Sunday Morning

Sunday, and sunny... well, partly. Trying to get into the 50's and so heater still necessary... the boys are happily munching down the grass in the yard (they are still wearing their coats too!) I'm listening to music by Stars of the Lid... ambient and lazy, honeys... a tummy full of peanut-buttered garlic bread (oops, I think I just lost a couple of you), watching cat sleep... and my emotions are like the ocean: waves of one beautiful feeling after another, created from the thin, forever-calm, continuous line at the horizon. Thought I'd share with a pic that KINDA resembles this feeling, if any two-dimensional image can relay the myriad quantum actions inside us...

It Was a Good Day

Today was one of those normal, albeit punctuated, days, the kind that are nice to have just to laugh and relax a bit and stop WORRYING about every damned thing...

Nevermind that my tax check to the US Treasury bounced, OOPS four days ago... or that I had to borrow money from (here it goes again, hate the term) ex husband to cover the truck payment while I shop for food at the dollar store again til next week's unenjoyment check... ;o)

When I got home from errands, I had barn chores to do, so what else makes the time go faster and more enjoyable than bringing a double dose of the best BLOODY MARY ever... and my cat! Since the berries are coming back from their long winter sleep and apparently 'need' insecticide, we've had to keep all the horses in the stalls for two days. Having gotten the message that the HAY DUDE now wants to spray fertilizer on his fields (and the pastures) tomorrow, we must keep the horses in aNOTHER two days... and they get their feet trimmed Friday so IN AGAIN... that is almost an entire week in the stalls when they are used to traveling across acres every day and they are FRUSTRATED!!

So I let them out in the lower pasture for a couple hours while I scooped the poop and cleaned the barn... only to witness one of the funniest home videos ever. Sans video. Happy was running with a couple other horses around the pasture and came to the gate end, only to find the space running out quickly! So he shored up and tried to pull too short around, ending up slipping onto his side and sliding another couple feet (which would have been embarrassing enough in front of everyone... and in case you didn't know, they DO get embarrassed!) only to bump his beak into the water tub at the last... you KNOW I was laughing my ass off. Which of course meant he hadn't hurt anything but his pride in the process.















It is one thing to describe, it is another to understand how incredibly HILARIOUS it is to watch a horse do something silly, only to be caught ashamed about it, oh honeys I wish I could relay the amount of tears flowing out my eyes from laughing so hard!

The barn eventually became clean enough for the horses to be brought in, and Cat was there at the door surveying each one as I led them through to their awaiting food... she is such a good girl. Finally we walked back up to the house, me stumbling and inebriated, she picking her little pink paws thru the gravel and mud, as the first sparkling stars of twilight appear.

It was a good day.

Tell me, honeys...

Why is it when I decide to get more organized, things seem to get more complicated? Figuratively AND literally.

I straighten some things in my room; more stuff comes in from seemingly nowhere (when really it's just from the truck, or out of the horse trailer tack room and finding non-horsey items). I straighten things out in my closet, and find more stuff in my room that seems to just have a tangling orgy when I'm not looking!
When I need more light to see what the hell I'm doing, what used to be pleasant (my pink party bulb in my nightstand lamp) is suddenly nowhere NEAR enough.

Buddha might say that it is my WANTING of these things that brings their opposite.

Zen is being at peace with shadow and chaos as much as light and order.

I can see those things. But, BUT I really like finding things I'm looking for, and not pulling out cat's food bag, a sock, and a roll of TP when I'm only fishing out my laptop power cord... I want to be able to depend on things that I spend time and money into maintaining. I guess I really am attached to those expectations. Not knowing if your stove, your car, your PLANS are going to work... we really couldn't function if those things didn't go as expected at least some, or most of the time!


What if you had to? Our worlds get turned upside down all the time. If not us directly, then people we know. What if you lost your mate, then a month later your job, and then one of your cats, and your RV catches on fire... then your brother disowns you, and a longtime friend decides she likes her life better without you in it... and while you are moving you lose what's left of your belongings from the divorce... well, I'm being slightly redundant. That saga needed installations, for any who missed it the first time: parts One, Two, Three, Four, my Awakening and Hell Night.

We don't really OWN anything, do we, darlings!?

That is the test, when our stuff dispossesses US. That's when you know. What would you need for your basic survival? Your friends, family - who can you count on? It's not pleasant (especially in February) but think of it, honeys. Just for a moment.

Because of my experiences, and their proximity to each other, I feel aged, but closer to wisdom; jaded, but free. Free to see things as they really are, because what I wanted would have none of it! I'm not talking about wanting a diamond ring, or a kitten, or a house... I took Sheryl Crow to heart: "It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got!" ~That was me! I was satisfied.


Whether jaded or free (or both?), I know now that the future, much like the silhouettes of those giant trees across the street in the evening fog, is only lovely because it's edges are still fuzzy.


(P.S. ~ I know that sounds fatalistic. It really isn't supposed to be. What needs saying too is that the rest is up to YOU!)

Valengine's Day

OK, so Valentine’s Day is coming. And it can’t be over soon enough for me!! Now before you go making up your mind that I’m some kind of feminazi, or just someone who doesn’t get anything for this holiday, hear me out!

So every day after New Year’s – and some ways before even – we have to endure commercial after commercial (get the not-so-indirect point there!) on TV and radio, billboards… and if you’re like me, and happen to not own a TV and listen to your own CDs in the truck, and are lucky enough to be spared the billboard scene, you probably still will visit a grocery store and get hit in the face with a million of those floaty heart balloons and more pink flowers than your optic nerves can process.
Shameless, I tell you!

And what are they all hocking? From the side of the road even (in case you are one of the evidently MANY suckers who either forgot—or refuse—to put any thought into the gift or the meaning of this day) where you can find limitless rows of identically stuffed cellophane blobs full of…

And yes, this is my point… Chocolate, flowers, candy, bath foof, even silky robes and fluffy slippers, maybe a cute stuffed animal—are these the ingredients that apply to our population? NO!!

When do you ever see pre-season tickets, beef jerky, baseball caps, magazines, leatherman tools, maybe even fishing poles and bait happily wrapped in camouflage plastic? Do they even make cellophane decorated with camo?
How is this day supposed to be anything other than Make Your Vagina Happy Day? It is completely geared toward the fluffier parts of us.


Think of it—chocolate to elevate that snappish, foul, after-work mood, soft fluffy things to tame the nagging tongue because you know you didn’t take out the beer bottles like she asked you to, and happy bath stuff to keep her occupied for a while so you can actually do what you’ve always wanted after your day at work: to rest in the quiet, maybe sit with your socks on with your pants unzipped on the couch, and nibble on cold pizza while perhaps flipping through the channels with the remote all to yourself… Ahhhh!!!

Well, there it is. Now I guess I can see why it is some people still go for this stuff. If I think about it on that level, how it may actually be more manipulative than I first thought, how maybe it’s all a ruse and WE are actually the suckers—I may even get a bit upset… if I could only muster up the will after using my chocolate-covered fingers to find the faucet through all this foam, and turn off the bath water…

Egads, I've been AWAY!!

It has been a TERRIFIC year for me so far, honeys, tho a tad chasing my tail it seems... I haven't read you all in such a long while it may take me a WEEK to catch up. But I will.

I have been a bit miserable at home but things are changing. In the meantime, while I concoct a story for you all, I will leave you with this bit of peace: