Today’s dream; I was at a cerebration park with my family and friends. Some of them were not familiar in my physical world, so they should be my family spirits. One of them showed me a huge beef steak that they were about to cook for us. It was so huge that the person spread his both arm wide open to hold the steak meat. The beef looked like Kobe Beef and my favorite part; sirloin with moderate fat. Then I woke up.

***

While I was watching a movie; Navajo Springtime (2002), I happened to see my dad-in-law in the film. He was building a Ceremonial Hogan in our homesite. It was nice to see him in his younger days; probably he was in his late 40s or early 50s.

***

I read the following two books.

Rainy’s Powwow written by Linda Theresa Raczek and illustrated by Gary Bennett. I like this story. The Grandmother shared her experiences as a Powwow dancer. She touches Mother Earth with her moccasins tenderly; touch-step and carries the fan of sacred eagle feathers to send prayers for all the world. I miss going to Powwow to feel their different energies gathered. Maybe I can visit some in next year when the current situation calms down.

Native American History for Kids: With 21 Activities written by Karen Bush Gibson.

My husband woke up the earliest of the family because he needed to go to work. I noticed he made unusual sounds in the kitchen and stayed there longer than usual. Then he came to me getting ready to get up from the bed to report the unusual accident.

He told me when he went to the kitchen in the morning, the first thing he saw was the flooded kitchen floor with liquids. He noticed the liquids came from a watermelon sitting on dining table. The watermelon was not broken or exploded, but the juice leaked from the watermelon and fell onto the kitchen floor. We didn’t know exact reason for this. I am doubting if the watermelon was already old when my husband bought it from the store just a couple days ago. I noticed the oldness of the watermelon right after he came back from the store. I could tell it because the skin of the watermelon was very light fading color. When I held it, the skin was so soft. It felt like paper thin. I asked him to select a flesh watermelon by choosing a fresh watermelon with the vivid colored skin. You can feel the freshness when you touch it anyway.

***

From the later afternoon to night we spent at the local park where our local community presented a 4^th of July celebration. We had lots of rain in the early afternoon, so that we enjoyed the outdoor cerebration started from late afternoon ended in the night without rain. We joined the cerebration after my husband came back from work. It was nice to go there because the waiting line for the food distribution died down by the time we got there.

My former coworker found my husband and beckoned us to his table. He was with his wife and they seemed to be enjoying having us as their company. So far so good, until the moment they showed us a tall coffee cups with their huge grin. My smile got frozen when I heard them bragging about their tall coffee cups were filled with strong liquor. And they started smoking a cigarette just in front of us. We hurried up pacing our food and left their table as soon as possible. I hate eating something with breathing in cigarette smoke. Other than that, we enjoyed chatting with our neighbor friends, our favorite librarians, and friends there. I understand a whole bunch of people drink alcohol at the 4^th of July celebration and drive back. I hope they will think twice about the danger of drink-and-drive and stop doing that.

***

I read the following three books.

The Stone Cutter and the Navajo Maiden written by Vee Browne. It was a heartwarming story that a young Navajo girl went through. She broke he late mom’s grinding stone and looked for somebody who can fix it. Instead of fixing it, the last male elder gave a new set of grinding stones to her. It reminded me of my daughter’s Kinaaldá. Our family didn’t have a set of grinding stones and we could not afford to buy a new set. We borrowed the set from one of my husband’s aunts. Since her set was a sturdy and spacious set, it seemed for my daughter to grind kernels of corns easily. We should buy a set of grinding stone one of these days.

Jim Thorpe’s Bright Path written by Joseph Bruchac and illustrated by S. D. Nelson.

Thirteen Moons on Turtle’s Back: A Native American Year of Moons written by Joseph Bruchac and Jonathan London and illustrated by Thomas Locker.

We spent differently as our Saturday routine. Instead of going to canyon hiking, we slept in and relaxed in bed in the morning. After morning walk, we took care of our backyard by pulling weeds. For the past couple of nights, we had plenty of rain so that the soils got wet and soft. It was easy for us to pull some weeds. There are some types of weeds are very hard to pull because they root firmly to deep inside the ground.

It is fun to observe our okra baby plants growing little by little in our garden. They sure like the rain water.

***

I read the following four books.

The Legend Of the White Buffalo Woman written by Paul Goble. I have read his book before but it was good to re-read it again.

We Are Water Protectors written by Carole Lindstrom and illustrated by Michaela Goade. I enjoyed looking at the beautiful illustrations. This book taught me the Ojibwe culture; women as the protector of water and men as the protectors of fire. Even though my support is small in my daily life, I keep supporting to protect water and Mother Earth.

She Sang Promise: The Story of Betty Mae Jumper, Seminole Tribal Leader written by J.G. Annino and illustrated by Lisa Desimini. I didn’t know about Betty Mae Jumper. This book taught me about her life and contribution to her tribe as one of the first female tribal leaders. She was born about 10 years before my parents. She was born for a Seminole mother and a French father. Some of her tribal medicine people at that time were against of intermarriage with whites and threatened the lives of Betty Mae and her brother. I felt good when I read the part Betty Mae had an opportunity to heal the person who tried to kill her in her younger days. I admire her to perform unconditional love to her former enemy.  

Bowwow Powwow written by Brenda J. Child and illustrated by Jonathan Thunder. This book is written in two language; English and Ojibwe. The author created a YouTube video for both language. Even though I don’t know any words in Ojibwe, just listening to their language in her video soothes me. It was a great book especially for her tribal children.

Today’s dream:  I was in Japan with my Reiki teacher. I participated their healing tour in Japan. My family; my husband and daughter, attended with me too. We enjoyed the healing session together. We also enjoyed going in a hot spring together. I thought my family spirits are suggesting me to participate my Reiki teacher’s class in Sedona in October. On the last zoom session, my Reiki teacher showed him concern about Tokyo Olympic 2021 in this month. Even though 80 percent of the people oppose to have it, the government stubbornly is not going to cancel or postpone it. All we can do is wait and see what is going to happen through the Olympic.

***

I read the following three books,

Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story written by Kevin Noble Maillard and illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal. I enjoyed the texts and the illustrations. Even though I cannot eat lots of fry bread for the health reasons, I love eating it occasionally.

The Very First Americans written by Cara Ashrose and illustrated by Bryna Waldman. It was a very brief history of Native Americans and easy for small children to read and understand.

Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidatsa Story written by S. D. Nelson. I really enjoyed reading this book. It contains a big volume of information. I learned how Hidatsu people used to live in the daily life. I was amazed to know their wisdom on how to preserve vegetables for winter. They had an underground storage chambers called cashes and preserved dried vegetables and beans. I really love and admire this author’s illustrations. I found in the author’s note that there are two more books about Buffalo Bird Girl. I am planning to read them too.

My husband’s new company offers normal benefits to workers. Today we can finally apply for insurances we have been waiting for. The application procedure was more complicated than we thought and took almost all morning to go through by calling the agent a couple of times. Before noon everything was done and we made a dental cleaning appointment.

***

In today’s meditation I talked to my family spirits about how I feel about my dad. When I started the conversation, I noticed I have so much anger to my dad accumulated and that is why I don’t call him very often even though I think of him and pray for him every day.

In the morning I registered my daughter for the second part of the summer school. She was happy for that, and I am happy that I will be able to enjoy my alone time for another 14-days in next month.

***

I finally finished reading the book; Tall woman: the life story of Rose Mitchell, a Navajo woman written by Rose Mitchell. Since it is a thick book, it took me 11 days to read through.

I want to show my high respect the two women; Tall Woman and the editor. I was amazed that the author Tall Woman for remembering in details of most of the events in her long life starting from her very young days to very old days. I was also amazed that the editor for her patiently listening to Tall Woman’s story and putting all the information in this book. This book contains lots of data for her family in a big volume of the appendix and notes. This book serves like an encyclopedia about family history for her family.

I was surprised at the fact that Tall Woman had 12 children and she was 58 years old when she had her last baby.

I also was surprised at the fact that it took for this book to be finally published in 1999, which was 22 years after Tall Woman passed away. In those days, there should be much more tiresome procedures to get approvals from all the family members and edit.

Thanks to the advanced technology, we are blessed that the publishing procedure in the modern age has gotten much easier than before.

Today’s dream: I was with my parents in my parents’ local area in Japan. We were on the top of a hill and looked down to the canyon area. There, it was a construction area for a tall building. It was surrounded by tall skinny trees with lots of green leaves. My dad told it was one of the tall building that he designed all the piping lines. He is proud of his job to support humans’ life line.

***

Today’s meditation: My family spirits gave me a talking stick. It was nicely decorated with Navajo’s four sacred colors with some eagle feathers. They want to provide me many opportunities to speak up on behalf of them. Whenever an opportunity is provided, they want me to take a couple of deep breathing and relax, and fully trust them, so that they can talk through me. Thank you to my family spirits. I am honored to receive this talking stick.

***

Last night we were blessed with lots of rain and so it was nice and cool morning this morning.

***

This evening a rowing machine that I purchased online was finally delivered. It was supposed to be delivered yesterday, but it was delayed due to post office’s mistake or something. My husband assembled it for me. My daughter and I exercised 50 times each before we went to bed. Our body was warmed up and the blood circulated nicely so that we fell asleep right away.

Today’s my 5-hour alone time while my daughter was out to summer school went by so quickly. I am still reading the book; Tall woman: the life story of Rose Mitchell, a Navajo woman written by Rose Mitchell.

This book contains lots of interesting memories of the author. I have been really enjoying reading this book,

The author had 12 children. It was common for women to give a big number of children birth those days. She mentioned some of her children including herself didn’t go to school because their parents needed the child’s help to take care of sheep, goats, and other cattle. She named her first daughter as Mary and the second daughter too as Mary, so they had 2 Marys. I thought it interesting that she named one of the daughters Chubby Woman and named the daughter born after Chubby Woman as Beautiful Woman. The two girls grew up close to each other.

The author kept on having a baby for many years. It is interesting that the author and her oldest daughter had their baby around the same time, like a couple of months apart, so the babies grew up like twins even though they were in an uncle/aunt and nephew/niece relationship. And it happened twice. One time when the author got infected from a rattlesnake’s bite and needed to stay in a hospital for a month, the author asked her daughter to nurse her baby together with her baby. When the author came back from the hospital, she was happy to see the two babies were nice and fat in a healthy state. It was a cute story.

I like the part where the author mentioned about one of the old traditional ways. It was to break a pot over the child’s head to fix a child’s stuttering. One of the author’s children stuttered when he was about to be sent to school. The boy got scared and refused to use the traditional way, but the author’s mother did it anyway. When she held a pottery over the boy’s head and broke it by hitting the pottery with a wooden stick, the boy was surprised and scared. But amazingly this method worked. The boy’s stuttering was fixed right away and he never stuttered.

Today’s dream: I was building a house by scrap woods and waste materials with my family. The house turned out to be a gorgeous house. Then I woke up. I know this dream brings good messages to me.

***

During the meditation, my late mom showed me of her daily routine while she was alive. When she woke up, she went to the toilet to release, the bathroom to wash her face, went to the kitchen to cook breakfast, went to the washing machine to start laundry, went back to the bathroom to put make up on her face, and went back to the bedroom to change from a pajama to nice clothes for public. She does not need to do all kinds of those anymore at this moment in the Spirit World. She told me she misses those daily chores and routines. She said all those things that we do naturally while we live will turn to something we will miss once we go back to the Spirit World. And so, she told me to enjoy everything in every moment while I am here on this Earth. She told me everything is a precious experience. She told me with her big smile. I am happy to know she is enjoying being where she is currently at, and communicating with me in my meditation state. I appreciate her wisdom and constant love to me. Thank you Mom. I will follow your advice and enjoy every moment on this Earth while I can.

***

I read three books Trail of Tears written by Joseph Bruchac, Many Nations: An Alphabet of Native America written by Robert F. Goetzl, and Super Simple Native American Art: Fun and Easy Art from Around the World written by Alex Kuskowski.

The first book is written a history of Trail of Tears that Cherokee People went through in 1838. It is written in easy English for children, but it was difficult for me to read it through because of the content. It describes how White people lied and stole the houses, plantation, and land from Cherokee people. It is sad to know some rich Cherokees acted like White people and betrayed their own people. I didn’t know about the fact that some white Americans supported the Cherokees by writing articles in newspapers and sending letters and petitions, which were all ignored by the government. I was surprised to read that each Cherokee was given an allowance of $65.88 to cover the cost of moving to west. I wonder if Navajo people was given any allowances to move to Fort Sumner. I never read something like that for Navajos.

The second book is a picture book for young children. I love the beautiful illustrations.  

The third book contains the instruction for young children to create art crafts. This book reminds me of my elementary school days. I enjoyed creating art crafts.

Today’s dream: My okras in our garden were growing healthily. Then I woke up.

In the morning we went for the canyon hiking as usual. When we arrived at the parking lot, there was only one car parked before us. Even after we were done hiking and came back to the parking lot, there were still not many cars parked unlike usual. It was a little bit freaky. I don’t know why people stopped coming to the hiking area anymore.

***

In the afternoon I kept enjoying reading the book; Tall woman: the life story of Rose Mitchell, a Navajo woman written by Rose Mitchell.

I liked reading the part where she mentioned about Old Man Hubbell known as Man with the Eyeglass at Hubbell Trading Post in Ganado. She described him as the nicest man ever. He always gave the People extra for what they traded, a place to stay whenever they needed to stay overnight, and something for the trader’s wives and children. The Wikipedia says about him as “He was well respected in the Navajo community for his fair dealings with them.” It is very nice to know that there was a nice Non-Navajo back then. I personally have good memories about this trading post because my boyfriend and I often visited and I bought lots of books and jewels from them. This place is where my Navajo dad is originally from.  

***

In the evening my PC screen suddenly became black with some error messages. I got scared of losing all the data in my PC, but luckily it came back to normal after turned OFF and turned ON. I have been using this PC since 2011. It has been 10 years. I love this PC very much and hope it will keep working well for me.

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I received a postcard notice telling me that my business trade name will expire in 60 days. I was surprised that it has been almost 5 years since I established my small business in August 2016.