Did you ever see a little kid, usually a toddler, pick up a play phone (I guess those are now toy cellphones and yak away? Cute, right? Or is it? Do our toddler selves know something our adult selves don’t want to admit?

In Japan, Itaru Sasaki created a phone booth that has now become the go to place to talk to one’s dead relatives.

Last year in 2021, I finally found a Valentine mailbox on sale at Joanns. Mine is slightly different with a white trim but any mailbox will do.

I used it to put letters to my late aunt and cards for my late family members. You write like you would if they were alive or you buy a greeting card and put it in the box. You can also write a letter or buy a card and mail it to yourself but it’s addressed to your late relative or friend C/O yourself.

Think about all the stories you’ve ever read about sticking a note into a grave or a rock wall or a cave. In many countries in Asia, a drink is poured onto the ground so the dead can partake. It’s very important in many cultures to honor the dead – yeah, I was an anthropology major and did anthropological fieldwork but seriously “ancestor worship” as a term is just plain insulting. Ask any medium or spiritualist. I highly recommend Craig Hamilton-Parker’s YouTube channel and books and films. I also cannot say enough good things about Joshua P. Warren ,who isn’t a medium, but he works with them. Josh also builds devices to talk to the “other side”. but a simple mailbox is all you need.

I did not buy a flower for Julius Caesar’s grave in the Roman forum but I did honor the grave. At least in May 2003, people were STILL bringing gifts to the dead Roman emperor who on the Ides of March was stabbed to death by his closet associates and senators. There’s a wonderful blog post so you can visit virtually. The day I was there the grave was COVERED with gifts. Even after 2,000 years people still want to honor CAESAR! But are they also trying to talk to him?

I could keep adding examples of how people try to “honor” the dead but in reality, what they REALLY are doing is giving gifts to the dead and chatting with them. You see it all the time in cemetaries. But if your loved one is buried at sea, or cremated and the ashes were spread, or the grave is far far away or forgotten entirely, use a mailbox! Be creative. The “other side” is just a dimension. Most people who study thanatology will tell you that the dead can come and go at will. Most have no desire to come here but a lot do. If you really miss someone, don’t grieve, write out what you want to say, mail it, light a candle and sit at the table and chat over a meal – yes, that’s why a plate was always set aside for the a dead relative. I’m linking to an article about Poland but this custom shows up around the world.

https://culture.pl/en/article/why-do-poles-leave-one-chair-empty-on-christmas-eve

https://ampoleagle.com/the-empty-chair-at-the-wigilia-table-p15813-226.htm

And don’t forget the hungry ghosts or relatives that are missing a home cooking and a stiff drink!

https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/2018/04/12/why-do-buddhists-honour-our-dead-feeding-them

Let me know in the comments if you post a letter and if you get a reply. Sometimes the reply will simply be peace of mind or the smell of a faint perfume or cigar!

This evening, on the Ides of March, while cooking T-Bone steaks I found marked down almost 40 percent at Albertsons, I looked over and spied a deck of cards Ryan was examining. Thinking he had bought himself an oracle deck I jumped out of my skin when he held up a card and asked its meaning. OMG, that can’t be, can it? A few cards later I was reeling. I loused up the boxed mashed potatoes (I hate using them but it was raining I didn’t get to the store.) while processing the fact that Ryan had found a deck of cards I had sworn I had thrown out.

“Why on earth would you throw out oracle cards, especially a deck your mom gave you”? Why indeed? PS several years ago I wanted to replace the deck and the cost was over $280. It’s come down. But still. It’s pricey.

The late Harry Leo Duran, MD., Ph.D., MPH had decided to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy after having converted from Roman Catholicism and Father Mark was coming for a visit. If Harry had found my 1985 Christmas present from my mother, he would have destroyed them the way the Taliban blew up the Twin Buddhas or the missionaries to Hawaii had destroyed shrines, or how Oliver Cromwell ordered the burning of books in 17th century England. Harry, you see was a fanatic!

I thought I had actually thrown the deck out rather than watch my bookcase next to my bed get toppled and everything torn up. While in San Benito, Texas I used to hide the latest Harry Potter book under my bed. Fearing they, too, would get torn to shreds, I gave the entire collection of first edition hardcovers to the library where I worked when I moved away. Broke my heart.

When I lived in El Paso, Texas, I worked with a 5th generation curandero. Living RIGHT on the border, it was hard not to take an interest in curanderismo. Harry flew into a rage because he felt that was a province of study that only HE should write about, but I created a huge bibliography, published it on the web, and wrote a conference paper that got accepted. In fact, I was the lead speaker on Alternative Medicine at the National Medical Library Association Conference in San Antonio, Texas in May 2005.

Which doesn’t make me an expert. BUT I can talk about SOUL RETRIEVAL and LIMPIAS and PLÁTICAS because tonight I got to experience a soul retrieval in my kitchen and well I’ve had a limpia and a plática done to me back in El Paso. In 2005, curanderismo was a word people asked me to SPELL (pun intended). “What is it? Never heard of it”.

So, what happened tonight? An oracle deck of cards reappeared along with another deck of cards I received at a Tibetan empowerment in New York City in 1997 (8 Heruka) and a card from a deck of flash cards one of my students had let me keep. At around 1:30 p.m. this afternoon, I was talking to the vet tech telling her about how I used to teach Prehistoric Rock Art and then at 6:45 pm., one of the student assignments shows up at the dining table.

THREE pieces of my soul were retrieved during dinner! If you watch all the fancy rituals that cost quite a lot of money to retrieve a piece or fragment or sliver of your soul that took off when you were traumatized or injured or abused or simply frightened, you will see how important it is to FIND all of the pieces of your soul that got lost over time.

BUT you don’t need to do a ritual if you live a truly MAGICAL life. The divine will do the ritual for you and if you are blessed with living with a conduit through which the divine can manifest healing, all the better. Ryan is a pure innocent who has found more than one soul fragment. I saved his life the night he was attacked by pit bulls in July 2021 and he saved mine in Las Vegas in November 2021 and tonight he found fragments I thought I’d never find. It’s like Humpty Dumpty. The soul shatters. In order to be a truly powerful healer or a successfully tax account for that matter, one needs to be whole. I’m getting there.

https://www.ritualcravt.com/platica-a-heart-to-heart-conversation-with-a-curandera/

I just learned that my new friend’s best friend in Colorado has a huge collection of moldavite and a buyer lined up. I hope he doesn’t buy all of it.

On Saturday, February 20, 2021 during the Waxing Gibbous phase of the moon, this incredible piece of moldavite reappeared after vanishing back in September 2015.

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll see a lot of strange things happened to me in 2021 on the 8th or 9th of the month. Well, back on February 8, 2015, Andrew who created the Moldavite Collectors Global Network, sent me a message on Facebook messenger asking if I ever was able to acquire any moldavite. I wrote that I had not, and he wrote “. . . .I have a piece that was on my mind today…to sell at the price I bought it at…. but I felt I needed to wait for that person to show up”. He sent me instructions on how to send him $58 plus shipping using PayPal. It arrived on Saturday, February 28, 2015.

I was afraid of losing it so I placed it in a green party favor bag. For several nights I slept with it under my pillow. I carried it with me. I kept it next to my bed on a night table (in the bag). Then in September 2015, I was on the phone with my friend, Eva who was feeling really sick. I got the idea in my head that we could use the speaker feature on the cell phones so my moldavite could talk to hers and we could do a healing.

What happened next, I cannot remember. It’s like I forgot I ever owned it. By the time I remembered I had had it in my hand that night, I freaked out.

Sometime AFTER the garbage pick up day, I realized it was missing. I tore my house apart looking for it. I searched under the bed, around the bed, in the closet, in pockets of clothes in the closet. I looked behind bookcases thinking the cats took it. I was CONVINCED I had had it on the night table and it fell into the trash between my bed and the table.

I used my pendulum. I called friends who were psychic. The pendulum insisted it was in my closet so I took everything out. I swear I even looked in the black canvas laptop bag that was in my room. And YET it was nowhere. HOW, HOW could the bag disappear? I knew moldavite can. But a party favor bag?

This is where my mind freaks out. On February 28, I got out that very same black canvas laptop bag that I used to travel to Salt Lake City with the late Mart. I kept his medical records in it or whatever he needed each time he was hospitalized. That bag used to fall over in the back seat. That bag saw a lot of suffering in the hospital and in the nursing home where Mart ended up after botched surgery.

When Mart died on September 11, 2018, I converted the bag into a paper craft bag. I had fancy craft papers and punches and colored pens and things.

Wanting an Xacto knive, I searched and to my total amazement, in the outside UNZIPPED pocket in the far far corner was the mesh bag with the missing crystal!

I swear I heard it laughing at me. “I never left the house! I’ve been here with you all the time!”

I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. All those years! I beat myself up thinking it was in the Elko Landfill. I beat myself up because the price of moldavite skyrocketed.

I had a small pendant Eva had sold me and IT even said, when I used it as a pendulum, that it was in the house, but I just had no clue it was in the black canvas bag. NONE. I do not know how it had not fallen out on all those trips.

Later that day I took the dogs with me to get the mail at the rural mailboxes and to check on the other house which is now sold. The wind was absolutely bitter. The song, “Too Much Time on My Hands” started playing on the truck radio and I burst out laughing! We still were dealing with COVID lockdowns.

When the song came out in 1981 I was teaching ESL at THREE (3) different colleges. I had set up my parents’ living room as a piano studio and had students six days a week. One night a week I taught piano at the high school in the night school program. I was a tutor, and I taught beginning figure skating at South Mountain Ice Rink where Olympic skaters also taught. I had no idea what pop culture was. I was too busy working 10 hour days.

We did not have cable back then and I had never seen MTV anyway. This video is hilarious in retrospect.

The late NOTORIOUS VEGAS DOC (aka Harry Leo Duran, M.D., Ph.D., MPH) was only popular so long as he was buying everyone rounds of drinks or picking up the tab at the SUPER expensive restaurants he frequented. Pay close attention to that scene in the music video. And the clothes. I truly missed out on the 80s. And the 90s. And most of the 21st century until now. I’m definitely paying attention now.

I understand that copying the lyrics is a copyright infringement so I let you read and see how this described Harry perfectly.

https://genius.com/Styx-too-much-time-on-my-hands-lyrics

4:44 p.m., Sunday, March 6, 2022. Am searching for the photo I took of it. Ever since Harry died, I’m seeing 111, 222, 333, 444, 555, 11:11, 12:12 on clocks, cash registers, receipts. CONSTANTLY!

Yasmin Boland and Joshua P. Warren and Christie Marie Sheldon all talk about manifesting abundance. What I did not expect I’d ever manifest was friends – real friends. Friends I could talk to about ANYTHING and laugh until the tears flowed. Laughed with true joy and happiness emanating from my heart.

I spent so many years oppressed by a narcissist that I had not ventured forth to truly enjoy life. In El Paso, Texas I would run away from home with my dog, Anubis, and walk the Franklins or drive out into the desert with him until I knew I had to return home. My mother was a narcissist so I did not really know what it was like to be FREE!

I had wished not long ago for someone, like myself, who had been through hell and back who had traveled and who was a witch. Eva, my sounding board and most faithful friend since I moved to Nevada held an open house in her new home on Saturday, February 20. I met several people and had a wonderful time. I secretly made a wish that I could meet “more of my kind”. For at least two weeks there was an ad on the radio for a film that was going to be shown downtown hosted by the Nevada Lands Council. Saturday, February 27 rolled around and my friend, Ryan went off into the wild and I had the FREEDOM to drive downtown and attend “an event”.

I was about 6 minutes late but it had not started. There were, alas, only 4 chairs left. And within minutes I got to sit with the MOST AMAZING two couples! The movie was dull and not what I had hoped it would be. But I met, get this, A GREEN WITCH! I’m a Kitchen Witch. She’s from Rhode Island and has lived all over the country. She talks just as fast as I do. She’s had a life that could fill an encyclopedia!

And we agree on EVERYTHING. I felt like I was back in THIRD GRADE! We went antiquing on Sunday and spent time with an INCREDIBLE octogenarian in Lamoille buying crystals. I got Ryan a $300 fly fishing rod for $190! Time stood still until we both realized we had long since missed brunch and it was almost past lunch. We split a check at a local bar and grill and it was like eating with someone you had known since childhood.

I finally have someone to cook for who brings out all the magic in my soul. I have a huge collection of cookbooks and my mom, although a narcissist, was an EXTRAORDINARY cook. She lamented that her grandmother was the baker but my mom could bake as well. She never taught me much. I learned from cooking shows and at Miller Cory House. About three weeks ago I bought one of those hydrogardens to grow your own herbs. There’s no place to hang one of those Kitchen Witch dolls but I don’t care. My giant kitchen filled with all kinds of pots and pans and Good Cook aides is finally my canvas!

Luann is a GREEN witch! OMG, a match made in the Realms of the Fae! She creates with crystals and items from nature. She has expertise in antiques and she can feel energy! She has so many talents and combined with mine and Eva’s and Luann’s friend who will be moving here, I’m not sure I can contain my soul. It’s already soaring in the skies!

I thank the GODS and the Universe and my ancestors and guardians and any and all entities that felt pity for me in November 2021 when a truly evil man died and I went into shock at the damage he had done to my life. At the same time, I had a man with me in Sin City by my side who made sure I did not succumb to the horror. I was gifted the courage and fortitude to pull us out of the financial disaster my husband had planned for me to never get out of. I met amazing people who had known him and did NOT like or truly HATED him. I do not think Harry Leo Duran ever dreamt that I’d be befriended by so many of the people HE had kept me from ever meeting.

Ryan is now living a joyful life bringing home treasures beyond either of our wildest imaginations. The house is filled with energy and happiness – although the carpet really needs to be ripped out and replaced and the walls need fresh paint. But we survived a horror most people would not have been able to do. And I’m meeting people who have also survived horrors.

I’m in the Hay House Writer’s Community and getting very positive feedback for my Tell All Book about the fiend from hell. And the ghosts and spirits have seemingly settled down for the moment.

One does wonder how the Tibetan relics are getting along with the African fetishes and the 19th century Sioux artifacts and the Yei blanket and katchinas are getting along with the Eastern Orthodox icons and the Roman Catholic relics. I hope the crystals are all happy and humming along with the baskets and urns and ceramics and paintings. I bought a shamrock to keep the lucky bamboo happy on the perch in the kitchen corner. The Valentine bouquet has a few flowers left that refuse to wilt.

Snow is predicted so I need to roast another chicken with my mom’s rosemary, parsely, sage, and thyme stuffing and pan gravy. I trust the aromas are going out into the universe and hopefully healing lost and tormented souls. GOD knows with the war in Russia and the Ukraine and terrorist and political unrest or outright civil war in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq (political unrest), Libya (civil war), Mali (civil war), Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Tunisia, and tyranny in Canada, oppression in China and threats against Taiwan, maybe JUST maybe if I can attract a group of powerful healers to my area, we can send out waves of energy to heal the planet. That is my goal and if the planet could smell sage dressing wafting in the air, it might just bring everyone to take a moment and say, let’s stop fighting and find the source of that amazing aroma and share a meal together!

The past couple of days have been – let’s say – a bit out of the ordinary. Ryan downloaded ghost detecting software on his Samsung Galaxy phone and using bluetooth speakers set up a sting to find out who is haunting us. Several, it seems. They talked over one another. The app displays words as well. The sardonic evil laugh at what I screamed out, really pissed me off.

So, this morning I downloaded onto the fiend from hell’s IPHONE X, cause mine IPHONE is quite old now, a program called “Ghost Hunting”. The ads are infuriating and I had to give up but I did capture this interesting word salad from “something”. I could not get a single yes/no response.

The first word that appeared we had heard yesterday and the day before “church”. I asked if the entity or spirit was my late Aunt Dorothy May Smith who lived here and who put the down payment down hoping she’d not need the nursing home. She did. The assistant living facility lied about how bad her Alzheimer’s had progressed. She sun downed. She was violent. It was a nightmare. When she fell out of bed and I couldn’t lift her back up, I had no choice but to place her in a home. And they had a terrible time with her. She died up in Twin Falls, Idaho in a home there AFTER attending chapel services in December 2010.

2/22/2022 – 9:12 AM: CHURCH (.45) 

The next question was is this Aunt Dot? I was peeved to see the standard prank call – heavy breathing crap of “Guess” but then it said “friend” followed by Reveal.

2/22/2022 – 9:13 AM: GUESS (.49) 

2/22/2022 – 9:13 AM: FRIEND (.59) 

2/22/2022 – 9:14 AM: REVEAL (.48) 

I have no idea why I would ask Adam anything. I mean Adam is the first human’s name right? Other than

HOLY SHIT! Sorry, this just hit me like a laser!

Adam was the name of the guy who brought his girlfriend’s brother to the house when Bekins Moving Company arrived with the van in July 2009. Charlie, OMG, Charlie or was his name Frank – I didn’t keep the obituary – fell over backwards on the moving van in front of my house. I did CPR on him but the sheriff told me he was already dead. The EMT had me remove the poor man’s necklace and to assist in trying to revive him. OMG. I called the library – they don’t have copies of the paper for 2009. The librarian recommended I search Ancestry.com for deaths in Spring Creek/Elko, Nevada for July 2009. I didn’t know you could do that. But nevertheless, ASK ADAM is creepy

2/22/2022 – 9:14 AM: ASK ADAM (.52) 

2/22/2022 – 9:15 AM: CROSSOVER (.63) 

2/22/2022 – 9:15 AM: SEE (.47) 

FRESH – is a word my late aunt used a lot. Might be significant or it might not be.

2/22/2022 – 9:16 AM: FRESH (.48) 

2/22/2022 – 9:18 AM: DAY (.49) , 2/22/2022 – 9:19 AM: CHARLIE (.56), 2/22/2022 – 9:22 AM: IAN (.5), 2/22/2022 – 9:24 AM: UPHOLD (.53), 2/22/2022 – 9:27 AM: RAIN (.46), 2/22/2022 – 9:27 AM: HAPPY (.48), 2/22/2022 – 9:27 AM: LAYLA (.67), 2/22/2022 – 9:28 AM: INTEREST (.48), 2/22/2022 – 9:30 AM: CORNER (.49), 2/22/2022 – 9:31 AM: I AM NOT (.69), 2/22/2022 – 9:32 AM: HUNTING (.45) , 2/22/2022 – 9:34 AM: DEAD (.46), 2/22/2022 – 9:34 AM: SET (.47), 2/22/2022 – 9:37 AM: SO WEAK (.48), 2/22/2022 – 9:38 AM: VIOLENCE (.5), 2/22/2022 – 9:42 AM: SOME (.45), 2/22/2022 – 9:43 AM: WITHIN (.61), 2/22/2022 – 9:43 AM: WOUND (.49), 2/22/2022 – 9:43 AM: GABRIEL (.5), 2/22/2022 – 9:43 AM: WRITTEN (.47), 2/22/2022 – 9:44 AM: DRAWING (.48), 2/22/2022 – 9:47 AM: HELL (.51) , 2/22/2022 – 9:48 AM: LOGAN (.49), 2/22/2022 – 9:48 AM: FASTER (.47), 2/22/2022 – 9:50 AM: UNDER BOOK (.47), 2/22/2022 – 9:51 AM: EDGE (.48), 2/22/2022 – 9:51 AM: MARCH (.53)

I decided at this point, that the app was just randomingly generating words from its built in dictionary and gave up. Ryan was busy in his wing of the house at lunch so I tried again while trying to get the logs in the Blaze King wood burning stove to burn. The dogs were all excited and fussing while I sat on the couch. The minute Auggie tried to get in my lap (He’s 65 pounds – not gonna happen) the word PET appeared. the rest sounds like gibberish.

2/22/2022 – 11:32 AM: OTHER (.45)

2/22/2022 – 11:33 AM: PET (.5)

“Pet” was a direct hit but then the rest is word salad. I don’t know anyone named Sebastian.

2/22/2022 – 11:35 AM: SEEK (.47), 2/22/2022 – 11:36 AM: PROVIDER (.56), 2/22/2022 – 11:37 AM: SEBASTIAN (.53), 2/22/2022 – 11:57 AM: TRAVEL (.48), 2/22/2022 – 11:58 AM: ROCK (.46)

Ryan went out and I did chores and then after I had dinner, I tried again. Nothing worthwhile.

2/22/2022 – 6:42 PM: FOLLOW (.5), 2/22/2022 – 6:43 PM: SHINING (.52), 2/22/2022 – 6:43 PM: MEMORY (.52)

2/22/2022 – 6:44 PM: DIFFICULT (.58)

When I saw the word DIFFICULT I had a thought. A faint thought. The kind of thought that gets cartoon characters into trouble. Why not go into the locked room my late aunt used as a bedroom, that is now filled with fleece in bins, and Harry’s “stuff” we had to put somewhere – aka thangkas, the Chinese rug with a skeleton that he found was rescued from the Red Guard and another with a woven image of a tiger skin on it, Tibetan ritual implements, a buffalo ax, his human skulls he bought to study brain surgery that he then ended up using in Santeria, you know “stuff” and it’s where I keep the Yei Ceremonial blanket

https://gateway2manifesting.com/2021/07/06/changing-woman-yasmin-boland-and-a-super-rare-white-yei-navajo-blanket-rug/

and

https://gateway2manifesting.com/2021/07/12/the-yei-blanket-imbued-or/

I got into the room and said, well, you all now have a chance to talk. Brent said you chatter all the time. With that the word FREAK appeared. If you read about the Yei blanket, you read how Brent came barreling down the hall trying to brush the fae off him. They only stopped once he got to the Senufo. Mmmm.

Now I’m not going to embarrass my friend, but, he has a brother, whose name is spelled differently, but it’s close enough, and I have no idea what RIPPING APART references UNLESS, and this is a stretch, they wanted to talk about BelBel ripping apart her pet bed later that day.

2/22/2022 – 6:46 PM: FREAK (.46)

2/22/2022 – 6:47 PM: SEAN (.72)

2/22/2022 – 6:47 PM: BROTHER (.52)

2/22/2022 – 6:48 PM: RIPPING APART (.46)

I’m going to be experimenting with these apps. Total investment so far is about $24 US – a waste but I have to figure out if it’s worth the investment into some heavy duty ghost hunting devices – not apps.

I also figured out that Brave was the reason why I couldn’t find the pop up for the color wheel in WordPress so I’m back to using Chrome.