Mothers Day 2021

 Good early morning Mother's Day to one and all momma's out there.  Be you momma's to flesh babies or momma's to fur babies; I see you.  

Mother's day can bring with it both the bitter and the sweet for many.  To the mother's whom have yet to hold their babies, be they unborn or still a glint in their eyes; I see you.  To the mother's whom have lost their mother, by whatever means; I see you.  To the mother's whom struggle with mental illness, doubt, frustration, or chronic illness; I see you.  To the momma's taking care of their own or another's mother whom can no longer take care of themselves; I see you.

To the momma's who's babies ad to leave this earth too soon, and who are having to hold them in their hearts instead of their arms; I see you.  To the momma's who gave their children to another, ensuring they had a better life; I see you.  To the momma's who are co-parenting, step-parenting, or are adoptive parents; I see you.  To the momma's with partners, without partners, or with multiple partners; I see you.  To the momma's wo's babies are covered in fur and will never leave home; I see you.

Being a momma is so much more than just giving birth.  It's a state of mind, a depth of caring that comes from deep within one's own soul.  It is my fondest wish that you each know and understand that each of your stories are valid.  

May love and light envelope you all, today and every day. 

Something New, Something Found, Something Green and Blue

Rescue is rewarding  Rescue is exciting.  Rescue is exhausting.  Rescue is sad.  Rescue is joyous.  Rescue is a blessing.  Rescue is a curse.  I maintain all these statements o be factual.  With rescue we take the bitter with the sweets, it is the way of life after all.  There are these moments where even little breakthroughs are so huge that your spirits fly high, and in the same tone you can feel as though you've come so far only to hit some unforeseen stumbling block that makes you feel as though you do nothing except fail.

Kong is starting to show a few "new" behaviours, that we must work on.  Now while they are new, too us; I am certain these are behaviour's that have been an issue in previous homes and developed out of his need to survive.  Like me he can be extremely dosil and just happy to be around most people.  Then there are moments where he's struggling to be kind to even his best friend.  I can narrow down the reactionary events, which is of the good.  Removing triggers and building tolerance is always of the good. 

For the past two years that Kong has been with us, he's never showed any signs of food aggression.  He has ample food, and chew toys.  we can all be around him and handle all those items without issue or concern.  Recently he's show a lacking in response when feeding on a bone.  He does not listen or follow commands.  So now I reexamine his reaction, behaviours and responses to those high valued food items.  Occasionally, like this morning I come across the unexpected bone in the backyard; a remnant from the raccoon's score next door.  At 3:00AM this was not a joyful happenstance.  

It's understandable that Kong didn't wish to relinquish the large T-Bone, but for his own safety, I cannot just allow him to eat everything and anything e finds.  He has allergies and a sensitive stomach so the payback is very real.  There will be puke.  

Oh Joy!

Wide Awake Now

I have a feeling that something big is just around the bend. Is it just my imagination or lack there of? Did we create a rift in the time space continuum relaying our emotions to the vast beyond? Or all we all just drunk on this thing called life?

There has been an unsettling feeling stirring within me for over a month now and it is the most uncomfortable place I've have been in a very long time. There was a time that I believed that my father was a God and faultless, I though my mother had all the answers, that my friends would always be my friends, my family would live within a block of each other, and that my grandparents would live forever.

I used to believe that bullies were just bullies, that cheerleaders were all flakes, that blonds should be stopped, and that the dark was a scary place to be without a candle. I use to think that being smart was unobtainable, that reading was not possible, and that the past could not hurt me. I use to think that I had a rock for a heart, and a trash bin for a soul.

I know better now.

I use to sit for hours on end just dreaming of how it was going to be and why it had to be the way it is. I find myself these days trying to remember what it *was* like and worry less about what is going to be. I use to believe that we are all black or white, good or bad, sinners or heaven sent... I now know that we are not... not black or white, not good or bad, not sinners or heaven sent. I now know that we are all just us, human, alive, and making our way through the metal jungle with at time the stealth moves of a stalking feline and other times with the clout of a sloth... and other times we are standing still not moving an inch, waiting…yes waiting for those that are not there yet, waiting for those that will walk with us a mile and share in our joys, sadness, tears, and triumphs.

I now see that a smile can cure a cut, and a kiss can make things better. I see that we are all part of a common ground, doing our best to remove the walls of clay that are no longer needed, replacing them with that grand old slamming screen door; and not once shouting “stop the slamming”. We swing it open wild and free, letting it slam against our soul's allowing the wind to carry the echo to those that have yet to find the front porch.

For those of you that are still waiting, I thank you. I see that porch light on, it has been a long trek, but your echo is guiding me well ensuring that my steps are rich and sure. I was lost in a fog for what seemed a lifetime, but that fog is lifting and I see the hand outstretched.
I was asleep for so long.

Jade 2003

I'm wide awake now.

How's that for rambling ?

Derby Days Past

 There will be no wide brimmed hats donned with such care and grace.  Not this year.  Thanks ever so much mass spreaders.   At the very least, I am still able to enjoy a beautifully glazed bourbon cake.  Oh how I miss being in the South for these events.  The regalia, the food, the mint julips, muddled ever so perfectly.     

Sleep

What a dreamy idea, yet when there is breathe in my body, and a thought in my head how can I sleep? 

Would I not be robbing you and myself of the opportunity to suffer through my spelling errors, my wit, charm, shameless sexual advances on my not so innocent husband?

If I slept now would any of you know of the deep unhealthy feelings I hold for all of you, or would I just be a faded memory, or worse yet a used tissue in the hand of father fate? 

If I slept and did not share with you the random evil that has become such an important part of our very normal *cough* lives would I not be giving into to the bible thumping head hunters that would have us eating whole grain foods, and brushing after every meal?

Should we allow this sadness to take place our should we rage against the night? Should we just sit idly by and no longer post, leaving the walls of our home barren and uncorrupted?  

I say nay! I say we band together and vow to paint the walls red with passion, the trimmings yellow with a zzzzsnap embracing all that Mirage has endowed us with. I want us to haul in purple rugs to give a comfort that reminds us of Razi, and a fluorescent green lamp shade that screams Evil thread 666 jesteR lives all night as we suck the marrow from life rendering it our whore now and always.

Ok enough from me...

 I love you buh bye... silly buttons!

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I finally had a chance to talk to my brother today.  He' doing his best to sound, jovial but I can hear the truth of it all it in his voice.  He is struggling again with his anxiety and his depression.  Under it all, under all the jokes, he's just so sad.  I understand that, he said his ex girlfriend is still abusing the drugs and doing the "save me" routine.  She's always been tis way.  It's what drew him to her in the first place.  He's got a saviour complex a mile wide. He craves it like a drug, but as time slowly slips away he becomes tired and less drawn to a weak female.  She's supposed to start rehab in a couple of weeks.  I hope for his and my nephew's sake, it takes this time. 

I tried to remind him that her pain is hers alone to fix.  She had the ability to heal, but she has to want to do it.  He can no longer ride in on his white horse to fix it all.  He cannot keep ding all the same enabling behaviours.  I'll be making some finger food , snacks and such and have them sent over in the afternoon to him.  Just to give him a bit of breathing room.  

The verdict is still out on my hair, I've been foolish enough to allow my stress levels to climb to such a point that it's falling at an alarming rate once again.  It hasn't been this bad in years.  I've only got a few strands of white here and there.  I wish that it would just go all white for me.  Going natural would rock.  It's been 6 months since I went ahead and bleached it all to bright white.  I still shampo it with a dark purple shampoo, it takes the brassy/yellow tone out.  I haven't yet decided what colour I want to throw onto it next.  Maybe I'll just go back to my mahogany red.  If only it would grow as fast as my waistline does then I'd really be pleased. 

Reflection On Time 2

 Barbie, you have really mulled this over. I know you said that you'd rather claw out your own eyeballs than go back to any reunion. But what if, just play along Barbie. What if for those few short hours in time, you get to go back. To be who you were, the same kid with the same attitude?

Would you? Could you?

You see I am the shy quiet girl (figuratively for you, but literally in my high school) who sat in the drama class and never said much of anything and spent a lot of time looking at the floor. I didn't disappear..I chose to live, to come out of my shell and grow.

I am also the girl who started a family. Perhaps too soon and it has not only aged me, but has given me insight and strength. With those added insights and strength, I found a unique set of  tools and hopefulness to teach the family that I created early on, not to walk down the same road that I have.

You never really get to go home again. The buildings are there, the structure's the same, but nothing else seems familiar. 

But if you give yourself permission, permission to just be who you are. Permission to not care about the "cliques" to not notice who was the popular kid and who were the nerds. Permission to mix and mingle and perhaps get to know that one person you have always wanted to talk to, but wouldn't, couldn't or were far too shy to. You might have fun and for a split second go back in time, so that those who didn't know you then, who never knew you were alive or didn't care that you were will leave that reunion with your name on their lips and your memory etched in their mind. And then you will have touched the world.

Just a thought. 

Reflecting On Time

I kind of whipped this up while I was sitting at work and thought I'd share it. It'll explain why I'll likely be in a really weird mood the next few weeks. 

Perception is an odd thing, especially when it involves something as abstract as time. A day can drag on and "last forever" while weeks, months and years can seem to disappear in a flash.

I like many of you possibly have; quite a few years ago, subjected myself to one of the most spectacular examples of this phenomenon: my high school reunion. My graduating class had about four hundred and thirty people in it. I wouldn't say I really knew a lot of them, but I could probably have picked about two thirds of them out of a police lineup by the time I graduated. In the months and years that followed, I lost contact with... well, just about all of them. I never saw them around town for the brief time I returned home and then moved out to the sprawling metropolis of York Region into the USA.

It wasn't quite a "small town", with right around 12,000 or so folks living in the area at that time, but people sure lived like it was. It was everything you'd imagine a large rural high school to be, right down to the cheerleader sex scandals and hockey heroes who always managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time after the last school bells rang. Some went to college, others went to work, still others started a family right away... or worked on raising the family they already had started.

There was always that bittersweet mixture of joy and tragedy, opportunity and wasted days, youth and death. I remember the honor student who had a few beers and fled the local cops for fear of getting busted. He wrapped his car around a tree and died on the scene. There's always that tinge of the tragic around youth. It's never quite the carefree time that is romanticized in music or movies or TV. Everyone had their scars and trials and burdens to bear, but most came out of it okay. At least, they came out as okay as an seventeen-year old kid could at the time.

We made it through, got our diplomas, hung out at parties for a few weeks afterward and went our separate ways. I think of all that I've personally been through in those many years away and how it's shaped me. I've made decisions and paid the consequences. I have some fantastic memories and bitter regrets. I look in the mirror now and I don't see the baby-faced teenager who walked off to college with a baby in one arm full of hopes and dreams of being a profiler. Sometimes I stand and stare at my reflection for just a few seconds and think of how it's all different now.

Now I can say I got to go home again. I got to walk into a big room with mid-80's music playing loudly and shake hands and exchange laughs with people I never really knew to begin with. I got to also see some people I did know pretty well then. I looked into their eyes and searched for who they used to be... and it wasn't there. None of us were really who we were, or who we were going to be; because that's how time works. All the hours and days and months and years just kept adding up, and it was all there on display for me to see. I got to see how the homecoming queen aged, I heard how the quiet girl in my politics class just disappeared one day, and for some strange reason, it hurt me. I got to see the question in so many hearts, "How did this happen? I wasn't supposed to be there, like this, at this time. I was supposed to be someone else."

We'll all be different from who we were. Just not whom we thought we'd be.

That's time.

Utter Randomness

Why is your sky blue?  Mine is black. Black as night.  Just a depthless void filled with invisible stars that are overpowered by the synthetic night-life.

Tiny ice crystals fall from the sky to create a shimmering image that is soon destroyed by snowplows and salt trucks.  Maybe we're better off staying home in the winter.  Few things are more beautiful than a parking lot covered in a white coat.

Okay, I'm just about done.  Thanks for playing.

Shards

 My story is filled with a million broken pieces.  Terrible choices, less than well thought out plans, and some of the ugliest of truths.  Yet it also contains major comebacks, deep unabiding love, pockets of deep rich belly laughter, a learned peace in my soul, and a fire in my belly.  I do not know what tomorrow will bring, but I am ready for it.