Rainbows

After the storms, fast and fierce...

I am grateful for the rainbows.

Outdoor Meditation

So, here I am, home alone again.  I was determined to sit down and write something - perhaps even something brilliant.  I sat down...nothing.  So I decided to think on it.  I went outside and did some outdoor meditation, otherwise known as mowing the lawn.

No really.

And instead of percolating brilliance, my head filled with random thoughts, none of them really brilliant, however, the lesson in them worthy.  When I say random, I mean it... completely random...

1.   No matter who you become, who you were in school will forever define you in some people's eyes.  It is these people who are truly sad.

2.  I am still really angry with my brother, and I dislike the allowance of the anger.

3.  I really don't want to be bored on a long weekend.  I must find something to occupy my time.

4.  I can count my true friends on one hand, and have a handful of strings to let go of in the other.  I heard a quote this week that was something like "we hold on to people that treat us poorly"...true story, and guilty as charged. I seem to return to the one way street like a familiar path to home.

5.  I really wish I had the affordability to just get on a plane and fly away for the weekend.

6.  I need to buy myself some new summer clothes.  Maybe a sundress or two... and those shorts I saw.

7.  I really want a slurpee.  Really.

8.   And maybe some popcorn.

9.  I want Reese Witherspoon's hair...and someone to style it for me every day.

10.  Bug spray and sweat... ick.

Return to 4. 7. 1. 2. 3. 2. 1. 4. 5. 4. 7. 7. 8. 7. 9. 7. 7. 7. ..


So, here I sit, with my slurpee, and fresh cut lawn, and a handful of random thoughts, all of which I am grateful for.

Witherspoon movie and popcorn? Yes, I think so.

Let It Play

Another school year has whispered goodbye.

How is it that time has gone so fast?  I blinked and they are grown.  Too cool for hugs in the hallway, friends and new journeys...

It's going too fast...

Please slow down.  Not yet, not yet, not yet.

But the wonder of the humans they are becoming, it's impossible to hide my proud smile behind the loving tears.  Their hearts are golden, their ambitions are abundant.  

They have turned cacophonies into symphonies... let the music play on. 

Let it play.

Boobies, Boobies, Boobies

I have to say I love those of you that stop during your day to share a moment with me, and read.

But I get a kick out page view numbers doubling when there's the word "boobies" involved.

I really do love boobies.

I really do...

Grateful :)

p.s. help kick cancer's ass, make a donation, get educated, and check your boobies!

Friendiversary & Boobies

This friendship...right here... I am grateful for every single day.

Today, is their 8th Friendiversary.  It makes me miss school friends... Like my Carly-Sue.

Today was their day.  They shared a strawberry trifle, the got their toes painted at the salon, and they shared these bracelets - which is a story all in it's own.

These are Keep-A-Breast "I Love Boobies" Bracelets in honor of the year they have been through together. There were hoops to jump through, and very loving hearts that got them here, and they are the only two girls in Canada with these special treasures.  Grateful, grateful, grateful.

A wonderful day, for two wonderful girls, with a friendship that is off the hook, and cultivates my own gratitude for my friendships.

Friendiversaries...Grateful.

Stuck

I am stuck.

In this big, fat place of suffocation.

I am stuck in indecision.  I am stuck in a creative fast hold.  I am floating in this purgatory of what might be, what should be, and what will be.

I am always in a place of cultivating gratitude; to be grateful for what I have, but there is a weight lately. The weight of myself, stuck in this place...This realization of how far away from me I really am.


Stuck. Unable. To. Break. Through.



Life getting in the way of my life.  (I am grateful for this moment of realization that has become my motto).





Overtired.

In need of a quiet place to quiet my mind.

Seek direction, listen for answers. 

Be grateful.

Move forward.

Try to make sense tomorrow.

Summer Solstice

Even after all this time, the Sun never says to the Earth, "You owe me."
Look at what happens with a love like that.
It lights up the whole sky. 

Summer has broken through, and Solstice has wrapped the day in glory.  Grateful. 

A Melodic Memory

Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience,
your eyes have their silence. 
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which I cannot touch, because they are too near...

...or if your wish be to close me, 

I and my life would shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully, everywhere descending. 

I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;

only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses.

Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

~E.E. Cummings

with gratitude and love...

Something Beautiful For Hearts

While I am stifled in my own writing, I give up some gratitude for beautiful people who can speak what's been on my mind.  I read this quote in another blog I love.  It's exactly right.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

and try to love the questions themselves.

Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be

given you because you would not be able

to live them.  And the point is to live everything.

Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then 

gradually, without noticing it, live along some

distant day into the answers.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet

Bears In The Sky

There were bears in the sky that morning, as I drove to work.

Little stories being told in the clouds above us all.

And just for a minute, I stopped to listen. 

Grateful.

Do you hear them?  Do you see them?

Good Fathers

Alright, this whole writing block is starting to irritate me.  I didn't even take the time yesterday for the most apparent post - gratitude on Father's Day.

But on the bright side, instead of writing about it, I was busy cooking for it, or should I say, them.  I cooked a dinner for the good fathers in my life.  My dad (parents) joined us for a lasagna dinner and a good visit.  Without on shadow of a doubt, I am most grateful for my father, the lessons he has taught me, and his love.  But more than just my gratitude for my own dad, I must say that I am filled with gratitude for the father of my children, for the man that shares my home and heart and my children, and for all good fathers out there.

Thank you to all of the men who have stood their ground as a parent, for the good of their children.  Thank you to all of those who have filled your hearts with unconditional love for your children, and hold their best interest in the highest regard.  Thank you to any of you who have ever struggled, yet never let it affect your love for your children.  Anyone can be a father, but it takes a great man to be a Dad.

Belated Happy Father's Day to all the deserving fathers in my life, and in yours.  May your treasured ones have as much gratitude for you as I do for mine.

I Just Don't Know

Sometimes, like today, I go back an read some of things I have written.  Often, I find myself lost in moments of my own brilliance.  That's not to "blow my own horn", I am just often intrigued sometimes that I accomplished writing something so utterly profound and self aware.  It almost sounds like a different person pouring out through the words.

For three days I have been not been able to write, let alone express anything.  Something's got to give.  I have been caught up in the end of another school year, another time period just flashed by, and I can't comprehend how it all happened.  I am dumbfounded, and silenced, it seems by this point in my life; a time that I am having difficulty understanding just how it all happened.

And so...this silence and contemplation may continue, and maybe, I might find gratitude in it.  And maybe it won't, and if it doesn't, I will be grateful for that too.

The fact is... I just don't know.

One Word Wednesday

Family

Change

"If nothing ever changed...



                                             














                                                                    ...there would be no butterflies."

Grateful.

Procrastination and Avoidance

I am doing some work...personal life work.  I have discovered (in some other personal life work) the cause of a big stress in my life - procrastination and avoidance...

It's like bitch and bitchier.  They are like the bully duo in junior high that don't let you walk down the hallway without almost having a stroke from anxiety.  Here's the deal... I procrastinate, which fills me with guilt, that results in avoidance, that results in anxiety.  Evil bully bitches.

The ironic part is - I learned looooooooooooooong ago how to deal with bullies, and here I am, allowing myself to be bullied...by me.  How did that happen?

So, in the work, I have learned to face it (whatever IT is), get it over with, and move on.  It conquers the anxiety, it fights the demon, and stuffs the bully in a locker.  

I stuffed a bully in a locker today... and I am grateful.

Maybe tomorrow...I could get my mail... maybe.

Maternal Deception

By the time I was thirteen, I had experienced my mother being in the hospital for surgery three times (? I think). The first one I remember was an appendectomy.  I think I was not much more than five or six.  I remember bits and pieces of that time with remarkable clarity, much of which, I am not happy to admit, dates me quite a bit.

I don't really remember her being ill, and as a mom now, I know exactly why.  Mothers are amazing liars when it comes to protecting their children.  We hide hurt, we hide pain, we grin and bear it, and despite our own good health, we are too often "fine".  This raw maternal deception never ends.

Regardless, she was ill - very ill in fact.  It would have been about 1982 I guess, and appendicitis was still a pretty big deal then - not all hospitals dealt with it.  Apparently she was ill enough to be hospitalized at our local hospital.  I remember being grocery shopping with my dad and the grocery store received a phone call from the hospital.  I remember hearing my dad being called over the store intercom.  He took the call, and we promptly left the groceries behind and rushed to the hospital.  When we got there, my mom was crying, terrified, as they were rushing her to Edmonton for immediate surgery.  She was going in an ambulance, my dad would follow with us.

I don't remember much else.  I remember a traffic jam on the way there of some sort; I remember that it was dark when we were driving.  I don't remember much else, until the next day, maybe two days later when we went to the hospital to visit.  Even then it's sketchy.  The memory is 30 years old.  I remember the pink house coat she wore, and the IV in her arm, and how when we had to leave that night, she tried to fight tears... and was unsuccessful.

That's the part I remember about every other surgery as well - the tears when visiting hours were over and we had to leave her.  My mothers tears stick with me.  Her fear sticks with me.  Her love sticks with me.

Fast forward to present day, where I am an adult, and she is still my mom, and she is still very good at protective deception.  Today, she is very ill, and has spent most of the day in an emergency room before being admitted to a hospital in Edmonton.  There were no ambulances, just a dad-ulance.  There were no emergency phone calls, just informational ones.  There is worry in my father's reassuring voice.  And I can guarantee, right about now, there are tears.  There are my tears of worry, being almost two hours away, knowing all about her tears as night falls.

Being a mom...well... sometimes, is hard, and right now (as I held my tears until my children were in bed), I am grateful for the protective deception I learned - masterfully.  I will worry enough for us all.  But this is a whole new experience - being a mother myself, knowing what she is hiding, and worrying, excruciatingly, about my mother, and trying to keep my children from worry - worry about both her, and their extraordinary compassion for me. (p.s. I have raised extraordinary children with hearts as big as the moon)

I know what she's hiding, I know her tears... and I know there's nothing I can do to change it.

Would it be odd to have gratitude for common, fixable illnesses?  My knot at the end of this rope is knowing the eventual outcome is a good one, where all of this will be but a memory a year from now.  Although the lesson in anxiety will stick with me - just like her love does, and I will chalk that up to one more similarity I have to my mother.

Love and light, prayers and faith, and of course, gratitude.

In My Way

There it is again.

The haunting.

The lingering.

The silent I-don't-even-know-what-it-is.

I haven't had any desire to write for some time, which is why I have watched my blog project fill with pictures.  I guess, maybe, I should be grateful for "you say it best, when you say nothing at all".

I am at a loss for things profound.  I feel like I am...just taking up space.  It really pisses me off.  I am missing purpose...again.  I feel like something's missing.  I am facing brick walls of life that get in my path, and seem so inherently permanent.

Dreams are becoming chaotic again, like purposeful yelling in my subconscious.  I feel pulling and resistance, and need, and too many people telling me "no".

Once again, I find life getting in the way of the way I want to live my life.

I wonder if there's ever a point where one stops wondering what's around the corner, or even where that other path leads. 

Butterflies and Blue Bells

I went for a Nature Walk with the grade sixes this morning.  What a beautiful experience.

What a lovely morning for a walk... grateful. 

Taking Time...For The Good Of My Health

I am grateful for moments where I am afforded the luxury of taking my time.  Today those moments came in a grocery store of all places.

I am grateful for being able to stop and read labels, and for the ability to ignore the irritated stares of people shopping around me.  I want to know what I am putting in my body, and it's okay if I want to read the darn label!  (p.s. grateful for organic food!)

I am grateful for a renewed desire to try new things, and for forcing my pallet out of the box.  I am also grateful for the effort to eat a little cleaner, and live a little healthier; for those who inspire me, and for loving (most) of my reflection in the mirror.  It's not about being skinny, it's about having a healthy body, and cultivating energy.

And next week, power plate rehab for my knees and muscles begins...maybe an ice climb can be on the agenda by the time the snow flies!

Misty Morning

There was a wild, sonorous thunderstorm here last night.  The wind whipped at the houses, grabbing at the windows, turning whispers into screeches (much like the ache in my head last night).  The thunder crashed around us, rattling the Earth.  Rain drenched the thirsty Earth.

This morning... there is calm.  The air is filled with mist, thick with fresh renewal.  The skies are still full, clouds lingering, hiding the sun still.  But the calm... oh, the peace of it.  I stood on the front porch this morning, breathing in the heavy air, letting the mist fall on my skin.  It was a quiet caressing this morning and I am so grateful for moments that make me stop, and breathe.

And so I did.

Grateful.

Something About A Kitten

My kids and I volunteer at a local animal shelter.  The lessons it has taught my kids in itself is a point of gratitude.

But after a long day...

...there is just somethin' about a kitten.

Sighing in Peace

At the end of a great weekend, I am content and sighing with this smile of peace.  And I really don't have a lot to say about it.  I am grateful for my moments.

For reading in the sun, and walking around Bond's Pond.  For home cooking, and filling my family with love.  For family smiles, and for being behind my camera, and for laughter.

Just when I felt my mood waning, along came this wonderful weekend... and I am grateful.

Lilies

I am admist a wonderful day.  I slept in - wonderfully slept in.  I woke up to a cool breeze flicking the curtains out from behind my headboard, caressing my face with the aromatic loveliness of a summer morning.  I laid in it for almost an hour before I moved.

I was coaxed out of bed only by an urge for raspberry tea and cereal.  I stayed in pajamas for just as long as I wanted.  I meditated outside in the sun, fussed over my yard, and enjoyed the sunshine - where I was pleasantly interrupted by two of my favorite people.

They brought me lilies.

                                 and more lilies

                                                                                             and more lilies.

I have spent my afternoon preparing pizza dough....

and had just enough left over for a dozen buns.

My house smells amazing. 

And I am filled with gratitude.