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The Libran thought process
Musings from the edge
Friday, August 13, 2004
 Ah, ain't he cute?  Jungle Cat Thank you Bill Gates for Clipboard!! I wrote this whole thing out once in the Blogger site, but then copied it to Word to do the spell check. I closed Word and went back to publish this and guess what? Page cannot be displayed!!!! Arggggg. So I went back to Word, hoping that it would have created a temp document as I had not saved it at all, and of course there wasn’t one. I thought I would have to type it all out again but before I did, I opened a new Word document, hit Ctrl+v and my whole blog appeared! Seems that when you close Word, it doesn’t erase what is on the clipboard. Hurray!!!
Well, it's Friday and it's raining, which sucks cause it gives me no excuse for getting out of cleaning the house. Except that I have to do an entry for my blog of course.... I’ve been reading some other blogs lately and it seems that this is not a good time of year. It seems that everyone is stressed, or sad, or just unfulfilled. I think that as we all get older we realize that life is moving on around us and we still have so much that we want to do. Long term goals are tough to accomplish when so many little roadblocks come up along the way. They come in the form of jobs that pay the bills but are in no way related to what you wanted from your life, they come in the form of children who, although you love them without condition and would not trade them for the world, force you to put your priorities in order and place them before any of your own dreams, they come in the form of missed opportunities. The ones that you found out about too late, or never had the time to pursue them due to other roadblocks. Regret is a strong and sometimes debilitating emotion. I think the most common regret is wasted time. Time wasted on a job that you never liked, time wasted on a relationship that never worked, time wasted just sitting around instead of making a plan and putting it into action. We all think "if only I knew then what I know now" and that is, simply put, "I wish I hadn't wasted so much time". Maybe it's the Libra in me, maybe it’s experience, but when I read the blogs of people I know and consider to be friends whose lives are in turmoil, I hurt for them. I just want to tell them that everything will work out the way that it's supposed to. To the ones who are having to deal with illness in their family, my heart breaks for you. I know first hand the responsibilities, not to mention the fear that goes with having terminal parents and trying to raise your own children at the same time. To those people, my only advice is "one day at a time". Soon it will be back to school time! My only conflict is do I want to continue the Marketing program, or do I want to change direction and go toward teaching? Aren't I too old to not know what I want to do? As for the teaching, I don't think that Fanshawe offers anything, it would have to be Western which is mucho dinero.... and it's a full time course so I wouldn't be able to work full time at the same time, which means that I would have to move (as my daughters put it) to a cardboard box on the side of the road. So the conflict continues. I really don't want to waste the time, energy and money on a course that I am not going to finish and if I do, not want to work in that field. Remember? The biggest regret is wasted time. On to other topics.... Does anyone know how to get a cat to stop biting? Not only does this one bite, unprovoked, but he stalks you to do it. If you punish him, he will just wait until you aren't expecting it to get even. He certainly doesn't forget. But just like a little child, "he's so cute when he's sleeping..." which is during the day so that he can torment everyone at night. Everyone who lives here of course, never anyone who visits. To them he's adorable and docile.... I'm trying to set up a photos link so that I can post some of the pictures that I have.... Well, tonight is the big opening night for Alien VS Predator. Seeing as how I have never seen an Alien movie or a Predator movie you will have to forgive my lack of interest, however there are some out there that are really psyched for this. I'm not sure if it ranks on the same level as Freddy VS Jason or not, I never saw any of those movies either.... Well, I think that's all for now, I will keep working on this photo thing. Has anyone out there ever used this Hello program before that Blogger uses for photos? It just doesn't seem to want to log me in... If you see photos later, it means that I managed to get it working. If not, I am probably still cursing at it (or playing Roller Coaster Tycoon). Maybe I will even have done my housework... HAHAHAHAHA. Anyway, kids, got to go. Have a great day! Monday, August 09, 2004
An exerpt from a poem that I recently read. Not mine, but there are a few from this book that I will put on my poetry page. The foreward of the book goes something like this:
"…not all poetry lends itself to music – some thoughts need to be sung only against the silence. There are softer and less tangible parts of ourselves that are so essential to open heartedness, to peace, to unfolding the vision and the spiritual realm of our lives, to exposing our souls. Poetry is a passage into those parts of our being where we understand who we have been and where we discover and decide who and what we will be. It makes us intimate with ourselves and others and with the human experience." Jewel Kilcher The poem like this: I would walk alone in the woods and let my mind wander Freely, stumble across theories on the origins of myself and all things. In nature I knew all things had their place. None supreme, none insignificant and so great peace would come to me as I fit neatly in the folds between dawn and twilight. Living in sync with the rhythm of the earth, eating what we grew, warming ourselves by the coal fire, creating myself in the vast silence that existed between the wild mountains of Alaska and our front portch. I grew to love the nature of God. I know Him best not in churches, but alone with the sun shining on me through the trees It birthed a space in me that would continue to crave the sacred and demand sanctity as my life took flight I stood on the bridge on Ridout Street on my way home Saturday night trying to discern if the flash of bright red I saw on a branch overhanging the water’s edge was a cardinal, as I had seen many of them on my walks to and from work. If it was, it would have been the brightest that I had seen. Now trying to figure this out is not so easy for me because as anyone who really knows me knows that I am farsighted (? I never get it right, but I can only see close up unless I am wearing glasses, which I never do) So, here I am standing on the bridge, squinting at this little bit of red when my eyes travel lower, to the water below that branch. I see a mallard duck. He’s swimming, or paddling, but not going anywhere. I watch for a few minutes and when I see no change in his position, I begin to wonder if something isn’t wrong. The way I figure it, I have a few choices. I can continue on my way and call the city when I get home to have them check to see if he is okay, I can continue on my way and figure that he will somehow get himself out of whatever it is that he has gotten himself into, I can try to get down the steep embankment and see if I can figure out what is wrong or there is a fisherman who has waded further down the river that I can try to get to help. I know in my heart that I cannot go home and pretend that I didn’t see him; I will just worry all night. Calling the city would seem silly and I can’t be sure that they would do anything. So, over to the other side of the street and down the bike path I went, not really sure what it was that I was going to do. When I got there, I could see that the duck had somehow become entangled in a piece of string and could not swim away. I could not get down the embankment and the fisherman was nowhere in sight. So I went in search of him. I found him further down and must have seemed a little off the wall when I asked him if he could backtrack and rescue the duck. I explained that he would not have to get too close as the string was long enough that he could cut it and hopefully the duck would be able to free himself at some point from the string hanging from his foot. Thankfully, he agreed and we went on our rescue mission. He managed to free him from the branch where he was tethered and he swam away with the fishing line, as it turned out to be, attached to his foot and floating behind him. I hope he didn't get snagged in anything else before he got that line off his foot.
I believe, in this life, it’s not always what you do but sometimes what you don’t do that defines your character. I could not go home knowing that a helpless creature was being held captive because of someone’s carelessness. I would bet most people would have had no problem is carrying on with their lives not giving the duck a second thought. Not me, not the woman who stops to talk to turtles and says good morning not only to the man who walks by every morning but a separate good morning to his dog that he is always walking. On to my next thought… When I was going back, looking to make sure that the duck had swam away, I noticed in the middle of the river, a shopping cart. Now I have lived in London for a very long time and I am sure that there are no shopping malls along the river’s edge so I don’t think it could have rolled down a hill on its own and ended up in the river. So anyway, I was thinking. You know how they have the “adopt a highway” thing where your group takes care of a little piece of highway and makes sure that the garbage is picked up and it remains clean? I know it’s big in the States, in fact I think it was the storyline in one of the Seinfeld episodes. I was thinking why don’t they have an “adopt a river” program? At this time of year, the water level is so low that if handled properly, people could go and clean things like shopping carts and old tires out of the river. We also have a cadet population that has the rubber rafts for the parts that are a little deeper. We are lucky to have a river that runs right through our city, why don’t we seem to care? I guess I’m just tired of the mentality that “I didn’t mess it up, why should I clean it?” Our mothers wouldn’t have stood for that attitude long or at least mine didn’t. lol Any ideas on who I would present the Adopt a River idea to? Anyway, things to do right now so have a good day kids…. 
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