Author: admin

Normalize

“Normalize seeing your intuition as divine protection, mismatched vibrations as divine separation, rejection as divine redirection, sudden inner knowing as divine intervention, and walking on eggshells as a divine sign to walk away. Always trust in the perfection of divine timing.” – Inner Practitioner, X

Our middle son is in our home city this month, working out of a local hospital, as he finishes up medical school. We decided on going out to brunch this morning, after his dad was done biking, our son was done washing his car and I was done writing. So, they must be hungry men. I’m the one holding the show up. I hope that you are having a great weekend friends. See you tomorrow!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

25. Who are your favorite writers?

Facefit Friday

Hi Friends!!! Happy Friday!!! Happy Best Day of the Week! On Fridays, I keep my thoughts on the surface. On Fridays, I focus on stuff that I like. Fridays on the blog are called “Favorite Things Friday.” Recently I read an article that stated, as you age, you are either more prone to wrinkling or to sagging. Now, I have both issues, but I believe that I am more prone to sagging, particularly in my jowls area. I am loathe to try something potentially expensive, dangerous or disfiguring, at this point in the aging game, but I did spring for a $20 Jaw Exerciser by Facefit on Amazon. Keep your expectations in check. This is not a substitution for a facelift, but I do believe I have noticed a subtle, but positive difference and it is easy to do the exercises when I am doing things at my computer, such as writing this blog. I also try to smile more frequently in my older years. Smiling is the cheapest, most effective facelift around!

Smile! It’s Friday! Enjoy your weekend! See you tomorrow!!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

419. Do you tend to “live” in the past, present or future?

Thoughts for Thursday

+ From 2009-2018, the United States had 288 school shootings. Mexico, the next country in line for most school shootings during that time period, had 8. (CNN) Since Columbine, the United States has had 416 school shootings (Washington Post). Let me state the obvious: currently, whatever we are, or we aren’t doing, to address this problem IS NOT WORKING. What are our priorities?

+ Speaking about priorities, I was listening to a podcast yesterday and the podcaster (Jessica Lanyadoo) made an interesting analogy. She said that our ideals are the starry skies, but our values are the street lamps that light the way. Our ideals are the utopian vision of the world we would like to see. We don’t have enough power or control to turn the whole world into our ideal utopia, but we can change the light bulbs on “our street lamps.” We can make sure that we are spending our time and our energy on what we most value. When we do this, we have created a lighted path that leads the way to making footprints towards the starry skies of our ideal world.

+ There is common terminology used to describe penises: “showers or growers.” (I’ll let you google that for the more detailed explanation.) Recently, though, I heard the terminology used to describe people. “Showers” (not like rain “shower”, more like going to a broadway “show”) are the people who razzle and dazzle you from the get go. They are entrancing, charming, interesting people whom you almost instantly like, and whom you feel attracted to from the start. On the other hand, the “growers” are people who “grow on you.” The “growers” are people whom you aren’t sure how you feel about them, but if you give them a few more chances to get to know them, you start to discover their wonderful intrinsic qualities. They are like mystery packages that when you start unpacking them, they reveal really nice surprises. Showers put it all out there instantly. Showers are flowers in full bloom. Growers are flower buds. We need both kinds of people in our lives. However, in my personal experience, it’s often the “growers” who have turned out to be the steadiest, most impactful relationships in my life. Showers sometimes have the tendency to burn out fast. Showers sometimes turn out to be fake flowers.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2020. Do you like photography or videography better?

Here She Comes

I’m sorry for the delayed post. It’s been a morning of distractions which is not ideal for a distractible person, such as myself. I’ve shared the following excerpt on the blog before, a poem most often attributed to Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea, but it is too poignant not to share again. I first read it when a friend sent it to me in a sympathy card after the loss of my beloved grandmother. I usually send it on in almost every sympathy card that I ever send because it has always brought me such comfort. Our son’s girlfriend just lost her beloved grandmother and so once again, I texted her this passage today:

“I am standing upon that foreshore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says “There! She’s gone!” “Gone where?” “Gone from my sight, that’s all.” She is just as large in mast and spar and hull as ever she was when she left my side; just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at that moment when someone at my side says “There! She’s gone!” there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout “Here she comes!” And that is dying.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

512. Have you ever carried a torch for someone?

Herd Animal

“Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they escape them, worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come.” – Seneca (one of the more well-known Stoics)

It’s so true, isn’t it? Have you ever watched a special on wild animals, such as caribou or gazelles? You see the cute little horned/hoofed animals, hanging out with their herd, peacefully eating some greens or drinking some water out of a lake or a stream, and then the camera zooms in on some big cat, like a lion, in prowling mode, watching intently, just waiting to strike and suss out the weak animals of the herd, like babies, or the old or infirm members of the group. And then you feel that distress and panic, filling your chest cavity, as you notice that a few members of the herd, have stopped what they are doing, and they are flicking their ears, looking and listening intently, and then suddenly and almost instantly, they bolt, the entire herd starts galloping . . . . . the terrifying chase is on, and the herd is going at a frantic pace, their galloping hooves pounding the earth with an intensity of nails being hammered deeply into the ground. And even though you know that big cats have to eat, too, you feel so stressed, and also hopeful that the herd will escape harm. Either way (depending on the wild animal special you happen to be watching at the time – I’ve seen it go both ways), the chase usually does end rather quickly, either with the predator giving up, or with the predator achieving its one and only kill, out of the hundreds that it could have gotten from the big, full, hefty herd. Wild animal specials are probably the only truly realistic “reality TV.”

Still, it never fails, once the imminent danger ends, the herd quickly goes back to chomping grass and drinking water. They seem absolutely nonplussed about the trauma they just encountered, nor worried about the next trauma that is guaranteed to happen down the line. The herd of hooved animals trust their instincts to help them in dangerous moments, and while they remain vigilant, they also remain calm.

We, too, are animals. We often put too much emphasis on our thoughts and minds, and not enough emphasis on honing our instincts. Interestingly, it’s our thoughts and minds that can become our worst predatory enemies, because they keep us hostage and hyper-vigilant. They keep us in “danger mode” all of the time. This makes us exhausted and feeling spent, and then not always clued into what is “real and actual danger” and what is not.

Don’t be your own predatory Big Cat. Be a gazelle. Be a giraffe. Know that your fine-tuned instincts/intuition will kick in when real danger presents itself. Learn to trust that inner knowing, more than you trust those thoughts that keep you prisoner in either a regretful past, or a fearsome future. Chew greens. Drink water. Be peace.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

123. Would you rather own a private jet or a luxury yacht?

Monday – Funday

credit: @woofknight, X

This Monday actually is a fun day for a lot of us, isn’t it? Happy Labor Day!

Epiphany I had recently when I was out with friends:

On Friday, we were out to dinner with dear friends whom we have been friends with since college, and I was saying something about us being middle-aged. “Are we still middle-aged?” my friend asked. “Of course we are!” I barked furiously, but the truth is, I really didn’t know. It was the first time that I had dared to ask myself if I had gone past middle age. So, the next morning I googled it, and it seems that most officials consider middle age to be 40-60. We are in our mid-fifties, “So yes, Virginia, we are still middle-aged.” We are upper-middle-aged, but we are middle-aged.

Epiphany I had when talking to my aunt:

Also on Friday, I had a nice catch-up call with one of my aunts, and we were reminiscing about her aunt (my great-aunt). Aunt/Great-Aunt was quite the character. She lived her life exactly how she saw fit, and she made no apologies about it. She was colorful, artistic, and had interesting, unusual opinions about everything. We all adored her and we often talk about her still, even though she is long past. One could write a book about her, but to give you an idea, Aunt/Great-Aunt had a parakeet that she taught to say “The Gettysburg Address.” Anyway, my aunt was saying that Aunt/Great-Aunt and her husband were definitely “eccentric.” I agreed. My aunt suggested that perhaps she and I had also inherited a little bit of the “eccentric” gene. I agreed. My aunt then said that her friend always says that “eccentric” is just a nice word for “crazy.” We laughed, but I thought to myself, “Call me “Eccentric” or “Crazy”, it doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Epiphany I had this morning:

At the end of my life, I want to be having such a good time with living, that I want to be like an over-excited kid on a playground or at the community pool, having an absolutely fabulous time, and thus becoming instantly furious and devastated that I am being called to go home, even though in my played-out exhaustion, going Home is probably exactly what I need.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

973. Do you prefer movies with-or without- special effects?

Soul Sunday

Good morning!! Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Have a happy last third of the year! I’ve really enjoyed 2024 so far. Have you? I had a delicious morning of rest and respite that I really needed. I wish for you, exactly what you need this holiday weekend.

Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Here is my poem for today:

There’s a game I play,

where you try to fill an empty space

with dropping fruits, coming from the sky.

The big fruits, are huge and exciting,

but they take up space quickly.

Leaving a lot of blank empty space around,

Only a few rare large fruits of plentifulness

The tiny beautiful berries that drop from above

Make room for more and more and more fruit,

Efficiently filling the space with as many tiny driblets of joy

That can be squeezed into where they are being dropped,

Leaving no empty space for anything but colorful fruits of joy.

Perhaps it really is the little joys that fill us up to fullness,

A constant trickle of happiness is true and renewable satiation.

Whereas when we rely only on the big harvests of happiness,

We leave a lot of empty space to be filled with sorrow and fear.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

999. How often do you self-reflect? (um, like always)

Turning Point

Between the last day of August and September there is a blank page:

a note in the margin

a daisy

and the ticket

for a turning point. ~ Silvia T

Gregorio Catarino posted this on his X account this morning. How thought provoking! We are about to enter the final third of the year. Where’s your ticket to your turning point going to take you?

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2811. What gives you an eerie feeling?

Friday Frolics

Happy Friday!!! Happy Holiday Weekend!! I love Fridays. Friday is my favorite day of the week. Fridays are for my favorites on the blog and today’s favorite is one of my absolute favorite rabbit holes that I followed down this week. (The internet was definitely created by and for, really insatiably curious, distractible people such as myself) So this week on social media, I saw the hilarious post above, of quite the unusual obituary. It made me giggle. I like original, unusual people who can make fun of themselves, and who can laugh in the face of death (and who are animal lovers).

Of course, I wanted to see if this was a real obituary (and so did many others, it seems). It is a real obituary. Holly McCray Blair was a real person. She is still getting all sorts of messages posted on her memorial wall, to this day, 4 years after her death, by people who didn’t even personally know her, because her obituary has gone viral on social media. Interestingly, a lot of people wrote “GNU Holly Blair” on the page. Hmmmm. What does GNU stand for? Is it relating to the animal? Is it an acronym? “Good night, Universe” “Good kNowing U” Those were my guesses and they were wrong. My rabbit hole continued on to this carrot of information:

“Sir Terry Pratchett, an English author and humorist, invented in his Discworld comic fantasy book series (a fictional computer code):

  • G: send the message on
  • N: do not log the message
  • U: turn the message around at the end of the line and send it back again

so that the book character’s son’s name John Dearheart is memorialized forever as long as the “clacks towers” (a telegraphic device) is still in use. Chapter 4 prologue of Going Postal (a book in the series) says:

“A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.”

Terry Pratchett (the guy who Holly Blair wanted to drink beer with, after she died) died, himself, in 2015.

What better way to remember the beloved inventor of this fictional system, then, than “GNU Terry Pratchett”?”

(the above information about Terry Pratchett was taken mostly verbatim from a Reddit article)

Do you have anyone who needs to be GNU-ed? Speak their names this weekend. Keep them alive.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2841. Is there anything you are really stingy with?

The Follies of Freedom

It’s a really awkward transition in life, when you all of the sudden realize that you can, and you should, put the focus back on yourselves, after raising a family. It’s all new territory. We raised kids for 26 years. (Our four kids are all adults now, ages 20-28) Our primary focus, decision making, and financial commitments were all centered around our family life. And now, just as our adult children are embarking on their young adult lives, we are also embarking on the same kind of freedom of choice, similar to what they are experiencing. And so are our friends and our contemporaries.

It’s fun and inspiring to watch our friends and family and contemporaries in their surprised giddiness, enjoying their new found freedom. It’s enlivening to watch “our people” move to new states, move to different houses, take vacations by themselves, put less focus on their jobs, enjoy rekindled or new-found romances, and focus more on their own re-discovered hobbies and interests. It’s delightful to get to experience our adult children as interesting adult contemporaries with their own lives. It’s a relief to no longer have the everyday family responsibilities, and to no longer have to make choices about other people’s lives, besides your own lives.

In my experience, it takes a while to realize that you are “there.” You’ve crossed the finish line, only to enter into your second lap of life. You feel a little guilty and giddy and amazed and grateful and confused and daunted and relieved. It’s a heady mix.

We parents are so used to taking care of other people other than ourselves, it feels strange to no longer have to do this. (I write this realizing that many of us empty nesters are having to caretake older parents, and sometimes grandchildren and so this freedom of responsibility is not quite over for many. I don’t mean to come across cavalier.) Still, when you realize that you do have more freedom than you’ve had for a long, long time, you almost feel incredulous. You almost feel like you need permission. I have the same feelings now that I had when they handed us our first child, and they wheeled me out of the hospital door to our waiting car. “Really? We can just take this baby home? You’re entrusting us with this whole other human life? Really?” I have the same feelings that my twenty-something kids seem to have, when it dawns on them that my husband and I have no “real say” (nor a desire for a “real say”) in how they choose to live their adult lives. They’re adults. The keys to their lives have been handed back to them. They seem puzzled, pleased and scared. This freedom of choice is exhilarating and a little fearsome and daunting at the same time. If I were a mind reader (and we mothers really are kind of mind readers of our kids, right?), I could see their thoughts as being this: “Oh wow, what if I make a wrong decision? This is all on me now. Where do I even begin?”

Facts are, the best part of this second go-around of freedom in our adult lives, is that we better understand, that there really are very few “wrong” decisions in life. When one of my friends recently purchased a second house, I asked her if she was worried about making the wrong decision. “No,” she said. “If it isn’t right, we’ll just sell it.” Those of us in these middle years, have usually bought and sold at least one home in our lifetimes. We get that there will always be places to live in and different environments to experience. We middle-agers get that even our worst decisions, have provided us with guidance and wisdom to put towards moving forward on our paths. We understand that nothing is truly insurmountable because we have a lot of experiences under our belts, that once seemed insurmountable, until they weren’t. Perhaps the only wrong decisions, are not making any decisions at all.

If you are feeling like me, and you feel like you almost need permission to be a little “self-focused” in this new phase of life, here it is: Permission granted. Great job on raising your family! It is not an easy task. You did well. It is time to celebrate “you”. It is time to love on “you.” It’s time to wind the circle of focus back on to your own life, and to rekindle the parts of you that may have gotten lost or neglected along the way. Go for it! As the favorite Dr. Seuss book goes, that so many of us read to our children, so many times, “Oh baby! The places you’ll go!”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2677. Do you think you can learn something from everyone you meet?