Category Archives: My Enchanted Life

April’s Angst

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I don’t know what the heavens have unleashed, but since April 1 every day seems to bring a new disaster, a series of unfortunate events…

—I tore or somehow injured my medial collateral ligament on my right knee, the one that had previous injury issues! Talk about collateral damage…It’s starting to heal; KTape is my new best friend.

—The day after our big rainstorm, I went out to my pond to empty the filled up basin so I could use the water for the garden. There used to be a waterfall with a motor that kept things moving along, but that’s no longer working cos it’s some sort of big job to fix the electricity.

—I very gingerly knelt down to protect my painful knee. I then leaned IN (not the kind that Sheryl Sandberg wrote about) with a small container to transfer the rain water to a larger bucket. Everything was still slick with the inch of rain we had and as I leaned my left hand on the rocks surrounding the pond (some cemented in, some not) I apparently leaned on a rock that was NOT cemented in which was super slick and my left hand slid right in the water, while my right hand which had been acting as a stabilizer got sliced on the other rocks. There was blood EVERYWHERE.

That’s not even the worst of it. I fell so hard and unexpectedly that the larger cemented in granite boulders directly collided with my upper left quadrant rib area. I have prominent ribs and oblique muscles so there wasn’t a whole lot to cushion the blow, which felt like I got hit by a bus. Now I have either bruised or cracked ribs or cartilage, not sure which as I’m going to wait as long as possible to call the doctor. I think that’s called “blunt force trauma.” I figure as long as I’m not having a problem breathing, I can be pretty sure that my lung wasn’t damaged, not so sure about the spleen, but I’m hopeful the ribs caught the brunt of it.

Did you think that was it?

Nope, there’s more…

—Yesterday I went in the shed to take out all the deck cushions and toys to get ready for a visit from the Angels. (My ribs are sore and I know I shouldn’t be lifting anything heavy.) I haven’t really been all the way in there for a while, maybe only briefly to get a rake or some clippers so I was absolutely SHOCKED to see that everything was covered in layers of fresh and old rat droppings. It is quite literally the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.

Apparently in our tight housing market, the first rats to move in must have communicated this free space to their entire extended family and they set up an elaborate condo development. The rats also ate completely through the plastic bags of fertilizer and snail killer, which was NONtoxic (unfortunately).

I thought about cleaning it up myself, but as I looked around at the filth and contamination, I realized that it was beyond my capability. I don’t even know what I’d do if I saw a rat run out of there; I’d probably be scarred for life. The shed also appeared to be a perfect breeding ground for the hantavirus which I definitely didn’t want to breathe in and become infected with, so I found a company that’s coming with biohazard gear and they’re going to take everything out, vacuum up the droppings, disinfect it all, and help me figure out how to avoid another catastrophe like this in the future.

I love all animals but the not the ones that bring disease.

You have to know that a situation has to be REALLY REALLY bad if I don’t clean it myself. I have pics but you probably don’t want to see them. The only one who seemed interested was Angel Boy 2.0 who wanted me to flip the camera around so he could see.

“Show me the rat poop, Grandma!” “Wow, that’s a lot!”

Yuck. I’ve lost my appetite, hope I didn’t do the same to you.

This garden has possums, coyotes, bobcats, hawks, and owls; all of whom include mice and rats on their menu. I’ve tried to make a hospitable environment for them here at Casa de Enchanted Seashells and all I ask in return is that they keep my space rodent free — and they let me down. They failed. I’m very disappointed in our relationship.

What more could April bring? I don’t even want to know. Tell me when it’s my birthday month of May, OK?

UPDATE: The rat guy left and the infestation was so bad that a lot of stuff had to be discarded!! It’s all clean and disinfected now, but WOW. If anyone’s in the SoCal area and needs similar services, I 100% recommend Pacific Coast Animal Control.

Playing Possum

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Yesterday was April Fool’s Day and I had to blink twice and do a classic double take when I looked out the kitchen window and saw a fat opossum waddling through the garden. I grabbed my camera and quietly opened the screen door to get a better look.

It’s not unusual for them to be here but they’re mostly nocturnal creatures and don’t often appear during the day. If you see one at odd times like I did, don’t automatically think they’re sick. My research revealed that it’s not totally out of character if it’s a new mom who needs to bring home a lot of food for her babies.

With their poor eyesight, she didn’t seem to know or care that I was there, so I followed her a bit up the steps and over the neighbor’s fence and back again.

Opossums eat a wide variety of foods: fruits, grasses, insects, rodents (yay!) mammals, birds, fish, and even carrion. Also good to learn is that opossums are resistant to rabies and rarely carry the disease. They are extremely beneficial.

There are LOTS of mice and rats around here, so I hope she or he went home with a full belly.

I don’t know why some people think they’re ugly or scary. Isn’t this a most adorable face?

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Melancholy

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There will always be a hole in my heart for all my loved and departed souls.

I had a dream about my Border Collie and I thought of “melon collie”, our joke because Victor loved to eat almost anything including cantaloupe and watermelon, and then I saw this.

Sometimes this is exactly how I feel; a void left by grief, sitting on a bench, adrift in sadness.

I’m updating this post to include some research into this sculpture because I feel it’s relevant.

Albert Gyorgy felt intense sadness and isolation with the loss of his wife and went on to create this beautiful piece of artwork as a way to cope.

This hole represents the massive void that we all feel when we lose someone dear to us, and many people have expressed their appreciation for this sculpture for it portraying the exact emotions they feel, but perhaps haven’t been able to quite put into words.

Curated from: https://www.penwellgabeltopeka.com/Blog/6245/Melancoliesculpture

Soul-itude

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It’s always a good time for peace and quiet, what I’ve started to refer to as “soul-itude”.

I need solitude, which is to say, recovery, return to my self, the breath of a free, light, playful air. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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I can’t say that I ever read Neitzsche before my son wrote his dissertation, but this quote reveals to me one of the reasons why Nietzsche resonates with him. Like me, my son loves to be outside; hiking, camping, or in the garden — planting, pruning, and thinking.

Where do you find YOUR soul-itude?

Cup of Gold

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Important info: Regarding Solandra maxima, Cup of Gold Vine–all parts of the plant are toxic and poisonous, so be aware of this before planting if you have pets or small children.

If that’s not an issue for you and you love vines with gigantic flowers — about six inches in diameter — take a look at this!

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The flowers deepen in color as they age which make this plant even more appealing and that’s when they become fragrant.  

About a year ago, a gardener friend gave me a few rooted stalks of Cup of Gold and they seem to really love it here. One of them is already about 40 feet and growing every day. The others are doing well too, but not as great as this one.

I’ve rooted more and now I have them growing everywhere; in a few years it’s going to look like a jungle around Casa de Enchanted Seashells.

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Strange Encounters

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Do you listen to your inner voice? Do you pay attention when you’re in a situation and something doesn’t feel right?

I know it’s a been a good long time since we’ve gathered in groups. For me it’s been a bit more than two years because I had a feeling that this mystery virus was worse than anticipated and stopped going to the gym or any other public event at the end of February 2020, a couple weeks before the proverbial shit hit the fan.

Now we’re in this sort of post-pandemic limbo coupled with a country inhabited by repression and rampant racism, banned books, elected officials who want to turn the clock back to a time where women had ZERO rights (reproductive and otherwise), and schools are prohibited from teaching certain subjects and acknowledge individual gender identity — and if we add the genocide in Ukraine, the world seems bleak.

A few days ago I had every intention of attending an all day seminar but I left after a few minutes.

Here’s why:

Right off the bat I got some weird vibes (only way I can describe it) from a group of guys that were clearly in the military. There were about a dozen of them, very young and all unmasked although masks were still required. They stood in the hallway just outside the room. One of them, way too clean cut and extremely militant looking, for some reason picked me out and started interrogating me with rapid fire questions in an insistent, belligerent, almost hostile, overly assertive voice, “Are you the teacher?” “Do you know where we’re supposed to go?” “Are you taking this class, too?” I took a moment to breathe and assess the threat level (haha) and responded, “You sure do ask a lot of questions” and he tried to stare me down before he walked away to stand with the guys he arrived with. It’s not easy to intimidate me so he obviously picked the wrong person. I might be only five feet tall, but that’s misleading if anyone thinks I can be bullied. I can turn into ghetto grandma in the the blink of an eye. (Namaste, y’all.) My initial feeling is that they were white supremacist/Oathkeeper-types. No, I have no proof, only a feeling, and not a good one. Why they were there didn’t make sense.

I observed another man, older, also unmasked, making the rounds of the room before the seminar started. He seemed to think it was one of those instant speed dating events as he chatted with all the women. When he came up to me, I purposely made no eye contact but he didn’t seem to care. “You must be cold. YOU MUST BE COLD.” I glanced at him. “Your arms are folded, you must be cold.” I ignored him. I don’t play the “friend finder” game. He was annoying and obnoxious. He walked away without escalating his sales pitch, thank goodness.

I don’t think it was ME — I wasn’t spewing negative energy — I was minding my own business.

The instructor showed up and closed the door. I was sitting all the way in the back nearest the exit and counted about fifty people in the room with only ten masked, including myself. All I could think about was the newest variant and how it might not be prudent to be stuck in a room with no open windows or air circulation.

When I quietly told the instructor’s assistant that I didn’t feel comfortable being there, she was extremely gracious.

I feel like I totally did the right thing by leaving for all the reasons.

I wonder what the story was all about with those Marines because they were out of place. I heard the instructor and his assistant talking about them too, so I know it wasn’t just me. Something didn’t fit. Something wasn’t right.

Are things back to normal for you now? Would you have stayed?

The Sky Above

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According to the weather report, showers are likely, mainly after 11pm. Today will be mostly cloudy with a 60% chance of precipitation. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch are possible.

That doesn’t sound like very much rain but it will be welcomed in this very dry March.

I looked up to see a sky full of clouds that look like something my grandma would have crocheted, a dresser scarf or table doily, two things nobody really decorates with anymore. I have layers of them in the cedar chest, nestled between sheets of perfumed tissue paper.

Kumeyaay Lagoon View

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I like to walk here and imagine the native population who lived in this area a couple centuries ago. Did they gather berries and seeds and grind flour in a metate nestled in the warm sands by the lagoon?

On this full moon day, I’m wondering what they thought when they looked up. With no city lights to get in the way, I bet they saw millions of stars alongside the moon and all the other planets and constellations.

The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai, or by their historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. (Wiki)

The story I tell myself is that I’m walking the same paths the Kumeyaay took and we are cosmically connected by the same sun shining on the waters of Agua Hedionda Lagoon, minus the intrusion of the fencing, of course.

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, if you have just a bit of rain, you may even get to spot a rare phenomenon called a moonbow. A moonbow is just like a solar rainbow, but is created by moonlight (rather than sunlight) when it is refracted through water droplets in the air. Moonbows only happen when the full Moon is fairly low in the sky, so look for one in the hours after sunset when the sky is dark.

Think Pink

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I don’t know why Angel Girl 2.0 and I love the color pink as much as we do, but we DO.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“PINK PINK PINK!”‘

A little research reveals that the color pink represents compassion, nurturing, tenderness, and love. It relates to unconditional love and understanding, and the giving and receiving of nurturing.

A combination of red and white, pink contains the need for action of red, helping it to achieve the potential for success and insight offered by white. It is the passion and power of red softened with the purity, openness and completeness of white. The deeper the pink, the more passion and energy it exhibits.

Pink is feminine and romantic, affectionate and intimate, thoughtful and caring. It tones down the physical passion of red replacing it with a gentle loving energy. https://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-pink.html

All I know for sure is that all shades of PINK make me happy, from the pink of my ballet shoes to any and all flowers in the garden. After all, I was named for a flower so in my case, it was sort of predestined.

It’s a little early for my rosebushes, but here’s a very pink freesia:

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And deeply pink peach flowers, Since this is the tree’s first year, I know I’m supposed to pinch off all the flowers so the tree will grow stronger but I can’t bear to do that.

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“I want to go home.”

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I had an unsettling dream. I had originally awakened just before six a.m. and thought I’d meditate but I made the mistake of laying my head back down on the pillow and fell asleep for about thirty more minutes.

BIG mistake.

I remember bits and pieces of this dream but am losing the main narrative. Dreams are so ephemeral; they swirl out of my mind like smoke from a bundle of sage. I’m hurrying to write it down before the details disappear forever.

My mom decided she wanted to move to another city. I can’t remember the reason but I went with her. I recall that I was moving away from the angels who lived in the city we were leaving and why I would do that that made absolutely no no sense to me, but I did it anyway. This was weird and out of character behavior because in real life, my mom lived with us here in this house. She wasn’t the type of person to encourage me to abandon my family.

There are decades and lives that are not aligned in reality — my mom died years before there were any angels and I don’t live in the Pacific Northwest like they do, but dreams shapeshift and time travel, so in that regard I guess it all makes sense. Sort of.

On the whole, I like to stay put, I like security, I love the adventure of travel but I also like to have an anchor to bring me back, a safe haven, a sanctuary. I don’t really take risks like packing up all my stuff and moving away forever. For me, there’s no place like home.

Back to the dream…we found a house to rent and I was engrossed in decorating my bedroom in pink and lavender (details!) but I wasn’t happy. I was yearning for HOME. I can’t explain WHY but there were roommates and I stayed in my room because I like solitude. I missed the angels. Oh, my bed was a narrow hospital bed with a handcrank, not sure why; maybe it was already there in the room because I wasn’t sick, not in the dream.

My mom suggested we attend some kind of outdoor activity–I can’t recall if it was a theme park or a street fair or a sports game (things she HATED in real life) but I went with her.

I got lost and separated from her because it was too noisy and I became disoriented. A little boy about T’s age was lost too but he had a better sense of direction than I did and helped us both find the exit where I found my mom waiting for me. I remember thinking that I should escort the little boy to his grownups, but in my dream, he kind of vanished. I guess he was there to help me, not the other way around,

I told her, “I want to go home. I really want to go home. I really need to go home.”

She said “OK” and we immediately started packing to return home.

After that, I woke up with the strongest message in my head, “I want to go home.” As soon as I opened my eyes before I was fully awake, I repeated it out loud to myself.

But I AM home.

I already know there’s no place like home. It’s very special to me.

What was that all about?