~?~

I left to take Mom this morning to an appointment in DC...

After I finished poking out my eyes with forks they put me in a straight jacket. I'm typing with my toes.

Debating

Well, I guess I'm going to fess up and tell you about something that I'm not sure about....something that seems to be plaguing my mind lately.  For a while now I've been debating... I've been thinking about not going to  Olds College this year. It is for several reasons and no I'm not quitting on the Master Spinner's program... for that matter, this is only in the thinking stages yet. For a while I have been feeling burnt out. Fibred out... and everything in my life is suffering for it. More and more I've been looking at my wheel and thinking I really want to spin on my old wheel. I really want to spin something for a project and not just another sample. I really want to write a poem... You'll notice on Feathermist that I have not put a poem there since last autumn and that one sucked!  I really want to do that online writing course that looks so interesting. I really want to sew my quilt.... I really want to work on rug hooking. I really want to paint a painting. I really want to take the dogs for a walk... But I can't because I have another question to tackle. I'll be honest getting a meagre mark on my Level 3 contributed to this. I feel that I'm not satisfied to get a low mark and keep going as if I'm some awesome student. I'm not and I need to back up a bit. I went into this so that I could be the best spinner that I could be and that failed abysmally in level 3 when I passed but barely. So if I want to walk away from the MSP program having graduated with pride I think I need to take a year to complete my second version of Level 3 and finish my Level 4, and, most importantly, do it well. Every time I think about trying to complete three levels in two years my stomach does flip flops. And I get stressed and then I start looking at my wheel as the enemy and not as my best buddy. I'll also be honest... money is part of it too. Recessions are not for the faint of heart... and while Teapot and I do OK... paying for hay at sky rocketing prices, and veterinarian bills for sick dogs, and gelding alpacas among a whole bunch of other stuff, has taken it's tole.  The Daughters too have required this year, some fairly huge expenses and so I'm at the middle of April with my head in my hands going, "What do I do about Olds?!"

Still, I have a little time to decide on whether or not I will go. I've been thinking about trying to get a short job with the election process which would help with the money.... and yet I look at my wheel and can't help feeling a little resentful that my time is not my own.... The MSP was supposed to be fun... and somehow along the way I have lost the fun-ness of it and now it is well... a struggle. I'm sick of worsted and woolen and the flax just made me want to throw up. (We all have our likes and dislikes and flax is one of my most definite dislikes and guess what.. some of us can know it right from the get go... sorry R.G. that's the truth of it)! I'm still plugging away (note the description... plugging is not how I should be tackling it) at my level 4 homework but I really want to get to the 150 hour project because I am looking forward to that. I really want it to be awesome and beautiful and simply divine.... I am excited about that at least. But I want to do it justice. I want everyone else to look at it and say, "Wow, you made that?!" I don't want to do it because I'm on a deadline and I need to get it done before the next level. I want to do it because I love it.

So MSP or not to MSP this year.... I'm not really sure. Besides I'm supposed to submit my in depth study topic this year and I have about five and can't choose and I don't have time to think about it. Basically I just don't feel ready for level 5 and I really just want to carry on at my own pace. Perhaps I've taken too big a bight out of the apple right now.

There is one slight boomerang in all this. All along I have been going to Olds with two friends and so far we have kept pace with each other which has had it's good points and it's bad points. I love going through the class with them but I hate the feeling that I have to keep up with them. I'm tired and keeping up with two really awesome ladies who outstretch me in spinning experience far and away, is making me more tired... but I will miss terribly their input into my work and the ability to discuss things when we run into problems if I don't do level 5 with them this year.

So you see I am in a terrible dilemma... and there is no reprieve in sight...

Ah if only there were someone who could tell me what to do... but that's ridiculous, I realize...

So I will wait for a while and keep thinking about it all... sooner or later I will be able to decide or the decision will be made for me... especially if the class fills up and I can't get in...

We'll see...

Companion For Daughter #2

Bailey has come to live with us. She's a Sheltie x and she comes to us from the FSJ SPCA. She is not quite a year old. She is a lovely dog, full of personality. Daughter #2 is very happy to have such a loving dog. Jiggs however, is not quite sure.

Baching It... And A Few Thoughts On War

Teapot has left for the weekend of his dreams... He is gone on a Canoe Convention. Yup he is gone to oogle and ogle canoes of every shape and size. He left at 1:00 a.m. Argh! I'm pooped from being up in the middle of the night to give him a kiss good bye as he went out the door. But he checked in at about 2:30 p.m. to let me know that they had made it safe and sound... all was good and he was in high spirits. I'm sure that he will have a high old time.

As for the Daughters and I... we are baching it for the weekend. And as usual whenever Teapot goes away the mice play... and so we have been watching movies though I will say that we could have watched better ones... The first was a Jackie Chan flick... so so.... but then we watched The Wind That Shakes The Barley... a really good movie, but I want to kill Teapot for picking it for us right at this moment... We've all been crying for two hours. It's the story of the beginnings of the civil war between the English and the IRA and Sinn Fein, a dreadful time by any standards.

Being a light hearted soul, Teapot always manages to make us laugh after a movie of such sadness and desolateness, thus the reason for wanting to kill him... he picked the movie and then ran off to let us drown in our own tears with not a bit of light heartedness to pick us up and save us from ourselves. As with all movies of civil wars, there is no doubt that it is the women that suffer the most when their men go to war, and the Daughters and I empathized maybe a little too much with the women in this movie. With hands bound by the words of freedom and higher ideals, they watch their men going off to fight and they can't stop what they know will come. In the epic words of Ruby Thewes from Cold Mountain.... "Every piece of this is man's bullshit. They (men) call this war (the American civil war) a cloud over the land, but they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say, "Shit! Its rainin'!"

There is no doubt in my mind that fighting is not the right way to seek our rights, or to help the underdog.  I watch daily as this world around us deteriorates into chaos and wonder what Mahatma Gandhi would think of our efforts in Afghanistan.... or our efforts in Libya. And yet there is something dreadfully poignant about the first scene in the movie we watched tonight, as British soldiers descend willy nilly on an Irish peasant home and beat a young man to death for playing a game of field hockey because there are to be no public meetings.  You want to bash the brains out of the British soldier who is the leader as much as the Irish must have for the injustices and feckless abuses they received at the hands of the British. These types of abuses play themselves out all over the world regularly as we speak, in places like the Yemen or Syria or the Ivory Coast or the Congo. Why oh why do the strong and mighty feel the need to repress and crush the weak... why do they not have the need to support and uphold weak... why do they not take care of the weak? Why is nurturing not universal?

In the end all is quiet now in our house. Daughter #2 is above deck no doubt plugged into her iPod... Daughter #1 is glued to a book on the couch. The dishes are clean after a yummy supper of Nachos and cheese and Salsa. And all the wet and soggy tissues are in the garbage.... but in our hearts lingers the ethereal... the bight of pointless death and wasted lives... of gentle hearts who long for a better time... and who long for peace. What could be more ethereal... more magic than that.

Sweet Peace

If I Were Wealthy

1. I would eat fruit more often. All kinds and exotic stuff too.

2. I would adopt at least 20 dogs. But not cats.... 2 of them is enough.

3. I'd buy a really nice tent trailer... because I love the ability to sleep at night in a nice bed but love to camp and hear the sounds of the forest at night. No tent and I don't want an RV or a hard sided trailer.

4. I'd go camping a lot... in out of the way places... where nobody could find me... just squirrels and maybe a coyote or a howling wolf in the distance.

5. I'd buy a swimsuit that flatters.... nah... that's impossible.

5a. In view of not getting the previous one, instead I'd hire a cook to do all the cooking here and he/she would come camping too... but not in the tent trailer... that would be weird.

6. I'd find a beach where I could camp right by the water. (PEI here I come...)

7. I'd pay people to stay away while I skinny dipped... (or in my case fat dipped).

8. I'd buy a friend flowers and a nice pastrami on rye sandwich with potato salad on the side....  and then we'd share lunch and drink tea.

9. I'd finish the house renovation.... new flooring and a finished wall in the stairwell with no wires poking out anywhere... "wouldn't it be luverly".

10. I'd buy exotic trees and spend a fortune trying to get them to grow.

11. I'd hire a tractor to come and plow up all the poop in my yard. Then I'd bag it and sell it and be even more wealthy.

12. I'd put in a very elaborate water garden with running water so that it wouldn't breed flies.

13. I'd buy Teapot a new canoe... the canoe of his dreams... maybe two canoes.. (that would include the canoe of my dreams too)!

14. I'd pay off all my Mom's and Dad's debts. Hey mine too.... I'd be debt free.. now there's a thought!

15. I'd go to Olds Fibre week every year and spend a fortune at the vendors and buy all my friends something sumptuous to spin.

16. I'd go to Victoria with a friend to shop for beads.

17. I'd go to Britain with Teapot and the Daughters... to see the Scilly Isles and then I'd go to Scotland to the Orkney's and I'd get my picture taken by this fellow.

18. I'd pay for my friend's medical bills in Veit Nam... her husband recently died there unexpectedly with a lung infection with no travel insurance.

19. I'd go to Walmart and buy those $4 angora socks that Daughter #1 gave me for Christmas 2009.... and loved.... I know... I actually loved s----..... Holy Cow!

20. I'd come visit you or pay to have you come visit me. Would that be ok?

I think that's enough....

Bye bye....

Seeking Magic

Here for more Ethereal Art

What is it that makes us want the world to be un-ordinary.  I have been reading a lot of blogs online recently and the ones that most appeal are those where someone is seeking beauty through the un-ordinary... through the world of magic.  It seems to me that people seem to deal with the world around the by seeking the humour in it but what they really want is not reality but that which is beyond them. We find it inordinately appealing when something from the world that is tangible combines with something from us to create something intangible.  For example, when I hear the howls of coyotes out in the night, it sets the hair on the back of my neck to standing on end. There are shivers that pass up and down my spine. It is the intangible connected-ness of coyotes howling and my reaction of hairs standing on end that creates the world of the ethereal.

A few years ago I began doing the research on mathematical models in the natural world and what I discovered was that there was a connection between math (the absolute abstract) and nature which is tangible.  In it's simplicity, mathematical models are random numbers that equate to create recurring patterns. In other words, no two snow flakes are the same yet all snowflakes possess six-fold symmetry. In the plant world, this interprets as leaves, petals, daisy heads etc... with patterns that can be duplicated in common mathematical equations, particularly the "golden number"[(1 + the square root of 5)/2 =1.618 which the Greeks studied so long ago.  The curl of a drying fern, the spiral of the seeds growing in the head of a daisy are also to be found in the spiral of nautilus shell.

Patterns in leopard skins and some forms of insects as well as Giraffes and Cheetahs have patterns that can also be duplicated by mathematical properties. Even cracks in mud or the way fur lies on an animal are reflected by mathematical properties.

Thousands of years ago there was a Greek philosopher that said that "all things are number" and perhaps he was closer to the truth than we can know. In the end, it is the connected-ness of all things to each other that gives this world it's ethereal quality. Perhaps that is why we tend to be drawn to the ethereal, perhaps we have a desire to return to our roots which is somewhere between mathematics and number and our skin cell's patterns. Perhaps we are not as unique in the world as one may thing... perhaps we need to look at math more closely to understand ourselves better. Perhaps we can use math to cure cancer. We just need to find the identical patterns to helps us understand what is underlying all life.

Who could believe that something so definite as mathematics, so absolute,  could be so intricately entwined in something so elusive as life.

When I hear a coyote howling in the night and the hairs on the back of my neck is beginning to rise, then I will know.... and not just wonder... that the ethereal is at work in our world.

Here for more Ethereal Art

More Old Pics...

Teapot in his youth...

How did he get like this?!

I always did like the out doors.

He looks like he should be carrying a gun and not a wine glass.

And why oh why did he marry this freak.

We did have our moments of normalcy.

Then the kids came along. Daughter #1 and Daughter #2....

Daughter #1 liked to drag Daughter #2 everywhere around the house.

Things started to get to me and I had moments when I should have been in the looney bin.

It started to rub off on Daughter #1

But how could you go crazy when there were moments like this...

We didn't build snow men... we built the kids snow horses.

Impish little grins....

Daughter #1 went to school... this was her 1st day.

Then Daughter #2 went to school a year later... and this was her 1st day.

We all got older.... but sometimes I miss the old days when we were young and foolish.