Please dear God

I hope I NEVER have to see my children or grand childrens death....I wanna go first....I hope I don't have to see my husband die either! Not that death scares me...as a matter of fact, the sooner the better as far as I am concerned, but having my heart broken here on earth is a worse death than any physical death I can think of! This old ticker of mine is a little hypersensitive and the mental and emotional anguishes are SOOOOOOOO much more painful...at least this has been my own experience. There you have it. I am a mental and emotional baby. I admit it. And so be it amen.

Hope

Something I hope to do in my life.....well, there are too many things to even begin to think! I want to be the best grandma EVER, I want to have the best marriage EVER....I want to draw pictures without second guessing myself....I want to have self confidence....I want to see, hear, touch and smell EVERYTHING that comes my way....I want to live long enough to do these things, but not too long so as to be a burden...I want to help people like others have helped me....I want to visit Malta, Italy, Sicily, Spain, England and Iceland....Is this too much?!!! I have lived over half of my alotted time here on this earth, and have wasted way the heck too much of it! I want to live every day to its very fullest and enjoy every minute. I want to learn so much! And there is so much I wish I had learned at a younger age....it would have made these latter years more palatable. Live and learn....Carpe Dieum....Here and Now.

hmmmm....

Okay...I started this thing and by golly, I am determined to finish it.....someday. #4....I have to LIVE forgiveness with my husband every day....I say LIVE forgiveness, because when the person who is suppose to love you the most, hurts you the most, it must be lived and not a one time thing. When trust is gone, forgiveness must be lived in the now. It is never ending. It goes forward and does not stop. We have been married for 38 years, but have only truly loved each other in a healthy way for a mere year and a half. A hell of a ride, and a living forgiveness was a must during our separation. So...my final answer....Rick!

Oh dear....

Soooooooooo many things come to mind on #3.....but to choose one, I think the first thing that comes to mind is to forgive myself for not being perfect....the perfect wife....the perfect mom.....friend, daughter, sister, aunt....yup, that pretty much sums it up in a really tight nutshell. Mostly being such a rigid mom....raising my boys in fear of failing, I failed. Well, in my own mind anyway..they turned out pretty good as a matter of fact, despite the young, crazy, over religious mom they were given. Many regrets there that I will not go into, but you get the gist of the thing....but I have to choose today to live here and not there...to go forward and not look back except to learn from it....I have learned that I can actually CHOOSE to live my life in the present and the now with full capacity and enjoy every second....I don't have many left and I don't want to waste one more.

Oooooooo.....

Look at me!! I am answering the next ? on the next day!! WoooHoo!! Well....don't get use to it all you millions of people out there that hang on my every word!! ROLMFAO!!! Now....to be serious....if only for a moment....
Which is the answer to ?#2 "what do you love about yourself"? I love the fact that I am diverse. I can be stupid and fun, serious and intelligent, melancholy and overwhelmed with feelings, I can be a pain in the ass and the one you love the most at the same time! Reminds me of that Alanis Morrissette song EVERYTHING.
"I'm the funniest woman you've ever known.
I am the dullest woman you've ever known.
I'm the most gorgeous woman you've ever known
And you've never met anyone as, as everything as I am sometimes."

A living breathing oxymoron. It can be confusing, even to me, but it is what makes me not be bored with myself or the life around me. There is always a different way to look at something....a different facet of the same diamond. Like John Candy said " I like me"! All of my parts are essential in the whole.

Ummmm....

Well, as you can tell, I did not start this journey right away....I will also NOT answer these questions on a daily basis...I will be doing well to finish them at all, but I do want to give it a try. So....numero uno es....
"Something I hate about myself"....well, I have spent many years and as many dollars in therapy to do the opposite of hating myself, but for this exercise I will look over all I have learned about self loathing....I hate the fact that I love too much. There. I said it. I think over loving is dangerous to my soul (to quote my friend)....it tends to lead me down the path that it will be reciprocated and that is not always the case. I feel at times, like a puppy who just sits and wags its tail waiting for a glance, or a pat on the head, or even dare to believe a ball will actually be tossed for me to play with. I think I am loved, but perhaps not in the way my June Cleaver head dreams it would be like. I am learning though....I am opening my eyes beyond my Cleaver mind and seeing that because we are not all alike, we do not love alike, we do not dream alike, we do not look alike and that is how it should be. Hmmmm...come to think of it, perhaps it is the expectation of that love reciprocated that is the real culprit heh? And then, as always, I have to be the one who does this for myself....to start by loving myself, regardless of others....a life lived in co-dependency is not fertile ground for cultivating this concept, but this too can and will change. It already has......

REALY?!!!

Its almost THANKSGIVING?!!?? Well, Oblahde Oblahda......A friend of mine has been posting this challenge on her blog....I am inspired by it and so decided to do the same....I know no one reads blogs anymore....they have passed the way of the written page...edged out by the supersonic "social networking" places....but alas....I still read books that are printed on real paper, I actually talk to my friends instead of text them....grow my own veggies.....and make things with my hands. Oops.... off subject. Sooooooooooooo.....here goes.....this is for me mostly, to see these things written down somewhere for posterity.....read at your own risk....

this is the list of all the topics:

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days.
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down.
Day 15 → Something or someone you tried to live without, and can't.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → Your best friend is in a car accident right after you two fight. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs.
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

HUH?

Well, its coming on fall and I am really not through with summer yet! My garden is just now getting where I can enjoy the fruits of my labor and watering! But then, I remind myself that I AM in "another time zone altogether".....still getting use to waking up to 45 degree weather.....to the dear eating my flowers....to the beauty I see everyday as I look out to the mountains...to the missing of my friends and the familiarity of my place of birth....but I am reminded by those who love me that it takes time. Time...isn't that the truth for almost everything we encounter or do in this life? Time to heal, live, build relationships, save for something we want or need and yes, time to get use to a new life. The beauty here and the grandchildren here help me to keep my focus on the positive, but what if I did not HAVE those things to help me focus on the beauty that surrounds me? I am reading a book called "ON BECOMING AN ARTIST - Reinventing Yourself Through MINDFUL Creativity" (for the purpose of spurring my lazy butt into creating with my God given talent!), but what I am learning through it is not just for my artist side, but for my just living side. It helps me to remember that to be MINDFUL is what keeps me in the present and not the past, no matter where my body lives. "MINDFULNESS makes us sensitive to context and perspective . When we are MINDLESS, our behavior is governed by rules and routines." This can be true whether we eat breakfast, drive our car, talk to people, do our jobs, spend time with loved ones, or clean the toilet! We can BE there in the doing, or be MINDLESS in the doing. No matter what. And it is like everything else in our lives, unless we train ourselves to be mindful in the small mundane places in our life, we will NOT be able to do it in the more difficult places in our lives. You don't climb a mountain before walking around the blocks! My point, I guess in all this rambling, is to say to myself and to those of you who endure these ramblings, is to keep focused on today by training myself to be MINDFUL of today...of the moment...of the day...of the season.... whatever and wherever that is. As Seals and Crofts sang so melodiously, "We will never pass this way again" ...and one day is never like another....what did you miss today? What did I not see today in the squirrels chasing each other or the old lady that crossed the road in front of me? What did I not hear that came from my spouses heart and mind? What did I miss by not playing that game "just one more time" with my grand kids? I don't want to have lived a life of regret that I have seen so many others proclaim, but one of being mindful of everything around me. In THAT state of being, I can then reap my garden no matter what the circumstances, and glean the art that life is made of.
"The sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments, the moments which, if we don't look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears, reveal only . . . the gardener, the stranger coming down the road behind us, a meal like any other meal. But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with all of our being and our imagination - if we live our lives not from vacation to vacation, from escape to escape, but from the miracle of one instant of our precious lives to the miracle of the next - what we may see is Jesus himself, what we may hear is the first faint sound of a voice somewhere deep within us . . . " --Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

Alexi Murdoch - All my days

Well I have been searching all of my days
All of my days
Many a road, you know
I've been walking on
All of my days
And I've been trying to find
What's been in my mind
As the days keep turning into night
Well I have been quietly standing in the shade
All of my days
Watch the sky breaking on the promise that we made
All of this rain
And I've been trying to find
What's been in my mind
As the days keep turning into night
Well many a night I found myself with no friends standing near
All of my days
I cried aloud
I shook my hands
What am I doing here
All of these days
For I look around me
And my eyes confound me
And it's just too bright
As the days keep turning into night
Now I see clearly
It's you I'm looking for
All of my days
Soon I'll smile
I know I'll feel this loneliness no more
All of my days
For I look around me
And it seems He found me
And it's coming into sight
As the days keep turning into night
Now even breathing feels all right

Just my simple thoughts this morning....the song describes my life over the past couple of years...even now its relevance hangs in the air over my shoulders....

GRANDS

Grandkids are indeed GRAND....especially ALL of mine....they bring smiles to my sometimes dreary world...they bring a lift to my spirit when it is down.....they do so very much for me by just being themselves....they don't have to impress me....they accept my love freely offered with no doubts and no demands....unpretentious....
My hope is that I am giving them something as well....that is is a mutual give and take.....perhaps that includes a history....perhaps that includes a listening heart.....perhaps that includes strength or stability....or maybe an unconditional love.... these and so much more are what my grandparents gave me. No, they did not replace my parents, but they gave such a great added dimension to my own soul...my own being....they were some of the most important people in my life....
I think my own children and others as well, can relate to that...maybe thats why the people who invented this language put the "GRAND " in front of GRANDchildren and GRANDparents......because it is
GRAND.....Thank you kids for all you bring into my life and all the lessons I learn from your simplicity.....I LOVE YOU A, B, C, D, I AND S......

MY MY MY

How time flies!! As I sit here in my living room in beautiful Colorado, with my husband, dogs and cat, I think I become aware of just how much I have to be thankful for.....even though this has been hard on this ol gal (not an easy task to move from your birthplace at the ripe old age of 56), I do indeed have much to be thankful for. We are getting ready to make a trip up to Wyoming to be the grateful guests at our 6th grandchild's birth....amazing...really...am I THAT old?!!! To have 6 grandchildren?!!! Well....I come from a long line of healthy family.....my grandma was 95 when she passed into that other world....My parents are coming up on 80 and are still riding their motorcycles and driving 10 hours to see us...so it looks like i will be around for a little longer!
I sit here and listen to the music pouring out of my first husbands macbook....i see the 3 pound dog laying atop his comfortable belly....we smell the cool breeze as it blows through our pine trees and wafts into the house that sits atop a hill and overlooks the mountains....we are coming up on one of the most important anniversaries in our lives....the one that we celebrate our trial and tears of coming through a separation....of our commitment to this love we started over 37 years ago.....we celebrate the peace that accompanies pain......yes....there is much to be thankful for on this late April evening......may you celebrate your life, with all that it entails....and be thankful.....I never in my wildest dreams thought this life would or ever COULD be mine....but it is....I am a MAJOR dreamer and now I know that some of them really do come true.....not like the Hallmark movies, or the happily ever after junk....but the dreams of the heart to be known and to know.....as John Lennon said once in a beautiful song....."Ricko (yoko) and me..and thats reality the dream is over..."

SHOVELING

You know, you can learn a lot about life from the seemingly monotonous things of everyday ...IF, and that is a very big IF, you pay attention and listen to your life. Today, as I have seemingly done at least once a week now, I went out to shovel the snow that had fallen yesterday and through the night. I enjoy the outside so very much, so this is not a job I dread, rather one that I do indeed look forward to doing! I know, that in itself should prove my insanity. Nevertheless, as I shoveled this deep and dusty snow, so many thoughts started to ramble in my head, which is not unusual for me, but it is rare that I remember them long enough to write about! These thoughts are not earth shaking, but for me, thoughts like these need to be mulled over and meditated on so that I can squeeze out of them the nectar of knowledge that seems to elude most of us most of the time. So.....what the heck ARE these thoughts I go on and on about?!! Well, they are the thoughts of silence...about the things we miss all around us because we are so busy with theTHINGS around us....the huge crow up in the tall pine that caws at me each time I wreck his silent world by the shovel scraping the ground...It seems as though the sound of it is like our "nails on a chalkboard" sound to him...because he is silent when I am and starts making racket every time my shovel does its work.
Another thought that occurred to me is that shoveling snow is like my life....the snow comes only ever so often as do the troubles and trials that come to me...the snow, like my life, must be scraped off or else when we drive across it with the cars, it turns into ice that can not be shoveled but must melt with the warmth of the day. Like my life...when these trials come, they must be dealt with in the proper way, with the proper tools, in the proper time or the traffic of my life will only make it harder to scrap the hardened parts off....and they will only go away with time and the warmth of my Son....I have learned over the 50 plus years of my life, that I better get on it asap because I KNOW what it is like and I KNOW the difficulty that it is to deal with the ICED places of my heart and of my mind...it takes twice the energy and twice the time and is twice as hard if I don't deal with them as they come....as they fall like snow on my driveway.
It is also a great time to meet neighbors whom you have not seen or do not know yet. As I was shoveling in my newly acquired neighborhood, one of my neighbors came out to shovel her drive. We talked and shoveled and talked some more about our lives...I heard her stories and she heard mine....we found we have a lot in common and it was a JOY to speak with her. That would not happen if I was not out shoveling snow... and so it is with the "neighbors" we travel life's highway with whether they live in our house, our town, go to our church or work with us...if we do not shovel our own snow by sharing our lives and hearts and troubles and trials, we will never know their thoughts or hearts or minds...perhaps we don't WANT to know and if that is the case, we are worse off than we thought! I will never forget my mother in law telling us after her husband died that as he was dying and they were sharing their last moments together, that she told Rick, that she SO wanted to just say to him "a penny for your thoughts" but never did and how she SO regretted NOT asking him that question. Sad. But we are SO like that today in SO many ways...whether out of fear, or ignorance, or rushing around, or time, or (as is the case with me) don't want to "impose", BUT we loose the opportunity to know the others that come through our lives. We don't take the time and effort to know the ones we have been given and the ones that we are given to. So...take time to shovel, to think, to clear your soul mind and heart, to know the ones our lives touch...to know yourself. And please don't wait till those driveways of your soul become iced over.....go....now.

PROCRASTINATION

You know, I am amused by this word....why does this particular word, whose meaning is not very positive, begin with the word PRO?!!!! It is not PRO to PROcrastinate!!! Anyway, all that to say that I MUST get to work on my art!!!! I have no excuses now but the ones I make up in my head....I have a specified room ready....I have it organized...I have TIME if I choose to....BUT,(and that is a big word here)...for some reason I have been putting it off. The LINK to the right of this blog titled by this same WORD, helped me today tremendously!!! So....I pass it on to you out there, whoever you may be,in blog land....perhaps it will help you in whatever area you are prone to this vile dis ease.....(yes, I meant to separate that word). I seem to be able to come up with so many excuses, reasons and virtual whinings but am realizing that it is just a matter of doing...of priority...of discipline.....all of which seem so elusive at times....BUT (there is that massive word again!) it CAN be done.....even I HAVE done it on several occasions!!! YES, it is a mind set...a habit...something to be lived and not disscused....to be grasped and not grovelled in...something to protect and not shoved back into the recesses of my life....SO, why am I even blogging about this? So that I can read it myself...remind myself...reprimand myself...reiterated to myself...regain FOR myself, the lost days and hours and minutes of sloughing off my LIFE!!! My LOVE!! My ABILITY!! To make myself accountable TO myself because in the end, that is who we are indeed accoutnable to......cheers my friends!

SO MUCH FOR THAT!!!

You know....Facebook has its good stuff, myspace too, and all the things you can "do" on each of them....but somehow, still, no one is talking!!! No one shares their heart, thoughts, moods, questions, answers, problems, laughter.....it is just a quick fix to the rapidly dying art of writing....of journaling....of having to actually take more than the few seconds (FB) to communicate the depths of your soul.....it takes TIME....EFFORT....THOUGHT....all of which are in short supply these fast paced days....SO....
I am back.....back from the land of the LOST art of speak. I enjoy this, even if no one in this entire busy world reads it! I am back for my own sanity, for my own enjoyment, for my own knowledge and growth, for a look into more than the 2 sentence space on FB and MS. Oh, they have their niche, each one of them...it just so happens that the deeper niche is here....where you must take all the above and incorporate them in your own life in order to appreciate what is said from others hearts and souls to yours...that is ...IF you are willing to listen....