El Dia De Los Muertos

I know...morbid title, right? In Spanish, it means the Day of the Dead. It is a holiday celebrated primarily in Mexico, but our church has taken to observing it instead of/along with All Souls Day. It's a celebration of those who you've lost in your life.

In preparation for the service that day, our choir director found a perfect piece...haunting piece...He has a real knack for finding just the right piece of music. It's called Mata Del Anima Sola, and it has been haunting me for the last week. Here's a link to a group that did a fairly good rendition of the song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbN3AsHhTwE. The tenor solo is luring and haunting. The english transaltion is interesting...and it's had me pondering its meaning all week.

Tree of the soul lonely,
wide opening of the riverside long
now you will be able to say:
Here slept Cantaclaro.

With the whistle and the sting
of the twisting wind,
the dappled and violet dusk
quietly entered the corral.

The night, tired mare,
shakes her mane and black tail
above the riverside;
and, in its silence,
your ghostly heart is filled with awe.

Would love your thoughts on it's meaning...

In the meantime, I also found a somewhat gruesome website. I don't believe this stuff, but found it interesting that the deathclock says I'll be 95 when I die. How weird is it that I've had more than one palm reader/psychic's give me that exact same age... Check out http://www.deathclock.com/.

That's it for me today. I'm sorry it's been so long since I posted. It's been a very busy couple of weeks.

She drives me crazy...

This is my baby.

This is my baby in a car

(note the driver side location)

This is me in the passenger seat:

(Edvard Munch's The Scream)

Yes, my baby has her drivers permit and together we're struggling to learn the new world, our new world.

Am I a bad mom because I don't want to ride with her? And as she pointed out today, what does it mean for my marriage that I am perfectly happy having my husband do all the driver training with her? These have been the questions of the day at our house today.

I finally broke down and told her that i didn't even drive with her older sister until she got her license, so she should be happy that I have taken that step and actually rode with her this weekend...albeit...with my hands firmly gripping the door handle and the center island, and my feet pressed against the floorboard so hard that I feared they'd break through to the road below, looking like a Flinstone car! My heart was pounding, and in honor of my mother, I broke out in song of "Nearer My God to Thee!" This is a long standing tradition in my family - my mother scared the hell out of me the first time she did it to me, and now I get to hand down the tradition.

The reality is - I know she's going to be a good driver...eventually. It's really not her I'm worried about, it's all the other maniacs on the road that scare me! Welcome to semi-adulthood my lovely baby!