Gratitude Monday -- The Magic Cupboard

This morning when I opened the cupboard to get some cooking oil I saw lurking at the back a large container of olives. This was a wonderful vision, and for it I am grateful, but it was an unexpected one. I'd opened the 3L container of Kalamata olives a few weeks ago.
We love these olives. The nearest source for these containers ( 231-260 large olives in each) is Edmonton so we buy three at a time usually and they last us perhaps a year. We stocked up last April so opening the last remaining container recently was no surprise, but I took a second look afterward to make sure.
I moved several containers around to make sure it was the last of its kind and realized, with a pang, that when it was gone we'd have to find a reason to go to the city.
This morning's discovery was the very happiest of surprises, but similar things have happened in the past.

We used to have a magic freezer. I'd think I'd be out of something and then one day, there's be one more of it in with the other frozen foods.
It started about 25 years ago when we got some sauerkraut from Mike's dad in the fall. It was so good that we went through it quickly, probably less than two months.
I craved it and looked several times in the freezer in a case a container had fallen way down to the bottom and gotten covered. I emptied the freezer. I rearranged the contents. Nothing.
Then one day in the following March I went in to get something and there was a container of it, sitting almost on top of the rest of the food.
Oh yes, I was grateful.
Over the next few years similar things happened with that freezer . I dubbed it "The Magic Freezer" and often wondered if I was ever really out of anything.

We had to get a new freezer last spring. I am not sure if the magic has transferred to the new one or not, but if not, then at least it found a new home in the cupboard.

A Walk, A Dream, And An Answer

I've danced around this subject in various posts, trying to make sense of the events of my life. I've known what they are, but I could never find the hook I needed to write about them publicly.

I'd been looking for the big splash event, the kind of encounter one remembers and can hang a post, or talk, or a book on. The book I am working on. I've found a way to tell the stories of odd events and past life memories together as a roman à clef rather than memoir.

This is different. This is coming out publicly as one who has had contact with extraterrestrials, and none who believes she shares a consciousness with them. Here is a bit of my story.

#

I felt compelled to take a walk south of the barn, and there was no bargaining with me about it.

It was March when I was in grade six. That makes me 11 years old. It was Friday and I was riding the school bus when I saw myself in my mind walking south from the barn to the windrows. A few years earlier after we got rid of the cows dad ploughed up the pasture south of the barn and knocked down several acres of trees in an east- west orientation  to make more fields. The pasture used to go south out to those trees. Now it was all crop though not in March of course.

I reasoned with myself as the bus approached my home. It was cloudy and cold and already about 4 p.m. Dark wasn't for a while yet, but it would be along soon enough. A slight wind blew, and some thin snowflakes were falling. All in all a really lousy time to go for a walk.

I did as I usually did, went inside, put on some jeans and other home clothes all the while bargaining with myself. The drive to walk to the south end of the former pasture had me in a firm grip, but the major thinking portion of my mind thought there was some leeway.

"I'll just go to the barn," I told myself as I put on a coat and cowboy boots. Despite the cold I didn't put on winter boots and neither had I put on long underwear under my jeans. I didn't think I'd be out long. At the barn I decided to walk to the edge of barnyard.  I'm sure dad was in the barn cleaning a pig pen and I know there was no clown to greet meet this time. I simply walked thought it,  probably speaking with dad and then telling myself I'd go the fence at the edge of the barnyard.

So I did, and when I got there I told myself, "I'll go to the edge of the pasture." There was road beside it that led to a field to the west of the former pasture. This became my conscious goal. The unconscious goal remained going to the south end to where the windrows started.

But I kept on going. One foot in front of the other. Large clumps of ploughed- up dirt make difficult walking at the best of times. I remember wishing it had stayed a flat pasture. These were frozen clumps. They slowed my progress and I even thought about stopping and turning around and going back.

But I didn't.

How I felt escapes me other than what I was doing was right. This sureness rested past my conscious awareness. It existed as a thing I knew and the things one knows are not questioned.

Not every feeling escaped me. I felt cold. Denim alone doesn't protect all that well from a bitter March wind and cowboy boots aren't warm especially as I likely had on fairly thin socks. At no point had it occurred to me to dress properly for the trip. I'm commonly cold. For a few years, until about age 13, I wore an old winter coat in the house because of it.

 On this occasion I felt the cold and ignored it as a mere inconvenience. I noticed it and kept on, one foot in front of the other, eyes ahead to the charred trees in the windrows that we'd burned the previous fall.

It probably took 20 minutes from the time I left the house until I'd plunked myself down on a tree trunk.  Not all of them had burnt. I can see a trunk with a few spindly branches which still had green, if desiccated, leaves. I remember this. It has never left me.

This is the part I am not so clear on. I had a smoke, an American brand of cigarettes that I liked despite not inhaling the smoke then. That I learned a few months later.

I sat facing the farmyard enjoying the smoke. I looked at the thin brown filter end. I smoked it down. And then I tossed the nearly empty pack under a log assuming that I'd come back out again. This I recall clearly. What is as hazy as the smoke that came out of my mouth is where I got them. Having US smokes from time to time was hardly unusual. I got them from friends who could get them at a local store on occasion. Perfectly normal.

The non-normal part of this is I have it in my head that I got them from under a burnt log in the first place. And if I didn't, then it would be highly unusual to leave them half a mile from my house and therefore largely inaccessible. Yet this is exactly what happened.

We'd burnt the windrows in the fall. Smoke still trailed up in a few places, especially near where I hid the smokes. Then I climbed to the top of the windrow and looked down into the field. The land had a bit of a roll to it, a few shallow dips in an otherwise flat stretch. Water had pooled in the dip closest to me. I remember it rippling.

This is March in north central Alberta. Open water is rare. It's not unheard of, but neither is it all that likely. Yet there it was. Deep, dark blue against the grey-brown soil which itself should have been covered in snow. We had snow on the ground I am sure, it simply wasn't in those particular fields.

After climbing back down off the logs I walked back to the house, at one point wondering why I'd come all the way out there.  Along with that I felt a little odd, apprehensive maybe, and cold. The thin flakes swirled down in a stiff breeze that went right through me. I bent my head and trudged along occasionally slipping when I stepped on a larger clod of frozen dirt.

At home I put on long underwear under my jeans, and another layer under the thin shirt I'd been wearing. It snowed all weekend. I never did go back to get my smokes.

#

The cold spring walk stayed with me. I've never forgotten it, and neither did I understand it until a dream I had in the early 1990s. I'll call it a dream because it happened while I slept. It had no real dream quality to it.

In it, I am 11, it is March, and I am at the end of the field standing on top of the windrow. Instead of a pool of rippling water there is a small spaceship. Intuitively and without question I know this to be a scout ship.

Beside it is a small creature, a friend of sorts if somewhat businesslike. Slender, dark,  wearing some sort of uniform, also dark. He motions me toward the ship. I am not sure of the communication. I knew what he meant. It may have been telepathic, but I do not recall any words.

I get in. There is a round dome surrounding me. It is transparent. I see my friend ahead of me and off to the side, waiting. There are levers on the floor. I have been instructed to fly it.

Momentarily, I panic. How?

Then I remember. It is done by mental control.

I take the small ship up about 10 feet. I am thrilled I recall how to fly it.

I land and get out. My friend is pleased.

The dream ends there with a sharp knock on my head.

I wake up and look over at Mike initially blaming him for head-butting me awake.

He is sleep soundly.

The knocking came from inside my head. 

#

I know this to be the truth. I felt compelled to take the walk to the end of the field that day.
Now I know what happened. I am not sure I know why it happened.

Gratitude Monday - Solid Gratitude Edition

Back in the early 90s I'd had a dream that started in the house I spent my teen years in on the farm. In it I am in my parent's bedroom and there's a white cat on the window sill.

Then I am in my bedroom in my bed in my apartment and this same white cat rushes up from the foot of the bed to the head. A great waving of rising energy went through me keeping pace with the cat.

It is near impossible for me to describe this feeling properly. Rising, almost tingly, awake, fully alive, energy, and maybe not quite solid.

I rose up. It felt like my body, but I think I may have felt my body on the bed. I can't be sure because I so felt so filled with energy. I turned a bit went toward the open bedroom door. Instead of going through the door I went through the wall beside it.

It felt so wonderful. I was whole and yet in particles and so free and so filled with joy. I knew exactly what to do and how to do it, how to get through solid matter. It came to easily to me.

It made me happy to do this. Overwhelmingly happy. I went back to bed, back to my body in my bed and the cat walked back to the foot of the bed.

I know I fell back to sleep because I woke up remembering what had happened and knowing how, but not believing in, my ability to walk through the wall.

What stayed with me was an overwhelming feeling of love and the sense of belonging, of wanting to be with people, listen to them, love them, join in with them. That was entirely new.

That day at work I did join in more conversations and casual discussions and I know I was smiling that day. Maybe not on my face, but inside I grinned from ear to ear and I felt joy and happiness and wonder and such gratitude for life.

The joyous desire to be with others and socialize didn't last very long. Within a day or so I was back to my usual leave-me-alone-please self, but I remember how it felt to not just want to belong, but to know how to do it, and to do it and to feel I belonged. I remember the internal smile.

I remember the feeling I had of knowing I could get through solid matter by simply opening spaces in my body at the subatomic level. It's easy and simple and everyone can do it, I remember.

But I no longer remember how to do it, and the core sureness of it is gone.

#

I've had a lifetime of interesting occurrences and I've been writing about them. From time to time I will post about them.
They cover a fairly wide variety of experiences and some are difficult to speak about. That tells me it is important to do so.  I am convinced more people have these sort of off-normal experiences than are willing to say so publicly. In fact, I expect there are so many that they should be considered normal.

Gratitude Monday -Cornography Edition

Husband grew some Hopi corn this season. When frost threatened yesterday he had to bring it in even though it belonged in the field a bit longer.

However, we got corn out of it and that included a cob that was mature, and for it I am grateful.

With its field mates.

A closer look.

The Cornfather.

Gratitude Monday - It Never Ends Edition

I am grateful all the time. Every day brings something for which one can be thankful for even if it is the simple act of waking up to another day of being alive.

With that I am calling an end to the weekly gratitude posts. I will still write about gratitude, but it won't necessarily be on Mondays.
It may not be every week.
It could be any day of the week.

I've enjoyed sharing my gratitude with you.
I am grateful to you for reading them.
I am grateful I have always found things to be grateful for.

It's been great.

Thanks.

Gratitude Monday -- Picture This Edition

I am so grateful I was able to capture this photo:

Gratitude Monday - The State of the Butt Edition

It's all good and for it I am grateful.

In specific, I had a colonoscopy last Tuesday and nothing was found that wasn't supposed to be there.

It's been four years since I was diagnosed with colon cancer. This was my second follow up scoping and am good for another five years.

I am pleased to report all is well.

You'll recall what I asked of you four years ago and I am going to ask it again, this time in celebration.
If you've a mind to and a moment to do it either pour a glass of your favourite libation and raise it or simply pump a clenched fist in the air and say, "Cancer, my ass!"

Thank you.