I May Have Gone off the Cliff.

I was at Ross yesterday with the specific intention of buying new sheets for our bed.  Any time I'm upstairs in the particular Ross I go to I have to look around and see what's on the clearance racks, or on the baking/cooking aisle.  A lot of times I leave with cutesy cupcake pans featuring shapes such as Easter eggs or hearts.  This time I managed to avoid the baking/cooking paraphernalia and headed straight to the clearance rack.  On the way there I was side-tracked by a shelf of journals; I've been looking for a new journal for a while now.  These journals happened to have religious quotes on them, and I happened to leave the store with one that said, "Nature is the art or God," or something along those lines.  I also acquired the specific sheets I was looking for and a pizza pan/serving stand set.  All for around $65.  The journal accounted for $4 of that.
I was excited to bring the journal home, intending it to be a prayer journal my husband and I could use together.

I haven't written in it yet.
Or told hubby what it is for.

In an interesting series of non-events my mood changed (pretty rapidly) from chipper to sulky.  And then to angry.  And then I cried.  And then I was back to angry because nothing had happened to provoke any of it.
So after trying to calm myself down with my nightly yoga - which worked until I was finished with the yoga - I went to bed and fell asleep.
That is why I didn't tell hubby what the journal is for; I'm apparently losing control of my emotions.  It turns out that that is quite distracting.

I do like the idea of the prayer journal.  Although sometimes I think I'll feel weird when I'm writing in it, but I won't be able to tell until I actually make an entry.

~~~

I read a book about intuitive communication at work: the security guard produces books for me to read when I tell her I'm bored.  These books are always books that I would never pick up myself, so it's interesting to read them.
At any rate.
This book was about intuitively communicating with animals.  Or, being an animal whisperer.  I started off really skeptical, wavering pretty sharply between the idea that it was possible and totally dismissing it.  Then I read more, and more.  And by the last quarter of the book I was convinced of most of it.  There are still things that I doubt, but through curiously trying the exercises outlined in the book (it was sort of an instructional work) and actually having a fairly high success rate, I'm pretty convinced this is real.
Actually doing this is a lot like praying, except it feels different.  I realized around page 85 that intuitive communication with animals is almost synonymous with praying to God.
The basic idea is you talk to the animal as if you know they can understand you and respond themselves.  When you pray, you talk to God as if you know he is listening and will respond in a way he sees fit.  The difference here is you don't pray to the animals, you have a two-way conversation with them (once you've gotten good at receiving information).
I tried this with my cat Vincent before the convention at the beginning of March.  My roommate had been gone all day and her cats had been locked up for that time in her room, with no litter box.  Vincent usually follows me downstairs if I go - especially if I open her door to let the cats out for any reason - and the three of them don't get along.  If he was going to follow me, there would be no litter-boxing for Caspian or Sphynx.  So I stopped and patted Vincent for a second, then told him that I would appreciate it if he stayed upstairs while I let the other two out to use their litter box.  I went downstairs and Leeloo followed me, so there was no litter-boxing anyway, but Vincent stayed at the top of the stairs like I had asked.
I have several stories similar to this, and I know that to an outside perspective it sounds like coincidence, but it's interesting to see the change in behavior if you just speak to your animal the way you would speak to a person.

I got a little off topic there.  Ahem..
I meant to say that the book made me sad when I finished it.  We're so disconnected from nature now, and I think it causes more problems than we realize.  Nature really is God's art, and we should really take more time to appreciate it in my opinion.
Which is why the article in the Post about the Lorax made me want to laugh, cry, and punch someone simultaneously.  The article was about how the movie the Lorax was creating "Occu-babies."  By teaching children to appreciate nature it was somehow anti-progressive.  I haven't seen it myself, and I didn't read the whole article - just enough to figure out what "Occu-babies" meant - but I'm pretty sure some appreciation for nature couldn't hurt.