My husband went to work. He had an extra day off from work last week and stayed 4 days at the house with us. He stayed in bed longer than the usual work days and woke up around 8 or 9 a.m. I needed to prepare three meals a day for him.

So, I was happy that he went back to work this morning. We got back to the regular work days. We woke up at 5:30 a.m. I fixed him breakfast and lunch and saw him off to work.

This coming week he will have another extra off day from work and will stay at home for 4 days. After this week his work shift will get back to the normal work shift, which I am kind of looking forward to.

From tomorrow, my daughter will attend the summer camp Mondays through Fridays. Even it is only 4 hours a day, I will be able to enjoy my alone time during the weekday daytime. It is normal for the majority of moms, but our daily routine was changed since last year of Covid-19.

Having my husband and daughter at home during the weekday daytime all the time, sometimes exhausts me. I will definitely enjoy my free time from tomorrow.

***

I read four books today.

First laugh: welcome, baby! Written by Rose Ann Tahe – It was a cute picture book. Easy to read and understand.

The Water Lady-how Darlene Arviso helps a thirsty Navajo Nation Written by Alice B. McGinty – I like this book very much. The illustrator did a great job. This book gently reminds the readers how blessed we are to live in the areas with running water. I have visited northern area of Navajoland where they didn’t have running water. Also I went through two months without running water and gas after the Great Hanshin earthquake in 1995 in Japan. I support people to try to preserve water and keep appreciating our great resource of water.

The Navajo Written by Andrew Santella – This book is short but very informative to introduce about the Navajo and their history. It serves very well for a reader who wants to know the basic information. I didn’t know they were originally nomadic hunters and gatherers living in the northwest of Canada thousands years ago.  

Monster Birds: a Navajo folktale Written by Vee Browne – I enjoyed reading this picture book.

***

Today is my dad’s birthday. I thought of calling him, but on my second thought I decided not to call him today. I know he would be happy to hear my voice, but…. I just sent good thoughts and prayers to him. Happy birthday Dad.

In the morning my family and I went to the canyon hike. Today the entire trail was amazingly vacant. We hardly encountered anybody in the trail, but we did encounter many wild animals and birds. The weather was nice with clear blue sky and nice breeze.

***

I have been reading the book Dog flowers written by Danielle Geller. This book is a memoir of the author who was born to Navajo and a white man. I had enjoyed reading her book. She must be a brave and matured soul to choose such a tough life. While I was visiting many different Navajo families on the reservation when I was single, I encountered many, many alcoholic people and their family members who suffer from being hooked. In my life in Japan, I did encounter some alcoholic people but they never got to the same extreme level as her family members.  

It took me seven days to finish reading this book. I could have finished reading the same volume of book if it were written in my language. But for the books written in English I still encounter new words that I don’t know the meaning and I look the meaning up, so it takes longer than reading books in Japanese. I waited my only alone time at night after my daughter went to bed and read it little by little.

I like her book very much. I want to write and publish a memoir like hers. The only difference will be the structure. I like my book in chronological order unlike her book. Her book is structured in back and forth between the past and the current. I think this is a common technique for the majority readers, especially for mystery books fans.

I watched the movie The New World (2005). This movie is about Pocahontas. This movie reminds me of my late Navajo friend. He watched this movie at the theater in America. I wanted to watch it but it was not available in Japan at that time. Now 16 years has passed, and I finally could watch it through DVD.

He had some strong spiritual connections with Europe. His first and last girlfriend was a European girl while he was living in Germany. This is probably the main reason why he liked this movie very much even though he was a Native.

As for me, I don’t have any spiritual connections with Europe like he did. Just looking at European invading to the Native people’s land made me feel sick. This movie shows the historical truth that even though Natives warmly welcomed the unexpected invaders and even shared their food when they needed, the Europeans kept on stealing everything. Sorry to say, but I personally could not fully enjoy watching the movie from the Native’s perspective. Please don’t get offended by my personal opinion.

My friend in the local area is going to move to another city. It will be in the same state, but it will be a 5-hour drive away. She will move out on this coming Saturday. We planned to see each other at the last moment before her move. We originally planned to have lunch together at the restaurant, but I asked her to change our meeting place to the local park.

So we had a get together at the park. It was good for us to change the venue to the park as we kept on chatting for more than 5 hours. We would have been gently chased out if we stayed at the restaurant. 

It was nice to be able to meet her before her move.

We have not been close all the years. We had a 5-year absence that we didn’t contact each other. We never got argument or anything, but during that time I shut off my mental door to people on this land. I had been depressed.

Both of us don’t remember what the trigger for us to reconnect each other was, but we were happy for our reconnection.

I believe everything is up to our spiritual connection. I hope and believe we can see each other again in person in the future. I appreciate her for her friendship.   

Today my husband was off from work. We watched two movies of Lone Ranger (2013) Smoke Signals (1998). My husband and I have watched these movies before. The reason why we started re-watching old Native American movies is because we want our daughter to know a lot about Natives.

***

Today I had one uncomfortable experience. I receive an email from the realtor. I hope she is originally a nice person, but when it comes to the communication via emails, texts, and letters, she sounds very coldhearted. One biggest example is about the rent increase notice. At the end of 2019, she sent us a letter. The letter did not contain any greetings or nice wording, but it went directly to the business. It was the rent increase notice letter of $100 increase per month. It was very coldhearted notice because it had only 30 days in advance notice and a huge amount. The letter ordered us to choose one option out of the two. Option one: accept the increase and start paying from the next month. Option two: leave within one month.

The letter arrived to our house at the beginning of December. Who can pack up and leave that soon?  We are the family; my daughter goes to school and my husband goes to work. We could not find a new place to move out. Of course we had no option but to accept the rent increase. Since that time, I totally lost trust to this realtor.

Today she sent out the similar type of notice email. It says we as a tenant are responsible to change an air filter. The email, same as usual, does not contain any greetings or respected words. Just went straight to the business in a cold hearted way. I believe changing an air filter is on the owner’s responsibility, not tenant’s responsibility. We have been living on the renting situation for 12 years now. All the owners prepared a new air filter and exchanged it every time when they switched from heater to cooler. In order to switch an air filter, we have to climb up to the top of the roof. We called the realtor and wanted to ask her to arrange somebody on her side, but she didn’t pick up the phone nor returned the call all day.

I meditated and went to the high vibration realm and talked to my family spirits.

I wishes are like this.

My family and I want to keep peace with the realtor.

We don’t know how many years will take for us to get ready to move to Navajoland, but we will for sure. Until then, I want to keep living in this house.

I visualize something unexpected and great news will come to us, such as the current realtor will quit her position for some reasons and somebody really nice and thoughtful will take over her position.

I think all I can do at this moment is to keep thinking positive and believe in we will be fine no matter what. We want to live peacefully. We want to deal with only nice and thoughtful people. We thank spirits for their constant support. I strongly believe this will be solved peacefully.

My favorite YouTuber posted his newest video clip today. He started positing his videos in 2011 and posted almost every day in 2012, but gradually the frequency got smaller and smaller by now. So I was happy to see his new video clip today. I never commented to any of YouTubers before, but I wanted to say hi to him. I took courage and commented to a YouTube video for the first time. I commented I watched all his videos and I love his Navajo-English slang video clip the best. He replied back to my comment and said he would make a newer version of the video clip. I was so happy that I could unexpectedly communicated with my favorite YouTuber. Nice.

Today’s dream: My Japanese friend and her husband and daughter were visiting me in my dream. I was with my husband and daughter. The six of us went to an amusement park together and sat down in the audience seats to see some entertainment show. We all shared our foods for lunch. We had a good time together. Then I woke up. I haven’t talked with them for a while. I miss them. I hope they are doing fine and we will see each other again once Covid-19 situation calms down.

***

I finished reading the book Lump Lump and the Blanket of Dreams inspired by Navajo Culture and Folklore written by Gwen Jackson and illustrated by Lissa Calvert. It was a cute story.

Today’s dream: My mom and my grandma visited me in my dream. My mom gave me a whole bunch of her homemade onigiri (rice balls) and my grandma gave me a whole bunch of her homemade hamburgers with lots of cabbage. They all looked very yummy. They told me to share them with my family and friends. I woke up feeling refreshed and happy.

***

I finished reading the book Navajo History edited by Ethelou Yazzie. I have read my different books about Navajo myth in my late 20s and I know the storyline, but it was good for me to review them again as I forgot some of them.

My daughter read it before me. It took her only some minutes to finish reading it while it took me three days. At first I doubted the she actually read it through. But she told me what she has learned from this book, it was all accurate and in details. Up until now all her school teachers have told me she is an amazingly strong reader, and today it was fully confirmed.

In this summer I am planning to have many books about Navajo and read them with my daughter.

In the morning my family and I went to the canyon hiking. The weather was perfect; not too hot nor too cold. We enjoyed having nice gentle breezes. Unlike usual, there were not many visitors on the trail, which we enjoyed too.

The local swimming pool was open from today. We didn’t go but it would be nice to jump into a cold water pool in such a hot summer day.

***

At 8:30 p.m. I attended the Sunday Service. At the spirit communication demonstration, I was chosen unexpectedly. On top of that I was the very first one who was chosen. I was surprised because recently I had not been selected at all.

The medium stared saying that my paternal grandparents appeared for me. My grandma came forward. She showed a vision of writing a postcard the illustration of some purple flowers as iris and hydrangea. The medium didn’t know exactly what the vision meant. She recommended me to start drawing some flowers or something artistic works.

***

After the demonstration, I focused on my grandma. I felt that purple energy means spiritual ability. I include her name in my prayer, but I was not sure if she was with me or not. I felt my grandma appeared and showed a vision of writing a postcard as her response. She has been listening to me and I can talk to her often.

Thank you to my grandma and grandpa for coming to see me tonight. And thank you to the medium for conveying the precious message to me.

My daughter decided to attend the summer camp presented by our local school and community volunteers. She previously attended this summer camp for three years. There were some not-nice girls in the camp and she had some bad experiences from them. So, for the last two years, she didn’t attend it.

This past school year one of her former classmates and my daughter have been chatting through the online game and that made them closer than before. They decided to attend the summer camp together.

We registered her to the camp and paid the fee. The summer camp stars at the beginning of next month. She is excited to interact with other people. I am happy that she will get back to the society. Since last March when the school closed due to Covid-19, she has been staying at home with me all the time more than one year. I guess it is time for us to have our own private time. It will be only 4 hours a day, but I will cherish my alone time of the 4 hours for one month.　

I hope from my heart that she will have only good experiences during the summer camp.