Take it into your meditation as an opportunity to practice grace under pressure

In a reading today, Domino was concerned that a former business partner was bringing up old gossip and acting as though it was new news.  What to do when that happens?  Ignore it. Don’t react.  You don’t even know it’s happening.  You have enough things going on in your own life that you have no time to pay attention to someone trying to stir a cold pot.  Consider it an opportunity to practice grace under pressure. Your life is your message. It will pass soon enough. Add no fuel to the flame. Take your attention off the drama and it will drop out of your life. The fact they think it’s about them and can’t drop it shows the issue is theirs. Bless them, for there but for the grace of God go we all.

It’s been a busy and action packed last two days. Yesterday began with a sunrise drive along the river to pick up a pal to help me repair a floor at my rental unit. We finished up just as sun was setting, so I got to see both sunrise and sunset.  I enjoy being a landlord and enjoy doing home repair and handyman stuff.  I’ve got an excellent mentor in that, a friend who owns several rental units of his own and taught me everything I know about how mobile homes are put together and properly maintained.  I’m always stoked when we get to do a project and spend a day together.     Continue reading →

Were you influenced by fairy tales as a kid? Did you, as a result of having heard a particular fairy tale, form expectations about what your life would be like in the real world?  I don’t recall being read fairy tales except for  Br’er Rabbit, the trickster who could talk his way out of anything. By brother loved that story as a kid so I had to hear it every fricken night. This post was going to be about “I never learned anything from fairy tales,” but maybe I did.  It wasn’t the Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty and Handsome Prince stories that enraptured me and made me have expectations in the world.  I grew up with 3 brothers, so I knew “the prince” story was a lie. The brothers were handsome and smooth but they weren’t princes.  They were Br’er Rabbit, tricksters able to talk their way out of anything. I haven’t pondered it until now, but my entire professional career has been about words and spinning information to a particular advantage.  Now, with Horizons Magazine, I spin to a hope to a faithful readership. During a 22 year career as a criminal defense paralegal, I had brilliant mentors in the trial attorneys I worked for. I learned different ways of presenting information to spin it to the advantage of the client.  Continue reading →

On days like today, when a dear friend has taken their final walk and dropped their Earth robes, it’s comforting to know we survive in consciousness after the change called death.

Brian “Salty” Gabor

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Doing projects in my yard make me really feel connected to the Earth and to my homestead.  Yesterday afternoon I created a natural wall at the entrance to my east property.  After the tree cutters brought their machine through last month, a path could be seen from the street. I didn’t want anyone walking down it and into my yard, so I used bamboo stalks, grapevine, potato vine and oak branch deadfall to weave a natural privacy wall. I don’t prune the wild grapevines here until I’m ready to use them. I move them out of the way and route them along shepherd’s hooks to let them grow long.  I wanted the wall to look very natural and random so if someone glanced in from the street, it would look uninteresting and uninviting.  I began by placing several 12-20 foot long cut bamboo poles horizontally between trees that are about ten feet apart.  The bamboo are about as big around as my arm.  I place them where the trees have forks in their trunks: about head, shoulder  and waist height.  Then I pulled up a bunch of wild potato vine and used it to weave a loose wall in between the bamboo rods.  Next I strategically placed cut palmetto fronds and began weaving the live grapevine to secure them in place.  The vines will cover the branches by the end of year as they grow.

RELATED: Weaving my nature walls

Today I found a small tick on Benny, thankfully it was on the top of his fur. That was enough to send me into a frenzy washing all the fabric in the house. Yes, I just did it last week after my cold, but we’re only talking maybe 20 towels, sheets, blankets and pillow cases. I don’t have fabric furniture and the floors are vinyl tile.  I flea comb Benny when he comes in from woods walking. I put Frontline Plus on the kitties every 3 weeks during warm weather and monthly when it’s cool.  I keep food grade diatomacous earth swept into the corners and baseboards in the summertime.  I seldom have fleas or insects of any kind.   For 30 years I was using local Vegas pest control services, now I do it myself using Ortho’s Home Defense Max, which is safe for the cats.  That’s why I fly immediately into action when I see a flea or a tick.  We are a pest free zone and I intend to keep it that way.  Even when Benny doesn’t do his part.

I wrote in I love workworking projects that I’d gone to Home Depot yesterday for a sheet of plywood and I’d already spent lots of time figuring where I wanted the cuts made.  As you can see in the center left of the diagram, I made a math error as 24.5 plus 32 do not add up to 48 — the width of the board — it totals 54.5. That meant I needed 4 pieces of wood a specific size and, due to my miscalculation, I only got 2 of them. Yes, I could have recut from the top right piece (shown empty above), but by the time I caught my error, I’d already cut that for another project.  I think it’s interesting that 3 guys saw my plan for cutting the plywood, including the guy who cut the plywood. No one checked my figures to see I had the middle measurement wrong.  I see now I can swap places with the center pieces of wood, having the 32 wide by 26 tall piece to the left, and the 24.5 wide by 26 tall piece to the right.  It will be easier to piece together the missing 8″ in the corner right where no one will be stepping. The cut outs are for air duct and plumbing.  The diagonal cut is the doorway. Continue reading →

Some friends will have surprise guests at their Halloween party this weekend. They posted on Facebook about it, which let their spouse know where to locate them to have child support papers served. What is it with not paying child support and hooking up with new families? Have some respect. And have sense. While you’re busy letting your stoner friends know where to find you to party down this weekend, you’re also letting the wife and kids you left know. And what’s the BFD about leaving honorably anyway? You’re mature enough to spawn children, learn to have civil honest conversations with the other parent. And if you’ve got cash for alcohol, pot, tattooes and fancy wheels, you can pay your child support.

A busy morning! Went over project plans with the man, an hour of bookkeeping then bank, post office, Office Depot to get art scanned, Home Depot to get plywood cut, Publix for bananas they didn’t have and home to sketch out my template in pencil on the plywood pieces. I am a cautious cutter. I measure and eyeball it about a hundred times before I make a cut. I want to honor each piece of wood I own by using it to full advantage and wasting nothing. Is that scarcity consciousness or prudent thinking? The bigger piece I have left over, the more of another project I can do. I might do this next.

I shared a post on Facebook about how drinking a glass of water before bedtime prevents heart attacks and commented: “Since I wake up every couple of hours anyway, I keep two bottles of water next to the bed and drink half a bottle each time I wake up all night long.”  The article has since been debunked, however I know how important hydration is to the cells of our body.  That might also be why at 62 I have zero elimination problems. A 44 year old  friend is chronically constipated, drinks coffee, cola, beer and wine and very little water.  She smokes cigarettes and takes ZZZquil each night to sleep, she eats fast food and junk food.  All these things suck the moisture out of your system, leaving a dry passage for elimination. To my spidey sense, when I encounter someone with the condition, it feels like the food in their digestion system is a slow moving train stuck in a tunnel.  Six to eight hours after eating, after your meal passes through your stomach and small intestine, it enters your large intestine/your colon for further digestion and absorption of water.  This is a big reason to drink water if you are constipated. You will eliminate that meal anywhere between 24-72 hours after eating it. Hydration is good for your system, the cells of your body love it.

Best laxative: Mix 2 oz of milk of magnesia into 4 ounces of warmed prune juice. Nurses call this “a black and white.” Follow with 8 oz warm water (essential to success). Expect a bowel movement within 30 minutes to 6 hours. Milk of Magnesia is a saline laxative which means it acts by drawing water into the intestine to help gently pass the bowel movement.

RELATED: A bowel movement should not take 45 minutes
How long from the time you eat food until you excrete it?
Healthy Poop color chart

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