JESSIE'S VEGAS

The presents, the stockings and rising early before the sun rose up trying to see Santa are all beloved memories from my youth. I LOVED Christmas and bought into the whole North Pole fantasy without a second thought. To a child, the magic and promise  of "good things happening to the world" was not so hard to buy into. Fresher from heaven and angels, as a child, I did not think it was unusual for one man to load up his sleigh and visit every single house on Christmas Eve.  Of course he knew my name and every other child's name on earth. I did not have trouble believing in a babe that was born in a manger either.  Why wouldn't the donkeys, sheep and cattle surround that place and worship their Heavenly King?The thought of a salutory star rising in the Eastern sky,   guiding wisemen and sheperds made perfect sense. As the years have passed , my childlike faith has been replaced not so much with doubt, but with its bed-fellow fear.  The trials of the mortal j...

Buckwheat/Millet pancakes I got my buckwheat and millet in bulk at WINCO. I turned them into flour in the blender. Buckwheat is related to rhubarb and is more like a nut than a grain. It is one of the healthiest foods on earth! Millet is birdseed! Ha! Wait until I tell Dave he ate birdseed. Well, those birds seem to know what they are doing, eh? Chia seeds are packed full of vitamins! 2 cups buckwheat flour 2 cups millet flour 2 tablespoons chia seeds 3 teaspoons baking powder 2 teaspoons salt 4 organic eggs 2 cups almond milk 2 cups pureed pumpkin 2 teaspoon pumpkin spice 2 tablespoons maple syrup or agave syrup 4 tablespoons melted coconut oil Mix together and  drop ladlefuls to form pancakes on very hot cast iron grill . Use coconut oil to prevent sticking. Cook about 7 minutes per side of pancake. Nutty, dense texture packed with dense nutritional goodness!

Man! I could not get comfortable tonight. I tried to add the squishy body pillow with the soft ,microsuede cover as an amiable bed companion. This did not seem overly successful as the tossing and turning of my body beneath the pile of blankets continued.  "Maybe I'm thirsty", I say to myself. "Dave made me eat that delicious thai food. What was he thinking?" I am too lazy to go downstairs and I decide the water that comes out of the bathroom faucet might suffice. "Oh, no! It tastes like drain ditch water", I lament ,as I spit out the mouthful before I can chug another swallow down. The drain ditch was a murky moat of water that ran by the side of my house growing up. Cows frequented it's banks and frogs and carp fish swam in it's swirling depths. Growing up in rural Idaho, we played long hours outside. Instead of going inside for a drink, we would often grab the nearest hose to refresh ourselves. It was always difficult to tell ,without samp...

Vanilla almond cocoa  1 walk in door and pout at the sun ...that it went down during your long work day. 2 rummage in cupboard for largest mug  3 pour almond milk in mug 4 heat in micro for 2 minutes unless you are paranoid of radiation sickness or you wear a Geiger counter. If so, gently heat on stove-top. If you are a TRUE paranoid and fear electricity and don't like stove-tops, build a fire in your backyard and heat liquid in an ancient ram's horn 5 sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg on top. From the little containers in your cupboard. or , if you have the paranoia trouble,grind it yourself after you have Stolen it from the inner bark of your friendly Neighborhood cinnamon tree 6 sit in recliner with sore feet up in your house or in your yurt...whichever your conscience allows  7 sip white liquid and absorb magical almond riboflavin properties and watch your blood pressure decrease....unless you still have a fire in the backyard and a naked cinnamon tree to attend t...

Vanilla almond cocoa 1 walk in door and pout at sun that it went down during your long work day. 2 rummage in cupboard for largest mug 3 pour almond milk in mug 4 heat in micro for 2 minutes unless you are paranoid of radiation sickness or you wear a Geiger counter. If so, gently heat on stove-top. If you are a TRUE paranoid and fear electricity and don't like stove-tops, build a fire in your backyard and heat liquid in an ancient ram's horn 5 sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg on top. From the little containers in your cupboard. or , if you have the paranoia trouble,grind it yourself after you have Stolen it from the inner bark of your friendly Neighborhood cinnamon tree 5 sit in recliner with sore feet up in your house or in your yurt...whichever your conscience allows 6 sip white liquid and absorb magical almond riboflavin properties and watch your blood pressure decrease....unless you still have a fire in the backyard and a naked cinnamon tree to attend to.

Last night ,I had fallen asleep on the couch again and that was probably a good thing. The walls are still open in my bedroom exposing insulative materials that don't get a long with my throat. They have started tearing out the tiles in the bathroom and the whole house is still kind of in a state of disarray.  I can live anywhere as long as my throat stays open. The damage from our bathroom flood continues and I was just putting up with it until my body started to react strangely to the materials in the walls. My husband thought I might have "strep throat", but I told him that strep throat does not show preference to bedroom settings, that I knew of.  We giggled and called the insurance company and asked them to speed things a long so I could stand to hang out in my bedroom again. Sometime in the middle of the night, the movie "Frozen" mysteriously started playing and I suspected a Frozen fan was somewhere in the living room. Sure enough, I spotted a tiny he...

My dad was busy when we were growing up. He ran an auto-parts business and also had several hobbies , or ventures, that kept him occupied.  On the  occasion when he included the kids , he was always teaching. My father missed his inherent calling in life because he is one of the best teachers I have ever had. He loves facts ,has a brain for them and likes to know how things work or function. Of course this is a beautiful thing when you have a genius level mind for mechanics. In other subjects he struggled, but my dad was and is a savant when it comes to mechanical engineering.  Pistons, heads, and spark plugs. These were his mantras while the engine block was his canvas. He had a great friend named Dick Martinez who lived just down the road. Dick had converted his garage into a car painters paradise. My dad would fix the edsel or the Studebaker or the '57 chevy and Dick would put on his fumigation type mask and set to work. They came up with many a masterpiece and my...

"Hope"  by  DeAnn Goodwin This image is about hope.  The gnarled texture of roots and trees represent trials and tribulations we all go through.  Nonetheless, there’s always light and hope somewhere if we look for it. NOTE:  Done with mostly acrylic paint on collage of textured wallpaper.  Halloween cobweb was also used.  "in  Grimm's Fairy Tales , the hero always goes into the forest. It is not itself enchanted, but it contains enchantments and, being outside normal human experience, acts as a place of transformation. The German fairy tale has an unusual tendency to take place in the forest; even such neighboring countries as France or Italy are less like to have fairy tales situated in the forest. The Grimm brothers strongly believed the dream of national unity and independence relied on a full knowledge of the cultural past that was reflected in folklore.  They worked to discover and crystallize a kind of Germanness ...

  You could say I had been on strike! Most workers strike when they are not satisfied with working conditions. In my case, I guess I was no different.  I do not think my strike had been a blatant paint your sign and picket  the employer's business kind because ,in this case,heaven's gate was my employer. Rather, I had slowly just started praying not as long ,as often or as fervently.  I also had the problem of not knowing what to pray for. I had experienced miraculous events in my life. Were these not enough to carry me through any further storms? I was just tired of the same old problems, the same old injustices and maybe all this would not have mattered so much if I had at least felt good.  I had been running an uphill battle for awhile, working full-time, fighting schools for adequate IEP's,(Individual Education Plans), running to doctor appointments for my kidsand then trying to keep dinner on the table.  When my health started suffering an...

70 Years Young #flipagram made with @flipagram Music: OneRepublic - Counting Stars http://flipagram.com/f/ffiS0NuJbb

Over the course of the last year, I have emailed a woman with terminal cancer. She was an incredible human being. I was cleaning my "mailbox and decided to keep her letters. Carey,  October 1.2013 I was talking to Christie tonight. I was going to make cobbler for people but I found myself buying the ingredients for chocolate chip pumpkin bread. When Syd was in the hospital the last time we could only visit 3 x a week. They would not help her with hygiene and she has never been able to wash her hair. For some reason, not being able to see her much and then when I did see her seeing her look like a homeless person put me over the edge. I did not sleep for two days and my heart was breaking! I told Heavenly Father it was the silliest thing in the world, but I had washed so many peoples hair over the years and no one would wash my little girls hair. It was already bad enough that we had a second daughter experiencing psychosis, but now this? I was pacing and pacing. I had already s...