Sent by my good friend, Carol.
Women’s Health
Shout-Out to my good friend, Cathy, who starts a treatment of chemo and radiation today that runs through September 13th.
I would appreciate it very much if you would join me in trying to send her –
You’ll be in our thoughts, Sweet Cathy. You can do this.
Filed under Friendship
It seems that Monday comes around at least once a week…
We got a small, dog-type soccer ball for Amber at the store yesterday. She’s been playing with it off and on happily. She hasn’t popped it, which is great, but this morning she got quiet playing with it behind me in the office. I looked back to find ‘white stuff’ all over the carpet. She was eating the cover off the ball, spitting the bits of it all over the place. This will go out with the trash we’ll gather soon to put down at the bottom of the driveway.
We’re having truly nice weather, and it’s SO welcome. My husband mowed for the first time of the season yesterday afternoon. Things grew up quite suddenly, so it was more than time. Today I’ll need to start weed whacking – and there’s a LOT – in order to make it look like someone lives here.
We were awakened yesterday by Amber barking her head off around 5am. I studiously ignored it, going back to sleep. It turned out my husband went downstairs, got the .22 and looked to see why she was barking. Apparently, two stray dogs (at least ones we didn’t recognize) were INSIDE our garage, having come through the dog/cat door. Abby, our cat, who sleeps on the wood pile in there, was upset, of course, as was Amber, who sleeps inside in the utility room that shares a wall with the garage. My husband didn’t shoot anyone or anything, but he left the garage door open for some reason he was unable to explain. I discovered this when I got up and was doing morning chores. This freaked me out.
I explained to him that I slept, secure in my belief that we had the garage door closed, the people door to the house locked, and that no one could get in while we were the most vulnerable. I listened to him telling me my fears were unfounded, waited until he was finished, and then talked to him about closing off the cat door. Our garage door is open during the day while we’re there, so the cat can go in and out as she wishes. She sleeps in a ‘cat cube’ at night and I don’t think she goes out at night as a rule. Even if she does, we’re getting a lot of ‘critters’ we don’t want coming IN the door. My husband said he would put a piece of plywood over the inside of the cat door. That way the stray dogs, raccoons, stray cats, and other strange critters, won’t be able to come in. That sounds GREAT to me. I also stressed that, ‘paranoid’ and ‘silly’ and whatever other adjective one might use to describe my behavior aside, I wouldn’t feel safe anymore unless he agreed to make sure the garage door was closed again if he opened it during the night after we went to bed.
I happened to mention that leaving the garage door open at night when I thought it was closed MIGHT result in my calling the guy with the back hoe who will dig a hole in the back yard for me…
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
I gained a pound this morning. :0(
I KNOW. I’m probably just retaining water or not holding my mouth right, but it DOES make not eating more difficult.
I ALSO know that some people tell you that you shouldn’t weigh every day. If I don’t, it’s as if I have a ‘pass’ for the day and it doesn’t matter if I eat an ‘extra bite or two.’ If I know I’m going to have to get on the scales the next morning- fingers crossed to see some improvement for my efforts, I have more motivation to NOT eat.
On the good side, my jeans ARE getting looser. I am down 41 – make that 40 this morning – pounds and almost 38 inches since my lardiest.
Our new eating program, where we are eating a HEALTHY frozen food prepared by one of the two new local places in town – REAL FOOD or STU’S CLEAN COOKIN’ – eating tuna fish salad for lunch and a careful snack mid-afternoon – seems to be keeping us on track. On the weekends I am cooking, but combining something we have missed with careful cooking and attention to portions. Yesterday I fixed pork chops and black-eyed peas with onion. We’ll eat the leftovers from that tonight.
For the past week I have been working hard in the garden, trying to get it protected from the winter and mostly prepared for spring planting. This involves about an hour a day of standing on my head in various trash cans filling up buckets for the recipe of Mel’s Mix, a soil alternative for my raised bed square foot garden. I then haul a big plastic yard pail full of Mel’s Mix over to the garden, lift it and dump it in the middle of one of my planter boxes, then spread it around. Because I have been doing this every day, I have not done my ‘regular’ exercise.
Now that the garden project is finished, I will go back to yoga stretching every day and my elliptical trainer at least three times a week, if not daily.
Filed under Uncategorized
Pop Sugar
I am counting the work I’m doing in the yard each day, trying to clean up from the storm, as my elliptical/cardio exercise for each day. Yesterday I spent a total of 2 hours out in the hot sun blowing leaves and picking up branches. I gave myself a gold star for each hour. I drank water like a camel preparing for a stroll across the Sahara, and that led to a lot of exercise getting up to pee! I had a nice shower and did a very abbreviated set of yoga stretches to try to keep myself from feeling sore.
I plan to do more of the same today, since everything is still covered in branches and leaves. I will do short sessions, drinking lots of water and resting in-between.
Tonight is a DIY (do-it-yourself) meal on our South Beach plan. Thanks to Suzanne Ryan of Simply Keto, I have a recipe for bacon-wrapped chicken breasts that is to die for. My husband’s reaction when I told him what I planned to cook was, “Oh, GOOD!”
I am PLANNING to get up to my art room to work on the newest earring painting.
I hope you have a beautiful Sunday!
I am still walking around limping today from catching my toe on the corner of our bed in the middle of the night two nights ago – still feeling stupid. Yeah, everyone makes mistakes, but I KNOW where the bed is. It has been in the same place for over 30 years now. I KNOW it’s made of solid wood. My husband and I built the base for the bed years ago. I KNOW that confronting furniture with body parts is not a good thing to do. And yet here I am.
I’m still wearing slippers because I can’t wear a shoe. I’m limping around like a person twice my age – and that’s saying a LOT when you consider my “maturity.”
It would be NICE if I could simply pay better attention – even though it was the middle of the night and I was practically sleep-walking – rather than learning yet another lesson in such a painful way.
I’m glad that if I hurt myself, at least I didn’t do anything that required a trip to the emergency room. If I actually broke my toe, they would simply tape my little toe to the next one and call it done. I’m keeping it elevated as much as possible and am taking it easy otherwise.
I promise I will do something ELSE stupid next time…
Filed under Challenges, Funny Signs - Humor, taking care of yourself
Sometimes we aren’t sure which way to jump, which path to take, what is in our future.
One of the many things my dad taught me was to stand back and try to see the humor in any situation. He had a bad accident, falling off a horse when he was three, leaving him with a shortened left arm with an almost useless hand. He learned to use humor to keep kids from bullying him. He would make them laugh so hard they forgot his ‘disability’ and took him into their group. He used jokes and sarcasm to make his views known. An example of this was he would say, “Nice skirt” to me – when he actually thought it was too short and I needed to change my clothes. Whenever he was in a group, you would soon hear laughing. He passed his ability to see humor in most situations on to me. Just before he died, he scrawled on a napkin, “Remember me laughing.” Though it took me awhile, I do. What a strong, smart man he was!
I have used his lessons many times over the years. I can never win an argument, for example, because I can either easily see the other person’s point of view, or I ‘see’ us having a ‘discussion,’ see the humor in the situation – or the fact that what we are ‘discussing’ has little priority in what is important in life, and the tension dissolves.
Many times life throws us curves that challenge us on seeing the humor.
We’re in the middle of one right now, and things have been difficult. Our son is now home with us, helping with the situation. He brings CALM, caring, good sense, a healthy sense of the ridiculous, love, and lots of hugs. He has had us laughing several times already and he’s only been home a day.
I found this on the net this morning, and it made me smirk. A good reminder to keep my head on straight and be extremely glad my two guys are together. Together we will figure out in which direction we should go.
I Need Real Help
Filed under Challenges, Changes, Family, taking care of yourself
I Stole This From Another Page via Cindy Basnett Thurman
Filed under Attitude, Funny Signs - Humor
creativeartworksblog 