Anam Cara.

The Celtic word Anam cara means soul friend, the person you are connected to almost spiritually. You can read eachother's hearts you are so close, so connected, so bonded. It's like you are 2 halves of the same person, soul mates, best friends, connected on a deep spiritual soulful level. That's what Buddy and I are connected on such a deep level we know eachother's thoughts and can "read" eachother. I've never had such an intense bond or friendship like this before, such selfless unconditional love and when other people look at him all they see is an old Dachshund (he turns 14 in February, which is 98 in Dog Years! He's an old fart!) who is greying, has missing teeth, a chewed up leg ( he has arthritis in his hip and chews at it to relieve the pain) walks slowly, has death breath, a wart on his back, a chunk missing from his tail where the grey cat bit it and a constant scab under his eye.....but to me he is beautiful and the cutest dog ever. I don't see an old dog, I see a special soul. I see my best friend, someone who "gets" me like no one else ever has, someone who loves me with a pure heart and doesn't care what I look like or how broken I am. I see my Anam cara who has been sent to me from God to bless my life.He brings love, joy, purpose and meaning into my life and gives me a reason to get up each day, a will to live, someone to dote on, to need me, to love me, to miss me when I go away, to welcome me when I come back, to fill my days with smiles.

I also had a dream I was with a red-haired Scottish guy but in actual fact if I ever did get with anyone he'd most likely have grey hair at this point, and yesterday my hubby was in Toronto all day for work, for an evaluation( he got a raise!) and party and I had a nice stress-free day with him gone all day and Cadets is having a potluck Christmas party soon but I guess my "special" (pot) brownies would be out of the question although everyone would have a really good time if so, and Thursday is the 12 YR old's follow-up at the eye specialist and I know they must have found something on the ultrasound for the follow-up otherwise they'd just phone and say everything was normal and I have a bad feeling about it and it worries me but I hope it'snothing serious though and just something simple, like a dry eye and he just needs eyedrops or something and not sonething like cancer or glaucoma or cataracts and needs surgery or will go blind or anything like that..

All of the snow is gone too now, it has been for days and it's milder now once again: 8 C! My friend A (in Ottawa) was also at some lawyer's conference and boarded his dog and he said it cost 100$ a day! They also send him photos every day of them doing things with the dog and of it having fun. Shit....you can get some human hotels for around 100$ a night...that's sure one spoiled lucky dog!

Thought For The Day.

This.

This has got  to be one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. Yes, it is. it's a 

roasted Dachshund.

At first when I saw it I knew right away what it was; it looks distinctly like a Dachshund with the shape of the body and oh, my God, the tail  looks exactly like Buddy's(and his tail, BTW, also just happens to be my fave. part of him) and I couldn't believe it and at first I kept trying to convince myself that, no, it can't be, my eyes are playing tricks on me, it has to be something else; it just looks like a Dachshund and then my rational mind started trying to "justify" what I was seeing and tried to rationalize it; no way it's really a Dachshund; it just looks like one, it can't be, maybe it's just a piglet or something but it's cooked so you can't really tell.....it just can't be.... who the f*ck would cook a Dachshund..... until I read the caption below the photo:

Dog meat market in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Holy f*ck. It really was what I thought it was. I really was looking at what I thought I was.All I could think of was my beloved Buddy, my dog I love more than anything, my best friend, and my heart just broke into a million little pieces and the tears ran down my face. Now every time I look at Buddy I see this. I just can't unsee it. I wish I had never seen this; it will be forever imprinted in my mind. The kids are always joking about cooking Buddy (because he looks like a hotdog) like putting him on the BBQ and such but this is real, an actual real Dachshund that someone most likely cooked alive. Definitely one of the most horrible things I've ever seen, that's for sure. Oh, my God.

As well, lately I have this bad pain deep in my back where my kidneys are as well as pain under my right ribs and the pain in my lower right abdomen where I think is from the surgery where something either got pulled or something as well as in my colon from either chronic constipation ever since the surgery 18 days ago or some sort of twisting or blockage. Either way I hurt and yesterday in church the lady that sits beside me asked how my surgery went and even offered for me to call her to come over if I needed help which I thought was super-nice and shocked me esp. considering my own family doesn't even give a shit and basically just left me alone to fend on my own.

Last night my hubby also kept asking me questions such as what is my middle name and how do I spell it, where was I born, what year did we get married, etc.. so I know he's up to something. He said it was info for my employee spouse medical coverage but I suspect not( and my intuitive Sixth Sense tells me not and that something's up and he 's lying and has an ulterior motive and with my life experiences I can always tell) and my guess he's trying to get answers for his security clearance at work to questions I won't answer because I can't risk secrets from my own family and my own past possibly being revealed but if if it is and Pandora's Box so to speak is opened up he has no one to blame but himself....there are some things that should just be left in the past and left alone for a reason....or, maybe he's secretly going to file for divorce and needs the info for that. I'm not sure how I'd feel about that. Happy to be free but at the same time concerned about my survival, the same as I always have been my entire life. Everything's always been about survival for me.

I also saw Frozen 2 and it had some of that spirit mumbo-jumbo but other than that it was really good and I really enjoyed it and they've also changed how you can convert to MP3 for music and download and sync it onto your iPod, making it harder to illegally download music and the usual route I used to use doesn't work anymore so I had to go looking for alternate sources and it's such a pain in the ass and eventually one was found but it wasn't easy and not without issues and I ended up finding ones that always had annoying pop-ups and I had to watch a disgusting porno before I could download and even after all that I still never got my download and others said I had to download other stuff first....yeah, right...nice try guys, it's likely malware....even so I still ended up with a virus of some sort I had to get rid of.....f*ck! Why is is so hard just to get some fine tunes nowadays?

Today's Truth.

The Tree.

I really doubt that we're going to even have a Christmas tree this year. Normally over the decades I've been the one who puts it up and decorates it but lately as my health declines I just honestly don't have the energy or stamina it takes anymore to do it. Just the other day putting up the Christmas decor in the house wiped me out; I was all sweaty, breathless and faint and felt like I was going to pass out. I also felt something pop in my abdomen following my surgery(it had just been 2 weeks post-Op) and today I still have pain there, only now increasingly worse; it really hurts on the lower right side, so I don't know if something's maybe infected or rupturing or what, perhaps that cyst on my right ovary, I don't know, but in any case, the pain is bad enough now to make me wince and to suck in my breath upon certain movements and  I just don't have it in me what it takes to put up a tree and decorate it. I thought the kids might do it but the 16 YR old said she's not going to and there's no way the 12 YR old will and it's doubtful the 25 YR old will and my hubby never has and my mother's in no condition to do it any more than I am. I like Christmas trees. and, in fact, them and the lights are my fave. part of Christmas( other than Jesus, of course; He's the reason for the season and don't you forget it) and this year I was hoping we could put up the white tree with the silver and gold ornaments the 18 YR old used to have in her room down in the livingroom for everyone to enjoy but when I mentioned it the 16 YR old said she already claimed it for her room even though she hasn't even put it up or decorated it yet and it's still just laying there on her bedroom floor. That's sad though, the thought of Christmas without a tree, but what can you do?

My friend in Austria also saw the new Frozen 2 movie with his kids only in German it's called Die Eiskonigin (with an umlaut over the O except I can't do that on my keyboard so it's missing here but I know it's supposed to be there, I didn't 'forget" it) which litterally translated means The Ice Kings which I suppose makes good sense and I really want to see it too so we'll have to illegally download it and watch it because we're cheap that way and I'm not going to pay 12$ to go see it at the cinema! I was also listening to music on Google Home and I exlaimed with glee Skynyrd! when a Lynyrd Skynyrd song came on and Google was listening in on my like a spy and replied back, here is a station playing Lynyrd Skynyrd songs....oh, my God, that just really freaked me out! It's actually really and truly spying on us, listening in our conversations and replying to what we say, even when we're NOT directly talking to it! Holy shit!

I realize as well I live 2 lives; the one on the outside that everyone else sees and the secret one I live inside my head that no one knoes about. Actually, I live two secret lives in my head: the fantasy one where I'm beautiful and free and I'm the way I wish and dream I was, and the real but secret one that only I or a select few people know about, with secrets never to be revealed, intrigue, secret loves and losses, untold traumas, hidden desires, secret thoughts , hopes and dreams, untold traumas, hurts, secrets, past, etc. It's a very busy place in my head full of things always swirling around in a frenzy, never to be calmed or tamed, always gnawing away, trying to escape, refusing to be buried, hard to contain, I don't know if it's the Asperger's or the Bipolar or just my overall general f*cked-up life....or maybe a combination of all three...

Daily Pondering.

Art.

What do you call an armless, legless man on the wall?

Art.

What do you call an armless, legless man on the floor?

Matt.

What do you call an armless, legless man on the water?

Skip.

or Bob.

What do you call an armless, legless man in a pile of leaves?

Russell.

Speaking of art, here is a sketch of an apple( Still Life drawing) the 12 YR old did at his youth group the other night. They had a professional local artist come teach. Good job, huh? It looks like he also ( along with most of the other kids and myself) has inherited the creative gene from my father's side of the family for talent, for either art, writing, or music, as several of the relatives on that side are skilled in drawing, piano, writing, etc. I'm glad though as creativity is a good thing, a really good thing and it makes one unique. My own creativity has either both gotten me into trouble or rewarded personally though, depending on the circumstances. I can remember in grade school always getting yelled at by the teachers( esp. in grade 4) for always being distracted by my drawing and writing in class I was told endlessly to save on my own time and to not do during class, and the art teacher I had in grade 11 that endlessly punished me for my assignments as I only ever did 10% of what was assigned and then added my own style and flair so that my end results never looked like carbon copies like all of the others( but isn't that what art is supposed to be, the creative expression of the artist and NOT the same as everyone else?) and she's give me shitty grades for it like in the 60%'s because it wasn't what was assigned and didn't look like the others...yet in grade 12 I had this awesome art teacher who loved my creativity and I got to do sculptures that year and he rewarded my free-thinking and unique designs and I got a 95% grade.

The 12 YR old also has this App(or whatever you call it) on his device where it alters your photo and can age you or make you look younger and I excitedly said Do the one that makes me look younger! and he laughed and asked why and I said So I can make it a profile picture! For once I'll have a photo that looks good even if it is photoshopped! and it turned out nice(see below) and he commented that when it aged me it didn't look any different(than I do now)....gee, thanks kid....and when he "aged" himself he looked like the 25 YR old does now which makes sense I guess and now he looks just like the 21 YR old did when he was younger but they are brothers so it makes sense they look alike,and so much so that, in fact, when I see old photos of the 21 YR old I can't even tell which one of them it is; is it him younger or the 12 YR old now? The only difference is the 12 YR old has glasses. Other than that you'd never be able to tell.....

The store the 25 YR old and the 16 YR old work at also had a party and he brought home all the left-overs, which was alot of food and we appreciate and need it and aren't too proud or ashamed to accept; he has this knack for always scoring free stuff, just like the oldest does, and today is also the second-oldest's birthday; she's 29, and I'm still constipated even more than 2 weeks post-Op and I have to take laxatives now to even be able to shit at all now and even so it's still hard to go and I really have to strain and it's hard and there's bleeding....I really am beginning to wonder if maybe there might be some sort of obstruction or something; it shouldn't be that hard just to pinch one off and when the laxative does work it just keeps coming and coming, an endless literal shitstorm; it's like it's all impacted and full and just blocked and can't come out and when it does, only slowly, bit by bit.it's just awful.