The death of a childhood fantasy...

I just spent the past 45 minutes enduring the pulchritudinous-spewage that is ABBA: The Movie.
I was a child of ABBA. I cut my teeth on their album. I wasthat girl , I did dig it. So with all the recent hubbub over Mama Mia I was pleased to see the the quartet had a movie they were actually in. So I turned right to it.

But now. I have to ask myself now, what was I really digging?

This saccharin-sweet, mock-u-mentry is an all out assault on all my sweet dreams of the Swedish foursome. Where my memories we all about best friends, and hair-brush microphones, I am now left with a sensation not too dissimilar from that of
Alex, when he is forced to endure the Ludovico Technique.

Yes, I suppose I could have just "changed the channel," but I was transfixed.
The performances reminded me of something wormholed from the gay 1890's smack to the middle of a cocaine-steeped age of disco. Pure ickiness. Concept performances like "Get on the Carousel" and "I am a Marionette" merged into one horror-show blend of bad back-up, too much tenor, and costumes that, well I just haven't the words to describe the costumes. I will only touch on that with this quote from my husband, who was busy surfing-the-light-fantastic (i.e. internet) when he asked from the kitchen "Are they wearing their homemade costumes?" Nuff said.
My bemoaning was enough to drag my husband into this whirlwind of badness (in the tradition usage of “bad”). As we watched this, ice-cream social gone awry, we realized that ABBA, is the yin to KISS's yang. They should have toured together.

Lookey what I did!

In the immortal words of AC/DC.....

"...I'm back in the saddle ag-a-in..."

Or at least I think it was AC/DC. I could be wrong on that. All those "metal" bands blur together to me much like mid 80s Trans Ams, Cameros, and Firebirds. Which I dubbed "trans-fire-mos" in an effort to apply some sort categorization to them.
at any rate, I am here. School let out two weeks ago. I spent the first week in a frenzy of activity that had been neglected for the last few weeks of school when we ran back and forth to "the big city." My parents were coming to visit, and I didn't want to have quite such a nasty house. Also, I was apparently fighting some nasty flu bug, because once the dust settled, my husband developed it full on. He's been down with a bad bug for four days now. Fluctuating fever (very high at the beginning 103.5), cough, congestion, headache, body ache. General yuck. Today he is apparently feeling better because he is talking with renewed vigor about the state of the nation.
At any rate; Here we are.

"Modern Spiritual"

We are on our mini-break (more on that later) and last night Mi Espouse woke me up to tell me of the included video. My response...
"Oh well that would explain the nightmares I was having...."

I just realized our landlord's initials are the same as "butt hole"

...and it's apropos, because he is. Completely. We are moving, of course you know this by now. But I awoke this morning after nightmares of trying to escape a house inhabited by demons. Full--on blood from the walls kinda stuff. We were trying to get our cats and our son out without any trouble, and I awoke as we were pulling away from the house. As we were sipping our morning beverages, we talked about our dreams and my hubby also was plagued with bad dreams about moving ( you can read more here).
I've enough introspection and education to know that our dreams are simply means of filing away our current anxieties and daily thoughts, but it's still annoying as fuck. We've felt haunted in this house from the get go. I don't know if it is actual spectral energy, or all the shit that BH left in and around the house. It has been a crap place to live, and I'm glad to get on the move. We currently have about 1/4 of our stuff over at our new digs in the gigantic storage building that we have. As we were unloading, I said to hubby "If we live here for too long, this gigantic storage building could be bad."
"Why is that, you ask?"
Well, gigantic storage building, means gigantic space to fill. We could antique, and whatnot for years, and barely fill the thing. Hmmmmmm......
The potential for onerous future moves aside, I really can't wait to get into the new house. After we unloaded, we hiked out into the pasture and tears came to my eyes as we stood on the high bank of a pond, overlooking our new home, and the sun as it began sinking into the distance. We were all three bliss struck with the farm smells and sounds of silence, sprinkled with calls from various birds.
It's gonna be grand.

Happy. New. Year.

Happy New Year folks!
Here we are birthed naked and shiney into a whole new year! A whole new (symbolic) life! Why do people always make those grandiose "resolutions?" Because we are symbolic beasts. We love the idea of a new beginning; and new chance; new lease on life; starting over; born again..... all these ideas for what is really a imply means of keeping track of time.
I have a secret I am going to share with you folks, shhhhhh, it's not really a new start.
Nope. Sorry to bust that bubble. It's still the same old you, that you were born with. The same nasty habits, same smelly feet. To quote Mr. Miyagi "Same, same."
But what is different, is our approach to the shiney new calendar on the wall. Don't misread, I think it is extremely important to mark the turning of a year. We have to be made aware of the passage of time. Otherwise, we'd never get anything done. It is important to be aware that time does "keep on slipping, slippin, slippin-into the future."

Last night marked the first year that my husband and I kept our son awake to ring in the new year. He was all hopped up on sugar and ready to drink his sparkling cider and go to bed by 11:20. We convinced him to stick it out to see the shiney ball drop, and he did.
It was a new thing for us. New, shiney and new. Our son. Not a baby anymore. Toasting in the new year with us. I had cried earlier in the evening at something I'd said to him, that made me realise he isn't a baby anymore. It hurt. My baby is not a baby anymore. Such a sad realisation for a parent. All that sweetness, and little preciousness is just gone. It's like you wake up and it's gone. But in that is a newness, a newer sense of reality. Older and more of a smartass yes, but special in it's own right. We rang in the New Year with our son. It was special.
So even though we are all still the same, there is newness.

Chickens

I grew up smack dab in the middle of a mid-sized city, but was fortunate to have a surrogate-grandfather that saw to it that my brothers and I were exposed to the more agrarian side of life. My mom is from northern Wyoming- full-on cattle country; and my dad (who is from the same city as I) had allusions of cowboydom- so they encouraged this pastoral peek. We spent weekends on "the farm" riding horses, planting acre-gardens, and all those lovely things one does on a farm. But one summer, my dad and "Grandpa," as we lovingly called him, hatched a scheming plan to raise chickens. I won't delve too deeply into the details, suffice to say that "a few" chickens was actually 80, mutant-Cornish hens that topped the scales at 10 pounds when they finally broke through the bottom of the pen and ran amok in our backyard (which is quite large). It is one of my fondest memories. Plucking chickens is not a skill that most "city girls" can add to their c.v. I, however, was fortunate to get the chance.


But now that we are making a move to our own farm, I am thinking chickens again. Not 80, and not freakishly large Cornish hens either... No, I am thinking nothing but haute couture will do. I am looking at the fancy chickens!


I want beautiful, rainbow colored eggs, for chickens so plumed and coiffed they look like they just walked a Paris runway. Chickens like this one.......
Isn't she beautiful?
Mind you, our chickens will not be eaten.
They will be for egg-ing only.
I am looking at: Easter Eggers; Ameraucana (though these are apparently difficult to find); Andalusian; Wyandotte;a Leghorn or two(for the cartoon association); a white chicken of some sort (for the W.C. Williams poem The Red Wheelbarrow).
Yeah...chickens.
You will be very lucky if you live close to us and come to visit.
:)

Fainting goats or Watusi cattle?

"Pack up the yaks, and fold up the yurt, honey- we're moving again!" Oh, that we were mongols and it was that easy... But no. At latest count, there are 35 boxes of books alone. Sigh. How so you weed through books? We thought we had weeded through and condensed down to "only the essential" books. But 35 boxes seems excessive.

Nevertheless, I am excited about the move. Here is a picture of our new home to be....(nevermind the silver torpedo...it's a propane tank- soon to be painted like a submarine).

It's a little farm house located in a fertile river valley. It's got a huge chicken coop lots of space for a garden and pasture for animals.

I have for several years, felt a compulsion to run off and be a cheese maker. Now, there is very much that potential. I have been researching cheese making for some time. It all started when I saw a beautiful photo of a happy-milk cow on a Stoneyfield Farms Yogurt ad. Something about her sweet soft face and long eyelashes spoke to me.

I don't know if there are wheels of Brie coming in your Holiday baskets next year(though pepper jelly is likely!), but there is the potential.

We went to the feed store to buy cat food for our colony, and we also bought a salt lick (to attract deer), and two copies of the magazine Hobby Farm. It may be my new favorite magazine. I have been ordering gardening catalogs, and thinking in terms of rubber boots, bushel baskets, and gardening gloves. I am very excited about moving. After five months, of undeserved-landlord paranoia, and no money to splurge on the most minute of items, any break would be welcome, but I think that this move, will be one that we take to well, and settle into.

49 Days

It's been 49 days since my friend Barbie died. In Buddhist tradition, 49 days is the intermittent time (or Bardo) between incarnations. I think it is extremely auspicious that today is the 49th day, because of the rebirth associations of Christmas. Aside from Bodhi Day, I can't think of a more auspicious day.

It is traditional to burn an image of the dead as a symbolic gesture. I walked off and forgot the picture I had set on my shrine, but my wonderful husband took care of it for me.

As I sit and write this, I started feeling sad. I teared up. I feel that sorrowful attachment that we feel when someone we love dies. But that is the nature of suffering, and craving.
"I will never see her again; so I am sad."

But when I clicked the upload for her photo, I felt this immense sense of happiness.
I am happy for her. Because she was such a good person, and brought so much to those that knew her. I know that there is something better for her, becasue that is the nature of karma. She deserves a better life.

Because those people that should have been there for her, and set good examples for her, failed her. I won't point fingers and say nasty things, because that would be wrong, and ultimately, they have lost a beautiful bright spot in their lives, and I know they recognise this. It is a shame that she died, but I know, she is going to have a better life.



May Barbie Goodman have happiness and the causes of happiness.


May she be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.


May she never be separated from bliss.


May she remain in equanimity, free of bias, attachment and anger.





This is a restatement of the Four Immeasurables for my friend.
Namaste. my friend.