In the evening at 5 p.m., I attended the online Reiki gathering. Toward the end, the meeting host asked one question from the participants to our Reiki teacher. The question was what means the word “grace” to Japanese people. My Reiki teacher asked me to share my thoughts about it.

I shared like this.

To me, the word grace is the appreciation to all the things including somebody and something, visible and invisible. Thus, the word grace is similar to a Japanese term O-kage-sama; お蔭様; おかげさま. The philosophy of okagesama. We appreciate all the beings around us for their blessings to us.

We cannot exist here by ourselves. Rather, all the living creatures make it possible for us to exist.

We can exist here on this Earth thanks to everybody and everything including visible and invisible.

We are here thanks to our ancestors.

We are here thanks to all the spirits and other living creatures.

I appreciate my Reiki teacher for allowing me to speak up in front of other audience. I am not good at speaking in public, but I am definitely enjoying sharing my thoughts and opinions.

In my dream my family spirit visited me. He asked me about somebody whom I didn’t like or I could not get along with in the past. Instantly he received my memories and showed me the visions of my memories. At first, I felt uncomfortable reviewing the scenes as they reminded me the uncomfortable feelings from those people. But I right away noticed I was fine because they were the past. My family spirit agreed with me that they were in the past so that they cannot bother me anymore. My family spirit added one more reminder. They are not the bad ones because they made me feel uncomfortable. Rather, they are the good ones because they helped me to grow my soul by their offered challenges. Then I woke up. I appreciate the people who had shown me my bad habits by irritating me. Once I learn from it and get over my bad habit, they don’t need to show up in front of me to annoy me. Every bad experience makes me realize my bad pattern. All I need to do is to be aware of my feelings and emotions and change my habits. I want to make myself better every day.    

We all slept well on our own bed in our own house.

Yesterday before we left Navajoland, I collected some more pine needles and a pinch of sage from our homesite. My husband told me Navajo people drink sage tea as a medicine. After we arrived at home last night, I washed them and soaked them in water for one night. This morning I made tea with them. Even through the sage was just a very tiny portion, the tea had a strong fragrance of sage. I liked the tea and finished up drinking. It tasted like a great medicine for my body. I am glad none of us got sick even though we stayed close to my mom-in-law being very sick. I feel it might be thanks to the pine needle tea that we had during our stay.

***

On the day of the counselling with a professional homeopath, she didn’t issue an official remedy prescription. I was disappointed but I didn’t say anything on the day. On the next morning, I felt I should ask her a prescription because that was what I paid for, and what I deserve to receive. As a response the homeopath issued an unofficial remedy prescription. Even though I cannot purchase the alcohol potency remedy from Japan, I can somewhat make an order some of the remedies from India.

I mixed some sugar ball remedies with alcohol drink and made my original prescription. I am going to take this homeopathic medicine for at least one month.   

I had a sound sleep and woke up at 5 a.m. in the morning. My husband was awake too. We started packing up our belongings. We told my mom-in-law not to prepare our breakfast because she was very sick yesterday. After we finished packing our items in the car, my husband went to check his mom. She still looked very sick so that she decided to keep distance from us. Instead of giving a hug to each other, we waved to each other from a good distance.

On our way back the traffic was light. We arrived at our house safely and it took us much shorter than we expected.

While our usual evening walk, we called my mom-in-law. She sounded healthier than the morning. She said after she saw us off, her heigh fever went down so that she could go to the grocery store in the morning and did some house chores in the afternoon. We are glad that she is in the healing process.

As usual for the second night of Navajoland visit, I slept very well. In my dream my late dad-in-law visited me. He gave me an advice that we should go to the local grocery store for cardboard boxes in order to organize his items. I never thought of that. I thanked him for his great advice.

I shared the advice with my husband. We called the local grocery store and talked with a male worker at the warehouse. Luckily the man sounded nice and kind. We told the man we would stop by at his workplace after breakfast. When we got there, the man took us to the back of the warehouse, where he kept about 30 boxes in a shopping cart for us. We thanked his kind support. The half of the empty boxes were for eggs. I love these egg boxes as they were a hand sized and sturdy, and with hand holes.

We swung by at one more place, the homesite office. My late dad-in-law paid the initial fee for our homesite lease fee two years ago. The receipt does not say the payment’s deadline, but I thought we should pay for the second payment. When we arrived at the office, the female worker told us the second payment is $60, and it must be in the form of a money order. They don’t take a credit card payment nor a personal bank check. We told her we would send it through the post mail.

After we went back the trailer, we worked on organizing my late dad-in-law’s office. My husband doesn’t want to trash everything right away, so we decided to keep them for the time being. We wiped off the sand and dust from the items and organized them in a box. Then we went to his tool shed and organized items to clear some room for the boxes.

All day long, I didn’t see my mom-in-law. My husband went to her house to check on her. She was very sick with high fever. She slept most of daytime. While she was awake, she had coughs and headache. We prayed for her to regain her good health back soon.

In the afternoon I made a tea from the pine needles that I collected from our homesite and soaked in water for a 24-hour. I expected it to taste bitter, but it was not that bad. My family and I had the tea and we all liked it with the fresh fragrance.  

For two days straight of yesterday and today, we worked a lot for the trailer and all my body parts were feeling sore. Still feeling good though, as we made lots of improvements and progresses.

Last night my mom-in-law was feeling sick and didn’t join to us for the night snack.

In the morning she brought a breakfast sandwich for us. I don’t eat breakfast normally, but I decided to thankfully receive her kind hospitality. Also, I was hungry in the morning. She said she had been sick last night with coughs and high fever. She went back to her house and took some more rest.

After breakfast, we fixed the water leakage for the swam cooler. The water leaked from the water valve to connect from the main water pipe to the swamp cooler. We drove to the local DIY store and purchased a Teflon tape. My mom-in-law still looked being sick and she asked us to get her some grocery and meds for the high fever.

After we came back home, we fixed the water leakage. Now we can use the swamp cooler for the night.  

We cooked out some T-bone steak and vegetables with charcoals. It tasted great cooking outside. By lunch time my mom-in-law came out from the house and joined us for the lunch.

After lunch we needed to go to the bigger town to purchase a tarp. My mom-in-law wanted to join us to the stores.

On the way back home, we stopped by at the zoo. The zoo and the museum were closed after the Covid since 2020. They recently reopened them to public. The zoo has become nicer than before. During they closed, they worked on making lots of progresses for the visitors. I think they did a great job.

We went to homesite and covered the shed floor with a brand-new tarp and put lots of cinder blocks on top of the tarp.

Then the remainder of the day, we engaged on working for the trailer. We fixed the rainwater gutters, some roof singles patched up, and organized my late dad-in-law’s office. By the time we sat down for dinner, our body started feeling sore all over. We really worked hard today and made lots of improvements for the trailer.

I woke up earlier than normal and cooked our lunch on the road. We left our home around 8 a.m. as scheduled leaving for Navajoland. It was a Wednesday day morning, but the traffic was heavy. Maybe many families are on vacation trip with their children.

We arrived around8 p.m. We came back to Navajoland just 1.5 month ago, so my mom-in-law didn’t cry like she did last time.

After we ate the chicken fried rice that my mom in law cooked for us, we went on a walk to our homesite. We were shocked to see the tarp covered on our shed’s foundation floor were torn down and the wooden floor was exposed under the sun. The tarp we purchased before last winter was the expensive one because it was a heavy-duty and thick one. It was still fine on our last visit. According to my mom-in-law, last month they had a high wind and heavy rain and that was the cause of the tarp’s tear. We will have to purchase a heavy-duty tarp again on this trip.

On our homesite, we have two pine trees. They are still very young as we found them after we received a homesite permit in August of 2019. During the counselling with a homeopath, she suggested me to drink a pine needle tea as I am allergic to pine tree. When I heard the advice, I thought of these pine trees on our homesite. So, I went to the two pine trees and asked for a permission from them and took some pine needles from each tree. I washed them and soaked them in water for one night.   

It was a busy day. As a preparation for the upcoming trip, I cooked some foods and made them frozen so that I can take them to the trip. We are all looking forward to visiting my mom-in-law and Buckers (our Chihuahua dog.)

***

My desk top has been showing issues for the past two years. It sometimes (not always) makes a really loud fan sound. I always turn it off at night before I sleep. In the morning my computer sometimes shows black screen and is reluctant to turn it on normally. I purchased this computer in 2011, so it has been working for 11 years. It is Windows 8.1, and Microsoft will stop its supports to Windows 7 and 8 on January 2023. I appreciate my desktop computer for working for such a many years. It has helped me with my job and hobby.  

In the night I purchased a new desktop online. Feeling kind of sad, but I am not going to trash the old one. I will keep using it until its end.

Since last Thursday when we swam in the swimming pool, my daughter has suffered from the pain in the left ear. We tried many things including taking homeopathy remedies, drying the ear hole with a hair drier, and  laying down the left ear on the bottom. None of them worked so far. I thought of taking her to the ER, but on my second thought, I know the doctor would not do anything except for giving us some advices and we would get charged a huge amount of money.

In my meditation I asked my family spirits for advice. A vision of my friend’s smiling face popped up. So, I called her and asked for advice. She recommended to use alcohol pad and wipe the ear hole. She also mentioned about an ear drop to get rid of ear wax. I have both of an alcohol pad and a brand new ear drop. I tried two methods to my daughter. Several hours later my daughter told me she does not have a pain anymore. I don’t know which method worked, but all in all I am so happy that she is not suffering from a pain anymore. As always, thank you to my family spirits and to my friend for saving us.  

I still have some dreams where I was furious to somebody. It has continued almost every day. I interpret this in a positive way. I feel the homeopathy remedies are working for me so that I can express my anger in the dream. The anger might be something I forgot to deal with, in my childhood. I work on healing my inner-child’s forgotten emotions every day in my dream. I am happy for doing this right now.