pamkirst2014 posted: " If you have been all work and no play, the squirrel is here to teach you about balance. Angelnumber.org "Squirrel---Dream Meaning and Symbolism" I read about people---I even KNOW people---who have spirit animals visit them i"
If you have been all work and no play, the squirrel is here to teach you about balance.
Angelnumber.org "Squirrel---Dream Meaning and Symbolism"
I read about people---I even KNOW people---who have spirit animals visit them in dreams. The dreamer might be flying, for instance, on the broad, muscular back of a hawk, surveying the world from on high, soaring, power-filled.
Or they could be prowling, pad-footed, and realize that they are inhabiting the body of a tiger.
Or they are gliding, almost ripple-free, on the surface of a small, still lake: a swan, beautiful, graceful---and dangerous, if crossed.
Those are such powerful, emblematic animals, such strong message-bearers.
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Huh. Here is my dream.
I am beginning teaching at a college, the college where I went to school, the first place I taught post-secondary classes. The campus has changed, of course, and the building I will teach in is brick, long and low. It looks like an elementary school building.
For two or three days before classes begin, I meet a mentor (a person I can almost see; a person whose voice I surely recognize. But when I try, on waking, to summon her face, it will not come) outside the building. We sit at a picnic table and talk about the class I am going to teach, about the students I will be meeting.
And each time we meet, a fat squirrel jumps, chittering, onto the picnic table. I make eye contact, and I talk to it, sweet and low and soothing. I don't want a squirrel-friendship, though; mostly I want it to go away.
The first day of classes arrives, and I arrive, too---early, laden, trailing loose papers, going over lectures in my mind. The door of the building is locked. I stop to fumble for my keys, and, as I do, the squirrel appears. It runs across the lawn and it leaps, attaching its sharp little claws to my heathery blue sweater.
"You can't come in!" I tell it, and it chitters at me, urgently.
To get it off, I have to drop all my class materials, and pluck it from my arm. It waves its little arms at me, begging.
I stand in a puddle of papers and coursework, arguing with a fat gray squirrel, and then I wake up.
Seriously? I think. I get a squirrel????
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Of course, I look it up: what does dreaming of a squirrel mean?
Angelnumber.org tells me this:
"[A squirrel] is a symbol of agility, action, balance, activity, resourcefulness, responsibility, caring for the future, preparedness, awareness, adaptability, gathering, energy, playfulness, life, planning, organization, joy, happiness, socializing…
"It's clearly seen," the site tells me, "that the squirrel carries favorable omens."
And then it mentions that perhaps the squirrel has arrived to teach me about balance.
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Eric has us working with resistance bands in his core/strength classes. And as long as effort and determination are the key factors in an exercise, I feel like I can really keep up. But I dread using the short band, sliding it up above my knees.
First, we do lunges, side steps, V-steps…and that's all fine. But then Eric says, "Okay, balance on one foot; other foot in front."
And no amount of determination makes me succeed at this, especially at balancing on my left foot.
I lift my right foot in front of my left, toe pointed, and I wobble. I flail my arms, and I splay my left toes, looking for the sturdy, safe, balanced spot that should be, I think, provided by the pricey, roomy toe-box of my Orthofeet shoes. I do not find it.
My right foot hits the floor.
Up again: wobble. Wobble. Flail. Wobble. And I am forced to recall that my gym teacher, in high school, dubbed me 'Amazing Grace.'
I fare a little better on my right foot, but clearly: balance is an issue.
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Oh, and here's a lifelong quest, one yet to be completed: the quest for a balanced diet. The holidays, I find, always wreak havoc on that concept. So this year, being fairly well homebound for the celebrations, I thought we just wouldn't make as many goodies as we are wont to do (often, throwing them away on January 2nd.) We'd just, you know, make shortbread cookies and Grandma Kirst's chocolate fudge delight---which are, without discussion, Christmas-time essentials.
The shortbread dough makes a lot of cookies. I divided this year's batch into three chubs. James suggested we add sprinkles right into the dough this year, so he and I softened up one chub and put it in the Mixmaster bowl with a healthy dollop of sprinkles, and we left the machine patiently paddle it all together. Then we rolled out that buttery dough.
James selected cookie cutters and cut dough into shapes: Christmas trees, stars, Santa's boot, a Buffalo bison. I scooped up the shapes and laid them gently on a cookie sheet. We gathered up the leftover dough and repeated.
We repeated the process three or four times. Then the last time, we rolled out what dough was left over, and Jim scored through it with a pizza cutter, creating a flock of small, square cookies. We put them on baking trays, too, and started sliding cookies into the oven.
We baked tray after tray of cookies---baked them until their edges were deliciously golden brown. There were at least four dozen cookies on the old dented pizza pan I use as a landing pad for hot-from-the-oven treats.
That night, the three of us ate every single shortbread cookie. They never made it even close to the cookie jar, much less did they survive long enough to be iced and decorated. The old pizza pan sat on the edge of the kitchen counter, by the door one must walk through to reach the TV room. Every time one of us went by, we grabbed a handful of cookies. We dribbled crumbs out to watch TV. We left Hansel-and-Gretel trails to our computer desks.
"These are SO good," one of us would mumble, shame-facedly, and the others of us would nod. And when the cookies were gone, I saw a dear one lick his finger and gather up every buttery crumb from the pan.
So we were unbalanced by the buttery goodness, and in retribution, I tried to cook meals during the week after Christmas that were nutritious and not too indulgent. I used some of the leftover rib roast to make Jodi McKinney's wonderful Beef and Barley Stoup recipe, which is rich in broth and veggies. Oh, I did make one special Christmas day dessert---a red velvet bundt cake, drizzled with cream cheese frosting. That disappeared quickly, too. ("This is a legitimate BREAKFAST cake," Mark argued. The force of his legal logic was compelling.)
And when the cake and cookies were gone, well—there was the chocolate from our Christmas Eve bookflood, and from talented neighbor-cooks, and from wonderful dear ones who sent packages from afar. I tried to share the fudge, at least, and took a plate to work, and gave a plate away, but that recipe, also, makes a LOT.
So, several nights, after a healthy dinner, I would hear that goodness calling, and I would say, "I believe I will have the after-dinner Fudge Plate." And I would load a saucer (just a saucer! Small! Right???) with a couple of pieces of fudge, and a homemade giftie goodie or two, and maybe a mini Reese's cup (or three) leftover from Christmas Eve.
I would carry that saucer to the TV room, or to my reading chair, and I would savor every sweet lick and drop, with no concern for balance or moderation.
And then, all night, the buzz of sugar fizzed in my veins, and I woke up well before dawn the next day and almost ran to the gym, hoping to burn off some of the Fudge Plate Special's special effects.
Today we went shopping. We effected a grand replenishment that includes staples like red leaf lettuce, lowfat Greek yogurt, boneless chicken breasts, and Jasmine rice. No more rich and fattening foods---a new regimen for the new year.
Although I might use the crumbles in three potato chip bags to mix up a batch of potato chip cookies.
And I still have the shortbread cookie dough on ice…
Oh, goodness: wobble, wobble, wobble. Balance, where ARE you???
There are some areas—work/life balance, for example,---where I think I am doing pretty well.
There are some areas where I don't think balance is required. For instance, I don't believe there should exist an equal amount of skullduggery to offset a surfeit of integrity. (Imagine someone writing this about a politician, for instance: "It's too bad she couldn't get in touch with her bad self. She was SO one-sided!" I'm voting for HER, as soon as I find her!)
There are areas I need to explore and consider—the amount of time I spend playing computer word games, for instance. Is that leisure time or wasted time---stress-buster or thought sucker???
But there is one important area that I need to really work to find balance in, and that is my vision of this world we live in. Many, many things have happened—political things, pandemic things, environmental things---in the last few years that have blasted my rosy belief that life is, and people are, essentially good at the core. My scales have tipped me, many times, into despair, and climbing out again seems to get sloggier and harder each time.
But I found a kind of antidote in an article on forgotten English words by lexicographer and etymologist Susie Dent ("From Respair to Cacklefart: the Joy of Reclaiming Long-Lost Words," in The Guardian on 12/26. Link below.) Dent romps with us through funny, tasteless, pungent words no longer used, and ends up with one that should be. Here's what she writes:
But one English word surely stands above all others from the corners of the dictionary. I mention it all the time, because I'm determined to bring it back. Or bring it anywhere in fact, for it never really enjoyed more than a day in the sun. "Respair" has just one record next to it in the Oxford English Dictionary, from 1525, but its definition is sublime. Respair is fresh hope; a recovery from despair. May 2022 finally be its moment.
With Dent, I am entering 2022 determined to balance the sense of hopelessness with the real and present knowledge that goodness has power, thrust, and meaning. When despair creeps in, I am going to learn how to reach for respair. When reality seems too heavy, I'll lever a matching dose of respair onto my scales.
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New Year's Eve is the time to decide on my word for the year, and I muddled and grizzled for many days thinking, considering, debating---not looking up, feinting when the universe, unable to reach me any other way, slapped me upside the head.
And sent me a rodent for a spirit animal.
So…
All right, all RIGHT, I groan inwardly. I hear you. BALANCE will be my word of the year for 2022.
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Happy New Year to you, my friend. May we find in it real reasons for respair.
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