IN MEMORY OF MY AUNTIE DOROTHY

This very moment, I just received an email from my cousin telling me his mother, my beloved auntie died in her sleep APRIL 9th at 1:23 p.m.

It is 9:30 p.m. and I sit here alone with this news. At our age when an auntie passes, it would seem like a natural part of life, which death is.....but....in the moments that I write this, it is my only avenue of expression to HONOR THIS AMAZING WOMAN who was so elegant, so gracious, always so kind to me, always believed in me.

I feel shell shocked. There is no one to call. There is no one beside me to hold me as the waves of grief just now begin to wash over me. This woman knew me all my life. This woman loved me all my life. I AM SO SAD!

When she fell some months ago and was hospitalized, then sent home to recover at the home of her son, my cousin, I didn't send her the autographed book I wrote that she was anxious to read. I didn't send her a card wishing her a speedy recovery. I didn't call her and tell her how much I loved her. I just assumed she would always be okay. What an ignorant assumption of pure selfishness! YES....I'm beating myself up for not telling the Auntie that loved me the most for the longest that I LOVE HER, that I was thinking about her. Now, she is gone. Now her son is the only survivor from that family that I saw every weekend for dinner throughout my childhood. GONE. And I have learned about her passing a week after her journey....my cousin too lost in grief to be able to even tell me. What to do with this?

DON'T WAIT TO TELL YOUR LOVED ONES THAT YOU LOVE THEM. I've always read that, and now I'm living the painful result of not telling my BELOVED AUNTIE DOROTHY how much I love her. God rest her soul, for she was a beacon of light. I LOVE YOU AUNTIE!

ON BEING A NOBODY

Have you ever wanted to be a SOMEBODY??? Make your momma proud, earn a new respect from your friends? Be admired by people you don't even know? Get the last laugh on all those adversaries? Are you now living with not only the dream unfulfilled, but feel you are getting too old to ever be that SOMEBODY? Are you feeling discouraged that no matter how many attempts you've made down that path to "somebody-ism" you're still a NOBODY? Well, CHEER UP, I've got some GREAT NEWS for you!.....Do you know that all those stars, celebrities, sports icons and royal highnesses cannot ever be something you now are?......that's right.....a NOBODY!!!!! No matter what they do, they cannot enjoy anonymity and the invisibility you now enjoy. They can never be what you now are. How many out there aren't even ENJOYING their state of nothingness because the feelings of non-accomplishment, unsuccessfullness, and lack of great financial wealth are in the spotlight of your self judgment.....because you are wishing you were in their positions of regality, importance, iconship? CHEER UP, my fellow nobodies.....we're doing way better than we EVER give ourselves credit for. We are all, when stripped of our positions in society and opinions of ourselves, from the exact same sea of consciousness. We are individual drops of the same sea. We are all sub-atomic bleeps of light from the same radiant beacon. Whether it's the most famous athlete or Prince in the world, or a lowly inmate sitting in a cell for a crime he did not commit. Usually our drive to be a SOMEBODY stems from our childhoods. I'm not blaming the poor over-blamed parental units here, just stating the facts. It is not what they said or did not say to us, but rather, how we took in and reacted to what was or was not said. We carry with us sub-consciously our entire adult lives, that desire to show up the bastards who bullied us in grade school, or to make proud the parent who never seemed quite reassuring enough to our growing egoic natures. The lure of that media attention never shows you what that celebrity has to face every time they leave their palace doors: that wall of photographers with lenses the size of the Golden Gate bridge, the barrage of flashes to where you can't even SEE, the continuous sound of the motor driven shutters capturing our very nose hairs. Those people can never enjoy driving down the road while listening to their favorite song and simply pick their nose. It will appear on the tabloids and everyone that ever stands on a check out line in a grocery store anywhere in the world, will catch a glimpse of you with your finger even slightly brushing that nasal cavity, and the headlines will blow that miniscule gesture out of proportion to the enth degree to sell their publication. They may even photoshop it to look like your finger is wedged all the way up! So the next time you even slightly pick that nose driving down the road, enjoy it fully! Even if you don't reel in a booger that is newsworthy, you will be engaging in a simple human act that nobody in the global spotlight can enjoy. All humor aside here, though....I highly suggest listening to Eckhart Tolle's talk on the Flowering of Human Consciousness. He speaks slowly, with many gaps between phrases at times....so if you have ADHD, know that this aspect of your personality will be challenged - but if you treat yourself to rising above that challenge, you will feel really good about who you are RIGHT NOW, in THIS MOMENT, despite your bank balance, your credit card debt, your lack of a romance or the lack you perceive yourself as having in the fulfillment department. With the striving everyone who knows me to have done in my life thus far, to be a musical star in my younger day, a beloved partner in all my adult years, a literary giant in my middle age, or an overall success in any of my artistic abilities to make my momma proud and pad my bank account with independence, know this: I HAVE GIVEN UP THE SHIP. I hereby no longer wish for any state of being that I currently am not - I have embraced being an absolute NOBODY. This is not a lack of self-esteem that I am expressing.....OH NO......but ACCEPTANCE of the fact that I am a speck in the vast ocean of consciousness that doesn't give a rat's azz about what any society or parent views as a SUCCESS. Be it known that I have no problem with not having been invited to the White House for a party in the 'home theatre' or any of the royal weddings that have occurred in my lifetime, or nominated to run for president or cast in a major motion picture, or winner of a Grammy, Oscar or Pulitzer Prize. Nope, I'm just little ol' me living in a teensie abode out in nature with no servants, valets or personal trainer. I'm not sure where the next mortgage payment will be coming from or how I'll pay for a health issue should one occur. But somehow, it's always worked and nothing has come out of the ground or swooped out of the air in an attempt to devour me. I'm still standing. And I'm continuing on from this day forth without the fears and anxieties of the end of the world or my personal demise. Putting one foot in front of the other and taking it one portion of the day at a time, I know peace---the peace of acceptance of who I am in this very moment and what my current life story is. It's just a bloody story, we all have one--but our story is not WHO we are. As one cannot judge a book by it's cover (unless you're in Barnes & Noble) one cannot judge you and you don't any longer have to judge yourself by the decisions you have made or the story of your life. Don't like it? Just re-write it. Enjoy the ride and even when the script is rough, it's only a script....it's not YOU.

SURFING IN JAPAN

It's not that I'm making fun of the catastrophic event those poor people (and animals - I mean what happened to all their pets???) endured in Japan, but with the week I'm having, I find myself wishing I was surfing off the Nuclear Coast 3/11/11.

So the latest headlines are the experts advising people around the Fuckedushima Nuke plant to not drink the tap water. Do we really need experts to advise such a thing??? Experts also picked up radiation in spinach and dairy from the farms around the Fuckedus Nuke plant. Shocking. And "no way"- the experts soothingly lied, were there going to be any radiation particles hitting the U.S., as it would be "dispersed as it traveled across the expanse of the Pacific Ocean" - well GUESS WHAT???

Yup, highway 1 south of Carmel dropped into the drink a few days ago - and they're trying to tell us it's because of the rainfall. We all know it's radiation particles settling on the pavement, weighing it down....yeah it was aggravated by rainfall~perhaps~~
but who believes these idiots called EXPERTS or OFFICIALS?

I'm having issues with this damn ITALICS button. Once you hit italics, you're STUCK with it. Please note, dearest reader following, that I only wanted the word PERHAPS to be italicized. That bold face button sometimes gives me a hard time as well. But, when I think of the suffering on the planet in so many places right now, these little buttons don't throw me off too badly.

Ok, whew. I just POUNDED on that italics button and snapped it out of having a mind of it's own, after all, who's blog is this anyway? Oh my GAWD, it snapped back into italics mode without my doing a thing! WTF-ever.

Let's just talk for a moment, shall we, about the level of intelligence of those who planned to build not one, but MORE THAN ONE nuclear power plant on the most active seismic fault line on the planet. Yes, they were made to withstand quakes - but did they really have the arrogance/stupidity (I get those two mixed up) to think no way would a tsunami follow an ass kicking earthquake????? Can we count how many nuclear power plants are built on active faults? (Hang on) Google can't answer that question, but I am sharing the below findings with y'all :

What?!! They Built the Largest Nuclear Power Plant on an Earthquake Fault Line? offbeat news” />

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, closed since Monday following the major earthquake in the north of Japan is now known to be placed directly above a significant geological fault line. This line was thought to be inactive until it caused Monday’s earthquake, measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale.

The world’s largest nuclear power plant has been closed indefinitely, as it was designed only to cope with earthquakes of a magnitude up to 6.5. The quake has caused a number of accidents at the plant, calling into question its safety. Mildly radioactive water leaked into the sea whilst four hundred barrels of radioactive waste toppled over, 40 of them spilling their contents. There were, in total, fifty malfunctions at the plant following the earthquake.

Ok, just found THAT! Oops, the font changed, there.....back to Verdana. Then there's the nuke plant on a fault line 35 miles north of, you guessed it MANHATTAN.

LOS ANGELES – Two years before an immense coastal earthquake plunged Japan into a nuclear crisis, a geologic fault was discovered about a half-mile from a California seaside reactor – alarming regulators who say not enough has been done to gauge the threat to the nation’s most populous state. (So they're saying they built the plant and THEN checked for faults, OK, I'm down with that - so are all of us - we are all going down BECAUSE of that)

The situation of the Diablo Canyon plant is not unique. Across the country, a spider’s web of faults in the Earth’s crust raises questions about earthquakes and safety at aging nuclear plants, amplified by horrific images from Japan, where nuclear reactors were crippled by a tsunami caused by a 9-magnitude quake.

The Indian Point Energy Center, for example, lies near a fault line 35 miles north of Manhattan; on Wednesday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered a safety review at the plant. (And will they share with us the findings that none of these plants are safe???)

But none of the questions are more pressing than in quake-prone California, where about 10 powerful shakers – stronger than magnitude 7 – have hit since 1900.

At issue at Diablo Canyon is not what is known, but what is not.

Well, I hope you are all comforted, fans, friends, followers of this blog, I hope I've eased your mind. Now the terrorists can back off, because we are going to nuke ourselves. Makes you want to turn on all your lights and use your curling iron now, doesn't it? And what about all those car dealerships who's closed lots are lit up like ball fields all night? EVERY SINGLE BEACON is on lighting up those cars to generate the consumer's lust to buy, buy, buy.

When will Americans WAKE THE "F" UP and realize that those light switches, though easy to operate and annoying and difficult to switch back off when not being used, are blood on every hand ??? They have built nuke plants to satisfy the addiction to massive and unnecessary abuse of electricity. And to think all this started with a scientist flying a kite with a key in a storm. Ol' Ben is probably rolling over in his grave.

LET IT SNOW1

IT's WINTER....SNOW IS GOOD!

A good frozen snow kills the larvae of the destructive insects that 'winter over' in their little hiding places to emerge in spring and wreak havoc with your food crops, fruit trees, etc. Also those pesky mosquitoes that winter over in a mild season and on the first warm day there seem to be multitudes beyond what 'seems' normal.

Yes, our infrastructure sucks. Why they did not spend the money they had received from taxes, surcharges, etc., on underground wiring as they did in the Truckee region is purely nonsensical. To run electric/phone cables THROUGH the trees was an idea from people with no sense whatsoever. Did they think that heavy, wet snow laden branches hanging on the wiring would have no ill effects? By not spending the initial extra cost to run an underground system save them any money in the long run, when they now have crews working 24/7 and bringing in crews from out of the area to compensate for the lack of manpower locally?

On my property, for some bizarre reason, a tree trimming crew is assigned to maintain the growth around the one power pole outside my gate. These guys come every month. There is NO GROWTH around this pole, no branches looming overhead, but they still come out every month. Two poles up from this well manicured site, there are branches interwoven with the wiring. WHAT THE HELL???!!!!

Now maybe I've written here without doing research on WHY these funds seem to be mismanaged. But it takes no research to report that PG & E hassled me with phone calls, using their manpower to do so, to tell me how good their SMARTMETERS were and how it was mandatory that I have one installed. I did research on this brainchild invention to learn that these were really DUMBMETERS imposing much larger usage fees than what the consumer was really using. I did not allow them to install one, and now I learn that many who have had them installed, had their utility bills double and triple and their usage did not change, just the meter did. To dispute the outrageous bills and refuse to pay it meant the service was cut off. The consumer had no choice but to pay up and shut up.

The utility companies remind me of the government. Lots of money in, lots of reasons given to those that pay into the system why the money is not being spent logically and somehow, magically, there are those in high places running the show living with unmeasurable wealth.

Kinda brings out the revolutionary in me, but of course to take a stance and instigate change would find me at the bottom of a lake. As it is, publication of THE CHE DIARIES had a CIA dude trailing me who probably still is. This, I find rather humorous and sad simultaneously, because if the government can tail a grandmother of almost five who writes one little, harmless book and Osama and the pirates are still running wild, then I'd say, there's a misappropriation of the resources that WE PAY FOR.

But all off-the-track-of-winter snow verbiage aside, enjoy winter despite the inconvenience of no power - our family was out of power for 4 days and I melted snow to flush my toilet. It's not global warming (this is another invented farce) it's WINTER! Yes, they killed the Gulf, and this will effect climate as has many of the other crimes of greed has altered the natural balance, but don't buy into the distraction of GLOBAL WARMING, as that's a smokescreen, or in winter terms, a WHITE OUT, so we don't pay attention to the sinister shit that's going on that our tax dollars are paying for that we don't know about and never will.

Be it known, that I'm not opposed to taxes to pay for what is needed to run countries. There WAS enough money to have good, solid infrastructures, educated people, programs for the less fortunate and elderly and enough HEALTHY food so nobody goes hungry. Instead, we have what we are living with today, child molesters and murderers with health care, hard working Americans with NO health care, mass produced food with no nutrients, multitudes of uneducated, impoverished people and elders on so many prescription drugs that they are hallucinating, crumbling infrastructure and the military being mis-used in places we don't need to be.....and the list goes on.

Do love the aspects of winter that are the signature of the season and prepare for the inconvenience our crumbling infrastructure offers so you can still flush your toilets, use your candles and lanterns SAFELY so you don't burn your house down and maybe, we'll have less destructive pests this spring in our gardens and orchards.

YURT BEING BOMBED!

SNOW BOMBS DROPPING onto the yurt have me OUTTA THERE at 3:00 A.M.

At first, Cheyana, my loyal poodle, cuddled up really close after the first hour of the wet snow bombs dropping out of the overhanging old oak and onto the canvas roof of my yurt over my bed. It was rather unnerving, but I COULD stay sleepy, especially with my large red dawg right beside me.

But then...the snow bombs got heavier and had way more mass and were dropping more rapidly. We went to the door, I had to reassure my dog that the yurt was not being invaded by wild animals, which the previous weeks, it had been....skunks, raccoons, other members of rodentia scurrying beneath our sleeping quarters, thus giving us both sleepless nights. Cheyana would be up pacing the perimeters of the yurt hearing sounds I did not. But TONIGHT, a snow bomb would drop so loudly, she'd jump up and look at me, I could read the words in her eyes: "Mom, WTF is going on here!!!!?"

Finally, enough was enough. It was sounding so deadly, that neither of us could take it anymore and here I am, safely at my computer, within the sector of the cabin that did not have the old oak looming over it. The only word/idea I could think of to have it okay to be up at this unghadly hour was BLOG.

So....I've done the healthy good girl thing: I made some instant organic oats, actually ground some flax seed in my new coffee grinder that I'm using just for this new and improved purpose (we need our fiber!) .....and then made some coffee. It beckons me with it's heavenly aroma this moment as I type. Do they still call it "type" - I can't say KEY, that sounds weird....do comment this blog, fans, and let me know if TYPE is still literarily correct. Yes, I know 'literarily' is NOT correct, but it gets the point across and it's to f*#$@* early to give a rat's azz.

My coffee beckons and oh, yes, I almost forgot: even BEFORE I ingested my healthy sustenance, I found, photoshopped and resized my yurt images for your viewing pleasure. Au Revoir......

P.S. It is so loud in that yurt right now, that I wish I could give you the sounds to accompany this body of work. I will share the story and photos this spring (or sooner) when this deadly oak tree gets cut and craned out of here by my trusty professional, George Basso. Fotos of his fine ass hanging in the trees with his massive chainsaw will accompany that blog......stay tuned......where the fun NEVER ends!

Spankings are NOT Beatings

Good old fashioned discipline seems to be viewed as CHILD ABUSE. Like proper nourishment and love, children NEED discipline. They test boundaries before they can even make a full sentence, and it is this testing that REQUIRES the discipline of the parent to actually BE the one in charge. To sit them down and reason with them is like explaining physics to a fish....would you engage a guppy in such dialog and expect it to comprehend?????

I have two grown daughters that I've raised without their father. (Their father was the result of being spoiled, entitled and thinking they don't need to be responsible for their children, having been coddled and not taught by their own ignorant parents) I am of small stature and do not have a deep, manly voice that the father figure has which can more easily command the respect of the child. Yet, I was able to command the respect of my children and I did discipline them as needed. Each child is different, and the disciplinary requirements for each child is different. It is up to the parent to be aware of what each child needs.

My eldest was a firey, strong willed girl who required spankings (not beatings, not slaps in the face). These spankings were not applied out of my own anger. Quite the opposite. If she angered me, I would deal with my own emotions first, and then calmly tell her why she was going to need a spanking and to come to me and place herself over my knee. I never grabbed her and flung her over my knee out of anger, yelling at her while I applied my hand to her butt. I never used a belt, spoon or riding crop, I told her how many swats she was going to get, and it was very effective.

A forgotten fact that I came across as a young, single parent was that spankings originated because the nerves in the bottom had a direct connection to memory. To spank for a reason the child was aware of, and keeping that awareness in the forefront, ensured the child a better chance at remembering to not repeat the inappropriate behavior/action/verbiage*. (*When they are older and talk back)
Spankings are a tool that has been blown out of proportion by those ignorant bastards that abuse their children out of sheer ignorance or for their own satisfaction. Spankings are not about violence when not administered by an angry parent.

My younger daughter was a totally different child than my eldest. She responded to a firm voice and an authoritative "look", and responded favorably and immediately. I only had to give her one spanking when she was about 8. It is up to the parent to understand what works for each child and then to DO IT. Being consistent is KEY. When I see parents being inconsistent I cringe, as that does not promote respect from the child, and in fact promotes another set of ill effects. Besides consistency, one must be true to one's word.....never threaten a child with some punishment or consequence that you have no intention of following through with.

Parents need to have a clue about self discipline in order to effectively administer discipline when discipline is required. It's not just about spankings, either. Discipline is not giving a child what it wants because we have our own conditioned responses about not having gotten what we wanted as kids. Proper discipline in the myriad situations it is called for is not punishment, but guidance. It is not about anger or violence. Quite the contrary. It is about awareness and being conscious of the long term effect of our own actions and behaviors on our children.

Children are small and under our guidance for a much shorter amount of time than the time they will spend as adults away from us; we don't have a very big window to instill self discipline and guidance. It is what we instill in these precious first seven years ONLY that will mould how they will be for the rest of their lives.

After the romance of the pregnancy and new baby cuteness wear off, parents get less interested, I observe. The work required of the parent is neither fun nor easy. Good parenting requires self discipline, consistency, dealing with one's own emotions effectively and being tireless in all of these ways of being. Without applying all this for the first seven years of their lives (and continuing throughout their adolescence), you will live with the consequences of putting a new generation of disrespectful, lazy, entitled and very unpleasant individuals on the planet. Not to mention these kids have no interest in LEARNING anything or READING ACTUAL BOOKS~! How is a teacher supposed to correct all this in a class of 30 kids??? They are teachers, not magicians!

Both of my daughters turned out as well balanced individuals. I cringe when I see some of their peers interact with their children....when a 5 year old speaks to her mother like she's a lowly servant and the mother does nothing to correct this despicable behavior, yet gives that same child every material thing the child whines for.

I enjoy watching both of my daughters parent their children because they understand the concept of discipline and consistency, and are well aware of who is in charge. My daughters both respect me and adore me and still seek my advice occasionally. I did not seek their acceptance of me as their friend when they were small, the place of respected parent is an honorary position, and not to be confused with friendship.

I watch today's generation of parents interact more with their cell phones and texting their friends then being PRESENT with their children. Every time, and I mean EVERY TIME I see a parent walking their little one in a stroller, they are engaged in a cell phone conversation and are not present with that child. They are not interacting with their child at all. The long term effect of having a parent that clearly is disengaged with their child, but gives all their attention to some little device is showing up in the classroom. The students learn disengagement and laziness from their parents. Children are mirrors for us. If that concept sounds foreign to any parent reading this, then I suggest you yourself do some homework on self improvement and personal growth.

Natalie Munroe, the English teacher in Pennsylvania, who this morning is being 'disciplined' for speaking the truth about the current mostly worthless generation of students, is a very important messenger. She is bringing to light the worthlessness of the whole system. She displayed the courage to express a truth that nobody wants to hear or acknowledge. Another case of the messenger being shot, because the message delivered is not what people want. Being open to the truth takes courage and a desire to improve---two things that are sorely lacking in humanity.

Teachers are not paid well and under the gun to make up in the classroom for all the years of the inconsistency, laziness, indulgences and spoiling these breeders have imposed upon a new generation. They are not parents, they are simply breeders. Parenting is an art form, the child has the potential to be a masterpiece or a black spot in humanity. Unfortunately, there are very few masterpieces in this bleak and blackened state of humanity.

Games People Play

Seriously, the whole online fishing game has gone from entertaining to B O R I N G! As in real life, I'm finding men to be all the same.

Didn't want to have a negative cellular memory regarding the MALE human animal, but they themselves are cultivating this in women. After a history of having an open heart, a hopeful attitude toward finding/attracting and moving forward with a man, the results have always been the same. Of course these results came in a colorful assortment of scenarios that all resulted in either heartache, disappointment or both.

After each love gone wrong, I focused on not letting that particular experience shut me down to romantic love. Paramahansa Yogananda said "friendship is the highest form of love" - not romantic love. Romantic love is based on ego gratification and genital interaction. There, I said it. The very strength I possess that attracted a man was the very factor they came to feel threatened by, a need to control and a desire to destroy. Now that's healthy. That last one took the cake. Yes, I learned a lot from each experience, and was always able to pick myself up, dust myself off, get out the glue to piece back my broken heart and usually, thankfully, write a song about it. I have produced and recorded one CD of such songs, and have many that are not recorded. I had two daughters to raise and I wanted them to not be man-haters - so to do this, I couldn't be a man-hater myself.

One time when the girls were older, I exclaimed "I'm hating men right now and I'm not gay, what does that leave me?" my youngest answered "Alone!" Ah, the wisdom of children!
I've been alone for six years this month. It's been lovely, really. I've learned photography, photoshop, painted a series of canvases, trained and continue to train a canine companion, and a host of other personal growth opportunities-including the creation of this beautiful website - oh, and I almost forgot - I published a book. It's amazing what a woman can do when not involved in the struggle of a relationship who's partner wants me to be subservient, invisible and living in the shadow of their male greatness.

So in the spirit of being open to love and not loving my solitude to the point of getting stuck in my ways, I've listed myself with a few sites that cover all the potential bases for love/money/chemistry and arrangements. At first I found it very entertaining, as I don't watch TV. But after much correspondence and a few that seemed genuinely interested, they just seem to evaporate. I must say it's a bit discouraging, although many have advised it takes months of being active on these sites and wading through alot of toads (not frogs!) to MAYBE find someone to have a decent date with.

I thought I've heard all the bullshit, but my eyes were opened to some very new flavors of bullshit, kinky weird, scary bullshit. Who knew there was a medical torture chamber in the Trump Tower! I really don't want to go THERE!

Is there basic human love out there anymore or do men just want to play games, run control trips and use their money, success or manhood to continue to keep up the illusion that they are superior to women?

Truly, the dog being called 'man's best friend' was the wisest observation since the roundness of our planet. Of course mankind is doing its best to level the planet into a bleak, flat lifeless thing. The male-dominated CHURCH did in fact place under house arrest and ex-communication that wise observer that discovered the roundness of our planetary home. Control, control, control.