Sushi, Brownies, and Friendship – Day 884

Sushi – Not tonight’s, but close enough – Photo: L. Weikel

Sushi, Brownies, and Friendship

Some nights I go off on tangents about raptors, clouds, and messages. But sometimes the only reasonable course is to just take a time out and focus on sushi, brownies, and friendship.

I want to continue the conversation I began last night about Seeing patterns and connecting dots and how all of that comes together differently for each of us. But tonight is not the night for me to pursue that line of thought.

No, tonight was a night of sushi, brownies and friendship, and the upshot of that fact is the truth that I don’t feel like going so deep or so wide into my thoughts or feelings. Instead, I’m simply reveling in the sweet truth of what it felt like to sit around a fire safely ensconced in a fire pit, in the midst of a windless, completely still evening, with people I’ve known for all but maybe twelve months of their life to those I only met minutes before pulling up a chair to the fire.

Ah, the freedom of being outside and more than six feet away from all of these people (there actually were only four of us around the fire), yet still able to look at their faces – their full, maskless faces – and react to their expressions and laughter and full-toothed grins. It was the best birthday gift ever.  (But I’ll admit, the sushi and brownies were exquisite as well).

Knowing What’s Important

Sitting together outside tonight we shared a number of precious moments: the barely waxing newest of moons in Taurus, flashing but a tiny fingernail shape in the western sky, while captivatingly revealing the rest of her shadowy self if you looked closely enough. What a sight; especially when glimpsed through the trees that are just starting to bud out and contemplate bursting into full, leafy glory over the next few days.

Another moment? The satisfaction of coaxing the fire to rise to the occasion, licking its flames across the delicious bark of the wood we fed it. Ah, the warmth and flickering of flames that danced across our countenances as we told stories of years gone by to give the newcomer a taste of who we are and how we share certain bits of history.

Everything has a story if you give it enough time. Even people we’ve known all our lives have stories they can share that surprise or beguile us.

Sometimes, the further we travel from home, the more we realize that the people closest to us might just be the most exotic. Or at the very least, the most eclectic.

Amazing Seeds Being Planted

It feels to me as though this week is a particularly powerful week in which to plant the seeds of what we wish to manifest not only in the next thirty days or so, but also in the next six months and event he next year. The new moon (on Sunday evening) was in Aries but the seeds we’ve been planting since then – yesterday, today, and tomorrow – have been, and are being, planted while the moon is in earthy, nurturing Taurus.

To me, that feels luxuriously nurturing and like the perfect environment to cradle those incipient dreams.

I’m going to call tonight as one of those evenings we all yearn for but only rarely experience. Filled with sushi, brownies, and friends, it was momentary perfection. For a few hours this evening, four people sat around a crackling fire, listened to distant peepers, exclaimed over Canadian geese honking their way directly overhead, and knew we were all exactly where we were supposed to be in that moment.

Decades may separate us, but in the moment, we were all simply reveling in the company of kindred spirits. I couldn’t be more grateful for the experience.

(T-228)

Themes and Messages – Day 504

I am loved – Photo: L. Weikel

Themes and Messages

I should’ve started writing this post on themes and messages earlier. It’s getting late and I’ve been a total hog this weekend, indulging in sushi (yes, Karl does know my weakness – witness his Valentine’s Day ‘score’ this year, too) and two – two! – birthday cakes.

Last night I baked myself one of ‘Carol’s chocolate cakes,’ so Karl and I could celebrate all weekend. You know. Be totally decadent and use my birthday to justify the massive stress eating we’ve been engaging in lately. <<Ahem>> As you can see from the photo below, someone very neatly ‘edged’ along the entire width of the cake tonight with her fork. I think it looks decorative.

Carol’s Chocolate Cake – neatly ‘edged’ – Photo: L. Weikel

I couldn’t help it.

But to make matters exponentially worse (not a good word to use, come to think of it) – lo and behold! – my d-i-l Tiffany baked and delivered to me this gorgeous and delectable berry torte with whipped cream and cream cheese icing!

Oh my goodness…take a look at that baby. Tell me you don’t gain five pounds just by looking at it.

All of which is to say that I’m sitting here on the couch in a semi-stupor.

Tiffany’s Berry Birthday Torte – Photo: T.Dollar

Last Year/This Year

There are two sets of pretty interesting themes and messages that I noted last year on my birthday – both of which I want to reflect upon. But if I’m honest, I fear the sugar and fat coursing through my system at this point is not conducive to me writing anything even remotely coherent.

So I will ‘set up’ the stories, if you will, and promise to flesh them out for you in future posts.

Living Breathing Messengers

Both last year and this year, oddly, I was pulled from my slumber by two different types of birds. Last year, a pileated woodpecker literally hammered its way into my dreams until I awakened and saw it clinging to the bark of the maple tree just outside my bedroom window. What a sight that was! They dwarf most of the other birds that hang out around (or swoop through) our yard.

This year it was a completely different bird – but one that seems to have been ‘stalking’ me for a couple weeks now. The fact that I’d noticed this bird had left me a good handful of feathers from all different points along our walks over the past few weeks, flown across my path a number of times, and simply made itself quite obvious, I had to smile as I lay in bed this morning, my consciousness rising up from the depths, when I realized the insistent voice I kept hearing was this very same bird.

Mind you: for weeks, I’ve noticed it and thought solely of the one snippet of knowledge I have about the ‘message’ of this bird. I kept telling myself I needed to look it up, but never seemed to get around to it. I was also dismissing that it was really showing up for me, talking myself out of the mystical sense I was feeling when I kept finding its feathers, and telling myself that these birds have always been in our vicinity (which is true). I used that fact to actively attempt to deny that there was anything ‘special’ about their appearance this year.

Medicine Card Messengers

The other comparison I wanted to make, which if I type fast I may be able to spit out and thus not belabor were my Medicine Card* ‘picks’ on my birthday last year and now this.

I had to look up what I chose on my birthday last year. Luckily I write them down every morning when Karl and I sit, have our coffee, choose our cards for the day.

Last year I chose Dog/Lizard. Dog’s primary message is all about loyalty. Loyalty to ourselves, loyalty to others – and loyalty that’s shown (or not) to us by others.

When I looked that up just moments ago, I had to tip my hat to Spirit. Without question, the lessons I learned about loyalty and how it played out in my life were the biggest, most difficult, challenging, hurtful, and enlightening ones of my entire year. I certainly didn’t see them coming – at least not from the direction they came – and as they unfolded, their very nature was so surreal that the whole situation felt like a very bad dream.

This year’s pick, today’s cards, were Armadillo/Snake.

Given everything that’s going on all around us, from the pandemic to the personal, these cards feel like an amazingly perfect selection as a theme for my personal year. The need to cultivate my skills in setting and defining boundaries – both to give myself space and to protect myself – and shedding a number of things (beliefs, roles, relationships), including perhaps the outer identity I’ve had for some time, in order to reveal a new aspect of myself and my path.

Intriguing.

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(T-607)

V-Day Redemption – Day 460

Best V-Day yet – Photo: L. Weikel

V-Day Redemption

Today marks the 42nd Valentine’s Day Karl and I have celebrated together.

There’s no question Karl and I have been V-Day challenged since the inception of our relationship. Anyone reading this post can appreciate that Karl did not endear himself to me in that crucial first year Valentine’s Day pressure cooker. And while we did reach a détente by realizing that the very best V-Day gifts were those that were literary in nature, and we succeeded in making that a tradition for quite a while, many have nevertheless missed the mark.

This year, instead of going anywhere or doing anything even remotely related to Karl or our relationship, I had a session with a client. And this session entailed me driving a good distance away. As a result, I didn’t get home until just shy of 9:00 p.m.

Another Bust

Imagine my surprise to find the house empty when I got home.

“Hmmph,” I thought at first, when I pulled up and saw no cars in the driveway. “Maybe he went for pizza and wanted it to be piping hot when I got home.”

Not two minutes went by and Karl’s car pulled into our driveway.

I was standing in the living room, and through one of the windows could see him approaching the kitchen door. No pizza box in hand. The lack of same was striking and devastating.

In fact, from my perspective, it didn’t look as if he had anything in his hands. “Surely he brought home dinner,” I thought in a panic. I’ll admit it; I was pretty hungry at this point – and now expecting the worst. As usual.

Karl pushed open the door from our kitchen into our living room and flourished a small, unmarked paper bag with twine handles. “Happy Valentine’s Day!” Karl grinned, flashing me the smile that won me over all those years ago (and has wheedled its way into my heart far too many times to count over the intervening years).

I still wasn’t comprehending what he’d brought home. Was it even food? That bag sure was small. For some reason, my mind had become fixated on pizza as I drove home – even though I’d actively decided against calling and suggesting it to him. I was still trying to figure out how any of this added up.

Sushi Extravaganza

It wasn’t until I opened the paper bag with its distinctive twine handles and looked inside that I realized: This man knows me. He knows (finally!) after all these years precisely what to bring home to make me feel completely loved and known and indulged.

Every layer I uncovered in the bag elicited a shriek of delight. His choices were particularly significant since I’m the one who places the order for sushi the at most couple of special occasions we order it during the year. Karl isn’t nearly as bowled over by mouthgasms as I am over sushi, so the fact that he took the time to print out Ooka’s menu and figure out which of the offerings were the ones that pave a direct path to my heart was an act of pure love. (And beyond the love credits awarded for making the effort to pick out my favorites he earned triple bonus word score extravaganza points for choosing all my favorites!)

Best of all, I was utterly happy coming home to my love and just planning on spending a quiet evening with him and all our beasts.

The extravagant overload of delectable sushi was a total redemption for any and all prior V-Day transgressions. I’m one happy little fridget* (wink) Love you, Karl.

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(T-651)