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This quote blew me away when I read it today and I discovered a person I'd like to know more about:

“This is when the magic happens: right when you feel like everything is going wrong, shift your attitude to accept that it’s actually going right. Our judgments of how we think our life should be are preventing us from reaching our Highest Potential. If you’re going through a storm, hold the belief that it’s the perfect storm for you to be going through and that you’ve been given everything you need to weather the storm. When the chaos subsides you will experience the Truth that is forever true; you are always taken care of, exactly where you need to be and your efforts are rewarded exactly when they need to be. Remember this Truth the next time a storm is on the horizon and you will grow wings and be able fly right over it and towards the calm waters of Trust and Universal love.” ~Jackson Kiddard

Yesterday I had some news that literally brought tears of joy to my eyes. Although Unemployment had told me the amount I would be receiving via mail, during the process it turns out I qualified for an extension since I've only been working temporary jobs since getting laid off, so I still receive the maximum amount. It's truly wonderful to be slightly less poor than I was!

Burning Man prep is accelerating. I reserved a car, bought a used bike rack, bought 8 two-foot ,1/2 inch diameter rebar stakes, bungies, gems to glue on my face, some toiletries, a paper thin full-length mirror and clothesline. I ordered two small solar lanterns for camp and my tent.

I really need to start hemming and embellishing my clothes. I don't really have that many. Which is fine. I think that's tomorrow. I have another big trip to an army surplus store for goggles and to see whatever else they have I may need. I need a pad for under my sleeping bag...I am EXCITED and nervous!!

I did major work in my garden today. My hot pepper plants are huge, I see something like a flower coming along but it's droopy. I cleaned the leaves cause a few were shriveling, so I think bug was sucking the juice out of them. I need a ladybug or two out there. I transplanted my biggest one and a smaller one into a huge pot, then switched a few others into the next size. Yesterday I cut back the basil and cilantro and have it drying. I think I may take a nice dried bag to Burning Man, my mates cook alot. After I clean up the balcony tomorrow --once the sun drys the floor-- I'll take a few pictures and post them.

Current Mood: chipper

I didn't know Harold Camping, Rapture Fail-guy, bilker, conman, (does 'grifter' fit?) was an Oak Lander until this past week.

I enjoyed the joking all week and everyone I know expressed similar sentiments that once the Rapture folks leave, we'll all have better times here. A Native American friend posted a very cool statement on FB about how it would have been nice to get Paradise back right here on 'mama earth.'

I was still in a little bit of the past yesterday, or fighting a cold or just the pictures in my head, nothing major, just what I've been writing about this past week. This week, I could see myself clearly in the car with the lunatic, felt the sadness and humiliation I felt then and in the now, I felt heaps of compassion for that woman, that me. I think it has to be honored somehow, you can't stuff it away 24/7, you can't go numb. Anyway, I've slept a lot, Friday night and yesterday, immediately after the usual errands.

At 6:05, my friend texted me, but by then I was kind of over the whole rapture disaster. My body was so stiff from non-movement. I was 10 minutes into a yoga practice when there was a big thud or jolt, the cats scattered to the back of the apartment. Nothing swayed, there was no rumble, just a big jolt. I half thought someone dropped something heavy in the building, half wondered. I kept doing yoga. Two seconds later, same friend texted, did I feel that?

Holy shit! How funny was that? It turned out to be a small 3.6 quake in the east bay. Here at least Mom Earth played a good joke.

I have to think about the Mississippi flooding, the round of murderous tornadoes, the wars known and unknown, people suffering daily from hunger, violence and poverty; this rapture fantasy and hell for the rest of us, couldn't have had much meaning for them.

In

fortysomething I found myself over-defending Arnoldo's housekeeper because there was a weird judgmental thread going on. I don't like situations like that. 99 percent of it, we'll never know. He was a known womanizer his whole life. Didn't we all wonder (well to the extent that it crossed our minds) why Maria ever married him? It all came up when he ran for governor here. I figured it was sexual chemistry. Their kids seem awesome. The housekeeper fucked up and now the hell storm is on her. Humans fuck up and mostly do the best they can.

This morning is cool and foggy. I opened my fire-escape door to check the plants, they're all holding their own and the weather has been cool and rainy, so it looks like they're tough enough. I found a clear marble in the forget-me-nots container. Of course I wanted it to be a piece of a meteorite, a particle of a star, something from the universe. I'm pretending it is; and its some type of message left to me. One day I found an acorn shell, but no digging. It's nice having life back there. I'd love to have a garden-cam to see what was happening. I can't see it from any window, the window in the door is beveled.

And here comes the sun.

Current Mood: mellow

The whole family except poor poor pitiful me was in Florida at my mom & dad's. Even though being with them all at once stresses me out and turns me into a 14 year-old brat, I felt a few pangs of being left out and forgotten. I'll always be a brat as far as the fam' goes but at least now as a 50 year-old brat I can laugh at myself at thesame time as feeling sorry for myself.

About 10 years ago my mom told me she often had a dream where we were on a rocky beach and she had lost me. It was just us and I was a little kid. She said she was agitated and scared in the dream because she couldn't find me. She was calling and looking for me. She hated the dream naturally, it was very upsetting.

We talked about it several times and I tried to help her analyze it by asking what was on her mind at that point in her life, what did I represent to her, what did the beach mean to her, etc., but we didn't really get anywhere with it. I think about it sometimes. I wonder if when she started having it, I was at a point in my life where I was really drifting away, I never really followed a "normal" path. Or maybe she was the one drifting away. We were maybe lost to each other. Who knows?

A colleague I temped with told me when her daughter was very young, one year for her birthday, all she wanted was a flying magic carpet. My friend bought her a little kitchen rug and she said she'd walk by her daughter's room and the child would be sitting on the rug clutching the sides with her eyes closed. That is one special kid, I thought. As did my colleague!

So, I wrote this short story for my mom for Mother's Day. I enjoyed writing it for many reasons, the subject, practice and imagining. I haven't heard from her yet. She was busy feeding and celebrating with her kids and grandkids as she should have been when I called today. I asked her to open her email today--I didn't finish it in time to mail it with her cards--she checks her email about twice a month if that. I wonder what she will think of it.
( story for mom )My fire escape garden is growing. Last Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, I carried about 8 pots of fledgling plants from the table that gets west sun - formerly known as the dining room table- out to the fire escape to get used to being outside in the eastern sun and afternoon shade. Thursday night, they spent their first whole night outside. I didn't know how they would react to foggy, cool and damp nights, but they've become sturdier and now that's where they live. Today was windy and I checked them many times, I have to learn how to grow things in this climate. When the seedlings are bigger, I'll transplant them and hang them from the railings, since it is a fire escape and technically the path should be clear. I'm still coaxing ginger to sprout from roots, inside.

I've only had houseplants here, I feel successful with these tiny plants! I joined an LJ community called apartmentgarden when they were spot lighted a couple weeks ago. The urban gardening movement is really growing, hehehehe!

Take a gander-

4 pots of Asian hot pepper plants from seed & in the red former kitty litter pan, forget-me-nots have peeked through.




2 garlic plants, one avocado and another pot of hot pepper plants



Rearranged the pots for the photo, I bought the basil and divided it into 3 plants, 1 is inside



View from the fire escape, zoomed in just a little