In honor of Halloween beginning in about an hour, I thought I would turn this blog over to you. Usually I post annual blogs about the sorted history of Halloween but I decided to do something different. Have you ever experienced paranormal activity? It could be ghosts, creatures, aliens or anything else out of the ordinary. Describe your experiences in the comments. Let's hear what you have to say!
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Archive for October, 2010
>Carnevale in Atlanta tonight
>
I shall soon be dressing for the social event of the season, a costume party to be held at the Four Seasons here in Atlanta. This is part of my costume on the left. The event is Carnevale, hosted by the Jerusalem House, for which my uncle has volunteered for several years. Jerusalem House provides over 62% of Atlanta’s permanent supportive housing designated for homeless and low-income individuals and families affected by HIV/AIDS. Almost 40% of Jerusalem House residents are children. Carnevale is a costume party to raise money for this wonderful charity.
Of course, there will be a costume contest. I am dressing as my French Queen, Marie Antoinette, with a guillotine built over my wheelchair for proper effect. At first, I was going to make my wheelchair into a royal throne but my family thought I would increase my chances of winning the costume contest by going for the shock value of the guillotine. I have a few scruples about portraying my beloved queen in that way, but at a party made up of men dressed in drag like Madonna, Dorothy, Lady Gaga, and so forth, any sort of historical value will fall on deaf ears. My two uncles and my mother are going to dress as evil clowns and they are calling themselves Cirque du Toilette and entering the costume contest as a group.
I’m told several local celebrities are due to make appearances at the party as well. The judges for the costume contest are Atlanta City Council President Ceasar C. Mitchell, WSB-TV’s Linda Stouffer and Dwight Eubanks, star of Real Housewives of Atlanta. I’ve also heard that Anthony from Project Runway might be in attendance as well. I must remember to bring my business cards!
My lovely date for Carnevale was to be Sissy, pictured at right, but she became very sick early this morning and could not come. She would have either dress as a naughty schoolgirl or as a 1920s flapper, depending on what she would have decided along her way here this afternoon. She was to be coming to spend the weekend with me as soon as she was let out from work but illness has gotten in the way. I have found a kindred spirit in Sissy and we always have the best time together. She has been my friend as well as my sister-in-law in previous lifetimes, which doesn’t define our relationship, but adds to the closeness. She recently passed her nursing exam and her birthday is coming up, so we were going to celebrate throughout the weekend. When she is recovered, we will have our weekend together though. Sometimes these things happen, like I told her! I will miss her this weekend but her health is more important to me than some silly costume party.
Our preoccupation with French culture made me think maybe we ought to make French cookies this weekend. I found this recipe that I think we’re going to do and add chocolate dipping to it. We will put it off for another weekend, certainly!
Ingredients
2 eggs
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup white sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon lemon zest
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup granulated sugar for decoration
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Butter and flour 12 (3 inch) madeleine molds; set aside.
2. Melt butter and let cool to room temperature.
3. In a small mixing bowl, beat eggs, vanilla and salt at high speed until light.
4. Beating constantly, gradually add sugar; and continue beating at high speed until mixture is thick and pale and ribbons form in bowl when beaters are lifted, 5 to 10 minutes.
5. Sift flour into egg mixture 1/3 at a time, gently folding after each addition.
6. Add lemon zest and pour melted butter around edge of batter. Quickly but gently fold butter into batter. Spoon batter into molds; it will mound slightly above tops.
7. Bake 14 to 17 minutes, or until cakes are golden and the tops spring back when gently pressed with your fingertip.
8. Use the tip of the knife to loosen madeleines from pan; invert onto rack. Immediately sprinkle warm cookies with granulated sugar. Madeleines are best eaten the day they’re baked. Leftover madeleines are wonderful when dunked into coffee or tea.
9. Variation: Chocolate Madeleines: Omit lemon zest. Increase sugar to 1/2 cup. Substitute 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder for 2 tablespoons of the flour; sift into batter with flour.
>Manifesting your own reality
>The Law of Attraction is a practice of manifesting thought energy and intentions into real, tangible results that make your life and the lives of those around you better. Everybody knows about The Secret, which is an overly commercialized version of it that has become a fad, but the principles of manifesting your own reality have been in existence for eons in many different cultures.
It’s not as simple as saying, “I want ____,” and those things drop out of the sky for you. Manifesting your own reality takes serious discipline in reprogramming the way you think, how much effort you put into creating your reality, and doing the daily exercises to reach a heightened level of awareness of your thoughts and actions. Most people aren’t even aware that they sabotage themselves throughout the day with negativity. The biggest obstacle is the process of removing all negativity from your thought processes. Why?
The basic underlying principle to everything in manifesting your own reality is that thoughts are intentions, real things, pieces of your energy, and have power. The energy that you put out into the universe is what comes back to you. Putting out negativity brings negativity back to you. Putting out positivity brings positivity back to you.
In order to reprogram the way you think, you’ve first got to examine the very nature of your thoughts. There are various exercises to really look at yourself such as writing your thoughts – honest, real thoughts – in a journal and then counting up how many negative words you use vs how many positive words you use. Negative words are ones such as: can’t, won’t, don’t, hurt, pain, sad, unhappy, depressed, etc. Positive words affirm your ability to leave a mark on the world that is good and helpful to yourself and others. When you eliminate negative words from your vocabulary, you lessen the unintentional or intentional chances of sabotaging yourself with bad energy brought into your life.
Sometimes we think we’re helping ourselves but the words we chose have hidden darkness in them. For example, I once saw a person trying to use positive affirmations in her day to day life and one of them was, “I don’t want to hate myself anymore.” At first glance, that looks good. However, the words “don’t” and “hate” have negativity attached to them. A truer form of a positive affirmation of that nature would be, “I love myself more every day.” That is truly positive. At first, you may not believe the things you tell yourself each day but the important thing is to get into the discipline of reprogramming the way you think. In time, you will begin to live and breathe positive thinking, as well as knowing you can take action to make your dreams come true. You see, it’s not enough to simply say, “I want ____.” In addition to manifesting those needs through meditation and visualization exercises, you must also take daily action toward helping yourself along. The universe will not reward you without result.
A good exercise to get yourself started is to write down your intentions for the week or the month (your choice). Then you write three steps you can take toward making that intention a reality. Here is an example.
State the intent:
I will be hired in a satisfying job.
Think of three actions to help it along:
I will search online for jobs.
I will consider new career routes.
I will seek advice from friends who are satisfied in their jobs.
Another thing you can do to help focus your energy in a positive direction is to create a vision board, which is a collection of images that represent your goals. It helps the mind during meditation to have something visual to focus on and when you place copies of the images throughout your house or your office, the visual reminders will keep you focused throughout your day. Many people put their vision boards on their refrigerators and use them as desktop backgrounds on their computers among other places. The images you choose can be literal representations of your goals or they can be metaphoric and speak to things that only make sense to you.
Here is my current vision board.
Some of the images on my vision board are literal things I would like to acquire, such as money or the King Charles Cavalier puppy. Other images are metaphoric, such as the ocean waves representing my desire to get over my fear of water or the picture of me with people representing my desire to stay close to friends or Scarlett and Rhett representing my desire for a little romance in my life. Some pictures can be misleading, like the one of Jon Knight might make one think I want him but in reality, he is the symbol of fun and independence in my life, just as the images of the meditating figure and the rosary are symbols of being grounded in my spirituality.
What images can you think of for your own vision boards?
What positive affirmations can you use to improve yourself?
What ways can you alter your thoughts to eliminate negativity?