Monday, Monday, I make a new convert

Monday, Monday, October 14, 2013

I'm teaching them small.....

Yummy, that mouse was good.

I had to make a trip to Target before my 5.00 off 30.00 of food coupon expired. I only had a couple of days left and 5 bucks is 5 bucks. Pumpkins were 4.00 so I brought two home. No, there will be no jack-o-lanterns to come by and see but you might see a slice of pumpkin pie. I can always draw a face on it with whipped cream. Anyway, everyone was in their usual dragging mood. I was smiling as I had a coupon and nothing makes a senior citizen happier than a coupon off food...well, maybe a coupon off drugs but October gets you double credit in the Pharmacy toward your 5% off every day. I think I scored that day tonight.

At the end of my shopping trip after discovering my 5.00 prescription was now 5.44, I was having a little trouble getting the corners of my mouth to go up. Then I passed a little boy being drug by his parental unit and he gave me a huge smile and said, “Have a nice day!” Well, I returned that smile and told him to have a GREAT day! His parental unit was startled anyone actually responded to him and I had recruited another little Smile Warrior. I will win this frown war. I will spread smiles.

By the time we got home, I discovered something I had felt when I made the bread dough. The yeast was dead and though the sourdough did its best. It did not succeed in raising the bread. So George asked if we should put more yeast in and try again. I told him that when your bread dough doesn't rise you have PIZZA! Let the salivating begin as I fix a pizza and a garlic loaf from scratch. George is in the kitchen chanting over the yeast. Sadly, I don't think he is trying to resurrect it. I think he is trying to kill it. That pizza was delicious.

I have one tiny sweet pumpkin. You may not know this, but the little pumpkins are called sugar pumpkins and are best for pie though looking at it, you might need two or three and they cost as much as a big pumpkin. I bought one for the seeds. By spring, I will have many sugar pumpkins. I bought two big ones. One is known as “Old Warty” as it is warty and the other one is smooth. You don't pick them for hollowness as you want the meat. You get the heaviest and most solid ones. Gads, we barely got them into the van they were so heavy. Tomorrow it's scoop and bake time followed by puree and can and freeze some plus pie. Then I learn how to roast pumpkin seeds and plant the rest. If you get a good veggie, you multiply it.

I bought a bunch of the dollar plastic pumpkins to use as pots on the fence. After Halloween, I just turn them around and they become harvest pumpkin pots. In my world, everything needs two uses or more. You have to remember, we really don't have winter in South Florida and this is our prime growing season or it will be when the temperatures get out of the feels like 90 to 100F. Right now even the tomatoes and peppers are refusing to bloom, claiming it is too hot. Guess I have to sow another generation of them as these are dead on their roots.

So my Smile Warriors, Monday may be tough but you will be back in the groove by Tuesday. Get out there and make some converts. Just because the world is collapsing is no reason not to be happy. There is nothing you can do about it, so smile and be happy. Remember, an unhappy day is a day wasted you are never getting back. AND....the best revenge is living well. I have a stomach full of pizza, a garlic loaf in the oven and am looking forward to playing a little Farmville before bed. I'm all smiles and if Trouble's picture didn't make you smile, nothing ever will.

With the help of the cats, I emerge on Friday, Oct, 4, 2013

Good Morning Smile Warriors and welcome to Friday, Day of  Freya, October 4, 2013.

Are you ready to spread smiles?

Don't know who to credit but this might
speed my morning routine up!

Each of us begins our day in a different way. When I was young I used to awaken without an hour of yawns. I know, I was strange. Most of you awaken and stumble to the coffee pot where your elixir of life awaits you. It is sitting there all hot and ready to wind its way down to your tummy and into your blood stream where with luck, it will manage to awaken you brain enough to allow you to get dressed.

I answer to a high power. In fact, the high power wakes me up. Their names are Napoleon and Ningee.

Napoleon is at a cat age that he likes to sleep in a bit. Then he wants to do the cat stretch and some purring fueled by human strokes and kisses and a snuggle or two.

Have you ever noticed a cat never gets up without stretching first? They also never seem to have the aches and pains we do.

Ningee on the other hand is an addict and her drug of choice is Temptations cat treats. She can manage about 12 hours between doses most days. Her chirping will increase to a crescendo and she begins kneading me in earnest while standing on my side. If I don't manage to start moving there is a real chance of losing a kidney or gall bladder.

By that time, Napoleon has decided he could use another 18 hours and is actively trying to get me to sleep in but Ningee is frantically trying to push me toward where I hide the cat treats. This creates an interesting conundrum in getting out of bed, a real push/pull effect. Eventually I get upright and it takes more time with every year. Fortunately, the cats slow down with age, too.

From there, cats well treated, I have the routine of washing the night's dishes that accumulate while I sleep and then making a pot of coffee. My hands have gotten to where it takes several tries at grinding as I can't hold the button down for the complete time. Then the coffee filter and finally the water. You see, I live in South Florida, home of the enormous roach we call a Palmetto bug. They are capable of flattening themselves almost as thin as a sheet of paper. That means you can't keep them out of the house or the coffee machine. Nothing quite runs your day like setting the coffee pot up at night and when you get home in the evening discovering your flavor from the morning was boiled roach when you go to do dishes.

So I fix everything fresh in the morning under the careful eagle eye direction of Lady Jayne of the Gray. Should there be an errant Palmetto Bug, she has a morning treat. My cats are all ex-feral cats. They are killers. But what she really waits for is me to spill the water I am filling the coffee pot with as that she licks off the counter. She has a water bowl filled with clean filtered water but it seems to taste better after it bounces off the top of the coffee maker and pools on the counter.

Then I return to the bedroom to write this blog with a huge stein of fresh water, no chemicals, nicely iced. You thought I was going to extoll the virtues of coffee. I have learned as you get older, you dehydrate over night really badly. Coffee dehydrates you. One of the first symptoms of dehydration is your mucus membranes dry out and hence you have the dreaded: dry eyes. The only way to combat that is to stay hydrated or buy really expensive eye drops which have who know what in them. I find a huge stein of water just as effective and my brain fog clears faster. Then I will creep into the kitchen and usually find my pot as been raided, not by the cats, but by George.

I often think the first thing they did on his last job was hook him to an IV of coffee. When we first married and he drank cokes, he used to make fun of my coffee addiction in the morning. He has with retirement learned to grind and make an excellent pot of coffee and he can smell one from half a mile away. He will drink anything related to coffee. I with almost 60 years experience, yes my mother gave me coffee at a really early age because back then they knew it was a laxative and I was impossible to wake up, prefer my coffee Cuban. That is more of a roast and blend than a technique though as years go by, it is harder and harder to get a real cup of Cuban coffee properly made. Armando, at the Witches Garden, makes the best if you can wheedle one out of him. They don't sell coffee. By my teens, the morning cup of java was a necessity to getting to school. My boyfriend who used to pick me up quickly learned to check with my mother as to whether I had finished my coffee as I was known to draw blood without it.

By an hour later, coffee is being swilled, the Furry 7 have begun their rotation as Mommy cannot be left alone for some reason known only to cats and I have almost finished my blog of the day and am ready for Email, Facebook and Farmville all with the help of my furry crew as I chow down on my blood pressure pill: the organic banana.

So, although I live an isolated life by choice, you shall go forth and brighten the life of another human being most likely after your coffee as I don't trust you to do it before. I may emerge from my cave later but probably not as I need nothing in the realm of necessities and as you get older, going out and looking around has lost its appeal.

Thursday through the porch window

Ah Smile Warriors, we are on the other side of that hill and sliding toward the weekend on Thursday, October 3^rd, 2013. Everyone raise both arms and go: Wheeeeeeeeeee. It's all down hill from here.

The cats have gotten used to my routine of writing as soon as I get up. Ningee and Napoleon no longer pester me as they know there will be treats when I get to the end and save. Unfortunately their place has been taken by Ice. He is not as aggressive as they are and tends to lay on my knee and watch the letters appear on the screen. I am not fooled. It is just a matter of time before he decides to kill the cursor as that is the way of cats. They are natural born killers.

As such, most people think I am nuts. Humans are naturally selfish creatures that are totally self centered. We only have to look at our ancestors to see those people are wrong. There are very, very few lone mammals. Even the Lion lives in a pride or community. The cheetah is a loner and there aren't many cheetahs. Civilization is not built by a lone person. By simple definition, it takes more than one. That is the actual point at which all the depressive ideas of Ayn Rand and the rest of them fall apart. We are greater as a whole than as an individual. Ghandi would have been a nice guy but if no one had agreed with him and emmulated him, that is all he would have been. The thing is, great leaders never seek followers. People just congregate around them. 'A great leader is one, whom when the task is finished, the people say, “We did this ourselves.”'

This is what happens when you smile and lift someone's mood. They think they did it themselves but the actual exchange of positive energy is what does it and the person is lifted out of their morass. They then, totally by accident, do it another person and soon everyone is happy.

Remember the line, “If mother's not happy, no one is.”? Even the cats are unhappy and moody if I am. Then there is the party and don't invite that person because they are a real “buzz kill”. It used to be someone else would say to invite them and see if we can't get them cheered up. That was often the reason for the party in the first place. A party was when someone knew how to bake a cake from scratch and a real party was if it was chocolate! Where did this pizza thing come from that takes an entire aisle of freezers in the mega grocery? Now it has a new definition as someone who may force you to take responsibility for acts you don't want to own up to like beating some poor homeless person down on their luck.

Everyone tells you to create your own world of abundance and you'll get the best mate, house, car, watch, whatever.... All that doesn't manifest out of thin air. It has to exist my friends. Someone, somewhere has to have that house, car, mate, whatever you want and be willing to part with it. Ooops, that is not what the people selling that dirty little secret want you to know. What if they don't want to give you any part of what they have? The easiest solution is to create a pie in the sky you can never reach, that your basic logic says, “no way” but your heart says maybe. Hope is the real buzz kill, because it knows it doesn't stand a chance, but it keeps you working and working and striving and most importantly, not looking at what is around you, not enjoying your life.

If you read that carefully, you understand what I am trying to do. I am trying to bring you into the here and now, not some rose colored utopia where some invisible idea you have been fed as the ideal is guiding your actions toward a reward in a future in which you don't exist. You are guiding your actions. You are smiling. You are making the world a better place by your actions.

My Grandma hated two times of the day, dawn and dusk, when the veil between worlds is the thinnest. It is also the time most people die. Dawn was the busiest in a world that had begun for her before the Civil War. It was all work and no enjoying the sunrise. It started before light when the rooster signaled the coming sunrise in a barn and kitchen gathering the morning meal and there was no microwave or electric stove just an old worn out coal burner. Coal stoves burn dirty and it was a nasty affair. Dawn was not fun. Then came Dusk and the dying day. Dusk was when you paid for the bargains of the day. Workers were paid by the day in hard money or trade. There was no waiting. Your reward was immediate. Without reliable lighting, everything began to come to a stop and it was time to clean up the day's mess of living.

In her later years, she came to enjoy dusk as she would always take to her bed. Her bed was at the window joining front porch where a huge swing sat. It may not have been that huge but I was small. Everyone would gather on the front porch as the meal was over and through the window, she would engage us without leaving her bed and routine established over a 8 decades. We could all discuss the past, our heritage and things that happened. It was one great gossip fest all the women participated in. The men had their own on the back porch or in the barn or garage. All ages were welcome and you learned not from a history book but from the people who lived it. You were cheered up, taken down a few pegs and taught the reality of the world. You did this and that happened. Ideas were bounced around, picked apart and put back together again. There was a lot of laughter and a few solemn moments as those no longer there were remembered. As I grew old I was more accepted into the men's group than the women's because I was the new breed, the working woman. There was no fanfare, no glass ceiling just a maybe we ought to ask Janice 'cause she does that now. I joined my cousins, all of which were male. I remember the day my cousin said, “You're really beautiful.” I must have looked at him like he had grown another head. He hastily added, “but you're cool.”

Yes, it was another world but one you can learn a lot from because if we didn't work together, everyone in the community failed. We were still mostly farmers, getting our food from relatives in exchange for other goods they needed. My cousin's husband managed a grocery and got a good discount. We got flour and sugar and the nuts and the most desired item of all time: oranges. They got bacon and fresh veggies and canned veggies.

The first time I saw an orange tree laden with ripe oranges just sitting there for the picking, I knew all the religions were wrong because I had found heaven. Then I found kumquats and bananas and began to worship Mother Earth in all her bounty. Yes, I am now a tropical Druid with little connection to apple tree. I don't even remember them or how they hold fruit. Ask me about papayas instead. I have evolved and you will, too. However one thing will always remain the same: the power of a smile.

Go forth and SMILE!

Mr. Muffin Head says SMILE, Monday September 30, 2013

Mr. Muffin Head says: Go forth and smile.

I arrived at the shop yesterday afternoon only to find our contingency of feral

shop cats doing the begging thing. Napoleon's mother was doing her cute run up

the palm trees and bounce down pole dance and Howler, his brother, was

singing. I might point out his old brother and we are only certain about his

mother being in common. My idea was to get in, feed them a can and settle

down to work.

There was no can! Disaster! So I unloaded the van and made my way to BJ's for a case of cat food and maybe something to drink and snack. I had not had lunch. Remind me never to go into BJ's when the parking lot is full or on Sunday. It was wall to wall Sunday shoppers who have no idea of the simple rules those of us who shop during the week have created to make getting through the store without killing each other possible. The number one rule is not to shop and text as you get run over with a shopping cart. It is also a good idea to look where you are stepping particularly when going backwards as you may land in someone's cart. They do not know this.

I managed to get my stuff and get to the checkout with only two injuries, neither of which were life threatening as the people were still doing the same things that brought their soft parts into contact with my cart in the first place. Then I hit a wall. I thought I was smart as the clerk had just turned off her light having the problem with the customer fixed, but one should never underestimate self centered stupid people because it took less than a minute for the light to be blinking again because Miss I am the Center of Universe was trying another scam. Everyone behind me deserted the line like rats on a sinking ship. The person in front of me was trapped or would have to unload all her items from the conveyor belt. Odds were the problem would be fixed by then. Never under estimate how much time someone in the wrong will argue they are right when a couple of pennies are at stake. You will lose. I decided to stay and keep the trapped person company and any way, I would offer a few nice words to the clerk. Finally management solved the problem and then Miss. Center of Universe with a huge flat bed decides to rearrange her wallet while completely blocking the aisle and preventing the next person from being processed. That was when the clerk almost lost it but managed to grit her teeth and nicely ask her to move her cart. Oh, the shocked look upon her face and she even looked at the two of us as if to say, am I really blocking you. The lady in front of me shot her daggers and a few nukes. I looked at her, tilted my head and smiled sweetly while gesturing...move on, your time is up. Go away now. You really aren't worth frowning at, so just disappear. She scuttled off like her tail feathers were burned. You see, a smile really does work better than a frown and it takes less muscles. We all know as a Highland Scott, I am into the conservation of energy though most say we are just lazy.

The clerk apologized to me, not the nice lady in front of me. Once again we witness the power of smile, my Smile Warriors. I naturally said there was no problem, I had time. I didn't add the cats were probably going to eat my ankles when I got to the shop as hysteria was rising there by the minute. I mean that 20 pound Howler was surely going to starve in the next five minutes.

By the time I made the long walk to the end of parking lot simply because I believe there is no reason to pay a gym to use their treadmill when I can just park at the end of the parking lot and walk for free, I really didn't feel like loading the van. I managed 20 pounds of dry cat food and the case of cans felt like 50 pounds when I came to the box of muffins I bought as a treat for George and maybe a couple for me. That was when I glanced in for the first time and saw Mr. Muffin Head and started laughing. I giggled inappropriately all the way to the shop, fed the cats and took a picture of him. He is now our mascot for the Smile Warriors.

Things at the shop are moving at a surprising clip. Everything always seems to be in the way of something else stopping us from doing what needs to be done. I bet you know the feeling. After a lot of smudging and some magickal work, either a lot of stuff has disappeared or it never was there in the first place. I know you are saying, “What?”

One of the stock and standard curses to be bought is a blocks path spell. I learned a long time ago from another author who had been the focus of one that they are a nasty piece of work and the people who do them have the ethics of a politician needing a campaign donation for his booze budget. When they rebound on the person who bought them, and make no mistake about that – it will happen, their life if going in a really dirty crapper and it won't just be circling it. Think of their rebound effect as a full port-o-potty tilting. The lady who paid to have it put on him was pretty stupid. She wanted him to stay in the country and marry her. You never know when casting one of these spells how it will manifest the result. He got sick, so sick he was dying and then in a panic she took him to the person who she paid to put the spell on him to cure him. That is how he learned the whole sordid story, paid the guy to remove the curse and it rebounded on the gal, killing her slowly over a period of 3 months. Not only was she out of money, but no one could remove the spell because it was, well, the karmic law of 3, 7, 10 or whatever number you believe in and not really a curse or spell. It was just energy returning, magnified, to the source and trust me, the source is NEVER the person doing the casting. The first thing they learned was to attach it to the person paying.

I had the results of this thing demonstrated this morning. I accidentally used all my expensive eye medicine when my fingers twitched and too many drops hit my face, not even my eye. This morning my eyes were hurting so bad, I had to dig out the supply I squirreled away when I had insurance. Did I mention this stuff is uber expensive? I had to move a huge stack of stuff to get at the storage box which I slowly did, got my medicine out and began to put everything back where it was. That brought a pause because the pile was half as high. I am looking everywhere for the missing stuff and there is nothing to be found. I do a mental checklist of what I took off and what I put back and they match.

Okay, time for the Twilight Zone theme when I remembered yesterday George put the big AC in the shop window. I would have sworn there was no way he could get to that window without throwing out a huge amount of stuff. Not only did he get back there but he created a good sized path that remains and he didn't throw stuff out. The stuff is an illusion to prevent us from fixing things. Now the illusion fades every time something is moved and its size reduced to actual. All we have to do is move things and space happens, space that is really there all along. I can't help but smile when I wonder what is happening to the person who bought this spell/curse. Are they laying under a house of junk somewhere with only their feet sticking out like the witch in the Wizard of Oz? Is every object in their world expanding to mega proportions? Are they gaining an enormous amount of weight, because I have lost a lot of weight. I mean if it wasn't pitiful, it would be funny. And as they say, Karma's a bitch and so is a rebounded spell/curse. I think they are her puppies.

Thus, things are going really well for this Smile Warrior. I am picking up my studies I abandoned because I couldn't think. I am writing, as you see, after not being able to manage the time, having the word processor blow up and various sundries. The shop is going to be open by Halloween with many, many changes because I am not only thinking out of the box, I burned the box. That box is not getting me again. Suddenly, the world makes a lot more sense because now I see it has shifted into a zone where few have ever been.

I'll give you a teaser as it will become either a book or a series of lectures I get paid for....Magick is about 2.5% of the energy in the Universe. That doesn't sound like much until you realize than everything in the Universe tries to achieve equilibrium or balance. The closer it gets to balance, the easier it is to tip the scales in your favor with magick. Sorry about the math but I never said math wasn't the basis for Magick. Why do you think so few people can do it???

Go forth and smile, because Mr. Muffin Head says so. Hey, I have a picture of him and haven't eaten him yet. He's real.