Dr. Basil

Yesterday was a little rough. I stayed in bed most of the day, and I had no energy to make myself some soup. So I didn't eat anything until R came home. He made homemade cheese soup, which is so good because it has a bunch of vegetables in it that are boiled then blended and put in. So it's still very smooth, but it has nutritious value. After I ate I felt a lot better. I still feel like I have been punched in the mouth though, and I have an awful lot of swelling along my jaw. I actually do know how that feels, because many many years ago I worked as a cocktail waitress and one night a drunk and belligerent customer who didn't want to take a taxi home actually did punch me in the mouth.

However, while R was at work I was in good hands...or should I say paws. Buster was on his best behavior for once, and Jazzy came to stand on her stubby little hind legs and peer at me with those keen dark brown Westie eyes as if she was checking on me and wondering why I wasn't getting up.

Rizzo came and laid by me and purred, and Gypsy was never more than two feet away all day. But it is Basil who always takes the best care of me. He is the very special little guy I posted about last year who loves Christmas and smiles like a Cheshire cat. The post is called A Christmas Tail if you missed it and wanted to read it.

I don't really believe in reincarnation, but if there is such a thing, I am convinced Basil was a doctor in a previous life. After I came from home from my hospital stay from my hysterectomy he would come in to the bedroom and do the oddest thing every hour to two hours. He would lean over and stick his nose under my nose without touching me, then a couple seconds later he would lay his head on my chest for a few seconds. Then he would go back to laying beside me. It took me a while to figure out he was checking my breathing and heartbeat.

Yesterday he came and sat on my chest, stared at me for a minute then gently put his paw on my bottom lip as if to say "Open up, I want to have a look." I opened my mouth just a little and he leaned over and inspected it. When he was satisfied, he sat up and squeezed his eyes closed a bit. I think he probably believes he could have done a better job...or maybe that look was simply "Boy are you high maintenance!"

He is so sweet and concerned, and I felt very loved and taken care of in the best way he knows how.

Not Doing Too Bad And An Award!

I survived the procedure today. He managed to get me numb as promised which was such a relief. However, once it wore off...I won't lie to you, it HURTS! I feel like I have been repeatedly socked in the mouth. Thank goodness for Vicodine. I slept most of the day. I just managed to suck a tiny bit of tomato soup through a straw and drink some water. So I am not doing too bad all in all.

When I finally made it down here I had a lovely surprise waiting for me. Suse from Suses Teddygarten gave me this lovely creative blogger award! Isn't that sweet, and on a day when I could certainly use something like that!

I am going to go put the ice pack back on and then go back to bed. See you soon!

Hugs K. <3

The Last Rose Of Summer

I just thought I would leave you with something pretty before I go in a couple hours. Every year my rose bush blooms for the last time in October, but with the erratic weather this year I only have one lonely bloom. Pretty isn't she!

Panic Mode

The hours are ticking by way too fast today. 8 AM is fast approaching and I have noticed I have achieved panic mode. I can't think clearly, I feel that overall cold chill you get from fear and I am slightly shaky.

I am trying to not be afraid of tomorrow, but I am. They want me to take a Xanax to relax me before I come in, but in truth that's kind of adding to my anxiety. I have never taken a Xanax and I am not sure what it's going to do to me. Sometimes I have very odd reactions to drugs, so I try to take as few as possible.

I probably won't be making a post tomorrow or even possibly for a few days to come. I don't really know how I am going to feel after the procedure. So if there is silence for a few days, just know I am sleeping and healing.

Wish me luck, I am going to need it! Also if anyone has ever taken Xanax, please tell me what it does to you.

Thanks, K. <3

~*~ Tea Time Cubcake ~*~

I found this great tin, and knew I wanted to make a cubcake to go in it. I loved tea with my bears and Raggedy Ann as a kid, so every once in a while I have to do a tea party set! You can visit her on the bears page of my website.

Also don't forget to enter my give away for a Pumpkin Cubcake by clicking the link to the right if you haven't done so already.

Natural Born Skeptics

I am going to continue on in an odd vein of topics today for two reasons. The first is that something rather odd happened the other night. The second is because I always think about weird things when I am stressed, and if you read my post on my upcoming gum surgery then you know I am stressed. So bear with me, posts will probably return to normal next week. Also it is October and Halloween is coming, so what better time for ghost stories right? On with what will most likely be a very long post.

Grant Wilson of TAPS said that a skeptic is a person who hasn't had an experience yet. I think that is true up to a point. I have yet to come across anyone that couldn't tell a story about something they couldn't explain happening to them. Maybe they thought they saw Bigfoot, or a UFO, maybe they saw a ghost, or it was something as simple as knowing something before it happened or having a mental connection with a loved one in a moment of crisis.

Now if you went out into public and put any two people together and told them to tell each other a story of something that happened they couldn't explain it would most likely go something like this:

Person A tells their story with great earnest, giving the details of what happened as accurately as they can. Person B listens politely, but is thinking to themselves how crazy that is and that they had to be mistaken, there is another explanation or they made it up. When person A is done telling their story, Person B tells theirs. They in turn tell their story earnestly with as accurate of details as they can and Person A sits there politely listening thinking that there has to be another explanation, they misunderstood what they saw or they are making it up. Both people know what happened in their own experience, but doubt what the other person is telling them they saw.

I think we are all for the most part natural born skeptics even when something odd has happened to us. I am no different. I am always very skeptical, and yet I have had some odd things happen. Although in all fairness, I am rather skeptical over those too. So the question is, why would this be? Is it a simple notion that everyone else is lying? Probably not. I think it's just that when something odd happens to us that we can't explain we have a hard enough time processing that something outside of our parameters of normalcy and logic is going on, and when someone else tells us a similar story it puts us on that uncomfortable path to realizing that maybe we don't have as much control over our environment and we don't know as much as we think we do. So it's easier for our brains to dismiss the possibility that there are things that simply defy explanation as of yet. People have reported seeing spirits since man has been able to tell stories or write accounts of things down. But yet we like to think we live in an intelligent, scientifically enlightened, civilized world and that superstitions and nonsense are from an age of scientific ignorance.

So on to my story that you most likely won't believe. It's ok though, I have a hard time with it too even though I was there. I have said in the past that I don't really buy into the conventionally accepted concept of ghosts. I have an alternative theory, but it's very long and based on quite a few things, including physics, that I have assimilated so I won't go into it now. That being said, I am about to say something that I have never said aloud. I think my house is "haunted." Even as I type that, my brain is still rejecting that idea.

We moved into this house ten years ago this month. Over time odd things have happened on occasion. I keep dismissing them, despite a few of them being quite solid. The biggest of which was a white puff of smoke, or cloud or vapor...whatever you want to call it rushed out of the bedroom at my head one night when I opened the door to let the dog in to sleep with R. It startled me and I jerked back. The only reason I know for certain it was there and not a figment of my imagination was that the dog saw it too and chased it across the living room, jumping up trying to catch it. I searched for days to try to find a logical explanation for what it was and never found a thing. Was it a ghost? I don't know, I can't make that call. I only saw one other similar thing, and it was dark so I can't be sure I saw it.

A few years later I was making the bed when I distinctly heard a voice at the foot of the bed call the shortened version of R's name. I never use the shortened version, I was home alone, and the windows were closed since it was winter and cold out. I ran right away to look outside and didn't see anyone at all out there that might have said something I would have heard.

Over the years I have caught motion out of the corner of my eye so many times I lost count. But I always chalk that up to tricks of the eye, lighting or imagination. If I don't see something dead on, I can never be sure I really saw it.

I have also seen a picture fly off the mantle. I wouldn't find that unusual except that it was in the second row and the pictures in the first row were left standing upright because it flew over the top of them.

A couple nights ago, I was sitting in the chair down here working on some graphics when it sounded for all the world like someone said something right in my ear. If it had been a real person they would have had to have practically had their lips up to my ear to make it sound like that. I was startled again and spun around in the chair so fast I nearly fell out of it. There wasn't a thing there. I have no idea what was said either. It happened so fast and out of the blue I didn't catch it.

It was at this point, after ten years of odd occurrences, that I decided maybe...just maybe it's time for me to accept that there might be something going on that I just can't explain rationally. I am still not comfortable with that idea, and I am still not sure I really believe it despite having had it happen.

I think my biggest problem with it is that it doesn't make sense in the conventionally accepted idea of ghosts. Why would something want to stay here after they departed the physical realm? Why would something want to scare me? Is that even the intention? If the intention was less sinister...the question still remains why? If something could manifest itself enough to take on a vaporous form or a sound why not just write me a note and say what it wants to say?

I think enough people have had paranormal experiences throughout history that it's safe to say something is going on that cannot be explained with the knowledge that we have, but what is it? That's why I developed my own theory based on things that I understand. Someday, if you really want to know, I will type out my theory.

Maybe it's a simple matter of I don't want there to be anything else living in my house besides us...but despite having seen and heard and lived through some odd things in my life that I can't explain, and having known countless others who have lived through things they couldn't explain...I can't get over being a natural born skeptic.

Why Do They Have To Be Mutually Exclusive?

Last year Nasa was perusing some pictures they took of the first "man made" holes on Mars. They were made by the drill on the Mars rover. In one of the pictures someone noticed something that looked a bit unusual. In fact they thought it looked like a fossil of a worm. If you look at the picture you will see that it could be almost anything really. But if that turned out to be true that it was a fossil, then it would be proof positive that life once existed on Mars. But they never got any other pictures of it.

I read an interesting article tonight about that in a magazine. There is the supposition that they purposely didn't take more pictures of it because if it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was life on Mars, or anywhere else for that matter, every religion on the planet would crumble.

Now I can't say how accurate that article was since there were no references or facts to back it up. The writer was proposing a conspiracy theory, which I suppose is possible, but it might also be possible that NASA simply didn't see the fossil or whatever it was in time to get more pictures of it. If it was intentional as the article writer was suggesting however, I don't get that line of thinking. I have heard this notion of what would happen before.

A large portion of scientists are atheists, so how can they assume what people of faith would do or think when they don't have that in their own arsenal of personal experiences to draw from?

If you go outside and look at the night sky you will be seeing over 2 billion stars at any given time. It's pretty safe to say at least some of them have planets orbiting them. I think deep down inside us we all have a basic instinctual knowledge that we are not the be all end all of life in the universe. If we were, wouldn't it be a waste of those 2 billion stars we can see and however many more lie beyond those? Wouldn't it be vain of humanity to believe it's all out there just for us?

Now whether we will ever get to meet any of that other life during the existence of our species, or whether we would even want to is a whole other can of alien worms.

Ok so suppose we found proof positive that life existed elsewhere. How would that change anyone's faith in a higher power? I haven't read all the religious texts in the world, but I do know in the Bible it says "And God created the Heavens and the Earth..." Notice that Heavens is plural. So where is the problem?

When did science get to the point where it always had to be mutually exclusive of any other line of thinking? In science there are no miracles, no magic, no faith, no intelligent design. Just cold hard facts. But yet from my perspective as someone who does have a working knowledge of physics, quantum physics/mechanics/evolution, biology, chemistry, astronomy, geology, paleontology and a whole host of other sciences...I don't see how you can't believe in something more than yourself.

If you can't look at the stars and see the magic, if you can't look at the creation of life and see the miracle, and if you can't see how complex things are at the tiniest subatomic levels of existence and have faith along with the facts, then how can you possibly study it objectively? The whole point of scientific study is to be open to all possible answers until you find the right one. But sometimes there isn't just one. I will never believe that something so vast and complex on every level in every layer was an accident, and I will never believe that in this amazingly huge universe we are all alone.