2012 was an EPIC year!

2012 was one of the best years I've ever had.
There were lots of changes, and lots of challenges.
I forced myself out of my comfort zone and worked on some changes in both my personal and professional lives.
I made spending more time with my kids a priority and we are a closer family because of it.
I was able to take some time off to go on a few trips, and we have wonderful memories because of it.
I found my ability to just have fun again by learning to let other people be in charge sometimes.
My Husband and I grew closer and are getting better and better at navigating conversations without arguing.
I was able to devote more time to doing healing and spiritual work and that gave us more financial freedom than we had the years previous.
We made great strides in cleaning up our family finances.
I spent more time with my extended family, especially my Mom and Sister.
We ate healthier this year, and learned even more about how to use natural resources to impact our healing and overall wellness.
I ran my first 5K. Very exciting!!
2012 was a Fiery Passionate Year, just like I expected the dragon year to be.

There were lots of other things that happened, good AND bad. But overall 2012 was one of the best years I've ever had, and the most Fun and challenging. I feel ready to meet the coming year head on and cant wait to see what 2013 brings!

How was YOUR year in 2012? Tell me all about it!

(Credit goes to Dan from SDL for the idea)

Censorship is bad. And not in the fun way, like booze before 12 pm, or eating a pint of ben and jerrys.

This is as close to a black out of my blog as I could figure out how to do.. yeah.. I'm electronically challenged sometimes.

I will be going offline ( those of you who know me know that this is a BIG deal for me) from 8 AM to 8 PM EST in a statement of solidarity with those who oppose the SOPA and PIPA legislations. No Facebook. No twiiter. No Blogging. I will still be checking Email.

I doubt my blog gets enough traffic to influence things one way or another, but if even one person sees this and goes and learns more about these horribly unconstitutional bills, and then does something about it.. than it's well worth the time I spent blacked out.

go here:https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

and here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

and then help stop these bills.

Thanks

Moving Through the Void.

This is a short little note before I do my bigger New Years post tomorrow. This is about the space between the end of last year and the beginning of this one.

I subscribe to a few different trains of thought Re: Astrology and how it applies to our lives. I do know that we would be remiss to think that the pull of the moon, and the way the stars are interacting with our planet, wouldn't effect us. But I also think that there are so many other parts of the whole picture. Western Astrology, everyone is familiar with. In my case I'm a Leo, and I have a strong Virgo presence also, this is pretty evident when you get to know me. I fit that type. However, I also dabble in Eastern Astrology. their Zodiac is based on the year you were born, which makes me a monkey, which also fits in with my personality very clearly. Give me a minute and this will all make sense.

2012 is the year of the Dragon. Dragon years are VERY powerful, they are huge years for change, and dealing with fears, and burning -fiery- passionate living. Dragon years are never ever dull. But, we're not in the year of the Dragon yet.

The Chinese New Year is on January 23rd, which is the start of the Year of the Dragon. That leaves 23 days between the last day of the western calender and the first day of the new astrological year. 23 days of ...

A blissful void.
A quiet space to set intentions.
Tying up the loose ends of the last year.
Clearing out those things no longer wanted. 
Letting go of things that no longer serve our growth or happiness.
Preparing our selves for the coming year.
Meditation on what we've learned, and done, and created during the previous cycle.
Joyful Celebration of accomplishments
Burning out all things toxic.
Building Passionate excitement for what we might create and manifest in the year to come.

Add your own items. Things that you want to do while you're in the void before starting the Amazing, Fierce, Powerful, Year ahead. Post them to comments so that I can see how other people are using this gift of time in the void.

Are you feeling it too? That compulsion to tie up all the loose ends before starting into something new?

Tomorrow, I will be posting all about what an amazing year I had in 2012. Inspired by one of my favorite bloggers ( Dan of SDL). I'd love it if you came and read it and lent your energy to my manifestations and intentions. I'll return the favor if you blog yours. :)

The Universe Set me Up! ( damn it)

Sometimes I just want to bitch about things, and complain, and be grumpy, and act helpless, and make everyone around me miserable. And that's exactly how today started out. Nothing was going as planned, I was feeling put out, and put upon, and didn't want to put up with it. And because the whole damn world wasn't going to cooperate with me, I was going to take it out on everyone in it. So THERE!!

Yes, I am aware of how this is making me sound, but you've been there too. admit it. you know it, and I know it.  Own it and move on.

So, I was busy sulking, yelling at my kids, whining to my husband, and doing absolutely nothing to fix anything, OH yes.. and sitting on my butt browsing facebook, when the universe came out and gave me a quick bitchslap across the face.

 Not nice universe, not nice at all.

See a few days ago when I was feeling motivated and positive and there was all this awesome craziness that was coming my way and the energy was flowing well I found and re-posted a link to a article on WhiteHotTruth.com http://whitehottruth.com/white-hot/in-honour-of-the-fact-that-life-is-short/ . Its easy to feel good about life when things are going your way right?? and this was just another awesome little thing I found to reinforce that whole " life is great:" feeling I was having.

So back to today: Bitchy mean version of me is sulking and wallowing in self pity while on facebook, and I notice that there's an article on mothering.com's news feed by Danielle LaPorte ( same lady that runs the WhiteHotTruth.com site). I would not have EVER clicked on the link had that name not jumped out at me. But it did, So I did. and here's what I found.

http://mothering.com/all-things-mothering/mothering/the-grand-pep-talk-decide-to-rise-refer-to-this-when-in-doubt-or-sick-tired

This is the last thing I wanted to hear. I was enjoying feeling helpless and like the universe was plotting against me and all the things I needed to get done, but it was also exactly what I needed to hear.

So, you see, the universe was plotting against me. Days ago. Weeks ago. Possibly for years. And it helped me to find exactly what I needed ( NOT what I wanted) to get me to stop whining and start doing today. and it'll probably give me exactly what I need ( and again not what I want) tomorrow and next week and next year.

All these little things that are incidental. unimportant. they are all little pieces of what path we are on.
Sometimes we just need a little pep talk to make us put it all together.

By the way, I got everything done that I was whining about except for going to the post office, and that I can do tomorrow.  Damn it. ;)

Sparkles, and Sunshine, and all that happy shit. ( Or. Don't let the assholes get you down.)

this probably wont make any sense to you, but that's ok. I'm pretty sure when I read it back it wont make sense to me either.
about a week and a half ago I got dragged into work on my day off last minute when I had no car and no sitter to talk with my boss about stuff he wanted fixed which included the fact that he thinks I have a "bad attitude" which is fine. I mean I'm probably much less of a pansy than most of the people he's used to bullying and not listening too. All in all it was a pain in the ass, and it pissed me off that they have so little respect for my time that even KNOWING it was my day off he planned to come on that day and didn't talk to me about it first.
I refuse to let it bother me too badly, and after smoking 2 Cigarettes back to back I went home and decided I'd better figure out a way to handle this since I cant just quit seeing as I'm the primary income for our family.
The conclusion I came to is this: In order to save my sanity and my income I was going to have to become a fucking unicorn. Like this guy.

  All Sparkles and sunshine and happy shit. Also, totally fake. fictional. non-existent.
Normally I'm all about being real, and if that makes me a bitch than so be it. However, when we're talking about my ability to buy food for my kids, or keep a roof over their head.. well compromises have to be made.
So, I channel my inner Southern Belle. I'm all sweetness and smiles, and southern drawl.
This has been my mode of operation since the day after this "meeting". and guess what? I've had a HELLA GOOD WEEK AT WORK.
Maybe unicorns are magical for real. ;)

Coffee is like $100.00. ( or, sometimes I am a girl.)

So, Generally I am not very girly about things in the whole emotionally girly type of way. I don't usually do the  I expect you to read my mind and do what I want you to, and if you don't I will be upset at you and give you the silent treatment thing. This is not my usual style. I'm a fairly direct person. OK... I'm a really direct person. but every once in a great while the girl hormones get the best of me and my poor husband gets caught in the cross fire. Let me set the scene.

Its my day off. Which happens about once every 23 months. I am PMS'ing like a MOFO, which also only happens about once every 23 months. I was unreasonably tired, as in there was NO reason for me to be as tired as I was. the morning went something like this.

G Gets up a takes our oldest child to school and lets me sleep in ( Yay!)
Then G comes back to bed and starts trying to wake me up ( not yay.)
I Tell G "I'm so fucking tired. I really need coffee."
G goes and feed the middle kids breakfast and lets me stay in bed (more Yay!)
G comes back to bed and starts trying to wake me up again ( NOoooo.)
I tell G " Seriously. I'm Sooo tired. I REALLY need some coffee.. like yesterday."
G puts on show for Youngest.
G Gets tired of waiting for me to wake up and gets on his computer to play games for a bit.
I get pissed that I still don't have coffee and get up all stomp-y like and start banging around the kitchen making coffee.
I spend all morning sighing loudly and acting butt-hurt and getting mad at G for every little thing.
I have a long conversation in my head where I call G lots of names, the nicest of which is "daft", because he couldn't put together something as simple as the fact that I wanted him to start the effing coffee maker.
I find a post from my friend who compares someone bringing you coffee in bed to a non-coffee drinker having someone bring you 100.00 in bed every morning to wake you up.
I get more mad because G is depriving me of 100.00 worth of happiness in the mornings. and its not even costing him anything other than 2 minutes to turn the stupid coffee maker on.

Then I finish my coffee, that I made. And for some reason once my blood had reached a reasonable operational level of caffeine content I was able to see how insane I was being. Otherwise known as typical girl behavior.

So, I sat G down. I explained that I know he has been trained to expect that if I want him to do something I will just tell him what I want, but that when my stupid uterus hormones get the better of me I do need him to do a little thinking of his own. if I repeat 3 or 4 times in 1 hour that I'm super tired and I NEED coffee ( especially in a whiny girl voice), than its a safe bet to assume that I want him to go get me some effing coffee.
I also explained my friends 100.00 vs coffee analogy.

Yesterday morning, I got a big green cup with 100.00 worth of happiness delivered to me in bed. :) Sometimes my Husband rocks.

Cold and Flu Season: aka The germy little bastards are back in school

We are now 3 weeks into school. this year I have 2 kids in school. Sweetsy Started Kindergarten this year. its been 5 years since Bugga was in K and I had forgotten how good the little school kids are about sharing every stinking germ or virus or parasite or speck of grime they come in contact with. I know that they really work to enforce sharing in those classes but this seems like over kill to me.

So, 3 weeks in.... we haven't even hit the annual flu shoot out date which is usually when I can time Bugga getting sick by ( flyer comes home, we mark the calender for 8 days after it starts and magically we have predicted the exact date that JT will come home sick).. and every single kid in my house other than Bugga is sick. 

I'm going to go have my kids dig around in the dirt this weekend in the sun and see if we can improve their immune response because if this is an indicator of how things are going to be thing year its going to be a LONG LONG winter. 

better start stocking up on EO's and Vit D.

Good luck to all you mommas who are sending your germy little bastards back to school too. I'm praying for your sleep and sanity. Lord knows we're going to need it.