Hawaii?

Hawaii? I'm ready.

Miracles don’t happen overnight. Sometimes they take an entire weekend.

One day I declare how happy I am about the prospects of going to Hawaii.
The next I lie in bed ruminating. We’ll get gassed, I think. Sulfur Dioxide burps from the Volcano on a regular basis. The volcano might squirt lava in our direction. I’m sad about leaving my first-born daughter and first-born grandson. I’ll be leaving my friends; I won’t have any friends in Hawaii.”

Gee Joyce, the sky might fall too.

The sun comes out: I confess my fears to Daughter D. “It’s logical to have those fears about the unknown,” says my reasonable daughter. “Fear is what keeps people stuck. You still want to go to Hawaii don’t you?!”

She sees Baby D running on the beach, swimming daily, turning brown as a macadamia nut. And about daughter number one, she says, “Think of what a broadening experience that will be.”

Daughter D says when she was little her play was about water. When she and a neighbor girl would play, they would imagine they were swimming.

I played galloping a horse.

I have heard if you want to know what to do with your life, remember what wanted to do as a child.

What do you want to do?

I know we all have dreams and hopes and desires, and want to live life to the fullest, or at least to the happiest we can find. Our little group here on D mountain are able to move to Hawaii because of the magic of computers, as my husband does his design work on one. And there's the internet and cyberspace and I don't know what all. Gosh, I sent an email to our Real Estate Agent in Hawaii and he called me 2 minutes later. I’m in awe.

When I apologized to said Agent for going to the office on Sunday for our FAX, he said, “Are you kidding. Every day in Hawaii is a vacation.”

“In a time of great uncertainty and anxiety, my grandparents held on to a simple dream—that they could raise my mother in a land of boundless opportunity, that their generation’s struggles and sacrifice could give her the freedom to be what she wanted to be, and how she wanted to live.”
--Barack Obama

Chapter 11 of my book, It’s Hard To Stay On A Horse While You’re Unconscious begins thus:

Walk in Awe

“Is not life a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”
--Friedrich Nietzsche

Find the book on www.wishonawhitehorse.com

Turn Left at The Volcano

You have brains in your head
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
Oh the Places We’ll Go
--Dr. Seuss

Thus begins my soon to be a best seller Nonfiction narrative/ memoir, Oh Baby!

Life’s Twists and Turns may get another tweak in its neck. We are considering moving to Hawaii.

About 15 years ago Daughter D said, “In twenty years let’s retire to Hawaii.”

“Okay,” I said, not really believing it. I thought moving to Hawaii would cost about as much as a rocket trip to the moon.

Yesterday while cleaning the horse yard (Some of the best revelations come while shoveling manure), I asked the great powers that be where I be happy.

“Check out Hawaii on the internet,” said the Great Cosmic Consciousness.

Lo and behold, a property popped up that cost only a fraction more than property we were considering in the Eugene area. Plus it had a house which the Eugene property didn’t. I couldn’t believe it. Ten acres, fixer-upper house, macadamia trees, pineapple, limes, and it is remote. They will take horses.

Downside: You turn left at the volcano.

With Skype I can talk to my other grandson daily, and see him, and when he and his mother visit it will be quality time and in Hawaii.

Can’t wait to see how this story unfolds. Is it fate? And do you know, instead of the 120 day quarantine for taking dogs into Hawaii, with proper paper work, vaccinations and such, one can get immediate release.

Hallaluah!

I’m as excited as a cat with four mice.

Aloha!

PS. Don't forget to check out www.wishonawhitehorse.com. The book, It's Hard To Stay On A Horse While You're Unconscious is listed there, and of course you'll want to read it. It will tell you a few things about horses, it will make you want to run your hands over a horse's velvet coat. It will make you want to bury your nose in one's silky mane and believe you are nine years old again.
PS PS. How is the world am I going to get four horses to Hawaii?

Consider the Possibilities

July 10, 2009
I have completed a manuscript. I can’t call it a book because it isn’t one yet. I’m putting it out there though with high intent, with sweet affirmations, and a desire to either entertain or be of assistance.

Have a dream. Fan it to white-hot intensity. Take action, and don’t give up.

My manuscript is entitled Oh Baby! By Jewell D. (A new nom de plume.)
I think more than a story about Daughter D and I getting Baby D, it is a motivational book. You know I’ve been reading “How to be Successful.” Actually the book I’m reading is People Are Idiots and I Can Prove It, by Larry Winget. (Better title than “How to Be Successful” isn’t it?) I needed Winget, “The Pitbull of Personal Development,” to push me to the next level.

So, do you think a story about a mother and daughter embarking upon a journey that began at Disneyland and ended at Disneyland, “The Happiest Place on Earth,” could find its way into the heart of humankind?

It could be for whoever had a dream and took action to get it.

It could be for people who thought they wanted to adopt a child, but found that process so daunting they opted for artificial insemination instead. It could be for those who want to grow their own baby, and need encouragement.

It could be for those who contemplated an interracial family, and asked the hard questions: “How can one raise a peaceful person? Should one remove a child from its culture? What about raising a black child in a white household? What are the moral concerns of a single parent adoption? How does a child absorb its parent’s religious beliefs while accepting those of others?”

Two years.

It took two years to get Baby D.

In the meantime we “Flipped a House,” took trips, I fell off my horse, healed, we contemplated the nature of reality. My blog readers pretty much know the story at the end, but they don’t know the beginning, or the middle. Daughter D’s and my adventure led me into my blog’s title Life’s Twists and Turns, for this adventure was like following a two year old through the backyard, stopping at the sand box, splashing in the puddle, plucking dandelion flowers for Momma, spinning in circles, chasing the dog, jumping on the trampoline, riding a rubber bouncing horse, being distracted by a butterfly, chasing a hummingbird. Whew!

When Daughter D came to me with the proclamation “I’d like to adopt a child, a child of Africa.” I suggested making a documentary of the process. And with Daughter D’s attention to detail, and her eye for design, the idea of making a documentary fit her better than a wet tee-shirt.

We called ourselves Two Dorks and a Camera Production Company.

So we began. As I naturally turn to writing I began a companion to the documentary. Two mediums, says Daughter D. Let’s see how they manifest.

Mine is my manuscript Oh Baby!

I just read through our recent road trip and become inspired and called Nina who is on the road going to work. And we talk about how it was on the road, with every day a new adventure, and how we felt bigger than our possibilities when we were at Disneyland, and she tells me that in the mornings she whispers to Baby D, “What wonderful thing are we going to do today?”

Thanks for reading, and for accompanying me on life’s journey.
Joyce aka Jewell D

Ni Hao "How Are You?

"I'm great thanks. Is there any other way to be?

It’s better to be disappointed by expecting a lot and getting nothing
than by expecting nothing and getting it.—Larry Winget

The sweetest couple looked at our house yesterday.

If they don’t buy it I want them as friends.

They had been looking at our house on the internet in China, came into town about a week ago, and showed up here looking for a log home.

They said that a house is fated. They still had to give this one “serious thought” but I loved their attitude, and that they loved the house and they love animals. Now it is up to the fates.

You know how it is when people talk about their animals, their stories are often horror ones? Not this couple. Their stories were happy.

The lady often rescues stray dogs, and one dog she picked up was sick and hungry and so ugly no one wanted it. They nursed it to health, and someone in Beverly Hills wanted it. Now it lives in the lap of luxury, in an aircondioned house and fed hamburger. The neighbors even think it is a rare breed.

And ferrets. (My daughter has ferrets, thus the ferret story.) Mrs. Buyer said that one day a ferret wandered into the school house where they were teaching. They caught it and were going to carry it away and turn it loose. The Chinese people said, “Oh you do not disturb a ferret. It is bad luck.”

“But we were going to carry it away.”

“No matter, the damage is done.”

When a storm came through they blamed the people who disturbed the ferret. Not a happy story? A cute story.

And I learned a Chinese phrase. Ni Hao Pronounced “Knee How.” It means, “How are you?”

Besides this buyer story and the cleaning frenzy around here—did I tell you we can now walk through our garage? I have been trying to de-idiot myself. (Too late, I gave hubby’s work boots to the Goodwill and how he is without work boots. Guess I need to go to Goodwill and see if I can buy them back.)

I’ve been reading Larry Winget’s book People Are Idiots and I Can Prove It!

A rude title yes, but he gives help on how we can overcome idiocy.

Now don’t be offended. You know that no matter how smart we are we all behave as idiots sometimes. Like we ask for advice, beg for advice, even pay for advice, and then don’t take it. Do people follow their doctor’s advice; do they follow a rich person’s advice on how to get wealthy? People smoke when each cigarette will take 13 minutes off their life, they drink and drive. People say they want more honesty in government yet 60% cheat on their taxes. Oh yes, the lottery, and $300 jeans. Some people even think the earth is flat and Elvis is still alive.

I know none of that applies to you.

I do believe we are like horses. A horse is athletic, can run a total of 25 miles a day, yet to reward them you let them do nothing. Well, we’re all a little lazy sometimes. Writes Jim Rohn, “What is easy to do is also easy not to do.”

It’s easy to eat healthy, and easy not to. It’s easy to spend more time with your kids, and easy not to. It’s easy to procrastinate, but probably feels better not to.

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain said this about Tom:

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

What if “they” have been lying to us and all those things we want—health, happiness, success, great relationships—are easy?

If you want to know more about not being an idiot, tune in later. I haven’t finished the book.

A bit of advice from Winget, “Stop worrying about might happen. It rarely happens anyway, so why worry about it.”

And one final word: Learn how to meditate. If that sounds too woo woo for you simply tune in to slowing your body and stilling your mind.

My friend John told me this story about his mother. She said, “You know that ratty old chair we have? Well that damn fool of a dad of yours dragged it into the garden. When I asked him why, he said, “I’m watching the garden grow.”

“And you know what? I dragged another chair in beside him.”

That’s meditation.

And from Joyce’s book, It’s Hard To Stay On A Horse While You’re Unconscious:

Horse Priorities
Horses like safety, comfort, play, and food—in that order. Safety—that is the reason a horse will run into a burning barn after it has been led out. He had been safe in the barn up until now. Comfort and food had been freely dispersed in that barn. What happened? The horse can’t comprehend that his comfort zone would turn on him, even if it was ablaze.

So, how much like horses are we?!