vegetarian wisdom

I'm writing an article about healthy German eating, and I came across these quotes. Although I'm not a vegetarian, I deeply respect those who choose to be. Unless they judge me for *not* being vegetarian. Then my respect is sadly diminished. Anyway, here they are:

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." - Albert Einstein.

"The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." - Leonardo da Vinci

"I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals." - Henry David Thoreau

"A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite." - Leo Tolstoy.

"I do feel that spiritual progress does demand, at some stage, that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants." - Mahatma Gandhi.

"To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana." - Buddha.

slow going

Ted emailed me:

Did you get out some of that writing about your
mother? Shortly after my grandma died my mom had
a similar impulse and actually had all the
kids and grandkids write up a few memories that she
collected into a book. Come to think of it, though,
I'm not sure if mom herself contributed anything...???

my response:

Yeah, I'm working on it. I'm finding that the more I relate to the "character" of my mom, the more authentic the writing feels. Interesting. If GA didn't write about her mom, I can understand why. It is hard work that demands full participation, and not everyone is cut out for it. We'll see if I am.

I'm exhausted after a day with these kids. You know how great they are, but sometimes it feels like they are little vampires. I'm looking forward to school starting!

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Albert Einstein

Katy's questions, again

In mid May, Katy asked me some blogger to blogger questions. I wrote responses to the easy ones, but the questions about my mom were too hard. I had thoughts about what I wanted to write, but it was too soon and they were too painful.

It has now been six months since my mom died, and I feel like I am in a different place than I was even 2 weeks ago. I think about my mom a lot, and often feel her presence in my daily life. I feel her when I see tiger lilies, and when I see butterflies floating around them. I feel her when I am rocking my baby to sleep at night, remembering that she did the same for me when I was a one-year-old.

I think it is time to tell stories about my mom. I don't know where I'm going with this, but I know that there is so much to tell about her. I want the world to know her better, even if she is not with us in physical form. Carol Irene Canny Wagner is a complicated, loving spirit of a woman, full of depth and warmth and feeling. In life she was full of powerful love as well as powerful anger, and she was (like me) a flawed human being of a mother.

For myself, I want to recreate some memories I have so that I don't lose them. Now is the time to write them as they are so close to the surface. For her, I want to put them out for others to see because she would love the attention. Also it would feel lonely and wrong not to fling them into the universe.

Alright, here we go. Let's see where this might take us...

insomniacs

When I was pregnant with Maureen I was awake alot around 3-5 a.m. I would often get up and watch a netflix movie. Two that I remember from that time were something where Calista Flockhart played a lesbian psychic. It wasn't a bad movie. The other is an Iranian film about an afghani refugee girl who's family dresses her up as a boy so she can go to work at a construction site. The father in the family was disabled, and the only way for the kids to get fed was for the eldest child to go to work. It was also a pretty good movie. Can't remember the name, though.

Our neighbor lady also has insomnia. I know this because every time my pregnant was down in the living room watching movies, our neighbor was in her kitchen with the light on. Tonight she is also up, moving around her kitchen. Maybe insomnia is not the curse I've believed it to be? Maybe it's just another "disorder" that some people get to learn how to manage. There certainly are worse burdens to bear, like clinical depression for example.

I've decided to try not taking Sominex and see if I can live without it. This is night #3. So far so good. Yes I am awake in the wee hours today, but the test is really how lack of sleep affects me during the day. If I'm not functioning the way I want to during the day, then I will go back to taking a sleep aid. But what if early morning insomnia is my way of getting the quiet alone time that my personality so deeply needs? Right now is quite a pleasant time for me to be awake. So quiet, so alone. Just heard babykins screaming her head off, and went up to help her go back to sleep. Did I ever mention that ferber doesn't work on strong willed babies?

Anyway, we'll see what happens. Supposedly the SFQ exercises I've been doing for the past month and a half can cause a body to need less sleep? Sounds crazy, I know, but I'm willing to give it a try.

The NASA channel is on the TV next to me, and I find it incredibly soothing. Space shuttle Discovery is trying to land in Florida this morning.

practice makes a habit

Since our house has been on the market we have had to get into the practice of keeping our house more orderly and clean. Not an easy feat with this gang, but we keep trying.

Last weekend I got the chance to enjoy some time in our current house. I got to spend numerous hours alone in it, attending to its needs. Actually, attending to my needs is more like it: listening to music, not talking to anyone, being alone, focusing on the tasks at hand. These activities are luxuries for me at this point in my life, and the quiet time reminded me about how much I need such nourishment.

Last weekend was the first time in my history of being a parent that all our laundry was folded and put away, all toys were where they belong and the dishes were clean and in the cupboards. The floors were vacuumed and mopped, everything dusted and in its proper place! Am I bragging? Yes! Anyone who knows how we usually live should be impressed. It only took me about 3 hours of solitary work to accomplish this, and I LOVED it. Plus I really needed it to prepare myself for a "vacation" with small children.

Wouldn't it be great if this forced practice of keeping our house in order might turn into an actual habit? I'm really enjoying my home more while it is more orderly. It keeps my mind clearer just being in more cleared out space.

A practice that has become a daily habit for me is doing the Spring Forest Qigong active exercises.Back in mid JuneI was desperate to become functional again, so I began doing the active exercises once a day to see if they could help get me out of the hole I was living in. While my mom was here I met people at Pathways and at a caregiver support group through the Women's Cancer Resource Center who believed they'd been healed of cancer by practicing qigong, why not try it to help me with depression? Now, after 6 weeks of daily practice, I'm doing the exercises because I like how they make me feel. I get a tingly feeling in my hands and in my head when I do it, and although I don't understand what is going on, it feels like qigong is really good for me. If anyone out there has suffered from depression, I definitely recommend that you give qigong a try just to see what happens.