To the fathers in my life...

A day to you, a day for you!  May this Father's Day be one filled with grateful hearts, memories and some well deserved put-up-your-feet time.  A poem that describes well my father, the father of my children, and most of the fathers I know.

Only a Dad

by Edgar Albert Guest 

Only a dad with a tired face,

Coming home from the daily race,

Bringing little of gold or fame,

To show how well he has played the game,

But glad in his heart that his own rejoice

To see him come and to hear his voice.

Only a dad with a brood of four,

One of ten million men or more.

Plodding along in the daily strife,

Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,

With never a whimper of pain or hate,

For the sake of those who at home await.

Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,

Merely one of the surging crowd

Toiling, striving from day to day,

Facing whatever may come his way,

Silent, whenever the harsh condemn,

And bearing it all for the love of them.

Only a dad but he gives his all

To smooth the way for his children small,

Doing, with courage stern and grim,

The deeds that his father did for him.

This is the line that for him I pen:

Only a dad, but the best of men.

peace

By request...

It has been requested by some friends to post pictures of our latest pet.  So I am pleased to introduce you to Cinnamon our sugar glider.  He is a nocturnal marsupial native to Australia with adaptations similar to that of the flying squirrel we have here in North America.  In the wild, a sugar gliders diet consists of harden sap from the trees it lives in as well as insects.  So we feed him fruit as well as insects.  He is in fact eating a meal worm in the second picture.  We got this little guy in March from one of our friends and educators who was an animal rehibilitator.  He had rescued a sugar gilder, Barkey and Cinnamon is Barkey's son. Our friend recently passed away so this pet has special meaning for our family.  Oh, and we also found out (after we got him) that sugar gliders can live up to 15 years in captivity.  Wow, guess we just made a commitment.  Good thing he won't be going to college like our other two slightly unexpected commitments (that we love dearly, of course.  What?  Don't look at me like that!).

What's the strangest pet you ever owned?

peace

A few of my favorite things

These are a few of my favorite spring flowers.  If you can id the first and last, let me know.  I have been unable to figure them out for 2 years now.

In order after the first one,
Field Pussytoe
Bleeding Hearts
Painted Trillium
Blue Bead Lily
Foam Flower & Jack-in-the-Pulpit
Foam Flower
Canada Mayflower
Blueberry
Field Horsetail

peace

Another one bites the dust....

And another one's gone, another one's gone, another one bites the dust, yeah!

peace

Harder than I thought...

Seeing as I view myself as someone who doesn't wear shoes a whole awful lot, going barefoot for a day was way harder than I thought it would be.  I realized a few things:  I wear my slippers a lot.  Our house has all tiled and hardwood flooring.  We only have 1 or 2 area rugs because, well, we are messy.  In the winter we are constantly dragging in snow, the spring and fall, mud and in the summer, dirt.  So I have seen rugs as just one more thing to get dirty.  Because of this, our floors are cold almost all year long plus they are, well honestly, dirty quite frequently during the day.  I never noticed until I chose not to wear my shoes, how often I put my slippers on.  It is uncomfortable to walk on a dirty cold floor.  Not to mention the mud and rocks on the way to and from the van.  I was honestly, disturbingly uncomfortable by the end of the day wearing no shoes for most but not even all of the day.  Irritable, almost.  I was surprised at my own reaction and humbled.  I spent a good portion of the day inside working, a little outside in the driveway and nothing even touching the miles that most folks without shoes walk everyday just to get water.

I know all the well-intentioned but sometimes cliche phrases after doing something like this.  The expressions of gratitude for what you have, the compassion for those that don't, the passion for wanting to do something about it all.  And I feel and experience those things but something else as well.  Something of a hole in my heart/soul that these kinds of divides (those with and without, etc.) even exist at all.  Something of an ache, of a longing for this world to be put in such a state where those who have don't even consider keeping more than what is sufficient for themselves (myself) but give as freely as if nothing they had belonged to them alone.  And I know that this is the deep desire/longing for God.  This is feeling of separation from the Creator Himself.  This is the groaning for a reconciliation of this world that none of us can bring about with our own power.  And I am grateful.  For shoes?  Yes of course, but more so for a God who gives me (this world) a hope beyond this mess, a glimpse of life as we all see it could be from time to time.  For Love that does not change no matter how broken I (we) may be.

peace

Going barefoot...

Thursday is TOMS shoes 3rd annual "One Day Without Shoes" event.  If you don't already know, TOMS shoes is a shoes company that is more than a shoe company.  I mean how many shoe companies do you know whose founding principle is "With every pair you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for One."  Yes, you read that right.  They give away a pair of shoes for free to someone in need for every pair purchased.  As of April 2010, they have given away over 600,000 pairs!  Not like most business models taught in MBA programs today, I am sure.  A creative opportunity for those with buying power to help those without.

Anyway, Thursday April 8th is their annual campaign, not to advertise their company (although it does do that too), but to raise awareness to folks like you and me who have never known an involuntary day without shoes and who have more shoes than most people of the world have personal property, what it is like to live without shoes.  They are asking people to go barefoot for day (or an hour or ten minutes, whatever your life allows).  Ever walk on a gravel or dirt road in your bare feet?  Not so comfortable.  Go grocery shopping?  Take out the trash?  Go to school? 

Some shoe facts to consider:
Fact #1: In some developing nations, many children must walk for miles to school, clean water, and to seek medical help
Fact #2: Cuts and sores on feet can lead to infection
Fact #3: Often, children cannot attend school barefoot
Fact #4: In Ethiopia, approximately one million people are suffering from Podoconiosis, a debilitating and disfiguring disease caused by walking barefoot in volcanic soil
Fact #5: Podoconiosis is 100% preventable with basic foot hygiene and wearing shoes

Thursday, I will be going virtually barefoot as well as actually for parts of the day.  What about you?  Most of the world do not have the luxuries we take for granted everyday.  Might be good for the soul to walk a mile an another man's...well, feet I guess.

Check out their website.  Take off your shoes.  Feel the earth.  Connect to the life of someone you do not know.  Buy a pair of shoes and give a hand up.

A new shade of blue

By mid February winter blues of a slow-and-steady-few-inches-here-and-there kind of winter had set in around here.  So when we saw a big winter storm coming our way, we were actually looking forward to the change of pace and the beauty of lots of fresh clean snow.

That is until the storm got here and dumped 24" of wet, heavy snow in 36 hours on top of the 2 1/2 feet we already had plus another half a foot a few days later with more inches in between...we lost count.  It snowed every day for 6 days.  We went out into the yard a few times without our snowshoes on and Matt and I were both up past our thighs with more snow underneath!  Now I know that plenty of other parts of the country were hit with snow, lots of it and in unexpected places, this winter so I am not really complaining, just explaining why the additional 6 inches of snow-cone like snow this past Saturday just about threw me over the edge.

Since Monday, however, I am seeing a new shade of blue.  It has been amazingly beautiful the past few days and the sky has literally been a shade of blue I have either never seen before or never noticed before.  Electric blue, to be precise.  So despite the 2 feet of snow still on the ground, I KNOW that spring is here.  First the purple finches came back to the feeders, then we heard robins in the woods and two barred owls calling to one another, and today a hairy woodpecker was chasing a downy woodpecker away from the suet feeder.  Pretty soon we will see bear tracks, hear the peepers in the pond and see the ferns begin their alien-like emergence. 

And sandals, oh sweet sandals!  Nothing like a good late winter snow storm to give you spring fever.  What are you anticipating this spring?

peace