"Sleepwalk" This page is about Snowy Owlet, AKA Owlet and Strictly Taboo It All Depends on the Time and Place! My name is Paula. I am a traveller in time and space. I am a "stay at home mom". I went back to college and got my degree a few years ago, but after four years on the job, I have come to my senses. I have always enjoyed taking care of my family and home, and for more than ten years since I went to school and worked, the house suffered, the family suffered and Uncle Sam got the benefits! If you work outside of your home, you know just what I mean. You just play keep up with the laundry and dishes... and have very little left over at the end of the day to offer except a quickly thrown together meal and a brief "how was your day?" I am one of the fortunate few who can choose whether or not to be at home, my husband likes me to be at home and by careful managing, we can make it. So many women have not that luxury. It will mean some cutbacks, especially since some of the current bills are a direct result of my education and working expenses... Do you realize what it costs to keep clothes fit for public consumption? I added up all the costs involved in my working, and it turned out that after taxes, travel, clothes and the increased cost of food, due to so many quick meals, my contribution amounted to around a hundred dollars a week. It isn't worth it! So I am doing the "back to the land" thing we started out doing twenty five years ago. Baking honey wheat bread, I have a wonderfully rich recipe for whole wheat bread.. Tastes like Cake! and planting flowers, growing my violets and vacuuming and dusting and doing all the mundane things which I neglected for these ten years. And, above all, I am loving it! There is no doubt of that. My special totem is the Great Horned Owl. I am birthmarked with its symbol. The Wolf also holds a special place in my heart. One of my first memories is of a picture hanging on my grandmother's bedroom wall. For some reason I never knew, she had cut it from a magazine and framed it. It was a dark colored, wolf standing alone on a snow covered cliff overlooking a small town. It is a night scene and the moon is visible through the clouds. It was a very small picture, about 3 x 4 inches in size, but the memory of it is as vivid as if I had it with me now. I don't know what happened to it after my grandmother died, but it is a treasure from my childhood memories. I turned 52 New Years' Eve 2000. December is a full month for our family. My husband and I had our thirty-third wedding anniversary on the 18th, then Christmas, followed by my birthday on New Year's Eve. We tend to celebrate them all at once. By the time we all get together in the same house, we are our own party. We have seven children, ranging in age from 31 to 17. Hank 31, Jeanne 30, Rachel 26, Matt 23, Andrea 21, Michelle 19 and Brian , 17. Hank and his ex-wife, Julienne have three children, Stephanie 9, our angel baby Stephen, who would have been 11 this spring, and Sean, 5. Hank married a lovely young woman, Cynthia and they have her two boys, Bobby and Taylor. Julie and her new husband are living out East with Stephanie and Sean and her husbands son DJ. Rachel and her husband, Joel have Sarah, who is three and Tova who was one last October. Rachel will graduate from Graduate School in Illinois this Spring, after which it will be her husband's turn to work toward his. He is a Sculptor by Vocation and has sold several of his pieces. Hopefully, he will get his chance to work more with his art as time goes on. Jeanne and her husband, Stephen have been married three years now. They live near us and are praying for children soon. I am sure such a prayer for them would be appreciated. Matt and Rosie have Nathaniel Lee, he was two on Valentines Day, and Eric who is still shiny new, born in October, 2000. They are living in our old farmhouse, until they can build one of their own. Andrea tripped up to Michigan two years ago to prepare to enter college there in the fall, and promptly fell in love with a terrific fellow named Brendan. They had their official wedding last May. Michelle is attending college part time and working. And Brian is finishing up his senior year of high school. Although he doesn't like to hear me say it, is our resident computer expert. He is pretty good for only having had access to a computer for a couple of years. All of them are generous, loving souls. We are thankful that our children and their spouses are all so compatible and loving. Happy Winter from The Widows Web My husband and I met in college. Then we did what all parents don't want.... we dropped out and got married. We have never regretted the decision. Fortunately, we somehow had the right mixture and the thing "took". I did go back to college a few years ago, after a 24 year "vacation" to raise the kids. I graduated a few years ago with an accounting degree. My husband is self-employed as a custom home builder. He's very good at it, too, so if you want a beautiful home built... well you might get on his waiting list, if you ask. He finished our first hew home a little over a year ago and we are enjoying the space and airyness that was missing for years in the old house. I am employed part-time as bookkeeper-secretary for our church. Life has been a pretty good trip so far and I'm glad I came along for the ride. I love to read.....almost any kind of books. I especially enjoy fantasy novels. I am also very interested in spiritual journeys. I have read a wide variety of authors of several spiritual persuasions....from Fulton Sheen to Edgar Cayce to Tagore to Deepak Chopra. I enjoy most kinds of music, as a child of the 60's, rock and roll is on top of the list, but I also listen to light classics, Yanni, Enya, music from the teen years of my children and bits of music I heard in my childhood reflecting my Mother's musical tastes. Rap is (to my mind) non-music and I don't much care for most of it. I also enjoy some country.. Colin Raye is a favorite of mine, Mary Chapin Carpenter, K T Oslin... I don't much care for jazz or blues either, so if you do like these kinds of music, go for it!!! Enjoy! That is one of the rights we have in this country.. make up your own mind, enjoy your life. If someone else doesn't share your tastes, that is their right too.... as long as you aren't doing harm with your tastes! A special belief of mine is that we are here to learn and share with our sisters and brothers what we are able. That sharing is, of course, tempered by the possiblilty that our sisters and brothers may not be ready to share some of the insights or beliefs we have discovered. We are all spiritual travelers and each is stepping into the stream of life at a different point in time and space. The family is split about evenly on my strange ideas. It isn't a bone of contention, just "oh, you know how Mom is" We are necessarily different and this difference is just one more way to grow and learn. One of my greatest faults is my Intolerance of Intolerance!!! There are just so many wonderful things about life and about other beings. We all have the same basic needs and desires. We all bleed when cut and cry when sad and laugh when happy. Religious, Racial, Ethnic, Gender... or any other of the artificial divisions of life style are not sub classes... they are personal choices, and happenstance. I don't want to be judged only by my color or religion or sex.. and I refuse to judge others by those standards. Indeed... I believe we do not have the right to stand in judgment of others. I have always been a seeker of knowledge. Over the years, I have spent a lot of time gleaning tidbits of wisdom from where ever I could find them. I believe in taking unto oneself all that is useful for growth, and leaving those bits which do not apply. Thank you, Gina I believe the adage, "and it harm none, do as ye will" In my pages I have placed a disclaimer. I am sure somewhere in these pages at one time or another I will use someone elses thoughts and words. I have not done so to pass them off as my own, but to share them for the richness they hold. I am immeasurably grateful to the people upon whose shoulders I stand to see the horizon. I am terrible at remembering where I picked up some of these informational jewels, I do try to make note of where and who credit may not have been given every time, but my heart is full of thanks for the gift. I mean no harm in offering these ideas, I hope perhaps others will find them enriching. as I have. Welcome to all who wish to share their experiences and feelings about the moments and travels through life which they have had. Together we may discover some new land. Every person has knowledge and experience to share, and so each of us becomes richer when we make new friends. Please take a moment to mail me your thoughts, or sign my guestbook. Sometimes in the birthing pangs of life, we come across someone who eases the hurt and smooths the feathers. A word here... a touch there...that is all it takes to get us over some of the bumps in life. There have been people who touched my life during the darkest times who, in sometimes socially unaccepted ways, have gotten me through the potholes in one piece and relatively unbruised. Though they may never know who they are, they made a difference. We can never know how many lives we have affected in our lifetime, but we can be sure it will be many. The solution is to be aware that we ARE affecting people every day, usually in small,unknown ways. My stories are part fantasy, part therapy, and part fact. They also were a means to get through some tough times. I have been told I'm full of strange ideas and beliefs, but I have found other people who share some of those beliefs. Maybe I'm not so strange after all. I always wanted to be a writer. So why didn't I do it? Maybe, like Grandma Moses, I am a late bloomer, or maybe just a dreamer. Whatever, like the millions of others, I have found a forte to express myself here in the "Web". Being a little on the dominant side, I am often pointedly brief. There is so little time to learn and do all the things available, I am often impatient with "time wasters". That is a thing I need to work on, along with a few thousand other things. I think maybe this is enough of an introduction for now..Kinda long for a pointedly brief person...LOL. It does seem to ramble a bit. I've found so many interesting places to visit full of so many interesting ideas and interesting people. Finally have realized that it will take a long time to even touch the surface of all the richness lying within reach in this lifetime. No one could possibly absorb it all in one lifetime. But, I plan on making a good try!