Sunday, January 31, 2010

Day of Rest: Snowy Pix

Yesterday at the early stages of the blizzard:




Ruthie & Albus who's not a fan of his coat!

This morning:

Blue Sky!

Ruthie's year-round tree ornies.

Back porch.

I watched the snow rise on this table all yesterday! Really? More?!

'member the Mother Mary Statue Rescue? Here she is this morning. Back tomorrow with M&M Monday! :-)

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Flood Aftermath

Here are few pix after the flood:



Soupy & wet.

This gives you an idea of how high the water was.


Still high, but the floating dock is safe!


Mmmm...river mud with the water pattern.

Snowy pix on the way . . . HAPPY Saturday! :-)

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Doing my part for nature

When we had The Confederate Snowstorm of 2009, I got a birdfeeder when I was getting milk with the rest of civilization. So I hung it up and none of the birds were coming to the feeder. Until just recently. I have some really striking cardinals but I looked out the window on Saturday to see this:

Really? A wood pecker? Cool!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

More Flood Photos

Yesterday's sunrise. :-)







Look!



A beaver!



What a wacky winter! Blizzard . . . flood . . . locusts & pestilence next? Hahahaha

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

FLOOD

Usually I go for a walk to my post box in the afternoon. Something prompted me to walk down in the morning yesterday . . . we had a tremendous amount of rain last night. It poured. The water was a bit high:


See? Overall Beach is flooded.

Overall Creek, rushing into the river. It sounded like rapids!
Acting like a real river.

I got to my postbox--jackpot! Birthday cards--YAY, me! A couple hours later, I was tippy-tapping away at the computer, and Millie is staring out the window. Periodically, she gives a woof.


Sometimes she barks at cars or airplanes. Not this time. Yesterday, she was barking at the river. I stood behind her and you could see the movement of the river. Every time a tree or something floated by, she barked. Then Maggie joined her:


Like TV for dogs.

The river had risen a bit so I walked down . . .


Well this puts a damper on going into town today!


You can't see them, but in the photo below, across the river, 2 people on a 4-wheeler had gone along side the river down a ways. They just barely made it back; in that 10 minutes, the road had already been covered by water. That's how fast the water was rising.

So I went back to the house. And then! More woofing and I looked out the window and it seemed that there were more trees floating even faster down stream. Was that a refrigerator I just saw? So I walked back down to the river:

WOW!

Neighbor Dave at a safe distance.

Definitely not going anywhere!

Monday, January 25, 2010

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Day of Rest: Maggie's Haiku

Dirt nose ring
shedding hair
gentle snores

Friday, January 22, 2010

Retro Labyrinth

Ophe, who hosted chiro-sister's baby shower, had this really cool cart from the 60's:

LOOK! A labyrinth! How cool is that?!

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Chicken Foot

I have special memories of playing dominoes every weekend with Dogfood Bob & his wife, Gloria. Just recently, I taught Fisherman Willie's wife, Sue, to play. The dominoes go from 6 down to blanks. You begin the game by each drawing 7 dominoes. You play 7 rounds, beginning first with the double 6 domino. You can't play any other dominoes until that double 6 is played. Sometimes we end up pulling all the dominoes from the drawing pile until at last! There it is. So you start with 6 & each round begin with the next number below; 6, 5, 4, etc.

When a double is played, it's call "Chicken Foot." And you have to have a domino with that number on it. You need a total of 3 (like a chicken foot) before you can play other dominoes. So we started the game, and played all the way . . .

Notice what's wrong, here? We played until Sue pulled the double 6 domino and realized that we'd played the 6's against the double FIVE domino. And neither one of us realized it! :-) Good times!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Haiti

Haitian goddess of Beauty & Love, Erzuli's veve (symbol).


There has been much speculation as to why the earthquake in Haiti happened. Beyond the geological reasons, tectonic plates and whatnot, people want to ascribe an esoteric reason based on religious logic. There are idiots saying it is God's punishment, atheists who argue that if there were a God, why would He let this happen? As if human logic can explain something like this. As if that would make the hurt go away.

When I first went to study with Dave Dobson, he said, "Give up the need to know why." We've been conditioned by psychology, to believe that if only we knew why a thing happened, we would be able to heal or move on. Dave said, why keeps you stuck in content. Knowing why doesn't heal it. You may even have all the reasons why you do what you do. It doesn't stop you from doing it. If you are waiting to know all the reasons for something, you will stay waiting. Would you rather know why, or would you rather heal? So much of our misery is the need to know why something happened.

Add to this the expectation, reinforced by Newagers, that only good things should happen to us. Therefore, bad things happen because we attract them and it's our fault. As if. All we have to do is affirmations, meditate, be vegetarian--whatever, and our lives will be perfect. Caroline Myss points out that the church teaches us that if we pray enough and we're good enough, that we have the expectation that bad things won't happen and if they do, somehow God is punishing us.

I do believe that what we resonate with, we attract. But it's not a conscious resonance. There is more at play--our soul, our patterns, our life contract.

I was recently whining to John Morgan about a part of my job that I dislike. After I ranted, he quietly said, "But isn't that a part of the job? To separate it out as not a part of the whole package is to annoy yourself." To separate heartache and illness and death from life means that you are denying 50% of life. It is all a part of the package. I'm reminded of Caroline Myss saying, "People say, I never thought this would happen to me. Well, who did you think it would happen to?!"

This is what we signed up for, but somehow we think it shouldn't be the way it is. As John likes to say, "I wish it was the way it isn't." We prolong our misery when we fight against reality. It is what it is. Now what?

Back to Haiti: Before the earthquake, how much did you even think about Haiti? How much did you care that their biggest import is used clothing from the Goodwill? Did you see their living conditions before the earthquake? Right. Out of every disaster--natural or otherwise, we get to be reminded that the most important things in life are not things. We are all on this planet together and we're not getting out alive. My prayer for Haiti is that with new resources going to rescue, resuscitate and rebuild, that they will come thru this with a renewed strength & hope for a better future.

P.S. I'm linking to the Cakewrecks Doctor's Without Borders page, for donations.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Baby Shower

Chiro-sister is expecting her first child, & this weekend was her baby shower. Here's Ruthie with a cutout of Ellen, who is in the middle of campaigning for world domination. You can go to her website & down load her picture & then take pictures with it in different locations.

Hahahaha in utero

Ruthie's been feathering the nest. Here are a coupla pix from the baby's room:

One of Ruthie's stained glass pieces. You can't read it, but
there are little tiles on there that say, "LOVE YOU."


Chakra flags & a Ganesh print.


The party was at friend Ophe's. And this gives you an idea of how uber-cool Ophe is; how awesome is this?

Shouldn't everyone have a disco ball in their living room?


Ophe's stained glass piece from Ruthie.

Everything was gluten-free, of course. Mum made one of her famous carrot cakes & left me to decorate. She gave me baggies of nuclear colours & no cake decorating instruments. I had planned on doing something wrecky, especially after this divinely-timed, baby shower Cakewrecks post, but it really did end up wrecky. No one commented on the mispelling. They must have politely thought I didn't do it on purpose. Here's the explanation for sprinkles. No explanation for "red hearts" except that the baby is due on Valentine's Day. Awwww!

Is it a boy? Girl? We don't know yet. Unlike many
designer births, it's going to be a surprise.


The daughter of Ruthie's belly dancer teacher made her a crown with metallic pipe cleaners:


This was the funniest thing, & I wish I had it on video. Ruth kept saying, "Wait--how do these work? It's a pacifier? It stays on your finger? What?"

Since Ruthie is waiting to find out the gender of the baby, Ellen put on her Psychic Hat. She thinks it's a boy. Then she told me the lottery numbers for next Thursday.

I predict you will have an easy birth, says Ellen to Ruth.

Monday, January 18, 2010

M & M Monday

In the a.m. I let the girls out & then follow after I've put the tea kettle on and put on my boots and other arctic gear for braving the elements. I walked out on the back porch and the girls had found a new spot:

Can you see them?

See the bear? Kidding. No bear!

Different angle, they are up behind the labyrinth.

Here's Margaret getting snarley with Millie trying to come into the living room. They've never done anything more than growl and snarl. Millie in particular, just sounds like she's chewing on gravel. It's funny when it's not scary.

But then she falls asleeeeeeep:


I had a quick vizzie to Richmond, so the girls went to Mystic Pet. as soon as they saw me putting the ramp up to the car, they came--well, I would say "running," but it's more like fast-walking!


Yay! We're going to Gareth & Lena's!

They adore Gareth. Lena said that she was calling them to come to her and they just looked at her. Nothing. Then Gareth comes in and they snap to attention. "Come on, you two!" And off they go. I think he loves them as much as I do. :-) Back tomorrow with pix from chiro-sister's baby shower.

P.S. Here's a different M in honour of MLK Day. Here's the whole I have a dream speech. Inspired. Eloquent. Brilliant.