I’ve got my own aromatherapy – my own set of scents that relax me and improve my mood, I guess if they’re relaxing me and improving my mood they’re promoting health as well.  My aromatherapy scents aren’t anything special.  They’re just everyday smells that remind me of home – comfort smells if you will.

One of the top ones on the list is air-popped popcorn.  A lot of days we’d get off the school bus and walk up our long, long driveway and enter a house that smelled of fresh air-popped popcorn.  I don’t know how Mama knew just when to start the popper so that it’d be ready and waiting and still hot when we got home, but she always did.  I loved coming home anyway, and that just made it better.

Then there’s the smell of wood smoke. I was lucky enough to grow up in one house.  We built it and moved in when I was two and I didn’t leave it until I graduated high school.  We had a fireplace originally, but we replaced that with a wood-burning stove insert.  I always loved to smell the smoke drifting down from the chimney and to hear the cheery crackle of the logs burning.  It was always wonderful to get off the bus or out of the car and smell that smoke and know how toasty warm it was going to be inside.

Bread baking is another favorite.  My mother always made bread from scratch.  When she’d bake it the whole house would smell like a bakery.  We couldn’t wait till the bread came out of the oven and was cool enough to cut and eat.

My other favorite is buttercups – which some people call daffodils.  They’re my favorite flower, we had them in our wedding and I’ve got them scattered all over around our house.  They’re bright, happy flowers with the sweetest smell and they always are the brave little bits of sunshine that herald the approaching end of winter.  I love to smell buttercups.

The list goes on, of course, but those are my top four favorites.  Skip the expensive store brands of aromatherapy for me – just air-pop some popcorn, bake a little bread, light a wood fire or waft the scent of buttercups my direction and I’ll have my aromatic therapy and I’ll be just fine.

Slow-Cooker Pork and Apple Curry
2 pounds boneless pork loin roast, cut into 1″ cubes
1 medium tart apple, peeled and chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 cup orange juice
1 Tbsp curry powder
1 tsp chicken bouillon granules (or one cube if you go that route)
1 garlic clove, minced (about a tablespoon of pre-minced garlic I’m guessing)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp cinnamon (I just sprinkled some in)
(add water if needed to just cover meat)

2 Tbsp cornstarch
2 Tbsp cold water
Hot cooked rice

Combine all ingredients except cornstarch, water and rice. Cover and cook on low for 5-6 hours or until meat is tender. Increase heat to high. In a small bowl, combine cornstarch and water until smooth; stir into slow cooker. Cover and cook for 30 mins or until thickened, stirring once. Serve over rice if desired.

Can garnish with raisins and coconut, chopped peanuts or chutney

A friend clued me in one day as I was sitting in her apartment crying over a failed relationship, my fears, life in general.  She said, “Honey, you can’t change the past.  Things could always be worse, you know.  What you have to do is just let it go, trust God to do what’s best for you and find the good in everything.  Always find something to be happy about.”

Pollyanna has long been a favorite book of mine, though I used to scoff at the feasibility of Pollyanna’s “Glad Game” while I was stressing myself to death over things I couldn’t control.  I’ve found that it does work and it is a tremendous help for getting through stressful days without pulling your hair out or going on a crying jag.

I quit worrying about everything and resolved to always be as positive as possible.  I know I drove my husband crazy sometimes with my cheerful attitude because he was a great one for letting things get to him.  Driving behind a slow driver was enough to make him angry and ruin his day, conflict pushed him over the edge and problems at work hung over his head for ages.  He’s gotten better.  Maybe I’m a good influence.

So no matter what the situation I always look for something good.  I try to remember to keep a smile in my heart even if I can’t manage to plaster one on my face.  I listen to WAY-FM so I only hear music that’s encouraging to me and I hear DJs that make me smile instead of irritate me.  And I try to remember that letting stress get to me isn’t going to help me out in the long run – it’ll generally only make matters worse for me mentally.  Which isn’t to say that I never let things bother me, because things do sometimes.  I just make myself get over it instead of stewing in a boiling pot of frustration.  Whatever the problem, it could always be worse and God really is in control even though I might not think so at the moment.  I remember that first and foremost.  The light at the end of the tunnel really isn’t the headlight of an oncoming train!!

So when life, work, whatever starts to get you down and stress starts to tear you up, just take a page from Pollyanna’s book and look for the good, make a commitment to always have a smile hiding somewhere and relax – there’s always tomorrow

Relay for Life is NOT a race or a marathon or even a long walk.  People can attend Relay and get no physical exercise at all if they choose.  We ask that each team have a representative walking on the track at all times during the night to show their commitment to the ongoing fight against cancer, but nobody is forced to walk.

Relay night is a time of fun, food and fellowship. The teams set up booths with food and games, we have a silent auction to browse through, live bands come out to play, people wander around from booth to booth and just enjoy the fun.

One of the most important things about Relay for Life is that it’s a time to Celebrate and Remember.  We have a special recognition celebration for survivors in the evening before it gets dark. We also recognize the caregivers.  After dark we have a Luminaria Ceremony where luminary bags are lit in honor and in memory of those with cancer and their names are read.  It’s a beautiful and touching time.

Who is a survivor? Anyone who has ever been told the words, “You have cancer.”  If you’re currently undergoing treatment, you’re a survivor.  If you’re in remission, you’re a survivor. If you’ve been cancer free for years, you’re a survivor. If you just found out yesterday, you’re a survivor.

Who can participate in Relay?  Anybody and everybody.  You’re never too old or too young.  All you need is a heart willing to help in the fight against cancer.  Registration is quick and simple at the Relay for Life website.  Our theme for the 2010 Relay is “Surviving Through the Centuries”.  We’re asking teams to pick an era or a theme within an era for their team theme – a few ideas are Wild West, Roaring 20s, Woodstock, Gone With the Wind/Civil War, Reality TV, The Future.  A list of possible eras/themes is up on the Cheatham Co. Relay for Life website.

Now is the perfect time to get your team started.  The holiday season is a great time to start fundraising.  A team that sets a goal of $1000 now only has to raise about $150 a month from December to June to meet their goal.  Imagine what Cheatham Co. could do to help cancer research and our families suffering with cancer if 20 teams raise $2000 each … To get started now go to http://relayforlife.org/cheatham The website has links for registration, ideas for fundraising, Team Captain tips, luminaria orders and a wealth of information. Everyone has been touched by cancer. Now is the time to fight back.

Things seemed to be going pretty well.  She told me later that she’d been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis on top of the lymphoma.  I wondered if it was caused by the chemo.  Chemo does horrible things to the body.  She had a wreck late winter/early spring this year and seemed to be having a hard time recovering from it.  Then she told me she’d been not feeling well and running a low grade fever.  She was nervous because she was due for a cancer check and she was hoping those symptoms didn’t mean her cancer had come back.  They did.  Her levels were back up.  She had to start chemo again.  She told her doctor she didn’t want to go back in the hospital for the wipeout chemo again – at least not while her oldest boy was still in school.  She couldn’t bear the thought of being that miserable and in that much pain again.  They were going to try pill-form chemo and see how that did. I never heard her complain. Even when I could tell she didn’t feel well, she didn’t complain.  She did everything she could with and for her boys.  I don’t think she ever told them that they couldn’t do something because she didn’t feel well.

She passed away around 2:30 this morning.  I don’t know all the details.  My other mom friend called me at lunch and told me.  I know they found her unconscious, she’d gone into renal failure so they did dialysis and they had to put her on a vent. But it didn’t work and now she’s gone.  I can’t imagine how her husband feels knowing she’s gone and he’s got to tell those boys that they’ll never see their Mama again.  Conner was asking the other day if he could go play at their house sometime.  How do I explain to him that one of his best friends has lost his mom?  She’s been a constant in Conner’s life, too.  She was always at class activities, she was always there when he’d go to play.  I know this will make him worry that I’ll get sick and die, too. That’s the way kids operate.  After all, she was about my age.  I could get sick and die, yes, that’s a reality, but I don’t want him dwelling on it and worrying about it.  I don’t know what to say to him or to her family. Words don’t seem appropriate.  “Sorry for your loss” sounds hollow and useless.  “She’s not hurting anymore” won’t ease the hurt in her boys’ hearts.

I’m going to have to pray long and hard about this one because I just don’t understand.  Such a dear, sweet friend and such a wonderful mother….

The year my brother was diagnosed with lymphoma I truly learned the meaning of the phrase, “pray without ceasing.”  I thought I knew it before, but I didn’t.  I knew how to pray occasionally, or to pray every day.  But to pray without ceasing – that’s something you learn to do quickly when you find out a loved one has cancer.  You pray for healing, you pray for peace, you pray for hope, you pray for comfort.  You just pray. And you don’t stop.
People have asked me why we have people walk all night during Relay.  The answer to that question is because cancer doesn’t stop either.  Every second we pray, cancer works just as hard to insinuate itself deeper into the lives of those it affects all over the world.  Just because we go to sleep at night cancer doesn’t stop spreading.  We get up and go to work in the day and cancer keeps right on working, too.
Another thing people don’t always know about Relay is that it doesn’t stop at 5am May 16 when we go home from our Relay event.  The American Cancer Society, and therefore Relay, works all year to research for cures, to help affected families and to raise money to aid in these efforts.  We can work on Relay all year long.
There are lots of things on the agenda for the actual Relay event.  We’re having our annual Womanless Beauty Review, we’re getting a great lineup of entertainers ready to keep our music going all night.  Our teams have been working hard on the silent auction as well.  I’ve been told about all sorts of wonderful baskets full of goodies as well as some vintage Barbies and autographed Pat Head Summit items – including a Pat Head Summit Barbie.  Our teams are preparing a variety of good food for Relay.  We’ll have grilled burgers, hot dogs, spaghetti, pancakes, walking tacos and, of course, lots of coffee! GoJump will be there and one of our teams is having a carnival theme with lots of fun things for kids to do.
My six-year-old son told me the other day that Relay is one of his favorite events of the year (the other is Summerfest).  He asks me every day if it’s time for Relay yet.  Come on out and join us on May 15.  You don’t have to stay the whole night even though we’d love to have you.  Have some supper, listen to some good music, laugh a lot during the womanless beauty review and honor those who have had cancer during the luminaria ceremony.  It’s a great night to celebrate life and renew our hope for a future without cancer!

See, I always wanted a Narnia of my own.  I don’t remember how old I was the first time I read the Narnia books, but I do know it was pretty early on.  I learned to read when I was three. Mama says it seemed like I went straight from learning the alphabet to reading books.  I read Gone With the Wind in either the fourth or fifth grade, if that tells you anything about my voracious appetite for books.

I should probably stand up now and say, “My name is Sarah and I’m a book-aholic.”

I didn’t enjoy school during my growing up years.  In Kindergarten I was miserable because I wanted to stay home with my Mama.  And I was bored.  I knew my alphabet, colors, shapes and numbers and that’s what they were trying to teach me. In first grade I was still bored.  I remember getting the first grade reader that was supposed to last us for a good part of the year, taking it home and reading the whole thing.  In the first night. I asked for another one the next day and was disappointed to find out there wouldn’t be another one for a while.

Other reasons I didn’t enjoy my school years…well, I was different.  And we all know how cruel children can be to other children who are different.  I was also naive, had very low self esteem and I was an easy target since I so desperately wanted to be friends with my classmates.  None of that makes a good combination.  I eventually learned to keep all my secrets to myself and that, for the most part, my only true friends were those found in my books.  This is not to say I was entirely friendless, because there were a few friends in my life. But they were usually older than me and not in my class at school.
I remember reading books, like Narnia, and being terribly sad at the end because I couldn’t stay in the world my mind lived in while I was reading.  Sad because I had to leave my dearest friends behind. Sad because I had to go to school the next day and be lonely, be afraid that I’d tell somebody too much and they’d use it to tease me later, be afraid that I’d let somebody get close and they’d turn around and hurt me.

Happy times for me were at home.  Not just when I was reading, but outside roaming around our farm.  We had a Big Pond up the hill from the house and a Little Pond right in front of the house.  The Big Pond had trees all around it, some that were in pairs that made perfect gates.  I would walk through the tree gates and into my own Narnia.  The biggest tree at the Big Pond had a stump in front of it with a sapling shooting up either side of it.  It made a perfect throne from which I could survey my kingdom.

One day as I was walking through the field behind our house I discovered a teeny tiny little pond that was the most fabulous place for a girl with an imagination.  At one corner of the pond was a giant weeping willow tree with eight trunks.  The corner parallel had a huge locust tree covered in long menacing thorns. The side opposite these two trees was lined with small trees with twisted trunks. Naturally the willow tree was the queen’s castle.  The locust tree with all it’s thorns was the home of the Evil Being trying to take over the kingdom (the Evil Being changed form from week to week.) The Path of Twisted Trees was a secret passageway.

I found another place on my uncle’s part of the farm when I was a teenager and could ride the four-wheeler down the road and therefore explore more.  I found another tiny pond with an island in the middle.  It looked just like a doughnut.  There was a tree standing at either end of the island like a sentry. A flowering tree was just off to the side.  It was all so lovely in the spring.  I called it Oranal.
Up the hill a bit from my Oranal was a pond that filled me with as much dread as Oranal filled me with delight.  The first time I saw it I heard no singing birds around it, the wind barely seemed to blow.  Dead trees stuck up from inside it. It was still and dead.  I heard one lone crow caw.  I named that place Riel.

I wrote a short story about the ongoing battle between the worlds my imagination built around those two little ponds.

Like the Switchfoot song says, “This is home. I’ve been searching for a place of my own, now I’ve found it.”  I was home there, in my wild places, in my mind.

Thankfully, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found myself – so to speak.  I found self-confidence somewhere along the way.  I don’t worry so much about what people will think of me, if I worry about it at all. I have wonderful friends and a fabulous husband who makes me blush every day.

I do still sometimes visit the places created by my imagination. I still love to read.

But … this is home.  For now.  There’s another home waiting for me later, my own special Narnia that our very own Aslan will call me to one day.  But for now … this is home.

So why have I called this blog “Opalturtle” instead of “Just a Thought”?  I have long had a love of turtles.  They’re cute. They’re sturdy. They carry their whole world around on their backs, but they never let anything get them down.  They just keep plugging along after they pull their head and appendages in to make sure that car actually didn’t run over them.  I’ve never seen a frowning turtle.  They always seem to smile.  As for the opal part … after I graduated high school, my parents moved to Mexico to be missionaries.  When they were living in Guadalajara I was lucky enough to get to go visit them.  We traveled down to a little down named Magdalena (near the town of Tequila.) Magdalena is an opal mining town.  In one of the shops I found a black obsidian pendant in the shape of a turtle and his little shell was made of opal chips. It was beautiful.  I wore that pendant until the shell fell apart. I still have the turtle and all the shell pieces in hopes that I can get it fixed someday.  That or I can go to Magdalena again and find another one like it.  (I can’t find one online. I’ve looked. Repeatedly.) So while I had that pendant, the opal turtle became my representative symbol.  Something small, seemingly plain, but glimmering with flashes of brilliant colors upon closer inspection.

This blog shall be the place for me to publish the thoughts I would put in a column if I were still at the paper.

Here’s a poem I wrote some many years ago:
Opal Turtle

You see me and think me uninteresting and plain
But what is hidden will remain
Mysterious, fascinating as glimmers of color glow
Hidden somewhere, gleaming in my secret soul.
Like a rare, black opal, obsidian at first glance
But sparkling with emeralds, sapphires and rubies
when given a second chance.
Like a turtle I walk along with a soft smile on my face
Carrying my world on my shoulders yet not feeling the weight.
An Opal Turtle I’ve become shining with brilliant light
Beneath this shell exterior that takes intricate to new heights.
I am delicate on the inside, but my spirit is not so easily crushed
And my new-found voice is not readily hushed.
Smile at me in my strange loveliness, wonder at my new role
I’m finally living freely in my shimmering opal soul.
—-Sarah Sanford