PonderEthereal

I was 3/4 of the way through a wonderful Pinot Noir with a sweet fruit undertone when suddenly, the house was rocking back and forth! Wow! What a Pinot!

It was this quake - a 4.7 on the richter scale right around these parts. We are about 85 miles south of LA and about 70 miles south of Inglewood (close to the epicenter) and the house rocked gently for a minute or so with decreasing intensity and a few things rattled.

But we are close to Camp Pendleton which is forever blowing themselves up and doing that exercise they do where they learn how to attack a soundly sleeping town with low flying helicopters in the dead of night so I’m not sure that it was all that thrilling for us. We’re old hands at this rattling the windows bit.

My first earthquake was in 2004 and was a 4.7 as well.

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I have a penchant for picking up strays and with each one, there is a period of a month or so where their potty habits need to be whipped into shape. And then there is the occasional sick stomach or urinary tract infection when they get into something they aren’t supposed to.

Over the years, I’ve tried lots of products to get rid of odor from accidents. Mainstream odor control products such as Febreze don’t come close to solving pet odor problems and regular carpet or upholstery cleaners get the stain out but don’t help get the actual smell out. However, there are two brands that I’ve found that work and that I wholeheartedly recommend for pet odors… Simple Solution and Nature’s Miracle.

The problem with most cleaners is that they don’t get rid of the scent markers which tell the pet to go to the bathroom there. Cats and dogs have…

I’m here. Neither I or the blog have died.

I’m recovering from my injuries still, but for the most part, the external me has returned to normal, albeit a different normal.

I closed down for a while because I was afraid to talk out loud. I’m not as afraid now… I’m just gathering my thoughts.

I’m sure I need to talk about it all. I’m sure that it needs to be said… not just for my own healing but so that other women (and maybe men) can read it and find something to relate to.

I’m just not sure what parts are the pertinent parts. I suppose maybe one day at a time. There’s a lot. Just sorting it out is all.

I’m here.

Thank you, mystery person who got me the stuff off of my wishlist. You mentioned the blog so it’s safe to assume I can thank you here and you’ll get it. I am absolutely enamored. Thank you, thank you.

There is always more than one way to look at something - even something like autism that seems so set in stone what with all it’s medical clinical speak from old men in glasses that mmhmm over us from very the age of 2, at the first sign of ‘developmental disability’. For instance, in the western world, although there is a known medication for almost every ailment, in the east, a few needles in energy meridians is all it takes to effectively cure even the most gnarly of dis-eases. Not because Chinease humans are a different species than American humans - because they aren’t - but because sometimes there is more than one reasonable, working paradigm for a given dis-ease.

Awake people can be explained with a variety of Western diagnostic terms narrated into an impressive sounding list of diagnostic criteria and neurological soup. They can also be described by a…

I had a dream about rights being taken away little by little until it’s finally just acceptable because there is no one left to fight. It made me think of this poem.

by Maurice Ogden

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.

The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.

And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.

And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead –
Till one cried: “Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?”

Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
“He…

Climbing Vine : I have a vine that covers a wall down one side of my house. It has waxy oval leaves that alternate down each stem. Older parts of the plant have woody stems. Newer branches in thick parts actually stick out away from the plant and the parts up high can actually create some very nice shade. It has a milky white sticky sap and it grows odd purple and green pods that are filled with the same gluey sap.

Small Purple Flowers : This one looks like it’s climbing but it’s not… it’s just growing along the fence. I don’t know where it came from or how.

When we moved in here, the landscaping had lots of potential and I fell in love with it. I love fix er up type projects - and I love dreaming about possibly one day being able to make something live, let alone grow. Our front courtyard area took off wildly. Things sprouted out of the ground everywhere and started blooming and growing like mad. It already had ferns, rose bushes and ivy, three of my favorite plants. There were two pots of tall bromiliads left by the last tenants that needed to be put into the ground. They were root bound. I planted those. Otherwise, I just weeded, pruned and let it all grow wild.

The back yard was sand, mostly. It was gross for the first year. I was content to let anything green flourish anywhere it wanted to including many varieties of weeds. Hey, green is green, yo.…

Novel concept that it is, the nifty orange RSS buttons in the left nav ACTUALLY. WORK. NOW. I got something like 3000 rss hits last week so surely someone cares about my RSS buttons.

If you read this via livejournal, you will notice that my username has changed to ‘ponderethereal’. Please forget you ever saw the old user name. Seriously. Otherwise, when it self destructs, it will explode your brain.

The front page of the main blog now only contains posts that do not belong in A La Aspie, Beyond the Surface or Karmic Konsumer. You can see the last few posts in those blogs from the handy dandy new blurbs in the left nav. If you read this from livejournal, you don’t need to worry about all of that very confusing gobbeldy gook.. you’ll just see IT ALL. MOO HA HA.

I am going to be a guest blogger on a…