I am a big meanie

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Yesterday I closed the door on a 16-year-old's face. Not violently, not cruelly...but I did it. 

I had spoken with him on the phone about taking care of our lawn. Every day it is rainy here and the chances of a sunny weekend where my husband can mow the lawn is obviously never going to happen. Our huge lawn is becoming a jungle and I need help. 

I found a couple of ads and called them both. One was just an answering machine where I left my name and number and no one has called me back. The other told me he would be here at 4:30 pm to give me my free estimate. I wanted him to come earlier but no, he said 4:30. OK fine. I tried to get stuff done around the house by 4:30 and then got out my book and waited. And waited. And WAITED. 

I wish I could say this surprised me but it doesn't. This isn't the first time people around here haven't returned my phone calls or stood me up. You would think in a recession they would be happy to make some money but they obviously don't care and love wasting my time.

Three hours later during dinner the phone rang. We let it ring. The only phone calls we tend to get at night are from telemarketers. Half an hour later, a knock on my door. Getting interrupted twice during dinner put me in a lousy mood. I opened the door and there was a 16-year-old guy waiting for me. He told me he was supposed to be there earlier but he had to fix lawn mowers with his dad.

I looked at him shocked. So? I thought. You could have called! I sat here waiting for you. You completely screwed up my day. Blah blah blah. But I didn't say any of those things. I just calmly said, "Sorry, I need someone I can depend on," and closed the door.

Now, I thought that was quite mature of me. I do not reward bad behaviour. I have no interest in having a dialogue with someone who let me down. 

Then I started to feel like a big meanie.

I know I did the right thing but for once this toughy might be feeling kind of bad. My husband normally likes this edgy part of me but even he felt bad for the guy. I think it is his age that makes the difference. Should it?

Disappearing into the fog

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This is what we saw while driving downtown to see Kreskin on Friday night. I can not stand the three smoke stacks downtown so normally I would never take a picture of them but I saw the weirdest fog rolling in and thought it was cool that it cropped the bottom of the stacks off. They looked like ghosts.

As we got closer downtown, the thicker the fog got. In fact when we left the casino after the show and walked outside to the parking lot, I gasped as the fog completely enveloped me. Instantly I was wet and smelled of the ocean. My hair touched by the sea. It was absolutely wonderful.

Sadly, it made our drive home a nightmare, as usual. We have the darkest highways here and adding fog to the mix, completely made me a nervous wreck. 

I am beginning to doubt good weather ever comes here. And where I actually live, I am so far from the sea. For that one moment though, downtown, nature did connect with me. I was a part of the ocean. 

Today is dark and miserable. The rain is going to continue on, and on, and on this week. Instead of the smoke stacks, I am getting lost in the sadness of Nova Scotia's pathetic summer. Just like last year. I think I will lose myself in books and movies and the closest to the ocean I am going to get is by cooking up some seafood. This is not where I want to be but I will vacation from life. Pretend I am somewhere else. Escape into the fog of my mind.

The Amazing Kreskin comes to Halifax

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The one and only original mentalist The Amazing Kreskin performed at the Schooner Room at Casino Nova Scotia last night and I was lucky enough to be able to go. I have been interested in all forms of magic/magick my entire life and as a 70s kid, Kreskin astounded me. His ability to know what people were thinking inspired me. I did not really care if it was a trick or paranormal, he could do it! 

My husband and I hit it off so well when we first met when we realized we both loved magic tricks. How often does that happen? When I found out that he had a collection of old magic books I knew it was love. From the beginning, our relationship was built on many kinds of magic.

When a friend recently emailed us out of the blue and asked if we wanted to go see Kreskin on Friday night, we were both speechless! Then we said, Kelly you ROCK!

For those of you who have no idea who I am talking about, check out this interview with Kreskin on the CBC show The Hour. Kreskin is the original and only true mentalist out there. He has astounded people with his mind-reading abilities for decades and what a showman! To see him up on the stage making us laugh and our eyes bulge in amazement... fantastic!

The group hypnotism was of course my favourite part. I say "hypnotism" but what he is doing here in his words is the power of suggestion. He begins with us all standing with our eyes closed and our hands stretched out in front of us and convinces us that our left hand is heavy and our right is light. When we opened our eyes, I found out that my hands had not moved an inch. Nope, there was no convincing me of anything and I finally found out what I had always known, suggestion does not work on this rebel. My husband on the other hand?! Well, let's just say if his hands could tell time it would have been six o'clock at that moment!

Alas he did not make it up on stage in time to be one of the many people up there falling asleep on their feet, having their hands become unbendable or thinking that a member of the audience reeked! I think in the end he was kind of glad because then he could witness Kreskin's ability to make people believe just through his power of suggestion.

For an evening with our friends we got to go back to our childhoods, a time where we desperately wanted to believe in the power of the human mind. 

I asked my husband as we were driving home in the deep fog, "How do you think he does it?"

"I don't care. For once in my life, I just want to believe. I adore Kreskin and think he is amazing."

That makes two of us.

Wreck This Journal: Week 4

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Me, a book and a box of Devil's Food Cake Mix. Oh yeah, I am up to no good this week.

Yup, I am going to do it! I am questioning my sanity at this point but I am going to do it.

OMG, even I was freaking out at this point. I am baking Wreck This Journal into a cake!

I was shocked at how great the visuals turned out, the cover was completely visible after it baked, I was thrilled.

Getting the cake out with one hand was a bit of a challenge though, not to mention cleaning it with one hand.

I would say crisp and clean but no, it's starting to look thoroughly destroyed. Which rocks.

The scariest part for me was taking a bit out of the cake but I had to do it! Wasting food was the hardest part, that bothers me deeply but it was part of the wrecking. I did penance though after putting the cake into the compost, the cake went EVERYWHERE and I spent a lot of time cleaning my floors.

This foodie had to try something crazy with food for part of my sister Jamie's The Next Chapter book club. I must be a little insane to turn on the oven while the humidity has hit us!

I hope you enjoyed my Bake This Journal edition! I have health issues so I can't leave my own blogging area so don't feel pressured to make a comment but if you would like to, yes please! That would make my day.

Where the story begins

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Here is my mom outside Pier 21 in downtown Halifax. One of the things my Mom was adamant about doing during her visit to Nova Scotia was get to Pier 21. It was not until we showed up there that a lightbulb in my spirit turned on. 

Pier 21 is where immigrants landed via ship when they moved to Canada. In my head I knew that this place was a part of my cultural heritage but when I was there with my mom, I realized since she is a Latvian immigrant that she, my grandma and my Auntie Laima as an infant were all here decades ago. Grandma showed up with her two young girls after a difficult voyage across the ocean and waited in line from the ship to the train station and made their way to Ontario. 

It was so close to me. So real. I kept wondering would I see my family in these photographs? How I missed my grandma, her sharp and fiery spirit, so determined to come here and save her family from the war. Their Canadian journey starting here, the place I am now. Not here for very long but this is where their story in a new country started. 

They showed a movie about the different kinds of immigrants who came to Canada in this theatre shaped as a ship.

I never felt a connection, at least not a recent connection, to Halifax before. This is where my husband is from, I do not have the generations of blood roots here. But I do have this. And it is deep. It moved me. 

Well it is a place to begin. Just like Grandma waiting with her daughters to go from one story to the next, I wait here for my train ride back to British Columbia. I wait with my husband, hoping we make it back. Hoping one day we can start our story all over again. 

Cleansing my home, my spirit

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I know, it's totally the wrong time of the moon cycle to cleanse my home and spirit but I must! I have been plagued with upsetting feelings from others a lot lately and last night did not get any sleep because of chest pains. I need to make some changes to my diet and help my tummy calm down but it is really reacting to drama around here (which no, I can't talk about, wish I could though but...). I wish I was good at locking the door on other people's emotions but man, they just cut past any of my defenses and smack right into my heart. 

I decided to put small bowls around my house with white vinegar in them to absorb the painful and nasty stresses that have invaded our lives. We have enough sadness to handle right now, I can not take on other people's stuff as well. So I am letting the vinegar absorb residual drama and then I am flushing it all down the toilet!

After I put out these little bowls of vinegar I had such a lovely time preparing dinner for tonight. Normally making the same old same old for dinner would depress me but today, I was just happy to have enough energy to make a lovely spinach and strawberry salad and prepare the leeks for my cod dinner. 

Is it psychosomatic that after I put out the vinegar I felt lighter? Maybe. To be honest though, I am kind of a skeptic so I have no idea. Regardless of how it works, I will be happy to remove any negative energy from our beautiful home and say good-bye to it and then burn some incense to protect the house.

I do not know why spiritual housekeeping works but as long as it makes me feel like I have less burdens to bear, I am going to keep doing it. White vinegar is cheap and this is an easy way to make your house feel lighter and happier. 

Dark Days, Dark Nights

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Does sunshine ever come to Nova Scotia?

I found an interesting quote from Dark Nights of the Soul:

Imagine a black sun at your core, a dark luminosity that is less innocent and more interesting than naive sunshine. This is one of the gifts a dark night has to offer you.

I am getting sick and tired of the Biblical references and the word "God" in the book but then there are these gems that make up for it.

A dark night of the soul is dark because it doesn't give us any assurance that what is happening makes sense and will ultimately be beneficial. We can't understand what is happening to us, and if we are in the habit of always wanting to know what is going on, this aspect of the dark night will be maddening.

I could not have put it any better. I have been searching for meaning for what I have been going through and come up with nothing. It seems to be my utter blind spot. I sense no divine energy. I have no connection to Nature here. I have no spiritual compass. I am lost.

The book recommends not fighting the process, just get through the day. Make life comfortable if you can. You can not rush this invisible development of the spirit. You will come out transformed. You have been chosen to grow and change and deepen.

Six of Wands from the Pagan Tarot Deck

At first I found it ironic that I got the Six of Wands yesterday. Success? Triumph? What the?

Then I realize the cards were telling me, "You can do this Suzie...And you're not alone."

Well, that helped. That helped a lot actually. What also helped were all your amazingly supportive comments. So many of you have followed me through many of my journeys and I am so sorry that I have hit a dark patch that must not be pleasant to witness. I tried to go alone in the dark but I feel this must be shared. Perhaps the story of my dark journey may help someone else one day? 

The books asks you to consider what you would like to get out of this dark period. There was a time I would have wanted to say, strength. I don't care about strength anymore. I want to come out of this healthy, alive and happy. Somehow I sense though that my spirit will feel much heavier once this is all done. My life as the fool running through the forests of BC without fear is over. Today, I am afraid to leave my house.

I will look for this black diamond inside. The one just starting to develop after being in the ground for a year and a half. 

It feels like centuries.

Getting Real

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Ever feel like you really fucked up? I mean REALLY fucked up? One decision that has ripped you right off the path of where you are supposed to go, what you are supposed to do? Living the wrong life is the most painful thing I have ever had to do. It has come with so many negative consequences, I feel I could pile them up on top of each other and reach the moon.

I wish there was a street sign like this that told me moving to Nova Scotia was the wrong way for me. I would have stayed in BC and yes, probably never owned a home, but I don't care about that anymore. I wish I could explain to you what it's like, how for a spiritual person it is tearing me up inside and I know it's all my fault. 

The only analogy I can come up with is it is like I'm allergic to wool (which I am) and thought for some reason I could wear this particular wool sweater because it seemed soft. Within the first few minutes you realize, oh crap, I am still allergic. It doesn't matter that it seemed soft, I am allergic. Then you get hives and the hives turn to sores and you hope that they don't go sceptic. You would love to just tear off the sweater and run as far away from it as you can but you have a sentence to wear it for years and all the while you are trying to keep your mind together. To cope. To not scream all the time, "I am not supposed to be here!"

This is why I could no longer be Sacred Suzie. I am doing my best not to lose my mind. I focus on food as a means of staying sane. Of giving me something to do during the day. To make my life better on a very basic level of survival. Making food and spending time with friends have helped me get by. 

This space though is where I am going to just be honest. And if you don't like it, if you want me to just make the best of a bad situation, well I recommend you not come back here. I can not pretend that everything is OK. After seven months of being tortured by the cold and feel like my muscles are going to be snapped apart, there is no making peace within this abusive relationship. For those without health ailments, I am sure this place is fine. For people who can drive, I am sure it is easy to have a life. You are not me. You don't know what it is like for me here. 

As always I am searching for answers. I found Thomas Moore's book Dark Nights of the Soul at my library and am hoping that out of this painful situation I will at least learn how to cope with my situation here. Until I can be free again. I just hope I make it. I just hope I get out of here alive.