Beep! Ring! Buzz.

I really like a quiet life. I think I am very sensitive to the noise of the world. I love Bowen Island for many reasons, one being, it’s quiet here. (Except for chainsaws and leaf blowers on weekends) NYC is my dream town for about 10 days, but the constant noise is the one big drawback.

Then, there are sounds that are meant to warn us of danger. Sounds that are meant to draw our attention. I know each time you hear a car alarm go off, you probably call the police right away. Oh, wait, no one never summons the police for car alarms. Car alarms just piss people off. So do barking dogs for the most part.

But smoke detectors — when they go off — we pay attention. The smoke detector in our house, tends to go off when I cook. Probably because I just set a pot holder on fire again. Knock wood we’ve never had a serious fire where we counted on the smoke detector to save our lives, but, like insurance, you gotta have it, just in case.

Once a year the smoke detector makes the beep beep sound and we change the batteries.

Unlike car alarms and barking dogs, we pay attention to the smoke alarm. Until…. this last week.

For some strange reason our smoke detector started going off at the oddest hours. And it wasn’t the beep beep of check the battery beep — it was the full on siren of a full on warning. Ken checked and changed the batteries. Still, the detector went off. When this would happened, just as we started to deal with it, it would stop. Hmmmmm.

Then the darn thing started going off in the afternoon, then again a few hours later, a few times around 2 a.m. Not everyday mind you, just sometimes. We checked it – nothing seemed wrong.

We started to ignore it as a minor annoyance.

Then once, I was standing right by the smoke detector when it went off. The sound didn’t come from it. WTF? Something else in the house that sounds a lot like a smoke detector going off, but isn’t a smoke detector going off, is going off!

Secretly I hoped it wouldn’t go off when some realtor is showing prospective buyers the house. That wouldn’t be a great selling point. ☺

We heard the screeching roar, again last night around 3:30 a.m. Ken and I both ignored it, rolled over and went back to sleep. Neither of us considered ourselves in danger.

So, what good is a warning if we ignore it? We decided we had to get to the bottom of it.

Ken went exploring.

We don’t go in the basement much. There is no reason, we live upstairs. But, Ken was on a mission. Sure enough, he found the culprit. There was an old detector sitting on the counter in the kitchen downstairs, blaring away. Mystery solved, but I see how easy it was for us to become used to, even comfortable with, a strange and loud, alarming noise.

Maybe now, we will go back to paying attention to the things that go bump in the night.

Master rant alert.

In the martial arts it is a big deal to be called a Master. It means you’ve not only put in serious time, but that you know your stuff.

Most of the old Chinese guys in the Internal Arts are called Master out of respect. But, since the internal arts don’t have belt or promotion recognition, how are we ever to know who really is a Master and who isn’t? Basically, old, Chinese and male gets the title. A few old, Chinese women do too, but they had to be quite humble in receiving it as well as protest a bit at first.

But, what if you are a middle aged, white woman? Okay, what if you are a middle aged white woman with 30 plus years of training and you know your stuff?

You wouldn’t think she would have to defend or deny the title. And yet…

It takes four years to get a degree from university, and then another year in graduate school to get your “masters”. So you would think after a decade or two of serious training, never mind three or four decades… it is pretty much a given. And yet, a Tai Chi teacher uses the M word in a bio or on a web page, and all hell breaks loose.

“Who do you think you are?” shouts a stranger. “Master? Prove it!” “How dare you!”

I mean really.

I took a 60 hour gardening course back in the 80s. I was given the title of Master Gardener. I hardly knew the difference between an elm and an ash tree at the time, much less a lichen and a moss. Still, I had the badge and certificate, and people turned to me for answers. Thankfully today we have the Google and I’m off the hook in the garden. What I’m getting at is that I didn’t know very much on the subject, yet held the title. Why can’t someone with some serious backup not be able to claim her work?

So anyway — why the uneasiness about Mastery in Tai Chi?

Yesterday, I followed a huge kuffulle about a tai chi teacher who dare advertise her self as a Master.

For crying out loud. The woman has put in more training hours and personal study than a Phd. with tenure.

Her on the job experience is unbelievable, teaching 10 – 20 classes a week. She travels to train, and to teach, she brings in other teachers for her students benefit. She continues her journey in earnest, and some bozo, gets all huffy about the fact that she dare, use the title Master in her advertising.

For crying out loud! Move on.

Despite her training, time in the art, and knowledge of her subject, what I saw yesterday demonstrated her true mastery in the martial arts and why I won’t ever hesitate to call her Master.

In the storm — she stood. True Mastery at its best.

I salute.

People ask if we are selling our house. In my compassionate smart ass way, I answer with, “No, but we do have a sign in the yard.”

Our house is on the market. We do want to sell. We have had quite a few showings, and even one offer that we turned down. We were just too far apart, the volley would have been silly.

Ken and I are not fans of the real estate game, and make no mistake, it is a game.

We have a big, green house in Tunstall Bay, on Bowen Island. We do not have granite counter tops or stainless appliances. The house has 5 bathrooms, a training room and a shop. It sits on one acre of somewhat flat land. Our asking price is $549,000.00. We came to that price with our realtor.

Now, we know, the value of anything, is the price someone is willing to give you, not the price you are set on receiving. That being said, Ken and I have a bottom line number and there is wiggle room. Also, we are in the wonderful position of not having to sell or settle. We do not have to take what is offered. We can wait and waiting on Bowen Island is not a hardship.

I find we may be a bit too unwilling to deal faced with the game and the back and forth, blah, blah of house buying / selling. This is not a secret.

We had a terrible experience selling our house in Oregon; we do not want a repeat of that fiasco. Long story short — Ken tore up the contract, in the bosses office, after we were asked to sign off on addendum H. That contract had gone back and forth eight times, each time asking us to change the house. The problem was that what we were selling in Oregon was a small blue cottage. What the buyer wanted, was a large red farm house. They wanted what we didn’t have. This was not possible. In the end, it worked out horribly, with nobody was thrilled with the deal.

This is the game I loath and Ken and I doubt we will play it again.

We thrive in simple reality. Our life is good as it is. Our house is not fancy, but it is warm and comfortable and well built.
I’m sure someone will want what we have. We are willing to wait for them —hence, the sign is still in the yard.

A beautiful day on Bowen. I started my walk and continue with the Snap Judgement podcast binge I’ve been on for a week or so in my ears.

Twenty minutes into the walk, I usually stop at Lot 1 at the Cape. I take in the view and do a few lines of guanqifa. This morning the inconvenience of a tent and small pickup truck were set up in MY space!

No problem, there are 58 lots at the cape, all with incredible views, and only a few have zillion dollar houses (or tents) on them. I move on.

The place I walk to next does not have a lot number on it, but the driveway in is newly paved. The cleared lot is flat and the view overlooks trees below. I can see the ocean, but it could be the sky for the colour. It is a lovely spot, but my favourite is still Lot 1.

I turn off the podcast, put down my walking poles and take a stand.

“Please raise my hands… [I talk to myself] … From this new day, new chance and new opportunity…” I bring pure and clean and allow it to enter… I lower my hands and begin to feel the juju wash. As my mind gets to my feet — pass my shoes and into the rock… I realize this is new territory.

This sound weird as I write it, but, it really felt odd. The ground below me felt like a tight muscle thats needs a good massage to warm it up.

The rock below is not accepting much. I raise my hands again. The second path down through my core, goes a bit deeper. Still, the rock doesn’t accept my “impurities” as my usual practice spots do.

As I raise my hands a third time, I remember a lesson Korguer taught me years ago. “Don’t push the qi — allow it and if necessary, dig a trench a little in front of it. Give it a path.” He said sometimes we have to provide the room for movement.

The third path of guanqifa is more fascinating to me than habitual.

There are several places in the world where I raise my hands and allow impurities to pour out. It’s been a while since I’ve been to a place with no trench in place.

I always say Qigong is not about woo-woo. Todays practice reminded me never to take the juju for granted.

Spidey sense is derived from the comic book superhero Spiderman. It is generally used to mean a vague but strong sense of something being wrong or dangerous.

Spider bites are at the best wrong and at their worst — dangerous.

I don’t read comic books and the closest I’ve been to anything Spiderman was the ride at Disney World in Orlando and that scared the hell out of me! That being said, I’m hoping that Kens recent interaction with a spider, leaves him with super powers when all the poison finally moves out.

Please raise your hands; bring in the pure and clean, and send love and sympathy to the poor boy.

Ken told me that to make anything a real adventure, there has to be an element of risk involved. So, although I will say yesterday’s events were quite adventurous, I never felt any real risk, yet the opportunity for risk surrounded me.

I was looking forward to a day at the sewing machine. I have some presents I want to make with fabric I bought (yes, I bought fabric) on our trip to Oregon. Marian had called earlier asking if we could dog sit Moser, as she and her niece Ona were going to town.

When she dropped off the pup, I asked her where they was going. She said they were going to a giant Japanese dollar store  in Richmond.

I said I wanted to go.

We were shooting for the next ferry, so I quickly changed my clothes, put shoes on, turned off the sewing machine and unplugged the iron… We went tooling off island.

It took us 2 hours to get to this place in Richmond. I’m not going to say anything about Marian’s driving, because we did get there, and I am always grateful when others drive. The ride was in some part also what made the day an adventure. Still, I had no idea what we were in store for.

The place we went to is called DIASO. It’s in a mall like no other I’ve ever seen. I felt like I landed on another planet. At the centre of the three storey mall by a fountain, were huge mechanical bugs! Bugs! Grasshoppers, mosquitoes, and flies that were 20 feet long and munching on stuff as they wagged their tails or fluttered their wings, with coloured water from the fountains spraying swirls high into the air. I cannot over emphasize the weirdness of this place. Too bad I didn’t bring a camera.

Marian told me that DIASO is FULL of plastic, bright colours and cheap shit. She was right. Everywhere was stuff, Japanese stuff with Japanese packaging, bright, funny and totally bazaar. DIASO carries household goods, clothing, snacks, stationary, containers, cleaning stuff, cooking stuff, fake stuff and more. There were two floors full of people with carts, bumping into each other, and spending money.

Everything in the store was two dollars. This made a few things a real deal, but in my opinion, most everything was totally over priced.

I’m not a serious shopper. In fact, I don’t care for shopping all that much. I do like going to a new place and looking around, picking things up and putting them down and then moving on. DIASO was overwhelming. I would stand in an aisle, shoulder to shoulder with someone, looking at plastic containers, thinking they would be great for the van. Then change my mind, because I would see something that would be even better! Then I’d have to decide on blue, pink, green or orange, small, medium or large.

My biggest fear was that Ona and Marian would lose me in the store and I would never be seen again.

I did spend a whopping $8. though on some containers for the van.

Marian and Ona spent a bit more with Marian splurging on art supplies and loads of fake flowers.

We found a place to recover, ate some noodles and onion pancakes, then started for home. It was near 8pm when I walked in the door. It was a fun, stimulating, long day, with wonderful women, in a very weird place.

Maybe we didn’t have an adventure, but we certainly had an experience.

We are home from a great trip.

The van was terrific and I look forward to many more road trips with Ken. I’m getting used to camping, as long as every once in a while we find a place with wi-fi, so I can check in with friends.

We had very few plans on this last adventure. We knew we wanted to see several old friends and we did. There were also several friends we did not connect with and I’m sorry for that. I hope we will try again soon.

The first part of the trip was spent camping out in the driveways of friends. Some of these folks had notice we were coming and others didn’t. The next half of the trip was just me and Ken and pretty places.

We drove the 101 up the Oregon coast and pulled over to look at the sights whenever we wanted to. We stopped at farm stands. We ate blueberries and cherries, one right after the other. With my feet on the dash, windows rolled down, we spit cherry pits into the wilds and sang the songs in our heads out loud. And we did that thing old people do… we read out loud every friggen sign we saw.

“Kevin’s Tire Store, View point ahead. Best Mexican Food Ever, State Park Fee Area, and on and on.

Ken did all the driving. I told him where and when to turn. He always said, between the two of us, we make one hell of a driver.

On the 9th day I said I was ready to go home. We were going to stay longer, but something in me was just done. I know now what that was. (My qigong is very good.)

When we got home there was a message on our phone. I was surprised to hear not the message, but the news that all messages are deleted in 10 days, and that two messages would be deleted the next day.

Messages not heard. I didn’t know this feature of our phone system and am glad to know it now. One of the messages that had one more day in the machine before disappearing was from Nancy Lee at the Bowen General Store. She said she might have the necklace I lost several weeks ago. I got pretty excited and was ready to jump back in the car and head for the store. Ken said I might want to call to be sure it was still there — after all it had been 9 days since she called and I never spoke up, it might be gone. I called. Nancy wasn’t working and wouldn’t be in until today, Monday. The other clerks had no idea what I was talking about. I called Nancy at home. We played phone tag leaving messages and waiting until Monday to know seemed to be what would happen.

Patience, being my strong suit, I went to the store Sunday morning. Sure enough taped to the shelf by the smokes, in a plastic bag was my pendant! My heart leapt. Saying I’m okay with loss is one thing, being tested is another.

This morning I went to the General Store, after stopping at Cocoa West and buying a big box of chocolates. I saw Nancy, gave her the chocolates and a huge hug. She said she found the necklace on the floor of the store, but no chain. She thought maybe the diamonds were real. 🙂 As were the rubies, pearls and emeralds.

Nancy said she was glad I posted the loss on the Bowen Island Forum and she was glad it came back to me.

I’m glad too.

Woke up this morning in Newberg, OR. We’re at Franks house, high up on a mountain top.

We’ve know Frank for close to 25 years. I was super good friends with his wife Linda. She died a few years ago. The last time I was in this house, she was sick, but she was here. Now, she is dead, yet in a warm and wonderful way, still here. We tell stories that all begin with, “Remember when…”

It’s so good.

I wake early as usual, sit on the deck, with a view of the world. I watch hot air balloons drift by and I remember even more.

Invest in loss. That has always been such a puzzle to the tai chi player.

At times in my training I have used it as a great lesson when I got pushed over playing with someone that I did not want to get push over by!  I humbly thought to myself when losing my balance and ego, “Invest in loss.” I’m pretty sure this isn’t the lesson!

There are other answers to this mystery, and to tell the truth I never really under stood any them well. But I willing apply it when I struggle with the idea of loss.

Side note – I have never used this principle or saying when I’ve experienced a love one die. Never.

I have used it when my computer crashed and years of photos and writings were lost.

I liken it— to having a house burn down — gone. Thankfully we are safe and it is just stuff.

Just stuff. Anna gave me a fridge magnet once that said, “The best things in life are not things!” I wholeheartedly agree. And, that being said, stuff maybe stuff, but sometimes stuff is special stuff. It may still be a thing, but it holds a  memory and a meaning. I attach to a few things and place emotional and sometime financial value to them. The money part is easier for me to overlook somehow, but I am triggered with memory through some things.

I lost such a thing this last week. I am heart broken over it and continue to placate myself with “stuff is just stuff” and “invest in loss.” It isn’t working very well yet.

The hardest part of losing this necklace is … well, one of the hardest, is that I don’t know how or when I lost it. If I had seen it go down the drain or felt the chain break from around my neck, or saw someone make off with it— if I saw it go… I think I could handle the loss easier. Instead I feel like I will forever be looking for it.

If you find it, please let me know.

I am going to say something all women know and very few men do.

If there is a men’s washroom and a women’s washroom, and there is a line for the women, women WILL use the men’s room.

I’m not talking about locker room style washrooms, with troughs of urinals. I mean the single seaters at malls, restaurants and stores. The washrooms with locks on the door.

Yesterday I was in town. It was a cooking hot day. I was one of five women standing in line waiting to use one of two washrooms at a grocery store. It just so happen that these particular washrooms were co-ed. Meaning they had all the graphic icons on the door.

As we were waiting, which is nothing new to women at public washrooms, a young man, maybe 20 – 25 years old, breezed past us all, and tried to push in the locked door of one of the washrooms.

At first he was quite surprised by the fact that the door was locked, and then by the fact that 5 women, at about the same time, told him to get in line.

He looked at us all and exclaimed, “You mean there isn’t a men’s room here?”

Now, usually I’m the one that speaks up, but I didn’t because the woman next to me said, “What is here, is a line.” And another woman said, “Funny, how men just aren’t used to waiting.”

We all smiled to each other and none of us were surprised when the young man left — I guess he didn’t really have to go, as he did not get in line and wait with us.

I’m writing this because, 1. I’m always thinking of topics for this bloggy thing. And 2. I haven’t seen such arrogance up close and personal in a really long time.

#Yesallwomen and to cover my base #notallmen