Sunday, July 31, 2011

Change....

"Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown."
                         -George Shinn-
My dearest Athena!
It has been like seventeen million years since I last wrote you and I feel compelled to sit here and share a few thoughts with you. You are 11 months and your first birthday fast approaches. So many things have changed and change in my opinion is a wonderful yet scary, scary thing. So your father and I are no longer together and you and I have our own huge, wonderful home together. It has been an interesting experience traveling through life's misadventures with you at my side. Sometimes it is overwhelming but with every passing day it gets easier. However, very soon mami is going to be burning the candle at both ends unlike I've never done before.
I have a job working as the resident coordinator for the two properties that our apartment management company oversees. So I have to coordinate so many thing for over 550 tenants. On top of that I start a new job next week going back to my server days. The only reason for that is because I start baking and pastry school at the end of August and restaurants are usually the most flexible with school. When I start thinking about it all I get emotional because I know that for the next four months you and I won't get to spend as much time together as I'd like. After spending every minute with you for the first 10 months of your life having to not only put you in daycare but spend so much time away from you really kills me. I never thought it would affect me the way it has. I really wish that things would've turned out differently, that I could've stayed with you forever but alas, we are where we are and that's okay. I will make sure to work my fingers to the bone in order to provide for you and give you everything you need and deserve. I cannot depend on anyone but myself in order to make that happen. And I know that we'll get to the point where I can be with you all day again and be your teacher and everything else you need me to be.
Very soon my beautiful, gorgeous goddess an incredible amount of things are going to change and I embrace it all with open arms. I can't wait to see how we will overcome all obstacles and challenges that we are faced with. With Jehovah and each other at our sides we can do it ALL! I love you!

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

That's how I know.

There is a song by one of my very favorite artists in the world...India Arie....it's called God is Real. It so perfectly encapsulates everything I feel about Nature being the visible face of God. I remember the first time I heard this song. I happened to stumble across the new album India had released that had this track on it. I was just busting at the seams with excitement when I paid for it and walked out to my car. Never in my life had I been more excited about having a CD player in my car than I was at that moment. I put it on and jammed every song. Every song infiltrated my pores and resonated within my core. And then, this track came on and I was just forever changed. I felt this sensation at my toes start tingling and causing my toes to feel as though they were throbbing and that sensation traveled little by little all the way to the tips of my fingers and to the split ends of my hair ....and I felt like I had been electrified back to life, infused with a spirit and a message that was just undeniable. I had never felt more connected to a set of lyrics partnered with some beautiful melody.

The sweetest honey to the brightest flower
The largest planet to the smallest atom
Snowflakes and the bird kingdom
Smaller thatn the eye can see bigger then the mind can conceive

Heard a man on the radio today
(spoken)i mean I’m not going to believe in anything that I can’t see and i’ve
Been through a lot of hardships in my life ya know ya know in my life
Must confess I disagreed with what he had to say
How he could he not believe that God is real
I don’t understand how
He could feel that way

When there’s earth, air, water, and fire
So many different flowers
Sunshine and rain showers
So many different crystals
And hills and volcanoes

Chorus
That’s how I know that God is real
All of this is not by chance
That’s how I know that God is real
All of this is not by chance
That’s how I know that God is real
I know this is not by chance
That’s how I know that God is real
That’s how I know that God is real

In st. lucia I jumped in the water
(spoken)it was like I was seeing it for the first time. it literally changed
My life.
For the first time I understood it’s power
As I swam I was cleansed
If I had any doubts
This experience cleared them
Now I know for sure that God is real
I know that it’s the truth
By the way it feels

Cause I saw starfish and sponges
Fish shaped like trumpets
So many different colors
I stayed out there for hours and I only saw a fraction of a fraction of the
Deepest of the deep of the great blue wide
It brought a tear to my eye

We’re made of the same stuff
As the moon and the stars
The oceans saltwater just like my tears are
You feel me
The sunrises and sets everyday without fail

When people say they need "proof" of Jehovah's existence, I laugh. I laugh and I feel a bit sad. There are two things I KNOW, I FEEL are real life proof of Him. Nature and The Human Body. I am belittled by Nature's Fury and all it is capable of. I look up at the sky and I can't help but feel this infinite sense of wonder. I stand in the rain and feel it beat against my skin and renew it with the essence of Earth, I stand and watch an ant carry a leaf 200 times it weight and size, I am humbled by phototropism, cellular respiration, and deciduous trees that soak up the chlorophyll in the winter and spit it back out in spring, I just can't help but feel when I see all these things this overwhelming sense of .....well....I don't know....something so much Greater than ourselves. So much Bigger. And as though looking into the night sky and drowning in it's cosmic and celestial wonder and feeling this tug at my soul as though I were bound by a rope around my waist that was being pulled into a galactic maelstrom of a black hole wasn't enough to make me believe, then there's the Human Body.
I've always been in awe, in utter, unequivocal, irrevocable and profound awe of what our bodies are capable of. I mean we can carry within us the Divine power to heal ourselves, to fight infection, to regenerate, to reproduce, and to do things no other species are capable of. I HAVE always had a fascination with medicine and all the miracles and intricacies of the human body it has exposed and introduced me to. I remember being in my Anatomy and Physiology class in college and being moved to tears when Dr. Mishra would go on and on about how incredible and magnificent we were. How every thing was symbiotic and nothing could work quite as well without some other thing going on. How we were mere puzzles and everything had its place and reason and we worked together consciously and unconsciously....voluntarily and involuntarily to maintain a most magical machine. I have never felt that more vehemently than when I wake up next to you and watch you sleep. I think about the fact that you started your life off as a little traveling liquid that found something about me favorable enough to knock you into existence. Then within me you grew day by day into a little person with your own set of everything. And then you were here. And when you were first born you were so unsure with your movements. So hesitant. You'd lay on the changing table and have these sporadic bouts of appearing like you were falling off The Empire State building. Like you needed some reassurance that I'd be here to catch you if you fell. And every month you surpassed some developmental milestone and my belief was deeper and deeper. I watch in amazement how you manipulate your little fingers to bring things to where you want them. I watch you bring your feet up to your mouth to explore these amazing new things you just discovered. I crack up as I watch you learn on your own that if you bite your fingers, it hurts. You went from needing my hand behind your neck at all times to holding up your little head all on your own....I've watched you go from comatose to "God why can't you just keep still for a second?!!" I pondered over your health because you slept all day and stayed awake all night and now beg for a nap longer than thirty minutes. Your body has settled into it's circadian rhythms without a bit of help from me. You were a thought and because of what we are capable of you lived inside of me for nine months and now you are real and every day I am fortunate enough to witness how amazing it is to watch a body develop and unfold right before my very eyes.
I am truly blessed to be able to understand and appreciate how amazing we are and how amazing it is to be able to appreciate the world around us. And when I am asked how I know that God is real.....my answer is not a difficult one to conjure....it's quite simple.
 I wake up, I live, I have you, that's how I know.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

No such thing as useless.....

My beautiful chunky little warrior!
You should know that your mother absolutely loves random bits of knowledge. As if the wonderful and extensive and quite vast array of knowledge that the world or books gives me wasn't already delicious enough ......I'm blessed to have the wonderful world of weird and wacky and some may say useless trivia. I have to confess I don't believe ANY knowledge is useless. Goodness no! So I wanted to share some of my favorite tidbits with you....


  1. Bananas are herbs - Although referred to as banana trees, they are not trees at all but a perennial herb. Its trunk is not a true one, but many leaves tightly wrapped around a single stem which emerges at the top as the fruit-bearing flower stalk.
  2. Dr. Seuss actually pronounced Seuss such that it sounded like Sue-ice.  
  3. Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand draw with the other at the same time.
  4. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand. One should carry a stout pole while traveling in quicksand country...when placed under one's back, it helps one to float out of the quicksand. 
  5. Laser is actually an acronym for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emissions of Radiation."
  6. There are enough blood vessels in your body to wrap around the Earth almost three times.
  7. Lightning is three times hotter than the surface of the sun.
  8. If you unfolded your brain it would cover an entire ironing board.
  9. The average four year old asks 437 questions a day!( WOW! I can't wait to answer them or look for the answer to all of them.)
  10.  Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day. (So we will always make each other laugh mami, so we will both be healthy, beautiful women!)
  11. If the normal one hundred thousand hairs on a head were woven into a rope, it could support a weight of more than twelve tons. (It's a good thing to know in case we ever need to build a bridge .... huh?)
Don't you worry my baby girl! There is so much more where this came from. And here is hoping you are a big a nerd as your mami! I love you and sweet dreams!

    Monday, January 31, 2011

    An extension of my soul

    As a voracious reader I believe I have made it blatantly clear that I appreciate the written word is all it's splendor and glory. There is nothing I enjoy more than a good book, a good dear book that, I will by the time I read it in it's entirety, become good friends with. Now there are two quotes that I believe epitomize what a good book or story is all about.....

     "Literature duplicates the experience of living in such  a way that nothing else can, drawing you so fully into another life that you temporarily forget that you have one of your own. That is why you read it, and might even sit up, in bed til dawn, throwing your whole tomorrow out of whack simply to find out what happens to some people who---you know perfectly well--are made up."               
    -Barbara Kingsolver-

    "Nothing in recent years, on television or anywhere else, that has improved on a good story that begins, "Once upon a time......."            
    -William J. Bennett-

    And it is my deep love affair with books that has fed my insatiable hunger for words all these wonderful years of my life here on this fine Earth. There is something so fulfilling about writing. It's like an extension of my soul. Like when I sit down to write there is no complication, no hesitation or confusion. The words pour fourth from my fingertips like there has always been a purpose for them.  My respect for the written word and all the power that it possesses I believe is what fuels my facility and ease with words and weaving them together to create what my thoughts and spirit have conjured and now desire to express. And in doing so there is a sensation comparable to my entire soul being ignited from the inside out..
    I love running in the heat of Texas summers .....when the sun is at it's most cantankerous stage....like noonish...running long and running hard and then finding the oasis that is a water fountain or a water bottle ....there is a moment when you take your first sip that it feels as though you can feel the water travel from your mouth to your stomach and it cools your entire body. When I write it's water for my soul cooling every crevice of my being and I can feel it's yumminess from my head to my toes.  There is no greater sense of accomplishment or greater compliment for that matter than when someone says to me that they are moved, touched, or impacted in any way by my compilation of words. It makes me feel connected to so many people, my ability to express myself in the written form. And here are just a few words about words;

    "Writing is nothing more than a guided dream."        
                    -Jorge Luis Borges-                                  
                                                                                 
    "It is in the margins that poems are found."               
                      -Osip Mandelstam-                                               

    "We stayed at home to write,                                  
    to consolidate our outstretched selves."                      
                       -Sylvia Plath-                                       
                                                                                               
    "Writing is busy idleness."                                     
                 -Goethe-

    "Nulla dies sinea linea"
                  -Plinius-

    "I know nothing in the world that has as much power
    as a word. Sometimes I write one and I look at it
    until it begins to shine."
                   -Emily Dickinson-

     "Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face
    but black words on a white page are the soul laid bare."
                      -Guy de Maupassant-

    "I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the
    hands of fools. Let's start with the typewriters!"
                -Frank Lloyd Wright-

    I hope writing serendipitously happens into your life and that you find an extension of your soul dancing amongst words manipulated into an awesome concoction of exquisite expression. Here's hoping you have your own infinite paeans to the wonderful world of words and that I am present to witness them all and be enthralled by them. I love you my beautiful warrior goddess.

    Thursday, January 20, 2011

    Walt Disney had something....

    It's been far too long since I've written to you here my little Athena and in the days since I've last left some words of wisdom to you much has transpired. You have two beautiful little teeth poking up from your bottom gums. That is monumental. It really is. I never thought I could get so incredibly exuberant about something of the sort. I try to get a glance at them every chance I get. And since you are always SCREAMING, SINGING, OR TALKING it isn't hard to do.
    So today's quote come to us from a man named Walt Disney...and by the time you read this, I am most certain you will know him quite well. I think it really encapsulates very succinctly just who he was and what he stood for. And it's quite simple. Walt said;
    "The BEST way to make your dreams come true......
    is to WAKE UP!"
    Now it isn't hard to decipher the meaning of his words for I think they are as clear as day. It's a great thing to dream Athena it truly is. When you dream about the things you want, the life you desire, the adventures you'd like to participate in you are giving power to your thoughts so that they may become a reality. Our thoughts create what we see before us and in order to obtain the dreams we spend countless days and nights playing out in our heads we must begin to take steps so that Jehovah and the universe can help the path we seek take shape right beneath our feet. The moves we make, the actions we put forth to achieve our dreams is the waking up part and when you wake up and start the wheels then slowly but surely you will see that soon life presents you with situations and people that will help you become who you dream of becoming. Sometimes it hard to cling to your highest right and follow your dreams, because it singles you out, makes you different and sometimes you just plain want to give up because it seems the end is nowhere near in sight. But if you run from safety into the world of your dreams then you take flight in a most delicious manner. I sometimes forget this or don't practice what I preach but I try everyday. And I promise to try harder for you. And Walt really did have something spectacular in mind when he said this and I hope that you're constantly waking up and making YOUR dreams a reality and know that I will always be here to stand beside you and help in any way I can to build paths beneath your feet.

    Friday, January 7, 2011

    Little Piglets

    "I saw some piglets suckling their dead mother. After a while they shuddered and went away. They had sensed she could no longer see them and that she wasn't like them anymore. What they loved in their mother wasn't her body, but whatever it was that made her body live."
    -Confucius-

    I am absolutely in love with this quote Athena. And the only reason I believe I can empathize and so totally comprehend this little collection of words is because I had a set of parents that instilled in me such a profound, ravenous and insatiable hunger for ....hmmmm...how do I put this? Well, I guess I can sum it up in one word, if I must, a hunger for skin. My papi is a huge boxing fan, has been all his life, and when we were little papi use to lay in bed and invite us all in for what he called "rounds". Like in boxing they were three to four minute bouts of legs entwined and arms pretzeled and above all else rubbing and kissing and hugging. And they were never complete unless he asked one of us to rub his head or give him a massage. And within seconds LITERALLY he'd be knocked out. Mami followed suit with the rounds, only hers were always much much longer. And mami would inhale us, literally. Like stick her face in our necks and inhale as though her life depended on capturing every last whiff of our very essence. Like in order for her life to proceed she needed to suck our souls out through our pores. Most kids, mind you, hate this. They hate for their parents to kiss all over them and ask for affection constantly. And I believe that the kids that are this way, unfortunately it's because they weren't loved on like we were to the point of complete and utter exaggeration. We have always loved it because it's all we've ever known. And I wouldn't trade it for all the riches in the world. I will still lay in bed and cuddle with my parents until they day I am no longer able to I don't care how old I am. You see the reason papi would knock out, why mami would inhale us, and why I can never get enough of their skin is because when our skin touches I feel these sensationally brilliant magnificent electrical impulses all over my body and I feel safe and I feel at home. And it is the exquisite soul that skin encapsulates that makes it that way.  And I know they feel that too. It doesn't matter what is going on in the world or even at home within our family when we make that physical contact it's like on Avatar with the tails.....like we cuddle, we hug, we kiss and all is right in the world because we are where we belong. I tell you, it's not anything material  or tangible that connects us so strongly and keeps us together but the delicious energy we transfer to one another when we touch. I am grateful to my parents for having taught me how important the human touch is, how necessary it is to our existence, our well rounded existence. This has made it's infinitely impacting mark in my life and has poured out in everything I do. I touch EVERYONE. Not just my family. I speak through my hands and absorb life through my pores. There is nothing and I mean nothing more beautiful than the human touch and had we not been mami and papi's little piglets we would've never known that. Now you're my little piglet and I will teach you the same.