Day of Rest

"Gratitude is the power cord to the universe. Plug it in and enjoy the gifts you are bound to receive." ~Tony Robbins, tweet

Getting ready for a big day tomorrow

It's been a v. busy day. I've been getting ready for the Front Royal Air Show tomorrow. I found out about it on Sunday at church-in-the-woods & decided to get a booth. Chiro-sister & I are doing seated massage, as well as selling her glass pendants, & my CD's. I got new packaging for Healing Labyrinth Path--the CD covers look AWESOME!!! National Media Services really came thru. I sent final approval for the CD on Wednesday, and I picked the CD's up this afternoon. How cool is that?

In addition to seated massage, Virtual Massage, & beautiful jewelry, I also made some labyrinth crafty things:

Finger labyrinths on steno pads; great to keep by the phone.

Finger labyrinth rocks. Painted with dimensional paint for the labyrinth part.

So I'll be at the airshow on Saturday & will prolly be tweeting. Will post again on Sunday. Here's wishing Blue Skies to everyone. :-)

End of Summer

We are into my favourite time of year: Autumn. Crisp breeziness through glorious colours. We've had a bit of a drought and my 7 miles of gravel-and-dirt road is mostly dirt. If a truck is ahead of me I have to slow to 15 mph. Ah, but it's so pretty:

It's a dusty Christmas . . . er, shrub!

I would prolly not appreciate it as a hiker along the road, but I accept it as part of the journey out & back. I'm reminded of something John Morgan said to me in a phone convo:

I wish it was the way it isn't.

So it's dusty. It's changing seasons. I can lament or I can accept. One is closed, one is open. One is rigid, one is flexible. One rejects, one accepts. Lamenting prolongs our misery. When we have our focus on what we think should be, we miss what is right in front of us. Worse, we miss the opportunity to shift into a different awareness. Acceptance is the first step to awareness.

This is the part where Mum says I sound more and more like John's Grasshopper Notes. Perhaps. :-) Back tomorrow with some cool labyrinth projects I've been working on. In the meantime, may your day be the way it is.

Eddie Iz STILL Running

Eddie's road.

Eddie Izzard, British comedian, has been running a marathon a day for charity. I've been following him on Twitter. Today is his 38th marathon. 38th!!! WOW. Running is kind of like gardening to me; I like the idea of it. Nevertheless, inspired by Eddie, I decided if he could run a marathon a day, I could at least give it a go to my postbox. [Pause for laughter. Yeah, you know who you are--Laughing People]. After all, it's a mile round trip. I'm calling it my Postbox Marathon-a-Day. Lessee. I ran last week. Down that hilly part of the road. Yay, me!

Back to Eddie: you can follow him here & get all sorts of wonderful random shots of road signs, & knackered Eddie pix. He posted an oozing toe photo with a plea not to let it be in vain. Mum saw it & said, "That's disgusting--did I show you that picture of peppers?" WHAT? "Seeing his toe just reminded me." You can donate here.

Communion Conundrum

When I was at the annual church-in-the-woods service this past Sunday, I realized that I couldn't receive communion after the service had started. The bread may be unleavened, but it's still bread. I couldn't very well go up and whisper to the minister, "Do you have any gluten free body of Christ? No? Then I'll just have the blood. Thanks, very much." I managed to chat with her after the service and she said that I could bring my own cracker-whatnot next time. I have these horrible GF rice crackers--horrible! And then I thought, well, there's the GF ice cream cones. And they're more like the communion wafers. Wouldn't that be funny? Take this ice cream cone, it is my body which was given to thee. Eat it in the remembrance of me.

Oh the flames are licking my heels. Back tomorrow. ;-)

A Different Kind of Labor

This Labor Day weekend, Mum & I watched The Business of Being Born, Ricki Lake's documentary on birthing in America. I feel so fortunate to have grown up with a midwife mother. Through the years, there was a steady stream of pregnant mothers getting my mother's wise counsel. Mum was licensed in VA, so on occasion, mothers from WV crossed the state line so that they could deliver in our home. If we were lucky to be there, we were invited to attend the birth. Birth was a relatively calm, quiet, natural event. "Babies come when they're ready," Mum says. "It's when you interfere with nature, that you have problems."

30% of births in the U.S. are C-sections; more in certain hospitals. Often they are performed based on convenience; convenience to doctors, mothers, husbands. A C-section is MAJOR SURGERY! And it has become so routine that it is considered normal.

There's a wonderful hormonal cocktail of oxcytocin, etc. that mother & baby receive thru the birthing process. These biochemicals create bonding. That final push when baby enters the outside world is the euphoria that erases the labor part of labor. Does this happen with a C-section? I do know that C-sections prevent all the dermatones from getting stimulated as they do in a regular delivery. So this is what I'm wondering: How does this affect the mother-child bonding? How does it affect the neurological development of the child? Could C-sections be connected to the rise in learning disabilities? The more you interfere with nature, the more problems you have. Something to get curious about on this Labor Day.

Day of Rest

Mum & I are going to the annual Church-in-the-Woods service. Sorry no post yesterday, I went to a flea market. Back tomorrow with a post of all my fabulous finds.