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#SelfCareSunday Efforts And Rewards
May 22, 2017
— 3 Comments
cactus
The essence of effective self care is self knowledge. If you begin to understand yourself just as you are it becomes easier to please your senses and intellect. Your body craves healthy food and activity, and your mind thrives on stimulating conversation and reading. Writing, art projects, and journaling lead one to discover inner talents and insights. Clearing or updating personal space is an ongoing project that gives great satisfaction. Creating excellent work and play environments in your own home make life much more pleasurable.
I like simple pleasures like beautiful plants and fresh foods. Since I like to cook and find it therapeutic, I can always spend an afternoon in the kitchen having fun. On Sundays I like to prepare food for the week. Bob takes a meal from home to work with him most days, so I pack a few servings to get a head start on the week. If I also take time to do some deep cleaning tasks on the weekend, my work during the week is lightened, and I enjoy the clean environment. I know cooking and cleaning might not sound like self care tasks to you, but in my mind they are basic. I don’t pay others to do these things for me, so making it an adventure in creative homemaking is my only good healthy option. I feel accomplished and well cared for when I have some chores finished. I then relax completely.
I do not plan an entire day of effort without some direct rewards. I often make sweets and desserts on the weekends, and clean my bathroom extra well. I treat myself to some sweet concoction and take a lovely long soaking bath in my sparkling clean tub. I use essential oils of lavender and grapefruit, and take a tall glass of iced tea to drink while I soak. This is at least as good as being at a 5 star hotel for me, because I don’t have to travel back home…I am home!! I provide my own room service, slip into my own bed with fresh linens, and sleep soundly.
How do you make your weekends work to combine tasks that must be done with some relaxation and fun? Everyone has a personal style, which is why each person knows best how to be true to that style.
cactus
#WeekendCoffeeShare The Heat Is On
May 20, 2017
— 6 Comments
vintage cookbook and tickets
If we were having coffee in Tucson today I would invite you to take a dip in the pool because it will reach 100 degrees this afternoon. I am drinking coffee in the early morning as we prepare to spend the day in Phoenix. I know it sounds counter intuitive to go down to the valley of the sun when the heat is cranking up. Here is my logic. This weekend will be a slow one at the Heard Museum, where there is a special exhibit of the paintings of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. The universities have graduated the student population, and the snow birds have gone back to the north woods, so this is SLOW season in all of Arizona. It will reach 100 for the next 5 days in a row, which will just be a warm up (pun intended). We get good deals on hotels and other things in the summer. Natives handle the heat by going inside to air conditioned comfort in the middle of the day. Our reservation for the Rivera/Kahlo show is at 1 pm, which gives us time to see the rest of the museum. We have not been there for many years. The permanent collection has some amazing Native American art, including Barry Goldwater’s kachina collection. I am a real museum nut, and Bob does not mind spending lots of time checking out every detail of an exhibit. After you finish your coffee you can ride along in the red Mustang for the trip if you like. It should be a fun day. I plan to have crepes for brunch up in Tempe.
If we were having coffee today I would tell you a funny story about clearing clutter, about which I write frequently, and actually accomplish with less alacrity. I managed to take a large box of books to the used book store last week. Although they only purchased one book, I left the entire box for non profit organizations that pick them up there. I felt proud because I even managed to ditch some of my beloved, and never used, cookbooks. Yesterday in a Facebook group of people who used to live in the boonies in petroleum camps in Eastern Venezuela folks started saying they would pay to have a certain cookbook copied. I happen to have a copy, much used, and very special to me. The pride in ditching the old books has been replaced by pride in keeping the right one, San Tome Gourmet. San Tome was the name of our petroleum camp in Estate Anzoategui. It does contain some killer recipes. I have preserved history and culinary authenticity in my cookbook hoarding practice, so it is now very cool.
vintage Venezuelan cookbook
vintage Venezuelan cookbook
vintage cookbook
Tell me how your week and your writing has been. I have skipped too many days posting here this week, but did manage a couple of poems. Maybe next week I will be more productive and creative. I am calling on my summer muse to show up and inspire. She always shows up sooner or later…she is a little late. I hope your muses are serving you well and keeping your creative juicers flowing. Thanks for visiting this week. For those of you who want to keep up with bloggers around the world each weekend, check Nerd In The Brain for party invitations. Read, comment, or write your own digital beverage post. All are welcome.
#WeekendCoffeeShare
#WritePhoto Haunted Quarters
May 18, 2017
— 5 Comments
weeping window
The tower had been built in the time of the beheadings
Torture and murder were the order of the day
They wiped out knights and murdered the queens
Who did not please the monarch by giving him a male heir
Some of my ancestors lost their heads, fortunes, and means
As players in the center of the Tudor dynasty reign of terror
Some spent their last night in confinement writing poetry
To leave a written legacy to the future subjects of the crown
The sorrow and the suffering of every tortured soul is evident
The stones are carved with the names of the doomed who have past
While the window weeps tears of the ghosts who haunt the present
With their unresolved memories of cruel and heartless treatment
Looking from this point of view we can see the harm done by violence
#writephoto
This poem is in response to this week’s photo prompt from Sue Vincent’s Echo. Join writers from around the globe each week to read, comment, or write your own story for #writephoto.
Newsflash Fever
May 15, 2017
— 5 Comments
thorny
What is the hurry to rush to judgement before the truth is known?
Where is the discernment needed to tell fact from fiction?
Confusion reigns while some are making a living making up news
And others are taking it all in from morning until night every day
Is there a limit to the shadow nonsense information we consume?
We need an intervention from a natural reality with perspective
These newsflashes and their associated contempt and contention
Are fast occurring, tiny openings into the dystopian future we create
#WeekendCoffeeShare Ignorance Crisis
May 14, 2017
— 3 Comments
the web woven
sticky business
If we were having coffee this weekend I would serve you a long tall glass of iced tea. I am enjoying dewy cherry, a strong fruit flavored herbal tea with long lasting flavor. It is refreshing and beats the hell out of artificial cherry anything. I switch the flavor of tea daily so we never get tired of any one of them. It is also the time of year when we start of consume a lot of fresh juice. I can offer you watermelon, cucumber, tomato, or a combo of any of these juices. I went to the produce site yesterday where I pick up 60 pounds of produce for $10, and decided to score to boxes for $20. We are once again loaded with honeydew, watermelon, tomatoes, and bell peppers. I am cooking up a storm, and drying tomatoes for the future. This non-profit does not operate in the summer, since most of the Mexican produce they bring is not crossing the border in the heat. It makes a big difference to our budget when we have to go back to paying up at the grocery store for our fresh fruits and vegetables.
If we were visiting today I would tell you about the latest installment of the attempt to complete my non-fiction book. I have written this book over the course of many years and published it here on this blog in real-time, as the story developed. It could have been a short story about justice triumph and community policing. Sadly it is a true story about how the local police department accidentally used their “neighborhood watch” program to promote felony crime (charity scamming by the HOA board using our corporate property, our corporate treasury and our corporate lawyer) in the hood. It does sound like an incredible tale, and I wish it were not true. I have published each part of the book and sent the evidence to the city of Tucson since 2013, but the criminal activity has gone on much longer than that. Each time I reported the crimes I thought it would be the last time I would need to do it because I thought the city would want to stop supporting and promoting the most obvious crime in our neighborhood. Alas, the police do not understand that HOA fraud and charity scamming are against the law. They encouraged the scam, and even promoting cramming the fire lane full of cars in order to run the 24 hour donation drop off for the scam. They thought this was a community service. They thought they were serving us by protecting and promoting felony crime (including postal fraud) in front of everyone here for almost a decade. They thought that by setting up an illegal knock-off of the food bank in the fire lane of a residential condo village they would serve our community. They never understood that their actions were very detrimental to safety, property value, quality of life, and certainly did a lot of damage to respect for law enforcement officials. They flaunted obvious obstruction of justice for years and told us it was community service. They might be that ignorant, but the people in this ‘hood are not.
The national political scene is all a-twitter about a constitutional crisis caused by all the latest developments. There is nothing new happening. With all due respect to anyone who thinks they can fix national politics, I believe the crisis is one of extreme national ignorance. The governed have no idea how government is supposed to work, and neither do the folks who work for the government. If anyone knew how the justice system was intended to operate, it would be something other than a for profit prison system that fails enrich or protect the community. If people knew what the presidency was supposed to do, they would shape that mandate in the voter’s booth. I think our position in the world today is a result of a long era of willful blindness and withdrawal of education to the masses. If they can’t read, write, spell , or do math, they will probably not challenge the powers that be because they don’t even know what and where they might be. Ignorance and willful blindness are the enemies, gentle reader.
And thus I will conclude my political rant against ignorance in the United States. I have advised the city of Tucson that there are laws against charity scamming and HOA fraud, as well as blocking the fire lane with traffic for a decade in front of my house. They have yet to respond, so I can’t have a happy ending to this book. It is about the truth, and the truth is that they still think they have the right to come out here and mislead people in order to promote crime. I will end the book and let you know when they finally respond. They do not have the right to remain silent, but the continue to do so. I rarely go on political rants, in fact I consider this to be an education rant.
Thanks for joining me today while I let off steam. Please read, write or comment on the state of your personal affairs at the weekly party hosted by Nerd in the Brain. Enjoy sipping digital beverages with bloggers from all over the world each weekend. Please pipe up with your own stories.
#WeekendCoffeeShare
Party Time Moon
May 12, 2017
— 3 Comments
Sagittarius truth day and MARS in GEMINI trines JUPITER in LIBRA a very optimistic socializing airy energy. One of the best days to meet new people and socialize like mad.
#WritePhoto Old Green Stone Wall
May 11, 2017
— 10 Comments
green passages
People tell stories about the time before the stone wall was built. The streams and rivers flowed freely and served everyone as they went by. Water to run small mills and to irrigate crops was plentiful and easy to find. Family farmers subsided and even thrived in years when the weather was favorable. The community members provided for each other, and the simple agricultural life was comfortable. They had plenty of food, shelter, and water.
Progress came to the area in the form of a land buy out by a large estate owner who wanted to experiment in modern farming techniques. His ignorance of nature combined badly with his lame and greedy attitude toward those with deep knowledge of working the land. He changed the landscape, moved the waterways to suit his purposes, and set out to build an empire. He had a monopoly on all the waterways in the valley, having sewn up all the land on which the tributaries flowed. His signature move was a large stone wall he built. It stood in the middle of stream, with tunnels to handle the water as it flowed beneath the structure. He was secure and pleased with his conquest of this natural resource when all hell literally broke loose. With a crack of thunder and a flash of lightening the sky broke open with a stormy and deadly response to his lack of respect for Mother Nature.
The flash flood poured over all the banks and rushed through the canals and tunnels like an angry dragon. Destruction and erosion brought famine to the land, once ripe and productive. Once the greedy land owner gave up the ghost the land itself returned to a riparian state. The farmers did not return, so the land has been fallow for centuries. It no longer feeds or shelters people. The natural world has taken the place of the former residents. The streams flow sweetly and green moss covers the ancient stone as if nothing had ever happened. All is forgotten.
#writephoto
This slice of fiction is a take on the prompt of this week by Sue Vincent. Visit Sue’s Daily Echo to read, comment, or submit your own story or poem.
Habitually Blind
May 10, 2017
— 2 Comments
hole in the wall
hole in the wall
While time passes by your window and blows through your mind
Where are your connections to the natural world?
Are you just habitually blind?
Does the rising of the tide of hatred sting your immortal soul?
Or do you sit in the corner twiddling your thumbs
When everyone becomes a merciless troll?
Did you have a purpose for being born on earth?
If so you better get to work, because things are getting worse
hole in the wall
The Holy Fool
May 9, 2017
— 4 Comments
Holy Fools in History and Eternity
One of the greatest character archetypes in the history of literature has to be the holy (or sometimes unholy) fool. What is so absolutely strange about the holy fool is that they are said not to exist. Typically they appear in stories that have to do with some Christ figure who is so perfect among the other characters that he is blinded by that perfection in a way. His beautiful, and often romantic vision of virtue, love, and peace among people so central to his character causes the other, more realistic characters to despise him and either seek to manipulate the holy fool or kill the holy fool because of his convictions.
The differentiating factor of these characters is their sense of not belonging in the universe because of they were born into. That the act of killing them off is all at once diabolical but cosmically necessary. They are…
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#SelfCareSunday Rejuvenation
May 7, 2017
— 5 Comments
in bloom
in bloom
in bloom
Wipe the slate clean by taking the first day of each week
seriously.
Make a commitment to clear your space and time
to restore your serenity
To daily life that passes at a constant pace, yet seems to be compressed
Into stressful packages of worry and uncertain future demands
On the dwindling energy and time our position in life
commands
Step away from the every day, unplug from the noise and chatter
Give yourself the Sunday self care you deserve. This is an
urgent matter
Immerse yourself in music, perfume, and poetry that feeds your soul
Return to the world on Monday feeling healthy, relaxed and whole
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