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Monday, May 31, 2010

We all need fertilizer.

I love spring time, the new growth on the plants, and the promise of warmer days ahead. Sometimes, and I say this tongue in cheek, even the rain feels good and cleansing. As I was weeding my flower bed though I realized that my poor plants have been neglected, they certainly have enough water, living on the coast, but they needed a good pick me up and so I fertilized them. I love all natural fertilizers; you know the ones made almost purely of rotten debris and well…poo.

As I was explaining to my four year old daughter how poo helps plants grow it occurred to me, we all need a bit of poo in our lives, or more appropriately, we all need some crap! I mean the kind of crap that drives us crazy, that keeps us frustrated and on our toes. The kind of crap that keeps us up at night, the kind of crap that makes us not want to pick up the phone when it rings. We like plants, need to be fertilized! Without the crap, or garbage in our lives, we wouldn’t make any changes, we wouldn’t grow.

Now while we and plants need good fertilizer, we have to make sure we aren’t over fertilizing our selves, just like a plant will wither with too much, there is only so much we can handle also, so we have to be good judges of our stress levels and we must determine which crap is good for us (in the long run) and which cannot be used for growth.

I also realized that we all have weeds in our life, which stunt our growth and steal our precious fertilizer, you know when you go through something really frustrating and powerful that could just be enough for you to make a positive change in your life, but you do something and neglect to make the change? Like perhaps you turn to an addiction, rather than dealing with the crap and growing from it.

Well I’m sick of it, I’m sick of going through the hard stuff, only to have the fertilizer that could benefit me be stolen by an enabling weed. I’m slowly going to pull out the weeds in my life, if I pull them out to quickly roots will be left behind and they’ll keep popping up, so slow and steady I want to remove them. I also want to fertilize with caution, by saying no more and not overloading myself, but being open to the kind of crap that really does have a purpose, even if I don’t understand it right now.

So be careful what you curse in your life, it could be the best mixture of fertilizer for you. It could be exactly what you need to make your next big beautiful growth spurt. Embrace the poo and rotten debris, grow from it, pull out weeds that steal your growth potential and hard earned fertilizer, and don’t forget to share, you never know when your experience, or crap, can help someone else get through their own.

I apologize about the crude nature of this post, if it offends you…well put on the big girl panties and deal with it, sometimes life is offensive!

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Do you love me enough?



This past weekend I felt like I did at least of year’s worth of growing up. It was exhausting, humbling and an emotional roller coaster ride.

My Grandfather died, while I was in the room, talking to him. Right in front of my eyes he let go, I felt his soul leave; goose bumps covered my flesh, tears, panic and somewhere deep inside relief came over me.

I don’t do death, I haven’t for over 12 years, and sure death has come and been a part of my life, like everyone’s I suppose. But I have avoided it at all costs, due to my fear and an overwhelming need to protect myself.

On Thursday I got the call, Grandpa was sick, I told my mother that no, I wouldn’t be going to say goodbye. But sometime later that night I could hear my Grandfather’s voice asking, “Do you love me enough to be uncomfortable? Do you love me enough to let me go?” I course do, and so I drove, to what would be the most emotionally scary place in my life, to see my hero take his last breath, to tell my hero what he has meant to me, at first I didn’t think I was doing this for me, I told myself I was doing it for him, but now I understand that he was doing this for me. Him letting go in front of me was his last lesson for me: I was strong enough to get through it.

I’m still struggling with the visions of things I can’t un-see. I still have questions, but now I have a sense of peace, I know where my Grandpa is, and I know that death, while terrifying- is part of life, it is another birth into perhaps the greatest part of life.

I am honored that my Grandfather let go of his last grasp in this world while I was present, he was always so in control, a real patriarch. He would never want anyone to be uncomfortable in his presence, unless it was of course for their own good. And so I am humbled.

This is more of a diary entry than a blog, I suppose, somehow just writing these jumbled thoughts and emotions feels better than keeping them in my exhausted brain.

At this point I could be asking God why, but after that distinct moment I have my why. I know what myself and every other person in the room confirmed to me, he wasn’t gone; there was a very real presence of his soul, his being, with us. I guess a lot of people may think I’m crazy, or just trying to make myself feel better, but my faith has only grown stronger since this has happened. If I’m wrong and there is no God, then nothing will happen when I leave this earth, if I’m right then I know I will be in his presence and my grandfather’s, that’s an insurance policy I can’t refuse.

Grandpa, I’m so thankful for all of the lessons you taught me, most of all I’m so thankful for every single breath we shared.

“Life should not be measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”




Monday, May 10, 2010

Treasure Hunting


When it’s a sunny day on the coast or anywhere for that matter one of my favorite things to do is Geocache. For those who haven’t explored geocaching on their own, think treasure hunting with a GPS unit. Once you go to geocaching.com enter in your zip code and find a list of geocaches, you simply enter the longitude/latitude coordinates or waypoint into a GPS unit and you’re on your way.

Not only does geocaching get me out and into nature but it takes me places I haven’t been, or to places I have been but never truly appreciated in the past. Once you find your way, using your GPS unit, you look for the cache, which is usually some sort of metal ammo container or plastic weather proof tub, inside will be a log book to document your find and some nick naks of some sort, the rule of the game is to take something and leave something for someone else to take. It’s not only an awesome way to get out into nature, but a great way to get rid of unwanted small toys that you find yourself stepping on in the middle of the night, I have a basket on my junk drawer for such toys, that once the silent screaming and cursing is done I toss the offending toy into. I say silent because no pain is great enough to wake the kids and have to start the bedtime process over again.

Since I love geocaching so much I decided to start a geocaching journal, I feel very much like “Indiana Jones” when I write in my journal, it’s leather bound and has a cool design on the front, it’s something I picture the girls finding in the attic when I die, and of course since they would love geocaching too I would hope that they would go to all the places documented in the journal, heck maybe by then they could teleport there, but frankly I think that would diminish the value of a good treasure hunt, indeed the real treasure is the journey. I started this journal ages ago and have logged many caches over the years, so I thought I would share one of those entries with you.

From the journal:

July 17, 2008. CACHE NAME: Sied Creek. WAYPOINT: N44’57.700/ W124’00.293.

CLUES: West of sign.

We are new to Lincoln City; figured breaking out the GPS unit would be the easiest way to find some cool locations in this windy city. We quickly realize that driving and trying to read a hand held GPS unit is not wise and also can cause many arguments. Shauna takes over on navigation, David drives, and Madi is cheerfully holding her prize that she will leave behind for someone else after we find this cache. We know the general location of the cache, somewhere around Devil’s Lake. We quickly realize as we drive that Devil’s Lake is much bigger than we realized. We enter a park and follow the GPS unit, we unload Madi and get her bundled up, even in July it’s cold and chilly here. David is asking me questions; I am stumbling over rocks and actually walk into a garbage can as I’m too focused on the GPS unit in my hand. We wind our way up a path and come to a breath taking view of the lake, tall trees surround us, and the smell of camp fire is in the air. It’s really quite something. We search and search, we find one sign, and look to the west, nothing. After an hour we are all frustrated, and David takes over on the GPS unit, he quickly realizes that I’m way off and that while on the screen of the unit we are only an inch away we are really a mile away. MY BAD.

So we eat lunch at the small park we found, and take a lovely break before loading up and having David navigate and drive us. Within 5 minutes we are at a large sign that reads “Sied Creek” Damn he’s good! Once there we searched for about 20 minutes, there was a small trail, we followed it for some time, then decided the cache couldn’t be that far back into the brush, we went back to the sign and searched under some big trees, under the largest of trees was a pile of rocks, I decided to dig. It paid off quickly I found a small green lock box, the cache had been placed by Lincoln City Parks and Recreation. The rule in geocaching is to take something and leave something; we let Madi choose her treasure. She chose a small novelty bottle of bubbles from someone’s wedding; “Mark & Jenny” were printed on the outside. I thought this to be very sweet and hope that Mark and Jenny are still together. We left a map of Cedar Breaks National Park, Utah it was still in the truck from our last hiking trip there, we had all our favorite sites marked on it, I hoped that someone would find it useful and maybe even go to some of our spots.

We had a wonderful time today, the area was beautiful, I learned a lot about our new GPS unit, and Madi had fun, which is all that matters. We do want to go back to this area sometime soon to see if Parks and Rec will continue to clear the trails that lead through this awesome area.

Kind of cheesy I know, but we did have fun, and like I said the real treasure is in the journey, looking back on this now I remember feeling so frustrated at my GPS skills, or lack thereof, but David swooped in and got us back on track, I think that’s good for both of us. I also think it’s great that Madi gets to explore with us, to places none of us have been, but will hopefully continue to go to in the future. These are my real treasures, the memories of the breeze on my face, watching Madi dig through bushes, even running into that garbage can. The best is always unearthing the treasure, even though there are only trinkets inside it is very fulfilling…like I said very Indiana Jones.