23:12 - 08.04.07
Spirit - ed
I woke up on Friday with a frozen shoulder and neck. You see the cleaning this week has focussed on things such as pulling curtains down, washing them and then rehanging them. The problem is that I chose to have ceiling to floor panels because, from an interior decorating perspective, one is supposed to try to avoid breaking up a clean line when one has a small space to work with. That's what I learned years ago when I worked as an assistant manager in a drapery/fabric store. A small Canadian firm that actually made it's own draperies - custom work. Anyway, being vertically challenged, even standing on a chair to reach the curtains was only a partial help. I still had to stand on tiptoe and try to balance at the same time. Try that with four or five cats winding their way around your legs. The upshot was that at some point I must have pulled or strained all the muscles on the right side of my body from the waist up. It didn't help that we had a weather front passing over that caused the usual havoc with joints and heads too. It took about 20 minutes of lying on an ice pack before I could even move. Owwwww. My sons say it is because I'm getting older, but I think it is just being out of shape. Who says housework isn't exercise. They obviously aren't doing it properly then.
As I was waiting for the washing/drying cycles to complete, I was also sorting through bags of clothes and old toys trying to decide what to save and what to throw out. There are now 8 bags of extra garbage waiting to be picked up in a couple of days. Add in the extra bags of yard refuse I hope to gather tomorrow and those garbagemen will be getting their own workout from this house this week. The milkman is on holiday so I won't be able to work things out with him until the end of April, but I did finally get through to that salesperson who had sent me the letter thanking me for allowing him to do an in-house estimate a month ago - the one that never took place. No one locally or nationally would answer any of my phone calls. They even tried to deny that they had any record of me - then why the letter addressed to me personally at my home address. I finally called the local guy and stated, for his voicemail, that his letter indicated he had been in my home without my knowledge or consent. I let him know that if he didn't respond to my call within a day I would turn that letter over to the Better Business Bureau and/or the police for investigation. After almost a week of being given the runaround, I had a return call within half an hour. I love paper evidence. The fellow was still pretty rude. He stated that they had had a call from me when my furnace broke - yes in November 2005 which they never responded to - and this was his standard follow-up letter. Since he had never responded to my request a year and a half ago and had never been in my home, how could he make the statements he did. I never did get a straight answer. He was becoming more flustered as the conversation continued, so my conclusion is that he lied on his sales figures then had to come with extra names to account for padding his reports. I don't think my name will be used again though. Finally I also received another call from Elections Canada - is all the unpaid work we are requiring of you done yet? Yes well, at least that prompted me to write the description of my ideal job that the interviewer had asked me about just over a week ago. Time to walk on.
I heard from my friend doing the election work overseas finally. She was explaining further what was transpiring to make her so upset. It is hard when one is witnessing deception and lies in a setting where one's ability to deal with it is severely limited, unless one does wish to be injured. She was not at physical risk at that point, but was close enough to make her very uncomfortable. She was letting me know that one of the senior supervisors she respects was due to arrive for the duration of the assignment and that seemed to ease her mind considerably. Eased mine too.
I also heard from my sister's sister-in-law. An interesting work assignment has raised her spirits. Cat-sitting for a family whose home has a wonderful view of nature on their tiny island bordering the ocean. She's also been able to start her gardening for the season. Couldn't help being a tiny bit jealous about the last bit of news, although I would never let on to the resident felines. I sent her some of the recipes published in the on-line newspapers for home made pet food. Given the spreading poisoning crisis with respect to commercial pet food it seems prudent to have an alternative plan - especially since she is dealing with someone else's cherished pet(s), eh?
I continued guerilla home cleaning yesterday. I don't know where the burst of energy is coming from, but I'm exploiting it for all it's worth. Made a fair amount of headway, including it as part of a ritual of intent too. I decided that since there was an astrological grand trine between the Sun, Mr Saturn and Mr Jupiter it would probably be much more effective than New Year's resolutions that just don't stick somehow. Maybe it's because those planets are all in fire signs or because Jupiter is conjuncting my Venus and ascendant, but it seemed to have a lot of power in it. I chose a Kokopelli candle votive for the focal point of my meditation and prayers. In Southwestern US aboriginal legends Kokopelli is supposed to draw one's spirit into one's spine upon conception by using his flute to draw it up through the chakras - Kundalini yoga. Sort of like a snake charmer, I guess. A red candle wrapped with rose quartz beads completed the active part of the mandala. I placed that in a stone buddha dish, adding a thin layer of water on the bottom of the dish. The whole was placed on a wood surface. Hmmm. I had no plan but to follow whatever promptings I received as I was working. Started out with yoga. The cats were thrilled.
On the television, as I was working through my asanas, was the movie "Enemy of the State" with Will Smith. What was curious was that for part of the ritual I wanted to open an awareness of where to focus energy in the coming year. Shades of Robert Redford and "Three Days of the Condor"! Remember that movie was prescient with respect to the beginning of the Desert Storm and Iraq wars. It was released in 1975. Will Smith's movie was released in 1998. It almost exactly mapped the Homeland Security attempts from 2002 onward to monitor all and any one's personal communications and movement using everything from spy satellites, to GPS to high frequency monitoring of a person's every movement. In this case the target was a lawyer, Will Smith's character. He happened to learn of a rogue senator who was using his authority and security clearance to bludgeon people into supporting his attempts to enact a draconian bill that would take away US residents' right to any privacy or freedom of expression. One of the character's (Gene Hackman)comments with respect to the government was "They get into your bank statements, computer files, email, listen to your phone calls... Every wire, every airwave. The more technology used, the easier it is for them to keep tabs on you" while the rogue politician in justifying the murder of another politician states " we are already at war (on terror), it's just that the average citizen is unaware of it". What becomes eerily apparent is that the surveillance war the corrupt politician is indulging in is aimed squarely at his fellow Americans. At one point that character has to divulge his birthdate for verification. September 11.... Too weird. It made me recall a Canadian newspaper story from a couple of weeks ago where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police divulged, during a trial, that they had staff hired whose only purpose was to monitor the on-line blogs of Canadians. Yes well, that would be an interesting job but why not for the purpose to better understand what Canadians need or want their governments to do. And the beat goes on.
After the yoga I soaked my sore muscles in the tub and read one of the books I have on ley lines - energy pools created from mother earth. In geophysics it is partially accounted for by scouting magnetic anomalies. It can also be used for dowsing, which is still used both in agricultural and oil and gas industries - at least here in this province. The writer was talking about sacred sites, such as churches and monoliths like the standing stones that criss-cross Europe and the British Isles. It links in to the research undertaken about zero gravity that is most evident in the Haarp project in Alaska. I don't know why I feel drawn to those studies right now, but it goes back to that 35 year astrological cycle that I wrote about over a month ago. Hmm. Cooked up a mess of veggies as part of the ritual - cleansing, don't you know - then moved into a meditation that took in Easter themes as well. As I was nearing the end of the meditation, I had a vision of a middle aged man of Asian descent. He was wearing a silk coat that was a deep red colour embossed with a small, deep gold mandala that repeated itself in a non-linear pattern all over the coat. He was revered as a great sage and teacher and he seemed to be giving me instructions. That was when I came back to the present reality. Maybe I will hear the words he spoke when the time is right for the work he was directing me to do. Don't know.
Today the highlight of the day was when my oldest son came by with is two children. My youngest was off at his Dad's for Easter dinner with the rest of his brothers. On Friday, my second son was recounting an incident that makes counting our blessings even more important this Easter. He was driving home from work, my youngest grand-daughter tucked up in her car seat. Their home, in a very nice community is just after the overpass across the main north-south freeway. As he was approaching the overpass he sighted what appeared to be a robbery occurring. Turns out there had been gun-play immediately before my son arrived on the scene. One of the thieves was shot. He arrived at the site before the police, which makes it a close call alright. Now that our city has a population of one million people it seems that crime appears in all neighbourhoods. A friend who is a journalist, told me that such incidents are under-reported for certain communities because those residents don't want their property values diminished and the editors are intimidated by the financial clout of those residents. This one was reported because it is harder to hide something that comes along with gunfire.
My family plan to have our Easter gathering next week, partly because all my sisters' families have birthdays to celebrate this weekend and because of the death of my Dad's work partner. Next week just seemed more appropriate somehow. Anyway our gathering at my home was very casual. My son and grandbabies made pizza using flat bread and hot (for Canadians) salsa as a base then added pepperoni, onions, cheese and other toppings to taste with a side of fresh carrots and spinach. Vanilla ice cream with chocolate chips were dessert. Maybe not traditional Easter fare, but it satisfied those that ate it. My grandbabies watched Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, while my son and I continued sorting through the mounds of clothes and toys I had been trying to cull. He left with several bags of clothes and a backpack full of Hardy Boy books he wants to read out loud with my grandson. They left at the end of the movie and my youngest arrived home not long after that. Full days indeed.
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