While You Were Gone

“What happened while we were gone Peaches? Sorry, I had to leave you, but it was 107 degrees in Las Vegas.”

I know Mom, I forgive you.

You might think I lay around and slept, but you see, this happened:  I was skulking through the garden when I came upon a rodent bigger than a house. It had teeth the size of a T-Rex’s and slobber dripped—it was disgusting. Well, do you think I was scared?  Yep, I was, so I called Bear. Now Bear is big. Bear’s a Newfoundland, and they are big, but that rodent was bigger. Maybe it was a T-Rex. 

It was red and yellow, and its eyes shone even in the daytime.

Bear and I hid behind the rose bush and planned what we could do about this invader monster rodent. We couldn’t let it wander around the property, it would scare you when you got home.

Did I tell you steam spouted from its nostrils? And it was bigger than Big Rock Candy Mountain across the road?

Well, it was.

Bear and I hatched a plan: we would sneak up behind it at night while it was sleeping. We would tie a rope around its feet, and hook it to the truck. When Dad drove away—bye bye monster rodent.

Our paws really can’t tie a rope, but we can bark. So we barked as loud as we could. We even barked into a garbage can which made our voices sound like 100 dogs. And you know what? That rodent ran right over the fence into the next yard. Now neighbor dogs have big hairy monster.

And we have none.

Yep, that’s what we did while you were gone.

I just checked Peaches’ blog  dogblogbypeaches.blogspot.com and decided she was a better blogger than I am, so here she is. She hadn’t written for awhile—being in heaven, she’s been having fun, but she checked in last week.

Me?

Oh, I’m supposed to write something?

Well,  “Ha ha ha ha,” [Maniacal laughter]. I checked a publishing site for my novel, Song of Africa the other day, and they want the author—that would be me—to have three books. Three! Three! Three!  I spent forty years on that one. That means I need to live another 80 years.

Okay, to speed things up a bit, I did think of an opening line for a possible sequel:

 “You killed my mother you low-down son-of-a-bitch!”

Do you think that one would fly?

For any who have read or are reading Song of Africa, in that book, a baby is born in Africa to an HIV mother who dies giving birth to her. Her name is Star, and in the sequel, she is thirteen years old and confronting the man who gave her mother AIDS.

Only 99,989 words to go.

As you may know, I began another blog on #Wordpress, as I heard one ought to use that venue. Well, unlike the traffic on the freeway, on that blog the traffic is like a country road in the middle of winter. However, the comments that come to it are choice. Except for the fellow who wants to boycott American Women because we are too independent, not marriageable and don’t want to have babies. [More maniacal laughter.]

The comments tell me that people do want to learn about themselves. I had hoped for that when I began the traveling-thru-life.com page. Not that we don’t connect in a personal way here, it’s just that WordPress has more opportunity to be boosted.

But what words of wisdom can I impart? What answers can I give? How can I help the human condition?

I didn’t say I had the answers, I said we would travel through like together, but if you are walking along the edge of a cliff, you want a sure-footed person walking beside you, not someone who will trip and pull you over the edge.

Therefore I will look for sure-footed people. I have mentioned #Tony Robbins many times, for I believe he is a sure-footed person.

Sure-footed people do abound, and they weren’t always so sure footed.  (Look to Joseph McClendon). Often they had troubled pasts, rotten childhoods, and miserable financial failures, but they sprang back. I get a kick out of Jack Canfield who says “Everybody had a rough childhood, get over it.”

That does surprise me about childhood for I see parents taking such loving care of their children. I see them sacrificing to provide for them. I see them searching for the best possible nutrition for their body’s souls and minds.

Yet, on the other hand, we hear from adults who are stuck in their past, and how horrible it was.

Is it because the mistreated ones have louder voices, or is it that there something in the human being that is never filled?

I believe we are hard-wired to have fears, (A primary marketing tactic—use fear.) We want love—another way to market.

Our fears lead to the extreme. When friends get divorced, we fear for our own marriage. When someone we know goes bankrupt, we worry about our finances. When friends get sick, we fear for our health, and heavens, when a friend dies…

Not logical.

And we search for meaning.

 In Greek lore that desire was called “Pathos,” the yearning for home.”  And what is home? Is it the physical place, or is it a connection with the divine? Is it a connection with one’s inner being? Could it be a connection with Spirit?

Perhaps the lack we feel was not so much damage that was done to us by our parents and family, but that ache that is the human condition.

It means we must fill it ourselves.

"With a little help from our friends.”

Join the group.

Now, look out your window and see the glorious spring.

What Shall We Talk About?

Talk about #Out of Africa, this picture is too good to pass up

What shall we talk about?

The state of the world?

Nope.

As it relates to politics…that is verboten here.

As it relates to the world in other ways…okay.

I have been tied to the keyboard of late, and not in a good way. In previous months, I was having fun working on my manuscript. Over the past few days I have been as frustrated as a cat with four mice.  

I've been trying to fix  my computer. Not only that but I have killed more websites than shooting ducks at a gallery. My many words have crashed them.

As a result I have not been taking in as much of the grandeur that is outside. the flowers, leaves, grass, green, green everywhere. 

Driving up the Columbia River Gorge a week ago I saw green dripping from sheer cliffs.  There is a tree in our neighborhood that has little sprouts coming from its trunk and they, too, are in blossom—little puffs of pink stair-stepping up the trunk. It just couldn’t help itself.

 Now, if people would do that—that is, bloom in every area they could, wouldn’t the world be transformed into beautiful people?

All photos are from our property--look at all the flowers the wonderful previous owners planted for us.

I wonder sometimes why people don’t get it that we are all in this together. We are all floating around on a big blue planet in an immense universe. We ought to get along, however, many people hardly acknowledge that their fellow travelers exist. But when you meet that friendly live-wire doesn’t it just warm your cockles?

My reason for being tied to the keyboard is that my computer has been having fits. I restored it back to a couple of weeks ago, and all hell broke loose.

For one, I lost my PDF files from Pictures where they had been stored for years. I finally found them but couldn’t attach a file, until many hours and swearing later I found an answer—it had been Rube-Goldberged.

And with my technology challenges, before driving to Portland last week, I wanted to photograph a little house and send the pictures to my daughter. What? A red dot? I can’t take a picture?

The sun was slowly setting, time was of the essence. This was my new phone, and I didn’t know it would set itself. Found the solution, simple if you know how to do it. It was on timed photos. Okay that done.

As husband dear drove up I-5, I texted, except my new phone likes my fingers better than the stylus, as my other phone did, and my fingers lap over onto the next key. 

I got that done in time to set the GPS to find our hotel. Well, we were there by the time I got that set.

And then falling into a bed the size of an acre, (We have a King sized bed at home that isn’t that large) I had a postage-stamp sized area. My husband said, “I’ll move over.”

 “No," I said. "This is funnier.”

My complaints are only the minutia of traveling through life. And that’s how I see us, as Fellow Travelers. Thus, that was my intention in starting the blog www.traveling-thru-life.com, although we are doing fine here on www.wishonwhitehorses.com.  

My perspective is that we are all traveling through life, and I believe the one thing people want most is to master life. They want to know how to manage their emotional states, how to get along with their fellows, how to have a loving relationship, how to have a spiritual connection that is meaningful to them, and fits in with their belief systems.

That is what I wanted to address, and I hoped that readers would chime in.

A fascinating aside is that #Mauro Biglinos, who was a Hebrew translator for the Vatican before they fired him, said that the Old Testament of the Bible was never meant to be a spiritual guide. It was the story of one family, the Israelites. There was no mention of God. It was The Elohim, Yahweh, Jehovah, not God. There was no word for God. This was not what the Vatican wanted to hear.

You see, as we are traveling through life, all sorts of tidbits come up.

And now for the Whoopee! 

Just this day I got my manuscript Song of Africa onto a website. With enough tries even a technologically inept person can do it. For the ones who asked, and those interested I am offering Song of Africa Free to my blog readers only. (Forty years in the making, cast of, well a dozen or so.)

You guys have stood by me through good times and bad. I thank you.

To read please go to song-of-africa-complete.blogspot.com

Oh my goodness, I just found it goes to the place left it..
I wonder if that work for you.

If you have problems, please let me know.

I don't know how long I will leave this site live, so if you want to read it at your leisure, please grab it. If you prefer a PDF file email me.


P.S. Peaches checked in on www.dogblogbypeaches.blogspot.com