Saturday-11:45am

We finally had some snow yesterday. This was the predawn scene.

Enough for them to shovel the sidewalk...even a very narrow path to the exit door below my window. I wonder if they will keep that up? Sure hope so.

Today it was raining and now it's snowing. The roads are going to be terrible for the party folk. I hope they all travel safely.

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I checked emails and blogs first this morning.

Time for lunch after I am done here. :)

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Best of both worlds for Karma...her cat bed and a good hard pillow with the arm of the chair--LOL!

Well, I had a sad package yesterday from John/Spruce. Two large manila envelopes taped together and look what I pulled out of them? These envelopes...also taped together...

...containing all the bookcards I have sent John over the past year!??

He returned them!??

John has been a teacher in Nain (Labrador, Canada) with the Inuits for 50 years. He was online when I met him in the Chinese Brush Painting Yahoo group a few years ago, but decided to drop the internet over a year ago.

We had already been writing letters...

I knew he loved the prairie sky pictures on my blog...

...and anything to do with Karma....

...so, I'd print off pictures that I had used on the blog and glue them into the bookcards. He loved the Picture Bookcards. (These are what I mailed to my friend, Anita, too, who never had internet.) Anyways, my new printer is almost out of one color of ink...happened about a month ago..so I told John that it would be a while before I'd be able to add pictures to his letters...that it would take some time before I'd be buying ink cartridges because they were a little spendy, but no problem...just be writing regular letters for a few months.

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Well, I don't think he understood that the pictures in his bookcards were just copies...or that I don't do the picture bookcards for everybody...or something? He sent them all back because he said he "felt guilty hoarding all these wonderful photos". That I could use the pictures to make some kind of art project or I could somehow pass the pictures on to someone else. :( Made me sad. They were just prints, you know? I should have never said anything to him, but I wanted to explain why I was back to just writing plain letters with no pictures when he had been getting these for a year, you know? Dang it all. He didn't understand.

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And it has been so sad there with the Inuit culture. Alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, and recently a couple more suicides. One was a young boy who hung himself right in the school where John still substitutes. I think he was just feeling sorrowful and like he wasn't worth the pictures. Broke my heart. I think maybe I should send them back...but not really sure what to do.

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Anyways, that was the strange and sad mail yesterday. Maybe it made me more sad because it made me think...all the picture bookcards I sent to Anita would be a stack like this, too.

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Anyways, on to the blogger award.

I got the Versatile Blogger Award from Wendy.

I don't usually do awards. I will just invite anyone who wants to do this to grab the award and go for it! You just tell 7 things about yourself and pick 5 bloggers to pass it on to. I will certainly enjoy reading the stuff about you, for sure, if you do it! ;)

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Okay seven random things:

1. I really did used to have a mind like a steel trap. Now it is like a steel sieve! Fibro fog has blurred the edges of my mind. If I don't write things down these days I am likely to forget. This is why I need my desk calendar and lists and post-it notes and scratch pads--LOL! But then I have to remember to look at them. ;)

2. From the time I left home after high school I never lived in any place more than 3 years (twice) until I moved up here to the Fargo-Moorhead area. I lived in Moorhead from 1999-2005 and then moved here to Fargo in Feb of 2005! I am sick to death of moving and want to stay here forever. :)

3. I've been married twice. Lived with somebody twice, too. I apparently have no judgment when it comes to love. So I decided to hand my love life over to GA (guardian angel), put my spiritual path first, and have been happily alone since 1993. [Note: a psychic told me I'd be married three times and the last time I'd be old--but I'd be happy and content with him. I'd have to meet him online, I guess, eh? And I'd have to let the thought enter my consciousness once in a blue moon, too--ROFL!]

4. I have angels in every room of my apartment...even the bathroom and kitchen. Pictures, cross stitch (from my sister), magnets, figurines...

5. I was born in Minneapolis Swedish Hospital. I'm the oldest of three...have a brother and sister who still live in Minneapolis. They were born in the same year...brother in January and sister in December. [Is that what they call Irish twins? Even if they're Swedish?] We were the last of the full-blooded Swedes in the family.

6. The first 45 I ever bought (1962 when I was 11) was The Locomotion by Little Eva...and it still makes me want to dance!

7. I guess I have a distinctive laugh. At a reunion a classmate who hadn't seen me for 20 years told me, "I could hear that 'Rita-laugh' from across the room when I walked in and knew you were here before I ever laid eyes on you". There are worse things to be known for. :):)

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I have to quit playing The Locomotion so I can finish this. ;)

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New Year's Eve!!!

For those of you new to my blog, I have my own little ceremony for saying goodbye to the past year and greeting the new one. Have this square cloth I bought from the Tibetan monks when they came to Concordia in Moorhead about 9-10 years ago that I have used every year since. I place the cloth on the table, gather all my various crystals & do-dads from all over the apartment, clean them, and place them on the cloth. New Year's Eve is the time they all get cleaned and re-energized. Since I moved here, I try to let them all stay out on the table until they can get some sunshine...but sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate...and I want to use the table. ;)

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First I put on some peaceful new-age music and light some candles. Then I write down on little pieces of paper all the things I want to release to the universe. I slowly burn them one by one in my copper burning bowl and send them off. I always pick a card from my very favorite angel card deck. Sometimes I pick three rune stones--past, present, future. Sometimes I play my Tibetan bell or Tibetan bowl a little--or strike the ting shaws or the chime. Sometimes I journal. Sometimes I do a longer mediation. Sometimes I sage the whole apartment. Just depends on what I feel like doing and how tired I am--LOL!

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So, I best eat lunch and clear off the table and start puttering. This year I may or may not be doing this at midnight...unless I take a nap. Might be one of the years I'm done earlier because I'm too tired. Sleep comes before strict adherence to time ritual these days--LOL! I didn't make it past 10:30pm last night, so who knows? But the rituals will be given proper respect. It always feels like it completes the year for me...and like the starter gun for the next. :):)

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What is your New Year's like this year?

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"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."

Edith Lovejoy Pierce