GrowingBolder.com
GrowingBolder.com
GrowingBolder.com
Filed under aging, Attitude, empowerment, Encouragement
dogspotting – Bored Panda
Isn’t this a sweet face with which to start a day?
I’ve been ill for the past two days and am very happy to tell you that I’m feeling sassy again.
Yesterday we went to have our semi-annual teeth cleaning. I didn’t go for years, having my husband take our son for checkups, etc., and going himself. I was really afraid to go. The only thing I had had done to my teeth, other than cleaning, was to get braces. I wore them for two years, then the retainers, all to end up with crooked teeth again. My husband got angry with my attitude. We finally agreed that “I” would start going to the dentist regularly if my “husband” would wear a helmet while he rode the motorcycle. I have never had a cavity.
Yusuf Belek
This all stopped yesterday. I have a small cavity – the first in 73 years – in a wisdom tooth. I will have it filled October 2nd. I will probably have nightmares the night before. I’m like a little kid about things like this. It’s a gut reaction, though, so I’ll just try to be a big girl when the time comes. Also, adding frustration to the mix – I had ordered three tubes of a tartar control toothpaste, since I seem to manufacture the problem. The hygienist has asked me to go back to whatever I was doing before I changed, since I had more than I had the last time! :0(
“Caught Red-Pawed” – Audrius P. – Bored Panda
The good part of yesterday was that we picked up our first order of frozen meals from Real Food in Greenwood on the way home. We tried the BBQ meatballs with sweet potato and green beans. We also bought half a loaf of olive bread. After we ate, we looked at each other and said in one voice, “YUMMY!!!!!!” I wrote to the lady, telling her how pleased we were. I also requested two things: 1) she consider providing at least approximate nutrition information for each choice, and 2) give recommendations on how long to heat or microwave the options. (I put the bread in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes, and I simply hit ‘reheat’ on the entrees, and it worked out fine, but I would like a bit more direction, if possible, just in case.
Our weather is glorious. We have doors open and are really enjoying the breezes coming through the house. ( I DID have to vacuum the first floor tiles this morning first thing because tufts of Amber’s hair were wafting around in the breezes. :0)
Amazon Handmade
Today I THINK I registered for an account on Amazon Handmade. They finally gave me a url I could copy, instead of click on, so I could put it in my FireFox browser, instead of the Google Chrome they don’t seem to like, and I was able to fill out some information. I have to wait 24 hours, and then I’m supposed to be able to start listing products for sale. Now I will see what information I can find about how to list things, parameters, etc. One step at a time…
I am planning to play in my art room a bit today, working on the bookmarks I started. Since I’ve been sick, I am definitely taking things easy today, trying to get my energy back. I’m looking forward to trying some yoga stretching this afternoon.
I hope you have a very pleasant day.
A-Waterfall-Deep In The Woods-Doodlewash
Chen Wen
crbndesign-Redbubble.
Filed under Watercolors I Love
lialip.com
POLICE # 1 While taking a routine vandalism report at an elementary school, I was interrupted by a little girl about 6 years old. Looking up and down at my uniform, she asked, ‘Are you a cop?
Yes,’ I answered and continued writing the report.
‘My mother said if I ever needed help I should ask the police. Is that right?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ I told her.
‘Well, then,’ she said as she extended her foot toward me, ‘would you please tie my shoe?’
Pexels-Jagmeet-Singh
POLICE # 2 It was the end of the day when I parked my police van in front of the station. As I gathered my equipment, my K-9 partner, Jake, was barking, and I saw a little boy staring in at me.
‘Is that a dog you got back there?’ he asked.
‘It sure is,’ I replied.
Puzzled, the boy looked at me and then towards the back of the van. Finally he said, ‘What’d he do?’
Filed under Funny Signs - Humor, Grin for the Day, Kids Perspective
This is my husband and Amber, who thinks she is a lap dog. This was taken in 2018, when she was a year old. Now she is 3 and weighs around 95 pounds. Unfortunately, she STILL thinks she is a lap dog. We have to be on guard all the time to keep her from inadvertently hurting us.
The latest example of this is that she comes and sits beside me each morning while I am at the computer, answering email, writing posts for the blog, etc. I pet her and love her, and then tell her ‘down.’ She complies quite nicely (unless we have people here. When that happens she has never met me and becomes completely deaf to commands.) I again concentrate on what I’m doing and all of a sudden, I have half a lap full of exuberant Amber trying her best to climb into my chair with me.
Thank GOODNESS she eventually responds to “DOWN!” albeit reluctantly. She is WAY too strong for me to have any control trying to grab her collar and pull her down. I think my chair would actually either break or roll and then fall if she managed to get up with me. I have a ‘backstop’ of a short set of shelves on my right, so I don’t think we can roll FAR. We have this test of wills over and over each morning, and we aren’t making much progress in getting the idea across that I do NOT want her in my chair with me.
I’ve tried getting down on the floor WITH her, encouraging her to come sit with me. Her only response to that so far is that she comes over, keeps pushing until I tumble over backwards, and then she leaves.
I won’t quit my day job to even think of being a dog trainer… She is definitely too much of a good thing.
Filed under Challenges, Family
GrowingBolder.com
GrowingBolder.com
GrowingBolder.com
Filed under aging, Attitude, empowerment, Encouragement, taking care of yourself
I am in awe of people who think outside the box, creating something new and wonderful, making us laugh, touching our emotions with things we probably will never make or do ourselves. I’m grateful to live on the same planet, and hope they continue to thrive – appreciated for their uniqueness and talent.
In a more literal sense this morning, my fish – and their aquarium – have a clean bill of health, all being squeaky, sparkling clean at the moment.
They didn’t SAY anything when I scooped them up and put them back in their tank, but they were busily checking everything out when I left.
Do you know any fish who do tricks? I don’t, but I’m trying to get them to do things like swim along with my finger when I come up to the tank and talk to them. I start on one end of the tank and move my finger to the other, trying to get them to follow me. No luck so far. I don’t even know what one would CALL a trick like that, in the off chance they might actually DO it…
Filed under Family, Housekeeping - Maintenance
My husband’s definition of “happy,” is ‘busy.’ And, if he’s correct, I’m euphoric!!!!
I’m doing better at tackling things doggedly, doing what I consider the most important things for the day first, trying not to feel stressed. I have this quote by Brian Tracy on the side of my file cabinet in the office. I’m looking at it as I type – “When you feel overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time (or energy – my addition), remind yourself that all you can do is all you can do.”
Yesterday my plans were snafued. My husband wanted to try installing the light switch in our office again because the three fluorescent light fixtures were still acting wonky. We spent a lot of time on that. We THOUGHT it was fixed this time, but it’s still wonky. I suspect that mice are chewing on our wires inside the walls. They did that to our phone wires. We went to a cell phone base instead to go around that problem. We have changed out the ballast transformers in the fixtures AND the switch now. This problem is either mice – or gremlins…
Today I will try to honor my need to stable mental health and get up to play in my art room – at least for a little while. I would LIKE to work on the bookmarks I started several days ago. I also have some other ideas rattling around in my head….
I’m making progress on the “clean-out-donate-or-throw-away-clean-and-reorganize” project in our master bathroom. I’m planning to do some each day until the shelves in there look like someone has a plan. I can see progress, but my husband hasn’t noticed yet.
My OWN idea of “happy” is having lots of things to do that bring you joy – or at least a strong sense of accomplishment. I believe happiness comes from inside and that you create it yourself. That doesn’t mean that I think one should go around with a doofus, happy grin all the time. But inner satisfaction does shine through.
Kentuckiana Humor
Filed under Attitude
GrowingBolder.com
GrowingBolder.com
GrowingBolder.com
Filed under aging, empowerment, Encouragement, quality of life, taking care of yourself
“Caught Red-Pawed” – Audrius P. – Bored Panda
Our last BistroMD meal last night was Salmon. It was mostly edible, but my husband and I both used lots of tartar sauce. (Usually I don’t use anything except maybe a squeeze of lemon on salmon, so I was really disappointed). Neither of us could identify the side veggie, but we each took one bite and that was it. I just looked it up online and it was eggplant with 5 spices. (Maybe it would have been better if they had used 6.) We are in celebratory mode now because we are moving on. (We still have some snacks from both South Beach and BistroMD, but time will tell if we are hungry enough to eat them.)
Today I will cook some pork chops. We will have a side salad and a celebration of small portions of black eyed peas with onion. We will eat half of this tonight and the other half tomorrow. Monday we pick up our order from Real Food. I’m eager to try that.
As with so many things, their competitor has already sprung up in Greenwood. It’s called, Stu’s Clean Cookin’. I was impressed with the ad in the paper. They list calories, fat, carbs, and protein for each meal listed. They identified some as “low carb,” “contains dairy,” and “contains gluten.” I like that.
So – just as we needed them, we have TWO nice companies preparing frozen meals we can try! I will be doing a lot of label reading. I plan to at least have several meal options available in the freezer while trying to get back into the swing of meal planning for keto eating.
Filed under DIET!, Healthy Eating, quality of life, taking care of yourself
“School” – Nino Chakvetadze
“Spring” – Nino Chakvetadze
Filed under drawings, Nino Chakvetadze
“The Flight of the Swan”-Coderch and Malavia-Jessica Stewart – MyModernMet.com
“Tissue of Time” -Coderch and Malavia-Jessica Stewart – MyModernMet.com
Filed under sculpture
“Caught Red-Pawed” – Audrius P. – Bored Panda
Tonight we eat the last meal from BistroMD. This program was not a good match for us, and we are happy to be able to move on. Sad to say, I didn’t lose any weight over the past week – just held my own. (I didn’t get any taller, either.
If I grew about 5 inches, I would be in MUCH better shape. I have a massage next week and will encourage my wonderful therapist to redouble her efforts to pull on my head, legs, and arms enough that my problem might eventually go away. :0) (One can dream….)
We are looking forward to a week off. We have ordered some hand-prepared frozen meals from Real Food in Greenwood. We will pick up our order Monday. Some of our Lunch Bunch friends say their food is delicious! In the future, we will do a combination of keto meals and meals from Real Food – if we like it – concentrating on portion control, good choices, and exercise. Fingers crossed.
Filed under DIET!, exercise, Healthy Eating, quality of life, taking care of yourself
GrowingBolder.com
GrowingBolder.com
GrowingBolder.com
Filed under aging, Attitude, empowerment, Encouragement, quality of life, taking care of yourself
One Green Planet
I’ve been upstairs in our master bathroom most of the afternoon. I have filled half a leaf bag with things I’m throwing away. I have things I can donate to others. I have gone through ONE of the floor-to-ceiling shelves, pulling everything out and going through, deciding what needs to be done. I have cleaned the shelves and put things back. I have taken things downstairs to be thrown away. A bag of things is by my office chair to be added to the donation list. Other things have been moved elsewhere.
My husband won’t be able to tell I’ve been upstairs or done anything. It will probably take me through the weekend to finish going through the second set of floor-to-ceiling shelves, medicine cabinet, and then clean the bathroom. THEN my husband will mainly notice that our counter top looks neater and that the rugs have been vacuumed.
I’m lucky that he DOESN’T notice a lot of things. Lots of people would go crazy with all the STUFF we have, or the fact that I’m such a lousy housekeeper.
Having him finally notice a difference when I’ve been cleaning for several days is good enough. :0)
GrowingBolder.com
GrowingBolder.com
GrowingBolder.com
Filed under aging, Encouragement, quality of life
“Singin’ in the Rain” – Pinterest
It’s very cloudy, 73 degrees F., and raining quietly here. We have our doors open so that we can ENJOY every minute of the rain and cooler temperatures!
I was unable to find any lettuce plants, so I won’t be planting in the brick planter near the house for the fall. :0( We still have a few tomatoes, so I’ll just enjoy whatever we can harvest from that and the ‘nook’ planter as long as they are producing. Yesterday I got caught up pruning rose bushes, and then overgrown stuff from more planters, so I didn’t get out to murder the fire ants in the main garden. That will have to wait another day.
I DID get up and play a bit in my art room yesterday! (I converted a bedroom to be my art room.) It’s been forever, since other priorities have eaten up our days, so it was really nice to spend some time up there.
Thomas Merton – Healing with Art via Cathy Ruggiero
I decided I would make some bookmarks to sell at Rags & Roses, the wonderful local shop in Greenwood where I share a booth with my good friend, Carla.
I played with my Unicorn Spit paint that my sister-in-law, MaryLou, sent to me as a nice, ‘just-because’ gift I guess about a year ago now. I have SO enjoyed experimenting with what I can do with it, and have barely scratched the surface. I also used some rubber stamps. I let things dry overnight and will go up and spray the sealer on them next. When that is dry, I’ll do the finishing touches to make them into bookmarks! I love choosing the ribbons, strings, beads, and stuff to add to them. :0)
“Caught Red-Pawed” – Audrius P. – Bored Panda
We have about a day and a half’s worth of BistroMD meals to finish. My husband and I got online last night and ordered some meals from the new local place in Greenwood called Real Food. We can pick up our order Monday afternoon. In the meantime, my husband has asked me to make “Keto Chili,” Saturday, one of our favorite recipes from Suzanne Ryan, Simply Keto.
I’m truly delighted that I was finally able to find a place that the elephant ear plants my friend, Laufrain, gave me back in September last year would be happy. I wintered them over on the floor in our dining area by the window, and then put them out on the front porch when it was warm enough in the spring. They were very UNhappy there and almost croaked! I decided to TRY them in the planter we rebuilt along the front of the house, thinking they would get more sun, but would be more protected from wind here. As you can see, they are smiling! (As you can also see, I will spray the ‘greenery’ in the rocks with KillsALL weed killer on the next dry day we have…)
Today I will work on the bookmarks. I’m not sure what area of the house I will attack on my decluttering project, but I’m leaning toward the shelves in our bathroom. We have a set over the toilet, and two floor-to-ceiling sets in the main part of the bathroom.
Amazon Handmade
I will also see if I can make any progress registering my shop on Amazon Handmade. We are still fighting over whether my Google Chrome is ‘acceptable’ or not at this point. I have upgraded to the newest version. My husband checked my computer and confirmed that. I’m still getting the screen that says I need to upgrade my browser to meet their requirements. ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!
I hope you have a glorious Thursday.
Filed under Landscapes I Like
GrowingBolder.com
GrowingBolder.com
GrowingBolder.com
Filed under aging, Cause for Celebration, Encouragement, quality of life
“Caught Red-Pawed” – Audrius P. – Bored Panda
Today is the cutoff for making changes to our next week’s delivery from BistroMD. Until yesterday, my husband’s page still wasn’t showing that I had written and asked them to remove snacks from what I thought would be the final week’s order.
When I went to the websites for each of us this morning, each said at the top, “No deliveries are scheduled.” I’m HOPING that means that our memberships are – in fact – cancelled and that we don’t have to pay for and receive another week’s worth, but it isn’t clear. At the beginning, the paperwork said we would have to get ANOTHER week when we cancelled. I’ve been on hold, and have given a call-back number several times, but haven’t been able to reach anyone yet. All my appendages are crossed that we are finished with this company and can move on after we eat a few more meals from the first week’s order.
In the meantime, we checked out the new Real Food place in Greenwood yesterday. It was so clean it squeaked! There was a choice of four different prepared-by-hand frozen meals in the freezer, and all sounded good. The lady explained to us that now that they have an actual ‘store,’ they will move away from weekly pre-orders and will expand the offerings in the store as they can. This would be very convenient for us. I will need to check out the nutrition labels more carefully, but we could at least have some meals in the freezer for the times I go on strike and don’t have the energy to cook in the future.
I am ready to go back to our keto plan IF we are finished with the Bistro group. I think we have a day and a half’s worth of meals left from the first week, and then we can switch.
GREAT NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!! A customer service person from Bistro called me back just now. He confirmed that since it says “no deliveries are scheduled.” on each of our pages, that I cancelled the plans in time that we DON’T have to pay for or receive another week’s worth of food. HOORAAAAAAAAAY! :0)
Now I will look at the Real Food website and see if they have choices listed for pre-orders for next week listed.
Filed under DIET!, Healthy Eating
“Caught Red-Pawed” – Audrius P. – Bored Panda
I am feeling like this cat – wanting to steal food.
I have told you that the BistroMD food is not for us. We are basically meat and potatoes type people, plebeians, who don’t like a lot of spices. We don’t like spicy hot food, and we are limited in our appreciation for fancy. We have cancelled the plan, but we have to eat our way through this first week, plus ANOTHER week yet to be delivered, before we can move on. This is a character-building exercise for us, since we are finding a lot of things we would rather not eat again – like eggplant.
Last night I had “Roasted Corn and Scallop Chowder” with some broccoli on the side. My husband had “Turkey Breast with Gravy, Carrots, and Cauliflower.” We both had “Jerk Spiced Chicken with Mango Chutney” for lunch. Each meal is a new adventure and we are glad we will be leaving this train soon. The saddest part is that, though we are following the plan religiously, and I am exercising, neither of us has lost any weight. We were hoping that we would lose a couple of pounds each week, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Filed under DIET!
Reader’s Digest
We have several errands this morning, and more this afternoon, so I might not get ANYTHING else done today.
In about an hour, we’ll leave 4 leaf bags of trash at the bottom of our driveway for pickup. (I made my goal of finding 2 extra bags of things that SHOULD have been thrown away a long time ago. I’m hoping to continue this each week.) We will also get our mail.
We have been experiencing serial failures of our fluorescent light fixtures this year. We have changed out the ballast transformers on many of them. Now we are replacing the switches that control them. We will pick up those at Yeagers. We will stop at our co-op to see if they have lettuce plants. (I’m hoping to pull out the spent tomato plants in the long brick planter by the house and put in lettuce plants.) Then we will stop and check the new Real Food store on the way home, hoping to find some frozen meals to buy and try.) Later, we’ll go back for my husband’s hair cut and a quick trip to the clinic for a shot for him.
I got lazy yesterday and didn’t do anything outside. This afternoon I’m planning to mix up EIGHT bug killer and will hose down my raised bed, square foot garden planters before I even THINK about trying to harvest the rest of our onions. I am finally healed up from the attack of the fire ants that I discovered living among my onions, so I’m ready to wage war. If I’m successful on getting the lettuce plants, I’ll take some pics for you.
I finally got an email from Amazon Handmade, confirming that I have been accepted to list my work there, and giving me some directions on how to get to a place I can register. When I have a calm space of time, I’ll try to follow them. Fingers crossed!
I hope you had an enjoyable Labor Day and that you make today a great day, too.
A. A. Milne. Illustration by E. H. Shepard
“Rivers know this – There is no hurry. We shall get there someday.” ~ A. A. Milne
Filed under Favorite Authors & Books, Favorite Quotes
creativeartworksblog 