The Scorpion Factor

It's late, I should be in bed. Therefore I write. Then I sleep. 😔 If you don't get the title, you need to read this book.

So I just searched my blog for the BIG FAT scorpion story and I'm shocked it hasn't been written. That will be for another day and when it is written it will be amended and included. Until then, let's just say I have a history with scorpions. I also used to have a massive understandable phobia of them. The one time I DID write about scorpions, was a non-sting encounter with an explanation of my phobia.

This is a bark scorpion. It is the most dangerous kind in North America. It has black on it's back and it's the kind I was stung by five years ago. AND IT HURTS!!! But here's a little walk down memory lane after searching through my past facebook posts. Because I have learned a great lesson by being stung again. By date.

June 1, 2011

thinks 3 scorpions in 3 days is just about enough!

June 18, 2011

wasn't very thankful for my close encounter with a scorpion last night, but was thankful even though I touched it, I was not stung.

September 2, 2012

Is still a little freaked out about stepping on a scorpion in my bare feet last night, on my way to bed. Grateful I was not stung, seeing as I saw the reaction of someone stung just a few weeks ago.

September 3, 2012

2 BIG dead scorpions with my shoe ON. And one dead rattle snake.

ALSO September 3, 2012 

after a centipede crawled into our pump switch and fried it and shut off our water!

It's like I'm Dorothy in the Wizard of AZ. "Scorpions, and rattlesnakes, and centipedes, Oh MY!"

February 14, 2013

That freaky moment when you pull something out of your suitcase and a scorpion comes out behind it. #heebeejeebies

April 2, 2013

There is NOTHING I hate more. N.O.T.H.I.N.G. And *I* had to kill it. #heebeegeebies

Probably also a BARK!

May 16, 2013

21 years living among scorpions. Finally got me. Worst. Pain. EVER!!!!!! Its gonna be a long night. (The BIG FAT story referenced at the beginning)

Later May 16

I still can't feel my toe. Jefferson tested and nope, couldn't feel a thing. But I'll take numbness over excruciating pain any day.

May 18, 2013

Thank you Mr Blacklight inventor! I put you up there with Mr Air Conditioning Man as one of the people I want to meet in the next life. #myrationalfear #mywoodentoe

June 8, 2013

Scorpions used to freak me out. Now they really do. #3rdonethisweek #madethehubbyspray #founditdead #onitswaytoh#$l

It's a BARK!!!

2013 WAS A BAD SCORPION YEAR!!!

July 10, 2014

That hysterical moment when you want to run through the house screaming because you realize you just slept all night on a scorpion.

June 15, 2015

I LOVE dead scorpions. Thanks for spraying this week honey.

August 18, 2018

I'm grateful for scorpions in the closet that teach me the connection between my thoughts and outcomes. SERIOUSLY! YESTERDAY I had a conversation with my friend Caroline Skrdla on the topic. I cemented the conversation with an emotional shudder. THIS MORNING when I took my shirt out of the closet and took the sweater off and turned it around, there it was! Long story short, as I declared over and over " I can be brave," I took it outside, let it crawl off, then pummeled it with a borrowed flip flop. So grateful I wasn't stung! Call me Dawn... Scorpion Slayer. Hahaha

How it didn't sting me, I don't have a clue!

August 22, 2018

Blast. Walking across my property in flip flops something stung my toe. Half my foot is numb. Go to home remedies? Fortunately it only hurt very briefly.

And now....I just want to pick up my feet and glide through the air to bed because how am I going to walk in bare feet right now? But I digress...

Referring back to the August 18 post above, I met a new friend named Cari, and she brought up the subject of scorpions and how she doesn't like them, I mean who does? The Bible appropriately refers to them as torment. So we were staffing for our friend and author Leslie at her Genius Bootcamp.  During the weekend, she taught about thought, vibration, emotion, and how together they actually create our reality. I TRULY believe this string of events happened to make me aware of exactly that on a more personal level.

I ALREADY KNOW ALL THIS and have used the principles to create all kinds of great stuff in my life, but I guess I needed to really understand the other side of the equation.

Without telling the whole story. 5 years ago I was stung by a scorpion at 1am and it was one of the most painful traumatic events of my life. I know! It sounds so melodromatic, but it really was awful. I resolved the trauma with EFT and it became a manageable experience after that. 

As you can see, since then, I've continued to have interactions with the beastly critters but hadn't been stung again until this week. 

I was staying with Leslie's family at her home. They had just moved in days before and they were kind to invite me to stay with so much going on. After the conference Friday, and our little scorpion shuddering moment, I woke the next day to get dressed. I pulled my brown striped shirt from the closet. My white lightweight sweater was draped over it. I always wear a sweater at conferences because they tend to be so cold. This time, I did not need my sweater. So, I took the sweater off the hanger and put it down. Instead of taking the shirt OFF the hanger, I first turned it around. Part of me has no idea why I did that not normal action. The other part of me knows that it was orchestrated for me for a learning moment.

Staring right at me, tail curled was the bane of my existence. I did not go leaping through the house as  I might have at home, but my very first thought was, I NEED A HOUSEHOLDER TO HELP ME! I had to put the shirt down first because I still didn't have one on. So I threw the first thing I could find on, and stepped out the door. 7am Saturday morning. Nothing but moving boxes. WHERE are teen boys when you need them!!!???

I turn around and start declaring, "I can be brave, I can be brave!" The pitch rises in my voice as I grab the shirt back up repeating my brave mantra and gingerly speed to the front door and nearly heave the shirt onto a bush. Great! The spawn of satan remains on my shirt. Now what? I need something to whack it with. Back in the foyer I see a pile of shoes ready to leap to my defense. I grab a much loved flip flop and assume a battle stance. 

I pick the shirt back up and start whacking the back of it to try to get the scorpion to fall off. Of course, it does not. I want to cry, but I can be brave. So, I lay the shirt on the ground and the demon finally moves and crawls right off. I pounce with sword, ahem, flop in hand and whack the thing until it no longer moves. RELIEF!!! 

As I put my shirt on, the thought occurred to me, that conversation the day before, created what I had just experienced! I had a previous emotional attachment to an idea (fear of scorpions). I had mentally, emotionally, and physically connected with the idea less than 24 hours before and every time I see one. It created the right vibration to call a scorpion into my existence. At the moment I thought this, I realized, I could either be grateful for the experience, let it go, and learn from it, or I could dismiss it as so many odd coincidences.

When Leslie came down I told her the whole story. When we got to the venue for the last day of Bootcamp, I shared it with Cari and the few people there. I felt all self-congratulatory for my great wisdom and understanding I acquired, not knowing there was one more piece left. 

A few days later, I went out to feed my chickens and gather eggs. I was walking back to the house when I felt a poke from what I thought was a sticker. I didn't even look down at my flip flopped feet to see what it was, because it was pretty insignificant, but only about ten steps later, I felt pain, that increased until I was inside my house sitting down looking at my toe trying to figure out what just happened. I realized that I had been stung and new it was likely a scorpion, ON THE VERY SAME toe as before! What are the odds?

The pain intensified but it was nothing like the previous experience. It was bearable and my toe started going numb and it spread throughout my foot. It stopped at my ankle and I grabbed some lavender and other calming essential oils and slathered my foot. Within a few minutes, the progression stopped and I went about my day. It really got me thinking. How in the world was all of this connected? Then it hit me. I just had a rather mild experience with a scorpion. I didn't see it. I didn't fear it. I didn't freak. I didn't attempt bravery. I didn't realize it until it was far too late. It was a night and day difference than all the previous experiences. 

Several days later, I can still feel the stiffness and some tingling in the the upper portion of my foot and toes. I have not suffered. I was not traumatized, but I am left to wonder, if it was all for a bigger purpose. For me to connect the dots between my thoughts, feelings, fears, and see them brought into reality. WHY?

So, I can see that every negative thought and emotion becomes a part of the creation cycle, just like every positive thought and emotion is part of the creation cycle. My previous practice of watching thoughts, erasing and replacing them, and expressing gratitude continues to be worthwhile on a day to day basis. 

The last part of this verse has never made so much sense!

“Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again."

In other words, whatever you send out comes back. MULTIPLIED! If you send out measures of blessedness, you get blessedness back. If you send out measures of misery, you get measures of misery back. The previous sentences to this verse of scripture include the same idea in regard to judging, condemning, and forgiving. 

I have new respect for scorpions and things of my own making. The scorpion factor will not be a thing I forget quickly. I'll also be more aware of the words falling out of my mind, heart, and mouth, and what they are ultimately creating. What are you creating?

I'm a Writer

IAT = I am thankful

If you remember typewriters, remember the sound of the paper going between the rollers as the gears go round n round n round? Fingers to the keys, I begin to type. "I am a writer." My fingers pause. "I write." Pause.

If I was really using a typewriter, I'd rip the paper zipping past the rollers right now. The paper would be crumpled and added to the pile forming behind me. I'm not a writer. Well, I mean I have to be a writer, because I have the affirmation up on my bathroom mirror with other secret affirmations that I am not about to reveal. The only way a general friend would see my affirmations is if I put them here, or I'm lying sick in bed, unable to lift my head and someone gets the bright idea to come and clean my bathroom. And my husband LETS them???!!!

However, I have been writing a blog for (let me check the dates)...ERMERGERSH, it will be ten years in September! How exciting! Let me take a moment to relish in this moment.

I'm a writer? Maybe. Hmmm. Let's add up the evidence. I HAVE been published. In newsletters. And in an actual book! I found out accidentally when I did a google search of myself. It's a book on EFT that one of my submissions make it into. I can't remember the title, but it was a fun discovery. I've also been invited to write in other books that didn't end up published.

My good husband tells me nearly every time I write a post that my writing is good. Does that count? Maybe, but we'd have to evaluate his tastes in writing and what genres he reads, etc. I have 7 followers and sometimes they tell me they like what I write. Seven! I'm not a writer. 

What does it take to be a writer? Hmmm. Some of my posts have hundreds of views. Does that make me a writer? I've had book ideas for years and even started on some of them and now I belong to a writer's group. Ahhh, now we're getting somewhere!

Each month, when I don't have fourteen other things going on, I go the the writer's group and we share something we've written and make a new goal for the next month. I've shared blog posts from my blog that I imagine I will recycle into chapters in my first book. You can imagine how intimidating it must be to go as a newbie to a meeting of REAL writers who have actually published books, making them AUTHORS! It's like that moment from Oliver Twist before he actually says the words, but holds up his poor little bowl to beg for more, wondering all the while if he is worthy enough for the meager scraps returned to him. 

No, I'm in a group of fantasy, science fiction, and romance novelists. PUBLISHED. Remember? I said they are published. I'm the only non-fictioner in the group. But they give me warm sincere compliments. They encourage me. They keep inviting me back so....I write. There was this one meeting that I ACTUALLY did write a new chapter...I write!

Maybe the definition of a writer is someone who writes, so that when their words are read, the reader is moved; changed; better. Can I just make up definitions? I really don't know. I like my writing. Maybe if others like my writing that aren't family and friends, and I like my writing, I'm a writer. 

I know sometimes when I am bored, I return to my blog, skip around a little, see a title that intrigues me, and I begin to read. A couple of weeks ago, it was a 3 part post. I've only written one 3 part post. I was emotional. It was an election year. It was politics. Haha. When I finished reading that 3 part post, I sat back and thought, "WOW, that was really good. I don't even remember writing that." 

I write because it teaches me. Usually, I have an idea. I just WANT to write, so I get on here and I start pounding it out. The amazing thing that happens is, when my fingers hit the keys, ideas being flowing and pouring through my fingers. I see them appear on the screen. Sometimes, there's an idea on the edge of my brain, not yet fully expressed. So, I look through a dictionary, scriptures, a talk, a video, and then the idea seems to solidify more, and get on the page.

Then I read. And edit. Read. Edit. Until I'm tired or it feels just right, and I press the publish button. Usually (not sure it will be the case this time, but I've always said this is only really for my own benefit of getting my thoughts down), I feel satisfied. So maybe that's a part of it.

I write. My husband likes it. I get my ideas on "paper." I feel satisfied. I share. My friends like it. Random hundreds read it. They don't respond, but they read. Months or years later, I read again. Sometimes I am moved to tears. Sometimes I think, "dang! that was good!" I am satisfied. I feel good. I write.

I guess that means....I'm a writer.