An excellent example

our living room

My sister-in-law Jeanne has never been to our house because she is highly allergic to cats. We met for lunch last week and she was telling me that she loved seeing the photos of our house on the blog (usually the house is in the background and I am showcasing one of our furry mammals). I asked her if she’d like me to send her some pictures of our home and she said yes. I took a bunch last night and when I looked at the photo above, it reminded me of the inside of an Aladdin’s lamp. When I was a young girl, I loved the TV show, I Dream of Jeannie. The inside of her magic bottle was especially appealing with all of its pillows and soft places sit. I wanted a room like that so much…I think I finally have it.

Most of the furniture in our home is from some thrift store. With 6 cats, a big fuzzy dog, and 2 human beings, who are not very neat and tend to spill things on a regular basis, I need to have a house that I can live in and not worry about if something gets broken, spilled on, nails sharpened on, thrown up on, (by the animals, not us) and sometimes even a little worse than that. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I once heard a very wise statement, “Don’t cry over anything that cannot cry over you.” The comfort and happiness of the things with beating hearts always comes first.

Life is for living now; for using up fully, not stored away, over-protected, or worried about.

“Live life fully while you’re here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up!  You’re going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes….Don’t try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.” Anthony Robbins

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Loving animals, and a give-away

A couple of times a year, I go through my books and donate or give some away to make room for the new. Instead of putting this one in the donation bag, I thought I’d offer it here as a give-away. Since I really enjoyed these stories, and we are such a community of animal lovers, I thought that you might like it too.

To enter this give-away just post a comment that has a word, which comes to mind when you think about your animal friends. It could be love, comfort, joy, etc., or even a pet’s name or a story. I’ll choose a random winner on Saturday the 14th.

“I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it’s such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her“. Ellen DeGeneres

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Birds as messengers

Photograph by Medford Taylor

Last evening Jack and I were driving to a friend’s house for dinner and had gotten into  ”discussion” about moving. Jack owns an antique store/gallery and has been there for 20 years. I want to believe that he can close his shop, or sell it, and move easily to a new town/life, and he says that he wants to and yet, when things don’t seem to be moving (at all), I find myself blaming him for dragging his heels. As much as I know (in my head) not to blame others, and that all answers are within, and how disempowering it is to look to someone else to make things happen, I still do it…

Last night, it was under the guise of, “I’m trying to be helpful here.”…giving him all sorts of, what I considered to be, helpful suggestions and he was sitting there mute. I could feel the frustration building inside me, (which should have been a clue to check myself but I didn’t), so I pressed in even more.

Suddenly he said, “I just saw a peacock back there!” I thought he was talking about a sign with a peacock on it, or some other dumb thing, and just said “What? Where?”, “Turn back, there really is a peacock walking on the side of the road.”

I turned around, a little begrudgingly, and sure enough, on the side of the road was a peacock. We got out of the car to see if we could get near it. Where on earth did a peacock come from? I tried to call it to me, and had visions of myself sitting in the backseat holding it…bringing it some  place…where?… as Jack walked around behind it.  At that moment it flew right over the top of my head. We tried to find it but could not.

That has to be one of most unusual occurences of my life and I knew that it was a sign. I was more than a little stunned as we got back in the car and said, “Maybe that was a sign that if we can see a peacock in Rupert, VT, something so impossible as this, then Jack Metzger could move.” We both laughed, but I also appreciated how that startling bird helped me to re-direct my own critical thinking.

When we arrived at our friend’s home, and they were introducing us to good friends of theirs, Judi and Roger, and we told them what we just saw, Judi said with a big smile on her face, “That is a sign!” …I loved this response and knew instantly that we would hit it off.

Driving home from a very lovely, magical evening, I looked up the spiritual significance of Peacock and it said, “The call (of the peacock) has a kind of laughter quality to it, as if the peacock is a reminder to laugh at life.” pp 182 Animal Speak

“Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind – listen to the birds. And don’t hate nobody“. Eubie Blake

This weekend it might be fun to “listen to the birds” or watch them…see how they show up to help…I would also love any stories that you would like to share about birds in your life.

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