To One And All

 

Last Book Of The Year

 

Description:

I lived through her murder when I touched her bones

I am NOT a freak, although many people call me that. The night my father was murdered and I was left for dead, I awoke with the ability to “sense” things. Touching things can give me visions, sometimes horrifying, murderous ones. That doesn’t make me a freak, but it gets me into trouble.

The bones of a murdered woman are unearthed and our safe small town is shaken to its core. Her killer was good at hiding the truth and after decades in the ground, any clues are gone - her murder a complete mystery. The only clues are the ones I can see.

My brother was recently promoted to head detective. With no other clues, you think he'd be thrilled to have my help, but he’d rather pretend I don’t exist than use my gifts. Thank heavens, his handsome partner doesn’t agree and calls me in.

Although I’m terrified to touch her, the mysterious skeleton has a story that needs told. When I grip the bones, I live through her murder. The message I see changes me - changes everything.

Instead of a helpful hero, I become even more of an outcast in my small town. The only person who believes me is the one man who knows the truth of my visions - the killer. He’s desperate to keep his secrets buried. Now he hunts a new prey – me. I don’t need psychic powers to know he’s right behind me – closing in – about to strike.

My Thoughts:

I love the cover for one. I was hooked from beginning to end. I read this book in 2.5 days. I never saw the ending coming. The person I thought was guilty wasn't it at all. The villain was completely unexpected. I got this book on Amazon for Free. 

As part of my savings challenge for 2024 I gave up my unlimited kindle membership because it is money that isn't necessary to spend to find books to read that I will like. It is also part of my decluttering challenge because I read on Kindle and dont have a physical bookshelf I need to maintain and clean. Plus I don't go back anymore and re read my books. 

 

January Challenge

 

I am doing this challenge come January. Ive come a long way from Full tasting sodas to diet and zero sugar although I'm still sure somewhere in those sodas is still some type of sugar. I use to drink sodas all the time 24/7. Soda was what my coffee is now to me. 😄 Well with me being pre-diabetic I have been working to count down on soda all the way around but I want to get to the point where I'm rarely ever drinking it if at all. 

And of course with me being 56 now my body isn't so forgiving as it was in my 20s. The doctor did have me on Ozempic, needle injections in a pen. We both thought it might help no only the diabetes but the weight loss. NO, NO, NO, and Hell No. It was causing me sever stomach pains, extremely bad gas and excessively gross belching. It got to the point where I had to go to the ER and then they sent me to a specialist that ran test on me. I was advised to stop Ozempic immediately which I did. Not a problem that way since.

When I first started my weight loss journey several years ago I weighed 249 lbs. I'm now down to 225 lbs. And I've kept that 25 or so pounds off for years. But I really need to start and get serious about my health and changing things for the better. I should have been doing this all year but I wasn't ready. I wasn't in place to where I could change my mindset. 

Yes, I've considered weight loss surgery but Im not going to put myself or my family through that. I know it's a tool that has helped many people but since I started this journey years ago I've learned that change doesn't happen without change. And for me that would be going from one extreme to the other. Weight loss surgery isn't going to heal the ROOT of my weight gain problems. And all it would do is cause us more $$$$$ stress. 

I found a quote that fits my journey:

No diet can give you the spirit of self control. 

I can't remember who wrote it but its true. No diet, no pill, no routine, no quick gimmick or anyone else for that matter is going to give you self control. When I first found out I was PD I started to do my own form of fasting. I had never been able to fast and go hours without eating so I started each day seeing how long I could go without needing to eat and each day I did it for longer and longer periods of time. I still do this. It has helped me realize I didn't need to be constantly eating or forcing myself to eat because everyone else was eating. I still find myself stress/emotionally eating at times. It's not as bad as it was in the beginning of my journey. In the beginning I not only ate to deal with this but I also smoked. I got to the point where I looked at it this way better to eat then smoke. I was in denial of that one but I quit smoking. 

This journey to gaining back my health has been a long road. I've had to fight for it on all levels, physical, mental, emotionally. I had gotten to a point where I just didn't care about myself. I had convinced myself that I wasn't a good mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend if I didn't put myself last. I hit major burn out. 

I'm lucky because right now I have the chance to not being diabetic at all. But the choice is mine, just like it was my choice not to care about what I ate, drank or put in my system. I do not like doctors at all and especially dentist because I have had some really bad experiences with them. Over the last year and a half I've had to really sit down with myself and do some heavy soul searching about my health. That was hard as hell. It caused me a lot of pain to get over the pain that helped put me in this situation with myself. 

I would like to reach a 45 lb loss by the end of 2024. That means I'd have to lose about 3 lbs a month. I have went from full flavor stuff down to either diet or zero sugar, that's a start. I don't drink alcohol so thats not going to be a problem. I have cut down on eating out a lot. That has helped. I do write everything down of what I eat and drink. It's a process. But at the moment this is where I'm at. 

Blogger PIMA

 Mrs Swan congrats on the good grades. 

Blogger is being a pain in my rump and wont let me sign in to comment on blogs but yet it's allowing me to post on my own blog. 😡

The puppers are adorable. It looks like she enjoyed her gifts.

A Few Winter Memories

 

I love taking pictures of the moon for some reason but this turned out good considering I took it with my phone.

I was just playing around and drew this. I'm thinking about taking some art classes from Skill Share this upcoming year. 

I'm getting a bit braver in my coloring. This little fellow was just left floating in space on the page. I added the path, bit of grass and the clouds behind him. I do believe he was in one of my Hannah Karlzon books. 

Am looking forward to this weekend we'll have our grandson with us. He is the only grand baby that bugs to stay and spend time with us. His mamma could never move out of state away from us cause he would throw a fit over not getting to stay with Papa and Nana. I'm looking forward to spending time with him.

Happy Birthday

 

To our son Russell

I hope you have many more wonderful birthdays with the people you love and who love you.

My Spiritual Path

 As I have stated before I grew up in a household of multiple faiths which actually hindered me more than was a help. My grandfather was of Native American descent and my grandmother, mother were Christian. My grandmother was raised in a home by nuns until she was of the age to marry. So she went from Catholic to Christian. 

Both my mother and grandmother had gifts that were never spoken about unless absolutely necessary. To this day my mother claims that gift came from the devil. Unfortunately, I became gifted myself. It has always been more of a curse then a gift even though it came from the Great Spirit. I say curse because my family never taught me how to deal with it. But that gift ballooned at the age of 7 for me. Thats when it became "more" in my life in many, many ways. 

I know things without knowing, I have visions, I have medium-ship abilities, I can hear and see Spirits. I am an empathy. I have searched my whole life for answers, explanations, why, how and so forth and trying to get those answers in a christian based faith is impossible. All that happened there was my being condemned as a daughter of Satan but yet they believe in God, Devil, Angels which you CANT see, they partake of holy communion which is in-vibing a replica of his flesh and blood but yet I was the one condemned.....So I walked away from their judgemental decrees. 

 

The only good thing to ever come from my walk in Christianity was Mother Mary. She will always hold a place in my heart. Whenever I did reach out to her, prayed to her to help within 24hrs she answered. It's weird cause Mother Mary always answered but Jesus and God never did. But also when I reached out to Mother Mary it was always as one mother to another mother for help and she always answered. I wasn't left for days, weeks, months, years waiting for an answer. 

I went in search of other paths and came across Wicca. Wicca is not for me because I don't just believe in everything good, love and light and do no harm. There always must be an opposite, a counter move or consequence. I'm not going to hurt anybody on purpose but I will defend myself and those I love however necessary. I came into Witchcraft which in my opinion is a little more balanced for all rights and purposes. But that didn't fit with me either although it did come to help me to start and understand the broader spiritual, unexplained things but it was too "open" to create your own thing. 

I am thankful for the Deities I have worked with and whom have helped me over the years but truth be told I was never truly comfortable with it and it never felt like coming home, a true belonging. I still found  myself searching.....I have never been comfortable calling Deities anything but Spirit or Great Spirit and that comes from my Native American partial upbringing from my grandfather. He is the one who instilled a love for the land, animals. So I left the pagan paths behind me. 

But that path bought me a tool that I will continue to use on my path and that is Tarot and Oracle cards. They help me look from within, they show me perspectives and possible outcomes of things I ask about. They are not evil. They are a tool nothing more.But I have also found out I dont connect with any kind of decks unless they are geared towards a Native American slant or animals of the wild variety. 

 

For a long while I worked with Buddha and Quan Yin which I am very thankful for. They taught me the art of calmness, learning to be patient and try to look within and realize when I was ready things would come together. 

Over the years I have had several different spiritual, paranormal experiences. I have had OBEs-Out Of Body Experiences. They were a little scary because I had no control over them either but what was so wonderful about those is I did get see the silver cord that attaches our soul to our physical bodies, thats real. 

 

And there are physical objects that can act as a portal between dimensions. I have believed in reincarnation since a young child because I have remembered past lives. To this day that is something I firmly believe in. 

I have always been told that answers will be revealed to you when Spirit considers you are capable of handling things. This is something I have always found to be true. Spirit has never let me down on that end. There has been several answers fulfilled in a short amount of time that has led me home to my Native American roots. Spirit works in his own time frame not ours. The more I start to study and learn of the Native American beliefs the more my faith returns to a solid foundation. I don't fear the unknown. I don't question what type of worship I should be doing. I have found my home.  

To Everyone

 

Im Back

 Yes, I had deleted my blog and honestly, I thought it was going to be for good. There is a lot of personal reasons I won't go into right now but I've done a lot of hard thinking. I'm not going to let anyone push me out of doing something I enjoy anymore. If you want to waste your time stalking my blog then go for it. 

I took this time away to do a lot of heavy thinking about how I do want to spend my time and what that would look like for me. Being online and on all of these different social media websites is fun but it is also a HUGE Time Suck for me. I feel like I'm glued to online 24/7 and for me that is a problem. I also realized that it feeds my anxiety and depression to different leveling degrees. I absolutely love You Tube but it can also be overwhelming cause you have a lot of them who are doomsayers.

So, I will be streamlining my online time, how much viewing I am taking in. I am also streamlining my planning. I agree with you, Mrs. Swan I don't think there is ever truly planner peace but at the moment I have planner contentment. I have 3 books now that I'm using for my system 

This is what I will be using for my daily logs and to do list. My daily to dos and food logs arent something I need to save, it can be filled and pitched when it is full. And I wont feel bad over throwing away $1.38.

This is going to be for my personal journaling, things I want to keep private. 

This is going to be my planner and catch all. I got it from Amazon, the other two are Walmart specials. 😀 And actually this planner I got from Amazon I used my Fetch reward points to buy it. 

I have also been spending my time decluttering my home and finding a system to upkeep my home better. I love minimalism videos but I find a lot go beyond what will work for us so I take from them what will work for me and forget the rest. In past years I have lived my life from one extreme to the next, that never works or I was just simply trying to find a way to survive. 

This year I have made some HUGE changes in my life in order to heal on all levels. One of them changes was something I had been struggling with for years, hoping that things would change in the situation but when it wouldn't I had to face the reality that the only thing that would help me heal is walking away from certain people and cutting all ties, all communication. That became the closure I needed to heal certain areas of my life. 

I have also been rediscovering things I enjoy such as my drawing. I love Animal Crossing New Horizons and I play that a lot. So I will be sharing more of both. My other big hobby is coloring because it allows my creativity to go wild, it's always different, and its a huge stress reliever. When I color I get lost in the process. It is my form of mediation. I am still reading but I've come to realize that at this season of my life I'm a big mood reader. I will DNF a book now with no problem. 

Another thing I'm going to be workin on this year is getting healthier. I am still struggling with being diabetic. It's hard to cut back, cut out a lot of the foods I've become so accustomed to over the years. Part of it has also been denial that I can find a way to still enjoy all of this when my body has changed and said NO, we aren't doing that anymore so it is a slow process. Especially where sugar is concerned because for me it's an addiction. I won't be able to completely cut out sugar but I can cut it down. I have managed to get my eating down. I'm not piecing or snacking all the time or letting my emotions make me eat, that's a hard one. 

One of the biggest reasons I am back to blogging is because it has been something I enjoyed. I'm not doing this for anybody else, not for the likes, the views, the comments, the stalking but because I enjoy it. 

Another big change in my life is my spirituality. I have spent time trying a lot of different belief systems over the years and there was always something missing, something just never felt right. I grew up in a multiple religious household which didn't benefit me either because I always felt like I had a foot on each side of the fence. But I am returning to my roots, my Native American beliefs. And I have found answers to questions that have been plaguing me for years. I finally have that sense of coming home. 

So you can follow along for the journey if you like. 

I will be adding a lot of things to this blog over time, especially a lot of pictures cause I'm proud of my drawings, my colored pictures.

Happy Birthday

 

Just a few different pictures of me over the years. I really have never liked having my picture taken.

Planner Burnout

 I didn't ever think that could be a thing but for me it is at the moment. I have been doing planners for a few years. The very first one I had came from Blue Sky and it was the family planner which I loved and added embellishments, stickers, sticky notes and everything else. It was a Chunky Monkey and I loved it. Then Blue Sky quit making it. 😭

Since then I have tried several different things and none fit me. But today I watched a You Tube of Sam Plans and she made me think and really take a look at my system. I have tried to make every type of notebook and planner fit my system instead of making my system fit the planner. That got me to thinking about my system, it has changed just like everything else over the years but I found myself still trying to fit into that old mold because it was comfortable. 

Even if BS did still make the family planner it wouldn't work for me now like it did in the beginning. Why? Because my life has changed drastically. The only person's schedule I need to keep track of or beware of is my hubby's. Thankfully his pretty much stays the same.  I don't have kids schedules to keep track of. So what I need to keep track of is small compared to what it use to be. 

I have always wanted one planner to fit every aspect of my life. But after that 1st one it's never worked like that again for me. I've come to realize also that some of the things I like to track just aren't necessary so somethings are going to have to go like my movie list, books read, pages colored. It's nice to have but not necessary. And keeping track of things I enjoy is ok but I'm also trying to simplify my life. No one really cares what I read, what I watch or how many pages I've colored in a year. And I don't need to track them to feel like I've accomplished something major in my life. 

Those things are meant to bring me joy, help me de-stress not make me have anxiety over it. Change isn't a bad thing. Change is an extremely normal thing in life. It helps us to cultivate different seasons in our lives.

A November Night

 

I may not be an expert at taking photos but I enjoy it just the same.

What Does It Mean Cultivating A Simple Life

 Well this is different for everybody. No one size fits all because we are all individually different. We need and want different things according to our lifestyle. But as I find myself in the later part of my life what I want and need is changing drastically from what it was even a month ago. It is also about accepting how you change in different seasons of your life. 

My season is wanting and needing contentment, simplicity, drama free from toxic things and people. It's enjoying what time I have left on this earth with people I care about the most. I stopped the comparing game a long time ago. I was never one who tried to keep up with the Jones and what they had or didn't have. I could care less. 

I'm a transplanted country girl plain and simple. I may no longer live in the countryside but that is how I want my life to feel like. 

For me it's about downsizing what we have in the household, what I have to take care of on a daily basis. For my hubby it's about keeping him organized and his collection of stuff that makes him happy. It's about letting go of old systems that no longer work for me such as the way I use to plan, roles that no longer fit me, that belief of who we come to think we are because of what we did or use to do. 

It's about learning to enjoy life again on all levels and in all aspects.