Got new glasses. I can see! It is awesome to see the print on the boxes at Wal-Mart. Unfortunately I have not seen Mr. Owl in awhile because I could not see him. I have vision again. I'll update immediately when I see him again. If you don't have a clue what I am talking about one of my earlier blogs is sure to include information regarding Mr. Owl.
Life is strange. Life is challenging. Life is a gift. Life is a two-edged sword! Life is a trip. Life is short. Life sucks for an hour, exhilarates for an hour, bores me for an hour and so on and so forth. Life is fragile. Life was a magazine. Bravo to life!
I cut the grass this afternoon. The backyard was a jungle. Now my body is asking me what I was thinking yet my mind is at peace as my hard work made a difference to our home. I know, what do you care, right? I'm wondering that myself. Just writing about me cutting the grass. YAY! Big deal! People do that sort of thing all the time! Small successes count!
Late for bed, as usual. My large kitten, emphasis on large, is vying for my attention by biting at wires under my desk. Do you have a tangled mess of electrical cords, computer cords, recharging device lines, etc. under your desk?
Speaking into an abyss as there has not been a comment on any of my posts in a long, long time. If I yelled "hello" into this blog I would get an echo in return. Hello, ello, llo, lo........!
I think five minutes is up. Probably more. I dunno. Peace out!
Friday, May 31, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Ignorance is bliss! Awareness brings responsibility!
Recently I made a decision to begin a free course of studies provided by the Voice of Martyrs (VOM). They are a Christian organization who draw attention to the martyrdom of Christians throughout the world. This topic has drawn my attention from time to time. I admit I avoided looking too closely at any data or listening to stories of Christian persecution. I knew the moment I began educating myself I would also become responsible for my knowledge. I also knew that I have not, to my knowledge, suffered so much as a breath of persecution as an American Christian. Viewing videos and learning the extent of persecution in other parts of the world drops the scales from my eyes. What I would look away from, avoid when presented with it, I now can see.
The suffering I have learned of in the short time since I began these courses is overwhelming. I remember going to the Grand Canyon as a teen-ager and looking at the vastness of the canyon. I remember looking down into the canyon as I stood behind the safety of a fence. With growing awe I realized that my mind did not have the ability to perceive the depth of this magnificent Grand Canyon. My vision saw the depth. My mind could not encompass what my eyes transmitted back to it. About half-way down is where my mind stopped and I found myself unable to relate to the reality of that great vastness. So it is with the reality of the persecution of Christians around the world. I read the words, watch and listen to the videos, absorb the statistics yet I cannot relate to the reality. Perhaps this is why I was drawn to pursue these courses from VOM. Perhaps it is time to study, listen, view, pray and understand the truth of persecution.
I anticipate to hold this pattern of distancing myself from the reality for awhile longer. After that my normal reaction is anger fueling a desire in me to conquer a reality I cannot begin to accept. Some time will pass and I will allow the truth of martydom and persecution to settle into my psyche. I will allow myself to identify with the truth and then I will ask God what He will have me to do as a response to my identification.
The pursuit of knowledge can be a dangerous business. It can alter our world in small and large ways. Once the scales fall from our eyes and we see what has been hidden we are responsible for that knowledge. May God help those suffering for His name's sake tonight!
The suffering I have learned of in the short time since I began these courses is overwhelming. I remember going to the Grand Canyon as a teen-ager and looking at the vastness of the canyon. I remember looking down into the canyon as I stood behind the safety of a fence. With growing awe I realized that my mind did not have the ability to perceive the depth of this magnificent Grand Canyon. My vision saw the depth. My mind could not encompass what my eyes transmitted back to it. About half-way down is where my mind stopped and I found myself unable to relate to the reality of that great vastness. So it is with the reality of the persecution of Christians around the world. I read the words, watch and listen to the videos, absorb the statistics yet I cannot relate to the reality. Perhaps this is why I was drawn to pursue these courses from VOM. Perhaps it is time to study, listen, view, pray and understand the truth of persecution.
I anticipate to hold this pattern of distancing myself from the reality for awhile longer. After that my normal reaction is anger fueling a desire in me to conquer a reality I cannot begin to accept. Some time will pass and I will allow the truth of martydom and persecution to settle into my psyche. I will allow myself to identify with the truth and then I will ask God what He will have me to do as a response to my identification.
The pursuit of knowledge can be a dangerous business. It can alter our world in small and large ways. Once the scales fall from our eyes and we see what has been hidden we are responsible for that knowledge. May God help those suffering for His name's sake tonight!
Monday, May 27, 2013
Been Gone
went to Virginia to attend my oldest grandson's high school graduation and triple loved it because i have three grandchildren so it is triple love and then you add my daughter and her husband and it is triple plus two love. i could add more because i did receive a bunch of love and hope i gave some also. great week-end. left friday and came back today, sunday. short and very sweet trip. i love virginia. my family lives in the country. i mean, really...in the country. beautiful green trees and pastures with light green grasses, honeysuckle aroma that went straight to my head triggering years of memories of the scent of honeysuckle. virginia red clay, gravel roads, country air, the works. can you tell i enjoyed it?
home now and up way too late for my own good but i didn't want to go to sleep before writing a bit.
a man i care for very much is fighting for his life at the VA hospital. he is having dreams or visions of beautiful mansions. he tells his wife they are not visions or dream. they are real and they are too beautiful to describe. he says there are no words to describe their beauty. he is in a va hospital and in a hospital room but he sees it and exclaims how beautiful the room is and tells his wife how beautiful the room is to him. one foot here and one foot in heaven. i am so grateful he is seeing beauty and is not afraid. he is an awesome man. we all love him very much!
night!
home now and up way too late for my own good but i didn't want to go to sleep before writing a bit.
a man i care for very much is fighting for his life at the VA hospital. he is having dreams or visions of beautiful mansions. he tells his wife they are not visions or dream. they are real and they are too beautiful to describe. he says there are no words to describe their beauty. he is in a va hospital and in a hospital room but he sees it and exclaims how beautiful the room is and tells his wife how beautiful the room is to him. one foot here and one foot in heaven. i am so grateful he is seeing beauty and is not afraid. he is an awesome man. we all love him very much!
night!
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Just A Little Something....
http://youtu.be/M9K7mlpgUJ8
Please listen. The rest of this post will make ever so much more sense.
Meet Arrogance and Ego
Listening to a few songs from way back in the day when my mind was under the influence of, well, more than a couple of things. I was 17 when I heard the song I have attached. I was gone...way gone on a drug trip that lasted 13 hours. Yeah, you are right! I should have known better. Good Day Sunshine has been a part of me in an intrinsic way since the day I heard it playing when my own brain did not know me. Writing is about truth either in your face or disguised in stories born of truth. This writing today is the truth. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Behind a mask I hid
myself. Behind that mask
was another and another
and another.
But the truth came crashing in
One day
Despite my clever disguise,
The truth came in.
C'est moi mon ami!
You've been found!
Please listen. The rest of this post will make ever so much more sense.
Meet Arrogance and Ego
Masters of Disguise
Behind a mask I hid
myself. Behind that mask
was another and another
and another.
But the truth came crashing in
One day
Despite my clever disguise,
The truth came in.
C'est moi mon ami!
You've been found!
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
It's Me!
Yesterday I quoted Mr. Sponsorpants who has a blog that I follow regularly. Today I am myself. "Ms. Smartypants" comes to mind as a fair moniker for me. A main trait of mine is known in varying circles as "the gift of blarney". I can spin a tale, trade sarcasms with the best of the sharp tongued devils I have met and, on many an occasion, appear to know far more about a subject than I actually know. I know enough to give me the threads of a conversation which coupled with my gift for gab fools some of the people some of the time. There is a saying used in a group I attend. It goes like this: "I am frequently wrong but I'm never in doubt." Voila! C'est moi! (For folks who did not 'parlez the francais' in high school the interpretation, southern style, is "that's me folks!")
Desperate for a change of topic the frogs singing around the swimming pool tonight are loud enough for me to hear in my bedroom. The impact lessens as reality demands that I remind the reader that I live in an aluminum condominium or mobile home or trailer depending on preference. The walls are thinner than in a "real" house. I love the smugness of folks who think trailers are not real houses. Mine has real people in it. Real pets dominating the environment. Real furniture. Real relationships. Real food. It can be seen using Google Earth. How real does a house need to be to qualify for the "house" honor. Yes, I know that the big, bad wolf could huff and puff and blow my house down faster than a brick house or a sturdy home made of wood. If a wolf did blow it over would he be blowing over less than a house? I can hear you suggesting that I am confusing "house" and "home" with each other. I have a home in my trailer. I do not have a home in a house. Why is it that a bit of shame haunts me when I say to someone that I live in a trailer and in a trailer park? I know a woman who, after years of knowing me, still looks at me as if to say, "You poor thing." My first instinct is to punch her in the nose to deflate her a bit. My second instinct is a wee sense of shame as if I have made an unforgiveable mistake by virtue of my residence. I finally coped with this woman by removing myself from her circle of friends. Her house sits on the side of a golf course and has a lovely yard and a beautiful interior with deep carpet and expensive furniture she bought in her first marriage when she was wealthy. I like it. I won't lie. I don't want to live there nor do I envy her but I can be honest and tell you that her house is lovely and in a lovely neighborhood.
Time to switch subjects. Oh how I do ramble on about one thing or the other. I worked today. I work from home. I am a customer service agent using a telephone and computer from home. I like the work and the flexible hours. I am beginning to notice the personality differences of customers associated with the company that is hosting their conference. Financial companies tend to have participants who are nice but easy to frustrate. Fast food companies have many Hispanic managers. Customers who call in that work for auto part companies are friendly, kinda down to earth in their responses. A demographics of sorts is developing in my mind based on my interactions with customers who work for different types of companies. I spend an average of 45 seconds on line with each person. Those short periods of time spread over a length of time develop discernible patterns, predictable conclusions that I draw from while answering calls. It is not my imagination. A true call center agent with a curiosity about people and a head for drawing conclusions from multiple sources of data can infer with a high degree of predictability how defined groups of people will respond on the average. Or, to keep it southern, "Folks is folks." It is a "fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly" parallel.
Putting on the brakes now! Preparing to close out. Building the courage to face a sink full of dishes, two bossy cats and a litter box. Might watch Criminal Minds and learn how make-believe psychotics kill people. Might come in handy if I ever want to be a make-believe psychotic. "Back off 'varmints' I'm a make-believe psychotic with an inferiority complex. Them's the worst kind!"
Sweet dreams!
Desperate for a change of topic the frogs singing around the swimming pool tonight are loud enough for me to hear in my bedroom. The impact lessens as reality demands that I remind the reader that I live in an aluminum condominium or mobile home or trailer depending on preference. The walls are thinner than in a "real" house. I love the smugness of folks who think trailers are not real houses. Mine has real people in it. Real pets dominating the environment. Real furniture. Real relationships. Real food. It can be seen using Google Earth. How real does a house need to be to qualify for the "house" honor. Yes, I know that the big, bad wolf could huff and puff and blow my house down faster than a brick house or a sturdy home made of wood. If a wolf did blow it over would he be blowing over less than a house? I can hear you suggesting that I am confusing "house" and "home" with each other. I have a home in my trailer. I do not have a home in a house. Why is it that a bit of shame haunts me when I say to someone that I live in a trailer and in a trailer park? I know a woman who, after years of knowing me, still looks at me as if to say, "You poor thing." My first instinct is to punch her in the nose to deflate her a bit. My second instinct is a wee sense of shame as if I have made an unforgiveable mistake by virtue of my residence. I finally coped with this woman by removing myself from her circle of friends. Her house sits on the side of a golf course and has a lovely yard and a beautiful interior with deep carpet and expensive furniture she bought in her first marriage when she was wealthy. I like it. I won't lie. I don't want to live there nor do I envy her but I can be honest and tell you that her house is lovely and in a lovely neighborhood.
Time to switch subjects. Oh how I do ramble on about one thing or the other. I worked today. I work from home. I am a customer service agent using a telephone and computer from home. I like the work and the flexible hours. I am beginning to notice the personality differences of customers associated with the company that is hosting their conference. Financial companies tend to have participants who are nice but easy to frustrate. Fast food companies have many Hispanic managers. Customers who call in that work for auto part companies are friendly, kinda down to earth in their responses. A demographics of sorts is developing in my mind based on my interactions with customers who work for different types of companies. I spend an average of 45 seconds on line with each person. Those short periods of time spread over a length of time develop discernible patterns, predictable conclusions that I draw from while answering calls. It is not my imagination. A true call center agent with a curiosity about people and a head for drawing conclusions from multiple sources of data can infer with a high degree of predictability how defined groups of people will respond on the average. Or, to keep it southern, "Folks is folks." It is a "fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly" parallel.
Putting on the brakes now! Preparing to close out. Building the courage to face a sink full of dishes, two bossy cats and a litter box. Might watch Criminal Minds and learn how make-believe psychotics kill people. Might come in handy if I ever want to be a make-believe psychotic. "Back off 'varmints' I'm a make-believe psychotic with an inferiority complex. Them's the worst kind!"
Sweet dreams!
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Quoting from a blog called Mr. Sponsorpants because I needed to see it often. Oh yeah, I am a sober alcoholic hence the AA part.
Other people's behavior -- either today, or in the past -- no longer dictates my behavior.
If there are monsters in your past, you can be free of them forever...
if you learn to (truly) forgive.
The book "Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA's Big Book) observes, first and foremost, that "...the world and its people are often quite wrong..."
It then goes on to suggest that the people who wronged us were themselves spiritually sick.
It can be a long hard journey to true forgiveness sometimes, but in my experience, that belief is where it starts.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Call it envy or call it jealousy!
Envy and jealousy seem, to me, to be two sides of the same coin. I am thinking of these two words because overhearing conversations at church today I heard families talking about their vacations either upcoming or recently taken. I felt a pull of angst in my heart. I adore to go on vacation to a beach area about just south of us and have not been in two years due to finances. I have not taken a "stacation" which is my fault. Until today I did not even give that a thought in my head. To be honest while listening to the description of a week's vacation to the mountains for one family I know I simply was green with envy or jealousy...call it what you will...you get my drift.
Interestingly enough I am completely in love with this little motel that sits just off the ocean and is about a 3 hours drive from our home. It is a practical motel for fishermen and their families. There is a pier adjacent to the motel. Separate owners but certainly nicely co-joined. The rooms are simple, made to accomodate sand and the detritus of going to and from the beach. The walk to the beach is ridiculously short. It is a no-frills place. I love it. We go, when we go, in the fall or early winter. No tourists, quiet, sliding doors open with the breeze from the ocean bearing the sound of breaking waves into our room. A small balcony with a couple of chairs overlook out to the ocean. Well, enough of that because the irony of this awesomeness is that I am, at heart, deliriously in love with the mountains of North Carolina. I crave to move there having lived in those mountains as a young girl. My sister lives in the mountains. Visiting her is bitter-sweet as I hold back tears born from the deep yearning I have to stay and never leave again and, yet, the motel on the coast of North Carolina entrances me.
But, at this present time, my finances do not favor travel of any kind other than local comings and goings. So I listened to the several conversations going on about vacations and lusted after the idea of one, As a recovering alcoholic I know full well that expectations of any kind are a set-up for misery in my mind. My best times have been largely unplanned, spur of the moment choices. Given time to think things through I spin tales in my mind; grandiose, dripping in unrealistic expectations. This thinking sets an evil trap for me as there is no chance that my expectations are realistic or attainable in a real world. Best for me to plan quickly and execute before I trail off into a dream world.
My envy and jealously were a part of me that began to effortlessly spin a tale to trap myself. I am the spider with her web and I am the insect caught in the web. I don't want to go to Dollywood for vacation or to go at the peak of tourist season. I forgot that this morning as I spun the web I stuck to in my head.
Interestingly enough I am completely in love with this little motel that sits just off the ocean and is about a 3 hours drive from our home. It is a practical motel for fishermen and their families. There is a pier adjacent to the motel. Separate owners but certainly nicely co-joined. The rooms are simple, made to accomodate sand and the detritus of going to and from the beach. The walk to the beach is ridiculously short. It is a no-frills place. I love it. We go, when we go, in the fall or early winter. No tourists, quiet, sliding doors open with the breeze from the ocean bearing the sound of breaking waves into our room. A small balcony with a couple of chairs overlook out to the ocean. Well, enough of that because the irony of this awesomeness is that I am, at heart, deliriously in love with the mountains of North Carolina. I crave to move there having lived in those mountains as a young girl. My sister lives in the mountains. Visiting her is bitter-sweet as I hold back tears born from the deep yearning I have to stay and never leave again and, yet, the motel on the coast of North Carolina entrances me.
But, at this present time, my finances do not favor travel of any kind other than local comings and goings. So I listened to the several conversations going on about vacations and lusted after the idea of one, As a recovering alcoholic I know full well that expectations of any kind are a set-up for misery in my mind. My best times have been largely unplanned, spur of the moment choices. Given time to think things through I spin tales in my mind; grandiose, dripping in unrealistic expectations. This thinking sets an evil trap for me as there is no chance that my expectations are realistic or attainable in a real world. Best for me to plan quickly and execute before I trail off into a dream world.
My envy and jealously were a part of me that began to effortlessly spin a tale to trap myself. I am the spider with her web and I am the insect caught in the web. I don't want to go to Dollywood for vacation or to go at the peak of tourist season. I forgot that this morning as I spun the web I stuck to in my head.
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