Category: cats

Chocolate hearts for Romantic starts,

Pretty cards written by wordy Bards,

Love declared by tenderness shared,

Kisses traded by passion unfaded…

… good grief, this sounds like a load of hooey! 

I tried to come up with some sort of a romantic poem for today, but it just sounded more like what a teenager would come up with, while dreaming of her biggest crush from school. Gross!

Let’s try this again…

Don’t get me wrong, I think Valentine is a lovely holiday for young lovers, and all the kids at grammar school who trade bright cards and candies marked with “Kiss Me”. Beyond that, it has just become the candy markets BOOM Time!

I do recall years ago, when my husband and I first married, how all of our first holidays together were such a big deal. Our first Valentines Day together, he filled our bedroom full of crushed rose petals and gifted me an enormous box of my favorite caramels. I still remember how fragrant the air was, just as I entered the room… it was sublime!

While it was amazing and unforgettable, it had set the bar for the future, of what could outdo the first WOW experience of a lovers day surprise! Where does the poor guy go from here? 

By the following year we were driving long haul in a Tractor Trailer, being limited to shopping in places that could park an 18 wheeler. 

The look of the overpriced and wilted flowers offered in the gas station, as well as the inflated cost of the crushed boxes of chocolates sitting on the shelf near the showers, stifled any acts of romance. 

We spent nearly 7 years of our marriage, traveling and surviving this way, forcing things of love and romance into the storage bins.

Love finds a way…

Somewhere in all that mess of life, my husband always found a way to remind me of his love… sometimes just buying me simple thing, or taking me out for a surprise dinner, occasionally even renting us a hotel room with room service. He may have stopped buying me fancy cards, but for years he has left random post it notes around the house voicing his love for this woman. I find them in spots like the medicine cabinet, the refrigerator, or my sock drawer. 

This morning I decided to give my husband a card… not just any card… no no, that would be boring. There has been this Valentines Day card in my bags for some years now, and neither of us can remember where it came from, or who purchased it for whom. It has remained in its original cellophane wrapper, with no writings in it, whatsoever! We both laughed hysterically, when I handed it to him, because it has been kind of a running joke between us… since neither knows who bought the card. When he jokingly demanded that I should at least write something in it, I pretended to be offended, as I explained to him that I was saving it for him to use next year. I gently placed the silly card back into its wrapper and once again, stored it away for safe keeping until next year. The words in the card still hold true, so why not use it again?

My husband tries to give me gifts, tenderness, and words of love throughout the year, so by the time we get back around to February 14th, I’m not craving chocolate, nor am I expecting a gift or special dinner venue… not that those are bad things at all… I’m just full up! Valentines Day now represents sort of an annual confirmation of the love we share with each other throughout the year. 

Don’t worry… I am sure that I will make myself sick off the chocolate that goes on sale tomorrow or anytime after…

I imagine it to be this way for many couples who have been together for many seasons, weathering many storms, building lives together, raising children … we learned to celebrate in the moments afforded to us, cultivating the garden of love we share. 

Valentines Day is a wonderful holiday that fosters love and romance…

May we remember to carry the sweetness of the chocolate, the heavenly aroma of those flowers, and the deep attentiveness that comes with preparing our lovers gifts, throughout the coming year…

Happy Valentines Day everyone!

Unfortunately, I have been battling a headache since yesterday, and my fibromayalgia has been hammering me all night.  As much as I want to write today, I’m just not able to focus.

I apologize, but this girl has to bow out today, guys.

Squagon insisted that we start handing out the chocolate hearts… right now!

Last week, when he asked me about the meaning of Valentines Day, I made the mistake of telling him that humans use this day to show each other love by sharing chocolate hearts and love notes. He spent all weekend madly making crayon kiss marks all over the bag of peanuts used for the squirrels at our local park. He begged me to find some chocolate hearts to hand out, but I then had to explain to him about how chocolate was not good for the wildlife. He seemed fine with this… I thought!

I woke up this morning to find Squagon in a panic! There had been a bag of animal friendly chocolate hearts I’d hidden beneath a bale of hay, to share with my barnyard babies on the big day… and my small friend had somehow discovered it. 

Apparently, in his rush to open the bag he’d found, the bag tore in half, sending chocolate hearts flying all over the barnyard. The babies went nuts, devouring many of the hearts before they ever hit the ground. By the time I walked out of the barn, there were babies sprawled out in every direction, snoring contentedly, with full bellies and chocolate smudges all over their adorable faces. 

In the middle of the mess stood Squagon, looking as if he had committed some heinous crime. Head bowed low, shoulders slumped in shame, my little romantic stood holding a lone chocolate heart, still neatly wrapped up tight in its packaging. When I bent down in front of him, Squagon offered me the tiny red gift… and promptly burst into tears!

My tiny Casanova told the story of how he’d found the candy and simply tried to open the bag, to retrieve one of the tiny hearts inside for this mornings post. He pulled out what looked like an attempt at a love note, though it now was so covered in chocolate smudge marks that I could not read the name of the recipient. Things had gone horribly wrong, somehow, and now the barnyard was a mess, the chocolate was pretty much all gone, and he knew it had been all his fault!

I scooped the little guy up in my lap, gave him a comforting nose boop, and handed him a tissue for his tears. I told him about a similar time, in my own distant past, when I tried opening a family size bag of Peanut M&M’s for my kids and the bag split, sending candy across the entire kitchen. It happens!

As it also happens, I had purposely put the bag of candy that Squagon found, underneath that bale of hay. I thought it might be fun to see how long it would take the babies to find the goodies, but now I felt bad, as I’d no idea this would happen. Now I felt badly!

Squagon begged me to give the last chocolate heart to you guys, as he felt that it was the only right thing to do, in this situation. Tearfully, he offered me the candy, looking so downtrodden as he turned to climb down off my lap. 

Hang on, I said, it so happens that I have hidden three bags of sweeties in the barnyard. You just didn’t find the others yet, so let us tidy up the mess in the yard, as the babes are snoozing… it won’t take much. Then I’ll show you where the other bags are hidden, so that you can take everyone on a hunt for them later… those candies can be handed out for gifts.

It didn’t actually take that long to clean up the wrappers, and no barnyard babies were harmed in the eating frenzy that occurred here… Dinky and I will both swear to this!

Well, I’ve finally left the book of Leviticus, after what seemed like chapter after chapter of lists and rules… and the Israelites hadn’t even left Mt. Sanai yet! All my life of reading the bible, I will admit that I often perused over the tops of most of the chapters that only seemed to offer who begot whom, or what not to do if you want to please God. I know what a loving God I belong to, but most of Exodus and Leviticus seemed to be filled with information about a very angry God systematically thumbing the Israelites faces into the dirt. It seemed awfully harsh of God, to drag over a million plus people, raised in bondage for over 400 years, out into the middle of the desert for some hardcore basic training… maybe it was. 

Then again, 400 or plus years of bad habits can be hard to undo!

If you remember, I mentioned when I began this read through of the bible, I’d be reading it slower and more thoroughly this time. No more relying on movies or plays that depict what the people of Israel endured in that time. If you didn’t remember… well, now you are reminded. If it says in 2 Timothy 3:16 that ALL scripture is God breathed, then I want to fully read and open myself to the full package!

While I do spend a portion of my study, checking different biblical and educational sites to gather more context, and the like… one actually can find most answers from different places within the Bible, itself. Often times, you will find me reading from multiple places within the word, during a single reading. Don’t get to thinking that I read for some grand number of hours a day, like a monk or something, as that wouldn’t be realistic at all! Truthfully, my bible reading time is usually around an hour, or maybe two at most… and some days I may have circumstances that prevent any reading time, at all. My point is to reflect that I move around a great deal, while reading through the Bible. There is no easy way for me to read about who begot whom, for an hour or two straight… No Way!

As I was reading in the book of Romans the other day, I came across a passage in chapter 7, where Paul was talking about the very thing going through my mind after wrapping up my study of the book of Leviticus. Romans 7:13 says, “Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.” I would really recommend that you read the whole of chapter 7, in order to get a more complete understanding of what Paul was explaining about sin and the law. The answer that formed in my mind, regarding all those rules and regulations God was setting down for the Israelites… you can’t fix a thing if you don’t know it’s broken.

Where do you think the saying, you are like those you associate with, came from? Doing a wrong thing, enough times, will eventually make it not seem so bad. Millions of parents have enlisted the above phrase, while lecturing their offspring of the dangers to hanging with the wrong friends. This makes me think of the hundreds of years that God’s people spent with the Egyptians, even if they were in bondage, allowing wickedness to become commonplace in the eyes of the Israelites. God’s people were slowly and methodically desensitized to all manner of sin… they unfortunately, were becoming like the Egyptians in which they served.

We struggle with this form of desensitization, even today, as it has enmeshed itself within our society, from what we watch on television, what we are taught in schools, and how we are treated in churches, and by our own Government. The world still tries to systematically undo our ability to decide right from wrong. The struggle the Israelites were facing all those years ago, seems to mirror much of the world today. Too easily, we readily compromise our values on a daily basis, seeking to blend in peacefully with those around us. We have found ourselves in a never ending loop of, if you can’t beat em, join em mentality. 

As God was preparing the Israelites for the journey ahead of them, He had no time for endless loops of ignorant thinking among His people… the journey was just beginning for them, and it would not be easy. God intended to travel with and dwell among His people along this journey, so it was imperative that the Israelites leave all their internal bondage behind with the external slave mentality. This was not the place for fake it til you make it spirituality! 

While that was Old Testament, and we now live in the New Testament times, with Christ Jesus blood to cover our sins, God’s holiness and His laws remain the same. We must guard against using this as an excuse to approach God, in His holiness, while associating and participating in things we aught not to be doing… even down to the tiny things that seem miniscule to our conscience. 

The walk, the talk, the living and the breathing… even the reading of who begot whom, as well as, exactly how many cubits high and wide of a thing, should still be valuable and important to the child of God reading. Personally, I am going to glean as much as possible from those scriptures way back then, to sustain and nourish my Christian walk in these modern days that we now live. 

God put all that stuff in His word for more reasons than I shall ever fully understand, so I will seek to study as slowly as I must, in an effort to read ALL of it!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Bad Habits…

When someone brings up the question of bad habits, many would give go to answers, regarding all sorts of things in themselves they find distasteful or negative. Usually, the habit or habits named will come in the form of a physical or verbal example, i.e., swearing to much, gossiping too much, drinking too much, sleeping around too much.. I think you see where this is going.

There is a sizeable amount of responses that go further inland towards the heart, like, talking too much, praying too selfishly, judging others too quickly, becoming angry too quickly, choosing self over others too often… stuff like this.

Sadly, not enough of us take the time to go deeper still, to the fertile soil of our heart, taking our shoes off and walking between the rows of our neatly tended, or sometimes neglected, character… the roots of us, nestled deeply within our vessel.

Personally, I don’t give a hooey about my surface traits! Don’t get me wrong, as I am far from perfect. What I mean is that, what you see on the surface of me is merely, the result of what is embedded deeply within my vessel. You on the outside of me, only see the surface of this garden, while I on the other hand usually can be found wandering around my own mid level garden, picking the flowers that I find beautiful, quickly snipping off the dead or dying growth that is visible… if anyone comes seeking me, I want this garden to look as lovely and as inviting as possible, so you’ll stay awhile.

It takes a great amount of effort and dedication for humans, myself included, to spend time barefoot in our own gardens of the heart, pulling out the weeds that choke out all the beautiful and fragrant flowers, up above, in the mid level of our vessel. 

The secret to all the surface stuff… is to keep the garden safe, clean, and fertile for tending the healthy growth of what reaches the sun, or at least the light of day.

I know I have just waxed poetic about tending our gardens, making it seem as if I have it all figured out… well, I don’t! 

What I can say is this, knowing a thing, makes you think on a thing, thereby spending time with a thing, to become better at dealing with, or doing, a thing… say that ten times fast!

Sometimes, for myself, I get a bit tangled up in my surface, and/or even my midlevel bad habits, becoming exhausted with the work of it. When this happens I forget to take my shoes off and head for the garden. 

I find myself surrounded by loneliness, anger, lack of confidence, doubt, hopelessness… and I misplace my joy in all the mess.

Here is where my notes come in extremely handy!

Note To Self #25 reminds me that what I am shoveling around on the surface, is not who I really am, it’s just the result of FORGETTING who I really am!

“You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” A.A. Milne