Right now I’m watching “The Golden Compass” with closed captioning on because my own offspring is being very loud. I’m being taken out to see “Iron Man” courtesy of my husband and my own mother who is babysitting.

It’s a nice relaxing day, which is good, we had a similar relaxing time yesterday because we went to a pool party and hung out with some friends and had some fun. It’s nice to have a few days to relax, especially after the stress of my husband coming through surgery.

I hope everyone else is having a nice day. Remember to honor those who have given you life, or those who have raised you, and hold you in their heart.

Working with the local bead shop might not be too hard. I can make some items with their beads and see if they’ll show them, things like that. I might be able to organize tarot night with a few places, but others…not so much. I can send out promotional flyers, but that’s an expense I really don’t have.

The yellow pages seemed like a decent option but with the move and the phone company screwing up my phone transfer I haven’t gotten any hits from the phone book in some time, other than people trying to sell me things or looking for astrologers, or bath supplies (don’t ask).

I think I might benefit from asking some of the small business owners for tips themselves, not only might it be good to help me, but perhaps I can compile some tips into my next article for Tarot World Magazine.

I’m never going to cut chocolate completely out of my diet, so I figure I’m just doomed to have zits. I’m not one to wear make-up it’s too much hassle, so you see me you’re going to see some spots. I pick at them. I know I’m not supposed to. I try not to but some times I just have to. They sit there on my face taunting me. If you just pop me I’ll be gone! Some times it works some times it doesn’t, as with anything that’s a force of nature some times you’re just doomed. I can’t stop the need for using the bathroom, and I can’t stop zits.

I’ve been hearing a lot about this new natural acne treatment and it’s tempting, but I feel like with anything else my zits may well just be too stubborn like me to respond to it. We got our tax return in though so maybe I’ll give it a go.

I’m doing fairly well with other things like my internal detox. I’ve successfully cut back to only one can of soda a day. The rest of the time I’m drinking water. Hopefully now that I’m weaning down the caffeine intake and the sugar intake it won’t hit me as hard as other times when I’ve just tried to cut things out completely. Some people can do “cold turkey”. I’m not one of them. It’s good to know your own limitations.

I had a nice time today communing with nature too. It’s great to have a yard, and to live in a fairly quiet neighborhood. I was putting up fence posts and once I was done I spent some time just lying on my back in the grass staring at the sky and feeling the sun streaming through the trees. It’s very cool. I forgot how good it feels and did a bit of grounding at the same time which was an added bonus.

I’m doing a lot of repairing of parts rather than replacing of wholes, and in our house we’re also running certain things out and replacing them with natural alternatives. I was gratified to find out that my host has been working on lowering their carbon footprint for many years and pride themselves on being eco-friendly. We have energy saving bulbs throughout our house, and I use a steam mop to clean the floors so that I don’t have to use chemicals on the floor, which is good for both the environment and my son and cat.

I’ll talk more about being eco-friendly in a bit, right now I have to do some more things away from the keyboard for a little while.

It’s become apparent that CDs are something that people are really interested in. So I need to find what I did with my new microphone and really start learning how GoldWave works so that I can start doing nifty things with the audio on the CDs and things like that.

There are a lot of factors which can affect your ability to lay down and go to sleep at night comfortably. While bedding is important in many ways, making sure it’s comfortable, clean, not itchy…and so on, something which I found out in hypnotherapy class that can affect your ability to relax is your ceiling fan.

Your ceiling fan?

I kid you not. My hypnotherapy instructor told us that we should be very careful putting ceiling fans in the office or room that we were intending to do hypnotherapy in because one thing which is important for hypnotherapy is maintaining a regular but slightly slow heartbeat of around 60-70 beats per minute. There are quite a few musicians who make CDs with rhythms to help you maintain that, but depending on what setting a ceiling fan is on and in how good of a state of repair it’s in it can really mess with that rhythm, because as you relax your heart is going to try to tune itself to the rhythm of the fan and that will throw off a person’s ability to relax.

So, if you’re finding yourself a little tense at night, you might want to check out your ceiling fan. Couldn’t hurt.

Given today is the celebration of Earth Hour, people are being encouraged to turn their lights OFF during the hours of 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. to conserve energy and show awareness of global conservation efforts.

I’m reading their site right now to see what things I can do to help conserve energy. Before we moved I’d begun switching out all our bulbs to energy efficient ones, but there are all kinds of little things which can be done around the house, very simply in order to help conserve energy.

I’m also sorry that my husband and I both forgot to bring the wine my father in law gave us at Ostara home with us that would be so nice to have right about now. We’re planning our sons second birthday party and I want to do a little dedication ceremony since he’s made it to two and that’s such an important year, the start of really understanding the world and becoming more of a little person instead of just a force of nature. I’d like to anoint him and do the pagan version of the naming ceremony.

I’m sure we can pull something together. We’re good at recycling and scrimping and getting things to work, we did it with our wedding and handfasting and that was a much bigger and more complicated affair.

I find it hard myself to resolve doing certain things, any time that I take twenty minutes just to watch a TV show or play a small portion of a video game I feel hideously guilty but I’m learning that it’s okay to take time for myself that accomplishing a few things on my task list is worth something even if I haven’t completed it all because my sanity and well being are more important overall.

Life is not a race it’s a collection of learning experiences, and happiness is more important than being a huge ball of stressed out goop shuddering in the corner.