Total Pageviews

Saturday, January 1, 2022

Things I Have Learned in 2021

Things I Have Learned in 2021 

I have definitely learned a lot more than this in 2021, but these are the things that actually got written down. 

1. Biceps have two heads.
2. Honeybees fly 80,000 miles to 2 million flowers to gather 4 lbs of nectar to make one pound of honey.
3. The Earth spins at about 1,000 mph.
4. Ruca is the best beer pong ping-pong ball retriever in the land.
5 Noodling- A form of fishing in which a crazy person runs into a lake and searches for holes on the bottom with his foot. Then he inserts his finger into the hole and lets something bite it.
6 always have at least 50% iPhone battery when shopping for an Instacart order. 55 items may actually be 75 units and a heavy maxed out shopping cart.
7 “paradise” is a Persian word for garden πŸͺ΄
8 Aquaphor isn’t for moisturizing. It is for healing. Thank you, Katie. My dry hands thank you.
9 If you run out of Paulo Santo at home just go to a Trevor Hall concert at Red Rocks.
10 The spelling of Daiquiri has an I after the a!!!! Thank you Daiquiri Deck.
11 EGR = Extra Grace Required  Thanks, Liz. I think we can all give each other a little more grace these days.
12 People in Maine host maple syrup barn parties. I must attend one of these!
13 Realization: I feel guilty to have recently purchased 3 books through  Amazon. I love bookstores. The quiet, the scent of new books, the readers stashed away in every corner. The overpriced coffee shop inside. If we don’t support local bookstores, they will no longer exist. It is sad that by local bookstores, I mean monopolies like Barnes & Noble with its Starbucks sidekick. What could possibly take over Amazon?
14 Not every mug is made for coffee drinking.
15 I drink too much coffee.
16 I have no idea what is real.
17 #TDLIATL  the dumbest lesbians in all the land
18 My former 4th-grade students in NJ have so many interesting names that I am only now learning the meaning of. 
Soham means I am; I am He-the presence of divinity of each soul; The presence of divinity of each soul. (Beautiful!) 
Divya- devine
Ishani- lord master ruler
Nidhi- treasure
Aarnav- ocean, wave, stream, sea
KrishnaOne of the most popular gods, the eighth and most important avatar or incarnation of Vishnu
Pranav- praise, salutation
Gupta (Sanskrit Origin) means 'one who is bound by duty to protect or govern', implying a King. 
Patel (Gujarati Origin)is a Hindu community of wealthy farmers and merchants. It originally meant 'village-chief'.
Singh, (Sanskrit Origin) the most common Indian surname, is Sanskrit for 'Lion-hearted'.
19 I am transitioning and struggling with crossing over from the must-do to the May do side.
20 I’ve become a part of the Great Resignation. The pandemic has caused us to genuinely reconsider what matters most in life and how we want to spend our days going forward.  Lewann Babler, Elephant Journal
21 It is really messed up that we take puppies away from their mama and siblings. If the puppy moms could talk, what would they say?

2021 Quotes

 Quotes From 2021

I love words. Here are some I read, received, or heard & resonated with. 

Enjoy! 


“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
Theodore Roosevelt

If we let go of the list of things that we want to accomplish and acquire, we would be living our dream. BB The Gifts of Imperfection

Part of being in your power and shining as brilliantly as you were meant to has to do with how well you listen to your life. The real way to glow always has to do with being in service to what’s guiding you rather than trying to be in control of it. Chani Nicholas

Lao Tzu: Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend.

When you go against the flow, you suffer. 

When you go with the flow, you enjoy the ride.

-Dark Night of the Soul article

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” –Rumi

"The meaning of life is just to be alive". - Alan Watts

From Ed
Ernest Hemingway showed us that safety is an illusion and that life is a wild adventure or nothing at all.

We are all mayflies and we don’t even know it. Irene Muldowney
7-25-21

“Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.”  BB

“Feeling discontent is exciting. Discontent is the nagging of the imagination. Discontent is evidence that your imagination has not given up on you. It is still pressing, swelling, trying to get your attention by whispering: Not this.”
Glennon Doyle

The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can't be organized or regulated. It isn't true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth. Ram Dass

When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent...you sort of understand that it didn't get enough light, and so it turned that way. Ans you don't get all emotional about it. You just allow it. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying "you are too this, or I'm too this." That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are. -Ram Dass

If someone is falling behind in life,
you don't have to remind them.
Believe me, they already know. 
If someone is unhealthy, they know.
If someone is failing at work, they know. 
If someone is struggling in their relationships, with money,
with self-image...they know.
It's what consumes their thoughts each day.
What you need to do for those who are struggling is not to reprimand, but encourage.
Tell them what's good about their lives,
show them the potential that you see. Love them where they are.
When we can't see clearly for ourselves, we need others to speak greatness over us.
People don't need you to tell them
what's wrong with their lives, they already know.
They need you to reassure them that they can still make it right.
-Brianna Wiest-
The Minds Journal

We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.

Terence McKenna
 
The flow is at the intersection of discipline and surrender. Jason Silva

Here are some inspiring words from Albert Einstein: πŸ™πŸ’«

“I didn't arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.”
“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. Matter is spirit reduced to point of visibility. There is no matter.”
"Time and space are not conditions in which we live, but modes by which we think.
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, determined by the external world."
“Time does not exist – we invented it. Time is what the clock says. The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
“I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me."
"The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.”
"A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
"Our separation from each other is an optical illusion."
“When something vibrates, the electrons of the entire universe resonate with it. Everything is connected. The greatest tragedy of human existence is the illusion of separateness.”
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
“We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.”
“When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.”
“The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.”
“The ancients knew something, which we seem to have forgotten.”
“The more I learn of physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.”
“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike. We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us. It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware.”
“I’m not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books.”
"The common idea that I am an atheist is based on a big mistake. Anyone who interprets my scientific theories this way did not understand them."
"Everything is determined, every beginning and ending, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper."
“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It will transcend a personal God and avoid dogma and theology.”
“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”
“Everything is energy and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you can not help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”
"I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care about money. Decorations, titles, or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. I claim credit for nothing. A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future."

"We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it’s worth."

"Ego is a structure that is erected by a neurotic individual who is a member of a neurotic culture against the facts of the matter. And culture, which we put on like an overcoat, is the collectivized consensus about what sort of neurotic behaviors are acceptable.”

"Unexamined cultural values & limitations of language have made us unwitting prisoners of our own assumptions."

“Personal empowerment means deconditioning yourself from the values and the programs of the society and putting your own values and programs in place.”

~Terence McKenna

Never underestimate the power of your presence. We can bring joy to others just by showing up.
Evelyn Lynch



2021 Funnies

2021 Was a Serious Year Overall

I still managed to experience and capture some funny moments. 

Cheers to Small Moments 

Enjoy! πŸ˜‚

Katie: What is that on your keychain?

Kelly: It’s a flashlight and it doubles as a horrible, high-pitched sound.

Katie: Why?
Kelly: My mom got it for me in case I was in trouble.
Katie: OK. I would have been more excited if it was a Tamagotchi.
5 mins later after I wrote this and swore her to 5 mins of silence.
Katie: Can I say what I want to say now? I really thought it was a Tamagotchi and you were hiding it from me.
1-5-21

Kelly: This honey is so good. Let’s make honey-infused vodka.
Katie: stirring her drink with a spoon coated in cold honey that clearly didn’t blend. How about we make honey-infused tea?
Kelly: oh, yeah. That makes sense. Hahaha

1-6-21

Jesus is a big gal.
1-19-21

1-22-21 CD
I’m ready to just serial killer drive straight across the country!

2-6-21 Katie
No, Kelly. I don’t want to play hide and seek.

Put a Nuun in your beer!
2-15-21 Sara

You can’t host an orgy and be mad if someone gets chlamydia.
Joe 2-15-21

2-20-21
I don’t eat anything orange.
Did you hear what beer I ordered? Blood Orange
I can’t eat it. I drink it.
Anthony Miragliotta

If you’re going to eat Cheetos. You better have some wipes or something.
Liz

If someone is younger than me and calls me hun. I’m done.
Stephanie
2-27-21

Kelly: Well, that was a great speech. We were all captivated.
Bob: No it really wasn’t but y’all are high and I had nothing else to do.
Erik: It seems you need to get high then.

K- Please don't pay for me. I had vodka 
You gave me drugs. We’re even. JC

I wish we had a pond in here so I could just sit and fish. 4-17-21 Kidney Stone Katie

She is the type of person that if you were hiding Jews under the floorboards of your house she would tell the Nazis. That’s what I imagined.
EJ

Kelly. All I am thinking about right now is what I can eat with Italian dressing. 
Katie 5-26-21

Kelly: Let’s just hike now.
Katie: No. Let’s wait until it gets warmer. 
Kelly: But, Look that the blue sky!
Kelly! Who is the native?

Have you ever shit underwater? Cuz it’s like giving birth out of your asshole. 
LM

Stephanie: You’re sparkling all over.
Kelly: I am a vampire. I sparkle in the sun. Jk, it is my Hawaiian Tropic sunscreen.
Stephanie: Haha you are so gay you sparkle!
5-29-21

6-11-21
I bet even their sour cream tastes like shit. (La CanabaΓ±a, Estes Park after eating gross guacamole.)
LM

Better start driving soon Kel before this kicks in.
Shut your flap!
Linz

That’s the first time I’ve ever seen three mullets in one minute. #MulletsPerMinute MPM--
Matt Bateman picking up sushi in Parker

If you notice I gave all of the bigger cups to the people who are driving in the smaller cups to the people who live here.
Stephanie 

It’s Wednesday night and we’re about to get crazy! Wait a minute, it’s Tuesday! Ha ha Stephanie about making topo Chico grapefruit with grapefruit vodka and pouring half a bottle of vodka into four glasses
Summer Stephanie 6-15-21

The yellow jackets just walked by. They are gonna sting us!
Katie Red Rocks Shakey Graves
6-23-21

No seeums= Irish hello 
Bobby Brower
07-24-21

Got Sallie watching Sopranos and all she can say is it sounds like Kelly, Jackie, and Cindy talking in the kitchen.
Keith Kemmerer Nov 11th

Since when did karaoke become America’s Got Talent?
Nov. 25 Katie

Look at this beautiful display of drugs (a bag of Doritos, a bag of Funyuns, and a box of MnMs)! No more avocado oil chips, Kelly. It’s like eating lavender and expecting to trip, but nothing happens. That’s what it’s like to eat avocado oil chips. All of THIS stuff is pure magic.
11-29-21 Katie

Kelly, you have enough energy during the day to power an entire country. I’ve seen you!


“I NEED a napkin!”
Mom
Pete and Elda's  12-2-21

I’m like a party favor- Sean
12-5-21

Katie: Hi, my Kelly. What time is your COVID test tomorrow?
Quarantined Kelly: 7 am but I have to return right away because at “10 am Santa’s comin' to town.”
Katie: Well you have lost your mind already.
12-8-21

12-14-21 Katie
Kelly: You have to eat something. How about some oats?
Katie: Oats?! You might as well give me horse feed!

12-22-21
"We probably didn't get COVID because we drink so hard and our bodies are pickled."
Sandy Miragliotta


Funny Moments From My Niece & Nephews...
Thanks, Jacko

In the boys' speech class today, they have been working on their ending sounds and for this session, they were practicing the K sound. The teacher was showing them pictures and they had to say what it was... this picture was a rake. Well instead of ending it with a k they messed up and ended it with a p... so they were both screaming “rape” repeatedly, loudly. πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚
1-13-21

Forgot to tell you about Cole’s Amelia Bedelia moment last night.
We were upstairs and they were waiting for me to get done braiding Brooklyn’s hair before bed so I could read a book to them. Cole wouldn’t stop asking for me to read it so I told him to do a book walk while he was waiting. (book walk= looking through the pages and seeing what you think will happen) so he grabbed three more books off the rack and lays them down on the floor and starts walking on them. πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚ I was like Cole what the heck are you doing?!? “I’m doing a book walk!”  πŸ“š 1-25-21

3-8-21
Question of the Day
If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
Cole: Colorado to see Aunt Kelly. 
Hunter: The Dunkin Donuts 

3-14-21
Cole comes to the top of the steps crying saying, “Mommy! My fan ran out of batteries!!” I hear he’s really upset so I rush up there, also very confused because the only fan he has is on his ceiling...
“Cole, are you talking about this fan on your ceiling?”
“Yes, I hit the switch and it won’t turn on. It ran out of batteries!!” (Tears are pouring down his face at this point)
“Cole you have to hit the switch under the handle sometimes, it also turns it off." (they have the dimmer and a switch on the plate)
“Ooooh!! I didn’t know that.” He’s very relieved that his fan and light are now working.
“Cole, what did you think that button was there for, silly?”
“I thought that released the rockets.”
😳


6-17-21
PS Brooklyn came home and told me she joined a beatboxing band today. 
See video

Brooklyn has a birthday party tomorrow and it’s half at Snyder’s farm and then at the girl's house. She just rolled over to me and asked what she is going to wear. I said, "Pants and a short-sleeve shirt and bring a jacket. If you want to wear those brown boots you can. 
She goes, "Oh yes I would like those brown boots, but maybe that shirt I wore for picture day (white with rainbow leopard print) even though I don’t think that’s really accepted at the farm but…"
πŸ˜‚
10-16-21