F is for Friday! Not MY Friday as in the day before two days off, but Friday nonetheless. Good Friday at that. A very Christian day. But when the early Christian forefather's were busy replacing all 'pagan' holidays with Christian ones, for some reason they seem to have left the days of the week alone. Did the people protest? "Come on, you're changing the name of our feast days, at least leave the names of the days themselves alone! For crying out loud, all this religious correctness!" Friday is named after the Scandinavian chief god's(yes, a pagan god) wife, Frigg. Or, alternatively, after the Scandinavian love goddess Freyja. As Friday in the latin countries is associated and named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty, it seems the western European countries also wanted to name that day after a goddess of love, but perhaps because they had been infiltrated by the Northmen and they didn't want to be like the Romans, they chose to use the Scandinavian version of the love goddess. Frigg...wife of Odin...blessed with the gift of prophecy but since she is mum about her foresight, how does anyone know if she really has the gift of prophecy or not? Does she just say to Odin "I knew that would happen, I just didn't tell you". One of her qualities is said to be the ability to get her own way, even as she lets her husband think he is in charge. Frigg (or Frigga) is the only one who is allowed to sit on Odin's high throne and look out over the universe, or perhaps it is the other way around? She lets Odin sit upon her throne and lets him think it is his? Anyway, Thank God it is Frigg's Day!

E is for EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

E is for Echo

as children we would climb the hill
to call across the valley green
to our neighbor whom we'd never seen
Hello Echo we would call
she always answered, never shy
then down the hill we would fly
our feet rushing along so fast we could not stop
does Echo still live across the way
I do not know, I've moved away

D is for Dreams Do you ever feel like you are alive in your dreams? Alive in some other place? Like it is just as real as your waking life? If we really do exist in another place and time in our dreams, what happens when we 'wake up'? Are we still there in the other place, but just not conscious of being there? Or do we disappear and if so, what about the other people in our dream world? Do they say 'what happened to so and so, they just disappeared?' Or do we fall asleep in our other 'life'? 'Narcolepsy, she must have narcolepsy. She is always falling asleep and it takes forever to wake her up again, so just let her sleep. She usually sleeps about sixteen hours.' Of course we almost always return to a different time and place in our dreams, usually with different people. The logistics just aren't logical. Still, our dreams seem so real. Sometimes they come true. Once I dreamed that a chicken I had was killed by a dog. Three weeks later she was killed by a dog. None of our chickens had been killed by a dog in years. The chicken was more than ten years old when she met her end. A very long life for a chicken. The other night I was driving on gravel roads in my dreams. I had to go down this virtually straight up and down slope. I wasn't afraid because I knew I had done this before and I knew that as long as I kept going down at a certain speed and kept the car straight, I would be okay. Hope that dream does not occur, although I guess I've been practicing in my sleep and as long as the happy ending part comes out okay, I won't mind so much. What did it mean? That things are going downhill....but it's going to be okay? AAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

C is for...Chickens. All of that mass multitude of feathered souls. Yes, souls. Look in a chickens eye, or any birds eye, there is SOMEONE IN THERE. They tend to recognize others by eye contact. They may not have lips or hands, but they speak with a multitude of sounds and use their beak or feet to accomplish what is needed. If you get on the wrong side of a chicken (most likely a rooster protecting his hens), he will recognize you and you should make a wide circle around him, especially if it is spring or summer and his protective instincts are high. Most roosters are friendly, though, just don't get in a crowing competition with them, as they may start to suspect you might be another rooster in disguise. Listen to their sounds. They have different sounds for happiness, fear, anger, and complaint. They are very vocal. Inside those feathers is an emotional being, not an egg factory. Chickens come in all shapes and sizes, some with interesting 'hairdos', some with 'beards', some with 'ear muffs', and some with feathers on their scaly legs. At the turn of the 19th century, there were many poultry exhibitions. More than a hundred years later, poultry are coming back in popularity as pets as well as layers of eggs. Next time you see a chicken, look them in the eye and you will find that they look back.

B is for ....Barnstorming! We look back at barnstorming in a romantic adventurous sense, but how was it welcomed at that time? Certainly many were amazed at the airplanes and the pilots with their daredevil stunts. On the other hand, how many farmers were outraged to have an airplane fly over their barn? Did the farm animals stampede? Did the milk cows dry up? Did the hens quit laying for a week? Did the horses scatter to parts unknown and take hours of searching to locate? Were there anti barnstorming movements? How many barns were demolished? How many people were injured when their horse bolted or a herd of cows ran them over? In this day and age, I don't think farmers would take kindly to a noisy strange flying contraption flying as low as possible over their barn. Did any barnstormers get shot at? Did they always call ahead beforehand and get permission to storm a barn? Just random thoughts about on B for barnstorming!

A is for April.

Always seems to me as a month of woes.

My mother died in April when I was twenty. I always had thought I could never live
if one of my parents died, but I did.

Here I am seven years younger than my mother when she died. Like her, I have three children, one
of them born later in my life. The two eldest are even both Scorpios, just like my mother's two eldest.

Will my life be similar to hers in other ways? Will I die in my fifties?

My resolution to avoid death:  never go into the hospital.