all those wonderful things. That's what I'm all about. So I am going to be a Natural Health Practitioner, at least I will be if I pass all my classes and the state board licensing exam.

I Signed on for 3 years and start May 19th. Should be a blast! Well of course there will be loads of work, I'll start out with Certificate for Nutrition, Bodycare and Herbalism work my way into Holistic Structure and Function of the Body (Antatomy and Physiology). Then move on to Holistic Pathophysiology, Holistic Pathology and Protocols and other fun sounding classes. My kitchen will be my lab as all classes are on-line, I love my kitchen!

In the end I will be certified in Herbalism, Aromatherapy, Iridology, Homeopathy and Dynamic Phytotherapy, those are the biggies anyway. Herbal studies will take the majority of my time but I love herbs, herbs are good...so...I am getting excited. Wish me luck!!!!!

Robin

Eighteen male Robins in dazzling breeding plumage

sunlight reflecting the fire engine red of thier breasts.

Dancing in the grass, searching for food

a couple of hops here, pause as their heads turn

this way then that.

More hopping, chasing sound

listening to the worms crawling

deep underground.

Completely lost in their dance

comfortable with me, their audience they continue

and in my head and heart as I watch

I dance with them.

Do you have a regular workout routine?  What's your favorite form of exercise?

yes, sort of. Jorja the kitten wakes me between 4 and 5am daily to play. She goes to bed between 8 and 10, I still haven't found her snuggle spot and by 4 she is ready to start her day. I have 2 choices, I can let her lick my face and chew on my hand and eat my hair or I can try to pretend to sleep while she destroys my bedroom. So, I get up and play.

This is the work out part of my story. We play chase the string, climb up mommy's leg (doesn't matter if it's covered or not) tackle mommy's hair, run and hide, etc. yes I run up and down the hall, the stairs around the furniture, yes I run.

Next we go down to the basement because it is time to fill the food bowls, change the water and clean the litter boxes. Coffee is made while I do my morning bend and stretches as I'm searching for my pens. Jorja has a thing for pens you see and none of them anywhere are safe (my pencil cup was so full I couldn't get another one in with a wedge, now I have maybe 5).

After warming up with the running and stretching we box. She has a box that she likes to hide in and we play, basically I sneak up (not hard to do as she is deaf) and stick my hand into the box allowing her to capture it and chew on it as though she caught a big game animal.

After my coffee I cool down by wandering around the house picking things up off the floor and putting them back where they belong. I have a LONG cool down period, it usually takes an hour or so to put the house back together after Jorja is finished.

We repeat the work out portion of our day 3 or 4 times so I am getting about 6 hours of "work-out" a day!

I'm really not loving my computer much these days. I really like Dell products never had any problems with any until this computer. It ran fine for a while, then started to slow down, it's crashed a couple of times and the hard drive finally died a noisy and dramatic death a few months ago. Still under warranty, a refurbished hard drive found it's way into my life.

It's still slow, we added memory. That sped things up for about a week, then back to slow and pause and hard re-starts. Last week I was so mad at it I wanted to yank it from the cords, throw it in the driveway and run my Blazer over it back and forth until there was nothing left but a fine powder but I had a couple bottles of beer and calmed myself down.

Yesterday the hard drive was no longer recognized and of course I had just downloaded my latest 400 photos from my camera and no they had not been backed to disk yet. 5 Hail Mary's later I tried again, it came up and I frantically backed up everything I could to disk and thank you Mary it didn't crash again until I was pulling the last CD out of the drive.

On the phone this morning with Dell going through all of the 'test' procedures they put you through. Performing surgery on my computer again. After taking it apart and unplugging, then replugging everything we are back to operational for now. I am trying to do as much as I can before it crashes again. I need it to crash again if the 'new' hard drive is faulty because my warranty expires Nov 2.

I think we'll shoot for 10 Hail Mary's this time. 

What is the best beer on planet Earth? 
Submitted by Remmy Van Hornie.

Yeungling is by far the best beer on earth. I've tried plenty but always come back to the PA beer. I am partial to lagers cannot tolerate ale's at all and microbrews are well just not as substantive as my yuengling!

What's the current hottest restaurant in your city?  Have you tried it out yet?

The hottest new dining establishment in my 'city', if you can call a one horse town that is a chinese buffet and delivery owned and operated by an older chinese couple, unlike the Italian sub shop owned by a couple of mexican brothers. Aside from the sub shop and chinese buffet we have a diner. I really don't recommend eating at any of them often but the chinese food is pretty good for what and where it is.

I do miss the choices of even Frederick, a Washington DC bedroom community, there are a couple of wonderful old choices and several fairly passable ones as well. All are better then my little one horse town.

Where is your favourite place to be on a sunny Sunday afternoon? 
Submitted by Rev Stan.

My favorite place to be on any sunny afternoon would be Cromwell Valley Park. Although I don't get there very often I used to visit the park as often as I could. When we lived in Baltimore 2 friends of mine and I used to go there early every Sunday morning to go bird watching. What we actually did was much more then bird watching. We followed tracks, took photos or made drawing of plants growing in the wild, we did some caretaking pulling up non-native and invasive species to protect the native plants growing there. We talked and discussed nature and the ways of the animals living there and of spirit.

Sometimes we would have a pipe ceremony and pray together. Once we did a pipe ceremony in honor of the passing of Phil's grandmother and a Red Tailed Hawk lited on a nearby tree branch and stayed with us for the length of the entire ceremony which lasted about an hour. That was one of our most special times. The Red-tailed Hawk is one of my spirit animals and I felt as though he was there as witness to Phil's love and respect of his grandmother and to let us know we were performing a special and sacred very ancient ritual. It was spiritually very moving and beautiful.There was a fox that was almost always present, particularly in the winter months and we enjoyed following his scent and tracks finding his kills and observing his hunting patterns.

These days I find myself going to Catoctin National Park when I can or just hanging out on my back deck warming myself in the sun and observing out regular visitors to our bird feeders and bath. Watching butterflies and humming birds in the summer and the Dark-eyed Juncos in the winter.

Last week a Hawk that I could not readily identify in the poor early evening light landed in my Bradford Pear tree just above the feeders and the bath. I had had a bad day, I had horrible nightmares of a dark figure stalking and sometimes capturing me. I would wake up, get out of bed and then when I would lay back down for sleep it would start all over again. I ended up watching TV in bed until 5 in the morning before falling back to sleep to the same dream all over again. I gave up sleeping and then had a horrible feeling of being watched all day, I was exhausted physically and mentally and wanted to sleep but felt unsafe. I usually open the front and back door to catch the breeze and leave the garage door open all day, that day I kept everything locked up and although it was cool outside turned on the air conditioner as it was humid and stuffy in the house with the doors closed. The hawk, even though unidentifiable was a sign I realized later, that I would be protected and safe. I still had feelings of being watched and went to bed when Phil did so I wasn't downstairs alone in the darkness of the night. Eventually I slept and had no night-mares so the Hawk protected me from whatever was stalking. I felt out of sorts for the remainder of the week and stayed to myself.

Now I feel better and will hopefully be able to return to my nightly time on my deck watching the stars and thinking about the universe.

Moonlight

Frank Peretti has caught my attention with two books of his recommended by my sister Lorraine. She lent me her two so I could read them. I am not a fan of Christian Books, I have my own relationship with God and tire of listening to prostelizing by most Christian writers. Frank Perertti has however found a way to wind charasmatic Presbyterian 'You have been SAIVEDUH' into some really cool mystery type novels.

"This Present Darkness" and "The Visitation" bring spirit and beings of light and dark into spell binding mysterious who dunnit journeys into the every day. He carries you along on a joyous ride of fiction that actually makes you stop and think about where this man has been. The characters a little too real, the plot a little too close to home, had me thinking that Mr. Peretti might actually be someone I would like to know.

My thing about Christianity or organized religion in general is that after awhile it can't help but become a business. With church committees and groups and services, and bake sales on and on and on. The 'church' becomes the business the people the consumers and the pastor and associates the conglomerate. I've really been thinking about that a lot and I can't find a way to organize one any better so I guess I can't hold a grudge or become persecutorial of the many churches and religious organizations in existence.

Church becomes the center, it becomes the wheel of the greater machine and the cogs get taken for a ride. You HAVE to follow the rules, you HAVE to believe exactly everything you hear and are taught, you HAVE to follow the church elders and act accordingly as one with the whole or you are not a part. If you haven't 'given' your life to Christ you are not saved and are therefore doomed to eternity in the firey pits of hell and are no more than a heathen and akin to the devil. If you don't cough up one third of your annual income into the church coffers you are a savage and not a true believer. On and On and ON!!!

Anyway, this is not a religious post and I am WAY off topic. If you want a good read and have some time pick up one of his books and give it a try. I'm glad I did.