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..."