Cozy in for the Full Wolf Moon

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It's going to be a cozy night over here at the boho diggs. 
The Farmer's Almanac tradionally calls the January full moon the Full Wolf Moon; a time of midwinter when wolf packs circled around the native's snowy villages.

Are you feeling emotional? Your need for security might be riding high, making you feel vulnerable. If you're away from home, you're likely feeling homesick and missing your family. This full moon will bring to the surface your desire to honour your home, protect your family and children.... your "tribe, kinship and ancestry"
Tonight's an ideal time to spend with family and loved ones in a cozy and safe domestic environment; maybe cook a special meal and gather your loved ones around you.
I'm making my hatchling's favourite sweet potato shepherd's pie. I'll light candles and we'll sit on floor pillows at our coffee table and just be.  It's all about family love, so nurture yours, especially for the young and vulnerable, and go ahead and acknowledge your own insecurities and fears, and allow yourself to be nurtured.

"It's a good time to...
~ give shelter to an animal or neighbor from the storm.
~tune in to your ancestors.
~make something artful from your memories.
~indulge your sentimental side.
~reach out to an old friend.
~be near a lake or the ocean"

Today's Instant Karma ~ scrape the ice or snow off someone elses's windshield

carpe diem!

The Action-Packed Adventures of Toronto OR Starting the Year With Abundant Happiness

Just got home from an amazing 4 days in Toronto at the home of my gracious and hospitable brother. (and coming down off my Starbucks abuse of caffeine). 
Hatchling  brought her friend and they did what they do best - lots of shopping!! They also handed out mitts and hats to the homeless, those sitting on the cold concrete of downtown Toronto. They're making an Ark (acts of random kindness) video to document the experience...(perhaps hatchling will allow me to post it here to share with you guys?)

we walked past an "occupy" demonstration to save a park downtown, 

and here's my hatchling, her friend and my bro being "political".

We went to a new MEGA-HUGE grocery store that used to be Maple Leaf Gardens. 

We went to "center ice", which they kept marked

 and took this artsy-cool shot to commemorate.

And it just wouldn't be my bro's if we didn't hang out around the piano singing 

and him teaching the girls to play their favourite movie theme songs.

Got back just in time ...back to school TOMORROW!!  Everybody ready?  For me, it means a grocery haul and catch up on laundry day.  It's been a warm and wonderful holiday season for us....hope yours was filled with  much love and happiness.


☺Today's Instant Karma~   Do things that make you feel passionately alive!


peace out!

Morning Pages~

♥Big hugs and a thank-you to all you bloggers who commented on my last post. 

Such kindness and encouragement....

Seriously, you guys made my heart break open a little bit.

♥ ♥ ♥

I went surfing over to Jamie's blog today and read her inspiring post on Morning Pages.  I knew what I had to do. I immediately went and dug out this super-fun journal from my bookshelf. I am all about journalling. I must have 20 of them laying around my apartment, some half written in, some painted and drawn in,some with pathetic attempts at poetry, and even a couple still blank, such as this one pictured above. (hatchling & I each got one on our last trip to Chapter's).

Pretty cute, huh? With cool, decorated pages inside for those little notes & ideas that spring into my head when I'm writing. 
I used to do morning pages religiously, after reading Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. It was sort of like a brain-dump 
every morning before I started my day. But I fell away from this practice, much the same as I stopped making time for my weekly artist dates, and yoga, and meditation, and drinking only lemon water and using eye cream, and all those millions of other things that we promise ourselves with the best of intentions.
I think we all need to slow down and find a balance in our hectic lives. It's so hard to juggle everything at once and keep our my balls in the air, so to speak. There has to be a moment of zen at some point in our day; to process, to plan, to be creative, or to just dump the overflow of activity swimming around in our heads.
So I'm beginning this year with a commitment to show up for myself. Every morning. I will write my 3 pages, long-hand in my journal or fingers speeding away on my keyboard. Either way, I'm going to write this year. A lot.

Someone asked the Dali Lama what surprises him most. This was his response... 

"Man,  because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recouperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present. The result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die and then he dies having never really lived."

Carpe Diem!

On Being Authentic~

abundancetapestry.com

"Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of"  ...Charles Richards

So has everyone selected their power-word for 2012? 
Mine, after much thought,and retrospection,  is Carpe Diem (seize the f*cking day). 


2011 was a fail. I became one of those walking cliches that I try to avoid- "when I get a good job, life will be better" and "as soon as I get a car, things will start happening for me". And this mindset killed my spirit. Of course both are true and 100% on the mark, BUT, my mistake was playing the waiting game. Overwhelmed by the immensity of struggling through another year of running my ass off for shitty min. wage part-time jobs, getting myself and my kid around town on foot in all kinds of crap weather, I became discouraged, just sort of gave up and it became the year of slack! 
My eroding self-esteem made it nearly impossible to get over my psychotic dental phobia for some much needed dental work.
Pretty much my only priority was my daughter and helping her through these rapidly growing teen years. And if I accomplished anything in 2011, at least I held onto that. As all you moms out there know, there isn't anything that can prevent us from displaying a positive and optimistic outlook for the sake of our kids, even when we have to fake it at times. So we got through ANOTHER move to a cheaper (and nicer apartment), cause that's how I roll. But I'm truly sick of packing and moving that unless it's for a job or very cheap rent,  I am fighting the gypsy in me and we are staying put where we are for awhile. ( so I also proclaim this to be the year of NOT moving)  If I get the urge to move, I'll just rearrange my furniture or something).


My  life-saving, life-changing car is very close - So close. I can't help but feel happy and excited and positively euphoric. It is my life-line out of this sad, decaying town of unemployment, and I cannot wait.
And I want to thank each and every one of you who've been reading my blog and supporting my years of rants and bitching and whining and and working and saving pennies and  hoping for a car. Your encouraging and understanding comments have helped me make it to every crappy bus stop, whilst dragging my hatchling and groceries along. Standing in snowbanks and blazing heatwaves, waiting for off-schedule buses and being late for pathetic jobs.  
I never gave up hope and thus 2012 is The Year of the Car for me! And In the meantime, and every day leading up to and following the birth of the car....Carpe Diem !!!  2012 is going to be mine and my hatchling's year!!!


"Things are going to start happening to me now!!"...Steve Martin - The Jerk


Peace & wishing you all a wonderful 2012!!

Are We Done Yet?

LOVE my hatchling !!

It's been a busy season of spending time with friends and family, eating a LOT, and staying up late, late, late, enjoying this time with my hatchling being on Xmas break from school. I don't know how I'm ever going to get her up at 6:30 a.m. again after these lazy mornings of sleeping in while I drink mugs of speciality teas and coffees that I got for xmas. 
Yesterday , we met friends for lunch, went to the health food store to check out boxing week sales, and celebrated  Festivus (sans the aluminium pole). Lots of  laughs and both hatchling and I are just pooped out from the non-stop action of the season. 
So today will be a lazy day of movie watching, grazing on leftovers, and maybe putting some of the holiday decor away?  I really want to take down the tree and get our apartment back to it's usual bohemian look, without all the greenery and twinkly lights....well, maybe the twinkly lights can stay..... :)


I'm thinking of my power word for 2012.....anyone else have theirs yet?  I've done this for the past 3 years now and find it much more effective than making a bunch of  unrealistic resolutions that I break during the first week of January anyway. 
I do, however, proclaim this to be "THE YEAR OF THE CAR".  I own it.....used, but paid in FULL. It's runs great, has been e-tested and safey-checked,  and is parked and waiting for plates, and insurance, and renewal of my liscense. I'm almost there. Baby steps, but I've made it this far. (gotta love poverty = no car).


So don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't reach your goals, that it's hopeless, or too difficult. At times it will seem hopeless and too difficult, and you will feel completely discouraged, but hang in there. I am here to tell you that it's possible. If you want something bad enough, you can make it happen. It may have taken me 8 freakin years!!! But I made it happen - and all by myself, which makes it that much more appreciated. 
And I thank my hatchling for her years of patience and tolerance of being the only kid who has to take the bus everywhere, for being the only kid whose mom couldn't drive to the mall or pick them up from the movies, who couldn't even do a drive-thru McDonald's (probably a good thing),. Who couldn't visit friends and relatives out of town, who had to haul groceries home on the bus with me and walk in all sorts of intolerable weather. It won't be long now kiddo!! We're almost there!


"There is merit in the attempt, and a whole lot accomplished along the way"        ..author unknown

When Christmas is Hard

"I can't tell my child to reach for the sun. 

All I can do is reach for it, myself.” 

...Joyce Maynard

This Christmas season, my hatchling went through an emotional growth period of about 10 years. Today in our small city, 2 days after Christmas, a funeral will be held for a 15 year old girl - a victim of cancer.She went to the other high school in town, not my daughter's, but her battle with cancer throughout the past 7 months united the teens of our small city in a way that no other experience could. Through purple ribbons, fundraisers and social networking, kids have joined together in a common battle of hope and belief that their constant prayers and cheers for this young girl's recovery would no doubt be answered. But instead the cruel and relentless cancer won in the end. It was devastating.
My hatchling found out at school on Friday (the day before Xmas Eve)... literally minutes before she went on stage to sing and play guitar for the school's Christmas talent show.  I am so proud of her for her ability to "keep it together" and still go on stage with her sweet sweet singing voice and her acoustic guitar, playing for an auditorium filled with a hushed and stunned crowd of her peers.
Cancer is no stranger to many, many kids my daughter's age. Almost everyone has a relative who has been taken by this horrible disease. But when cancer held it's grip on someone their own age, someone who played along side them on the soccer fields and the volleyball courts, someone who won the same academic excellence award as my own daughter; someone who just one year ago was healthy and happy and celebrating Christmas with her family, it became a horrible and cruel thing for the teens in our town to have to process through the Christmas holidays. The girl isn't sick any more; isn't going through chemo any more; isn't receiving "Get well-you can beat this" messages on her facebook wall anymore. The girl is dead.
So this Christmas season, I am doing what I can to help my hatchling process this awful truth. Being the empathetic teen that she is, my daughter is grief-stricken for this girl's family. It's horrible enough when cancer takes a grandparent or a parent too soon, but someones child? It's just too cruel and unfair to sort out.
So this Christmas our own family tried a little harder, hugged a little tighter, stayed together a little longer, and loved a little deeper. My one brother made a point to visit from Toronto, spoiling my hatchling, as always, with love and attention and pressies.
And the absolute best part for me was seeing my hatchling and my other brother singing and playing guitar together - "jamming together", and him teaching her to sing "the blues". A family tradition that goes back to my own childhood when my Dad (who is also gone from cancer), used to sing and play the guitar every Christmas. He'd have been so proud to see my daughter and my bro celebrating Christmas the way he did. It was like a healing balm applied directly to my hatchling's heart.
To echo my hatching's sentiment and the words posted on her fb wall this Christmas....
"I have the BEST FAMILY".



peace & love 

Happy Christmas to all my Blog Friends

* Just a warning - some pretty intense scenes here - not for children's eyes. (although the realism of the children in the video breaks my heart)




Peace and Happy X-mas from Boho mom & hatchling (& and the wisdom and compassion of John Lennon)

My Favourite Christmas Quote

"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."   

             ... Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol

~ 3 more sleeps ~

And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas ♫

One of my all time favourite songs at this time of year...

Recorded 27 years ago!

Do you think it made a difference?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Peace &  Love & Happy Weekend

Bohemian mom

Re-Birthing into 2012

My awesome hatchling,
 who reminds me every single minute of every day,
that I did something right!

With the big X-mas just a couple weeks away, I find myself thinking ahead of that day. I am more psyched about starting 2012... shifting into a new year, setting new intentions,  shedding the crap that hasn't served me in 2011... beliefs and ideals that have kept me stuck. That said, I don't want to be too hard on myself,  it's too exhausting. I did my best in 2011, and I acknowledge and remind myself of the positive steps I've taken, the growth process...I own that. All of it comes together in helping create my focus and direction for 2012.

Live and learn - I always tell my hatchling. Live. Every single day is a learning experience and an opportunity for growth. Mean people suck and for whatever reasons, it's their problem, not ours, and certainly not a reflection on us. I remind myself that there are unhappy people in this world, who choose to be that way, who choose to put others down to make them feel better about themselves....(highschool 101). I will never be able to, or desire to ,"wrap my head around" these people and their own internal conflicts. That's for them to work out and resolve - it's none of my business.

One of the hardest things in life is feeling stuck in a situation that doesn't serve us, doesn't meet our needs; a stagnant situation that we don’t like and want to change. Each new year (each new day) is an opportunity for us to set our intentions to the Universe.
To kick off my internal, spiritual, car-driving, fully employed re-birth, I'm totally down with this on Pixie's blog.

And although I'm worn out from struggling and doing the work to make positive changes, I am not giving up. Taking chances, huge leaps of faith, or baby steps will get me there and I have to keep reminding myself of that.

Bring it on 2012!

"The first step toward change is acceptance. Once you accept yourself, you open the door to change. That's all you have to do. Change is not something you do, it's something you allow."  ..Will Garcia

peace out!