Living In The Moments

"Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it's beauty."

-Albert Einstein

First of all... thank you. Your emails and comments about Elvis have been a tremendous comfort to Alan and I.

We have an wonderful young man, goofy and smart, silly and kind, determined and stubborn, handsome and charismatic. Besides Alan and I, his great loves are food, slightly slutty women, hats and stuffed animals. His favorite animal is the opossum, and his favorite color is green. He likes long naps, especially if I put on some classical music, and he growls when he sees George Bush on TV! LOL. I have seen this guy do things that are nothing short of astounding. Like the time he sat in the yard watching birds fly in and out of the lemon tree, and after a little while, I saw that he had climbed into the tree, settled down on a particular branch, where he sat with his mouth wide open... apparently reasoning to himself, that if he sat there long enough, a bird would fly into his mouth! LOL. True story.

That is just one of the times we are smiling about, as we get ready to say goodbye. If he were writing this blog, I know he would say to everyone... "don't be sad. Please." Elvis wasn't a sad cat, he loved pulling pranks to make us laugh. Do you remember the time when he convinced Alan that there was some dire need to be let outdoors? Well, Alan and I had just sat down to eat lunch of corned beef sandwiches, when Elvis began to whine, and scratch and claw at the door. Alan took one bit of his lunch and then got up to let him out. Elvis waited for him to get the door open, then bolted under Alan's feet making a b-line to Alan's chair, and up to the table. And I swear... he was laughing! LOL. He got to Alan's sandwich, never took any, but he made his point. He is smarter then us, and many, many times, he has proven it!

Everyone who loves a pet, believes they have the best little friend on earth. The smartest kitty, or the most intelligent dog, and they are probably right, but Elvis is my hero. He has been nothing but sheer joy, making us laugh every single day we have had him. I believe he was made of pure love. To me, it's like he doesn't just know what love is HE IS LOVE!

Alan and I are pet people. I know we will have another friend one day. We will need a little time to heal from losing Elvis, and we have a time frame that seems about right. In truth, we both know that it will never heal completely, but we will be ready for a new friend at some point. I can see a lot of light in that fact alone. For now, there is a lot of life in our house, and we are doing our best to do our normal routines. I will continue to post here, you know me, I have an opinion about everything! LOL. So please keep coming back! Elvis is having a birthday this coming week, and I have already chosen the theme, so, I will be posting a lot of photos of the fun. His life is to be celebrated. So stay tuned! There's much more to come!

-OndineMonet
"Elvis As Art"
Berkeley, California
April 24, 2008
Afternoon

John Scalzi's Weekend Assignment # 196: Plans For 2008

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

First the important news: This is the last Weekend Assignment I'll be doing here at By The Way. Next week is the last full week of me doing By The Way, and also we'll be in the thick of the holiday madness, so I think it's best to wrap up this very long-running feature here and now. It's been lots of fun, though, and I hope you've all enjoyed playing along as much as I have.

But I don't want to spend too much time with the past here, because the future is so much more interesting to me at the moment. With that in mind, here is the topic for this week's Weekend Assignment;

Weekend Assignment #196: What are your hopes or plans for 2008? Any big projects for the year? Anything you hope to accomplish or change? Or will you just relax? Because, you know, that's okay, too.

Extra Credit: How was your 2007?

-John Scalzi (By The Way)

Well, I will get to John's question in a moment, but first I want to once again tell John how much I will miss him and the Weekend Assignments, in 2008! Somehow, I wish there were just a few more weeks in 2007, so we could make it to an even 200 Weekend Assignments. LOL. Can you believe I just said that? The lady who began praying for New Year's Eve, just a couple weeks into 2007? LOL. Oh goodness, this was a bumpy year for me personally. I don't want to look back right now, because that is not the focus of this assignment. The point of this assignment is to look into the future. And when I do that, I get excited at the possibilities. :) So when I look into my future, through my crystal ball, here is what I see...

**I am going to take some additional classes on meditation and yoga, in an effort to improve my overall well-being. I need to cut some stress, as that is my number one trigger to my diabetes. Stress is even more dangerous to me then sugar. Don't get me wrong. My numbers are fantastic, my doctor is thrilled with what I have accomplished since July, and on this course, I will be officially diabetes free as of July, but I need more than one good A1C test before I get the full ALL CLEAR.

**I am planning to take a ceramics class. I want to learn something new, and hopefully make some new pals. It's time to climb out of my shell a little. I like people, and I like life, and hopefully they wont hate me on sight. Right? I remember our Blogfather once said, Internet friendships are wonderful, but nothing beats the relationships we have in real life.I am paraphrasing of course, but you get the idea. It sounded like sound advice to me. I have spent too much time in my own little world. I am so done with the past! I am over it!

**I want to volunteer for a political campaign. I have always wanted to do that, and I think it would be a great experience. It's something new, that I have never tried, and I can kind of choose how much time I want to devote to it. This is an important election coming up. Something has to not just change, it has to change for the better! If I am going to put myself out in the world, I want to help make a positive change, even if all I do is stuff envelopes. You know? It's time to do my part for the future.

**In terms of creativity, there is nothing more important to me then my photography. I need to really work on it, not just stick with the same old comfortable subjects, but rather really push myself to go to the edge with it. There are some photography classes available at the community colleges in my area, so why not expand my horizons a bit? :) I took a class online, in Portrait Photography, earlier this year, and I found it very enjoyable. :)

**Overall, I want to just experience life. That's all. My priorities have changed, since I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. I am so lucky that I wasn't told it was cancer, or heart disease or any one of the other things that tend to punch us down for no apparent reason. Since I began blogging in 2003, I have lost 2 good blogging/journaling buddies, Frank and Pam, to those things. I still miss them terribly, and they remind me of how short life is. It's too short to be afraid of the future. So, here I am, thrilled about 2008, and all it has waiting for me, good or bad! Maybe I will do all the things I have listed, maybe I will do none of them, maybe I will do other things that I can't even conceive of. Who knows? Isn't it exciting? Stay tuned, because you just never know with me!

Extra Credit: How was your 2008? ROFLMAO! Well, at first I thought it sucked! Then things kind of tapered off, and now, well, I can look back and see, life has a way of working itself out. All in all... it wasn't the worst year I have ever had. :)

"You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest, that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present."

-Jan Glidewell

-OndineMonet
"Believe"
Merry-Go-Round
Christmas Fantasy In The Woods
Tilden Park
Berkeley, California
November 29, 2007
Evening

If It's Not One Thing It's Your Mother!

"Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing begins."

-Tori Amos

Tomorrow

Yesterday, Wednesday, was my last day in therapy. It has been a once a week look into myself, for over seven years. It was an intense time to be sure, but had I not given myself chance to heal, after the event which shall remain nameless happened, I am not too sure I would be alive today to write this entry. I had been in therapy on and off for most of my life, and had worked with 44 different therapists, then one day I met Sarah, who was my therapist for the last three years, and who I saw for the last time yesterday. Of all the therapists I have worked with, Sarah is the one who gave me the strongest hand up from despair. When I met her three years ago, I was still so inside myself. Little by little we worked through those hurtful moments from long ago, and some from not so long ago, that life has handed me. The broken family relationships, the trust issues, the broken heart moments, the frustration with world events, and to some degree, the original cause of my break. She helped me overcome the terror of the day the the world caved in... and the pain of the months and years that followed.

Where The Hurt Sat

I will miss Sarah very much, but I finally feel that I am back to being not just me, but perhaps the best version of me that's ever been. With seven years of intense therapy behind me, the time has come to start using those coping methods I have learned to start standing on my own two feet. I know that at some point I may need to go back to therapy, because lets face it, life has a way of pushing us through doors, without necessarily asking if we want to go through them. LOL. Like when we lose someone we love so much, or we find ourselves in a position to change jobs, or when we somehow start believing that life is just plain unfair... and we don't know what to do. :( Somehow, however, I think I can cope with the future better now, then at any point previously in my life. Partly because I have personally matured, partly because I have learned a lesson or two, but mostly because I now know I deserve the best life I can make for myself. Gone are those ghosts who liked to tell me I was worthless, and talentless. They have been proven wrong, they have been proven liars!

Sarah

Sarah... thank you so much for all you have done for me. For all your guidance, especially in the last 8 months. Thank you for understanding me when I cried so hard... lol... I wasn't even sure of what I had said...lol... and most of all, thank you for sharing your gift of healing. I wish you much happiness.
:)

"Freud: If it's not one thing, it's your mother." - Robin Williams


-OndineMonet
"Wednesdays With The Lamp"
Berkeley, California
August, 2007
11:00 AM

The Focus We Choose

"It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."

-William Somerset Maugham

Long day with the camera. Good day. Productive day. A day where at the end, I feel like I accomplished something... GOOD. I am helping with a project, more of which I will share at a later time, that is helping me weed out all the head noise that has been bogging me down since late December. Sometimes, when we are willing to set the bar higher, and not settle, the best things come our way, and we find that what we thought we could never do, is only a matter of closing our eyes and jumping head first into the future. I know I make it sound easy... it's not... resistance to the future is normal... but sometimes the future is the focus we choose, for me, the future lives in the lens of my camera. :) Don't you just love the affirmations this time of year provides? :) It's all new, in every direction. Life.

-OndineMonet
"In The Pink"
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, California
March 7th, 2007
Afternoon