The 'F' Word at the Hicks House - Where once was a mathematical problem, now sits a bowl of number soup.

Since the birth of Ireland's school days, she has struggled to comprehend math. She has an internal struggle between her true self and the skills needed for math. Her hippie artist heart and mind (which I totally love and don't want to change about her), just struggles with the analytical steps, straight rows, columns, exactness, organization, and neatness required for math.

When she see sits down to work on math problems those numbers start moving and soon jump off the page!  They start playing with each other, dancing around, flying in the air.  Next thing you know, they have decided to play with the dogs!  They've jumped off the table and onto the floor landing on their head, using their nose as a slide, and doing several tucks and a few 180 degree twists along the way.  


You know what that means now?  Yep, Ireland is right down there with those numbers and playing with the dogs.  

What a difficult situation, not only for her - but us too!  We don't want to squelch her little creative mind, but somehow she needs to know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide - oh my!   

When we notice her little mind switching into creative mode, we will say to her in our persistent parental voice, " Ireland, focus".

Her mind races back to reality, snapping so abruptly and quickly that she'll comment in that rude, snotty child voice, "I hate that word!"  (I think sometimes her head spins around a few times as well!)

Focus, such a simple splendid word.  According to Mr. Webster:  Focus is the ability to concentrate attention or effort.  


Hmm, just what we need for her.  

Somehow, someway we'll have to help her learn how to make those numbers line up in straight, neat mathmatical lines instead of jumping around all over the place, and creating a soup of a mess for her to learn with!

On Sending Love and Opening Up - A piano gets a new life, and I send out the intent for a new piece

I've been thinking a lot lately about downsizing, letting go of things that don't serve my family or my needs anymore.  Most of the stuff I hold onto are things that have great memories attached to them, or they were something that belonged to my mother.  She passed of undiagnosed heart problems - I'll save that story for another post.

In any case, I have this beautiful piano that my family got when I was 8 years old.  I sooo wanted to learn how to play.  I remember begging for days, months, probably even years!  Finally, the day had come! (I guess my continual pestering paid off!)

I remember walking into the piano store, as my eyes beheld the pianos in front me, my excitement grew to paralysis!  All I could do was stare, and take in every detail of the shiny, beautiful, perfect pianos.  I knew I had to revel in this moment, take it all in.  I looked at every single piano before settling my eyes on the 'one'.

Oh this piano was perfect!  when you pressed the keys they all had the same pressure, the sound was angelic, the curved smooth body was perfect.   I run towards my parents telling them that I've found the perfect one!  My dad follows me.  As I sit down on the perfect piano bench, he giggles.  I knew then that I wasn't going home with this piano.  Come to find out, the white baby grand was way out of our budget.  My dad and I walk back to the ''frugal' section of the piano store, where we'd eventually find the 'perfect' piano.

I remember my mom sitting down at dozens of pianos.  Shed play a few keys and cords checking for their tone and how well it resonated.  She slowly narrowed down her choice to 2 pianos.  In my recollection, I think they were the exact same piano.  I couldn't hear any difference, nor could I detect anything visually different.

This is the piano I'm sending with love
to my sister.  It's now been 31 years
since it's been in the family. 

After what seemed like days, I'm sure it was maybe an hour, my mom pics the 'one'.  The piano of her 'dreams'.

The idea was that my sister, Beckee, and I would take piano lessons practice after school each day (at least 30 min).  While my mom fine tuned her rusty ability, and learn to play like she use to years ago.  Oh, I was so excited, I couldn't wait to get it home.

I don't remember how the piano got into our house, for all I knew or cared it was magically twinkled in by the fairies.  I do remember the first time I sat down at the piano.  My dad sat down with me and showed me how to find middle 'C'.  Then he showed me what an octave was, and how play the 'c' scale'.  I played on that piano for hours.  I think I even fell asleep under the bench!

I wrote my first song on that piano, it was 'Nicole', my elementary BFF inspired my to write it.  I think it had only 2 cords and 4 words for the entire song.  I learned how to play Star Wars, that was fun.  I also learned to love Beethoven, Bach, and many other classical composers.

About 6 months ago, my daughter
added these letters to help her learn
 how to play.  I think she's played it
 2 times since adding these.

In my junior year of high school I decided to try out for the Brigham City Peach Queen pageant.  For my talent, I decided to play a classical musical piece on the piano.  I can't remember what I played.  However, I can remember how nervous I got when I stepped out onto the dark stage.  All the spot lights were off, which made it possible for me to see the crowd. OMG was it a large crowd too!

I could see all the red blinking lights from the many camcorders recording what I was about to do.  I sat at the piano waiting to disappear, wanting to become part of the ivory keys or the black seat - no such luck.

The spot light shines in my eyes - I'm up.  It's my turn to dazzle the judges and wow the crowd.  I'd worked hard (well, maybe not as hard as I should have) with my piano teacher - I was ready.  I started playing the memorized piece of classical music.  I continued to play for the next 2 hours (well maybe on 3 minutes) the same 2 lines of music over and over again until I could figure out a way to end the disaster.

My mind went completely blank, I forgot the music, forgot what I had practiced - well except for the first 2 lines!  Gladly and quickly I end the snowballing mess.  I stand, bow, and run off the stage.  I'll bet you'd be surprised to learn that I didn't win Peach Queen, runner up, or any other title.  I was fine with it, because it wasn't my thing any way.

Ivory and Ebony keys

Years later, I'm a young adult now.  I ask my mom for the piano (because in my mind it was bought for me and it belonged to me).  She tells me no, it's her piano.  I couldn't believe my ears.  What, her piano?  In all the years we've had the piano, I  never heard her play it.  She tell me she practices when no one's around.  I ask her if I can hear her, she says no, because she's embarrassed.

More time passes, maybe 8 years since I asked.  In that time my mother passed about a year before and my dad was getting ready to marry in a few days.  I walk by the piano in his living room and my Dad asks me if I'd like to take my piano home with me.

What? My piano?  It's been 20 years since we've bought the piano, and my Dad tells me that he really got the piano because I begged so hard as a little girl.  He adds, after all I was the only one to really play it,and it belongs to the one who played it.  I'm so excited to finally get my piano home, I jump up and down while saying, "Of course".

I've now had the piano in my possession for 10 years.  In those 10 years I can probably count on all of my fingers and toes combined how many times I've played it.  Sad, but true.  I even sanded and refinished the piano, except the legs- cause I wanted to change those out, but it hasn't happened.  You can even see in the picture that I haven't stained the legs.

I sit and look at the potential of that piano, the great sounds it's capable of, and yet no one plays it.  I'm in a place in my life where I don't desire to play the piano. I want to orchestrate great nature expeditions, not piano music.  Having this great instrument is a blessing and a curse.  I love the memory, the connection it brings to my mom, but it just sits and takes up space.  Space that I'd like to see something else that we could use there.  Something that fits into our decor that could house other musical writing material.

The foot pedals - I remember
trying to reach these when
I first started to play.  I couldn't
wait until one day I'd be using
these in my songs.

So, here I go opening up to the universe - letting go of a beloved item in hopes for another beloved item, one that my daughter will have these types of memories about.

I called my sister, Beckee, who has 3 of her 4 children learning to play the piano on an old worn out, with 2 broken keys, piano.  I ask her if she'd be interested in having the piano.Without hesitation, she says yes.  Her children say yes.

They were feeling the same excited feeling I felt when we walked into the piano store.  I'm sure they'll feel the same way I felt when they finally get to have the piano in their living room.

The piano is off to another life.  To be cherished, loved, played, and received by other children.  Music will resonate through the fine keys, strike the strings, and back out of the solid wood, creating tones of pleasure to the player, listeners, and piano.

I open my heart and send out to the universe the intent of finding and receiving the 'perfect' new piece of furniture that will house what it needs as well as turn into a beloved family item.

Roll-on little piano, play on

Live on little piano, let music resonate again.  Thank you for the many values you helped me learn: dedication, hard work, coordination, commitment, and love for music.  May my nieces and nephews find the same love and values through you.

Visions Created.... Manifesting Material Money

In early January, I had to opportunity to attend a workshop by my life coach, Andrea Owen.  This workshop was about creating the future you want using a Vision Board to help creat this future. 

One of the key points in this workshop talked about the Law of Attraction.  In a nutshell this is the idea that what we think, how we act, we manifest.  If we have negative thoughts, negative things happen around us.  If we have positive thoughts positive things happen around us, very similar to Karma.

I flipped through magazines looking for pictures that reflted images of what I wanted to 'attract' for this upcoming year. I then cut, positioned, and pasted those pics onto poster board.

It's been about 6 months since I've had the opportunity to do this.  In that six months I've seen some manifestations start.

For starters: I've decided to start having a better relationship with my money.  If I compare my finances to a garden, my finance garden has been overrun with obnoxious, non-native weeds. I pretty much left my little money plants to fend for themselves.  This let the weeds start to take over. Soon the small weeds grew stronger, wrapped themselves around my money plants, surrounding, and chocking them out until one day the money plants disappeared underneath a thick patch of weeds.  

When I finally had to (thanks to my husband) walk out to my money garden, I found that I couldn't find my little plants.  I didn't evey know where they were, or if they still were still alive.  Each time I'd attempt to check on my money garden, I'd start to get anxious. I'd start to have that anxiety feeling that makes your palms sweat, your stomach do flip-flops, your deodorant have to work extra hard (luckily I wear prescription strength).  Slowly, ever so slowly I started to dig through the tangled mess of emotions I'd created around money.

I've come to realize that I assigned feelings to money.  For example, if I had money, I was happy -  if I didn't have money I was sad, nervous, with a scarcity feeling.  Through some really focused work, I'm finally able to stop assigning my emotional feelings onto money.

Just like an overgrown garden (which requires some serious work), I've been busy.  I've been metaphorically digging, weeding, watering, feeding, weeding, and more weeding through my emotions around money to slowly uncover a positive neutral relationship towards it.
In reality it's really rather silly.  I was allowing a piece of paper, or small metal coin to predict my mood and responses to money.  Money relationship is no different then the relationship you have with yourself, your partner, or friends - they all require loving attention.  If I treated any of these relationships like I was treating my money, I'd end up be a self loathing, lonely, divorced, bitter woman.

I'm happy to report that I'm no richer then I was 6 months ago, but I'm able to 'romance' and have a positive relationship to money.  This isn't something that is going to change overnight, but I'm loading up my toolbox with tools to help keep those sneaky weeds from popping up in my money garden.