Tag Archives: choices

Life with Sparky: What Happened to My Clean Floor?

The red dot moves slowly past. Sparky watches as it leaps onto the sofa.

He crouches.

The dot sweeps back to his toes, then off it dances around the room. It bounces up onto the back of the sofa.

He explodes from his crouch leaping and bounding up and across the back, following the dot.

He catches it.
And somehow it slides away from his grasp

He tears after it again.
It eludes his grasp until he plops on the floor, seemingly uninterested.
Until it dances near his nose, his toes, his tail! And he is off, chasing it again.

Thanks to friends who read my blog and made the suggestion, we purchased a red dot laser light. We can now play with him without being scratched and he gets some running in.

My house looks like a 2-year-old lives here again!

Scraps and bits of things I’d never leave on the floor before now lie in wait for Sparky to attack.

Soon after he came to live with us, a stuffed rabbit made its way out of the guest bedroom into the living room. It had been waiting for a granddaughter to return and love on it. Cuddled and tortured, it became one of Sparky’s best friends.

And then the seam split and part of the stuffing came out.

Now the poor bunny waits behind a closet door where Sparky can’t get to it. I need to sew the seam back together.

A strip of paper tied to a length of yarn is a favorite toy, especially when grandchildren come to visit. They drag it around behind them and Sparky chases them. When they are not here, he finds the yarn and wraps up in it.

Yarn!

My bedroom had yarn strung from one end to the other when he found three balls of yarn. It is tangled in a tie and a strap I detached from a purse and left on the floor. When I attempt to untangle the yarn, Sparky is in the middle of it once more.

Like all other cats of all sizes, Sparky loves boxes. His favorite place to play and hide, however, is inside a paper bag. It rattles and makes a noise when he runs into it. It is dark and safe. He can hide there waiting for someone to pass by to be attacked. He plays with them long after they are shredded.

Sparky is smart. He has searched through the toys I have in another room, waiting for grandchildren to come play with them. He has claimed toys from the toy basket: a straw, a stuffed lizard, a plastic man, a piece of string, a big Lego block, anything he can get his paws or his teeth into to carry.

He found two small stuffed animals he loves to play with. One is a little cat, the other is a dog. I think it is fitting that he plays with and attacks the dog.

One morning, I sat writing in my chair. Sparky played with a stuffed animal, the paper tied to yarn, and an elastic.

All of a sudden, he raced past my feet, growling! He ran behind the chairs and around to play with his toys. Away he ran again past me. He stopped to rest. Then, up he jumped and he ran past me at top speed, growling. I think he carried the dog in his mouth.

Where did that big growl come from? He has a loud purr, but I’ve never heard him growl before. He must have decided he’s a big cat again, chasing his prey!

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Is the Problem Guns or God?

The world seems to be falling apart, a city at a time. This last few weeks, there has been hurricanes, fires, shooting in Las Vegas, shootings in other towns and cities, and this Sunday a shooting that killed 1/10 of the population the small town, mostly children.
What is going on?
The pastor from the church shot up on Sunday and a fellow pastor from down the road suggest the problem is a turning away from God. God is not invited into our universities and schools or our courts, and is driven from many of our families.
Governments pray at the beginning of a session, then turn their backs on God while they “grind on the faces of the poor” and take bribes from big corporations. How is God welcome in halls of government? The hypocrisy of these so-called leaders is disgusting.
Once again, the call for increased and tougher gun laws is heard from men and women of government who would not leave their homes without armed guards. The purchase of weapons by some is a problem. Men and women who have violent mental illnesses and those who have violent crimes in their past should not have access to fire arms of any kind. Further, no one needs automatic weapons, or the “bump stock” that turns a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon.
It is common knowledge that criminals don’t go through legal channels to purchase their guns. Most home invasion robbers are seeking legally purchased guns. They don’t go down to the local gun store and have their backgrounds checked, like legal purchasers.
Guns are not the problem. If someone wants to create havoc, they can. Remember Timothy McVea? The problem, as the preachers from the small town in Texas said, is our distance from God.

Eve, First Matriarch is currently available for $0.99. Now would be a good time to check it out. Additionally, I am participating in two book promotions.
The first available for FREE, and you can find other great books about gods and goddesses (my Avenging Angel is one of these). Of course, Avenging Angel includes our God, Jehovah. Other books are mythological or science-fantasy. I know of at least one on that list that is a fun book to read—Redemption by Tora Moon.
These books are available until November 12th and can be found at http://goo.gl/pb8Rnk

Instafreebie Fall Gods Big Square

The second book promotion I am participating in is the Freedom to Read Promotion. All these books are written by women and are about women. Most genres are represented. All these are clean, meaning you won’t be surprised by language. Eve, First Matriarch is among these books. All are available for $0.99. These books are also available until November 12. You can find them at https://rachellechristensen.com/freedomtoreadbooksale/

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Where Do We Go When We Leave This Life?

Madeline L’Engle is one of my favorite authors and has been for a long time. My introduction to Ms. L’Engle’s works came through the children’s book, A Wrinkle in Time. I read it, and all the others in that series, and searched for more, reading many children’s and adult books by this wonderful author.

Recently, I found The Summer of the Great-Grandmother a memoir about the summer her mother’s decline into dementia, or arteriosclerosis, as it was known at that time. It became poignant as, during the time I read it, my husband and I attended three funerals, one for a sweet lady who had suffered from this horrible disease for the last year-and-a-half.

Ms. L’Engle is as passionate about her Christianity as I am about mine, though they are different. Still, I found her thoughts about the end of her mother’s life similar to those so many of us consider at the passing of a loved one from this life into the next.

We all think about life, at these times of passing, wondering where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going when this life is all over. Now is not a time to share my beliefs on that topic. Just know that I have a strong and firm understanding.

I love the poem by Wordsworth. From his Ode, Intimations of Immortality we read:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home …

Ms. L’Engle worried about these same things. Her concerns were about where we go after this life, and will we be remembered, by others, or by our God. She said:

“To the ancient Hebrew the ultimate hell consisted in being forgotten, erased from the memory of family and tribe, from the memory of God. If God forgets you, it is as though you have never existed. You have no meaning in the ultimate scheme of things. Your life, your being, your ousia, is of no value whatsoever. You are a tale told by an idiot; forgotten; annihilated.

“How many people have been born, lived rich, loving lives, laughed and wept, been part of creation, and are now forgotten, unremembered by anybody walking the earth today?”

Certainly something to be concerned about. Who wants to think our lives are so unimportant, they will be forgotten? Not me, though I know that after I am gone, my children and grandchildren will the the last to remember me.

I find peace in knowing, as Eve did, that I will return to my Father in Heaven, a Father who loves me, cares for me, and as he knows my name now, he will know and remember me in the next life.

Sadly, our extended family is feeling the greater sorrow of the loss of a young teenager. He did not live his life to the fullest. He will never graduate from High School, will not kiss a girl for the first time. His parents feel his loss to their core. Preparations for his funeral and burial were not in their plans for this summer. Certainly, their hearts are broken, and they are asking if they will ever see their son again.

Eve struggled with the loss of her child when Cain slew Abel. Her sorrow felt palpable to me, as I wrote about this in Eve, First Matriarch. I felt the sorrows of other matriarchs, when they lost children. In my soon to be released book (book 3) Finding Peace, a mother faces the loss of her children to kidnapping and the inability to find them or know about them. This mother, overwhelmed by grief, was taught by Mother Eve to find hope.

She (Eve) tightened her hug and added, “This I do know, darling granddaughter, you will be reunited with them. Perhaps not in this world, but surely in the next. This is the promise and gift of the covenants we made. Our children will be ours once more. Ask Enos. Ask Seth. Ask Adam.”

This I believe with all my soul. This I know. We will be united with our loved ones. We will be remembered.

I hope we are at the end of our funerals this summer, but as our friends age, we will be faced with loss of friends and loved ones.

How about you? What do you think?

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May is a Wonderful Month!

May is a wonderful month of the year! I have always loved the flowers! I visited my parents, up the road a bit, in Southern Utah last week and loved all their roses. I took pictures of a few to share with you.

I’m finding May is a good time for selling books! I am participating in a Headtalker Summer Reading Blowout! Prizes available for all who enter. My micro story, Avenging Angel, is included. Perhaps you will find another book or three you are interested in reading this summer? Go here to find it.


Speaking of Avenging Angel, I finally paid up and got a professional cover for it. It looks like my others, now. What do you think?


And, speaking of other covers, Ancient Matriarchs Book 2: Into the Storms: Ganet, Wife of Seth is available for pre-sale. Any book ordered today will be delivered Friday morning, bright and early. Wake up to enjoy a new book.


Do you like having other’s work shared so you can find it in the morass commonly known as Amazon? If so, I will share a book or two over the course of the month. If not, let me know!

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