Maebius Musings

Not much new to muse about, other than the weather is slowly warming up and teasing us with hints and glimmerings of Spring. Yesterday the temps got up to arounf 50, and today’s much the same, though we are supposed to get frost again and lows of 20F again.

Yesterday, we broke out my old red flyer wagon and took Doug for a ride down the road and back. Daffodils starting to pop up, daylillies are peeking from the wet leaves and snowpiles along the road, and the trees are slowly starting to bud out.

Also, started a batch of experimental strawberry Mead. Wish me luck. Once it’s done, I should be able to sleep soundly, lost in the heady bliss of ambrosia…

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Nothing much to report lately, as I’ve been rather too tired and worn out to muse about stuff, or do much more than sleep and work the graveyard shift at work.

The stomach bug thingy seems to have passed for me and Tammy, though we tried to go eat some chinese food last night with our friend, and poor little Doug had another episode of “food coming out of my mouth” (as he so fearfully describes it).

Otherwise, we got out the planters, bought a good $40 worth of seeds, etc, and are all set this weekend to start the springtime ritual of planting. Doug’s really looking forward to it, as he was allowed to pick out 5 packets of any seed he wanted from the store. His choices included some Nasturtium, two kinds of corn (white and an unusual red-kernal corn), lettuce, white radishes, and a giant sunflower. He also now has his own 25-slot seed tray, small enough for him to use, but still big enough for plenty of differrent seeds.

In other more esoteric musings, made a mental note to research entymology of such words as the Muse (ie: the title of this blog), Amusing, and Music. Are they related in some way? If so, what does this portend for funny lyrical ponderings and the continued creative evolution of humanity?! Only the shadow knows!

-Off to bed, glad to be back on days next week.

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First (well, not first, but …before) there was Corn Syrup being put in everything from toothpaste to Hot Dogs, to crackers! I mean really, adding sugar to something that helps clean teeth and prevent cavities?! But I digress.

Then they come up with sorbitol and other sugary substitutes, so the calorie-counters can bake their cakes and eat them too. No mentioning of the FDA’s suggestion that eating such can cause intestinal bloating and have a laxitive effect, since those sugar-alcohols are not absorbed well into the bloodstream (why they are calorie-free), and bind well with water to pass quickly “and harmlessly” through the gut. Same with Olestra, the no-fat substitute, which had much more prevelant and well-known Diarrhea effect.

What really got my ire up yesterday was the following bag of unholy evil that showed up in our fridge. Tammy went grocery shopping, and found a bag of apple slices in the clearance section for quite under the price of regular apples. Since our son loves apples and carrots as a snack, this was pretty much a no-brainer as a nice inexpensive item to help him eat after a recent bout of the stomach-bug.

(Insert: Tammy started with the illness, tossed lunch a few times, then Doug got it and was up most of the night sunday/monday, and ..as I type this, Nate is at work with a fever and making periodic runs to the restroom. NO FUN!)

Anyways, I tried one of these apple slices yesterday, and it tasted…off. Not sure what was different about it, otherthan it was a strangely sweet and almost fruity tart flavor, quite unlike regular “tart” apples like we get at the orchard each fall.

Only later, did I realize the horror that was in the bag. Mixed Berry flavored Apple slices! All natural, no artificial flavors! What…The…Heck?!

http://www.applesweets.com/Product/Flavored.cfm

Are we as a consumer culture so far removed from the very essence of eating real food, that we must now use “Natural flavors” to make apples taste different? Aren’t apples by themselves a yummy fruit snack?

I can almost, al-most, understand adding flavors to pre-processed foods like apple pies, or cobblers, or heck, even Apple Pop-Tarts. But what we have here is apple slices. Apparently raw apples sliced into convenient wedges, packaged up, and infused with berry (or caramel) flavor!?!

Forgive me for dying a little on the inside.

And needless to say, the apples are no longer taking up space in our fridge. I’ll live with wasting a few cents and buying other “whole” apples to slice up and put in a ziplock baggie for Doug’s snacks this week.

Sheesh!

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Nothing huge to report lately, other than I’m still on the night-shift this week.

Tammy feels rather under the weather yesterday, after indulging in some corned beef and cabbage, which apparently set off her stomach and triggered a good bug.

I found This really nifty and unique and strangely addictice zen-like game while bored at work tonight. http://www.k2xl.com/games/boomshine/ You should really try it out and see what you think. The last level is particularly tough, but still really pretty to watch play out.

In other news, in World of Warcraft I finally managed to get a chanracter to lvl 40 and had saved up enough gold to buy a mount! WooHoo! They rock, and really do help when just wandering about to different areas and zones, plus helping to avoid the majority of random battles when travelling, as you are faster than most things.

Also, yesterday we had a yummy meal made by Tom. Bowtie pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese, and garlic, among other secret ingredients! Very yummy, and was great because it was something “different” for us and not jsut the usual pasta or soup we’ve been making lately due to uncreative cooking minds. Thanks Tom!!!

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So yesterday after work, I picked up Special-Ops agent: Doug (current status: Redbird, formerly Redfish, formerly Thomas the Train…) since the usual sitters were feeling rather under the weather. On the way home, I stopped by the Whitestown Ice Rink to check on times of public skates and such, since we had thought about going a few times and never got around to checking when it was open.

Well, let me tell you, walking in to the otherwise empty building at 10:30am was like going to Disneyland for the kid! Eyes: properly bugged. Heartrate: channelling chipmunk metabolisms there. Excitement level off the charts. We were to skate NOW! NOW he sez! Unfortunately, or luckily, the public skates are Tues&Thurs evenings from 7-9pm.

So after convincing him to wait and we’d go later in the day -if- he was cooperative in School, we left to go home and he had to call mom right away to ask her about skating in the evening. *grin* It was cute.

** time passes ** (He was very good at school, only when it was break time and he ran for the door to go skating, instead of taking a seat for the upcoming storytime.)

Note to others: Generally the misbehaving at school takes form of insisting his name is NOT Doug, or getting into minor skirmish with his arch-rival, the kid who likes to take the same toy he’s currently playing with and refusing to back down.
Evening comes, we head to the rink, and get laced up with the Uber-hawt rental skates. *chuckle* First 20 minutes or so consisted of Tammy and I holding his hands and the rest of his body suspended between us while we played out that scene from Bambi, and he flailed his legs around (Dancing, in his words). Then it seemed to click that walking was more useful and less tiring on the rapidly weakening parental arms.

After about the first hour, he was slowly shuffling around, with a few butt-bounces, but smiling and dedicated to getting from one “circle” to the other (picture the markings on a hockey rink, we had to stop at each dot and follow each line/arc/circle).

The only bad thing was a beautifully executed face-plant with the side of the rink when trying to go take a break in the penalty boxes since the “door” to the real seats was waaaaay over on the other side, and he didn’t want to skate that far. Incisors met lips in perfect alignment, and the hemoglobin reared it’s crimson self. *sigh* Not too bad though, but defintiely a solidly pierced upper lip.
But, once the crying settled down, and a cold cloth helped sop up the little bit of blood, the tyke was determined and adamant about getting back on the ice, after we suggested it were time to go home. (My ankles were killing me, and our arms were getting a bit worn from picking ourselves and Doug off the ice…yep, parents definitely need more practice skating!). So, we went back out and skated around for another good 25 minutes before finally leaving at 8:45, with Nate spending the final segment trying NOT to laugh too much at the huge lip and drunken-boxer expression on the little one’s face when he was smiling. By the end though, he was walking around pretty good and even “glided” an inch or two from time to time, before succumbing to the harsh seduction of Mistress Gravity.

It was a lot of fun, and I almost feel bad that the rink closes down for the summer next week. It’s also pretty amazing how kid’s brains really are quite adept “learning sponges”. The way he picked up the concept of walking on skates with a fairly frictionless surface under them made me thing that calculus was not too far off! Wish we could pick up new things that fast!

But alas, like all things, the evening came to a sobbing end far too early for Doug, who promptly fell asleep as we got home. But we will probably be coming back next year for the “learn to skate” program for 3-5 yr olds. Heck, with the lip looking like it did last night, and his unwillingness to quit in the face of further pain and chilly bottom, I just hope hockey’s not too soon in our sports future. *grin*

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Oh, and here’s a random bit of FUN pictures, shared by one of the AODA druids…feast your eyes on: The Rabbits of Disapproval!
http://www.birdchick.com/adventures/rabbit/index.html

Enjoy!

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Just a quick update that I’ve been working the graveyard shift at work this week, and through the next. So that means basically that Nate’s life is full of quiet monotony at work, puctuated by lots of sleeping and foggy waking hours at home.

Not much to say here, other than I’ll post something more profound and esoteric here once the fog clears in my brain this weekend.

HOWEVER, and this is the good part…. We now have DSL!

Yep, you read that correctly. Dial-up connectivity to the Intarweb is a thing of the past!
(or at least, presuming it does not get prohibitavely expensive)

The rather nice thing about the whole TDS Telecom deal is that we also now have unlimited Long-distance on the phone for a flat-rate as part of the package. AND, we can talk on the phone while surfin…er.. working… online! Yay us!

Looking forward to a nice quiet back-to-normal-business-hours shift so I can get some seriously broadbanded World of Warcraft time in. Nookni the Troll Hunter is about 1/900 of an XP bubble to level 39 (something like 194 XP needed) and I havn’t been able to get him back to the level-appropriate areas from when I took him on a great quest to get all flight-paths for the continent. *grin*. But once I get to the Badlands again. Oh yes, Dingination shall be mine! MwaHaHaHaHa! And then, and THEN, I will make the great push towards lvl 40 and get my mount! So far, saved up just over 100 gold, and will be set yo run circles around the Shatterspears in the jungles of Strangethorn once the raptor-ride is mine.

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I’ve never been one to believe in overly “psychic” things in my life, though do acknowledge such gifts in others. My spiritual path is rather nature/experience based and rather internalized. Pantheism, I suppose, or druidic, though I’m not really that open and “witchy” much in public (I think). But I’ve been meditating on Spirit and such lately and I wanted to air out an anecdote that intrigues me lately.

True story: 03/12/07
So I get to work the midnight-8am shift at work for the next two weeks. Yay me, right in the crunch of Tax season for my lovely wife. *sigh* But I suppose there are some good points to the whole situation, and last night was one of them.

I had been awake for the majority of the day, only taking a short nap around 2-4pm Sunday, and thus was feeling a tad bit sleepy, but ready to face the night. Just after midnight I headed out the door for work, glanced up at the starry expanse of sky, caught the most brief whistle of a distant train on the stilling winds of night, and WOW’d.

That’s really the only way to describe the feeling, which I’ve noticed happening a lot more lately when I get to stay up around midnight. It’s a sudden rush of energy from the base of my spine all the way through my arms and into the back of my brain, usually filling my fingers with electricity and making me feel almost fearful to make little “finger guns” lest I zap the nearest target with mystic balefire. My eyes water slightly, not from sadness or grief, but I suppose in a sort of unfettered rapture. The Universe has Potential, and hangs on the focal point of balance, waiting for my next step…then moves on as it is meant to do.

If my life were a movie, this stepping outside and looking up would cue the over-used visual of extreme close-up into pupil, which resolves into the blackness of space and the Milky Way galaxy, zooming further in through stars, the planets flashing by and down through the clouds of earth, ending once again at Nate standing and staring at the stars while hauntingly trippy music swells in a minor crescendo then fades. I didn’t picture that particular image, but it’s the best generalized visual to relate to the inner-moment described.

On my way to work, every song sounded magical. I could not help but wail along in my loudest voice to “Evanescence: Bring me to Life”, followed immediately by Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten”. Then followed by Sting’s “Desert Rose”. Odd contrast, I know, but I love those songs! The empty roads that time of night were fun to drive, not any sort of chore or boring distraction between home and work. Hard to describe, other than “magical”, with the qualifying condition that magic is not all good (or bad), but simply and powerfully “Potentized”.

Once it hits me, the charged fingertips and tingling brain generally last a good half hour, but usually leave the rest of the day remarkably positive, regardless of events which follow. I could have my computer crash and just shrug it off as a chance to read a book instead. It’s almost spooky the “positive apathetic” feeling that follows. Not so much “the world is wonderful” but little problems don’t just seem to matter on such days. Likewise, any good news is similarly brushed off as a vague “ok, cool”.
This particular feeling, I’ve noticed generally happens about every other month, and just hits out of the blue. Sometimes when I’m driving to work and I think some random thought about something good. Sometimes, it happens when my mind wanders and I think of something potentially bad. But it always happens when I have a good bit of time to myself for one reason or another, and my brain is in a particular semi-unfocussed frame on mind. Often, due to lack of sleep, or just starting to get a cold.
But always, this type of thing is a physical reaction going along with the emotional/mental/spiritual overcharging. My heart seems to beat just a bit faster, my eyes get a bit misty , and I feel like I just had far too many espresso beans for breakfast.

For example, last time I remember getting all charged up before yesterday, I was driving home from work and a rabbit hopped out in front of the car. The critter ran back again quick, so no danger of hitting it, but there was that surge of adreleline and pulse-quickening fear for an instant when I saw it dart out. You probably know that feeling. But then, I imagined that if it was a different day and a different universe, I could have used my innate mystical powers to “phase” the car and allow it to pass harmlessly through the rabbit.

Then I followed that thought to having the ability to phase the car but not passengers inside it, and went down a mental path of being almost fearful I would have a major auto accident with the family in the car, and knowing that I could only phase two people. The strange sensation sprung up then as I was almost nightmarishly (and palpably) afraid that I would wreck the car if we all piled in and ran some errand that evening. It sounds insane when I read it, but that’s how I felt. The bad-dream feeling of knowing something bad could happen, of that being ‘Real’, but also understanding it’s all mental, and not actually happening.

But once my rational brain calmed down those fears, the energized feeling stuck around and I had a wonderful evening where all my favorite songs played the rest of the trip, my wife had made a surprise treat for dinner, and my son was not nearly as cranky at bedtime as he can be sometimes. Odd, yes?

The hard part is putting this unusual and rather bizarre emotion/feeling into the proper words and context. Re-reading the above it sounds rather over-dramatic, but when it’s happening, it IS overdramatic.

The best possible way to describe the feeling in short and non-specific ways is to reference events that not everyone reading this can relate to. “Starwood learning to juggle Poi all night while bonfires and drums filled the area”, comes closest. It’s almost exactly that energy. Or somewhat how I felt watching the final set of scenes from “The Fountain”. …. Happy, Awed, and a teensy bit frightening (in a good way), Trippy, but impossible to describe. I can only ride the experience and try to relate it to the current situations afterwards. (If anyone saw “Phenomenon” with John Trevolta- that’s how I feel, with no “White light in the sky” visuals.)
Sounds silly, I know. And I’ve never really spoken so freely of it, but wanted to see how others commented on such occurrances. Has this happened to you? Am I grounded enough in my own spiritual Path that I get these moments of “lucid connectivity” with the universe? Could it be some dormant Psychosis? If I’m slowly going nuts, it’s a fun ride.

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You can’t teach someone how to be spiritual. You can’t personally introduce them to the Divine. You can teach techniques, practices, lore, ritual – but a book can teach that just as well. So what is there to teach? The best thing a spiritual mentor can be is a good example, and that example is shown through relationship. Books are only a start, for they provide facts and gidance, but a relationship, the giving and taking of ideas and thuoghts, allows a more honest and deeper understanding to ensue.
- Nettle
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A set of questions from a book “Spiritual Mentoring: A Pagan Guide.” by Judy Harrow – …thought it would be useful in describing where I am coming from, and help any readers who wanted to explore your own answers…
Here it defines “commitment” as a stage of conversion marking the decision to join a new faith community, or begin a spiritual practice.

What do you experience as Sacred in your life?
In short, Life is Sacred. While not consciously aware at all times, I see magic in the world around us, in the Mystery and Wonder of both unusual, and every-day things. Albert einstein quoted once “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.” I prefer to think I believe the latter. Anything that is truly beautiful, or Mysterious, is something that touches a bit of the Divine, and thus is Sacred. Even technology, being the product of human creativity. To Craft, to Create, to Make Manifest one’s thoughts in form, that is Sacred Magic.

What is your source of hope? of pride? of power?
Those are three very seperate questions. I have hope in the future, that human creativity and inginuety will continue through any adversity. We are survivors, and regardless of the wars and ecological disasters we are heaping upon ourselves, there is a solution in progress, somewhere, somehow. It’s the little steps like learning to grow my own food, and stuying herbalism, that will eventually carry us through the future.
My pride, is perhaps my ability to be creative and not afraid to try new things. This is also a source of power. To know, deep in my heart, that my actions have an effect. It may be a bad effect, or a good, but changes are wraught in the world due to my being in it. Channelling those efforts towards less destructive means is a lifelong process, but untimately is the reason for Being. We are all gods and goddesses in our own way, since creative acts are the Stuff of Spiritual Magic, thus, our power comes from within, and our connectino to every other aspect of divinity around us.

To what are you loyal? To what are you devoted?
A strange question. Untimately, I would have guessed something like “I am loyal to my friends, by family, (and my work insofar as I am stuck at it)…but I think this questions digs deeper. And I’m not sure I know the answers. I am devoted to learning, and experiencing Life as much as possible, while still maintaining a ‘home-base’ and supportive structure of friends and family. I could run off to become a hobo and see the world on a shoestring, but that’s unfair to my wife and kid, and not a viable long-term lifestyle. So I suppose I come back to being loyal to my family and friends, and devoted to the study of the world around me. Learning flexes the creative muscles, and if I ever get bored, the usual thing I do is make a computer game, or try making some crafty trinket. So remaining Creative is important to me.

For what are you thankful?
I am thankful for the opportunity to be myself, and to at least begin to try to comprehend the world around me. I am thankful to have a small number of close friends, some from when I was very young, and some more recent but still as deeply precious to me. Social interaction is important to me in life. I am also mindful of the opportunity I have to live my current lifestyle, in a rural area, where I can study herbalism right in my backyard, and secluded enough that evening bonfires and drumming don’t rouse the neighbors and embarass me.

Where do you find nurturance?
This is a tough question because the easy answer is family. But there is a deeper underlying answer in my mind, that I only started noticing last year. Nurturance means “caring and support” similar to a mother and child, but allso applies to regular tune-ups for your car. It’s the process of ongoing support that keep something “healthy”. And for that, I must turn to more esoteric and less easy-to-describe things. Certainly RP games are on this list, since although they can be considered “escapist” forms of entertainment, through them I often create characters that have aspects of my own personality or situation that I am trying to deal with. The act of playing the role tends to put me in more of an observer-stance, and I can see better how to work my own problems out in real-life. That’s why in the absense of gaming, I always wind up making up a game of my own, at least in my head. Along with the mental-health that creative use of RPG games brings, I would be lost stuck in the city-work-life without periodic walks in the woods and my own backyard. Without a quick stroll to check out the local weeds and flowers I’ve learned to identify, I tend to get irritated and generally crabby. Sure signs that while not immediatly noticed by my rational mind, spending time outside helps to balance out my stress and emotional states somehow.

Which Deity/Spirit guides or empowers you?
I still hold to the concept of a Greater Spirit, call it God, Goddess, or Creator. There is an over-arching Wonder that permeates all of creation, but our limited brains have trouble grasping infinity, so the numerous Divine archetypes serve to help bring such a concept down to our level of understanding. If I’d have to give my personal Deity a name, it would be Smith. That’s both a bad pun on the common-ness of that name in English, and yet also a vague description of the process of creation. Smithing implies giving form and function to pure thought and energy. That is the core of magic and Spiritual Truth for me. Life’s cycles of summer and winter, and rain and seeds-growing-into-trees is all the same thing. The never-ending process of creation and change. Ideas become manifest, and then make way for new ideas. Life is change, and change does not always mean more/better. It includes the breaking of raw materials as well, in the process of making something new. Thus, any one name of God/Goddess is almost limiting in my view. Each has a place and a purpose, for what better way to focus on a specific task than to summon an aspect of the Divine which fits the mold already. Just as you’d use a hammer instead of a chocolate rose to place nails into wood, so would I perhaps offer thanks to the aspect of “Thor”, and not “Aphrodite” while doing workings in a thunderstorm to energize a magical staff. Another semi-generic name to put towards my all-encompassing Divinity, would be to say “The Maker”, while trying to avoid the obvious borrowing of that term from certain popular movies/books which use it also.

How would that Deity describe you?
I have no clue how to answer this one, and have thought about it for a good week or so. I know how I’d -hope- it could be answered, but the nature of my Deity is such that it boils down into how would others describe me. And for that, I am not an authority, since I have no real power over how others think. I can only be myself, and try to rest assured that ‘myself’ is a decent guy to hang around with.

Whom or what do you trust?
I trust my instincts a lot. Backed by what I’ve learned about the world in terms of scientific facts, and combined with personal experience. And I trust in the general goodness of the Universe. No matter what sorts of decimation and horrors get thrust upon us, there is still a larger picture where things are going to be OK. This really hit-home when I had a fire and lost a lot of my most cherished personal possessions. I was not devstated, I was not even really angry or upset. I simply took stock of the situation, looked for the best course of action, and moved on, curious what new life would emerge from the ashes of the one I was leaving behind. Sure I miss things in the past, but know, really -Know- that things always work out in the end. Maybe not for me as an individual, but in the larger web of life I belong to.
The best way to sum this up is to simply say: I Abide.

Whom or what do you fear?
I fear my own inadequite-ness, and the risk that being ‘me’ will drive others I care about away. I tend to see myself as a conflict between important social relationships, and yet struggling to walk my own path regardless of the public perception it generates. And so I fear holding myself back from my fuller potential, or that the Path I am taking is headed the wrong way and leads nowhere. It ‘feels right’ but is hard to align my emotional beliefs with the scientific rationality that also forms a big part of my personality. I trust my instincts, but still have to work through a number of “what-ifs” after I begin acting on those instincts. This probably contradicts some of the previous answers I gave above, especially regarding the goodness of the Universe and such. However, it applies to this question, and shows that even in a powerfully optimistic outlook most times, I’m just as human as the rest of the fine folks reading htis, and have doubts and fears which remain.

What are your most inspiring goals, your most Sacred hopes?
My goals, to get centered in myself firmly enough to openly walk whatever Path I wind up following. If it is the current one, then perhaps to open my land to weedy workshops on natural healing, and drumcircle bonfires. To share my own experiences with those who want to share them, without feeling ashamed or embarassed about such “mushy” topics.
It used to be to make a popular website, so that hundreds of strangers would at least know my online-name, but that goal is slowly being replaced by something more practical. To write a book or hold workshops so hundreds of strangers will know my online name, and get something out of knowing it besides random entertainment.

With whom do you share these things?
I share my goals, mainly with my closest friends and my wife, though not really to the depth that I probably could (strangely enough, less with wife, more with friends). Generally, my own dreams and visions for the future are something of a private matter, and not discussed much. This could perhaps be a fault, but I generally send such goals and energies into some of my rituals, then let them go with the thought that someday, when the time is right, they will filter back into my life as needed. I don’t force the issue, trusting optimistically as mentioned, in Fate.

What are your sources of human guidance or support? Whom do you trust?
For matters of spiritual questions, I always know I can count on my friend Robin. Likewise, Tom is a good resource for technical computer problems, and the buzz on any new movies or anime out there, as is the third Compadre of mine, Ryan. These people, and including my wife Tammy, I would trust with my life. Most of my other friends and family I don’t have such the connection to, for discussing deep personal matters, ethical confusions, or otherwise heart-to-heart chats. Though I trust also trust Ryan with my life, to the same extent as the others, I have a bit more difficulty expressing more personal thoughts with him, due to the nature of his Paradigm, and thus his relationship is delegated less towards “guidance” as this question specifically asked.

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For those gentle readers who would seek their own Paths, I’d recommend at least thinking about these questions sometime. If you do, feel free to share your thuoghts.

Brightest Blessings
-Nate

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