Yard Hunting

We are getting ready to go house hunting. We have been in this house for almost two years. It's not that we are unhappy with our home or this neighborhood, in fact, I doubt that I will ever find a house I like as much as I like this house. I picked this house for me, big kitchen and a heaven of a back porch.

Did I mention that my heaven of a back porch was pretty much our back yard? My lovely home is basically an over sized patio home. Perfect for my favorite activity: lounging around reading books, but not conducive to my family's active life-style.

As soon as we moved, our needs changed. First of all, my daughter developed an interest in basketball. She went from being anti-sports to a sportaholic almost overnight. This house has a sloped drive-way which left us no choice but to set up her basketball goal on the curb, which means that she plays basketball in the street every day. That's fine, because this street has hardly any traffic, but I would rather have a flat driveway for her 24/7 hoop shootin'.

Also, my youngest put on some weight around his mid-section and has become an avid gamer. This alarms me because I've never seen any of my children this sedentary.

Active families should be on the other side of John Stockbauer OR they should have an over-sized backyard.

More on Dreams

“Jaime had never realised that trees made a sound when they grew, and no-one else had realised it either, because the sound is made over hundreds of years in waves of twenty-four hours from peak to peak. Speed it up, and the sound a tree makes is vrooom.” Good Omens

I hate it when, in my dream, I am lying down or viewing the dream-world from my bed. Maybe it is another symptom of sleep paralysis, only instead of being totally conscious while unable to move my body, my unconscious mind is restricted by the placement of my physical body. How is that for a role reversal?

That happened to me last night; I dreamed that I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling. A vine poked through the ceiling and began to grow straight down to the floor as if the sun was below me and the sky was the earth. I was amazed in my dream that I could witness the growth of the vine. I thought that maybe this is what happens when I am sleeping – I go into slow motion as time around me goes into fast forward mode.

I saw that another vine was growing up from a pot sitting on the floor. The two vines stopped midway and began to spin around as if blindly feeling for the other. Finally, they connected and began to tangle and grow towards the right side of the room. The vine that had come from the ceiling suffocated the vine that grew up from the floor and this was very disturbing to me. The vine I had watched in amazement caused me to forget about the vine that I was to nurture. It was my fault and I felt guilt and remorse.

I’ve wondered if dreams are symbolic or if they are so literal that we are forced to give them too much meaning. I remember a dream I had as a little girl after a bout with a stomach virus. I was dreaming that my step-dad was chasing butterflies with a butterfly net. I emerged from that dream to my mother saying, “Tony (my step-dad) caught your bug.” That always fascinated me. Why, in a dream state, would my mind interpret the dreaded “pukes” as a beautiful butterfly? Literally, my step-dad had caught my “bug” which was symbolized as a butterfly?

I did go outside this morning to check on the landscaping. I often pull and redirect passion vines from roses, but this morning I attempted to pry tight tendrils away from my grapevine and ended up just yanking the aggressive vine out of the dirt. I had redeemed myself!

Which makes me wonder: What does poison ivy look like again?

Making Money

Yesterday, while I was washing dishes with the television tuned to TLC, my nine year old said, "Mom, we should build a machine so that we can make money."

"Really? What type of machine should we build?" I love it when children come up with creative ideas. Children are natural entrepreneurs.

"A machine that makes money."

He didn't want to build a machine that could do something useful and that we could sell, he wanted to create a machine so that we could print counterfeit currency. I assumed that he came up with the idea after the program about the man who had won five million dollars in the lottery. I guess, in his little mind, it would be easier to just print money than to win the lottery. The two are probably just as ethical, in his mind. Who knows?

I asked him what he thought would happen if we did print money. His said, "We would get rich."

I told him it was illegal. He said, "We wouldn't get caught."

"So, as long as we don't get caught you would be happy with printing money, even though it's against the law?"

"Yes."

I didn't judge. Mainly, because a part of me was busy spending...

A few hours later, I asked him again if he wanted to make money. He said, "We can't." I was relieved that he had come to that moral conclusion on his own without my help. Children are natural learners, after all. I was proud of myself for avoiding didactics.

I asked, "Why can't we make money?"

"We could if we lived out in the country."

The truth is, he has "made" money before. He turned our dining room into a restaurant and created menus for his customers and even "made" money so that they could purchase food. Does a restaurant like that exist? "Here's fifty Chili's Bucks, have a nice meal."

Now, isn't that the kind of person you would want "making" money; The kind of person who would give it to you?

Guess what this is:

Patchwork of Springs (not too silly)

Our Texas Mountain Laurel has been adorned in purple cascading blooms. The scent always takes me back to Southwest Texas State University (Texas State), as there was a long walkway seasonally walled by the lavender flowers. The trek to class was an event when the little trees were in bloom. When the air didn't smell like the river, it smelled like the grape flavored powder from Fun Dip and Pixy Stix candies.

The breeze brings the yummy fragrance into the house when the doors to the backyard are open. If I close my eyes I can imagine myself back on campus. I remember some of the characters I encountered on the way to class. I remember the frat guy who wore base; I remember the mean Prozac PETA girl, and I remember the fighting stallions.



I miss living in a place where you could safely, and without destination, walk from evening until sunrise, and where you could, without guilt and with a few new acquaintances, eat breakfast before finally going to bed. I miss the guy in the dorm beside ours who would play Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover” so loud that we could open our windows and hear the music as if it were playing on the stereo in our room.

I wonder why I was in such a hurry to get out of the dorms and into an apartment. Looking back, dorm life was the best part of college, though I hated it at the time.

I wonder what I was thinking when I chose a Saturday morning class as if I would actually attend a Saturday morning class. Only I can boast that a lack of common sense was the reason I failed Philosophy.

It’s amazing how a scent can gather up old memories and press them together at the folds. For a brief second I can see right through the fabric to all of my springs, but they quickly fade and wilt like the flowers on our Texas Mountain Laurel.

Saturday Silliness (dream)

Salvador Dali "Sleep"

The sound of thunder woke me up this morning. Remember that earthquake of a thunderclap? Anyway, I was in the middle of an audio-dream. Do you ever have audio dreams; the dreams that are more verbal than visual or emotional? It’s as if someone is talking to you in your ear - real time. It’s not always associated with a story or a plot. Sometimes, the words conclude a dream, like a punctuation. I don’t always remember the actual dream, but sometimes I will remember the parting words.

This morning my dream ended with a voice saying, “Some people wake up to light and some people wake up to wind…” just as the thunder was pulling me out of my sleep.

At first, I thought, “Silly unconscious brain! You forgot about how some people might wake up to sound!” But, after I thought about it, I realized that when you are experiencing something, it speaks for itself. The fact that it was happening to me completed the thought. “Some people wake up to light, some people wake up to wind, but you will wake up to thunder!” How cool to become a part of the narrative. Wait, I already was, it was I who was dreaming.

It’s very windy right now. If the wind woke you up, I guess you were one of the people who woke up late! Lazy!

Isn’t that fun? My dream made me didactic. =P

That concludes my little post on "Saturday Silliness." But, before I go, I have to share with you something my nine year old told me:

Last night, while watching a play put on by the junior high homeschoolers, I leaned over and whispered something in my nine year old’s ear. He put his hand up in front of my mouth and whisper-screamed, “Mom, your breath is burning my eyes!” Isn't that sweet?

It wasn’t onions, I promise, it was my menthol cough drops. I’ve been hitting the cough drops like an addict lately. I've been coughing for three to four weeks since the flu. Seriously, it was the cough drops!

P.S. Don't you think it's hypocritical of me, unemployed and all, to call someone sleeping in on Saturday "lazy?"

Unschooling Anthem (song)

Artwork by Amy Steinberg

I am fascinated with the unschooling philosophy. I think it is a nice compliment to my natural parental instinct: bossy control-freak. I guess I like to think that the unschooling philosophy balances me.

I would love to attend a conference like the LIFE ROCKS! Radical Unschooling Conference.

On their website they say that Amy Steinberg's song, "Exactly," from her album, "Must be the Moon," is becoming their anthem.

I always thought that the perfect song to describe this alternative educational philosophy was John Lennon's, "Imagine" or Pink Floyd's, "Another Brick in the Wall." Freedom is a big enough place for many anthems.

I wanted to share the song "Exactly" because the lyrics are amazing and part of the song reminds me of slam poetry. Slam poetry put to music. A worthy anthem.

Here is Amy singing "Exactly."




Exactly

i am exactly where i need to be
i need to be exactly where i am
i am a blessing manifest
i can undress the moment
naked time unwinds beneath my mind
and from within i find the kind of beauty
only i can find

i am exactly where i need to be
i need to be exactly where i am
i am surrendering so willingly
to be the perfect me inside this now
and truly how else could it be
destiny she blesses me
destiny she blesses me

when i try to fight or run
i only wind up back at square one
when i think i know what's best for me
fate she takes me back
to exactly where i need to be

i am exactly where i need to be
i need to be exactly where i am
i am divinely timed and shining brightly
yes i believe that there's a purpose just for me
yes i believe that we are light
and we shine infinitely

i am exactly where i need to be
i need to be exactly where i am
i am not aimlessly existing see
i am in perfect harmony with universal energy
and i am truly free when i accept my own divinity

look at me look at me closely
what exactly do you see
if you are paying attention you will now begin ascension of the mind
why, because if you look at me just right you will see a kiss
for it took a kiss to make this breath exist
the intersection of my mother's and father's lips
to touch twist and perfect what came next to produce me
look at me and you will see the breeze
the breeze it took to shake the leaves to make
my mother's hair move, my father dare touch it and say
please may i have a kiss
yes the breeze made me exist
and if you want to get even deeper into this
when you look at me you will see a cloud
the cloud it took to form the storm to shake the leaves to
inspire the liplock - yes a raindrop will pop up out these words
you heard me right
if you look at me close enough you will see a dark stormy night
and what is night without it's polar opposite of sunlight
so if you watch the way my hands sway
you'll see the light of day
and everyday is a testament to the sediment of the earth's core
it's ever spinning enormous force so if you look at me just right
you will see a spark of the source
but the most fascinating thing about this, and it's true
is that if you look at me close enough, you see you
it's only what you perceive how you believe the space between
you and me
that creates reality
so when i sing you can feel it
when i cry you can heal it
when i speak words you can be the words i speak by singing with me

peace love free
peace love free
peace love free

and when i am alone and full of fear
i just remember the rising sun always appears
everyday miracles that i see
well they take me back to exactly where i need to be


* * * * * *

I hope that you are exactly where you need to be!

Day of Wuv or Wust?

I was looking at some of the latest headlines from around the world and saw a few articles that I thought were very interesting. Apparently, some deeply religious men on the other side of the globe are protesting the infiltration of western "lust." Not our rated R movies or our Paris Hiltons, mind you, but our "lust" manifested in the shocking form of card stock folded in half with a red image printed on the front. Buildings and shops are being burned down in protest of Valentine's Day. “Death to those who would partake in this Western day of lust!” or something like that.


But, it’s not murder if they were lusting when we kill them, right? They were evil first? They started it by handing me this darn card with lacy looking stuff on it! Too girly! I guess no one over there wears pink to prove they are real men.


Maybe these deeply religious men have a point. As a child I would have identified with them. I don’t know how it was where you guys grew up but when I was a wee-Becca Valentine’s Day was not a fun day. I would have gladly faced death rather than the mortification of having to give BOYS cards with hearts on them! I remember holding the list of classmates in my hand and the humiliation and horror I felt as I imagined Shane or Mark getting the big “will you be mine” card. I was picked on enough as it was back in elementary school. Everyone called me “horse lady” and all the boys pulled my pigtails IF THEY COULD CATCH ME. I could outrun them all except for Anthony.


Anyway, the process of deciding who would get what card was a very intense time of strategic planning. First off, I would not hand out the cards that actually had the word “love” or “be my...anything ” on them. Those went to the trash can. Maybe I would have liked to burn the offensive cards in a public display of outrage like our anti-western pals. That would have been very dramatic! Nah, I was too mature for that.


I would have loved to throw some of these anti- ♥ -Day articles in my teacher’s face. Could you see little snaggle-tooth with her Pippy Longstocking braids (that’s me as a 7 year old) squeaking, “I will not practice this lustful tradition with you infidels!” to my elementary teachers? I wonder if they would have bought it.


Now that I’m older and more mature I enjoy a gushy card! Why can’t these men just be flattered and get over it? I did. It’s just so strange to me that on the other side of the world people are threatened with violence if they DO buy cards and flowers for their loved ones. There would be violence if my husband ever decided to NOT celebrate Valentine’s Day in the form of flowers and chocolates. I think I lust after chocolate? Is that a crime somewhere? Probably.


Not only are Valentine’s Day cards and the practice of this "day of lust" seen as evil but in India couples are actually fined if they kiss in public. I saw an article about how during a wedding ceremony when it was time to "kiss the bride" there was someone ready to give out a ticket for the offense!

We think we have religious fanatics here in America? Ours have nothing on theirs! Valentine's Day a day of lust? PLEASE. Evil IS in the eye of the beholder - what are they thinking they are getting with their cards? ::giggle::

First published here.

Food Cravings During Pregnancy (Silliness)

Pregnancy: a time when my body had a very strong-willed mind of its own, a time when I was blindly obedient to the commands of my food cravings. Not satiating a food craving was punishable by nausea. Nausea was a state that I spent my pregnancies desperately trying to avoid.

I wonder what those intense food cravings meant and if I interpreted the signals correctly. I bet that something got lost in transit.

Imagine The Depleted Vitamin Store in The Pregnant Body weakly reaching out to The Brain and pleading, “We are low on Vitamin C up in here. Can you send a shout-out?”

The Brain sends the most obvious signs so that Rebecca can get what she needs, “Hey, Body, we need some ascorbic acid. You are officially craving something fruity, citrusy, sweet, and sour. Oh, and, we need it now, or else!”

The Mind: “Or else what?”

Rebecca gags a little.

The Mind is repentant and immediately goes to work decoding the messages with all the mystery and precision of John Edward...

Rebecca to hubby: “I want gummy bears.”

Hubby to Rebecca: “It’s after midnight and we live 20 miles outside of city limits.”

The Brain and The weak Depleted Vitamin Store exchange confused looks.

Depleted Vitamin Store: “What? Rebecca, no, try harder.”

The Brain clarifies, “Stop thinking SUGAR!”

Rebecca to hubby: “I need SOUR gummy bears! NOW!”

Depleted Vitamin Store to The Brain: “Tell her to think more along the lines of citrus. Oh! Oh! I got it! Tell her to think NATURAL.”

From Rebecca’s little mental scrap-book The Brain selects a stunning image of an orange grove to convey the point.

Rebecca to hubby: “I neeeeeeeed O R G A N I C sour gummy bears!”





That was silly, but I imagine that THAT is how it all goes down.

Dream (planes, panic, cruel boss)

I pull back the covering of a very large swimming pool. Leaves are floating on the surface, though no trees are around. In the distance, I hear airplanes. There are two planes and because I am not there to watch them land, my “boss” yells at me, “I told you that when I land, you are to be there waiting!” He says this over an intercom system so his words are loud, though he is a tiny speck in the distance. He is standing on a metal structure. He is angry.

***

I’m inside preparing and serving frothy cappuccino. The froth is overflowing the silver cylinder and I'm scooping it with a soup ladle. People are enjoying their coffee. I think of monks, cappuccino, and ivory soap. It's the "air." I hear the sirens and I know that the planes are coming in to land again. I panic because I know that I am supposed to be there. I am going to be in so much trouble. I am too far away. I won’t get there in time. So much fear.

I miss my boss’s plane, but a second plane lands and crashes. For some reason it is my fault. I’m in a lot of trouble so I go to investigate the damage. On my way, I walk through wreckage. I come up to an empty helmet ... it's all my fault ... and then a body – whole – unscathed. His eyes are closed. I walk around him, he is wearing light jeans and a light gray shirt. ...his eyes open. It’s ____ who is referred to as "the husband" later in the dream.

I’m *severely* punished for this.

***

We are at my D-mom’s house in San Antonio. (My favorite place to be as a child.) I am showing a group of people her house. “This is where I used to hide and pretend that Darth Vader was looking for me. And this is where I always dream that there are stairs and as you can see, it’s just a wall.”

I hear the planes outside. This causes panic, but for a different reason. We are at war and when people are found, they are killed, so I tell everyone in the house to hide in the attic. I take a gallon of water with me because I don’t know how long we will be hiding.

***

We are at a little college, small like a community college, but bustling with student activity: people playing football and studying in groups along and around the outside of the building.

We are inside of the building. Hubby and I are going up the stairs and hubby grabs me by my shoulders and turns me around, “It’s the husband.” He won’t let me see him. He's protecting me from him and we are leaving quickly.

***

I go into a room and “the husband” is there. He is tied to a chair and someone (like a mob boss) is going to kill him. “You realize that he gave a woman $100.00 for her night gown?” The mob-boss throws a white gown at me. I have compassion on “the husband” and I’m told to leave or they will kill me too.

The next room contains all of my school books. I have to leave them behind. I had doodled much in one of the notebooks and it is open. I had written the letters “ABE” in cursive down one side of the page. I'm looking at the letters, wondering what "abe" means. For some reason this doodling is incriminating, but I don’t have time to close the book or take my stuff with me.

Dream (spinning room, orange and white)

Yesterday, I decided to take a little nap.

I was dreaming that I was standing in the middle of a circular room. Instead of windows, the perimeter of the room contained door after door. The room and the doors were spinning around me. I could look into each door for only a split second. Each door led to a room filled with information that I felt I needed to know more about. I couldn’t get to the rooms. Not only were people (unintentionally) blocking the entrances, but I couldn’t see around the people and the room was spinning too fast around me. One of the doors contained people and information made up of orange and white. I was frustrated, but the people were happy and weren’t aware that they were blocking my view. Crazy dream - spinning.

I don’t know what happened first, me waking up or the buzz of the dryer startling me. My dream seemed to last about a minute. Could all that information, the people and the unreachable mysteries in the rooms behind them spinning around me, have just been one packet of data sent in a split-second as the dyer buzzer startled me to consciousness?

Fact: We dream even during non R.E.M. sleep.

Lilith-tov (silliness)

I’m sitting in a huge bus with other girls my age. We are headed to a youth camp and I am very excited. I feel more like I am seated on a sofa and less like I am riding on a bus. I’m worried because I’m not wearing a seat belt. We are facing each other and not the front of the bus which allows for conversation. Everyone is talking but I am very quiet because I imagine myself as a projectile and worry about which girl I would fly into if the bus were to wreck.

The bus slows down and stops in front of a beach-themed restaurant. I look down at my bare feet. I’m sure that I can’t go in if I’m not wearing shoes. Just then I realize that I didn’t even pack for camp!

As I’m getting off the bus I confess my shoe-less state. A lady tells me, “That’s alright, we sell shoes here.” This is perfect because I love to shop! Inside, I find a section of the restaurant dedicated to boutique-cute clothing and footwear.

I expect to quickly purchase a pair of cheap flip-flops, since the restaurant has a beach theme, but the shoes look more like fancy boots. They are made of soft leather and they are decorated with real fur and jewels. The prices start at $80.00. If I spend $80.00 on shoes, I will have no money left for the rest of the trip.





I must have “shopped” too long because we are back on the bus and I don't remember eating. The girl seated across from me has straight black hair. She tells me, "Lie-lah had slanted eyes.” I realize that she is talking about Gutav Klimt’s painting, “The Tree of Life,” which I had looked at with much curiosity a few weeks before. How did she know? The girl has “slanted” eyes and looks just like “the other woman” in the painting. I realize that she isn’t just a stranger, or even a kid on the way to camp, but she is the daughter of the woman who wrote “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.” I had just read her reply, "Why I love my strict Chinese mom" the night before. The girl across from me is a combination of the Tiger-daughter and the lady in Klimt's painting. The contradiction reminds me that I am dreaming.

Awareness of the dream always wakes me up or puts me in a state of sleep paralysis.

Dreams are fun to decode. Last night, before I went to bed, I completed a second lesson of Hebrew. I remember thinking after the first lesson that the Hebrew word for night, lialah, reminded me of the name, Lilith, as mentioned in the Talmud. “Lilith,” and all that the name implies, was how I remembered the Hebrew word for “night.” Maybe my trick backfired because last night I told hubby, “Lilith-tov,” instead of "Lialah-tov."

Weeks ago I had wondered if Klimt’s painting was of Adam, Eve, and Lilith. I wondered that, but couldn’t find anything to confirm or dispel it. I wonder if unsatiated curiosities manifest in dreams because they have not been filed or solved. Are mysteries the stuff of dreams?

Dreams fascinate me.

French, Dreams, and Learning

I am having a difficult time learning French. It's not finding a sticky place in my brain.

Yesterday, I forced myself to listen to a French talk-radio station (France Info 105.5 FM) that I found on the internet. French conversations served as background noise as I went about my day. I cooked to French, cleaned dishes to French, read some of “The Four Agreements” while trying to tune out French, and I commented on this site while listening to French. (My laptop is in my kitchen.)

Something interesting happened last night as I was falling asleep in the dark and quiet of my bedroom. As I was slipping into an unconscious state, I heard someone speaking in French. I didn't know what the words meant, but I knew that my brain was dealing with the new sounds and patterns that I had heard throughout the day. I hate it when awareness of dreaming wakes me up.


I had many dreams last night. In one of my dreams I was watching a huge pyramid-like structure in the process of being constructed. It was like an inverted Sierpenski gasket and as the little parts of the whole were being hoisted up and snapped into place, I was aware that each piece represented or contained some random bit of information that I had encountered throughout the day, including the Sierpenski triangle itself. I was an observer of the building process and I was being shown each piece and what it represented before it became a part of the whole. My reaction in the dream to each was, “Yes! I remember seeing that!” Of course, sitting here, I can’t remember the details of each piece that I was so aware of during the dream. It doesn't translate.


Research Links Sleep, Dreams, and Learning.

Dreaming is when new information finds a permanent home in the brain. Awareness of this influenced my dreams along with the new patterns, new shapes, and strange new sounds...

Here is another French radio station: RFI Monde 89.0 FM Paris



The image of the triangle was taken from The University of British Columbia's Math Department's web page.

Buckle up! The train of thought can't stay on track.

One evening I was bored so I began to follow tweeted links and ended up at an interesting article, “Slow Down,” over at The Beautiful Brain. It was a little write-up about how our perception of time can be distorted when we watch a slow-motion scene in a movie. It included a video montage which only took a few seconds to watch.



One of the links on the side of the webpage caught my eye, as it looked more interesting, “The Neuroscience of Avatar.” Gustav Klimt's "The Tree of Life" decorated the article.















I began to wonder about Gustav Klimt. If this was a painting of THE biblical Tree of Life, then who were the people in front of the tree? A couple seemed to be locked in embrace as another woman watched jealously from the other side of the canvas. From deep in the prison of my memory escaped the name, “Lilith.” I was off to search for more information about Lilith and Adam, and Adam and Eve. I had no idea that Lucifer himself might be a vertex in a love triangle.

On my way to the first couple, the other first couple, I found a web page warning of racism in the Talmud and then another site that explained the purpose of the Talmud. Midrash. Why don’t we have that? It would answer at least one of the questions posed by Legion over at the Victoria Advocate Online. Of course, answering that question would give us many more.

Back to triangles and The Tree of Life. If that was Lilith, she was clothed mostly in triangles while Adam and Eve were robed in geometrical shapes, mostly circles. The ground contained circular shapes; the branches of the tree coiled around and around... Lilith was not from the earth like the tree and Adam and Eve.

Speaking of circles and embrace, Henri Matisse was born on this date.

Anyway, back to that night: That night I had a dream about a painting similar to Grant Wood’s American Gothic.






























In my dream, the woman was made of water. Two men, not just the one with the pitchfork, were standing beside her with a look of malcontent. A love triangle? It was inspired by the occupants of the painting, The Tree of Life. I am not grasping the point of the dream.

The song from the video montage was beautiful. If you didn't watch the video montage earlier in this post, please listen to the song: Sigur Ros "Staralfur."

Another song that was in my head around this time was "Lunatic Fringe." Red Rider - Lunatic Fringe According to Wikipedia, "The song was inspired by a book about humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg and is about the rise of anti-Semitism in the 1970s." I figured it reminded me of the religious and political debates over at The VicAd - and myself as I feel I'm sort of on the fringe, at least when it comes to education.

And here is another song written by Tom Cochrane, the man who wrote "Lunatic Fringe," Life Is A Highway - Rascal Flatts Official Music Video

Be safe out there and Happy New Year!

Sylvester the Cat

Our family cat, Sylvester, enjoys Yoga throughout the day. His favorite position is a very sloppy interpretation of the shavasana also known as the corpse pose. He can maintain this zen like solitude for hours. So deep are his thoughts that he sometimes slips into an unconscious state. I can only imagine the thoughts that are scurrying through his mind.

Cats sometimes remind me of Greek philosophers in the same way that dogs do not. It baffles me that Sylvester hasn't figured out that humans can't see in the dark and that I don't have X-ray vision. I've tripped over him several times while carrying overflowing laundry baskets.

I have a theory that cats are masochists. I came to this conclusion after Sylvester, who is always dressed in a tuxedo, gave up Yoga to court me. For two days he followed me around, forced his head under my hand so that he could simulate being pet, and purr-meowed every time our eyes met. Coincidentally (I think not) his food bowl had been empty. This can only mean that “cat people” are unwitting sadists. I’m forgetful so cats naturally love me.

When Sylvester isn’t engaged in Yoga, meditation, or sunbathing in the shade, he enjoys chasing string and playing soccer with marbles or lone tinker toys. He really enjoyed the time the kids tied a long piece of yarn to one of the blades of the ceiling fan. That kept him dizzy, I mean busy, for awhile. Yes, additional proof that cat people are sadists.

Coffee Infused Memories

My love affair with coffee began when I was a little girl. My best friend and grandmother started out her day with one cup of coffee. I loved the flavor of coffee because she always had coffee flavored ice-cream and coffee flavored candy in her home.

“D-mom’s” home on Sylvan Oaks (?) in San Antonio was the one place I longed to be. Not because of the coffee, of course, but because I knew that my grandmother loved me and that she loved me unconditionally. When I stayed the night at her house, I woke up each morning to the warm fragrance of fresh coffee. I would follow the scent down the long hallway towards the kitchen where I was greeted with an enthusiastic, “There she is!”

With memories and associations like that, you better believe that I wake up excited and ready for my coffee each morning.

My oldest son enjoyed staying the night with my "D-mom" just as much as I did when I was a child. When we were little (we were not little at the same time you understand) we both had to be pulled away from our D-mom's house kicking and screaming. He called her "D-mom" too. There are probably twenty people in Victoria, Texas, who referred to her as "D-mom."

I could call her on the phone and chat with her like we were high school girlfriends. I could share my opinions and she wouldn’t hesitate to tell me that I was wrong. (She didn't agree with my decision to homeschool my children.) That unconditional love coupled with honest and gentle chastisement helped keep me balanced.

We shared a cup of coffee once or twice a week until she passed away a few years ago. I think of her every morning and throughout the day.

I didn’t mean to type all of that. I was writing about some of the changes in our home since my husband and my oldest son returned from Europe. It had to do with how my husband has started to drink tea instead of coffee. The mention of coffee stranded me on Memory Lane.

She would be ok with my husband's mutinous preference for tea. I know this because she would have been thrilled that they were able to go to Europe. She would be proud that my son is saving up his money so that he can go back.

She always told us that we were "baked in the squat."

I'll post the post-Europe post later...

Karaoke with Jewel (link)

The other day my daughter asked me a question. “MOM YOU KNOW THE SINGER JEWEL?” (I typed it in the exact same style as I heard it.)

My children ask lots of questions and this was one of the most random.

She repeated, “YOU KNOW THE SINGER JEWEL?” She was obviously setting up context.

Her question made me think of the Singer Mansion and a big diamond like The Heart of the Ocean diamond from the movie, Titanic.


Then, I remembered April, a friend who rode and showed Arabian horses with me and how she and her family had moved away from Port Lavaca to Arizona. They had visited the Singer Mansion. She had written me about it. We were pen pals for awhile. I recalled a picture she had sent me of her with her big teased blond hair sitting together in the back of a limo. They were on their way to a Motley Crue concert. I was so jealous. She was younger than me and I wasn’t allowed to go to concerts. She also had bigger hair. Why is it that everyone who moves away always seems to have a better life? Bigger hair. Where is the Singer mansion? The Singer jewel?

So, I responded to my daughter’s question with, “The Singer jewel? Is the Singer mansion in Arizona? I bet it’s a really big diamond!”

My daughter gave me a confused look and my husband said something like, “Unbelievable,” as he began to walk away. My daughter remembered that she was talking to her mother so she hummed a tune from a song made famous by the singer, Jewel, and then it all made sense to me.

“Oh! the singer, Jewel. Yes, what about her?”

Sometimes I like to blame a head injury for my "ding dong" mom moments, but then I remember that even BEFORE the car wreck people had always apologized to me after telling blonde jokes in my presence. I wasn't blonde.

Anyway, all that so she could tell me about this:

Undercover Karaoke with Jewel


(I didn't tell her that I had seen it before.)

Where is the Singer mansion? Maybe it was the Hoover mansion? The Hoover Dam?

Confessions of a Former Hooker

“Open confession is good for the soul,” or maybe “There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.”

Confession is good for the soul but I wonder how much information is too much information when it comes to confessions on our local logosphere. Scottish proverb or Joni Mitchell?

I figure we all have a past, some shadier than others.

My shady past began during my childhood. Times were tough when I was growing up. Once or twice a year we were faced with the daunting challenge of getting a hundred bales of hay from the flatbed trailer into the second story loft of the barn. This required everyone to take on a specialized task. My job was usually that of the “hooker.”

As “hooker” I stood in the opening of the barn loft with my hook in hand ready to pierce the bale of hay as it was hoisted up and swung in my direction. It was the “swingers” job to cause the bale to swing towards and away from the opening of the loft. I had to learn to use that momentum to strategically guide the bale into the loft. If I didn’t accomplish my goal as the bale was swinging towards me I had to quickly let go of the hook or else I would leave the loft still attached to the bale. Once the bale was hooked and pulled into the loft the person behind me neatly stacked the bales – I was probably “stacker” too.

I didn’t weigh much more than a bale of hay so I am not sure how I defied the laws of physics to avoid falling to my death. Looking back I wonder if my parents had it out for me.

The greatest reward, besides completing the task, was finally getting to play with the rope and two-story-high pulley. You can imagine the rappelling that took place.

At the time, I hated growing up in the country: it’s where I developed my skill of artfully avoiding manual labor. Looking back, I realize that the chores I hated the most while growing up now provide me with my fondest and my most rewarding memories.

It hurts to confess that to my mom.

My sister recently confessed to me that while in the Navy she was a “stripper” aka deck hand, so I’m not the only one in my family with a shady past!

Maybe Peter De Vries, “Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff—it is palliative rather than a remedy.” Also, the “stoned by popcorn” quote is fun.

Originally posted August 31, 2010 Here.

Chasing Zen

I miss running. I compare running to psychotherapy. I remember thinking during one of my sessions that if it weren’t for my evening treatments I would be clinically insane. I love that alternate state that is reached after ignoring all cries of “are we there yet?” from the body. Only after the messages from the physical are hushed can communing with the subconscious begin. Is that “Zen” or “Nirvana?” Fasting only faster?

Well, one leg injury and six years of snowballing emotions and shallow introspections later, I think I’m insane.

But, there is some good news for us all. Last night hubby and I hit the trail. I thought we were there for a romantic stroll when he asked, “Think you are ready to run?” I felt like a parakeet who had been given permission to leave the cage. I’m very competitive so if hubby is jogging I have to jog faster. I won’t stop until hubby stops. Eventually, I was covered in sweat, doubting the effectiveness of P90X -- this only after a few steps. How is it that I can get through an hour of Plyometrics but only jog for a few minutes before I am physically spent?

After my injury I did walk in the evenings, but the rewards weren't the same. Walking takes you out of yourself only as far as nature. Don’t get me wrong, I love to hear the cicadas and watch the setting sun, like Midas, touch and turn the landscape into gold, and smell what people are cooking for supper… A few of you were BBQing last night and one was playing Tejano music. I'm Czech so Tejano feels like home.

I want an escape that’s deeper; one that transcends time. Will I ever reach that sacred place again?

This morning when I woke up I could walk without pain. So, if I can have patience, there’s hope. My lack of patience is what caused my injury in the first place.

I look forward to being able to bring my everyday problems, stresses, and wounds to that invisible spacetime in the universe to be assured of how insignificant they really are.

I miss running.

I'm chasing running.

Love at First Sight

I want to talk with you about love at first sight. I’m not talking about romantic love. I’m talking about a type of love that results from when your soul recognizes itself in another. A love that won’t die even though you know you will never see him again. The vision unreachable; a soul-mate found and lost in one day. Your gut wrenches and the artist is born to safely channel the feelings.

I’ve experienced this type of love once in my life. The first time I saw him he was standing in the sun. His temper matched his fiery red hair. He was intelligent, melodramatic, and tricky --and I was in love. I understood him. I related.

His trainer said that he was one of the meanest horses she had dealt with. My mom told me that he was too young and too green for me. Green? He was a chestnut! I remember staring at him as he stood in the round pen resting from giving someone hell.

We drove home from Seguin to Port Lavaca without Ibn. But I was melodramatic and stubborn too. I cried for Ibn. I drew pictures of Ibn. I wrote stories about Ibn.

Our discussion of love at first sight ends right where our discussion of fate begins. Do you believe in fate?

Fast-forward a year or so to my eleventh birthday. No one showed up to my birthday party. The lady who taught me horseback riding lessons pulled up to our house hauling a horse trailer. Guess who was inside? Fate.

My mom had learned that someone in Port Lavaca had bought Ibn and that they were ready to get rid of him. He was living up to his name.

(I explained the meaning of his full name in my previous post.)

I don’t remember IBN as mean. I remember him as my best friend. I could relate to horses better than I could relate to people. People wounded and horses healed.

He was playful. Before he would let me catch him and halter him he would run about fifty tight circles around me as fast as he could with his head in the air, his nostrils flared, and his tail over his back. He may have been three-quarters Arabian but he acted like he was 150% Arab.

I told you that he was Rebecca-trained. He responded to my voice commands as quickly as to my physical cues. I could jump on him and tell him to “canter” and he would go from a stand-still to a lope in one movement. He wouldn’t do that for anyone else. I also trained him to bow and to rear on command. He was a fast learner and an even better teacher.

We were soul mates.

I don’t know if “fate” is the best word up there but it is shorter than destiny. I'm too lazy to look up the right word. I was also too lazy to saddle Ibn and I usually rode him bareback and barefooted with just a halter.

Missing Horses

I loved horses as a little girl. I was collecting model horses and constructing stalls and fences out of pieces of wood when other little girls were playing with Barbie. Ok, I was playing with Barbie too, only I was trying to help her ride my Breyer horses. Her legs wouldn’t bend the right way and she always sat a horse cockeyed. Barbie made Breyer's Clydesdale look like Breyer's Shetland pony. Barbie was far from perfect.

I fell in love with The Black in the Sears catalog and named him, Cass Ole, before I was sure he was my Christmas present. Even my favorite celebrities were horses.

I had a Shetland pony named Charlie Boy and eventually I graduated to a three-quarters Arabian named, IBN. “Ibn” means “son of” in Arabic and his full name was Ibn Sharamoot. (Don’t look that up unless you want to get schooled in Arabic profanity.)

Ibn was "Rebecca-trained" and extremely versatile. He could run barrels and poles, and go from Western Pleasure to Hunter Hack. We won high-points at horse shows. He didn’t wait for my cues in pleasure classes; when the announcer said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, would you please trot your horses,” Ibn would assume the gait. Like I said, he was Rebecca-trained --and I was a mouthy little girl. I was also a one horse girl.

During my teen years the horse bug had morphed into a pesky fly as our love wasn’t strong enough to withstand my hatred of back-breaking labor in triple digit heat. Plus, it was more fun to chase boys than it was to chase horses. (I couldn't outrun horses but I was faster than all the boys.)

My knight in shining armor would not be a cowboy. I wanted to get away from horses.

I have been horse free for almost nineteen years. But, for the past two days I’ve had to “cowgirl up” and live the life I thought my husband had rescued me from: back-breaking labor in triple digit heat.

Ibn is still around. He is 34 years old. That’s pretty old for a horse.

Today I looked into one of his big brown eyes and saw the familiar shades and patterns engraved in his iris. His iris always reminded me of rough craggy rocks sketched around his cavernous rectangular pupil. In his eye is a miniature scenic shot of the Grand Canyon. I remember thinking he had the Grand Canyon in his eye. Not literally, of course, that would be impossible.

Regaining that twenty-year-old observation made the fact that I was covered in sweat and mud worth it. It also made me miss horses.

NOT THE WORK.

(I can't sleep again. I am so wired and I don't know why.)

Originally posted July 31, 2010 here: http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/weblogs/learning-in-freedom/2010/jul/31/missing-horses/