*Life is in the journey!* ~ "You Can"

 ♥

Life's Inspirational Valiant Endeavors

~ “You Can” ~

 

This is the story of Rick and, his father, Dick Hoyt.

Born without the ability to move or speak, Rick is the inspiration that has moved his father to run for him for over two decades. Among the oldest, out of thousands they have competed against, Dick Hoyt has pushed, pulled and carried his son in over 950 races, 60 marathons… and 6 iron man competitions (That’s a 2.4 mile swim, carrying his son along with him, a 112 mile bike ride with his son leading the way and a 26.2 mile run, ending only when they crossed the finish line.)   

“I may be disabled, but I live a very fulfilling life.”

~ Rick Hoyt

Hero, defined by Merriam-Webster, might lead one to believe in fairy tales.

a: a mythological or legendary figure

often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability

b: an illustrious warrior

c: a man (or woman thank you very much) admired for his/her achievements

and noble qualities (Okay, getting warmer.)

d: one who shows great courage (…warmer still)

 I like to think it is the man, woman and child who show great love, respect and devotion every day for their son and brother. 
Dick Hoyt is a Hero by most standards.

He loves his son.

So he runs.

What defines this father as, Hero, in my heart is this…

Rain or shine, he shows up.

Life is in the journey!

You Can!

~ Life is in the journey! ~

 

Joy My Friends!

"The best way out is always through."

~ Robert Frost

*I Cook Barefooted!* ~ Chicken Pot Pie Love

Barefoot Love!

I am no cook. 

I beg, borrow and steal any recipe 

that sounds like it might taste yummy, 

and just maybe will satisfy my picky eaters. 

For the record:

They don't like mushrooms. Big no-no.

 They don't like peppers, onions or asparagus.

They don't like pretty much anything that used to swim in the ocean, 
hate chicken five days a week

and despise the smell of salmon patties.

Reality strikes:

I DON'T COUNT GREEN BEANS.

Pick through it, talk to it, take it for a walk.

Whatever helps gets you past it.

 (What this means is, eat it or don't, but it is what's for dinner.)

 No worries, they won't starve. There's always bread.

 They like bread.

And, they're beginning to not mind the rest... so much.

Wednesdays are generally when I start

thinking about what to add to my grocery list

for the following week. 

By the time grocery day comes around

(this is any day I can get my butt in gear and actually make it to the store)

I am usually scrambling to remember that recipe I thought might

shake things up around here. Something my family 

just... might... thank me for.

So ~ Wednesdays are my new *I cook barefooted!* days here on 

Scarlett's Tattoo!

Read. Steal. Cook away!

And if you're in the mood for sharing, please do! 

(You can email me directly with a recipe

you'd like to share, if you like: scarlettcolleen@yahoo.com.

Don't forget to Name it something fun and Mark it with a 'B'! 
For Barefoot, of course!)
 ~And Thank you My Sweet, for *Barefoot Love!*~

So, here’s a funny story. 

Though true, to the best of my recollection, and apparently impaired judgment, I rarely humor such poor parenting at the supper table.

That is best served warm and with dessert!

My kids laugh out loud still today about 
“The night Mom lost it!”

Yes, my day had been less than stellar. I admit.

It was one night out of seven, I am sure, that we were all five of us actually sitting down together to eat at the kitchen table. Not in our coveted positions on the couch, the chairs and the floor in front of the television, but actually sitting our butts in chairs and giving thanks for what we were about to stuff into our waiting mouths.

In my worst nightmares, and ironically, also in my wildest dreams, I was in charge of feeding our spawn our beautiful family. As I stood in front of the fridge, door kicked open wide, kids whining and milling about my personal space, as if any minute their stomachs might turn inside out and flop onto the kitchen floor quivering...

I saw a nice bottle of white wine hiding waaaayyy back on the top shelf

 (obviously placed there for just such an occasion).

A smile lit my face.

Supper?

I’ll give you supper.

Let’s all have a moment of silence, please,

while Mom indulges in some of that *Me* time

 she’s always going on about.

My husband, and sometimes better half, arrived just then to see me leaning into the kitchen counter, glass in hand, a stray child at my feet, 

 glaring smiling warmly at him, as he made his big entrance.

"So, it's one of those days, is it", he grinned.

Two glasses of wine, on an empty stomach,

in case you’re wondering how long it takes 

to prepare a meal fit for this family.

Two.

By the time our Thanks were given to God, the Universe and All that is good in the world, those chicken pot pies met their fate,

as ALL good Chicken Pot Pies do.

Here’s the funny part.

One glass of wine warms my belly.

Two glasses of wine…

 catapults me straight to Crazy Town.

 Somewhere between Grace and Pot Pie Love, I practically broke into song, singing the praises of my home cooked meal.

Apparently, I also made plans

 (ahem! … in the form of a kick-ass business model)

to cook ‘em up, wrap ‘em tight and sell them by the side of the road!

Oh, yeah... and there was something about 

how I hovered over my plate whispering to my fork, but…

I don’t believe that one bit. ヅ

***

 ☮

Chicken Pot Pie Love!

1 Tbsp. oil

4-6 chicken breasts, skinned

Frozen veggies, your choice

(I use broccoli, mushrooms; sometimes peas and carrots)

Chicken gravy, homemade with chicken stock or canned

Shredded Cheddar Cheese

Refrigerated prepared pie shells for top and bottom crust

Heat oil in skillet.

Cook chicken till no longer pink.

If using mushrooms, add them now with a little butter and cook 5min.

*I season the chicken  and mushroom mixture
with a little minced garlic or garlic salt, 
and my favorite, 'McCormick's Italian Herb Seasoning Grinder!' *

Place bottom crust in pie tin. Toss in frozen veggies, unthawed, filling entire bottom crust. Top with cooked chicken mixture from skillet.

Pour a wee bit of gravy over top.

Spread approximately ½ cup cheddar cheese over top.

Place top crust over pie.

Bake at 375 degrees, for about 45 minutes, give or take.

Pies are done when top crust is lightly browned.

Serve with gravy on the side.
 

*4 to 6 chicken breasts will make two pies...
unless you want more veggies than chicken,
and in that case, more.*

*One pie will serve 4 hungry adults* 
Unless you're a giant or a hungry elf, and then, you will need two pies.
*Little known fact: We like a boiled egg, on the side, with our pot pies.*
   

You want reviews?

    How 'bout, 
~ a little Dickens! ~ ヅ

*'Please, sir, I want some more.'

The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupified astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.

'What!' said the master at length, in a faint voice.

'Please, sir,' replied Oliver, 'I want some more.'

The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.

The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said,

'Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! 

Oliver Twist has asked for more!'

There was a general start. 
Horror was depicted on every countenance.*

~ Charles Dickens ~
'Oliver Twist'

How 'bout You?
Have a recipe you want to share on 
*I Cook Barefooted!*?
Show some Barefoot Love and...

Send it here:  scarlettcolleen@yahoo.com 
Want to include a photo? Fun!

What's on your table?

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.

All life is an experiment.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 *Barefoot Love*Airbrush By, Colleen 
2012

*Life is in the journey!* ~ Choosing Peace

♥

Life's Inspirational Valiant Endeavors

~ Choosing Peace ~

I have yet to meet another human being who *doesn’t* live with worry, a modicum of regret or feel the steady downward pull of stress in their daily lives. If I could sit down to a cup of tea or even a warm doughnut, and discuss *The Journey* with the Dalai Lama himself, I would be most appreciative and humbled. I am amazed by his culture’s resilient spirit and their chosen path to peace and tranquility.

I, however, spent much of my twenties and thirties practicing the shadowy art of denial. My suffering eased, eventually, thanks to my younger brother’s keen intuition and love for me, when he suggested way-back-when, that whatever it was that I had been doing was apparently not working out so well, and that I might do myself and those around me a giant favor ~ and just do something about it already. Only, I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about at the time, because I was standing on the edge of that river, Denial, soaking wet, a deafening noise in my brain and furious with no one in particular.

Counseling seemed the answer in my early teens. The right someone (someone other than those closest to me, and whom I considered the source of my pain) listened to me for the first time in my young life. I see now it was on that therapeutic couch, literally speaking, that I first began to believe in the existence of my own voice.

Then Life happened. I grew up. I found my voice, but didn’t have a clue how to use it. Like a child with a new toy, I thought it was mine to covet. And rather than feel the uncomfortable process of self-actualization and accept peace into my life, I buried my head deep in the sand, eyes open for effect, and indulged my fears through self-preservation. Food, and the quest for love became my drugs of choice. I married my high school sweetheart. We had a baby, then two, then three. I, and my husband, lived relatively uncomplicated lives (outside of the pain still brewing inside of me, in the form of anger and resentment) on an artist’s meager but gloriously consistent salary, with a dog, two cats, a house full of kids, car payments, and a mortgage.

It was no Shangri-La, but looking back now, it was ~ Everything I always knew I wanted.

*Big Sigh*

Remembering the taste of sand 
between my teeth, makes me want to eat cake.

Here. Now. I am forty-three! My three children are immersed in those pivotal stages in their young lives, where I first entertained low self-esteem and self-deprecating behavior and attitudes ~ 13, 15 and 18 years old. And There, but for the grace of God, go they! It seems, one of my more modest life goals, has always been to try to live in a place of peace ~ without the aid of cake. Somewhere in my mid-thirties, (Yep, it only took me thirty-something years to access that part of my brain, folks.) I felt, for the first time, the irony of Life itself.

No longer drowning in the day to day monotony and the illusion of Life itself, and feeling reasonably confident that my voice would be heard by those closest to me, I lay my heart out on the table and took a leap of faith that no one would stomp on it.

And that is when I woke up. 

"A long time on a crooked road."

~ Joe, "Joe Versus the Volcano"

I awoke to the realization, that “Life is pain. You’ve got to scrape the joy out of it.” I was no novice, no stranger to pain. No one is. “Aye, there’s the rub!” (There, my friends, is the irony in Life. It is with little shame, that I just quoted Rod Kimble and William Shakespeare in practically the same breath!) 

Life IS in the journey! It’s a slow walk, naked, barefooted, and as if that weren’t enough of a lesson for us, bearing the weight in the struggle of those we love and those we despise as well, through ten-thousand miles of our own fear-driven conscience and consciousness. Hallelujah! Pass the gravy!

We are on one great, life-altering expedition into the unknown the moment our little hands and feet, and cheek, meet our mother’s breast, our father’s arms; and if we’re lucky, a warm blanket and a healthy sense of adventure.

Peace lies within, like a flower eager to open itself to the sun.  It has always been there inside of you. It flows through the life blood in each and every cell in our bodies, before we are even aware of the world outside of us. Its purpose ~ to teach us something profound, something we cannot live and thrive without. To teach us how to love ~ ourselves, and others.

It is my wish that, *Life is in the journey!* will serve all those who visit, as a most important and profound reminder, through Laughter, Tears of Awe and Joy, and through Peace... that there is comfort to be found in this journey we share.

We have only to choose to live our lives, "...awake and in constant, total amazement!"

~ 

 

Alexander Tsiaras’, “Conception to Birth” is, perhaps, one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring stories we, as humans, have to tell. A mathematician by trade, Tsiaras shares his expertise and his talent for minute detail, with humility, in a lecture given ~ Here. 

~ Life is in the journey! ~

 

Peace My Friends!

“The best way out is always through.”

~ Robert Frost

☮It is not my wish to debate in this forum,
when *Life* begins.

It is my intention to celebrate *Life* in all stages and all forms,

here in this place among friends, and with a healthy dose of humility.

~ Thank you!

 Love!

The Soap Jar

My grandmother was an artist. I don’t know that I understood this fully, until I recalled an encounter with the soap jar. We think we know a person, a loved one passed on, through the words they’ve spoken or the love they’ve shared. But what of the Life only they’ve experienced, as the unique individuals that they were?  There’s more to me, I can tell you, than that mass of dirty laundry staring at me from across the hall, which unfortunately I am in charge of, and that I will no doubt leave behind without a second glance when my time here has expired. A Life is truly in the details. It is in the malleable mosaic of living, and in the very existence of Self. We are complex creatures, difficult to figure out really.  However, when we are still, when we are quiet, the minutia of Self are revealed – in a word, a smile, or even in an old jar sitting beneath a window’s ledge, smelling of an Irish Spring and soap.      

Though certainly skilled in her more mundane, household duties – my grandmother could snap a bean and hang a bed sheet out to dry with style and speed – it is a treat for those of us who love her, each and every time, we happen across those memories we know to be, authentically Helen. In a sagging cardboard box overflowing with well-used sewing patterns smelling of old newsprint and attic, or occasionally in the impossibly small-and-perfect embroidery she once created, or even in an old pencil sketch of song birds perched atop a “Good Evening”, our family still marvels at her brilliance and her flair for thoughtful ingenuity in the simplest of things.

My grandmother’s most impressive talents, however, lay hidden in her knack for collecting and repurposing just about anything. Snug drawers, littered shelves, and nooks-and-crannies neatly housed rusty old nails pulled from splintered old barn wood, bits of fabric (so meager in size, that Hunca Munca herself would turn up her nose), stamps and greeting cards and pressed paper napkins – pencil stubs, colored glass and all things pink-and-pretty. In each of these things, these “…wagon wheel, Roy Rogers, garagesale…” things, we are given a glimpse into this simply-complex mosaic that was her Life.

~

So, who saves nasty old soap in a jar, I asked myself years ago, wavering then between my good sense and snobbery.  I stepped into her kitchen to ask her the same, where she stood rifling through a drawer in the sideboard. 

“Scarlett, bring those young eyes of yours over here and see if you can’t find a rubber band in that drawer.”  She straightened no more than three square cards with matching envelopes, which she held in her hand. “I want you to put these in your suitcase and take them home to Missouri when you leave.”

I closed my mouth, and quickly handed her a large silver paper clip resting on top of a pile of pens, some sort of glue or grease in a crimped tube, and a small flashlight.

She resumed her search, “Let’s find a rubber band to put around them, so they stay nice.”

Her eyes looked at me then, to the jar I still held in my hand, and then back to the task ahead of her. “Go get a small paper bag off the back porch, behind the tool box, and we’ll scrape some of that soap into it for your family.” 

‘Seriously,’ I laughed inside – so hard, it was difficult to keep my nostrils from flaring and tears escaping.  I could just see the look on my husband’s face as I handed him a clean towel, and the jar, before his morning shower.

“For what purpose,” I muttered under my breath, disbelieving. It became blaringly obvious; there was only one thing to do. Put it back where you found it, Scarlett, and nobody gets hurt.   

It was too late for that. She had heard my protestations. “You have the energy and the know-how – why don’t you take it home for me and see what pretty little soaps you can make out of it, and give them as gifts this Christmas.”

“Thanks, Grandma,” I answered over my shoulder, “but I don’t think we need any more soap right now.” I quickly replaced the quart canning jar beneath the windowsill and turned to see her grinning at me from the door. (She was much faster than she looked.)

“Now, that’s perfectly good soap,” she assured me, deftly stretching the thin, elastic band she’d found in another drawer, over a sleeping fawn painted in sepia tones. “That’s the trouble with this world today. People just toss things out when there’s plenty of good use to be had in them.”

We stood there a moment or two, before she gave in, gazing at the soap jar beneath the window.  I suppose, if I had looked closely enough then, I might have noticed how daylight played on the splashy hues of pink pastels, and variegated greens, and how the warm Kentucky sun danced along the creamy slivers of white behind the glass. Had I given it time to see it as anything other than used up bits, perhaps in the perfumed scent of a rose or the clean scent of a manly Irish Spring, I might have seen the beauty in such a thing, possibly even shared her vision – if I were quiet enough, still enough.   

I know now, the eagerness and the love behind the grin; that we all might see the wonder and the beauty and the artistry she left behind, in a perfectly good mosaic.