NaBloPoMo Feb 2014 Day 14: Something I Love

Friday, February 14, 2014 

Show Me Fridays: upload an image to your blog (with or without words) of someone you love deeply.

I would have put up a picture of my fiance, but I don't have a recent picture of him and he is very much against me taking his picture, so... Instead, you guys get an old cameraphone picture of his cat who I love just as much as him because she's a really sweet old lap cat named Tabitha, Tabby for short. 

NaBloPoMo Day 13: 10 Years From Now...

Thursday, February 13, 2014What do you think you'll be doing 10 years from now on February 13, 2024?

My greatest hope is that I'll be working with a steady job, possibly as a Certified Peer Specialist, as well as being a reiki practitioner, and a writer. :) I also hope that by then I'm married and living with my fiance and we're thinking about starting a family in some shape or form. 

February NaBloPoMo Day 12: Draw Me

Wednesday, February 12, 2014Pick up an object and describe it in such minute detail that your readers can draw it without ever having seen it.

It's seated on the desk and has fluffy light brown fur, two furry arms and two furry legs, the fur on its face is in its beady black eyes and a triangular shaped brown nose and a sewn smile barely visible in the fur. It wears a deep royal blue knit sweater with "THE QUEEN'S DIAMOND JUBILEE" embroidered in an arch over an embroidered British royal crown emblem in gold and red. Below the crown it has "1952 - 2012" embroidered on the sweater. On its left ear is two tags: a round red bottlecap shaped button that has a circle in gold around the words "Keel Toys" in a script front also in gold in front of a long worn card that is mostly red with a union jack waving along the bottom and the words "THE QUEEN'S DIAMOND JUBILEE" in an arch over a golden British royal crown emblem with "1952-2012" underneath the crown. 

February NaBloPoMo Day 11: Thoughts in Perspective

Tuesday, February 11, 2014What helps you keep thoughts in perspective so they don't overwhelm you?

This is something I still struggle with a bit. But the first thing I always do is put one hand over my heart and one hand over my stomach at the solar plexus and breathe. This helps me calm down and grounds me immediately to my body. Then I can tackle whatever is overwhelming so that I can figure out what if anything there is I can do. 

NaBloPoMo February 2014: Day 10: Do You Think You Do A Good Job Keeping Problems In Perspective?

Monday, February 10, 2014Do you think you do a good job of keeping problems in perspective?

It depends on the problem. But I do not think I do a good job of keeping most problems in perspective. I get frustrated and overwhelmed by things that seem to be easy to other people. 

NaBloPoMo February 2014: Day 9: Love Reaches Out and TWLOHA

“Love reaches out. That is the essence of love. Love is our longing for deep connection. A search for connection is at the heart of all spiritual traditions and practices. The spiritual journey is a pathway into the depths of our being and also a journey of transcending the stifling confines of the self. Profound spiritual experiences are experiences of union – with others and ultimately with the great mystery of life. We are profoundly and fundamentally relational creatures.”- Rev. Peter Morales, President of the UUA, Standing on the Side of Love Sunday Feb 9th 

"Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness..." - Jamie Tworkowski, To Write Love On Her Arms

In high school, I dealt with several ex-friends who were suicidal and/or self-injurious and I almost followed in their footsteps once, but was prevented from it because of my faith and a guardian angel. 

Later, in college, I discovered To Write Love On Her Arms, a nondenominational but Christian-influenced nonprofit organization that uses music to say it's okay to be honest, hurt, scared, stuck, suffering from depression, suffering from addiction. A group that uses music to move people because songs go to the dark places and sing out, they don't care about endings the way stories do. Songs are more or less about living in the moment, no matter what moment it is. Whether it's a moment of pain, or a moment of joy or some bittersweet combination of both. 

I love To Write Love On Her Arms's affiliate bands and their message because I like to know that stories like mine and my ex-friends are told in songs that these are the stories that need to be heard. That we aren't alone and that music moves through pain, sorrow and joy and that hope and recovery are truly possible things. 

NaBloPoMo February 2014: Day 8: Learning from the Past, Hoping for the Future, and sometimes getting disappointed at changes

I am very disappointed.

I was googling the all-girls Catholic high school I went to, Fontbonne Academy, the other day and it came up in my search box with a series of news articles, opinion articles, and news blogs about the administration rescinding a job offer to a food service worker because he was gay, married, and listed his husband as his emergency contact and a group of alumnae protesting this movement which screams of discrimination and runs strongly counter to what we were taught at the school itself when we were students.

I understand from an academic standpoint that they felt they were advised by the Archdiocese against hiring him for his honesty, however, like the other alumnae, I'm not all that happy about it.

This is the very progressive high school that heavily influenced me to get involved in social justice/social action groups. This is the high school where I learned what the Day of Silence was for the very first time outside of the internet.

This is the high school where I had a theology teacher who encouraged us women to push for the Archdiocese to allow women to be ordained at least to be deaconesses as that was a serving option in the early days of the Church.

This is the high school that didn't flinch when I saw God as something like Mother-Father, as an all-encompasing One God. I always loved our Sign-of-the-Cross: "In the Name of the Creator, The Redeemer and the Holy Spirit."

This is the high school that made me realize that I liked women's schools because I could have conversations I wouldn't be getting in a co-ed program. Women's schools talk and do and push against the boundaries of society, we ask hard questions and we try to tell ALL the stories.

I'm not afraid of that school being my past because it made me a lot of who I am: a courageous, smart, strong woman (mostly) who isn't afraid to turn things on their head, to dream, to speak, to act. But I am very concerned for its future, since what I valued most about my education there was being a courageous woman who would stand on the side of love always, even when it was hard.

NaBloPoMo Day 7: Prized Posessions

Friday, February 7, 2014
Show Me Fridays: upload an image to your blog (with or without words) of your most prized possession.

I have a lot of prized posessions but my new tablet is my life-saver these days! I got it during NaNo because my laptop screen died, which turned it into a desktop, but this is a lot nicer to carry around to be honest and it's a lot easier on the eyes than my phone, since the blue-light removal program actually WORKS on the tablet lol. :)

NaBloPoMo Day 6: My House from the POV of Oreo the Cat

Thursday, February 6, 2014Do you have a pet? Describe your house from the perspective of your pet.

It's big with lots of corners and I get free range of the whole house now that there are no other cats, but my favorite places are all the way high-up. There's a grey ottoman in the little girl's room with the weird sleeping place with two beds one tall and one short. There's a nice chair in the TV room and my two scratching boxes on the floor! And then there's the window with the chair with the red pillows that gets lots of sun where i can watch the humans eat across the way from my food dish.

It's quiet a lot of the time since most of the humans aren't home that often.


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NaBloPoMo Day 5: Explain blogging to an alien without using the word blog in your explanation!

Wednesday, February 5, 2014 You meet an alien and need to explain to it blogging. Explain what blogging is (and what blogging means to you) without ever using the word "blog."

"Greetings, I am very wary about your kind, but you seem like an approachable individual." 

"Hi, um, hold on a sec, let me finish blogging, then I can talk properly."  

There's a long pause as the woman finishes up typing on the strange flat device in her hands. "Okay, done... so hi. I'm Emma, what can I help you with?"

"What is that thing called blogging that you were doing?"

"It's a lot of things and it depends on who you ask too. For me, it's writing in some form most of the time. Sometimes to tell about how I feel on a topic, sometimes to just get information out to others, or to share information I've heard of. Sometimes it works like a captain's log, you have one of those on your ship, right?"

"Yes, we have captain's logs, but mostly those say what we have on board or where we have been." 

"This can be like that too but more public. More often than not people use it to expand on where they have been and what they have done. How they react to their lives. Sometimes even ask questions of each other. Or make things up, depending on what they write about regularly." 

"That's interesting." 

"It is! I love it because I can write about things and think about them and have a record to look back and see where things have changed in my life." 

February NaBloPoMo Day 4: Seeing through another's eyes

Tuesday, February 4, 2014 Do you think it's possible to ever truly see the world from another person's perspective, or are we held so tightly to our own way of viewing the world?

I think it is possible to see the world from another's perspective, though I DO think that our own views will color that. I think that recognizing people's differences are so very important in being good citizens, however I also think that everyone's view brings something important to the table.

NaBloPoMo February 2014 Day 3: Cat Receiving Work

Monday, February 3, 2014
Write about an event that happened today. Now write about it from the perspective of someone else in the room -- your child, your partner, a person dining in the same restaurant... your choice.

So I am a cat volunteer at my local animal shelter and back in December I got trained to do the backroom -- I am one of the few long-standing volunteers who had never set foot back there so I asked the woman who trained me if she'd show me how it was done a few weeks ago. We also don't have a lot of cats right now at the shelter that can be taken care of (some are sick, some are being scratch/bite -quarantined, a lot got adopted and/or transferred to other shelters).

So today I went through with the tail end of doing it myself training in the backroom. I was mildly surprised by the first cat on my list. It said it was a "feisty" cat but it wasn't exactly the type of feisty I was expecting. It was more of the feisty in an "I shall love you to death  and get in your way" cat.

It was interesting though unfortunately I spilled all its toys into the trash bin.


Harriet the Cat POV
These two humans are standing in front of my cage looking at me. I hope one of them is gonna feed me. Ooh the smaller one is coming closer. She's warm and she's paying attention to me. Ooh. I like this! Pet me! yay! Hey don't do that I want more pets! Ooh food! Food or pets! I want both! Keep paying attention to me.

NaBloPoMo Day 2: Spirituality Perspectives

Today's Imbolc, which is one of the wheel of the year holidays and the least known of all of them.

I recently joined a Unitarian Universalist church this past sumer officially and it's interesting that I finally found a church that suits me. I was raised Catholic and I still consider myself some flavor of Christian to a degree, but I also find that earth-based spiritualities and many other paths also call to me.

It was funny during service because we had a bat flying around the church. I was surprised that I didn't jump when I saw it and it made me happy to see. I usually hate swooping bats after a bad experience where one freaked me out at home.

Bats are good omens in most traditions, in spite of the fact that it's not healthy to have one flying around the building. People were making light-hearted jokes about it throughout the service until it settled or went back to its nest (I'm not sure which).

It was an interesting shift in perspective to not freak out about the bat and to experience a circle that was a little different than usual.

I think though the thing I like most about Unitarian Universalist churches though is that the learning and seeking never ends! There's so many things that I can do that are missing in my family's Catholic church.

NaBloPoMo February 2014: Day 1: If I could live anywhere...

If I could live anywhere... 

- from Creative Journal Topics Involving Different Perspectives

If I could live anywhere, I would live with my fiance in a place where it's not quite so cold as New England, but it still has seasons. I would live in a decent-sized house with a small dog, a cat, and a rabbit. I would be able to go to work nearby and still have some space to do my own thing and write and knit and practice reiki.