From Capricorn to Aquarius Moon

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Well the Capricorn Moon did not inspire me to do my paperwork (will anything?) but it did get me into a cleaning mood. I attacked my kitchen on Sunday and got my white sink and stove as white as they will ever get (scroll down to check them out).

But this afternoon the moon will be moving into Aquarius, my sign. This usually brings with it a little extra inspiration to my life which would be nice. Aquarius can bring unpredictable things into our lives with a dash of creativity and tons of spirituality. What rocks even more is the moon will be in Aquarius until Thursday morning.

Jamie blogged about welcoming back our creative selves the other day and I decided to get my butt in gear and use that Capricorn energy to help prepare me for the Aquarius moon. After cleaning my kitchen I spent the afternoon going through photographs and picking some creative ones out that I thought would be cool to collage with so I ordered them online.

I also brought my crafting table back into my crafts room so I have space to actually BE creative. I do not know how long it has been since I have done anything creative involving scissors or acrylic medium and thought I never would again. As my mom always says, NEVER say NEVER.

I am hoping some of the pictures will arrive soon so I can do something imaginative with them. I release expectations of perfection and will just see what the Aquarius moon brings me.

Moving from the practical to the creative...what do you want to achieve this Aquarius moon? OMG, I just realize, it's dreamboard time! And guess what? Next month I will be in Toronto doing dreamboards at Jamie's Toronto Circle. I hope you can come dreamboard with me!

Torrential rain & morning panic attack, no biggie

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Tropical Storm Danny hit all day yesterday but really walloped us last night! I stayed up as late as I could, hoping I would be tired enough to sleep through the pounding rain but nope. I woke up to see my garbage can (which I forgot to put in the shed) had flown into some bushes and the wind has also forced the trees to lose even more leaves prematurely. Even though it did not turn into a hurricane it brought with it a ton of rain.

This morning, after bringing in the garbage can, I went to upload the pictures I took outside and my computer would not turn on. Here is how my internal dialogue went within a minute:

OK Suzie, don't panic. I can hear my adrenaline start to rush through the veins in my ears...I am not the computer person. My husband is. Reg isn't here. Don't cry, don't freak out, even though the computer is the only way I can communicate with him while he is away. My heart is pounding. Crap, I'm starting to sweat. What the hell am I going to do without a computer? It's my only link to the outside world...OMG!!!!

Breathe. I breathed. Calm down! I calmed down. I'm all Aquarius, I am all electrical. The more I panic, the less likely this computer is going to turn on. I ask myself, "What would Reg do?"

I hear a voice say inside, "Turn the power bar off and on, slowly."

It worked!

Holy crap, to start the day with a panic attack really sucks but I am so happy and grateful at the same time. I have been very fortunate to get to work on a Mac. Most of the time we never have any problems at all. So I am not used to dealing with them in any way. I love my Mac!

So I got through another storm, a bit of a personal and technical crisis and I am OK. The sun is shining and the entire week is supposed to be gorgeous.

Nothing like a big storm to freshen up our lives!

Capricorn Moon, Paperwork and Working My Brain

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Looks like Danny is not going to turn into a hurricane but there will be a major tropical storm this weekend and it has got my weekend plans to go to a giant outdoor picnic cancelled. And I even baked brownies to share with my friends for it! My mother-in-law told me you can freeze brownies so I think I will do that so my husband can have them when he gets home.

It feels like a lazy weekend so maybe it is just as well. I may still go out for a bit but I think I will mostly hang out at home. I'm trying to really learn about my Canon Rebel camera which is very daunting for me. I have worked with manual SLRs years ago and the last few years with point and shoot digital. To put them together? My brain is seriously gotta grow to figure it all out.

The moon is moving into Capricorn in just a few minutes here so maybe it is a good weekend to get paperwork and other technical stuff done. My old fashioned paper inbox is so full and neglected, I wonder if I will have the strength of will to tackle it this weekend? The moon will be in Capricorn until Monday afternoon! Let's see how much we can get done now, shall we?

Fall is coming

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One month of summer and already I feel fall in the air. Hurricane Bill snapped off these oak branches with acorns still attached but the acorns are showing up more and more on the ground. It was so cool yesterday that I was inspired to bake bread but my house was so cold I had to let the dough rise in a warm oven.

Normally this time of year gives me shivers of delight. This year, I feel gipped. We did not get any sun until August and it brought with it extreme uncomfortable humidity and it is not even September yet and I know fall is around the corner. What happened to summer?

You see I know what will follow autumn. It is my nemesis. Winter. Six months of physical torture and imprisonment.

OK universe, if you want me to stop bitching and complaining about the weather here, give us a gentle winter!

I know it is possible. I did visit here once on my birthday and it was 18C. This last year for my birthday the wind was so cold that on the way to the restaurant it felt like I was being strangled by winter. For the first half hour I had to drink scalding decaf coffee in order to stop the pain and chronic coughing. I could barely breathe.

Perhaps this winter will be different. I will try and get through autumn and love my favourite season all over again, ignoring my impending doom. I can't promise anything other than I will try.

I can only write my truth. I will not lie. I will not pretend that everything is fine. That is who I am. Thank you all so much for visiting and caring about me even when I feel so dark. I know I will make it through but I won't paint a smile on my face.

I am nobody's clown.

Why I am an olive thief

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OK, something great did happen to me today! I have been featured on the lovely and talented Kimberley's blog East Coast by Choice! She is also a former Torontonian who lives in Nova Scotia and has had a week dedicated to local foodies on her site. Find out about how I became an olive thief by reading my story on her blog!

Blah

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Isn't that the saddest thing you have ever seen?! I walk past this little guy every day. Sometimes my neighbourhood breaks my heart.

Oh and I found out that tropical storm Danny may be turning into a hurricane coming our way this weekend. And I am on my own. I will have to buy more food, I gave it all to my husband for his trip.

No, I am not happy. I am far from it. But I am doing my best. I am getting through each day.

Leaving & Staying

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Old, weathered and beaten billboard in Fairview, NS

Normally I would never admit that I am on my own. That my husband has left on a trip for work and I am all alone but I am tired of hiding the truth. First the threat of a hurricane and now I am all alone on the east coast for a while. When he is here, life is bearable. We can still make each other laugh. Go to movies together. Enjoy being with each other. When he is gone, life out here is a whole new ball game from hell.

We took in all his stuff yesterday including his guitars. Now when I see his music room and even his guitars are gone, I will know I am on my own. I am lucky I have friends to go out with on the weekend but during the week, I must find a way to go through Monday to Friday.

It is clear that my path here in Atlantic Canada is to tap into even more warrior energy. I have to or else I won't survive. I will go mad. So while he escapes our life here I am going to walk more, do pilates and yoga and try to strengthen this poor body as much as I can. I intend to try to reacquaint myself with foods like brown rice and quinoa. Maybe I will even get creative? I also want to learn more about my new camera which I have barely used since I bought it. I will fill up the gap in time while he is away, somehow.

What would you do with this time?

We are OK, Hurricane Bill was no big deal

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So we got all our outdoor stuff in our shed so it would not fly away.

We actually had a lineup at the water dispenser to fill up our giant bottles for filtered water. I am so grateful that carrying these jugs did not re-injure my poor husband's back!

Water and bread were definitely the two items at the top of the list at the grocery store and apparently the lineups for propane were crazy!

The rain did fall quite heavily. It was so weird to have the rain fall and not have all my windows open to listen to it and feel it. Our home became a sauna as the cool water fell outside. Hurricane Bill could have been much worse had it come up off the water just a little more but it didn't and truly, it was no big deal. We have had crazier winter storms than this hurricane and I am so very grateful.

Jamie had mentioned to me that she hopes Bill comes and removes all the negative energy around us and I thoroughly embraced this idea. I even opened up one of my windows for a little while and asked the storm to take away all of the bad luck and old stagnant energy away with it and leave us refreshed and new and blessed. Let's hope that worked!

I am more than happy to embrace this good luck story and let the bad luck we have experienced in the last year and a half go. Blessed be!

Here comes Bill!

A local sign I walk by every day

Yup, Hurricane Bill is on its way to Nova Scotia so we are about to get smacked. Yesterday I just had to laugh as I walked past this sign while carrying a huge load of food home. Today we have to go out to get water and put all our outdoor stuff into our shed. The hurricane is supposed to hit here around 3 pm on Sunday so if I disappear for a while, you will know why. I promise to take lots of pictures (through windows) and share what hurricane stories I may have.

Normally a hurricane does not make it this far but considering the hot weather and humidity which will not leave, we are in for a "bit of a blow" (Joe vs the Volcano). This will be our first hurricane since we moved to Nova Scotia. The weather here continues to challenge me to the bone. It's all about weather drama here, Mother Nature is quite a diva showing off just how crazy she can be.

Wish us luck! I promise to post again as soon as I can.

No regrets

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I went to another yoga class yesterday despite the sweltering heat. Thankfully the studio was air conditioned but there was crazy construction going on that shook the whole room, talk about an exercise in patience and the ability to meditate through distractions.

My husband let me have his music stand bag that worked perfectly for my yoga mat. To be walking through my neighbourhood with a yoga mat on my back made me feel like "the true me" for the first time since I moved here. Going to a yoga class (despite nearly getting heat stroke on the way home) in my neighbourhood made me feel like I was part of where I lived for the first time ever.

Walking home listening to The Pierce's Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge (one of my fav albums of all time), I was on cloud nine and humming the song "Ruin". I love the lyrics of this song. It is about a bad break up and the music sounds so inspiring and happy and yet the words are so unforgiving.

How can I leave a class so inspired and positive and yet get so much glee out of a song that is all about wanting to make sure someone is miserable?

As much as there is a yogi inside me, I also have a ton of warrior energy too. And I am unafraid to admit my inner darkness while bathing in the light.

Perhaps that is why I love yoga so much. It keeps me balanced. I am peaceful but to a point. I prefer calm but I will fight and be mean if I have to.

This is not something I want to change about myself at all. I am very proud that I am a fighter and intense and passionate. I must remember that I am also peaceful when there are no bullies around. I am both yogi and warrior.

Do not regret who you are.

New Moon in Leo & Wishcasting

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Today both the sun and the moon are in Leo. Leo is all about celebrating our joy. Loving who we are. Stepping into the limelight. Embracing what makes us most happy, inner gremlins be damned! Perfect timing for Jamie's Wishcasting question: Who is the "you" you wish to be?

As an Aquarius, Leo is my opposite sign. A lot of this philosophy and way of life is foreign to me. Foreign but very, very appealing.

Sometimes the hardest part for me is knowing what I want. And limelight? Most of the time, no thanks. Yes, I like some attention of course but a lot makes me uncomfortable. I think it is time to just get out there and not care about the results. Just give life more of a shot.

I still don't know what I want to "do" with my life but I think I am closer to knowing who I want to be. I do have one dream that kind of sums it all up. One day I would like to go to the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland and take classes with Rachel Allen. She has a show called Bake where she teaches people the joy of baking.

Classes are informal and fun, taught on a large organic farm using food grown from their own land! The classes are taught in cute farm buildings with professional equipment. It is a casual cooking/baking school on the countryside of Ireland. What joy and bliss that would be!

I guess that is the me I wish to be: foodie and adventurer.

To bond or not to bond?

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I don't know if any of you remember how my husband tried to put solar lights on our backyard tree I named Twinkle last winter? Well it snowed so much that the solar panel was always covered and her little lights didn't start to twinkle until late spring when the snow finally started to melt. My husband decided to remove her lights and recently put them on our deck instead. So pretty!

We have always wanted Muskoka chairs for our deck but every chair we found came unvarnished. Now why would they do that? I guess perhaps if you want to stain them yourself. Yeah right! We resisted buying these chairs for months, hoping to find varnished ones but never did. We relented and my husband put them together and sprayed them with a couple of coats of varnish and now we have the deck chairs of our dreams!

Unfortunately when my mom was visiting we only had our rusty Walmart chairs for her to relax in on our deck! How she would love our to be out on our deck now, it is finally displaying our personalities and making our house feel more like ours.

We are not fixer-upper people. This is our first house and we don't know what they hell we're doing half the time. So far, house ownership has not felt worth it. At all! All that we gave up for this house. And then there are moments when I see the house change and reflect who we are and I have an now-unfamiliar twinge of happiness. The sad part is I resist. I do not want to get comfortable here. I want to leave. And yet, the house is my sanctuary.

Knowing my luck, if we ever get the chance and the money to truly make our house ours and I start to want to stay, that is when the tornado will hit and bring me back to BC. OK, damn it. I will make a home here. I will try and allow myself to love it. To bond with it.

Man, it is so complicated...this thing called fate.

Heal your home, heal yourself?

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When my husband and I were given ten days at Christmas to find and buy a house we saw about 30 houses within a couple of days. The last two houses we looked at were right beside each other and were so similar inside that we had a hard time differentiating them. I wanted to go into one of the houses alone and ask if there were any spirits there who didn't want us to live there (although I did not tell the real estate agent that was what I was doing, LOL) and was given no sign but I was given the chance to see the house one more time.

Out of all the houses we saw, I could stand living here. Turns out that someone had died in the house but thankfully their spirit has moved on.

No, the issue here was the front hall. When we were closing the deal on the house we made sure that the living room and dining room window treatments were going to be included in the sale. I knew by looking at them replacing them would cost a minimum of a thousand dollars. They wanted to fight us on this issue (why, I have no idea) but I would not budge. I don't play games. I will just walk away instead. I guess they sensed this because they relented. Then they tore out their shelving unit in the front hallway and left big gaping holes in the wall.

Which was perfectly illegal! Not to mention downright mean spirited. Because I had gone into the house the second time I had remembered the front shelving unit but my husband and the real estate agent did not. They thought it was in the house next door. I wanted to put the stipulation in the agreement as well but hey, I'm the one with fibro fog, right? Turns out my memory was better than both of theirs.

Since we bought the house this eye sore is what greets us every time we walk in the front door. It bothered me so much I never even took a picture of it.

We finally found a real wood frame long mirror that covers the problem so now when I come home from my walks to the grocery store and library I am greeted with a silly image of myself instead of an open wound. One day we will have the money to get the house painted but for now, this will have to do. I did not think that after a year and a half of living with this ugly spot that I would feel so differently having a pretty frame there instead but it does make a difference. I sense it not only within me and my husband but the house itself.

Perhaps we are all healing, just a little bit at a time?

Melting

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It is crazy hot here. And frickin' humid. My poor husband threw out his back at work and so we were stuck inside with the heat, baking away in my homey oven all weekend together.

What can you do when it's this hot? I spent three days taking my time making this pie and it melted in front of my camera. Screw it. If it isn't cold, I am not eating it.

I have housework to do. Food to make. Clothes to clean. Errands to run and I can do none of these things. I can not sleep at all so now every little thing may cause me great harm. The less sleep I get, the more prone to injury I am.

Cold showers before bed help for a couple of minutes and then I am back to thrashing around my bed being kept awake by the sound of all the buzzing fans in the house. The dehumidifier runs in the basement to help rid us of the river of water we have floating in the air, making it feel even hotter. I hear and feel EVERYTHING.

Now I am off before 10 am to get food, hoping I miss the heat wave on the way home. My poor lawn mower man, how will he not melt today?

It was 33C in my house last night. I kept the windows open overnight and brought it down to 26C. I have closed all the windows again and am keeping the blinds drawn throughout the day.

Have I mentioned the heat is just as bad for people with fibromyalgia as the cold is? There is no such thing as gentle weather here.

Finding the past a home

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I remember when this phone was the most high tech thing I owned! Now it is an electronic relic. I took it in to a Nova Scotia electronics recycling centre along with old printers and cables...but they would not take the phone! Thankfully I found this at the grocery store, of all places:

So I dropped off my old cell phone into the green box, letting go of one more element from my past that is no longer useful in my life today. Last week my husband and I took more and more donations to a shelter, lightening our lives a little more each month.

This is not to say that ownership is not important to me. There are things I do want to have, things I wish I had. I have at times regretted letting go of stuff. I donated a lot of sweaters that I wish I still had, I get so cold in the winter here. Usually though, it is a relief to let go.

It is nice to let go of things where they should go. I have been holding on to this cell phone for years because I did not know where to put it. Now it is going to the right place and we can go our separate ways.

There are still things I want and need. I want to buy exercise equipment and DVDs very badly. With the upcoming winter, I will be stuck inside for half the year again. So I will search for Pilates Toning Balls and a Fitness Circle and hope I find this kind of thing around here. Good news is they do not take up a lot of space and I can use them at home!

What can you let go of? What do you need right now? How do you find balance letting go and bringing in?

Spirit Singing, Body Dancing

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Here I am waiting in the parking lot of a wellness centre, waiting for the yoga instructor to open the door for my first drop-in class. I had picked up a book from the library on cooking just in case I got there early which I did. Just as I was reading about poaching eggs the yoga instructor drove up. I almost did not make it to the class, I have pretty severe social anxiety and this was the first community thing I had done since I moved to Nova Scotia a year and a half ago. I am so glad I pushed myself into going.

Upstairs the studio gets lovely natural light and I was excited that the instructor had brought a Tibetan singing bowl. I found out she is also trained in Kripalu yoga which is what my original teacher taught us and I have been looking for a Kripalu instructor ever since, they are very rare. There was only one other student who showed up but it was lovely, just the three of us escaping our lives together for just an hour.

What is most beautiful about this studio is their focus is on health. I am sometimes intimidated by yoga studios since yoga has become quite fashionable and fashion conscious. In many places it is about being seen in Lululemon outfits and how far and deep you can go in comparison to other people. This is now what yoga is to me at all. Yoga is a spiritual practice, a step towards greater health and personal development. Clothing and competition have nothing to do with it.

A few times I had to break out of my stances, on the verge of muscle spasms and potential injury. Unapologetically I moved out of the stance and then back in, allowing my muscles a second to breathe before going back into the pose. At the end of the class we fell into deep meditation under hemp blankets. Our instructor did the most wonderful healing meditation, where they crown of our heads opened and white crystal light fell from a pitcher like water into our bodies and healed us from head to toe. At the end of the meditation I was so deeply relaxed I was almost trembling.

Then she took out the singing bowl.

She gonged it three times before brewing up the sweet song and I felt my body being to vibrate. What the?! Yes, my body resonated with the sound and I almost fell into beautiful convulsions. It was downright spiritual and a tad...freaky!

Once a week I will go here and let my body and spirit sing. For the first time since I moved to Nova Scotia I felt healing energy come my way. How appropriate that it sang to me and my body danced.

Whatever you do, don't do this!

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Last week when we went to Rockfest we took this sleeping bag with us. All day we all hung out on the grass on this sleeping bag together outside and I just had to clean it. Being a cheap individual, I did not want to take it to the dry cleaners. I figured, I will wash it myself. I took my detergent for hand washables and filled up the bathtub with suds and added the sleeping bag. What could go wrong?

Um, it turned into one mammoth sponge and weighed a ton! My hands were too weak to do any wringing so I ended up using my feet to push the suds out yet as the water fell, the sleeping bag continued to soak up the water and get even heavier. Once I finally got most of the suds out I used my feet again to remove as much water as possible. I thought I had done a good job. After fighting with this blue dragon that weighed a ton, just the fact that I could lift it out of the top made me think it was "light."

My biggest mistake? Putting it in the dryer!

Within minutes water came pouring out the bottom and the dryer started weezing and groaning and I RAN in and turned it off. I unplugged the dryer and threw towels all over the floor and got so mad at myself! What the hell was I thinking? I should have known it was too wet and heavy, where was my brain?

I ended up taking the bag outside in the sun on my deck to drain and dry and within hours it was fine. I let my dryer dry out for days and days and yesterday was brave enough to turn it on and it seemed to work. I am going to do laundry for the first time since this stupid incident and fingers crossed that it will work!

Anyone else have those moments where you're thinking to yourself, why the hell did I do that?! Or am I alone in this embarrassing world of stupid ideas? Let's admit our mistakes together. Even smart people can have stupid moments, right?!

Investing in health

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This hydrangea is almost as big as my head. It is growing in my garden and thriving, unlike the rose my mom bought me for a house warming present that died within days of me planting it in the garden. I wonder why some things thrive here while others wither and collapse?

We have had three days of wet and dark and the sun has now reappeared again. My life has kind of returned to normal now that my husband is back at work and I have had a chance to get errands done and maybe soon spend time in the kitchen.

Yesterday I went to get new orthodics for my shoes, did you know you are supposed to get them replaced every two years? I have had mine for 13! Apparently they are all wrong for the kind of foot problem I have so maybe once the new ones are ready I may be able to walk even farther than I can now.

A few months ago I went to the dentist and had my last silver/mercury filling removed and I got a new night guard to help with my TMJ (jaw pain). Big financial health decisions and investments that have made my life very lean but they were all necessary. They were all purchases I have put off for years. I am getting these things done before winter shows up and keeps me imprisoned for half a year.

I think I am much more like the sensitive rose, despite being all prickly and defensive, she is quite sensitive and needs to take care of herself. As much as I would love to be that thriving hydrangea, I must face the reality that neglect does not make me thrive.

What health investments should you be focusing on right now? Is it time for you to take care of yourself?

The Art of Detachment

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Nova Scotia is completely surrounded by water and yet where I live is no where near this picture. I have not seen the ocean very much this summer and I miss it. On Vancouver Island I used to be able to walk to the beach and gather shells and check on the ships and talk to the seagulls. Here the water that surrounds me is the rain, the rain that darkens the skies. Thankfully during my husband's week off we had mostly sun but now the rain has come back to haunt us.

I moved here to live by the ocean in an old Victorian house. Funny, I don't usually have expectations, they just cause disappointment. I asked my mom when she was visiting what it was like for her to have Dad come home and say they were moving? She told me, it was exciting. I asked her what it was like to move from Montreal to Toronto with no idea of the house my dad had picked out that she had never seen? She said, I knew it would be perfect. Was it Mom? Yes Sue, it was.

The art of detachment from expectation is one I need to learn. What is funny is I never used to have any expectations other than, "I just want things to improve. To be better." With this move I really thought I knew what we would end up getting, what we desired. None of it came true. And so many bad things have followed. Now I keep saying, "Don't let things get worse."

When you have expectations you can not help but judge the results. It is inevitable. I must let go of my old expectations because they just remind me of all the disappointments that have occurred as a result of our move. Now I just hope to one day leave and go back home. To one day get back on track. We may end up living in a mobile home. We may end up squeezing into a tiny condo. Perhaps I will sell a cookbook and be able to buy a detached house? Maybe I will find healing in my heart and be happy wherever I am.

I will try to be open. Stay detached. Find solace in my dark waters and hope the sharks don't start nibbling at my life once more.

Tapping into positive warrior energy

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The other day my husband and I were out getting more errands done during our "holiday," dropping off donations, picking up library books and dry cleaning when these giant dark clouds showed up. Because we were just doing errands I did not considering bringing my camera, damn it! I should know better by now, shouldn't I?

The second we got home I ran into the house and got my camera but most of the clouds had taken off on me. You can kind of see them here. The funny thing is the giant storm did not hit until an hour later. Everything in our house turned dark and there was a strange yellow glow throughout the house. Then the thunder came!

I do love wild summer storms. I remember being an usher at the dolphin show at Canada's Wonderland, dutifully standing guard in the middle of crazy storms while seeing the Dragon Fire roller coaster get struck by lightning and loving it. I used to be so fearless, like these yellow flowers, ignoring the threat and just so grateful for potential rain after a hot and humid week.

This storm finally moved that crazy humidity away from us and now summer is less icky and more beautiful. Of course my husband is now back at work and I am back to my life in the house but now working out in my basement is more bearable. A little pilates and yoga go a long, long way.

Even though we are at the height of summer, I can not help but sense the coming winter. I fear it but I am training for it. I am finding ways to work out and make my muscles just a little stronger and become that much more a spiritual warrior. Perhaps I will be successful in replacing the fear in my heart with some strength in my body and spirit?

It's the little things

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My husband and I are brand new to home ownership. We know nothing about renovating, decorating or even painting. This is a photo of the big front window of our house (obviously taken in the winter) and for some reason the previous owners put a splotch of red paint on the one shutter. I guess they started to paint them and changed their minds. It has driven us crazy for over a year and a half.

Our big project during my husband's week off was to fix the problem. We took down the shutters, cleaned them and painted them. Thank goodness for my vast TV watching of home decorating shows, that knowledge actually came in handy. It was my husband who did most of the painting but I helped with giving advice and finding the little areas he missed.

Oh what a relief! So much better now! We are both perfectionists in a lot of ways and no longer having the mailman ask me when we are going to fix that shutter is going to be a huge relief. It was driving him crazy too!

I never believed that I could bond with our house. I have seen it as a summer fling of a relationship, nothing serious and a reprieve from the realities of life and yet doing this one little thing (which took two days) has helped me feel more at home here. It has also given us a little more confidence to do more around the house and now my husband wants to paint my kitchen himself! I have no idea when he will have time to do that but it still makes me feel good knowing that the house is being taken care of and feeling a little more like a home.

Full Moon in Aquarius

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I love this spooky image of people on Citadel Hill in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I took it after the concert.

It must be the full moon in Aquarius that has helped bump my spirit back into my body. I also sense spookiness return to me. Did you know that was my first blog persona? And my first blog: Spooky Suzie. Sadly not enough spooky stuff happened to me on a regular basis so I moved on to Sacred Suzie instead. Now I am just getting back to me.

Can you tell it is crazy hot and humid here these days?

Yesterday during this full moon, completely unbeknownst to me, I just had to bake bread. I just wrote about how I loathe to put the oven on at this time of year and yet I could not help but pull out my breadmaker. I also made a whole wheat pie crust. Then I saw in my Witches' Datebook:

The Corn Moon: Bake breads and sweet cakes to honour the god and the goddess.

So that is why I just had to make dough yesterday! Despite the heat, the humidity and the fact that we had to spend the entire day painting our shutters (long story) which was exhausting, I had to make bread. Now I know why.

Feeling out of spirit is the worst sensation for me. But I am starting to be back in tune with the cycles and perhaps one day with Nature.

Did anyone else feel the full moon yesterday?

I am not myself without yoga

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In the book Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert wrote that when she needed a guru, her guru appeared. I have had this book for almost two years and have barely been able to get through it. Mostly because I have felt completely spiritually bereft since I landed in Nova Scotia over a year and a half ago. I got through the first part of the book because it was about food but when she reached India? I stopped.

I have done yoga on a regular basis for 13 years, mostly in my home. Yoga is one of the few physical practices I can do most of the time. It gets me back to myself. It helps me deal with the pain my body lives with. It is how I connect with the earth and commune with the universe. For over a year I have not wanted to do that. In fact even though I turned my crafts room into a yoga studio, I do not do yoga in there.

When I lived in BC there was a show on the Multi Cultural Channel with a yoga instructor named Padma. A real yoga guru, she teaches not only poses but yogic philosophy and spiritual practice. Every day I would tape her show and go off on one of my hikes and then come home and watch her and do yoga as my cool down. To watch those shows now was just too painful. Every time I stood in mountain pose I was back on Eagle Mountain but then I would open my eyes here, so homesick.

I found out that there is a new show by Padma on the One Channel here. The structure of the show is different, her approach even more educational and the studio has a different but still lovely feel. I have found my guru once again.

When I was in Toronto last fall I picked up a meditation mat but never used it. I could not sit still, the pain too unbearable to stay in one spot. Now, I lie down on it in my basement in front of my TV and chant:

Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha

My dear friend and yoga teacher Michelle taught me this chant, it is to help remove obstacles from your life. I have had so many obstacles lately and just want to feel free again. Find my true self again. I am hoping that with my TV yoga guru I get back to myself and find the mountain inside.

Canadian Forces Rockfest 2009

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That's me rockin' at the Canadian Forces Rockfest in Halifax. Normally I don't mug for cameras but couldn't resist. I was smart enough to cover up for the ten-hour event that was mostly searingly hot but forgot to slather the sunscreen on my shins and feet! Oh well, next time I will do a better job at protecting myself. I still can't believe I got through the many concerts but did have to resort to pain meds and flaking out on our sleeping bag.

I wanted to be there from the beginning because the only female content came from a super young female band called Pink Thunder. This is their alternative version of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, pretty cool.

My husband is so into music and was so excited about this concert series we just had to go. I still can't believe I survived the whole day outside with no back support but he held me up and took care of me and we made it and had an absolutely fantastic time hanging out with our friends all day listening to heavy music.

That is Raine from Our Lady Peace on the monitor on the right climbing the scaffolding on the left. If you click here you can see a larger version of the photo and see him. After he went up there the fog rolled in and the temperature dropped at least 15 degrees! While Chickenfoot performed the fog was so bad that it was descending on us like rain. The music overall was fantastic, I am more of a punker gal than a heavy metal gal but really loved listening to music all day. I was impressed with the professionalism of Finger Eleven and wow, the lead singer of Sloan performed with a broken collar bone and was absolutely hysterical and entertaining. Definitely a highlight for me.

The one disappointment was, as usual, all the garbage everywhere. I have been to a lot of concerts and have been an usher and this was the worst garbage I have ever seen at the end of the night. It's hard to tell from this pic but there were mountains of it everywhere. Gross.

I have to give a shout out of thanks to the cops and security there who were unafraid of kicking the wasted idiots who were ruining the fun for everyone else the second they became a nuisance. I was worried about things getting out of control at an all-day beer fest but other than the leftover beer cans, the security took care of us and made us feel safe so we could enjoy the entire day.

Now, I am in recovery mode. I think the rest of our holiday is going to be spent watching movies and maybe doing stuff around the house but at least we got one big event in.