Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Snow Day

I am sure people who reside east of the Cascades will shake their heads in disbelief at my reveling in a snow day. The fact that we would refer to a day of three inches of snow as even a snow day will crack up many, but yes folks today was a snow day in western Oregon.

Classes were canceled, buses ran late, and kids throwing snowballs in the street at 7am actually woke me up this morning. Last night was Viking Hour, but they were on their own, and voice less, because I spent the entire time up on the hill trying to get our back up generator online. After having gotten my key stuck in the door (a feat that took me almost an hour to rectify, I got us back up and running, just in time to send the Viking Hour students home.

The mercury dropped to the low 30s, the wind whistled through the trees, and I bundled up next to my wood stove with a steaming hot cup of tea before going to bed.


It snowed continuously this morning and through out the day. Then by four (for the most part) the snow flurries and showers were over.
But not before I had to go out and crack my hose in half to spray off the satellite dish so we could continue airing The Music of Your life, and ABC top of the hour news.

A process that ...
1) I was not dressed for
2) proceeded to spray myself in the face
3) drench the side of my head
4) and the worst part - freeze my fingers off in the ice cold water - but I got the music back online.



I returned back inside as the snow began to come down harder, I warmed up my fingers with some warm water - ouch. Then when outside with my camera and shot this of Bubba and his snow dog, Jonah (who is usually the Radio Dog - but hey, it was a snow day.)


Sith,
Cele

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Talk Thursday: Wide Open Spaces

That is about how my sinuses feel right now - wide open dried out/congested can't breathe spaces. I refuse to get sick, so at the first hint of someone around me having a cold I start hitting my system with vitamin-C and an Airborne chaser – more Airborne than C in truth. And you say, “But Cele if this works so well why are you fighting Ducky’s cold?” It’s simple folks, I probably had it before he kissed me and then complained of feeling the onslaught of a cold. I truly believe in the force that is Airborne, if you don’t have it you won’t feel it if you get it. If you do have a cold it will minimize the effects of the cold. So right now I feel my sinuses, yesterday I felt tired, and Friday it was a headache. Ducky on the other hand (who gets drenched while working in the rain) was much sicker than I, but not as sick as he could have been. And yes, I can posit ad nauseam the benefits of good sleep, good diet, meditation, spiritual health, and Airborne. I have to say my eyes do hurt.

It is raining in Oregon, oh come on, don’t feign surprise, I love the rain it means I get to be a bit more lazy. And it gives me more time for my newest hobby – Beading. Lynblossom beads, I will have to pick her brain, maybe check out her designs. I’m starting off fairly easy, three strand bracelets. My friend, Beady Dee Dee, got me into this just by inviting me to a trunk sale at her home. The first time I suckered myself into buying a dozen dragonfly buttons. Why, I have no clue except that I’m a compulsive shopper – it has to be. I think I can make pins out of the buttons, they’re kind of cool, but I’m not sure how to make them a bit more exotic without making them gaudy. Maybe I should just go with plain and call it good.

Anyway, Beady Dee Dee makes her own, very expensive, highly cool glass beads. I am especially drawn to her sugar coated beads – she heats her glass, forms her beads, cools then slightly and then coats them in glass bits. They are AMAZING. I want want want, and until I have less money concerns I will continue to want want want. Beading, the possibilities are as wide open as my sinuses. So at her second trunk show I found these fabulous cobalt glass beads with brass-gilded edges. My mother loves cobalt. At the bead store I matched cobalt oblongs and drops, brass seed beads, and other bits and bobs with the intent to make my mom a three strand bracelet for Christmas. Time will tell.

I’ve already bought Tiger’s eye seed beads (thanks to the second trunk show), onyx and snowflake onyx seed beads, again thank you Beady Dee Dee. So now I have a minimum three bracelets that are on my horizon – Christmas time is coming. I can see bracelets in my head for Psam, my mom, Pinecone, Miseray, Rose, and Renaissance Woman. Crap even for my grandmother. But I’m enjoying it, my worry, that again I will burn out on this craft before my supplies are all used up. Other than that (nod to topic) the possibilities are wide open.

I am also focusing back on my meditation and sight. It’s a long story, very long, very confusing and even blurrier. But I am trying to refocus me, to figure out my gift and to tap into it – this sounds like mumbo jumbo to you all, Psam, possibly Sid, and somehow I know Lynblossom will understand what I mean. Maybe one will have an idea where I should go. The possibilities again are (nod nod) wide open. As am I to suggestions. Until, peace my friends and happy beading.

Sith,
Cele

Saturday, November 06, 2010

Talk Thursday: Story of my Life

Totally stymied by this topic, what is so special about me except that I am, but then so are you. I am blessed, but then so are you. Really, you just need to stop and count your blessings.

November is dark and gray, even a bit wet. I like November, less for me to do. So I guess I must say the story of my life includes the comment I am a closet lazy ass. By late winter I will be itching to get back into my garden. Right now I’m just hoping for a few days that are dry and open to me so I can get my 160 tulips into the ground before hard rain, ice, snow, wind and whatever pins me happily indoors with hot cups of steaming tea, a fire burning in my woodstove, and bowl week.

When I was a child we didn’t do a lot as a family, then my brother died. My family suddenly realized that life is too short, precious and meant to cherish and be lived – preferable with each other. We suddenly started taking vacations and often if we weren’t hiking we were fishing. Then I moved to Florence, grew up and didn’t fish for a very long time. Psam use to love to fish as a kid until I pretty much ruined that for her by making her clean her own fish. I felt it only right that if you are to fish, you should be able to clean said fish so you could eat said fish. I wasn’t fishing at the time, now she doesn’t fish at all (even though she use to love it) but Burp fishes, Ducky fishes, and now I fish again. Oh, my gosh I forgot how much I enjoyed the peace of fishing. A nice lazy pursuit. Apparently a river runs through the story of my life.

I know an ocean does. I have lived within 16 miles of the Pacific ocean for all but three years of my life – 9 months in Portland (then it was within sixty miles) and two years in Germany (let’s see – three thousand miles, five thousand miles, how far inland is Bolander, Germany?) I guess I was a ways from the ocean. When I was ten I wanted to learn how to surf. Ack, my mother turned white in fear. I’ve been swimming since I was about two, my mother a former lifeguard made sure all of her children learned to swim at very early ages. We then took lessons every summer and then we took advanced swimming and life saving classes. So yes I can swim. My mom said no. My grandfather, thinking himself to be quite wise (and yes he was he just under estimated my resolve) said I could swim to the boats in the bay and back to prove I was strong enough to pass his next test. No sweat. Then he told me if I could swim across the bay to Balboa Island and back (this was in the days before the eternal red tide) with no problems I could learn to surf. That task was history by the time I was ten, eleven max. I use to love to surf.
Yes, the Pacific Ocean roars through my life’s story. Psam, the water dog, on the other hand was lucky to survive my attempts to teach her to swim. Thank you Mr. McKibbon.

Words, a lot of words, few friends, and a lot of chocolate and diet pills are in the story of my life. I’ve always loved words in the books that I cherish, the songs that I sing, the poems I write. I may walk away from one of those but I always walk back. I still have the first poem I remember writing somewhere… it was about taking acid and the specter of death. I go back to my favorite books by Jane Austen when my poetic voice goes quiet. The songs of Crosby Stills, Nash and Young still stir the embers of urgency in my heart. Embers that are fanned into flames by the songs of Dave Matthews’ Funny the Way It Is, Nickelback’s If Everyone Cared, Everlast’s What It’s Like, and TLC’s Waterfalls – yes I can go on. Music is the soundtrack of my life. If you have been in my life for long, you are a song.

Diet pills, I’ve always though I was fat. I look back at my high school, even junior high, pictures and I know I was pretty darn skinny – but I had a bubble butt. Do you know how impossible it is to tuck in a bubble butt? Impossible. And cute bubble butts turn into wide -fat – old lady butts. So I’ve tried most diets known to mankind. Well accept the Atkins diet. My I gained a lot of weight (sixty three pounds) when I was pregnant – I was so big my stomach was four feet two inches around – ack, beached whale. When I moved to Germany my ex-husband use to make me take (yeah, as if I fought it at all - I was fat and desparately wanted to be thin) Antiadiposidium X-112 – pure caffeine – can only imagine how that wound me up. I didn’t lose that much weight. It must have been all that chocolate (Germany has great chocolate and pastries.)

When I was in beauty college (yes, I’ve done that, too) I was diagnosed with PMS. I literally went crazy about once a year, usually around the beginning of my second husband’s hunting season… which began in April with the Spring Bear hunting and continued through the beginning of December and the end of the autumn Bear Hunt. The made me take about a dozen things out of my diet
1) Chocolate
2) red meat
3) salt
4) dairy products
5) refined flour
6) refined sugar
7) nicotine
8) alcohol
9) coffee
10) fried foods
11) artificial sweetners
12) and almost anything prepared - you know canned foods, frozen foods - eat fresh.
– oh, oh avoid stress (yeah, like that is doable). I regained my sanity, lost about thirty pounds, and in the long run kept a daughter and lost a husband. My last bout with PMS came a month before I met Ducky – that was 18 years ago. Yoyo weight gain and loss runs through the story of my life. Now, I’m trying to learn to be happy with myself, grossly over weight.

So there, I am normal like you, I work at being unique, and I am pretty darn quiet in my old lady life. I kind of like it that way. And I apolize for not being more inspired for this post.

Sith,
Cele

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

ADHA America

First off I’d like to say this is my America too, WTF do you mean take “Our America Back?”

Second I’d like to say, “Idiots, it’s a WORLD WIDE RECESSION.” I apologize to you who realize this I didn’t want to shout but I’m frustrated, Americans seem so deaf. I knew that a lot was going to change to the opposite direction, but really it’s my country too and you never gave anyone time to fix anything that had been broken by those who went before and now the Headless Chicken Republic has given it back to those who helped break it in the first place. That being said, "Yeah, to all those who voted, whether you did as I or opposed."

What is it about Americans that it needed to be fixed yesterday? What? We’ve been in a worldwide recession now for over two years, but Americans only know they voted for change and damn-it they wanted it yesterday. Personally I know change and healing take much longer than a handful of months, it takes time, determination, and working together. I’ve seen little of that. Wait, I’ve seen nobody working together.

Katie Couric made this asinine comment about it being a good thing that when things turn around the new governors will get the credit. Idiot, governors have been working for months to get things turned around, if this happens it took more than new governors.

The catch phrases flying around tonight are driving me crazy, “Give the people what they want” (ha you idiots the people asked for health care reform, the spin from the talking heads and Republican leadership made my nose bleed.) “

A CBS poll asked, “Who do you blame for our current woes?”
1) Wall Street 55%
2) Pres. Bush 39%
3) Pres. Obama 6%
Obama? Really, people read. Bush? I’m not a Bush person, but in truth he wasn’t smart enough to get us in this situation, nor did he have near enough time- that doesn’t mean he didn’t aid the situation, but he did not create it. No, our current situation took years and years to develop, everyone that went before in the last twenty plus years has a hand in this dilemma, but most of all let us thank Wall Street and their enablers… They know who they are and “They” don’t read my blog. Thank God.

Hmmmm,
Cele