Week with Connla; Becky's Birthday is June 6th!?! No News is Good News; Home; On Death and Dying

Since the last time we checked in, I am here working away. Last week was crazy as Connla stayed home and got lots of my attention. We are working on his reading. We have found a new way to do this. I got the Harry Potter Goblet of Fire book from the library on tape. I am encouraging him to listen to it and follow along. He has been doing this and I find it to be a big help. I can tell in his day to day reading on signs and such that he is getting more confident. I am taking him to his DR to try to get a firm diagnosis. I am confident that when his brain catches up with itself, reading will not be an issue and he will love to do. We went swimming, played Pokemon (I won the last three way battle with Tony and Connla!), and watched shows about dinosaurs, the MythBusters and Dirty Jobs.

Having sent Sarah a birthday card by mistake, I got out my birthday calendar and realized that it was Becky whose birthday was this month. I had to call her and apologize for being selfish and missing her birthday. She is coming up for a Family Moon on Friday so I am going to make her a birthday cake. I sent her a card, better late than never right?

When it comes to writing I have completed a chapter on relationships. It is rough; however, I am proud about it because I did this in between time with Connla. It shows me I can work even when he is around. I re-read it to Tony and discovered it didn't totally suck. So that is good! This week is Southern Stories work.
I haven't received anything from any publishers. I take no news as good news right now. I continue to have dreams about getting contracts and advance money (which is certainly important). Last week when Tony was gone, it was really difficult to stay positive. Now that he is back and I have his attention to talk to him, I am feeling much better today. I am still sleeping a lot. I think I am just trying to get over the stomach virus I had last week. Connla got it and ran a fever for 24 hours and had mild stomach discomfort for 24 hours. Then it was like nothing happened to him, ahhh, the stamina of the young.

This past weekend, Dragonstone Family Coven celebrated Litha with the Nesters. We blessed their house with prayer and ritual. It was the most tolerant and religiously inclusive thing I have attended since I married the Jewish Pagan Goddess to her Christian Man in front of his father minister. There has been a shift between Sarah and I. She has become another piece of my soul restored. I feel like the house was now my home away from home. I also felt more connected to her husband, like the ritual had acted as a solidification of our relationships. I told Tony on the way home that if the four of us continued to do magic together there was nothing we couldn't make happen. Sarah told her man the same thing. The ritual itself acted as a catalyst to help center and focus me. I felt like my home had come home.

Speaking of homes, my mother called last week which accounts for why I was upset most of last week. It seems my father has finally gotten on some medication to help him better regulate his moods. My mother is so proud. Of course, I would have benefited most from this type of change 20 years ago. Although that annoyed me, it wasn't half as annoying as the conversation we had about death and dying. You may recall that I dreamed about my father dying and tried to warn my mother who blew me off. Well the subject came up again. I asked if dad had seen a doctor and had a simple x-ray of his lungs and he hadn't. My mother then launched into an exultation of a man who had brain cancer for three years and didn't tell anyone until he was almost dead. My mother admired him for keeping his pain to himself and not burdening his family.
I have to say I was mortified. When my brother called me to tell me he had tried working on my parents and failed, he summed up the attitude as "the ultimate in selfishness."

I have to agree. How dare people take away the chance of closure from their children, friends and family. So I asked me mom if this means that if she was dying she wouldn't tell us? She said, "Absolutely." Great. My mother is going to die the martyr and rob us of allowing her to leave this world with the business of this world completed.

This dying thing has come up a lot lately, as the theme of rejuvenation has. I really have been noticing the patterns in my life. I am amazed at how the same patterns seem to be shared by more than one person in my life. Of course the craft is about patterns, working with patterns and creating patterns.

I am looking forward to a Family Moon soon. The dark half has come and I am relieved. As Sarah said earlier today, "The Goddess has gotten wiser and the time for harvesting has come." Blessed Be!

Plastic Bags - Picasa - Mother's Day - My Birthday

I am really excited today about two different products I just happened upon in the past 48 hours. One product saves the environment at a great price and the other product helped me find photos I had lost in the vast space of my own hard drive.

My girlfriend, Penne brought a ton of things over to celebrate my birthday on Saturday in re-usable grocery bags from Kroger. I asked her how much they were and she said they were $1 at Kroger!

So, today, on my way to do my bi-weekly shopping, I stopped in and bought six bags to try them out. I have been using canvas bags that I bought from Hobby Lobby and Ingles. I have already ripped the handles right off some of the Ingles canvas bags and, because of the color, the other bags are beginning to look, well, yucky. My Ingles bags cost me $4.99 a piece. I bought them over several weeks of shopping when I decided to cut my own grocery bag dependency.

When I sat down to write about them, I went to the website advertised on the side of the bag called Bring Your Own Bag (BYOB). I was ecstatic about the website, the great information they give and the idea in general.

These BYOB bags are the greatest! They have a true rectangular bottom, a little zipper pocket on the inside and sturdy handles. I took my six BYOB bags and didn't use any of my other canvas bags at all - now that is my bi-weekly shopping trip there. Further they fit into the cart so nicely. They are just the right size! I know I sound like an infomercial. I don't care. I love the environment and I love the fact that this is now available and for such a great price! Let me give you some statistics that I have learned from BYOB.

Did you know? (these facts are from BYOB)

P It takes plastic bags 15 to 1000 years break down in the environment

P Plastic bags photodegrade ~ breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways, polluting our soil, rivers, lakes and oceans.

P Production of plastic bags requires vast amounts of oil.


P North America goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually.

P Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals dies every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.

P Each year an estimated 500 billion - 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That translates to over one million per minute.

P If 1 person uses BYOB bags, they will save the use of 250 bags per year.

P If a family of 3 uses BYOB bags, they will save the use of 750 bags per year.

P If a family of 4 uses BYOB bags, they will save the use of 1000 bags per year.

P If a family of 6 uses BYOB bags, they will save the use of 1500 bags per year.


Another great thing BYOB does, is a form they have on their website that you can print out, fill out and give to your local grocers. My only complaint is that the form is done in color with lots of graphics. BYOB obviously isn't remembering how much color ink costs the average consumer and forgetting the impact empty cartridges have on the environment. Still, you can print it in black and white or simply copy the letter itself into Word, or whatever you use, and print it plain. This is such a simple thing that we can all do. You guys get to Kroger and buy those bags! For $10 you can physically contribute to saving the environment. The environment is worth $10 to you, isn't it?

The second product I am excited about is FREE! That's right, complete free! Picasa is a program I downloaded after following some links on Blogger। I downloaded the file initially to make it easier to put pictures up on Blogger. Unfortunately that feature is no longer available because of incompatibility between Picasa and the new Blogger programs.

HOWEVER! The program completely rocks! It will scan your hard drive and download any jpg you have. It places these pictures in a library that shows thumbnails of the pictures and allows you complete management. You can delete files completely from your computer or simply tell Picasa to ignore a file you know you won't need to reference.

The greatest things is this: it puts your pictures into the Picasa library BY DATE! That means my Birthday pictures are the first ones I see and then the other pictures are available by year and folder. With the Manage Folder tool you can manage the folders your pictures are in and manage the way they are saved. You can edit pictures in Picasa, too! Easily set your favorite picture as your desktop background or order prints right from the program! Using a program called Hello! you can share your pictures with friends via the Internet. All in all, I have been really pleased, even though I can't use the program the way I wanted to.

Mother's Day was today and my family went grocery shopping with me, helped me make my favorite meal, cleaned the kitchen, water my plants and let me take a nap, all in all, a very nice day indeed. A friend of mine found out she was loosing her mother to her fight with brain cancer today. I can't get the frantic sound of her voice out of my head. I could feel her panic at the thought of not having a mommy anymore. I have been sending her lots of energy and experiencing the feelings of overwhelming sadness I felt in her soul.

My birthday celebrations are officially over. Yesterday my girlfriend, Penne, threw me a wild party. We had a beautiful piñata that was shaped like a star. We had bubbles at the party along with balloons and a helium tank which is just fun anyway. Tony, Connla, Penne and I all took a whack at the piñata. Since we were outside, we attracted a crowd of kids so we invited them to whack it to. It took Tony taking his cedar staff to the thing to bust it open. It was a sight! I got glow-in-the-dark bracelets from the piñata. I can't wait to share them with my friends at gathering we are all going to at the end of May!

Lydia's Birthday, Still Missing Tony

My birthday went well. Penne came over as did my new friend Bobbie. Penne brought snack foods that I am still eating on for lunch and red velvet cake. It is tradition that I eat red velvet cake on my birthday. Penne also gave me a lovely hummingbird feeder and a hook to hang near my back deck garden. She had remembered that I didn't have one because it was broken. Now - that is a good friend!

I miss Tony terribly. His being gone is getting old. Even Connla is missing him.

Today is My Birthday - Let's Reflect

I have debated about blogging today. However, this day has turned into 'Dia doing what she wants to day.' I decided - what the hell!

It is my birthday.

I am older.

My husband is traveling, my son is at school and a crazy friend has made it her mission to make sure I have a birthday cake (Thanks Penne).

I am suppose to be reflecting, right? I have been all day and have come to one main conclusion.

I am different.

I am changed.

I know people say that all the time; however, I AM different. Something has changed in my soul. It is like I am finally being re-born from the sickness that used to consume me and the person I am on the other side of illness isn't who she was before. Need proof?

I have a crush. It's o.k. Tony knows all about it. However, I haven't had a crush in years, so this is pretty amazing. It is almost like I have reconnected with my Maiden some how and she is the one with a crush...bad. I still love Tony. I still only want to have the sacred rite of marriage with Tony. My crush hasn't killed my love. Isn't that cool? You can crush on someone and love someone else - who knew?

I am walking nearly everyday and I like it. Seriously, I mean I have come to depend upon my hour of walking around with my headset on, listening to my music (U2, LIVE, Solas, Dave Matthews, Joss Stone, Emerald Rose, and the odd songs here and there), sweating and holding my stomach in to strengthen those stomach muscles.

I do not drink Coke. I have the odd Sprite now and again; however, I do not drink Coke, Pepsi, Diet Coke...nothing. For those of you who don't know, I had a six pack a day habit of coke. Not diet coke either, regular coke. Not the mini cans - the big ones!

I have cut back on fat. This is pretty big too. I charted my fat intake and discovered it was 85% of my total dietary intake. 85%! So I have cut back and am eating more protien.

I am nearly always going to bed by 11 PM. I KNOW! She who used to sit up for hours. I am nervous about the upcoming gatherings because I know I will be staying up late to run my mouth. I am worried about getting out of the habit.

I have slowed down and not in the bad ways. I am not as in a hurry. I am not as worried about everything in it's place and a place for everything. There is a major gathering at the end of this month and I haven't even thought about it. I don't know who is cooking what. I don't even know if everyone coming has a tent. Further, I am not worried about it!

I know I am going to get published. It is just a matter of time, persistency and patience. I don't say this in a bragging sort of way, I know this, that's all.

I have all these friends and their support around me. I don't know if I was blind to it before or if they weren't there before. Maybe I was reluctant to allow my heart to know this before. Maybe I was worried that I would screw it up or make people mad. Goddess knows that has happened plenty enough to me. Maybe the caliber of people I am getting to know is just a better more mature group of people. I don't know. My inbox is filled with praise for this site. People are writing me and asking to camp with me and my husband at an upcoming gathering (Go Reclaiming!). I am meeting people and for the first time I sense mutual admiration. I even had Otter tell me I was 'glowing these days.' She wants a picture of me on this site to reflect it.

It is like I woke up and my life was being fully lived. I am so blessed. I am a Priestess to the God and Goddess. I am a wife and a mother. I have friends and I am other people's friend. I am doing what I love. I matter.

For the record, I have a crush on Kiefer Sutherland. It's that damn Jack Bauer. Who wouldn't have a crush on that?

Happy Birthday Me! Life is good.