My Thoughts

original date:  Feb 2011.  I found this "draft" and decided I'd do an update and publish. The last couple of weeks have been full of great stress for me. It all culminated on Friday with an announcement that a trainee at work I have worked with for eight weeks would be moved to train with my least qualified dispatcher. The reason is because the trainee says she cannot learn from me. Maybe it is my wounded pride or just my own exhaustion from consistent training for the last six months. I have not had barely a handful of days in the six months that I was not working dispatch while also training and handling my own administrative assigned duties. I am very curious how most people handle stress. I have actually spent too much time sleeping and doubting every ability I have. I internalize too much. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------***-------------- August 2012, 18 months later: During the time of the begi...

As a lil' girl, my Dad would  bring home cigar boxes from the liquor store that I used for all types of things.  Believe it or not, we actually used to take them to school to use as our pencil boxes. I always kept the lil' trinkets in my cigar box that meant so much to me..........a shooter marble, my skate key, a needle to air up my basketball, my jacks.  My box looked very similar to Scout's box in To Kill a Mockingbird .  In all these years since I was young, my desire to have collections has only persisted.  I have a collection of recipes in a ceramic box I made when I was first married; my antique buttons and bits of antique lace rest serenly in a mason jar with a satin padded top for my pins; my favorite photos are in a faded hat box lined with a soft cotton floral material.  When my mind reaches far back to those special and warm moments that sustain me, I always think about my collections. Pinterest has become my virtual cigar box..................

Like a memory from my own past, I sense her story so vividly that my breath catches.  As the sun slips slowly beyond the horizon casting a mythical shadow around everything, Sings the Wind sighs and the trees replay her sorrow. Haunting.................the pain and anguish wash over me and tears well in my pale blue eyes, the same eyes I see staring at me through time and distance. The first time I heard Taylor Swift's song "Safe and Sound", I swear that Sings the Wind was screaming through the warm evening air.  I could picture her on a grassy knoll, her hair blowing behind her as she sang into the wind.  This exact scene exists in the Disney cartoon Pocahontas.  My breath caught the first time I saw that movie, too. I know the spirit of consciousness of our ancestors lives inside each of us.  Recently, I came across a helpful hints guide to search for Native American ancestors, and one of the suggestions is to actually pay attention to whispered ...