All posts by Libby

Chicken Allergy…Who Knew?

My cat has had hideous feline dermatitis for months and months. Scabby, oozing sores that she’d open daily with her itching. Tried everything to get rid of it. Finally, after reading a Review of a chicken free catfood (Instinct), I realized that almost all commercial catfood has some form of chicken in it…and she’d developed an allergy to it.

I spoke with pet store folks about this and they told me that the processing of the chicken is what they figured was causing an outbreak in toxicity to animals. The frozen, or freeze-dried versions are affected as well. I guess it’s the equivalent of ‘pink slime’ in human-grade hamburger in terms of using industrial solvents to clean the chicken.

Gross and disgusting. I’ve finally found Instinct and Evanger’s, both are pretty pure. The dermatitis has gone away.

Signs of the times

Have been sitting here this morning thinking about the time we live in and what a challenge it is to stay in the Light.  An astrologer friend and I had a discussion this morning about how, astrologically, each quadrant of the astrological wheel offers the cardinal energy (creative/desire/passion), the fixed energy (manifestation/destruction) and the mutable energy (mental/integration/preservation) that, when taken together, create the patterns of all life.

I appreciated a way to think about and feel into the patterns I see around and within. I’ve been pondering all the ways we use to explain the magnificence and the mystery of life.  In case you want to explore,his website is: http://www.signsofthetimeshistory.com/

2011 Calendar

2011 Calendar of horsesTara is a skilled photographer and she has created a truly lovely calendar for 2011, each month with exquisite pictures of her horses photographed against the dramatic landscapes of Eastern Washington. This is really a quality item at a very reasonable price. I’m getting a couple of them for my horse-loving friends.

Oh Deer!

Here on Whoopie (Whidbey) Island, I have no garden space.  It’s the first year in 25 years I haven’t actively lived and breathed through my garden.  I finally decided I HAD to have something, so I planted about 10 containers, with just the right (researched) soil mix, planted and waited through the weirdest summer weather I can remember in my adult life.  Finally, after way too long, it produced…beans, sunchokes, leafy chard, peas, herbs, and the tomatoes were hanging off the vines…and all of this was on my deck, not 3 feet from my front door.

Went to work one Thursday morning and visited all the plants on my way out the door. They were lookin’ good — full, lush. I was finally going to get a harvest!  Came home that evening and everything, and I mean everything (except the sage, rosemary and parsley) was eaten down to about 3 inches of stem.  All the beans, chard, peas, tomatoes and plants, chokes…the whole shebang…chewed off by a mamma doe and her two frisky fawns who’ve been hanging around, and who I NEVER thought would come within 3 ft. of the front door to steal the garden goodies.  Sigh.

With nice summer weather being so sporadic and fall already beginning, and no harvest, I feel like I’m in some kind of time warp.  Leaves are already turning on the maple outside my window.

The Stories We Tell

“Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to the dreamland, that lead to love and learning, that lead us back to our own real lives as knowing wildish women.”~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I don’t know many people these days whose inner life isn’t fraught with anxiety of some sort.  This quote really reminded me that I have the freedom…indeed the response-ability…to tell myself a different story when I find myself responding fiercely to a story I’ve stumbled into while not paying attention.  If it’s not of my creation, it’s not my story.

The Sound of the Genuine

I love this quote!

“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”  ~Howard Thurman

Thought for the day from my friend Nancy…… “Somewhere along the line of development we discover what we really are, and then we make our real decision for which we are responsible. Make that decision primarily for yourself because you can never really live anyone else’s life.” Eleanor Roosevelt

I love this quote because it talks about taking responsbility for decisions,which means claiming power to change my life, realizing that what’s happened in the past is a result of my own decision making however flawed it may have been.

Living in the margins or on the edge of conventional life has a way of causing me to distill down to what’s essentially me, and like leaves on a tree, all the excuses, the blaming of externals, the noise of life in the king’s world…all falls away. I stand here like that tree with, in the words of a song I once heard, ‘my roots dug down, my branches wide and open.’

Women living lives that they’ve made up themselves, on their own terms, don’t have it easy but there’s a huge satisfaction in knowing that they’re living into a self designed life.

Avatar

OMG, I went to see Avatar with Hannah yesterday and it is truly a story for our time!  To say it was amazing is an understatement.  It jarred some kind of primeval memory, cellular.  It is a masterpiece of enchantment while being profoundly relevant.  Whatever else can be said about it, the communion the Na’vi with the soul source of their environment hearkened back to something that resonated in my bones.  The metaphorical Tree of Life, the transference of spirit…all of it…just amazing.

Don’t miss it.  Here’s a link: http://www.avatarmovie.com/index.html