It seems like giant holiday-themed inflatables are popping up everywhere. These are nutcrackers, but I’ve driven by streets with every house on the block participating, dressed up with gargantuan Santas and Frosty. I absolutely love it.
Street art.
After the plumbers left, I found a box of my sparkly trees when I cleaned the garage. I created a simple tabletop display that looks and feels so festive!
A forest of trees.
#WordlessWednesday
My Monday involves waiting for the plumber to arrive. The new hot water heater has been delivered in a great big box I’ll save for the Angel Kids.
A neighbor came by yesterday and turned off the hot water heater so it’d stop leaking and I realized how much we take for granted things like readily available hot water at our fingertips. It’s something to be grateful for but we don’t normally think about it until we no longer have that luxury.
I had to move everything away from that area in the garage to make it accessible so I took the opportunity to clean and purge which hadn’t been done in a long time, and that felt like an important accomplishment.
Waiting, I started to research other meanings for specific life events. It’s interesting to look deeper to see what it could symbolize in the fourth dimension, out of time and space, on a spiritual level.
Since water represents the flow of emotions, plumbing issues in a home (or a leaky radiator in a car) might signal emotional matters.
Water leaks in our homes can often be perceived as nothing more than an inconvenience or a financial burden, but in some cultures water leaks are seen to have spiritual meaning. They may represent the release of pent up emotions within your home, or even a greater life transition occurring.
On a brighter side, water has long been seen as a sign of luck and wealth. In Feng Shui, water can also symbolize prosperity and career success, and water leaking into your house could be interpreted as an abundance of good fortune coming your way.
That makes me feel slightly better!
Many spiritual practitioners believe it’s a sign to clear out negative or stagnant energy in their homes or lives. Spiritually cleanse through meditation, cleaning, and smudging.
Once you’ve repaired the issue and taken steps to prevent future leaks, you can begin to restore balance and harmony in your home.
When the plumber leaves, I think I’ll sage the new water heater as I restore everything I had to move out of the way so they could work in the garage–and be thankful for a nice, long, hot shower.
Like the lyrics from that Heart song…
“These dreams in the mist
Darkness on the edge, shadows where I stand
I search for the time on a watch with no hands”
I experienced an incredibly unsettling dream last night that I just can’t shake, one of those dreams that some other protective part of your brain thankfully forces you to wake up from; a heart pounding, traumatizing, scary dream that you can’t quite figure out and you wish you could forget, but some of the details and the feelings of dread and fear remain firmly etched.
In this dream, I had driven to the airport, not to immediately travel anywhere, but for another reason, although I don’t know what that was.
I wasn’t alone–one of my first-born fur children was with me, Sabrina Sue, my beloved Border Collie. (She died when Angel Boy was still a toddler). I parked on the street, close to the airport, because I planned to walk there. I couldn’t explain why Sab was there and alive when she’s been gone for decades, but our bond was strong and it was like old times when that beautiful black and white, bright-eyed little girl was with me, as she always was.
Here’s where it gets weird. I left Sabrina in the car, which I had NEVER EVER done when she was alive, except for a couple of times when I quickly ran into the store or the post office, and only when it was cold outside, so she would be in no danger of becoming overheated.
I finished whatever business I had in the airport and walked back to where I parked my car. When I was about a block away, to my surprise, Sabrina was sitting on the sidewalk, ears up, looking at me. I crouched down low and like I always had done, stretched out my arms and said, “Come, girl!” She ran at full speed, nearly knocking me over, and we proceeded to where I parked.
But the car was gone. It had disappeared, gone, not where it should have been.
My car had been stolen, I surmised, but whoever did it must have opened the back and let Sabrina out, which wasn’t easy, as she was an extremely protective Border. I think she was the best trained of all my kids, and stay was so ingrained in her memory that she could wait forever until I gave the signal that released her to come to me.
My memory is fuzzy about how we got home, but I remember using my scarf as a leash.
As I reflect about the dream, after my heart rate subsided and I was no longer in panic mode, I had a faint recollection that I went there to purchase a ticket to Hawaii, but I’ve lost the rest of that mindthread.
When we got home, I called the police and reported my stolen vehicle.I don’t remember having a cell phone, so I had to wait for a landline.
In my dream state, I was overcome with an overwhelming feeling of shame and anxiety. I remember saying to the police, “But how will I get anywhere? I need my car.”
That’s when I woke up, saturated in self-hatred and shame for whatever I had done to set the wheels in motion to make my car available to be stolen. I must have done something wrong and that’s an intense stressful trigger for me. I always take the blame, it’s always my fault, somehow.
I think I woke up before there was any clear resolution, but I have a fleeting thought that my car WAS found and returned and that it wasn’t damaged, but I don’t recall any details about who stole it, or why.
Of course I researched dream interpretations and learned that dreaming of your car being stolen has many different meanings and scenarios. It could reflect something you feel is out of your control. You shouldn’t ignore a dream in which you lose your car because it shows your deepest fears and hopes. This dream could be the consequence of a number of unacknowledged insecurities that have surfaced in your subconscious and are causing you fear. To overcome your anxieties, you must first recognize them.
Along with my subconscious mind freaking out, here in SoCal we’re being blasted with multiple energetic events, solar flares, and strong Santa Ana weather with very low humidity. There have been multiple structure fires around here today, and a wildfire up the coast.
Did you know about space weather? That’s new to me. Check it out. It’s NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Space Weather Prediction Center.
Sun activity has jumped to high over the past day, thanks to an M5.4 flare blasted out by sunspot region AR3511. The blast happened late in the day yesterday.
What damage could a solar flare do?
Heliophysicists and other scientists studying space weather warn that flares and related solar outbursts can indeed interfere with modern life by damaging power grids, as well as by increasing radiation exposures for occupants of space habitats and high-altitude aircraft.
Solar storms also affect the circadian rhythm in humans, reducing the production of melatonin and increasing levels of the stress hormone cortisol, effects that are more pronounced in patients with coronary heart disease.
During solar flares, people may feel disconnected or low while others of us may feel imbalanced or emotionally sensitive. This volatile energy can be used to connect with the higher self or achieve spiritual connectedness through meditation and yoga.
My solution? Spend the entire day in the garden.There’s always a project or two that needs attention and love. In Southern California, autumn/winter is a good time to prepare the garden to plant natives so they can benefit from the upcoming rainy season. Fingers crossed that we’ll get some decent rain this year.
At the end of the day, this dream is still sort of haunting me. As much as I loved being reunited with my sweet Sabrina, the idea of my car being stolen triggers every one of my vulnerable abandonment issues. I’ve never had a dream like that before and it’s going to take a while to recover from the intensity of the feelings it generated.
And if you read this far, the calamity that befell me wasn’t a stolen car, but just now when I returned from a walk, the garage was flooded from a very leaky and failing water heater. I don’t know how it happened so fast, but it did. I put a bucket under the drippy part, wiped up the floor, and now I need to find a plumber. Did my dream foretell impending doom? Maybe so…
Tonight’s the first night of Hanukkah and Hello Kitty reminds us to let our light shine!
Our Jewish Festival of Lights lasts for eight days and nights in honor of a 2,000-year-old miracle in which light won out over darkness.
During Hanukkah 1931, Rachel Posner, wife of Rabbi Dr. Akiva Posner, took this photo of the family Hanukkah menorah from the window ledge of the family home looking out on to the building across the road decorated with Nazi flags.
While it’s definitely a time for serious reflection, it’s also all about fun with latkes, gold coins, dreidels, lots of presents, and this iconic song by Adam Sandler:
Last year’s post about Hanukkah has a lot more info about the historical significance https://enchantedseashells.com/2022/12/19/whats-hanukkah-all-about/
There is truly no greater joy than to have my sweet yet scarily precocious Angels in their car seats as we drive down to the beach, windows down, all of us belting out Karma by Taylor Swift.
They pay no attention to the fact that I can’t carry a tune; we’re nodding our heads and singing along with Apple music. “Play it again, Grandma!”
“Karma is my boyfriend.”
“I keep my side of the street clean. You wouldn’t know what I mean…”
(Picture us mimic sweeping with our hands.)
“Karma is a cat…Purring in my lap ’cause it loves me.”
“Me and karma are like THAT.”
“Karma takes all my friends to the summit.”
“Karma’s gonna track you down Step by step from town to town.”
Like Taylor changed the lyrics to her bf’s name, I also change the words in this line…
“Karma is the guy on the screen coming straight home to me.”
to
“Karma is my two favorite kids coming straight home to me.”
Time spent with these Angel Kids is a neverending tapestry of shared joyful memories, including singing with tone deaf Grandma.
“Play it again, Grandma!” And I did.
Coyotes were in the garden last night! I was awakened at midnight by at least two extremely conversational coyotes; yipping and howling for a few minutes. I went back to sleep with a smile on my face.
This morning I went on a beach walk (did NOT almost get run over by a crazy driver this time) and was lucky enough to see three dolphins! I’m sorry the photos aren’t great, but I only had my phone.
Here they are in the middle of the photo, to the right of the little boat. They’re moving south.
In this photo, the dolphins are directly to the left of the paddleboarders, who are actually watching them swim by.
Dolphins represent a bond between mankind and Mother Nature, in part due to their emotional connection with humans while they remain firmly part of the animal kingdom. Dolphins are representative of both the Air and Water elements as they are warm-blooded, air-breathing mammals, yet they reside in the depths of the ocean.
For me, hearing coyotes last night and seeing dolphins this morning are two positive indicators that December is starting out to be an amazing way to end 2023!
“December is a simple wish that brings spectacular moments.” — Unknown
Image from Pinterest
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Poem by Athey Thompson
Picture credit to Pinterest
The full moon always disrupts my sleep. This full Beaver moon is giving me strange dreams, too, but I can only remember fragmented snippets, like my subconscious is rambling and formless; inchoate. This is my signal to spend time in nature, whether it’s the forest, the beach, or my garden.
And she stopped…and she heard what the trees said to her,
And she sat there for hours not wanting to leave,
For the forest said nothing, it just let her breathe.
~ Becky Hemsley
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 