samorzady.org
InspirationSeek.com
Living Locurto
Ravelry Bob Tape Measure
I have now lost 28 inches on Nutrisystem – 44.5 inches since my lardiest.
ScalesGalore.com
And 28 pounds on Nutrisystem – 40 pounds since my lardiest.
The very best news is that my husband has been losing weight, too – going from 38 x 30 to 34 x 30 in jeans, and had a blood sugar count of 88 this morning, the lowest ever!!!!!! Woo HOOOO!
Another good thing is that we’re much more CONSCIOUS of the food we’re putting into our mouths now, and trying to move more.
My husband is trying to do sit ups. (He’s frustrated because he’s a former Marine and used to do 50 sit ups just because his superior was feeling out of sorts. Now he’s having real trouble – and is shocked to learn that 55 years or so without exercise affects one’s muscles! :0) ) I’m really happy for him for trying and I’m cheerleading, telling him he’ll get stronger if he tries every day.
I’m switching off each day between my elliptical trainer and yoga stretches and exercises, in addition to working in the yard and doing another decluttering of the house, room by room, consciously trying to keep moving.
We’re making progress. I’m about halfway to my weight goal now (I think – subject to re-evaluation if I meet it). It feels good to be doing what we CAN control to take care of ourselves better and improve our quality of life.
MLive.com
The BAD news is that someone in South Carolina won the grand prize in the Mega Millions game last night. :0(
The GOOD News is several-fold:
I don’t have a ‘before’ pic of the table by the chair in the living room, but here it is cleaned off –
Here is the BEFORE pic of the go-out table between the dining area and the utility room with the door to the garage –
And here is the way it looks NOW –
A. A. Milne via Lisa Bearnes Richey
Filed under Attitude, Favorite Quotes, Good Thoughts, quality of life
IdeaStand
infonesia.info
Robert Falcon Scott via sayingimages.com
Filed under Amazing Animals, Attitude, Encouragement, Family
This is my good friend, Marsha.
Marsha used to be a potter, displaying some of her fine work on my website, Creative Artworks, for several years. On a trip to Florida, we finally met face to face. Marsha met me at the hotel and spent much of an entire day taking me to wonderful places, sharing lunch, and then finally sitting with me in the lobby of the hotel where we could have easily talked all night.
Marsha has now turned to making beautiful silver jewelry, rather than potting, and her creative juices continue to flow. We email each other several times a day, just chatting about what’s happening – or not happening – in our lives. We’re good friends.
All of a sudden several days ago, Marsha wrote with an apology for whatever she had done – or hadn’t done – to tee me off. I wrote back immediately, telling her that everything was fine, she didn’t owe me any apologies, asking the reason for the email. It turns out that something is wonky on either her end or my end, because we can’t communicate via email.
I’m getting emails from lots of people, but not Marsha. I’ve written to her several times, but haven’t received an answer. I wrote to my husband and asked him to send me an email to test my email. It worked fine. I don’t know what’s wrong and have no clue about how to fix it. I’ve rebooted my computer, doing everything I can do, to no avail.
I called her on her phone. I get a canned message, asking me to leave a message, which I do. I’ve left texts on her phone. No answer.
I finally wrote her a note on a card and mailed it snail mail. She should receive it by the end of the week.
She left a message on the blog this morning, obviously thinking I’ve dropped her as a friend without saying a word. I’m really frustrated. The lack of communication is telling her we’re no longer friends, and it couldn’t be farther from the truth.
I’m hoping she reads this post, picks up her phone, sees all the texts and messages I’ve left, and calls me.
I’m down to carrier pigeons and smoke signals if this doesn’t work.
Here is the latest picture she sent me – showing her at a recent show.
Lovely lady, lovely friend.
UPDATE: I finally found what I thought was an old phone number for Marsha. I called, expecting to be told the number was no longer in service. She answered!!!!!! We talked, exchanged all kinds of contact information and are updating our records. We’ll talk again later today. Friends are too important to lose!
Filed under Friendship
yourellipticals.com
I’m doing 30 minutes on my elliptical every other day now, doing yoga stretches on the alternate days. I like this machine because it’s low impact and doesn’t make my knees, back, or hips hurt – a HUGE help in my efforts to keep moving. I’m now doing a bit over half a mile each session. I don’t push myself to walk faster, though I do have the resistance set to 20, the highest level. I push the User 1 button, get my MP3 player going, and zone out, keeping time to the tunes.
I’m “Walkin’ to New Orleans…..
“Turtles in the Sun” – Paul Militaru Photography
Filed under Paul Militaru Photography
Fubiz.net
HousingaForest
Wilferd A Peterson via Lisa Bearnes Richey
Filed under Attitude, Challenges, Encouragement, Favorite Quotes
Amber loves to play with a ball, particularly one with a loud squeaky inside.
She comes to us, ball in mouth, showing us she wants to play. We ask for the ball. She puts her whole head in our hand with the ball in her mouth, or just the ball, still holding onto it. She tries to get us to play tug of war with the large, squeaky, spitty ball. Yuck. We do this over and over, with her taking the ball and running away, then coming back to tease us with it.
Then she finally lets us have it. We throw it, she runs like a maniac, gets the ball, and the game starts again. She doesn’t really want to play ‘fetch.’ She loves the whole idea of HER having the ball and OUR wanting it. For every time we throw it, she pretends she’s going to give it to us and then runs away, smiling around the ball as we wait for her to come again over and over … Anticipation is all.
Filed under Amazing Animals, Family
Molly really doesn’t like to have her picture taken, but here she is, fresh from the groomer’s. She is super-clean, smells wonderful (I don’t know what soap they’re using now, but it really smells nice.) Now I can see any varmints who try to hitch a ride on her (though things have slowed WAAAY down since the weather has cooled down some) and I can easily bathe her in the sink and get her dry if she and Amber slip off together again to roll in ‘whatever.’
The receptionist said she was a ‘good girl,’ so she got a cookie a minute ago and is now spreading out on the dog bed in the living room after drinking a ton of water.
We won’t have her groomed again until about March, so she’ll be ‘Fuzzy Molly’ again in about 3 months…
Filed under Amazing Animals, Family
andrewjobling.com.au
I think that I have finally settled on an exercise routine that I can keep up with – 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer one day, and about 30 minutes of yoga stretches and exercises the next. I’ve kept up with this for about a week now, and I’m not feeling overwhelmed. I can easily work in 30 minutes a day of ‘official’ exercise and still get other things accomplished.
Today was yoga.
I’m doing my own routine now, slow and steadily stretching my parts, holding the poses and breathing into them until I feel my body ‘give’ a bit. It still takes me a minute or so before I can bend over and touch my toes, but I CAN, after months of simply bending over and breathing, trying to relax and not fall over onto my head. :0)
I’m also ALMOST able to put my head onto my feet when in the sitting position with the soles of my feet touching each other. I’m flirting with it, though not there yet.
I’m twisting my torso in all different directions. I still can’t relax while doing this, but I’m holding the positions and breathing into them.
When I started yoga I was unable to lie on my back without breathing and consciously RELAXING, pressing the small of my back into the floor over and over before I could finally relax enough to simply lie there. Then I was also unable to stretch my arms up, laying them on the floor above my head. I spent a lot of time with my arms hanging mid-air, breathing. FINALLY, one day my arms touched the floor. I’m still not comfortable, but I’m gradually able to relax a bit more.
Today Amber came in while I was practicing, wanting to play ball. When she saw I wasn’t going to play, she lay down and ‘oozed’ closer and closer, a bit at a time. Finally, she was beside me, her feet in the air, trying to get me to rub her tummy. When I wouldn’t comply, she started gently biting my fingers as I did my stretches. At this point, I yelled at my husband in the office, asking him to call her.
As always now, I feel better after my stretching. I’m more relaxed, and I move more easily. The fact that it’s still hard to make myself go into the living room, get out my mat and get started is just the fact I’m hard-headed and have spent years avoiding exercise like the plague. I will never become an exercise aficionado, but I DO see the benefit in moving more, trying to increase my flexibility and balance, and alleviating much of the pain and stiffness in my back and hips.
Filed under exercise, quality of life, taking care of yourself
sayingimages.com
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Filed under Attitude, Encouragement, Favorite Quotes
Living Locurto
clipartextras.com
Easyday
amazinganimalstories.com
I’m feeling a bit frazzled at the moment. We hit the ground running when the alarm went off and finally stopped just a bit ago, declaring an end to the morning, and finally treating ourselves to a first cup of coffee.
I told you last week that our doggies, Amber and Molly, got out together and traveled to places unknown, returning with yuck all over them. I put Molly in the kitchen sink and scrubbed her, but her hair is super-thick and wiry, so after you get her wet enough for a good bath, it’s next to impossible to get her dry again, even using multiple towels and my hair dryer. So the first stop in our travels this morning was taking Sweet Molly to the groomer’s to get sheared like a sheep. We’re waiting for them to call us so we can go back and pick her up.
Between my closet clean-out and my husband finally going through his amoire to gather too-large jeans, we had collected three large leaf bags of clothes to take to the Veteran’s Thrift Store as a donation. So from the groomer’s we drove to Fort Smith.
On the way back, we stopped at the grocery for a couple of items we neglected to get on Sunday, mailed a book at the post office that we sold via Amazon, went to the gas station to buy Mega Millions and Power Ball tickets, then stopped at City Hall for early voting that started today. I can’t tell you how MUCH I appreciate the people who make it possible for us to be able to vote when it’s convenient for us, when we don’t have to stand in line for a long time.
Finally, we picked up our mail at the bottom of our driveway.
Since then, I’ve paid bills, transferred money around, written a note to a good friend, confirmed the book mailing online, and done other odds and ends.
A good, productive morning. It’s now time for our Nutrisystem mid-morning snack and then we’ll regroup for the afternoon. I hope you’re having a good day today, too.
Filed under Acting Like a Grownup, Challenges, quality of life
“Birds 1” – Paul Militaru Photography
“He is Watching Her” – Paul Militaru Photography
“Lovers on the Lake” – Paul Militaru Photography
“The Lake and a Duck” – Paul Militaru Photography
Filed under Paul Militaru Photography
homesteading.com
dnio.us
creativeartworksblog 