It's just a couple days late...

But... this week we are in Hawaii!!!

I've put down the drums for a ukulele.

Good Monday!

Here's your chance to get away to your own private little island. Everything you ordered is waiting just on the other side of it... What are YOU bringing?

Dr. Cheeks is running a little behind...

I've missed two precious Mondays. Guess it's harder to form these habits than I thought... so, until Monday, here is another dreamscape. Everyone is busy these days (even me!) and trying to catch up on posts, and post themselves... but the big huggy lovin is still present and accounted for. Peace, honeys.

Joyon

Many of you know, or may have guessed, because (some or most) of my posts are replete with them, that I'm a die-hard wordsmith. And here we go again.

If a moron is so termed due to the fact that whatever else may be true, they just can't help it, they just seem to say and do dumb things... (I may fit into that category myself) (but this was more for comparison) then what can I call someone who keeps triumphing, despite the odds or circumstances, over the hurt feelings, bad luck, and hopeless-looking situations? Yep, a Joyon.

Things have been looking up for me in this last week, thanks all who sent happijoy thoughts and warm hugwishes my way... I finally have some lights ahead, and the tunnel is a lot shorter.

Season's greatings, everyone... I know, I know, I can't help myself. No there are no spelling errors here. Insert clip of old Dr Pepper commercial...

A Case of the Mondays

Okay, my sweet honeys, because there are SOME people still left in the world working, and because other people may just need a pick-me-up, AND because some of you lovely people have traditions that I LOVE (Thinkin' Thursdays, Windy's old ritual, uh... there are others)

Here is my contribution. I have savored some of these in fantastical mind-wanderings and now you get to share. One each Monday. A new paradise. A beautiful place to dwindle away a few minutes. Because I'm damn tired (already?) of forty degree weather, and because we can dream!!!

So enjoy, and do like I do, picture yourself running around in the blue, lazing away in the shade, and WHATEVER ELSE until that sun sets and the beach party begins... listen to me on those drums! You'd think I was born here!!
What about you??

Where I'd LIKE to Be Right Now

It's likely I'll not be visiting THERE soon, I forget exactly where this is - Tana Lot - so, I put on some hiking shoes and wandered the hundred acres here again. Here is what it looks like.

The raspberry vines are all cut back and newly tied up for winter. Glum, but the sky was nice.


The strawberry fields, as well, are colorful yet yucky: The berries are taken over by slugs and insects even before they can turn red. Bummer. I'm not one for pesticides, but sheesh...


What can I say? The sky turned back to grey!! Sigh... Cool thing is, if you click on it, you may be able to see what I saw with my naked little eyes, that the tall pines on the coastal mountains were silhouettes against the muted sun. The scene was pretty unreal, and not nearly as depressing as it appears here.




Moss Farm. Only on the western edge of the strawberries, the softest, most exquisite stretch of at least three different types of moss and/or related green things spread out like a fairy carpet.



Meathead. This 100-lb Rottie beast belongs to a neighbor and visits when he wishes. For size comparison, I tried to get him to stand next to a barn, but he sat on it. It is barely visible, sticking out there beneath the lower half of his body.



Some big ol' paw prints. Just for shits n giggles, I had Meathead step beside the gigantic tracks you see here. His normally enormous foot print is visible next to the bottom most print, you can barely make out his smudgy toe prints and claw marks in this mud - making the size and weight of this mystery animal OBSCENE. We got scared and quickly ran back to the house.

Panties

Someone sent me this in an email recently. Still on the fence about it. Maybe I like the message. Maybe there are things just too complicated to be solved by undergarments. Or maybe I just soiled my last pair of big girl panties.

some poetry while my heart sleeps.

You stretch your wings across the face of the Earth… everything is motionless before you. You glide, silent; you are the difference between day and night…
You are Shadow.


You watch the People grow gaunt and weary; you make whole villages so thin and dry that even the ground beneath them cracks, and still the rain refuses to visit; now only their caricatures are left in the rock formations of the canyons…
You are Want.



You easily and constantly cover the land; there is always something new. You permeate the oceans, but the liquid must be so heavy, so slow. You’ve been everywhere at least once; they say there are places you’ve forgotten, but these are just places which you simply did not wish to see often…
You are Time.



Your reach is immense; your domain is the outermost to the innermost places… in some you are cold, but in others your fire is unsurpassed. You are the massless expanse of the invisible plasma that binds all things, and if you stretch your arms as wide as you can, your fingertips will touch…
You are Space.

Will Work For Hay

My "Living in the Sky" is not meant to say that life is fluffy. It often isn't. Nor to say that I'm way UP HERE and everything else is below somewhere... I have gotten calluses from having my face in the dirt, A LOT.

It is only to say that I have given in to the River, the river of life and things that are, were, and things that are yet to pass. After reading the wonderful Eat, Pray, Love (thank you Clare and Dawn for your simultaneous coincidental suggestions) I realize there are others out there who have had the All is One experience and realize humans have so little, and yet so much, to do with the workings all around us. Baffling, it is. Sometimes.

Which leads me to now be able to tell you how scary life in the sky can be. The lowest limits of the bottom of the barrel sank over a week ago for me. OOPS I couldn't find a job before my unenjoyment ran out. Sorry, you had your chance...

Humor, love, hope... all seem so far away right now. I live, it seems, for pictures from Florida, all your stories, poems, watching Ames move halfway across the country... and I have been doing all THAT for a long time, but now I'm avoiding thinking about the bank repo-ing the truck, having to buy food at the Dollar Store, and heaven forbid... look for someone who can take care of The Boys. I dunno what life would be like without my horses. I don't wanna know.

Thank goodness I live in a place rent-free and I get a hundred bucks a month for VA Disability (egads) but my injury continues to worsen, and (I didn't want to tell everyone) looks like I may need surgery (good ol' VA) for either my spinal injury or the carpel tunnel that it is causing so bad that the docs want to schedule me now. Every day of stall mucking and sweeping is murder on my hands and arms, but if all I have to pay for my livelihood, and my life, is pain, I've got that in spades.

There are some nice people at the unemployment and VA places who I've been talking to and who may be able to help me somehow, starting with food stamps. I'm sure I'll feel better next week. When I (gulp) turn 40. If anyone has any smile-makers, now is the time people (I saw the baby and dog on Rocket's blog, and have already cheered for the Big Blue Crab)...

Captcha - Part Deux

I've been saving these up, but am lacking a certain sense of humor to make a good post of them lately... So I'm just choosing some of my faves, ones that happened to make me laugh today. Which is to say the list would be different each day... but oh well, here goes.


This is cute. Like the plural of CACTUS, to silly people like me.




It just sounded funny cuz it rhymes with Feces. Hey, I never said I didn't enjoy the poop humor. I do.




OK, this one just made me laugh out loud.






There are PLENTY of utilizations for this one...






...and again, with the crude humor. I could begin a new word trend with my friends in L.A.





This is something that may pop out of Mr. Bush's mouth at any given time, given his predilection for such accurate speech and his recently picked-up Texan accent... don't get me started. He didn't have this accent growing up. Oh wait, I got me started. Sorry.




This one is just too damn cute. Still can't think of any use for it. Feel free to help me out with any of these... would love your input. You are all funny and make me laugh, have at it!

Dedicated to the Refocksa Family

Ah, The Days of SUMMER!!!

What happens when you mix three girls, costumes, whiskey, and one very compliant gentleman horse?



No, just the picture we put on our housewarming party invite. We took something like 50 photos, all of which I wish I could put up here, there are good ones, bad ones, VERY bad ones... well. I'll see if I can get them from my roommie's camera.

I love looking at them because I can remember getting sweaty in my cowboy shirt and chaps, back when the grass was green in the pastures and there wasn't so much MUD and MUCK to trample through everywhere... the skies were full of big white puffies, we played music a lot in the kitchen -

And now my old bones are bitten from the cold, the grey skies go on forever... I don't even want to get up to feed myself let alone the horses, the cat... I actually sit and think, how long can the litter box go between changes? And is there a way I can unnaturally prolong it? Cat refuses to use the oh-I-wish-I-had-this bed I made for her, an overstuffed-undersized cloud of a bed lined with a heating pad, whose controls I just push, and five minutes later she could be snoozing in her own steamy comfort... but no! she continues to crawl under MY new comforter, the down-alternative 300-thread-count, no-I-don't-wanna-wash-this-each-week comforter. Thusly, I have cat fur EVERYWHERE. Shiaat.

Well, sometimes I get smart (see! it can happen to anyone!) and recently here are some of my smarter ideas: I bought a desk lamp, brushed nickel finish with a 120-watt bulb, for $5 from the Goodwill, and the bright light helps banish my gray days (see, Windy? I don't know what the diff is either so I used one of each for good measure). The heat from the incandescent bulb too keeps my little bedroom from growing icicles. And if I put it next to me, sometimes even resting it on my legs... well, it gives off some heat to these cramping, cold muscles. Also literally shines heat onto my frozen toe-cubes.

I also went shopping at a discount store for some bubble bath, some GREAT smelling soap (I now have enough to last a small army 'til next summer) and the softest, cuddliest two-dollar socks I've ever held in my little hands! Putting one pair on last night, I turned them inside out, and my feet were so happy they spread the joy right up to the corners of my mouth!

After twenty minutes of lolling around in tropical olive-oil and basil-scented heaven that is my steam bath (for which I intentionally do NOT turn on the exhaust fan), closing my eyes to the bright heat lamps shining like an island sun down on me, and opening them again to see streams of their light through the steamy mist... putting my fuzzy socks on, and blow-drying my hair (a treat I hardly ever give myself), I feel the cockles warming up enough - even the sub-cockles - to motivate me to make some stew, or hashed browns, or some other lovely comfort food, and put my blankets and (down-alternative!) comforter in the dryer for a while to de-fur them for the next night's sleep.

I am watching the hurricane, and hope soon our Floridian sisters and brothers will be able to enjoy some peace soon!

Autumn Sky Morning

Clare took this photo. I'm thinking of replacing my butt-on-a-rock pic but I'm just not committed to it yet.

A Smattering of Stuff...

The trees around here are all but barren and I still haven't posted the pics I took a month ago. I plan to remedy that today.








And, I'm getting worn ragged, honeys! We've implemented a de-alpha-tization plan for Louie, my 7 yo used-to-be-good equine. Since he thinks he's such the top dog, with all the other horses under his command, we give him some time alone and some time with the old folks (our resident 25 and 37 -year-olds who don't give a honk about alphas) and I used to keep Happy with the young-uns... that lasted about a week til I found some righteous teethmarks in about 5 places on Happy's shoulders. Huge scar-lookin, will-the-hair-really-grow-back marks... and I pulled him outta there. problem is, with four horses together, H + L + the old folks, Lou has a chance to be alpha again, so I usually have to separate him by himself - the rest of the horses are great, but then HE gets in an uproar... and you know that stressed horses can lead to sick horses...















Not to mention that it's harder to bring the old gents in at night like we're supposed to when there are four horses gnashing at the gate... I'm about to pull my hair out. The pasture I COULD keep H & L in would be great, since it's separated from everyone and makes things peaceful... but we've been getting those nasty wind and rainstorms and that pasture has ZERO shelter. I end up rushing out in the middle of the night and putting them in stalls. Yes, twice, at midnight... geez no wonder l'm getting burned out on this...















Sorry to unload like this. last night and this morning were oh so challenging and I'm oh so tired... would be easier to have them in runs with shelters all the time. They'd be happy, I'd be happy... sigh. At present the plan is to wait til the gents have been put in the barn for dinner, then my two go into that pasture cuz it has a shed. Then before the gents come out for breakfast, I put my two in the barn to eat. I have to separate them or stand and wait til they eat cuz Lou is getting fat again and Hap's getting skinny from having his food stolen - he's a slow eater. Then I put them into the no-shelter pasture for the day til dinner. so that is where we're at.














And I had a really weird dream the other night - many nights in fact recently - and I find it interesting that this happened on Hallowe'en, when as they say the veil is the thinnest between worlds... not that I haven't had dreams of my ancestors on many other occasions, they show up in the oddest places, doing their pow-wows, dances, or just telling me things. This was a dream that these old ancestors were dressed in 'western clothing' and laughing about not wearing skins and such this time around... and we were all waiting for Leonard Peltier to give a radio address.
As far as I know he is still imprisoned...















My senile cat is waking me up it seems all hours of the morning, and even when I try something new like leaving my bedroom door open for her to wander about (she spends 99% of her time in my room) she wanders about wailing like a pinched child. I end up taking off one sock at a time and throwing them at her so that if the first one didn't make my point of SHUT THE HELL UP the second one usually does. She ends up running for cover and I get a few more minutes. I don't know how to deal with this w/o giving her tranqs every night... there goes her liver!!

Any thoughts or suggestions on any of the above??

Diaphanous Noodles

It first became apparent with Denis Leary, in his comedy No Cure For Cancer. Besides that being hella funny, it hit on how different adults are from children in what is acceptable activity in any place at any time. If I were Shane Rocket or someone remotely adept at splicing a piece of that skit here, I would. Find and view when you can.

But to paraphrase, kids can stand in the grocery store and act as if they were on the playground, swinging arms about, thith-puth-puthing unthinkingly, and show joy or anger at a moment's notice, maybe even in the same moment... those of you with children or have been around any know what I'm saying is true... they are not hiding any emotions when their disappointment becomes apparent by throwing a fit on the floor, even as it escalates to rolling on their side and running in circles, "Curly Stooge-style" and embarrassing the funk outta anyone who knows them.


So, as funny as shit as I think that is, it does spill over, in my raucous mind, into the rest of things I've heard, read, and seen about "child-like" behaviour that we adults have stopped appreciating. I've heard many a philosph(er)(y) likening the true awareness of being to the mind of a child, mainly in our view of things as always new, before the cares and burdens jaded us into such structured modes of thought. Before we decided the us-and-them, I-like-this-but-not-that that makes our lives easier by predetermining our actions, and reactions, to the gifts the universe gives us (even when they don't immediately appear as such).

But beyond this, observe in yourself your reactions to many things, and compare them, if you can, to similar stimuli in child-land. In your hands, can mud and rocks really become chocolate pie? That giant piece of kelp, the whip of the Gods and you, Neptune, running down the beach in your invisible chariot? When was the last time you watched clouds? Not, I'm on my way to the car from work, gee that cloud is cool -- uh uh. I'm talking, blanket out, give it half an hour, look at the shapes-kind of watching. Have you word-smithed lately? made one word into a perfectly legitimate cognate that didn't previously exist, using normal rules of grammar? Or on the freeway, in the parking lot, in the park, called someone a dodohead instead of the other colorful things we consider more adult-like? and are they really?

And when you are scared, can you scream without feeling that you are unnecessarily bringing attention to yourself? Jump up and down, wave your hands? What about crying in public? If you become frustrated with someone, how much more readily do you grin, bear it, and stew on it for a completely arbitrary length of time? Rather than tell them that they are behaving badly, and that you may be forced to stop sharing lunch with them, stop being their friend, and not give them candy at Hallowe'en? Because then, the lost art of laying blame at the feet of the problem shows it's mighty magic: the offending situation is addressed right away, letting the responsible party(ies) deal with it as they will, potentially showing their true colors, and potentially highlighting a heretofore-unknown behaviour that they need to address, and the offended party goes home without the shoulder and neck strain that usually occurs when, as they say, the mind overrides the body's urges to choke the shit out of some asshole who desperately needs it. Justice is served, in either case - you find out who your friends are, or who they aren't... surely we can amend this logic and response to apply to situations with our mates, or bosses, our community...? Who would we be if everyone could be completely real?

I have recently begun a new read on a very old book called The Feldenkrais Method, in which movement holds the key to our conscious - both in having it "written" in our muscles and ligaments, and also how moving can help us deal with emotions. To wit: the child, having been caught doing something they oughtn't, is face-to-face with the authority figure (parent, teacher, man driving the car with the egg on windshield) and is looking down, ashamed, swinging arms like Maypole streamers from side to side, body twisting, possibly stepping from one side to the other - moving to help ease the unease created in the body by being strapped under the microscope, dissected and naked in front of another.

Conversely, now imagine (or remember) as an adult, being called into the boss' office at work, or being pulled over for that emergency three-lane change you did to keep from having to go thru that pain-in-the-ass turn around that next exit... one thing or another - and how still you sat; how you wrung your hands under the table til your knuckles were nearly bleeding; how tight you held your lips to keep your mouth shut; how your guts inside squirmed to make up for how you couldn't; what can POSSIBLY happen to all that energy pent up inside? It has to go somewhere, an outlet - into your joints, your myofascia, your jaw, your neck... and how many other, little, smaller upsets do we experience in our day? They have less impact, but add up. No wonder the 'experts' say exercise is key for not just mental health (the cobwebs really do clear fast) but that it forces your tissues to get these pent-up experiences OUT. Literally.


Which brings us back to playing hard, drinking lots of water (try kool-aid! it makes everything better! especially if you get unsweetened and add Stevia!! guilt-free!!) and eating a gazillion times a day. Let our tongues be stained for an afternoon. MAKE FACES. Buy - and use! - crayons and drawing paper. Take that Sharpie at work and make hats and mustaches on faces in the magazines. Everywhere you go. Develop a signature work! And take some time to scream. By yourself, in car, whenever you can - if you feel like it.

I tell you what, I discovered this whole notion of child-like thinking and behaviour (as opposed to child-ish) a couple years ago, and it has freed me of so many things... I believe my overcoming fibroid tumors and polycystic ovarian syndrome and the related insulin resistance syndrome is due to this one, simple thing. I may not have written a blog about it, honeys, but yes I received just a few months ago a clean bill of health, from blood to ultrasound - a lifetime disease, disappeared without a trace.

All due to the joy (I believe, plus the pseudo-regimen I describe in an earlier blog here) that comes from being 100% honest with the world. No more facades. No more taking stress home from not being present or willing to say things that needed sayin when they needed sayin. As in one of my favorite movie lines ever, from Regarding Henry, "Just say when." Well, like Harrison Ford's character, I said when. And haven't turned back.







Just try it on for a day - see how it fits.

Just for Fun

Here's some shots I've been collecting the last month.



The horses made it into the yard...
I was compelled to rename the place to Spotland Yard in honor of the occasion.
















I always love these on my bills. It sometimes seems like an appropriate idea for some people, too. As in, can we make T-shirts?



















So whoever thought of chocolate-covered bacon is either a genius, or has a deficiency issue in their olfactory system...



What a comfy dog, Opal!















I call it "Morning Tail." Not nearly as exciting as any other rendition of that term.







And, the sleeping child. Who could resist snapping a pic of an otherwise impossible feat, sleeping at right angles.

What is it?!?

While having a big education about multi-culturalism during my time at a non-profit, there were so many things to appreciate and enjoy about people we hardly get to see in our institutionalised society. So much so that I have fantasies of going to places like India, Japan, Morocco...












But why is there always a flip side? Don't go there, you'll get AIDS... or there, you'll be kidnapped and sold into the slave market. Oh, they don't view women fairly there, oh and there, they hate that you don't speak their language so everyone is rude. Then there are the conditions in which the inhabitants live. Where poverty makes OUR poverty look not so poor. Where people are maimed by their own governments, or killed, through either crooked/unjust means, or sometimes sanctioned. Why, why, why?!? Does it have to be that way.




















My shameful optimism just wants to take all the vivid colors, all the beautiful rituals, all the good things that people of means in those countries enjoy... I think even if I had the chance I'm not sure I could visit all the places of my fantasies, for fear of inadvertently supporting nasty regimes. And so I continue living in the sky. Always looking at the beautiful places from afar.

Our House

There was a yellow house.

In this house grew a little boy.

He had great times in the backyard, climbing on a boulder and eating the fruit of the pear tree.

Once he ran into a BIG cobweb in the back and nearly bounced off of it, it was so strong.

And across the street there was a lady, she had a dog named Simon. He was a very good dog.

Simon and the little boy played in the lady's backyard too, it was so big, and there was so much to do for a little boy and a dog.

The lady even had a horse which the little boy rode once, except the horse ran under the branch of a little cottonwood tree and knocked him off! And stepped on him, too! But he wasn't hurt.



But now the little yellow house is gone. The backyard has been cleared, the boulder moved. Four new houses now stand in its place. The lady across the street is gone, along with her dog and horse, her house for sale. The lowest branch of the cottonwood tree is 2 stories off the ground.

This is what it looks like now. And the little boy is all grown up.