Wild Ones and Tame Ones

My Monday was a bit different than usual being I didn't have any clients for the later part of the afternoon. It was rather nice to come home early which meant I could go for my 4.5 mile walk. It's rather difficult to fit a walk in when I'm at work all day and, being I have a sit down job I like to grab the opportunity to get mobile when it presents itself.Looks like I may even be able to do the same tomorrow.

There's kind of a roadway along a bush line that leads to the town's sewer lagoon and a bigger wooded area. It's one of the places I go walking and there's always some interesting animal tracks crisscrossing every which way. From different birds species, to rodents of some sort, to deer, moose, and today, what I think are either coyote or wolf tracks.

It was hard to get a clear picture with the sun beaming down on the fresh snow so it's not too clear in the picture but they were good clear tracks when looking at them with the naked eye. There are no human tracks so it's not a dog for sure and dog prints don't show their claws but these foot prints had definite claws.

Poor little Peaches got sick on our watch on Saturday. He still wasn't feeling good on Sunday, nor doing much better this morning so Andree took him to the vet. We thought he'd come back home after they got him hydrated again but they wanted to keep him overnight to do further testing to see what has caused him to be so sick in the first place. He was so weak and lethargic after so much throwing up and diarrhea, that he barely moved. Hopefully we can pick him up tomorrow and he will be doing much better.

Please Shut It Off!

How I wish I could have a night's sleep. Dreams. I need to find the switch to shut them off. I awake all messed up. I feel like someone stepping off a ship. I walk around on my wobbly sea legs, unable to get grounded.

There's been an abundance of dreams this past month or so. It's like being at the movies all night long but they are not always movies I would pay to go to. Nevertheless, there they are, and I'm usually part of the script.

On mornings, like today, when I have a bit of time before heading out to work, I try to get a grip on where I traveled to during the night, the people who came to me in dream time, and what took place. I try to make sense of the imagery. Sometimes I can but most times I can't.

On mornings when I have to rush off to work, I jump in the shower and wait until the hot water clears the cobwebs of my dreams. Then I busy myself. I get dressed,  prepare my files for the day, pack up my computer, make a lunch, have breakfast, and whatever else I need to do.

I keep busy to focus elsewhere, to try to clear my head and get rid of how my mind and body feels limp and our of sorts. I try to bring myself back to the real world, or at least the world I'm required to function in.

Maybe it's my fault the dreams won't stop. Every night before I go to sleep, I ask to have clarity about my dreams, but so far, there are only a few insights. The rest is like the fog that rolled in this morning and made it impossible to even see across the street. It's hard to navigate one's way through that.

Maybe I need to start keeping pen and paper by my bedside. Maybe I need to start taking some kind of herbal meds to knock me into a deeper sleep state so I can have some more peaceful sleeps. Maybe I need to read less and write more. Maybe I need to walk less and write more. Maybe I need to work less and write more. Maybe I just need to write.

I've tried going to bed earlier, going to bed later, taking a relaxing bath, journaling before I go to bed. None of it seems to make any difference. None of it stops my mind from taking off and doing it's own travels shortly after I drift off.

A dream clinic would have a field day if they hooked me up to their machines and projected the images on a screen. In no time at all, there would be a full length movie. Likely not something that would even make any sense, unless the clinic had a dream deciphering machine. Is there such a thing do you think? Would it help?

The answer, I'm sure, lies within me and not a dream deciphering machine. It most likely has to do with the hunger to start on a big writing project and the hunger for a clear vision to guide and sustain me along the way.    

A week or so ago, the dream was that I was pregnant and the child wanted out. It was pushing so hard against my abdomen wall that it's little hands were making clearly visible hand imprints on the outside of my belly. I showed a few friends and they could not believe what they were seeing and how desperately this child was trying to push it's way out of it's confined space.

Maybe it was begging for my attention, begging me to stop long enough to allow it be born.

Coming Alive

My last post was titled "Stuck In The Cold." This one could well have been, "Coming Out of The Cold," or "Balmy Spring Day." At least I hope it was a sign of spring and not a false alarm. It sure felt like the real thing after coming out of our stretch of deep freeze weather. We hit plus 5 today. Woohoo! I went for a long walk in Peace River and everyone I met had a big smile on their face and I smiled right back. It felt like the world was waking up and coming alive.

I started journal #146 on the weekend. There's no greater joy than the smell and feel of cracking open a brand new journal. I love to feel my pen slide across the smooth, off white paper and watch my thoughts and reflections fill the blank page. This journal feels so different than the one with handmade paper I just finished.

I certainly don't fill journals as quickly as I once used to though and maybe that's a good thing from a financial aspect. I'd hate to see how much I've spent on my journal addiction thus far. But then, I consider it to be a better addiction than others I know.

So here's a funny story. On Saturday we decided to go swimming with our friend Marcel. I went to the bedroom, grabbed the swim bag, threw in some clean underwear for when we got out of the pool. We jumped in the truck and made the 50 minute drive to High Prairie, all three of us anticipating a relaxing time at the pool and a good soak in the hot tub.

When Andree and I got in the dressing room, she opened the swim bag, and said, "Uhh.., there's no swimsuits in here."

"What? What do you mean there's no swimsuits?"

"I mean there's no swimsuits! Did you grab them from where they were hanging behind the bedroom door?" she asks.

"Nope. Damn! Now what?" I ask.

"Well Marcel has a swimsuit and he's likely already in the pool waiting for us to join him. So you go and I'll wait out here and read my book."

"What? You want me to go naked?"

"You have clean underwear and it's black so put that on and go for it, Andree said."

And I did. And no one knew any different, (I don't think). And I managed to have a good time after I got over feeling bad about Andree having to sit on the side line by herself. But she's a good sport about stuff like that and I knew she meant it when she said she didn't mind sitting and reading her book while she waited for us.

When I was a kid, I used to dream about being taller. Then one day, I discovered I could be taller if I stood in the right spot. Sometimes, it's the simple things that make my day.

Stuck In The Cold

It's nice out - if you're sitting inside looking out the window that is. Wickedly cold when you have to go out and about in the subzero temps that plummets even further when the North East wind whips across the prairie field. It's been that way all week. Bright, sunny, brain freeze kind of weather.

I call it brain freeze with good reason. In one of my previous lives, I was working as a flag woman at construction zones on various roadways.

When I'd get home after 8 or more hours of standing in the same spot directing traffic in blasted cold weather, I literally suffered from brain freeze.  Never mind that I couldn't untie my work boots or unzip my coat by myself, I couldn't even think clearly enough to put one foot in front of the other to make my way across the room.

The only thing that saved me was my partner helping me crawl into a tub of warm water and as I slowly started to thaw out, she would add a little more hot water until my color started coming back and I could actually start thinking for myself again.

Makes me really appreciative of having an inside job when it's winter. but of course, being human, I bitch about being stuck inside in summer. Shish!

Look Alikes?

I received this picture today. Any resemblance between these two do you think? 

Meet my oldest daughter, Karen and my oldest granddaughter, Sadie. Two good looking gals that I love to pieces. My, how time flies. Makes me realize how old I am already.

We were five ladies who shared supper together tonight then we headed out to see the movie, The Shack. Great movie. The acting was good. The only drawback was the sound. Unfortunately we missed some of the dialogue as the actors voices were either not clear enough or loud enough.It was disappointing in that way.

There will be some shoveling to do tomorrow morning. A fair amount of snow came down in the course of the evening. The roads were snowy for our drive to Peace River but not icy which was good.

Tomorrow maybe I'll get to work on a course I'm putting together, maybe go for a walk, and maybe even do some writing in my paper journal. I still love the flow of the pen on paper much better than pecking away at the keyboard. I don't think that will ever change.

Late Night Meanderings

If the French saying, "Le trois fais le moi," is right, we're not over winter yet. I could translate it, but it loses all it's rhythm and spunk, so I best leave it alone.

It looked nice out there today but when I was out walking and facing that North wind, it was dawg-on nippy I'll tell you that. To be quite honest, I'm done with winter! Done! Not that my opinion matters or that it will change anything, it's just that sometimes you gotta get things off your chest in order to keep moving forward with your day. But, make no mistake about it, I'm more than ready to move on to the next season, especially since they're announcing more of that white stuff in the forecast.

There's plans to go to the movies tomorrow night. I'm looking forward to seeing "The Shack," based on William Paul Young's bestselling book by the same title. I'm curious to see how they portray certain parts of the movie. The filming of it took place in Vancouver and some BC countryside but I haven't been able to find out exactly where.

One of my young school clients has a lot of anger outbursts he can't quite control which gets him into trouble both at home and at school. I asked him to show me what that anger monster looked like. This is what he came up with. Scary looking dude.

Andree fixed an attractive looking healthy plate for each of us for supper tonight. I snapped a picture before we sat down to dig in.

I was sitting in my chair tonight thinking about how quiet it is in our house. There's never a lot of noise with just the two of us. We don't have TV unless we put a movie on which doesn't happen very often. Once in a while I put music on so both of us can hear it but mostly it's just me listening so often I use my headphones, like I'm doing now. For the most part, there's a lot of silence and we like it that way.

I've always enjoyed silence. It's never scared me as it does for a lot of people. There are many who run from silence as if it were a deadly disease. Afraid of hearing the whispers of their heart, the thoughts that run through their mind, the longings of their spirit. While there are others, like me, who can quite happily sit in the emptiness, stare out the window looking at nothing while noticing thoughts that float by until one or two invite further contemplation.

I love this quote:
"In your silence, when there are no words, no language, nobody else is present, you are getting in tune with existence." Osho