I am taking a little introductory class in American Sign Language (ASL). It has been very interesting. ASL has its own sentence structure and is an official language. I also learned that the public school teaches sign language but it is not ASL but a mutilated version that corresponds to our English language sentence structure. Why would the schools do that? Why not teach the real thing instead of trying to pass off a version that many deaf people may not be able to read? (I just added one more point for home schooling).
In Texas, I have been seeing billboards that tout Texas Public Schools. These billboards are sponsored by Friends of Texas Public Schools (FOTPS) and most say something along the lines of ‘great things are happening within Texas Public Schools’. First I ask why does the Public School have to advertise? If they are doing a great job, it will be known.
Have you ever noticed that ads usually tout their weakness as their actual strength? It is like they think if they scream loud enough that this product does this particular thing so well that you will believe them. I have seen this with cleaning supplies, laundry soap, food items and now I am seeing it with the Texas Public School billboard campaign. There is a reason that so many people home school. I know teachers who home school. I know people who would like to home school. I know a woman who was a single mom and teacher who wished she had been able to home school her overly bright child. This child with so much potential was burned, ridiculed, and put down by the school system so much that now as a grown young man he makes a minimal living flipping hamburgers. I know of another woman whose son was salutatorian for his High School, winning over $130, 000 in scholarships but then refused to go to college because he just saw it as more of the same type of hazing and he was feed up with it.
What is our school system doing wrong that it is creating such a crisis with our children?
I think the biggest problem is that they are teaching to a test and forgetting to teach the children. This is not an indictment of the teachers. There are many teachers out there who sincerely want to help the children learn but their hands are tied with policies and procedures. The polices must be changed so the teachers may actually be able to teach again. I have seen teachers who rejoiced when the last TAKS test was complete for the year because then they were finally free to teach what they wanted the kids to learn. They only had a few weeks but they tried the best they could. What is wrong with this picture?
I am afraid I have been ranting. I meant to write about learning a new language, ASL. I guess I have a topic for tomorrow.
Find Your Soul Mate Workshop – April 17, 2010
Posted by: Ann
March 25th, 2010 >> EFT, Energy, Life, Manifesting, Meridian Tapping, Relationship
I am excited about my workshop on “Finding Your Soul Mate”. I have been working hard to make it a great workshop. Yesterday I put the workbook together, a total of 18 pages.
There is so much great material out there that I am having a hard time deciding what to put in. I think I will put it all in and then have some things I can cut down on or cut out if time gets too short.
This workshop is Saturday April 17 at the T.B. Harris Community Center in Belton, TX. Time is from 9:00am through 3:00pm with lunch included. The topics to be covered include
1. Where you are now
2. Where you want to be
3. Why you are not already there
4. How to get where you want.
I will be using various techniques to help you activate the ‘Law of Attraction’ to bring that special someone into your life.
Find out more at www.naturallyresilient.com/event
After reading my story last week, my husband reminded me of another episode with Suzy Que the goat dog.
We lived on 68 acres and had fenced in about ¼ of an acre for our yard around the mobile home. One night as we were lying in bed just about to fall asleep here comes this Boom, Boom, Boom of a deep Great Pyrenees’ bark. This is a bark that easily transmitted through those weak, thin walls and readily seeped through the window that acted as our headboard. Covering our heads with the pillow was not doing it for us. At 2 in the morning, my husband Paul decided he had had enough and ran outside trying to chase Suzy away from the house where she could bark without sounding like she was outside our window.
She wouldn’t budge but thought it was a game. Paul came back in and put his shoes on and went back out to chase Suzy. Here was Paul running around the pasture chasing a white dog at two o’clock in the morning. He was throwing what ever he could grab at her. He came back in shoeless. This happened several times. I guess if you are into late night exercise this could be useful.
Actually Suzy was just doing her job. A Great Pyrenees has several barks and will use one bark in one location then run to another location and use a second sound then run to a third and use yet another bark. This is to confuse the coyotes and other dogs into believing that there is more than one dog in the pasture. It was just that Suzy was choosing all her locations around the house (probably because that was where the goats were hanging out).
After that every once in a while I would see Suzy out in the field carrying a shoe in her mouth.
Even to this day if you went walking around the field, you would come upon old shoes scattered around that Paul had thrown at Suzy in the middle of the night. Hmmm, I bet that is what happened to the pair of shoes that Paul could never find after we moved.
Spring is here! At least according to the calendar. The bluebonnets are starting to bloom. There is suppose to be a good crop this year because of all the rain.
We had a very cold and wet winter in Central Texas. We had several snow flurries and then a nice snow that actually stuck around for a whole day! The cats did not like the snow. Only one actually ventured out into it and he was our long haired cat – the one whose protein went to make fur instead of brains. But it was pretty to look at and play in. We did have a short show ball fight just so we could say that we played in it.
My son, who claims he likes the cold, sure did spend a lot of time indoors this winter even during the snow day. When I was a teenager living south of Houston, we had a 4 inch snow. I spent most of the day outside in it. I only came in to defrost my toes and nose. I remember that school was cancelled only because the busses would not start.
If you live in a cold climate which sees more than its fair share of snow, I guess you are not as mesmerized by the white stuff. But down here it is always out of the ordinary.
I guess I should not be too quick to say that winter is over. Three years ago we had a 5” snow fall the night before Easter! That was fun. People were building snow bunnies in their yards.
Everyone in the US should have their census by now. They want you to send it in the day you get it but it ask about who is living on the premise on April 1. You never know what can happen in two weeks. I am not sending mine in until April 1st.
There is another quirk that bothers me. This census asks about a person’s race. There are several things I don’t like about this question.
First, as long as we keep dividing people into ethnic groups we will continue having separation of people. The ‘them’ versus ‘us’ mentality will still prevail and people who look a certain way will be the subject of various crimes.
Second to what purpose is a question like this anyway? We are getting to be such a mix that the question is obsolete. If I look at my background I find German, Irish, English and who knows what because I had a great Uncle who said he was laid by the buzzards and hatched by the sun. He never would say where he came from. So maybe I am part buzzard, but that is not a “race” option on the census form.
Third is that this division is so misleading. I know people from Mexico who do not look Hispanic but they still abide by the Mexican culture. The Hispanic look comes from intermarriage of the native Indians of the area with the Spaniards who came over. I would think a better question would be ‘What culture do you live under’, or ‘what language do you usually speak at home’.
I am still undecided what to put for race. My husband wants to put American but I feel that still divides us. I want to put Human — that is what I put on all questionnaires that request such information. Maybe I should put buzzard. Well, I still have until April 1 to decide.
Book of Afformations – Book Review Sunday
Posted by: Ann
March 21st, 2010 >> Books, Change, Manifesting
The Great Little Book of Afformations (All-New, Expanded Edition)
Is it bothering you that I say affirmation sometimes and afformations other times? This is on purpose. The author wants to distinguish what he does as being different from the standard affirmation so he calls his afformations.
Affirmations are positive statements we say to ourselves. Afformations are the positive questions we ask ourselves. The premise is that we are always asking ourselves questions and our mind is constantly trying to find the answers. Think about it. When you have a pain you ask yourself “why does my knee hurt?” we don’t just think “my knee hurts”. If we do think the statement, the question quickly follows and the mind will go and try to find reasons for the knee to hurt thereby giving you more knee pain and more reasons to hurt.
If we phrase the questions correctly we can get faster and more positive results. This book ask us to switch our thinking around and ask “why does my knee feel good” or even “why does my body treat me so well” or “why do I take such good care of myself”. This gives our mind a different question to answer and the positive results will follow.
Give this great little book to try and reap the resulting benefits.
Behind the Scene Work
Posted by: Ann
March 20th, 2010 >> Guides, Manifesting, Physical/Material, Spirituality
Yesterday I talked about coincidences as being the result of your mind shoving the more pertinent info into your consciousness.
Could there be something more involved? Could coincidences be the result of a spiritual or behind the scenes work?
Just so you know, I do believe in a spiritual life. I talk to my guides and angels and yes I do hear them talk back to me. It is all in my head, I don’t hear an actual physical voice so some may say it is just another aspect of me talking and maybe it is. We are all connected and may be more intimately connected than we realize on the physical surface plane.
I suggest that you do an experiment. Think about two different problems you are having for which you would like a solution. Talk to your guides, you can do this out loud or in your head. Tell them that you appreciate them being there and willing to help you then tell them that you would like help in solving a problem. Then tell them about one of the problems you want help with. Then tell them you have a second problem but you want them to stay away from that particular problem until you specifically ask for help on it. Then note which problem is solved first. You must also note exactly how you asked for help with the first one. How you word it is important because the solution will appear and you will invariably say that wasn’t what I wanted but if you go back and look at your words the solution will fit exactly. It is almost like they are showing their sense of humor by solving it in a way that was not even remotely anticipated.
Good luck and let me know what happens.
The brain is an interesting thing. It is bombarded with millions of sensory inputs a day, (what am I saying?) a second. Look around you everything you see, all the colors, shapes, whether something is moving or staying still, all the sounds, high to low frequency, all the vibrations and things you feel. I just realized my right hand fingers are cold. All of this is taken in by your mind and sorted into importance by the mind and then only what it considers to be important is delivered to the conscious. This is why I often say “You see what you want to see, and you hear what you want to hear”.
Have you ever bought a new car and in driving it home started noticing all the other cars on the road just like yours? This is your mind working. It has realized that this car, make, model, color is important to you and it is pointing out all the ones on the road that fit into that criteria.
I am starting to think that coincidences fit into this realm. Your mind has come to realize that a specific something is important to you and now it is ‘highlighting’ the things in your life that fit that mold. There are other things that are going on in your life that would also be characterized as coincidences but your mind is ignoring them, they do not surface to your conscious level so you can note them as being such. Only the things you are paying attention to in your life will surface.
For example, you are having a problem with your business and have been trying to think of solutions then you meet somebody at a friend’s party that has a solution that would work great for you. If you had not been concerned with a solution in the first place, you would have met this person and probably would have promptly forgotten them even if they mentioned something that would have been great for your business because this was not of prime concern for your mind.
Maybe this is why affirmations or (as I will be explaining on Sunday) afformations work. This is your mind being conditioned into what is important and so you start noticing opportunities.
This leads to another question. Does your mind (or maybe on a spirit level) also twist things to bring you to a solution? Did your mind suggest that you go to that party even though you really didn’t want to? Was that other person persuaded on an energy level by your mind to show up because they had an answer to the problem? I will tackle this tomorrow.
I finished my EFT – Meridian Tapping Surrogate study a couple of months ago and put together my report. It was a fun and interesting experiment. If you are interested in receiving a copy of the report just leave me a comment asking for it and I will send it to you in a pdf file. It is too long to post here.
But I will give a little synopsis of the results as they startled me. I was expecting the hour long sessions to have better results than the five 10-15 minute mini sessions. But the mini sessions showed much greater results. This has prompted me to change up my offerings.
I now offer not just the one hour phone or in person sessions, but also short surrogate sessions. The surrogate sessions may be purchased in 5 minute increments and if you purchase more than one increment you have the option of spreading them out over time. This way, if you have an ongoing problem such as panic attacks or depression, you can receive daily help. The sessions will be recorded and e-mailed to you in mp3 format. I also realize that this is not for everyone so you may try it risk free and if you are not satisfied you may receive your money back and you can still keep the mp3 sessions you received. Check out www.naturallyresilient.com/Services.html to see what is available.
At one point in our life travels, we lived on 68 acres. To keep taxes to a reasonable level, we had goats which allowed us to keep the agriculture exemption for the property.
After losing a goat to a coyote, we bought a Great Pyrenees puppy. We named this white pup “Suzy Que” and called her Suzy for short. When we first brought her home we shoved her into the goat pen and the matriarch did not take kindly to a dog being there and butted her around the pen for a while. But Alice and Suzy soon came to terms.
Suzy was just a puppy and not too sure of what she was there for. We had another goat attacked and killed; at that point Suzy seemed to realize her job. It was like she felt sheepish, hanging her head and thinking “oh, this happened on my watch”. After that she took her job seriously.
One day we came home from the store and Suzy was acting all excited. We did not know why. I got some food out and feed the goats but one held back which was totally unlike any of them. Food was usually of prime importance to them. I took another look and it was Abigail and her rear end was bloody. I think Suzy saved Abigail. Abigail quickly recovered.
There was another day when I went outside and Suzy was acting excited, jumping all over the place. She would then take off to the corner of the property and start barking. After doing this several times, I finally got the hint and went to check it out. There was a small dog sitting in the corner shaking with fear. I told Suzy she did a good job, and then held her back while I opened the gate and let the poor dog out. That poor little dog was so grateful to be out of there, I never did see him again.
Suzy would walk the property line, following the fence every morning and evening and would bark at anything that was not where it should be. One night I had driven our van to the gate and left it there overnight. The next morning, there was Suzy, on the other side of the gate barking at that van. She kept at it until I got tired of hearing her and moved it back to the house where it belonged. All-in-all she was a very good and sweet natured goat dog.