Woo Woo 💥💥💥Warning:

 “I believe that if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade. And try to find somebody whose life has given them vodka and have a party.”

--Ron White

And put salt on the rim of your glass—wait, I’ll bring limes and tequila.

 

Questions I'm pondering:

1.     If you enjoy reading your own book, does that mean it’s a good book? Or is it nostalgia? (Remember slide shows--those slides, aka pictures, you took on vacation, that were fun for you but put your audience to sleep?)

2.     Why do you always get a hair in your mouth when you have your hands full?

3.     Why do we need tools to open our Christmas gifts when we used to rip the paper and throw it with wild abandon?  And why can't you wad up much of what seems to be paper anymore? It blooms when you open your hand.

4. Why did my dishwasher fail over the holidays? 

And now I think of of people in the world who have never had a dishwasher, or paper to write on, for that matter. Many have never had a gift under a Christmas tree, or maybe not even a Christmas tree.

That we have running water in the house is a marvel; that it comes in cold or hot is an added blessing.

I am grateful.

A little drama sneaks in with the holidays.

For Christmas Eve, we had food and gift opening for one side of the family--a splendid time. I cleaned up, loaded the dishwasher, pushed the button, and went to bed.

Christmas morning was grand. Before everyone else was up, I drove with Sweetpea to the grocery store to see if it was open, just to get rice crackers to go with the cheese. It wasn’t, but that’s okay, give those clerks the day off. And Sweetpea and I were in awe of the day—the glorious sunshine, the paper whites in our side yard are a foot high and budding—on Christmas day! The streets were virtually empty of cars, and the streets looked clean and black from the rain. To top it off, I drove by a street, and on a side street to my right, I saw a classic scene: a little boy trying to ride a miniature bike, and his parents out in the street photographing him.

Home from our excursion: Those dishes in the dishwasher were still dirty. Two lights on the control panel were on. I flipped the breaker to give that appliance another chance and proceeded to prepare for another celebration for our immediate family.

Celebrate, Ta Da! Night, our guests went home. Still no working dishwasher. Phooey—go to bed.

The day after Christmas, the kitchen had two celebrations of mess. I said, “*&%$ it,” and went to my office to write, or rather to edit that good book I mentioned.

After my husband read that the dishwasher has sensors and if something is amiss, like the seal around the door, or a plugged something or other, the machine won’t work. So, in the evening, he and I set out to clean, scour, and scrub every nook or cranny inside that dishwasher, even the spinning sprayers. Why would a dishwasher be dirty when I keep putting soap and water in it?

But it was.

Run that sucker.

Two lights are still on.

Last night I emptied the dishwasher, washed every dish, pan, and foil from two celebrations, and went to bed with clean dishes air-drying all over the kitchen. This morning, I tidied up the kitchen, and when my husband used a dish, I washed it immediately.

There will be no dirty dishes in that sink.

Then, my husband, being in a fix-it mood, tore apart the sink faucet that had been leaking, and he left it apart over night so we had no running water in the kitchen.

This is like Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat, fix one thing, that thing leads to another.

Sunday, the faucet is back together, one purchased part and another reamed-out part that husband dear used a drill press to fix, and now we have a non-dripping faucet. But still no dishwasher.

I am wondering what to do this coming year. Today I deleted a pile of Substack posts. I was disgusted with my own stuff. Enough with the negativity.

And, I wonder what in the heck I’m doing here, blog readership went up when I was griping over the state of the Union, I know we were all feeling fractured, but it is time to aim toward the light. 

 

For all of you who stuck with me over crisis and calm, over insanity and lucidly. Thank You, Dear Hearts! 💓💓💓💓💓

 

Woo Woo 💥💥💥Warning:

I may go woo woo this coming year. I have begun to read The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes, and he answered something I have always wondered about.

It is the idea of good/bad, right/wrong, hot/cold, that we live in duality.

And I’ve heard folks trying to justify this duality by saying, “If you didn’t have bad, you wouldn’t appreciate the good you have.” To which I say “B.S.”

Good feels good, bad feels bad. We know the difference.

Holmes says that “As the belief in duality has robbed theology of its greater message, so it has robbed much of the philosophy of the ages of a greater truth; for in philosophy the belief in duality has created confusion that is almost as great as that in theology. It has made a philosophy of good and evil…True philosophy in every age, however, has perceived that the Power back of all things must be One Power, and the clearer the thought of Unity, the greater has been the philosophy.”

I do not believe that science and theology are at odds. Holmes explained that Science deals with results, and Theology deals with causes. You can see why one is more complicated than the other. We can grasp more completely what we can see. Thoughts? Well, thoughts can be debated, argued, and fought over.

Remember, there is no dark switch. The light is either on or it’s off, but it’s on a dimmer switch, and we are living in a dim room, when the bulb is a million-wattage one.

 

There Lived in the Land a Handsome Prince

 When I was away from the house, my husband opened the front door for Gabe, our Rottweiler.

Outside the closed door, mayhem ensued. A motorcycle had zoomed up a hill that intercepted our street. Well, a motorcycle is to a Rottweiler as a rabbit is to a coyote.

Gabe chased the man who was frantically maneuvering his bike to avoid clashing with the dog until he finally out-ran the dog.

I knew nothing of this until two days later when the man knocked at our door and explained it to me. (Neither did my husband.) He said he had a young daughter and was afraid for her, and rightfully so. I said, "I would trust Gabe with my life, but I will never let him out the front door and will keep him on a leash." That seemed to satisfy the man as I stood there quaking that he may demand some disciplinary action.

 A few days later, the man came to our street when I was walking Gabe and proceeded to make friends with him.

The man would often see us on the street, where he would drop to one knee, hold out his arms, and let Gabe run into them. I learned that the man was a Navy SEAL.

 I recently read about the rigorous training of Navy SEALs, including a 5-day sleep deprivation to prepare them for battle. Knowing how rigorous their training was, I was all the more impressed with how this man humbled himself and made peace.

 I wouldn't have chosen a Rottweiler, and I didn't. He chose me.

 Gabe came to us as a juvenile, almost full-grown but still with that slender gangling look of a young dog. He just appeared at our door one day. I tried to find a home for him, including tacking up posters around the neighborhood. Finally, after a week of no response, he became my dog.

I named him Gabriel because I said he was my guardian angel.

He had some sort of skin condition that the Vet said was caused by stress.  (Being homeless can do that to a dog or a person.) He prescribed shampoo that cleared Gabe's skin, and love and a home cured his stress.

Most every morning, Gabe and I would run in the forest across the street from our house. Although we lived in a residential area of Eugene, the university-owned the land across the street, and it was left wild.

Gabe would ride with me in the car that had a fabric headliner. And since he liked to stand on the console between the seats—pushing me to go faster, I figured, his head would brush the car's ceiling. So, one day, tired of trying to remove black hairs from the vehicle's fabric headliner, I put a Babushka on him.

How cute was that?

We were building a house in Marcola, and Gabe and I would regularly drive to the building site. If I stopped along the way at a drive-through for coffee or whatever, he would wait patiently for a dog biscuit. He soon learned that all drive-through windows ought to give out dog biscuits. After waiting patiently, if a biscuit didn't come through that open window, we would give them a good piece of his mind by barking as we drove away.

On one such trip to the house, smack dab in the middle of Marcola, Gabe saw a dead dog lying alongside the road. He did a quick double-take and looked quizzically at me. Surprised that he recognized the situation, I said, "Yes, it's sad, isn't it?"

During this time, my daughter lived in California, and on occasion, when she was sent on a trip, Gabe and I would drive down and take care of her critters. Her dog was a Great Dane. When I took a walk with those two dogs leading the way, I felt like I had a team of horses in front of me. Luckily, they kept together and didn't go their separate ways.

On an evening, as the Valley River shopping mall parking lot had nearly emptied, I led Gabe to the car when two men walked past us. I heard one say, "Not with that dog, I wouldn't."

 I figured that day Gabe lived up to his name Gabriel.

 

                       There lived in the land a handsome prince, from my scrapbook.

 

 

Something to ponder:

“You will never get any more out of life than you expect. Keep your mind on things you want, and off those you don’t.” --Bruce Lee

Although Bruce Lee (November 27, 1940–July 20, 1973) is best known for his in martial arts and film, he was also one of the most underappreciated philosophers of the twentieth century, instrumental in introducing Eastern traditions to Western audiences.

He always carried a tiny 2 x 3” pocketbook with him which he filled with training regimens, poems, affirmations, and philosophical reflections. Images of his notebook that are perfectly readable, can be found at Bruce Lee’s Never-Before-Seen Writings on Willpower, Emotion, Reason, Memory, Imagination, and Confidence – Brain Pickings