Lost: one Mo-Jo. Reward for it's return. With apologies to song writers all over.

If you believe what you read in the papers, and on the 'net' it's apparent there are a lot of doomsday end-o-time kind of people out there.  Books and movies about 2012 - the Mayan year of great change - point towards December 12 2012 - or 121212.  The end of the world as we know it?  Hmm makes me want to put on a Bare Naked Ladies album! Or is it?  In my mind it's more of a march onward through life - as in Hup one two one two one two....

They tell me life is a journey, not a destination.  I so firmly believe that is true! Allow me to wax philosophical for a moment or three: Where a person ends up on the road of life is nothing compared to what one does while on that road.  Which way did you choose - the old straight and narrow or long and winding? And why is this blog full of Beatles lyrics?  Hmmmm points to ponder!

But seriously - and this has been a serious year so far - life can throw even the most ardent traveller a loop just when you think you've recovered from the last crisis.  For example, this year, New Years Eve saw yours truly doing the Joe Cocker imitation of "get by with a little help from my friends".  Let me illucidate.

 For those of you who get all squiggey about personal details, and soul baring pain, maybe today's blog isn't for you. Fair warning.  

The end of the year brought me spasms - not of joy or sorrow, but actual spasms! To be honest the first one was such a surprise I was convinced that it was a stroke! Well, since it was my right side, my menno-logic said noooo it's not a stroke - but what the heck! My arms, toes, fingers, legs and all muscles on the right side contracted for about 2 seconds, no matter the position I was in and making me look like Joe Cocker doing his solo! Very weird! Didn't hurt, but was disturbing for sure for anyone who was with me who hadn't been briefed.  Uhuh.    So off to the doc, the chiro, the massage therapist - only to discover after several dozen vials of blood (ok maybe 4 but I'm a wimp!) that I was low on magnesium! Who knew?? Apparently my fall diet of bread, cookies, meat of all demoninations and noodles didn't have enough of this vital mineral! Enter brocolli, spinach, pumpkins seeds and halibut!  Adding a supplement daily didn't hurt either - so three days after  the culprit was identified, Joe Cocker left the building!

Add that to $1400 worth of firewood magically appearing after two trees blew down during an epic windstorm onto the neighbors house and had to be removed by a licenced tree trimmer (wallet trimmer is more like it) we were a bit in shock! Eeeep that was not in the January budget - but what the heck we can survive! At least our house didn't burn in a massive prairie fire like 5 other folks that day!

All these are minutia compared to the horrible and sudden loss of my youngest step-son this March, m husbands son Bryon.  How awful it is for a father to lose a child - to have to say good bye to a boy who is going to be 30 in two weeks but who will never reach that age.  Who has struggled with diabetes since he was eight, and who, because of not having his breakfast after his shot of insulin, and falling into a sleep he'd never wake from - has been taken from us. 

The pain is so strong.  I think the hardest is watching a spouse who has lost their joy, who's heart is ripped apart every day.  This is where the small issues of day to day life become even smaller.  Who cares that the car isn't washed and the house isn't spotless?  These things are so trivial  and inconsequential in comparison.  But we continue to attend to these chores to keep life normal.

As a wife, I remain as strong as I can - and draw on our faith, family and friends to carry us both through.  As humans we have to deal with our grief, and the grief of those we love.  Yup it's a process, and not a clean and fast one - it's messy and it takes time.  But we don't quit, we don't give up - we trust in our God and keep moving forward.  As they say, life goes on.

Marching as it were, one foot in front of the other, one two one two one two.  And that is how we in our house, and in the houses of sons will make it through this leg of the journey!

Lost passwords - into the Oh Cr@p Zone!

As often as I've wished, nay pined to blog in the early year, alas all efforts have been thwarted.  Terrorist actions? Subterfuge? Alien invaders?  Alas the reason is simple - as simple as I.  Tis age.  Marching onward, my post 50 age has impacted my memory. 

Life was not so complicated in the long long ago - there was no need to memorize and enact several security clearances in the form of a password.  Or secret log in name.  Or super secret code with vague questions to remind you of the now long forgotten secret password.  Questions framed to jog a memory lead to more confusion.  My first teacher? My favorite pet? My first out of country vacation? Why not ask me what was my favorite blankie or first out of body experience? These are all about as meaningful as...well as my password.

And if the selection of the password was my choice, why on earth did I choose something so obscure, so mundane, that no amount of forehead slapping would reveal to me what it was!  I just couldn't recall - and for some unknown reason I hadn't entered my secret password in my super secure vault on my Blackberry!

Now the Blackberry, or BB to those in the know, is a great way to store all your secret passwords.  It's a vault whose gates hide the passwords to my phone, my computer, my bank account, various other bill accounts and my Kobo.  What tho would happen if my super duper secret deluxe password, the one and only that I use to open this repository to all things Marlean were lost in the O Cr@p Zone! THIS WOULD BE A DISASTER OF EPIC PROPORTIONS! So in order for this massive failure not to take place, I have my code of codes, the big secret squirrel one that is forever embedded in my mind.  And so far - it works!

Unless you get into the safe deposit of all things password-related and can't remember that damn password.  Which eventually I did - after using a variety of combinations of names, places, numbers and upper/lower case.  Phew!

The reward dear reader is my ability to re-enter the sacred world of the blog - that calm, clean, undemanding place where I am able to blather at leisure on topics that range far and wide.  From my pet cat to pinterest...it's all here waiting to be let out, released as it were with the one secret password to my life.

Thank you my friends! Good evening.....