Stressful Day

Today has been a super stressful day. When I got home last night, I realized that Salem was sick. I was so worried that I didn't sleep much at all. I spent the wee hours of the morning making phone calls to the emergency veterinarian and waiting to call one of my two local vets. I was lucky and managed to get Salem into a local vet to help his urination problem. Three hundred dollars later and he is home.

I also discovered early this morning that Bella managed to get out last night when I came home from work in the dark. It wasn't obvious last night to me- she is super sneaky and I had no hint she got out at all. I figures it out this morning because she wasn't trying to sneak out on me this morning. She is also a pretty vocal cat and the household was silent. It took her all day - until 5 pm to come back and the stress of wondering whether she was going to come back was pretty intense. I also felt so guilty that I hadn't noticed she had gotten out and been out all night- a really cold night to boot. I'm so glad that she is back but I will confess I am a bit frustrated that she keeps my emotions and my heart on a bouncy string that jiggles everywhere. I could use a few days where she doesn't stress me out I guess.

Last, but not least... I went to the ankle doctor today and it's official. His office is getting all the paperwork together to present to my insurance and I am getting surgery. I have no idea how I can afford not working and I'm not sure how I will keep up with everything when I will be unable to stand for a minimum of six weeks. I'm going to try and put it off until the spring so that I will not have to worry about getting around in the ice and snow, but I am not sure how long I can put it off- the doc was pretty convinced I shouldn't put it off for too long because things are just going to get worse. So we will see I guess.

Synopsis: lost a cat and then got her back, had a sick cat and spent lots of money to get it back, and agreed to get my ankle carved up and tightened up. Not the best day I have ever had.

I'm sitting trying to rest and deal with the stress of it all today and as I start to deal the anxiety of the day start to pass... I am really glad to have the evening to rest. I have volunteering tomorrow and a vague timeline to start creating lists and figuring out what I need to do for the surgery. I'm done for today though. I think I've had enough.

Fiddly Weekend

Since I had a specialized MRI on Friday that required an injection, I thought I should take this weekend off from volunteering at the Turnstyle. I usually love to do it as I love the socialization, but I wasn't sure I would feel up to it. So when I woke up Saturday morning so early from the wrong number, I realized

that I had made a really good choice to stay home. I felt like I shouldn't just sit around even though I did need rest so I spent Saturday doing small things that needed to be done, took little time, but would be easy to rest in between the tasks. It's funny that you never realize how many fiddly quick jobs you can stack up in a house and in the dooryard when you are focused on the big things. It's even time to start taking down some of the garden- last night was 39 degrees according to my thermometer. My Virginia creeper and the trees in the dooryard and nearby woods are just barely starting to turn red, but as the weather changes they will start to turn pretty quickly in the next week I suspect.

The things I accomplished are a bit to numerous to list because they were all tiny

things like washing mannequins and cabbage patch dolls for future CPR classes and moving the house plants back inside for the winter after a nice summer of sun. I also moved in two pepper plants to try and overwinter them- I have no idea if it will work but I might get lucky so why not? I also got the house ready for my day with the ex and Bug. I am so glad I had a day to just focus on rest and getting the little things accomplished. Its amazing how accomplished I felt even though not much was completed that was anything to brag about.

Today was a lovely day of rest and films and good food as every Sunday tends to be. I am grateful for the extra time with family and I have a few hours every morning to do Sabbath-y stuff before the full visit commences. We have a really good routine set up where we visit for breakfast and then they leave Teddy here and head off for a hike while I do my Sabbath celebrations and contemplation and then the rest of the day is ours. They always spend the night on Sundays and, as I sit here and type, I hear the sounds of cooking and boy laughter as Bug carefully takes apart his newest toy to see how it functions. I feel full and relatively warm (I haven't turned on the heat in the house yet so it is starting to get a little chilly inside in the evenings) and generally content. You can't ask for more in a weekend than that. I am very grateful.

Gratitude - 1/20/18

1. I volunteer every Saturday for about six hours at the local thrift shop. There is a large bin that is filled with bags of clothing to go through and every week, I struggle to get the bags as low as I can... to come back and do it again the next Saturday. Every time I make a dent- sometime quite a large one- but I rarely create enough of a dent to have it remain throughout the week. Today, alone with another volunteer, we emptied it. It was completely empty with no work to be done. That is an amazing feeling. It feels a bit odd to look at the work and realize that there is no more to be done. While there will be plenty more next week, it felt lovely to see that empty bin and recognize it for what it was- a job well done.

2. I hadn't been able to take the time around the holidays to watch all the Christmas movies that I had been hopeful to watch. I had a few new ones to watch and the one I was most hopeful to enjoy I had missed. Therefore, I thought it prudent to enjoy my spare time this evening to enjoy "A Christmas Carol" with Sir Patrick Stewart. It held all the promise I had hoped for and more. I haven't sat and 'just' watched a film in ages. It was wonderful. A few parts of it gave me cause to ponder, but one particular piece of a line caught my ear and has held it after I have turned off the film.

.... the torture of remorse... - Jacob Marley

Definitely something to think upon...

3. When I fed all my companions last night, I manged to get a picture of all of them together except Footie. It is a bit awe inspiring to see them all together and realize how many there are and how much 'mass' they seem to take up together. I am so blessed and so grateful for each and everyone of them. Like an attached parent, I can not imagine my world without each one of them and I am aware that the loss of even one would feel horrible. To watch them together is to smile and , when I tuck into bed at night, I never go alone. I awake in the morning hearing a quiet rumble of purrs and I feel content.

4. I was able to get an amazing deal on a 100% wool queen size blanket. The warmth I felt the few minutes I used it was wonderful and I am looking forward to using it all winter!

5. I found a really interesting pair of pants in my travels today. I recognized the seal before I read the words and as I looked at it, I thought of my Uncle Rick and I missed my family in Utah. I have some amazing relatives out west- in Utah, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Las Vegas_ and I do not see them as much as I would like. This symbol reminded me of my desire for good things for them, my love for them, and the hopes of a peaceful week for each of them.

A good evening to all. :)

A Conversation With a Friend

I spoke with an old friend a little bit ago. That conversation has been turning around in my head for days. A small piece of it was the casual sorrow that no one had been availed to dress her partner in his temple garments before he was cremated. I have heard so many stories of people who haven't been allowed to help because other family didn't wish it or even the possibility that so many people were available that some would simply be usable to help due to the quantity of volunteers. I have never heard of a church member passing who was unable to be dressed in his temple garments because there was no one who was willing or able to serve. To say that I am appalled suggests a simple emotional response whereas what I feel is much more complex and difficult. As I ponder on that thought and recall experiences of asking for blessings and being unable to get them because priesthood holders were too busy and watching others ask for help and not able to get it either. It's a bit disheartening to see it still happening. I'm a woman and can not given blessings so I can only watch others not get what they need. I am a woman and am limited in what roles I can have in my church. So here I sit and think about all this and wonder when will change happen. When will the church culture stop pulling people in so many different directions so that important service is unable to be performed or even seen as unimportant while decorating for church activities takes more precedence? When will a ward community itself look into each of their hearts and determine that what they want is not to focus on the minutia of culture details and calling desires, but the pure surrender to service. To set aside perfect sacrament programs and instead make sure that shut ins and those in nursing homes get the Sacrament. To have fewer exclusive events that focus on teaching about service and charity... and instead have events that ARE service and ARE Charity. How amazing would it be it the local organizations that support the most impoverished found themselves with no need of volunteers? That families in need were 'adopted' by other families who helped them to get basic needs met, but also mentored and worked with them to find the resources to become more stable on their own. there are some programs that do this- the program in Canada for Syrian refugees comes to mind- what can we as a community of Christ do to create the same amount of successful service? Instead of 'love bombing' people who start to fall away or shunning and ignoring others, what if our focus was pointed so strongly into understanding their needs and to love them that we lost ourselves in the joy of service and love?

I can't change the direction of a culture myself, but I can determine how I respond in it. My response at this point is to move my service and my focus into local groups that are focused on the impoverished.... something I understand a bit to well for my taste. Working with groups that are focused on trying to understand and meet immediate needs for those in my community has been wonderful and I have been amazed at how valued and needed I have felt and how much I have learned. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I have understood about specific topics and I hunger to learn more. This is the service that I feel called to perform. I can't make others see things the same way that I do, but I must confess that I am weary of hearing the stories of people who are not being served in the religious communities that they worship in and I am weary to think that I was one of them.

Dare I ask for all of us to do better... to be better... to reach out to someone everyday and to be the person they need that day? It is the resolution I have for this year and one I feel compelled and called to do. I have hope for a future where I don't hear so many stories of people who are unable to get the help they need. I intend to work as hard as I can to serve better and to seek out those who need me this year. Here's to a focused New Year for all of us!

Service Day

I love Saturdays. Every Saturday I head to my local non-profit clothing store and work in the back to sort clothing. I grab the bags from the special bin and then dump the contents onto the table and then sort. I have a few different choices as to where I put clothing depending on how I judge its condition. Great or better clothing is hung up to go out onto the sales floor or set up to be steamed or pressed before going out. Then clothing can be placed in the free boxes for locals, bagged up for the Emmaus Shelter (a local homeless shelter),or into bags to be hauled off to Goodwill. Reusable bags that are not in good enough condition to sell can be donated to the free bag bin at the local supermarket and household items are sorted and donated to the local non profit thrift store to earn money to help the local animal shelter. The plastic bags that the clothing come in are gathered together and then recycled. There really isn't a lot of waste if we can help it. So I spent the day in the routine and organized assembly line of sorting and packing. There are not many volunteers on Saturdays and some weeks, I listen to audiobooks on my phone while I work the table. It's a lot of work and sometimes I feel almost too tired to go in, but I still do because I know that I am really needed there. Today I got some time to chat and joke with a few other volunteers and that was a nice addition to the day today. It actually felt a little bit sad to head off and teach my CPR class.

I enjoyed time with a friend tonight as we chatted while her husband did a little home repair for me and I am so thankful to end the day with a great book. When I went to Bangor the other day and swapped some books with Bull Moose I got some great books to goof of with. They have these large miscellaneous book bins and I made a great finds the other day. Now I just need to decide which of these ones I'm going to tackle. :)

Gratitude- 12/4/2017

1. I love having the opportunity to volunteer in my community. I work alongside so many nice women with a multitude of life experiences and I love hearing about their lives and family.

2. I love my Bug. He is a mixture of wonderful and frustrating in a gorgeous teenage package. Watching him eat (and the quantity of it) reminds me of myself decades ago. It makes me smile.

3. I love my Nook. I got it for wicked cheap when I was in Utah visiting my grandfather for the last time and I love haven't a book to read anywhere that I go. It's so convenient to curl up with and gives me more options for reading.... with four huge bookshelves in my house I could use some more 'compact' storage. :)

4. I love having the opportunity to draw and goof off with pastels, pencils and trying to re-create the images that are the brainchild of other artists... so I can read about their motivations and try to learn to recreate their images. A challenging but fun process.

5. I love having my own Minion. His purr and weight are extremely comforting and he is simply a mellow soul and quite gorgeous.

6. I am grateful for my pile of blankets. It is a joy to be able to have enough blankets that if one gets dirty I can change it without having to plan a quick trip to the laundromat.

7. I am grateful for sister-in-laws. Some of the most powerful blessings and relationships in my life have come from these two women. I am more grateful to them for their care and friendship that I can express.

8. I am grateful for post it notes. They are extremely convenient as I wade through piles of paperwork and prepare different tasks simultaneously. They are a bit silly, but make planning ahead easier.

9. I am grateful for canned pears- they are so good and I can eat them all year including December in Maine. Enough said.

10. I am so thankful that Remus got his surgery today. That takes a load off of my mind and will make his life so much easier and pain free. Tail today... gone tomorrow.

What are you grateful for today?

The Year of the Cat :)

To the reader: One picture is slightly adult and immodest in content. This is your warning. :)

Exactly one year ago, I received a phone call at 6:30 in the morning from a young women in Ellsworth named Jane. Her call was the culmination of six months of advice and was to change my life a little bit more than I expected... because she brought Morianna into my life.

When I lived in Vegas, I used to do a lot of volunteer work for a an animal shelter called the Ark. It was a pretty large shelter and dealt with the majority of strays that were caught in the city limits. I thoroughly enjoyed some of the new skills that I learns and I was soon one of the leaders in training stray cat to become 'smooshable' - a skill that is needed for many people to choose them for a pet. It was a fun place to volunteer, where I saw some awful and sad things, but I also gained great friends, some of the most wonderful companions that I was to know over the last decade or so, and some neat skills that I figured I wouldn't use again after moving to Maine. (I also gained some wonderful rabbits for my grandfather and a few fun hamsters as well.) A few years ago when I had some spare time and my life was beginning its horrible upheaval, the 'local' shelter in Maine started a thrift store in Blue Hill to raise money and I happily joined its volunteer staff. I tagged items, sold them, and tried to help move items quickly to get as much money as I could thinking of the animals that would benefit by my service since the shelter itself was so far away. At one point a woman waked in and told me about some stray cats that lived behind the Riverside cafe and expressed her concern about their future lives and what could be done. I gave her advice on how to catch them- the slow but almost always successful way- and agreed to pick them up and get them to the shelter after she had been successful.

Six months later, I received a call saying she would try the next day and success! She caught a very terrified gray Persian covered with mattes... and eyes the six of dinner plates (maybe about six months old). Twelve hours later, I picked up my trap full with two slightly younger cats of clear mixed heritage... the spitting image of each other in markings though not color. I happily called the local shelter (also called the Ark) and was very distressed to learn a few hard facts. One is that while the Ark in Cherryfield, Maine is a shelter, they are very selective in the animals that they select- only animals that are healthy and appear easily adoptable as accepted with a donation. As I looked through the resources that I had I found that there is no really good funded organization for strays in this state and so the cats only options became clear. I dealt with them or they would be put to sleep. So I realized that all the cats that so many of us as volunteers and as shoppers thought we were supporting were not the lonely hurt strays we imagined. I still love the idea of the Ark and while think it serves a very useful purpose, I think that my energy needs to be more towards the smaller, less known, and less funded organizations that actually help the most needy and vulnerable... the feral population.

That didn't change my current situation however. I now had three stray cats in various stages of ill health and not even a real roof over my head. I needed to deal with the difficulties of introducing Brock to them slowly and trying to find them homes. In the end, one year later I still have all three of them and they have been one of the biggest blessings that I have gotten in the last year. The first thing I did was set all three of them up in a large dog crate. Their great fear of me was very apparent and I started in on some of the small things that I used to do to gain trust or at least less fear. I waited for a breakthrough and the breakthroughs can be slow (and usually are.) Stray cats that are older than a few weeks have usually had a few really bad experiences, bad nutrition as well as difficulties in their gestation and early weeks. All of these difficulties can cause brain damage, birth defects, disease, etc...

One of the youngest cracked in two days. She is a beautiful black and white female and around 1am she began to wail. Her fear, sorrow and confusion were very evident and I jumped out of bed and fought past the other two cats to clutch her in my hand. With the recklessness of past experience and the joy of the blessing, I held her softly against my bare skin (yes, I don't wear much to sleep) and crooned a hymn with some clicking and slow notes. For an hour I prayed and held her singing and talking softly and soon I was able to hold her and get dressed without a

great deal of fear from her. By morning, I could sit against the wall, warm and well dressed with a still slightly scared animal, but one who was open to learning about me. She became Morianna, my great companion, who would jump onto the bed for a few pats and would happily act kitteny one minute and feral the next. Over the last year, I have discovered a few things. Her health, while sound has been severely affected. She will never be a full size cat and may always be trapped in a 'teenage' body... slightly small and thin. She is not the sharpest cookie that I have ever had and her enthusiasm for fun and adventure can cause her great trouble as she makes the same mistakes over and over again, not learning the lesson the first time.... or the tenth time. :) Her relationship with Maximilian Robespierre

(my gerbil) has grown over time as he has consistently lured her over to the cage and then bitten her. Over time, Robespierre has gotten tired of biting her (or maybe he feels sorry for her or understands her mental limitations) because he now longer bites her and so he will stand up on his hind feet and throw shavings at her or use his hind feet to kick them in her face. Over the year, she has finally learned to sit close... but not too close! Her fear is almost gone... not quite gone, but has disappeared for the most part. But a few days ago, I walked into the kitchen and she did something that no cat that have ever been feral has done to me before....

Just awesome! She is not the smoochiest cat I have ever had, but the blessings she has given me have become more obvious over time. Caring for her and her 'siblings' has allowed me to use my underused skills and has given me some feelings of success in the rest of the failure in my life. When things have become too much, knowing that these guys depended on me for their very lives would push and motivate me to continue forward. When I get off of work, I am excited to come home and say hello to every one. Her brothers are moving forward much more slowly. The gray Persian I have named Smoke for his ability to appear to dissolve into thin air. He has a few problems. Smoke is also trapped in a stunned body and will probably always look like a teenager. He is thin but with his thick hair, he hides it well... He has problems with digestion, but boy, his reflexes are awesome. Give him a few empty studs with no walls and he can get up, jump, and climb up them in 3 seconds tops.

Egg (or Enigma) is blessed with the perfect kitty size. He is the right adult size now and holds his weight well. The only obvious problem that he has is his eyesight. It is poor and his eyes are a bit infected.... not much I can do about it as I can't hold him down three times a day to put ointment in them. All three look forward to my return every day and have even started to play with my hands or feet when I am supine and haven't moved for a while. I am hopeful in the next few years I will have three great companions. They are truly the blessing I didn't expect at the time. :)

What blessings have you gotten in the form of trouble or difficulty? Anything as 'purry' as mine...? :D

The Small Blessings of Love and Service

I was blessed today to get to do some volunteering at the local food pantry. The love and amazing spirit that these people have is just phenomenal and is always so inspiring. I can go in feeling sick and tired and just unable to really 'think'- almost hunched up physically by my burdens... and then walk out three hours later, laughter still ringing in my ears, shoulders straight and the motivation and attitude to tackle the next problem that comes by. The feeling that I get from helping others at the food bank is one of the best feelings that I have ever known and sometimes find only in the temple. I hope that service will always be a big part of my life.

A quote I read in one of my textbooks later in the day keeps coming back to me - "Giving love is receiving love- In order to experience love, you must be vulnerable to it. When love is given away, it remains with you as well. In fact, love is unique in that the more you give, the more you will have to give and the more that you will receive."

With a smile on my face, I end my day … and wish that I could volunteer everyday!

Prayer, Service and a U-Turn

Today, until just recently I was having a great day. I felt so peaceful and just... happy. I really couldn't find anything that seemed to break in and distress the 'groove' so to speak.... until this afternoon. I am disappointed that I can be so easily acted upon and I am really disappointed that I 'allow' myself to have negative reactions to things. Even when something isn't good and is negative, it doesn't mean that I need to dwell on it and it doesn't mean that I have to forget all the good that I am surrounded with. So why do I have such a hard time focusing on the positives?

Anyway, I decided to pick up my scriptures and do a 'random' reading. Yesterday at church, there was a great discussion by two members of the stake presidency on the importance of scripture reading. I have sat through MANY lessons on this topic throughout my life with small variations based on teaching skills and class interest and focus, but essentially they have been all the same. You must read your scriptures because:

1. It is a commandment and you will be held accountable.- Some teachers have suggested that you will be cursed for not reading, others have suggested that you will 'lose blessings' without appropriate scripture study, and others have gone to even more interesting lengths; one I remember in particular is John Bytheway who thought we 'might' have to confess to the actual prophets who wrote these books after we die that we didn't read them because … *** insert lame excuse here***.

2. If the scriptures are a gift given to us by a loving Heavenly Father to help guide us, give answers and advice, and offer comfort and hope... then how ungrateful are we if we allow this positive and loving gift to sit on the shelf collecting dust? I know of one member who was born in the church and while she has had periods of inactivity she has for the most part been a faithful attendee (she confessed to me several months ago that she has never read the Book of Mormon.) How many others of my faith fit in into this mold?

The phrase 'reading the scriptures' is one of the best generic answers for church. Any question asked with very few exceptions can be answered with it and it will be an unassailable answer. But while it is an 'easy answer', it tends to not be an easy thing to do. And the lesson on Sunday mentioned that when we pray, our answers from God are more likely to come from the scriptures than anything else. I have always thought that answers would come in many other ways as well as scriptures- instead I learned that if you do not read your scriptures, you are less likely to receive answers at all. The stake presidency also talked about how scripture study is uniting- that those who read the scriptures become bound closer to others, even if they are not reading them together. He said that scripture study helps you to interpret true miracles as well.

So today.... today, when I felt confused and sad, I picked up my scriptures and opened them randomly and landed on Alma chapter 34. These verses really pulled me and I read them over and over for almost a quarter of an hour.

17 Therefore may God grant unto you, my brethren, that ye may begin to exercise your faith unto repentance, that ye begin to call upon his holy name, that he would have mercy upon you;

18 Yea, cry unto him for mercy; for he is mighty to save.

19 Yea, humble yourselves, and continue in prayer unto him.

20 Cry unto him when ye are in your fields, yea, over all your flocks.

21 Cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid–day, and evening.

22 Yea, cry unto him against the power of your enemies.

23 Yea, cry unto him against the devil, who is an enemy to all righteousness.

24 Cry unto him over the crops of your fields, that ye may prosper in them.

25 Cry over the flocks of your fields, that they may increase.

26 But this is not all; ye must pour out your souls in your closets, and your secret places, and in your wilderness.

27 Yea, and when you do not cry unto the Lord, let your hearts be full, drawn out in prayer unto him continually for your welfare, and also for the welfare of those who are around you.

28 And now behold, my beloved brethren, I say unto you, do not suppose that this is all; for after ye have done all these things, if ye turn away the needy, and the naked, and visit not the sick and afflicted, and impart of your substance, if ye have, to those who stand in need—I say unto you, if ye do not any of these things, behold, your prayer is vain, and availeth you nothing, and ye are as hypocrites who do deny the faith.

(Book of Mormon | Alma 34:17 - 28)

I realized that I have not prayed enough lately. I have cried (probably more than necessary I should think :) but I have closed myself off from many but I have also started in my pain to close myself off from my Father. Until that moment I hadn't really realized it. Lately, I have given a short prayer and immediately fallen into sleep. If I wake a few hours later, my brain simply continues a circular pattern of the same fairly horrible feelings and thoughts that have been running through my subconscious for a few months now... and the thoughts will continue for hours until exhausted I fall asleep again. In verses 27-28, Amulek (the speaker) reminds his audience that it is not enough to pray constantly about your welfare, but you must also pray for the welfare of others. I was struck suddenly by the idea that if I am not constantly working for my good but also the good of others, my prayers will be next to useless. I will be crying and begging just to hear the sound of my own voice. Sounds embarrassing and foolish.

So I think I have been doing things a little backwards lately. I have been volunteering and spending my free time working to help my family and others and exhausting myself so that I do not have time to think... no time to read scriptures... and no energy to pray. So I think I need to make a 180 degree change... and start praying more, reading more... and then volunteer and continue to do my work for my family and for others. This may help me find the path I have been looking for over the last few years.