New Day, New Year

The snow has been falling off and on all day. We have spent a lazy luxurious day just being together and reading and doing various things around the casa. These pictures are not from today, but they still look about the same out there....snow is snow is snow.


When I left this place back in 1976 and ran off to California, I swore I would never come back. I had left a couple of times before this particular Exodus, but returned each time. I had run off to Wisconsin for a year (not so far away, and same weather!) and then off to Colorado for about a year and a half. But when I landed in sunny California and the cold temps got down to about 50 and the hot temps up to about 80...I knew I was home. lol


I still don't like the snow and I don't like the cold. Now that I'm old and beat up, the cold makes me hurt in places I didn't know I had. On the other hand, because I don't work anymore, I don't have to deal with that side of the bad weather. When it snows, I just stay home. I don't have to drive in it. If I have appointments and the roads are bad, I just reschedule them. Where I live, sometimes the worst part is my hill of a driveway and the road in front of my house. There's about a quarter mile stretch that sees no sun, is on a hill, and is a sheet of ice, regardless. PLUS...we are out in the boonies, so we are the last place the snowplow finally comes. When they come. And that's okay by me...I am content to just stay here and read and sip tea and look at it through the window. Husbandman says the weather here is sucky...never cold enough for long enough to be fun. I think he is deranged. But, he is from Wisconsin...and you know how THOSE people are. lol. I tell people I have my own personal zamboni driver. (About 1/4 of them know what I'm talking about.)


There are several people on my mind this evening that I hope are weathering the holidays okay. I don't hear from them anymore, and there's a little hole where they used to be.


So, here we are, the first day of the first month. I started reading the Artists Way again today. I also started the workbook lessons in ACIM. This should be enough to keep me on track in some areas of my life and expand my world so that some Light can come in on a regular basis. I hope so.



I am especially blessed tonight by friendship and by love and by the miraculous gift of sobriety. I am blessed with wonderful memories and a wonderful family and all manner of things good. I have had a life full of adventure and romance and mystery. When I tally it all up, I find it wanting for nothing...and how great is that?


I leave you with this recycled quote (because it's one of my faves):

"I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning."~~ J.B. Priestly (1894-1984)


Namaste.

Thoughtful Thursdays

[Molly McGee, the Jack Russell Terrorist extraordinaire!]

Well, home from the speaker meeting and it was a good one. The speaker had about 26 years and was delightful. We had a medium sized group, and they devoured the desserts. I did manage to bring home some of the old fashioned oatmeal cake I made..everyone loved it and wanted the recipe. It's one of those poor people cakes. lol On a brown recipe card with fading ink that I've been carrying around with me since I was 18. (HOLY CRAP!!!! Do THAT math....)

For some reason tonight, I'm thinking about the blessings that are a result of NOT getting what we want. About the way sometimes things come to us in such a roundabout fashion that we could easily miss them if we're not careful. It pays to practice mindfulness...

I taking part in a thing called 365 days of grace in small things...every day you post at least 5 things that you are grateful for in your life. Lots of folks are doing it, and it's really a good exercise in paying attention to the small stuff. It's easy to be grateful for the big ion-your-face stuff...but we forget about the grace of the smell of our baby's scalp, or the feel of the sun on our face, or any number of tiny seemingly inconsequential things. For instance...it wasn't until after I experienced my Ubiquitous Event and couldn't sit on hard surfaces anymore, that I really appreciated being able to sit in the grass. Or in the beginning when I could barely walk, did I have a new appreciation for walks in the woods that I used to take with my husband. Or riding in the car on long trips. Or feeling at ease anywhere I was. Or not worrying about where I would be or what I could or could not do, whether I could keep up. Whether I would fall. Things that never crossed my mind before.

Today, things are more precious to me. Because I have found the sacred in almost everything, I am a better steward. Because I have glimpsed the fragility of life, I am more caring and care-full. I wouldn't be who I am today, if things hadn't been set in motion that changed my life. It gives me a new perception in life.

A Course in Miracles says that a miracle is a "shift in perception". Undoubtably, I have experienced a miracle in my own life.

And so it is...


Namaste.

A Thankful Thursday

Had a great day...got to hear a wonderful young man tell his story at our speaker meeting and share good food with a great bunch of people, and see my friends who arrived exactly on time! The is nothing like meeting up with friends you haven't seen in a while....and tomorrow we will go have a nice long lunch and catch up some more.

We had a moderate turnout, only about 25 people, and so I came home with sloppy joes to go into the freezer. I made enough for 45-50...and some of the folks took some home, so I only had about 2 gallons left, if that much. I can always use it in chili or for more sloppies.

I am beat tonight. I finished 2 loads of laundry and cleaned house and cooked and then set up the meeting and now I'm bushed. Feels like a good productive day. I know that once my head hits the pillow, I'll sleep with no regrets that I didn't get more done. (Not that I ever do, really...lol) I'm a list maker, and whatever doesn't get done just slides over to the next day's list. It's a fool proof system :)

Tonight, I'm feeling really blessed to be sober and alive and happy. And relatively sane. And content in my life and in love with my husband and even more in love with my friends. I'm blessed to have something to give away today. I'm blessed to know where to go if I need help. I'm blessed to know that I am blessed.

ACIM says that a miracle is a "shift in perception". To be able to look at the world through clear eyes, to be able to love, to not have to drink at all the problems that drinking caused me...these are truly miracles for me. And the truth is that all that happened was a "shift"...for one minute I thought you guys in AA might actually have a solution to my problem. That one minute of suspended egocentricity was enough of a crack to allow a little hope to shine through. And that, my friends, is when my perceptions started to shift. Maybe I could get sober. Maybe this thing could work for me, too. Maybe I wouldn't have to die drunk, way before my time.

One Day At A Time, you said. Act "as if", you said. To thine own self be true, you said. Don't take the first drink, you said. Give it away to keep it, you said. And here I sit, at a keyboard in a house of love, sober and happy and free.

You weren't kidding......




Namaste.