Catching Up

It's been a while since I posted last, and I apologize for that. So let's catch up, shall we?

Karen the Exchange Student and I with a dog.

Over the Yule/Christmas week I spent my time at my cousin's farm in East Texas (i.e., middle of nowhere). It was like a much needed retreat, and I had the fortune to be in a place with 40 acres of nothing but forest and no lights for miles and miles. Blissful to say the least, and it reminded me that I do very much like the country life. Now, only to get 100 acres of my own....

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

You can see a portion of the woody area behind Karen and I. Behind the camera, as well as to the right, the woods were much closer and much deeper. Also done was one of my Bucket List items! (Yay!!) When Christmas came around (because my cousins are Christian and celebrate that), I got a great collection of kitchen items as well as my very own Pokemon party. xD

Did I mention that my cousins have goats and horses? No? Well shucks, those things are so cute and so stupid at the same damn time. Those goats, I'm telling you, are either crafty, sly little poop machines, or they are so damn stupid I wouldn't be surprised if they had trouble breathing in the rain because they look at the sky with mouths wide open. A few of the goats had kids, but one had twins and rejected one. So Mata (my female cousin; she is very, very energetic. Mata means again, also, or fork in the road.) is taking care of the baby. Booger is sooo cute and sooo spoiled!

Damn thing is so cute. It is a boy, and also adoptable.

After we got back from East Texas, we proceeded to move my brother, Otouto, into my house. For the back story, look here. It has been a rocky first week, but we are getting the hang of things and it is starting to smooth out. Perhaps things will continue to be smooth. Perhaps my lesson in all of this isn't to have a clenched fist, but rather an open hand. "Pay no mind to the battles you've won. It'll take a lot more than rage and muscle. Open your heart and hands my son, or you'll never make it over the river."


As for my health, I have (to my relief) started lifting again. HAES talks about moving your body the way you love to and it loves to, and for me that is lifting weights. I love the pump, the rush, the feeling of being strong. Now, don't get me wrong; I also enjoy Zumba and, most recently, Flirty Girls (they are kind of like a mix between dancing and stretching, except way harder). However, there's just something about pumping iron that excites me.

Which brings me to a competition. My favorite bodybuilding website is sponsoring a fitness competition, and the grand prize ain't something to sniff at. To the victor goes $50k, plus a few other nice tid bits. I am seriously thinking I am going to join and go through the LiveFit workout program. Mind you, the LiveFit program is about leaning out but also for strength building and endurance. For my purposes, I'm going to focus on the latter. If I happen to lean out, meh, but that isn't my goal nor will I advocate for that. I've cheated off the program for a while now, getting workouts from here and there, but haven't really gone through it, but I can tell you that the workouts are pump-ilicious. I've never pushed myself like I have before. Makes me lick my lips just thinking about the challenge!!

Last but not least, I have been working on lucid dreaming with mixed results. A breakthrough happened a few days ago, where I just happened to go to sleep *in my dream* and while I was dreaming in my dream (Inception!) I realized that I was dreaming and "woke up" to be able to fly around for a bit before waking to the first dream and continuing with that one, completely oblivious to the fact that I had a lucid dream beforehand (if that makes sense).

Source, and a pretty interesting article.

My dreams have always felt "real," sort of, in the sense that I never ever feel like they are dreams; instead they feel like reality. No matter how odd, how completely weird or crazy the dream becomes, it always always feels real. In fact, when I have gotten injured in dreams before, I wake up with pain in that spot. A few weeks ago I had a dream that I was having a heart attack, and I woke up with chest pains. Years before that, I had a dream where I had gotten shot and I woke up thinking I was dying because I could still feel the bullet wounds. Anyway, my dreams seem to be like I am the third person watching things unfold without my opinion or voice, as if I am the silent observer.

Almost like this, except male and scarier.

One dream stands out from the many, many. This one I was actually present, way back when I was starting my Pagan and magick path. There were two children in the dream, a girl and a boy, and I wandered over to them. We started talking about magick, and they told me that they could teach me. We started talking about stones when suddenly I was in an alleyway with cats everywhere. I walked down the alleyway but as I was, the scene kept cutting to a guy who was running down the other end of the alley in a nun's outfit (he actually was surprised he was in the nun outfit, but then actually hiked the dress and started running lol), and then cutting back to me. We reach the middle in this sort of tunnel/bridge underside and I'm on this ledge looking down at this guy. At this point, the two children are next to me. The guy brandishes a knife and tells me that I should "stop, before things get serious." I could sense he was talking about my journey into learning magick and that he was going to kill me if I didn't. I looked down at the children, and the children look back up to me with worry in their faces; they were worried I was going to leave them. I guess I decided to stay with them, because I cut the guy a look of pure indifference and wish him gone, and I wake up.

This would be just another weird dream of mine if I hadn't caught wind that my mentor also had a dream of the same children and the same guy that same night and gave details of these people without any kind of preconception. In his, he was teaching the children about magickal Fire when that was cut short and he ended up in a blacksmith shop which eventually lead to him fighting the same guy who was in a priest's suit and collar.

Anyyyywaaaayyy, the very last bit of news is I have been going through the articles in this Body Love Wellness post. Warning, some of the posts may be triggers; it certainly triggered me into a serious binge this past week (which can also be coupled with boredom, being super stressed re: my brother, and my seasonal depression). Either way, the articles are a must read, and so is the blog.

Chow for now!