Hooray For Hot Springs!

I met my cousin in Hot Springs, Arkansas and had a bit of dirty fun.

We spent 2 days digging through red clay to find quartz crystals with our name on them.

Pay dirt!

We had a blast.

It was an interesting trip.  We came separately - K left her husband in California, I left my dog in Virginia - and we met by accident in the middle of the airport in Little Rock.  I was thinking about K as I walked up the ramp from my plane, worried that I didn't have her cell phone number and I hoped that we'd meet up at the rental car counter within the hour.  I was walking briskly toward baggage claim watching the floor so that I'd not run over people's feet with my carry-on-with-wheels, when I looked up to see a familiar woman walking in the same direction from another gate.  We locked gazes at the same time, both equally surprised to see each other. 

And this was the beginning of a vacation that was meant to be.

Our flights to and from Little Rock went perfectly.  We had serendipitous meetings with total strangers.  We had lucky numbers reappear, specifically 13 and 777.  We had perfect weather that matched our wish list.  We never had a bad meal - even the eggs we bought to make breakfast every morning were the best I ever had.  We got along famously, never one argument about anything.  We had a great water view from our balcony and spent every morning and evening looking over the lake.  I was able to take advantage of a friend's time share and K took advantage of a family discount on the car rental.  We even had a brand new car - I was pulling plastic off of the seats and the back of the car, and it had that new car smell we all love.

The first two days in Hot Springs were hot and humid, typical Arkansas summer weather, so we sucked up the heat and explored the Hot Springs area.  First we took a tour through Garven Woodlands Garden, a beautifully kept woodland garden in the Ouachitas mountains. Even though we had to climb up and down the trails, the trees gave us some welcomed shade and a connection with nature.  After a long but relaxing walk we drove back to Hot Springs to explore the Bathhouse district, did a little shopping in the air conditioned stores and headed back to our rented condo on Lake Hamilton before treating ourselves to a great dinner in a local restaurant.


I can't remember what we did the second day, probably more driving around and shopping - oh, wait - we had lunch on the Belle Riverboat as we toured Hamilton Lake, a beautiful man made lake bordered by million dollar homes.  It was beautiful.  Then we went downtown for some shopping. There are a lot of local artists in the area!

The third day the weather became more friendly, less humid and cool, so we set out to Coleman's Crystal Mines where, for a measly 10 bucks a piece, we could spend the day digging around the cast-off piles of dirt and take home anything we could find.  And we found!  We kept digging and finding and filling the trunk of our rented car with red clumps of clay until we could take no more, then headed out for food.  We hadn't eaten or had anything to drink for hours.  We went to the first fast food place we saw, a Sonic, and had a meal fit for queens.  It could've been our hunger, but that was the best fast food burger I'd had in years!

K and I spent the rest of the afternoon outside our condo soaking and cleaning off our finds.  We felt like we had found a long lost treasure and were pleasantly surprised by the beauty of our bounty once we'd cleared off the red mud.  

We were so successful we did it again the next day, though that time we quit an hour early and headed  straight for our first Bathhouse experience at the Buckstaff Bathhouse - no appointment necessary!  Little did we know how well our attendants would get to know our naked bodies during our 3 hour bath and massage package.  Lots of steam, lots of water, lots of massage oil.  We closed the place down and went to dinner.

Hot Springs is famous for the thermal spring waters that rise to the surface from the depths of the earth at almost one million gallons a day.  After we pushed the native American population aside a couple of hundred years ago, people from all over the world have been visiting the giant and beautiful bathhouses since the 1800's, creating a healing center for any who could make the trip.  The history of this town is rich, and because the buildings are mainly marble and ceramic tiles, they are still standing!  The water is so hot, we have to cool it down enough to bathe in and its soothing mineral water is so pure we can drink it straight from the ground.  I drank a ton of it and did not die! Downtown Hot Springs is full of fountains, big and small, where you can fill your own bottles with water and take home for free, but you have to be careful you don't burn yourself.  There is no shortage of water or steam in this town!  For K this was a welcome relief from the drought conditions back home in Northern California.

The next day we skipped the digging, spent the morning cleaning out the trunk of our car and getting as much mud off of our crystals as we could before heading out to the post office to send the rocks home; neither of us wanted to carry the stuff home in our suitcases.  Rocks are heavy!  Lunch, shopping, dinner, condo on the lake.  A good restful day.

Our last day in Hot Springs involved a scheduled bathhouse/massage extravaganza at the Arlington Hotel.  We closed that place down, ate a late lunch, spent some time getting sound therapy at a shop to which we were recommended, shopped some more and headed home to pack. I had a clear vision during the sound therapy, which involved being surrounded by sound frequencies that promote healing, of Hot Springs turning into another Sedona, a town filled with energy healers and creative people.  Encircled by mineral springs, crystal laden mountains and natural beauty, it's a perfect place for some healing.

It was also a perfect girls only vacation, though K loved it so much she's bringing her husband back with her next year.  I'm going to recommend some cave tours that we missed this time around that look really interesting.  We were pretty close to visiting Hot Springs during the perfect time of year, but I think a week or two into October would be even better.  The weather would be cooler; better for diving deep into hot steamy things, and the plethora of trees would be turning into their autumn glory.

Our crystals are our gifts straight from the earth, untouched by any except our own hands.  Thank-you mother earth for your healing waters, your healing crystals, and the lovely, friendly people of Hot Springs.  It's was a dirty and clean and fun vacation - the most fun I've had in a long time!

#Tweet For Good

We are a judgmental species.

When we see someone we don't like, we comment on it.  When we feel bad about ourselves we can't help but express our feelings.  Sometimes we project our self criticisms onto others to make us feel better about ourselves even though it makes the other people feel bad.  We might feel sorry for it later, but we can't seem to help ourselves.

I've hung out with people who spend their days gossiping about other people.  They laugh, rage, complain, and worry about the person they are focused on because they have pent up feelings about the way their own lives are going.  I've seen it in my neighborhood even though it's a great area full of people who share and help each other out with smiles on their faces.  There are some who stand outside, point at houses and comment about the people living in them.   It's really bad at work, where the building is full of unhappy employees and changing work conditions that scare them.  They probably don't mean any real harm, it's just that complaining has become a habit.  I can understand how they feel, I just wish there was a different way to make them feel better.

I can also understand the need to judge the people we know and are exposed to on a daily basis.  It's a coping method that helps us deal with the unknown.  We don't understand our friend, so we gossip about them with another friend, hoping friend number two can shed some light on the actions of friend number one.  

What I can't understand is the way people are spewing their angst and hatred onto people they don't know, especially via the web.  Modern technology has allowed us to connect with each other in wonderful ways, and what do we do?  We gossip, threaten, and rage over the dumbest things.  It's especially bad for those in the limelight.

We used to be able to have problems in private, worrying only about what our family and friends thought about us and having the gift of time to work out our differences, but now we have to worry about what the whole world thinks about us.  We tweet and vlog and email our opinions in the heat of the moment without thinking about what we are doing to complete strangers.  It's a test of how secure or insecure we are with our own identities; a test to see if we can accept and set aside our egos for the greater good.  Most of us fail.

The world is raging against itself.  Wars are being fought.  People are rioting.  Families are hurting their own, neighbors are feuding over things that don't matter.  And what do we say to each other to make things better?  What can we say?

What if we used Twitter as a tool to heal instead of a weapon?  What could we say to each other to make everybody feel better?

Being a student of Reiki, Ho'ohponopono, the vibration of Love, and the law of attraction, I've learned that words change everything.  When we choose our words for good, gifting compliments, forgiveness, and encouragement instead of complaints, hatred  and expressions of fear, we can shift the vibration of our and others lives from gloom to light - even if we aren't really feeling it at the moment.

Studies have proven that intentional thought by large groups of people can change whole environments.  The more people pray or meditate the same intention at the same time, no matter where they are in the world, the better the results.  It's called the Maharishi effect.  The most well known experiment was held in Washington D.C. area in 1993 by practitioners of Transcendental Meditation.  When the meditation group grew to about 2,500 people the crime rate in D.C. decreased.  By the end of the eighth week and the growth of the group to 4,000, crime had fallen by 24%.

Can you imagine what millions, maybe billions of people could accomplish together?

The law of attraction says that changing your intention can change your world.

Ho'ohponopono stresses the idea of expressing regret and love in a short prayer can change the outcome of any situation: I love you, I'm sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you.

Reiki has the power to heal even if you don't believe it will.

 After a night, actually more like a week, of constantly hearing about certain celebrities getting hate mail and death threats via Twitter which did nothing more than make their lives even harder, I came up with an idea.

Why don't we use Twitter for good instead of evil?  

We don't have to pray, we don't have to meditate, we don't even have to mean what we say.  Our intention will do the work for us, eventually creating change in our own lives.

We should try a mass tweet.

Every day, when we pick up our phones to tweet or text someone, before we even start the conversation with our intended reader, we should type in "I love you," and send it out to the world.

For the next month, at least once a day, gift a little love to the world.  Whether you mean it or not.

Let's see what might happen.

Three little words.  I'm already starting.  I hope to start a movement of change.  It's so easy to do.

I love you.

Tweet for good.

Pass it on.

My Etsy Decision

I haven't been writing much lately because I've been reevaluating my projects.  They keep adding up, and even though I'm having lots of fun experimenting, I really needed to take a good look at them  and stick to a favorite few.  

I started a couple of years ago trying my hand at internet marketing and failed miserably.  I spent a lot of money and created a bunch of websites that accomplished nothing, helped no one, and led nowhere.  It turns out I'm a terrible businesswoman.

I tried my hand at becoming a coach of some kind, got certified and licensed and chickened out on selling myself as an expert.  I found a Reiki master and was attuned to a level two practitioner with hopes of starting a business working with animals.  I tried and blogged about all sorts of energy healing systems.  I created products and stored them in a box in my basement.  (In case you're curious, they are Law of Attraction magnets.)  I packaged them and have them ready to go, and all I have to do is decide what to do with them.

I wrote some books and self-published a couple, and I'm still working on a couple that I think will make good reads if I ever get around to finishing them. 

After some thought and experimentation and a lot of effort,  I came to a conclusion.  I have to make a decision and focus on something.

So I opened a store on Etsy. 

Ginger and her Bling

I like to make jewelry.  I like my dog.  I know that animals have energy systems like us, and like us benefit from energy healing.  I know that crystals aid in healing.  My dog, Ginger, was having a hard time getting over her fear of people, new situations, strange things in the street, and my bird.  So I started doing Reiki with her and made some jewelry from stones and crystals known for their healing energy and clipped them onto her collar.  This gave me an idea; these would be great for other dogs who need a little healing as well as a great addition to my Reiki practice, so I started making more.  I bought beads and crystals and started making pendants.  I created a label and packaged each pendant with a little explanation of what the stone does.  Now I have something else to store in a box in my basement.

I woke up one morning and realized that I could sell them, I just had to figure out how.  Immediately Etsy.com came to mind.  Open an E-store!  That will solve everything!

Ginger made a beautiful model

In a weird way it did.  Because of that little decision I now have GingerBling for my Pendants, am testing out my magnets with my cousin's coaching clients (yes, I have a cousin who is already a successful coach in the UK.  She was nice enough to carry a bunch back with her after visiting here recently with the promise of asking what her clients thought of them), and dropped Niche Builder, a great SEO system by the way,  with some of the websites that are doing nothing for me.  It's a hundred bucks a month I'm saving there - a loss to the internet world, a win for me.

I made Happy2beEarthbound my parent company and licensed it.  I revamped the site to showcase the things I decided to focus on.  I'm keeping FurryEarthlings to use as a blog site for my Reiki practice.  I'm keeping Happy-Earthling just because it has some good information and a good message.  I'm still on the fence about LemonadeThoughts, though; that was to be my coaching business site, but until I decide if I'd really make a good coach Lemonade Thoughts will have to stay on a back burner -  someday I'll have to do something with the workbook I created for it.  All of this is listed on Happy2beEarthbound.com.

The first thing I showcase on the Happy2beEarthbound.com products page is my Etsy shop, GingerBling, because it's my latest baby.

I've always loved shopping on Etsy.com.  It's a showcase website set up to sell the wares of creative people of all kinds.  The artists make and sell everything from jewelry to clothing to stained glass and furniture, and I even found a psychic who sold readings.  You can find some pretty well-made and beautiful things on Etsy.com and they make it as easy to buy a $2000.00 item as a $6.50 one.  It's visually attractive as well.  I found a perfect venue for my meager wares.

As I worked on my own Etsy site I discovered it was easy to create the pendants, a job to set up the description and sales price, and a pain to take a good picture of each one.  Etsy has an easy to-do process - all you have to do is follow the directions to set up shop and publish.  They charge 20 cents for each item and take a small percentage of the sales.  Easy peezy.

But like any perfectionist I find myself fussing over making it perfect.  I take pictures, try them out and take more.  I edit, reedit and start over.  I can create a pendant in 20 minutes, but it takes me all day to showcase it.  Luckily there are lots of people on line, including the kind people of Etsy, who have lots of suggestions and tips for me to try and become a better photographer.  Who knew I'd be training to be a product photographer?  It'll all be worth it when I start selling.  I hope.

Now my BIG idea is to make more pendants and find some stores who'll be willing to sell them in the real world.  This way I can build my Reiki practice and attract clients.  I'll have more to blog about on FurryEarthlings and can refer my clients to my Etsy shop.  Maybe I'll be able to throw in some coaching on the side.

I'm doing a great job of simplifying my life.

With any luck, the year I'm ready to retire I'll be able to quit my broadcasting job and be paid to be creative full time.  I like to dream.

And it's all possible because of Etsy.