Happy Birthday, Dr. Suess! This seems like a good day to get back into the habit of posting my weekly list on Monday again rather than letting myself put it off. I'm all cleansed and have been back to sculpting away, so glad my pieces didn't dry out over the past few weeks. Hooray! However my kiln shed is now behind a giant wall of ice and snow so hopefully I'll be able to get in there easily when my underglazing is done and I'm ready to fire.
1. All sorts of videos by Infinite Waters, really digging that guy. Eg, When you stop caring so much these 5 things will happen, and 9 Things to Get Rid of to Feel Better.
Through a few of his videos he's mentioned the concept of the human mind being like a computer; I really dig this thought. Cleaning up my diet and getting into the habit of doing yoga every day has felt like clearing off my hard drive, ready to go. Another thing he's said that resonates is the thought that life is like a play and at the end all the actors walk off the stage but on good terms. Why not. We all come from the same point of light, after all.
This Teal Swan video is good too: How to Stop Caring What Other People Think.
2. This Bob Proctor lecture (Law of Attraction stuff).
3. This Abraham Hicks talk - stop pointing out what's missing from your life
4. Having fun with our Excalibur Dehydrator and making up Raw Vegan Cuisine. This has been super fun! 4a. I'd been craving chips so my husband shaved a rutabega (which is supposed to be good for fighting Candida) with a potato peeler. I soaked all the peelings in a mix of olive oil, apple cider vinegar, some water and spices for a few hours, and dehydrated on the living foods setting for almost a day. Crunchy healthy anti-candida chips!
4b. Crunchy flax crackers! There are a bunch of recipes for this online, but I soaked a couple cups of flaxseeds in water for a few hours and stirred in: a minced onion, several minced garlic cloves, juice and pulp of a lemon, some apple cider vinegar, a few tablespoons of zatar (tasty Lebanese seasoning), chopped fresh parsley, celtic salt, smoked paprika, garlic powder, cayenne, pepper and dehydrated at living foods temperature until crispy. So good. Warning: these are very high fiber and flaxseeds do have cyanide in them so these should probably be eaten in moderation. Here's another article on the bad side effects of flax seeds.
4c. Vegan Pate: Again there are a pile of recipes for this I soaked a couple cups of sunflower seeds and maybe half a cup of walnuts for several hours, stirred in a slap-chopped onion, bunch of garlic cloves, celery stalk, a few small grated carrots, apple cider vinegar, various spices and hand blended the whole thing. It had a fleshy colour so then we got the idea to form globs of it into rectangles and dehydrate some more with a crust of dried rosemary, basil, parsley, celtic salt, pepper and a bit of olive oil on top. It actually ended up looking and almost tasting like a meat pate! And tastes great on the flax crackers.
4d. Frozen blueberry chocolate clusters: this was melted (organic, cold pressed, unrefined) coconut oil with cocoa powder, honey, cinnamon, cardamom, shredded coconut and chopped walnuts. I stirred in frozen blueberries and turned the whole thing out onto a plastic container in the freezer. It firmed up right away into this awesome lumpy blueberry chocolate bar. highly recommend. It would be healthier with raw cocoa powder, which is full of good stuff for you. According to what I've seen online, unlike heating about 115 Celsius, freezing does not kill enzymes, so that's good news!
5. This quote by William Shakespeare from Hamlet: "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."
This really resonated with me this week.
All this law of attraction brainwashing I've been doing every day has been with the intention of trying to raise my vibration and I had a breakthrough!
For the first time instead of looking back over the past few years and thinking "OMG I've been taken, boo hoo hoo." Something has shifted! Now I've started thinking "Wow, did I ever get taken, how hilarious!"
It feels like I'm finally getting over the craziness of the past few years. I've realized it was a very interesting life experience. On the bright side I'm grateful I'm not the type of person who has decided it's best to go through life lying to people, ripping them off and suckling off of them like a giant parasite to get my needs met.
At the same time I can see where I really messed up in 2012. It's a classic case of someone switching from the role of "Empath" to "Apath" and has made me think perhaps it was a microcosm for how things like wartime atrocities start and get out of control. Yes. This brings me to
6. The word "Microcosmonaut" I thought I invented this word but I just googled it and I didn't.
Anyhow instead of continually beating myself up over the day I let myself be brainwashed into being a minion of evil, it I'm just going to write about it (eventually) in my 'truth series' as a big internet confessional so I can take responsibility for my actions and keep moving forward.
7. The Truth. Part 2.
"The Truth Will Set You Free". I didn't realize this quote is from the Bible! (John 8:32). But it's true, telling the truth feels just awesome. Why didn't I think of this years ago. Beats feeling powerless and depressed. In fact, I began this whole weekly "my favourite things" blog post series over a year ago to cheer myself up from the reality of this particular situation.
I wrote "The Truth part one" a couple of weeks ago and have since really questioned why have I kept so silent about what I've gone through. Embarrassment? Fear of losing my money for good? A twisted sense of loyalty to protect the reputation of someone who clearly doesn't give a rat's ass about me despite the fact that I sacrificed thousands of hours of my life, miles on my car, and dollars in order to help this person? Fear of looking like an asshole? Fear of looking foolish? Fear of looking crazy?
I think Franklin D. Roosevelt was right when he said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself". This is also the moral of the movie "Case 39" which topped my favourite things list for weeks at the beginning of the year.
The person who took my money apparently refuses to acknowledge it was a loan or that money was ever taken at all. A friend's take on the situation is that from his point of view he may feel like he was entitled to it. Maybe as his reward for being clever enough to get it out of me.
Who knows what he is thinking.
Anyhow.
My father had a really great memory for random bits of dialogue.
Growing up he'd tell me all sorts of stories from world war 2, starting with the night his family was packed on to a cattle car by Russian soldiers in 1939 to go to a Siberian work camp. He was 14 at the time. His father fled and went into hiding when the soldiers came to the door, because he thought the soldiers at the door were just after him. But they weren't. The soldiers were there for the whole village and that was the last night my family spent on their 60 acre farm. So on to the train went my grandmother, my dad, his two brothers, and little sister.
One of my favourite things my father ever told me was how my grandmother tried to cheer up her kids by encouraging them to see the train ride to the camp as a grand adventure. She told them "Just imagine how long we'd all have to work and save to afford such a train trip!"
How is that for positive thinking!
My dad's memory for dialogue made his stories fun to listen to over and over again. I think I might have inherited this ability. For example, I can so clearly remember in 2010 standing in a friend's driveway.
We were talking about the person I was about to lend a chunk of my house fire money to start an art business that I thought was supposed to help artists, especially ceramic artists, in the Halifax area. It was summer. My friend was in the middle of moving house and I remember the scene like it was yesterday. I remember the concerned tone of her voice.
"Don't do it, Susan". She said. "I get feelings about things sometimes and I have a very bad feeling about this. This is going to end with him sitting out there in that building on the side of that road with all your money and you having no say in how the business is being run."
This prediction ended up being eerily accurate, as I confessed to her a few months ago. There were more things she said that day:
"I've known [him] for years and I've never had a good feeling from that guy."
And
"Everyone bitches about their boss"
This last statement was in response to the fact that he had made out like his former boss was The Great Satan. As a soft-hearted sucker I had gobbled it all up, thinking that by funding his dream venture I'd be pulling an "Oscar Schindler" and helping countless artists enjoy the same freedom I was enjoying thanks to my house fire insurance. In my opinion, years later, the truth turned out to be more analogous to me investing in the infrastructure for a Jim Jones summer camp.
I took my friend's warning very seriously.
This whole idea is crazy, I thought when I returned home that afternoon to my living room that was filling up with items purchased at auction with my money. The rationale was that these things could all be flipped at high profit and I'd be paid back in "no time". Now I guess by "no time" he meant "never".
This person had convinced me that he had a gift for "picking". It is ironic that one for the first pieces he bid on was supposed to be a piece of Meissen that would make us big bucks. Instead it was a broken and badly repaired piece of Japanart that is pretty much worthless despite the $200 I paid for it.
A location for the business had been found and business guy would soon sign the lease, but my friend's speech was sinking in. Why was I doing this. I could go to Italy. Renovate my house. Just as I was thinking it would be a good idea to bail out before this venture turned into a massive drain on my resources the phone rang...
Brrrng Brrrng
It was him.
As if he had somehow overheard what my friend had said, he immediately launched into a passionate sales pitch detailing his skills and abilities:
"I know what you're thinking. You're questioning whether I have what it takes to pull this business off and I just wanted to let you know that I'm aware it'll need to bring in over 100k / year to be a success and I can do that."
This statement was followed by a lot of blah blah blah about all of his skills, abilities and experience, previous experience running a successful art/antique business, the teams of people who would jump to his aid, his mom was supposedly going to help him run the store, tonnes of connections in the local art and fashion scenes,and the fact that I wouldn't have to do a thing other than supply a small loan that would be repaid within the first 2 or 3 months of the business being open. Oh and I would have an excellent venue to sell my sculptures of course.
"Ok." I said. I surprised myself. At the time I thought the voice that said "ok" came from my heart and/or intuition, it didn't sound or feel like my normal voice and was counter to my common sense. I'm a very intuitive person so maybe I took the eerie timing of the phone call as a sign that helping with this business was the right thing to do. But since my recent parasite cleanse, now I question whether this "Ok" came from some sort of roundworm, fluke or other mooching organism in my gut that had resonated with this speech that turned out to be utter manure.
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Ok that's enough for this week's installment
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