I noticed something recently that I hadn't realized before.  Isn't it funny how that happens.  You merrily stroll through your life, doing pretty much the same things most days, and suddenly, something you've seen or done a zillion times previously, looks or feels different than it ever did before .  It's wild.

I wasn't intentionally deeply analyzing or examining anything. I wasn't doing in depth research or pondering great thoughts.  It was merely an observation.  But one that kind of hit hard.

I'll set the stage for you.  I've been making an effort to do my workouts on a standard schedule, not just when the mood strikes me and not at all surprisingly, it does make a difference!  I was doing my crunches - and not the potato chip sort -  two sets of fifty.  Yes, that's what I said and proud of it.  Anyway, I try to fool myself into thinking it's not actually fifty by counting to 25 and then from 25 back down to one.  It's a pathetic attempt to trick myself into doing more and I know how sad that sounds but it actually works for me. So anyway, I noticed, for the first time that it seemed as if counting up to 25 takes longer and goes slower than counting from 25  down to one.  What?

As soon as I was aware of this peculiarity,  I slowed myself down a bit and did it again.  Up to 25, down to one.  Yup, it still seemed as if counting up was harder and took longer than counting down.  Bizarre!  Then I paid attention to when I was doing other reps and sets, if I break my count in half and do part up and part down, does it happen doing other exercises?  Answer: yes!  

So now I had to really look super closely at what I was doing, get more analytical about it.   Am I going faster?  I made a very strong effort to keep a steady rhythmic count. UP 25 DOWN 25.    I'm accustomed to keeping a strong and steady beat from many years of music.  After awhile it becomes ingrained and you don't really have to think about it, you just do it, you keep a smooth and steady beat so I was pretty sure I was doing it evenly, but I wanted to be certain.

Turns out I was not going any faster (at least not perceptibly) but I still had that same feeling.  Counting up is harder and takes longer than counting down.  So Strange! As my Dad would have said " How 'bout that".  It was a multi-purpose phrase that he used whenever he didn't know what else to do with information given or learned.

I let it go,  just kind of allowed the information simmer in the back of my brain for awhile.  It's not really a life altering observation after all, more of a "huh, interesting" thing.  I mean, really, what does a person do with that sort of knowledge?  Exactly nothing.

So the front of my brain just kept doing it's front brain stuff as I wandered through my days, doing all the sorts of things I always do, tralalala.  And then the back of my brain, which is so much smarter than the front part and clearly had been working on this, unbeknownst to me, suddenly pops up and says, " so the first half of your count goes more slowly than the second half eh?  Just like life". And I stopped.

Seriously, I froze in my tracks and did a double blink.  Blinkity blink.  Yes!  Exactly!  

When I was a little kid, days crawled by.  Especially in math class with that giant clock on the wall above the chalk board that always went one beat backwards before it moved forwards (and that alone made me crazy). It took eternity for that clock to deliver us from the evil that is mathematics.  The days between Thanksgiving and Christmas might as well have been a trip to the planet Neptune - a journey of around 14 years by the way.    Even a good day felt long, in a good way.  There was enough time to really thoroughly immerse yourself in the wonderfulness of a glorious day. 

Then, somewhere along the line in my life, my perception of time changed and the seasons started zooming past me.  I assumed it had to do with being so very busy:  working at least one, sometimes two jobs but also a mother of 3, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend, the chief cook and bottle washer.........  my days were very full.  The days were absolutely Joyous, please do not misunderstand, but very full.  Sometimes overfull. I'm sure that most of us felt that same way.  It makes sense that for a super busy person, time would seem to fly by as they say.

But then suddenly one day, I was retired. I had all the time in the world now to do exactly as I please.  I could sit and read all day if I wanted to.  I take long walks on the beach or strolls into town. I can go for a hike with Joy, bake cookies, go to lunch with a friend, have a nap, whatever I dang well please.  I assumed this meant that time would begin to slow down for me once again since my life slowed down considerably.

As it turns out, I assumed incorrectly.  Actually, it feels as if time is going by faster than ever.  Here it is Friday and it seemed as if it was Monday about an hour ago. It's mid-November right now but I think it was just last week that I was fretting about the beginning of Hurricane Season which starts in June.  I know I move more slowly these days, and I wonder if perhaps, subconsciously, I am trying to force time to slow down with me.

Just like my exercise counting, my life went slower the first half and is most definitely going faster in this last half.  I read somewhere long ago that a life is like a toilet paper roll.  It goes faster as you near the end. When I first heard this long ago and far away, I thought it was downright bizarre thing to say.
​
I get it now.

Hello to everyone from the freakin' cold state of Florida!   And that is something rarely said. Yes, yes, yes, we are the "Sunshine State" and so forth.  Well, that part hasn't changed at all.  The sun is indeed shining today.  The sky is bright blue and cloudless.  And we still woke up to about 36 degrees with warm toes on icy tile floors.  And it's only warmed up to 44.  Brrrrrrrrr.

We pay attention, well some degree of attention, to weather reports so we knew it was going to be frosty this morning and took the necessary actions. Those being: close most of the  windows at least most of the way (we are fresh air fans after all), wear socks to bed, put an extra blanket on the bed and at least one of the cats.   It worked out just fine.  I woke up to not one but two cats curled up on top of me.  Brysco and Wyatt did not object because they are no fools.  We were all snug and warm and cozy together even though the air was downright cold.

The frigid temps didn't impact me one bit until I actually touched that tile floor with my naked toes.  Those tiles were so cold they almost felt hot. It's a strange sensation but if you've ever experienced it, you know exactly what I mean.  I will say that my hot shower never felt quite so good and I didn't dawdle one second longer than necessary getting dressed.  It involved a lot of hopping from one foot to the other until I finally got socks and shoes on. 

Tim even turned the heat on for a short bit just to take the edge off the worst of it.   That almost burning smell when the heater goes on for the first time each season always give me a nano-second of panic until I remember, nothing is on fire, just dust in furnace burning off.  whew!

This is how I know it's officially cold:  Tim is wearing a long sleeved shirt.  With shorts of course, let's not be crazy. But still.  Tim. Long Sleeved Shirt.  In Florida!  That's quite the statement.  I, on the other hand, am in layers.  I perfected the art of layers when we lived in New England, and it is a skill that continues to serve me well.   Today it's real socks and not those shortie sneaker invisible socks that I usually wear.  No short for me. I'm in jersey pants - referred to in some circles (not mine) as "athleisure wear" - my new white tee shirt and a toasty warm oversized hoodie.   My legs, I admit are a little chilly right now but that's only because at the moment I'm sitting still, writing, as soon as I'm up and moving it'll be fine. Or probably fine. If not, I'll add tights underneath. Again, I know how to layer.  The key, by the way,  is thin layers not bulky/heavy layers over bulky/heavy layers in case you didn't already know.

In the news, if you get any news of Florida weather wherever you are, they most likely mentioned how our iguanas tend to fall out of trees when it gets cold like this.  It's because the poor little things are cold blooded critters, so when the temp drops below 50, they get sluggish, below 40 they get "cold stunned", lose their grips and literally fall out of trees!  Once the weather warms up, they will "thaw" out and go right on their merry way. I suppose it's kind of like being in suspended animation.  Still the falling out of trees thing has got to hurt!  

Today we will see people bundled up in puffy coats and complaining.  While I don't love being cold, I will say that I am enjoying the novelty of it all.  I'm drinking loads of hot water to warm up my insides and I am making cold weather food like Cottage pies and baked mac'n'cheese casseroles.  Food that are more stick-to-the-ribs yummy rather than our usual light fare to balance out the Florida heat.

I'm sure any visitors from other places woke up a little bummed today expecting to lay on the beach in bathing suits, soaking up the sun.  Well the sun is out, so I suppose, technically, you still could do that but my bet is that anyone on the beach is fully dressed today. 

I'm going to enjoy this chilly day, maybe make some cocoa!  It'll warm back up again, not to August HOT and HUMID levels naturally, but to normal November in Florida which is more 60's peaking in the 70's range. Lovely.  It's why people come here during the winter.  But there may be more cold weather on tap for us yet to come.  Winter hasn't even officially arrived yet.  It's still autumn after all!

Yes, I know, other places have got far worse weather right now including inches to  feet of snow!  Yikes!  But those are places that have colder weather and snow anyway.  They expect it, they know how to dress for it, how to drive in it, how to cook for it and function despite it.  Here, it takes a minute to remember, "How did we used to do this?"|

Personally I have an extremely limited cold weather wardrobe so I hope for only small batches of days with wintery temps at a time  -  a few here and a few there - sprinkled throughout the fall and winter seasons. Because for the life of me, I cannot remember where I stashed my gloves. I know I saved ONE pair and I put them somewhere safe which is always the kiss of death.  I'll never find them now.

According to Tim the weather guys said that today is the coldest November 11th on record in Tampa for the last 130 years!  Wow!  I just checked to see what the most arctic the thermometer ever registered in Venice Florida and, according to Mr. Google, the lowest number was 28 degrees. And that's brisk anywhere!  Comparatively, today's 36 degrees is not too bad. After all, it's above freezing, right?

Anyway, as the week goes by, it'll begin to warm up to our normal again.  And our normal is lovely, it's wonderful, it's part of why people refer to Florida as "Paradise".  But days like today that are a little unique for us, are also a delight. I'm going to get out there and enjoy it.

I have no idea what your weather is like today. If it's really cold/snowy/icey, please bundle up and stay warm and safe.  If it's just an autumn crisp, have some warm cider or hot tea and enjoy the beautifully coloured leaves.  If you live in Florida, take heart, this is temporary.

Joy has been away, and my foot is still slowly healing (but even slow progress is still progress, right?) so there have been no hikes in a while.  But yesterday, Joy and I threw caution to the wind and headed to Myakka State Park.  It's always a gamble; we never know what we will find or if we will find anything photo worthy at all!  It was a gloomy overcast day with a prediction of showers, so we weren't starting from a strong position, and we knew it. But we always go in knowing that we might return with just a very small handful of photos. 

As it turns out, there were plenty of pictures to be had. I took over 200 photos and Joy over 400! Holy Cats!  It took forever to weed through my batch, heartlessly deleting those that didn't measure up with impunity and adding some "light" to every single dang photo because it was so very cloudy and grey out.  And the water level in the mighty Myakka River was low, very low, sometimes non-existent low which was a shock.  But that's okay.  It felt great to be out there once again, to spend time with Joy, and to be in nature once again.

I can only say that nature must really like us back because wowie!  So many birds! SO MANY BIRDS! oh and a few other things too, of course, but mostly BIRDS!  So this Photo Safari Repot will, of course, be called the So Many Birds hike.

​I think the birdie pictures ought to be grouped by a random commonality.  I'll begin with birds in the water.  Here We Go:

Then of course birds NOT in water:

The funny thing with the turkeys, at some point I said to Joy, isn't it funny that we haven't seen any turkeys today and she said, well we haven't seen them......yet!  And she was correct. As soon as we came around a bend, there they were, an entire flock all at once!  Ask and ye shall receive!  

​As I stated initially, birds weren't the Only things that we saw, there were a few other critters:

Oh and this is our version of Autumn Colour.  Are you ready?

Maybe one last bird?  It's not a good clear shot but I still really like it. You don't have to if you don't want to, I won't be offended.

And here we are, we've made it all the way to the end of the So Many Birds Hike!  Thanks for coming along on this Photo Safari!  Have a great weekend, see ya soon!

I think it's time for another hair update. It's been awhile.

In case you wondered, yes this photo is of me from behind.  And for those of you egging on the silvers and greys and whites, as you can see, tremendous progress is being made!  Sadly, most of the pretty is under the first layer of dull old brown hair.  Isn't that the oddest thing?   If my hair is center parted, there are just these little sparkly bits here and there, some definite white and silver in a couple of oddball streaks but mostly just a very boring mouse brown.  But if I part my hair on the side, all of this glorious tinsel shows up!   Wild!

It's gotten quite long too.  It's far too miserable all summer long to wear my hair down so I honestly  didn't realize how long it had gotten. Then I struck up a conversation with a neighbor one day when we were bringing in our garbage cans and she mentioned how long my hair was. At the time my hair was still a little damp and I had not yet wrestled it into submission for the day. It was just uncombed, a little wet and hanging out for anyone to see.  I guess I don't ever really think about it much, but after that comment,  I  made it a point, once I was back in the house, to grab a mirror and look behind me (a little tricky).  This is what I saw:

Not a terrific photo and never my best side for photographs but hey it is what it is.  Anyway, you can see, untidy brown hair with a few grey streaks and a lot longer.  Just a few inches yet to what passes for my waist.  That nice neat straight line across the bottom is thanks to Tim who very bravely and kindly agreed to trim my hair for me when I handed him my pair of Good Scissors (which I generally hide) , indicated my hair and asked him to please just cut a straight line.  He did!  He cut about 4 inches off that day. Beautiful straight line too :)  Kudos!!

I have to admit that when I first saw this photo, my initial thoughts were seahag and wicked witch, not  pretty images.  Oh dear.

Throughout the hot and humid months I wear my hair up. You've seen the hiking photos with me in either two pig tails or two braids of course. But on the daily it's either a pony tail of some sort or a variety of buns or a single braid.  The length of the braid depends on how cooperative my hands are that day:

And apparently, I now see, that sometimes my ponytail is crooked.  LOLOL

 Of course, now that they weather is cooler, I've started wearing my hair down more often or at least half down (half up), sometimes with a hair bands or clips keeping it under control.    That's when I started really feeling the impact of long hair.  Frankly, occasionally,  it gets in the way.

If I lean forward to, say, pick something up off the floor, I'm instantly flying blind because my vision is obscured by a curtain of hair.  If I'm outside and the wind is blowing, I'm completely confounded by the octopus of hair flinging about.  And when I'm sleeping, it often half strangles me.

Still l kind of like that cape of hair, tickling my elbows as I go about my day.  This was not my first long hair rodeo after all. When I was in college I wore my hair long and, for a change, since my hair is so naturally straight, I was right in style.  An accident I assure you, I've never been au current intentionally.  It was easy to care for, inexpensive too as I did not have to pay for a salon visit and honestly, like now, I just didn't think about it.

I think the end of high school and into college was the first time I had long hair. I loved it but I had it cut rather short when I had my first baby just for practicality and kept it no longer than shoulder length ish until all three of my boys were no longer babies. Then I slowly grew it long again. Until I was looking for work and felt that I needed a more professional look. Chop! From waist length to pixie with no remorse.  The hairdresser cried.  Once I felt more secure in my job, slowly my hair grew very long once more.  Then we moved to Colorado and I was ready for a big change.  Another chop!  And this time a funky chop that had me styling my hair with some sort of waxy product to keep the funkiness properly funked.  Eventually  - and that time it was so many crazy lengths that it took forever - I eventually grew it out to about chin length and kept it there for years.  Until I had this most recent desire for long hair again a few years back.  Well it was partly a desire for long hair and partly a desire for no constant hair salon expenses. Bonus points:  I always liked wearing my hair long.

But that was then, and this is now, and when I reallllly looked at my hair I hmmmmmed a bit.  It felt odd.  Not as smooth and silky as I recalled from the olden days. In investigating that oddity and concern that I had, somehow, damaged my hair with all the hairbands, scrunchies and clips, I learned that silver, grey and white hair are completely different that 'regular' hair.  The texture is different, the care of it is different!  

It turns out that grey is just unpigmented hair and the so called colour of it is an optical illusion from the mix of pigmented (in my case brown) and unpigmented hair together. Interesting.  When the brown is completely gone it should be silver and ultimately white which always looks shinier.  Grey hair doesn't reflect light so it looks dull (bah!)  Unpigmented hair is more fragile, more apt to dry out and requires special care.  I alternate now between my normal shampoo for the proper care of my normal brown hair and purple shampoo which is the correct choice for my grey/silver/white hairs.

Well, hmmm.  I am looking forward, even more eagerly now to the day there is no more brown and my hair has all the same texture and shine.  I currently look more and more daily like a calico cat with hair of many colours, only one of them shiny and soft.

At any rate,  that the deal with my  long hair, partly grey, partly white, partly silver, partly brown that I'm finally able to wear down and realize how nice and long it is and learning how to take proper care of the mixed up crazy hair colours I'm sporting.  Long hair just in time for the cooler - and sometimes even cold - weather, helping me to stay warm.  Perfect!

And then this past Saturday came along and out of nowhere I had this wild hair, speaking of hair, and well, long story short, this is me today:

 It was a whim, I admit but sometimes I just need a change and this is certainly a change.  I am having to re-learn how to "do" shorter hair once again.  I'm mostly happy with it and honestly if I decide I don't like it after all, I'll just grow it out again.  Maybe this shorter cut will encourage those silvers and whites to pop out and the browns to go away.

Hope everyone had a GREAT weekend!

Today we have:  Success!  Surprise!  and a Secret!

If you are onboard with this, let's go!

Perhaps you might remember my post from a few weeks ago about my failed attempt at replacing my old, beat up, white tees.  Well we did not give up, we just took a break.  As you can see, we found one. And that's a big Woohoo!  At long last, success!   Over the past weekend, Tim and I, once again headed out in search of my own particular grail, the ever so simple, iconic, white, tee-shirt.  Which shouldn't be such a big deal but somehow was.  

Walmart had exactly one.  And we bought it.  It doesn't fit perfectly and it's not my preferred neckline BUT it'll do.  I was content with just that one, surprisingly inexpensive, shirt.  But Tim suggested that we hit a few other stores to see if we could find a second one.  Obviously, a shirt that cheap isn't going to last forever. Nice to have a second one as stand by.  Ok, I like that plan.  

I was feeling much better about myself, tee-shirts, shopping and the world in general after our immediate good luck that day, so we next stopped at Burlington which is no longer just a coat factory.  (I'm sure you already know that).  Ours is a rather small store, square footage-wise, and the good folks of Burlington were trying to cram way too many different things into that small space so each section was tiny.  The odds were not good. And in fact, we found nothing. But that's ok.  I still had the new Walmart tee-shirt so I was still considering it to have been a successful shopping day. 

Tim however, pressed on.  In the particular plaza where we stopped, there was a Marshalls, literally next door.  Tim pointed to the entry, " do you want to have a quick look?" he asked. As we stood on the sidewalk, I paused and considered. Ok, sure Just one more try.  

I hadn't been in a Marshalls in a long time so the chaos of it all was a little startling at first.  There were quite a few other shoppers and their carts, carriages and other paraphernalia taking up a lot of space and energy so I was dubious.  At first in an unfamiliar setting I usually need a minute to get my bearings.  How is this store set up?  Where is the section I need to be in?  Where are the registers?  Where are the fittings rooms?  I need to take just a beat.

Eventually I sorted it out and we began.  The racks are a little higgeldy piggeldy, with tops next to pants next to jackets and the sizes often intermixed requiring a bit more attention be paid to things other than, the expected - do I like the look of this?  But that's okay.  I plunged in and slowly, steadily, moved hangars right  to left as I made my way along the Very narrow aisles.

Eventually between Tim and I, we had a couple of possibilities in hand and we began to slog toward the fitting rooms when we passed by the clearance racks.  I do love a good clearance rack.  Naturally I had to take an extra couple of minutes to prowl through.  It really was a quick stop too, Nope, nope, nope and then wait a minute.  Something caught my eye.  It was unexpected for sure. Nothing at all like the plain white tee that was my mission du jour.   Initially I took a step past it and then stopped and backed up.  I took it off the rack and looked at it again.  I held it up too me (checking for length) and decided, what the heck, why not.  Costs nothing to give it a try.

Once in the dressing room I tried on and disregarded the other items quickly. They didn't fit right. But the last item, the clearance rack item, still beckoned.  I laughed at myself while I admired it.  It was a crazy pattern, almost but not quite a cartoonish botanical print, brightly coloured, button front, nothing at all like what I normally would choose.  So what was appealing to me about it?  I have no idea.

When I took the shirt off the hangar I was surprised to find that there was also a pair of matching shorts.  I don't know if that's a thing where you live but I see it a lot here.  I'm not a  matchymatchy kind of girl really, but hey, free shorts with the top?  Maybe I'll wear them together, as intended, maybe separately who knows?  And does it fit anyway?  It could all be moot.

Curious, I slipped it on and surprise! It fit perfectly.  No pulling at the bust, not too tight across the shoulders,  the short sleeves were comfortable and the length was perfect, just over the waistband of my shorts.   I rarely ever find shirts this perfect length! I stepped back and looked in the mirror and laughed out loud.  I loved it!  The silly pattern, the bright colours, all made me very happy.  I checked the price tag and it too made me smile.  All right.  Not a tee-shirt but a shirt.  It's all good.

I didn't bother to try on the shorts.  I don't have the same issue with bottoms as I have with tops.  If the top fits, the bottom will fit. I wasn't the least bit concerned about the matching shorts and frankly I couldn't be bothered taking off anymore clothes to try them on. I can be lazy like that.  As far as I was concerned, the matching shorts were just a nice bonus!  It was all about the shirt.

Tim offered to try other stores but I was done for the day.  Two new shirts and huzzah to that.  
I was so excited that I did the laundry immediately so that I could wear the new shirt the next day.  Here's me in the new shirt.  Sorry about the flash.

Not a great photo, but you get the idea.  Isn't it just the most un-Sam like shirt ever?  I do not care one single bit.  I adore it and I know I will be wearing it a lot, under sweaters and sweatshirts as it gets cooler and on it's own all summer long.

But now to the secret part of the story.  As soon as we got home, I set to work carefully cutting out the 3 zillion tags attached to each piece. I at least glanced at each tag in case there was important information.  There rarely is, but hey it only takes a quick peek. It's not like I have to read an entire encyclopedia's worth of information, right?  So I see the size, the price, the original price, the manufacturer, the washing instructions and ....................................then I read that last tag and I burst out laughing and couldn't stop.  I kept laughing to myself the entire time I tossed it all in the washer and then the dryer. I was still chuckling when I wore the new shirt the next day.

Turns out it's not a matching shirt and shorts at all!  Nope, it's pajamas.  Pajamas!  Surprise! LOLOL  I don't give a damn.  I am wearing that shirt as a shirt and I dare anyone to be able to notice the difference.

The matching shorts on the other hand are pajama shorts.  They are very comfortable, they even have pockets but they are sooooo big!  Far too Big, they look silly, like clown pants.  Well shorts.  Clown shorts then.  So they have been consigned to the pajama drawer and I've already worn them as pajama bottoms. Super comfy.

So there it is, the Success, the Surprise AND the Secret!

(just don't tell anyone else the secret part, ok?)

​

Weddings rings. Simple bands which are themselves symbols of eternity, which represent the vows, shared by two people who have now promised to be together, forever.  Weddings always touch my heart in a special sort of way. Whenever I attend a wedding I have tremendous hopes and wishes for the newly created  couple.

As you may (or may not ) recall,  Tim and I have been together for a Long time now, coming up on 32 years.  And we are as devoted to one another as much, if not more, than we were the day we got married.  Awwww

Tim and I opted for the old fashioned, very traditional vows.  We promised to "love, honour and to cherish one another for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, 'til death do us part".  I know that a lot of folks nowadays choose, instead to write and speak their own very personalized vows and I do think that is charming.  I find it impressive that couples will go the extra mile to really consider what they wished to promise to the other and also be willing to state it publicly.  In front of witnesses.  Often videotaped.  We will call that evidence.

I stumbled across a set of essays online recently written by people whose marriages did not work out.  The stories told were about the breaking point, the moment the other person left. They were very personal stories, crafted by people who was sometimes sad, often bewildered, occasionally bitter and angry. 

Far too many of the tales were remarkably similar.  Generally something along the line of the when the writer of the essay became ill or injured or perhaps it was their child who ended up with medical issues and then the spouse was outta there.  The reason for leaving given, over and over, was, "I didn't sign on for this".

I disagree.  Yes. You did.  This is exactly what you signed on for.  "... in sickness and in health..."  It is right there in the vows.  You promised in front of other people. You made a solemn vow. On video.  There was no asterisk by the "sickness" part of those vows that said *as long as the sickness is just a cold or the flu and oh by the way, even if you are sick I'm still going to expect dinner on the table and clean laundry anyway". NO!

What is wrong with people?  This is real life. Not the Disney version of real life.  There are going to be good times but there are also going to be bad times.  Sometimes it'll be so sweet and easy and other times it's really going to be hard. Really hard. Screaming into your pillow and crying in the shower hard.  But you push through.  That's what you do.  You honour your vows.   Why do some people not get this?

I am not talking about two reasonable people who have grown apart and choose to move on to separate lives. I'm not talking about abusive relationships of any kind which absolutely is the perfect reason to leave. I'm talking about the real normal life of two people who loved each other enough to promise to care in Sickness and in Health and then when sickness happens - the really bad stuff: a debilitating injury, an unexpected disease - they haven't got the grit to hang in there.

Frankly, I am so disappointed in those people that I don't even know what to say.

I've heard in my real actual life, as well as this collection of stories, far too  many of these cases and I just......  It's heartbreaking. How can anyone abandon the person that they Swore to love and care for, Forever, just because the going got hard for awhile? I am baffled.

The worst one of these I ever knew, and this was someone I knew personally in my real life, was a mom of twin baby girls.  The babies were beautiful but born with a fatal congenital condition that was terrifying, exhausting and terribly expensive to deal with.  The woman's husband, the father of those little girls, upon hearing of their diagnosis/prognosis left, stating that it was obvious that she had cheated on him and they were not his children because his people did not produce defective product.  That is what he said. And that woman found the strength somewhere deep inside to care for and eventually, sadly bury both of those babies, alone.

When I heard what he said as he walked out of their lives, I had to calm myself because I have never in my life felt the compunction to violence as much as I did in that moment.  I am normally such a peace-loving gentle person but I was shocked by my desire to slap the crap out of that man.  Obviously, I didn't do such a thing. I had no idea I was capable of even thinking such a thought before.   And thankfully, I didn't even say it out loud at the time because it would not have helped the situation at all.  I just let it simmer inside me. 

I am so sorry that this sort of thing happens.  And it seems to happen far more often that I realized.  Do people not understand what 'vow" means?  Do they not feel the weight of it?  The Significance?  The momentous importance?  I am mystified.

Look, it's easy to love someone when everything is going great. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and you have enough money in the bank to put a roof over your head and food in your mouths and everybody is feeling great.  That's awesome.  But that's not the test of a relationship.

The test comes when things aren't perfect.  When one of you loses your job and the money is tight,  when everything breaks at the same time, when the baby keeps you awake for nights on end and sleep deprivation is making you short tempered and practically hallucinating or when one of you suddenly has a serious medical issue that is going to mean big changes, at least for awhile. That's the test you have to pass. That's when your honour, your integrity in fulfilling your vows comes into play.  That's when you and the world find out what sort of person you truly are.

The life Tim and I have built together was not clear sailing. Nobody's is.  We've gone down rough roads, experienced difficult times, faced lots of scary stuff and we didn't always agree. But no matter what happens, we always know that we will get through it because we will face it together.  I have his back and he has mine. Perhaps we are hopelessly old fashioned but when we spoke our vows on that day, we meant every word. "For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad".  

We weren't just mouthing random syllables,  I felt the importance of those words as we spoke at my very core.  I imprinted them on a cellular level. I swear they are carved now on my DNA.  

Anyway, those are the thoughts that were rambling around in my head this morning. I will try to put together less serious thoughts for posts next week!

Wishing everyone a terrific weekend.  Hugs all 'round

This is the jewelry I chose to wear to the museum last week, a mismatched set of turquoise pieces.  Well I suppose they do match in that they are all bracelets and they are all turquoise. But I mean it's not an intentional match. They weren't purchased together as a set.  The inlay piece I inherited from my Grandmother, the beaded one my friend Marsha made for me and the other one was a gift from Joy.

They went perfectly with the dress I selected for the day, a turquoise and brown dress.  It's an unusual colour combination which is probably what initially drew me to it. But I also liked the easy care fabric - I could literally wad it into a ball and throw it in a corner overnight and it still be able to just shake out and look great in the morning (perfect for travel) and it's very comfortable to boot.  As I recall, it was also on the clearance rack and usually that price counters any objection I might have to something as piddly as an unflattering colour.  See for yourself:

I'm not suggesting that the colour turquoise, in and of itself, is unflattering. No!  Not at all. In fact, I actually love the colour.  But it looks not so good on me.  There is something about my skin tone that when adorned with turquoise makes me appear to be jaundiced.  Not  a look anyone has ever aspired to.  But I counter that sickly yellow look, when wearing this dress, by wearing a cream coloured cardigan over it.  Trust me on this, it looks very nice and when I'm at the museum I always absolutely make an effort to present well.

Side Note: Joy, on the other hand, looks fabulous in turquoise. It's kind of HER colour and she is welcome to it.  With the exception of this dress. The dress is mine.

Anyway, while I was getting dressed and putting on my earrings (also turquoise) and bracelets, the random thought crossed my mind that all of my turquoise jewelry was set in silver.  And then, I realized that 99% of all turquoise jewelry I ever saw anywhere was also set in silver.  That got me wondering. Is there a reason?

My guess was, tradition but I wanted to be sure so I looked it up. And yuppers that is certainly one of the primary reasons.  Native Americans artists have been making amazing and beautiful jewelry, art, belt buckles and more from Turquoise set in silver for a Very Long Time.  But did you know that they aren't the only ones who worked with turquoise?

For more than 10,000 - that's ten thousand! - years turquoise jewelry and other ritual pieces have been created in such far away places as China and Egypt as well as the Native Americans of our Southwest.  Holy Cats!  I did not know that!  Interesting. I also did not know that, at least among the Zuni Indians, blue turquoise was considered male and green turquoise, female.  Not sure how I feel about that but I suppose, not my culture, not my call.

Interestingly, at least to me, other countries that worked with turquoise, often used gold. So in those cultures, the turquoise and silver combo was Not the tradition. They used gold or bronze or whatever metals were close at hand or perhaps other metals were their own traditional preference. So many varieties, so many options, so many stunning pieces of art!  And make no mistake about it, jewelry Is art.  Wearable art but still art.

On the other hand,   Native American, Mexican and Spanish artists nearly always used silver with turquoise in their amazing creations. Most likely because it was easily sourced.  Makes sense.   There are some folks who believe silver to be the "correct" choice in combination with turquoise due to the "cool tones" of the stone against the equally "cool tones" of the metal.  And I do not disagree that silver and turquoise look great together.

But sometimes I don't want things that go together. Sometimes I prefer things that contrast.  And a warmer metal, such a gold, would definitely contrast with turquoise.   Beautifully I suspect.  And in fact, I looked for some examples of turquoise jewelry set in gold and I find it equally lovely. Here's a few examples:

Completely different but absolutely just as beautiful as the turquoise set in silver, at least in my estimation.  Not traditional by a long shot, but pretty pretty pretty, nonetheless.

So there we are.  I asked a question and I answered it.  Very efficient.  And now I know something I didn't know before!  

How about you?  Do you have a preference?  Turquoise with silver or turquoise with gold?  

Feet. 

In fact, these are my feet. I can tell by the Frodo toes, the prominent veins and the sneaker tan.  Dead Giveaway.  So what's the deal with the feet?

Well, feet are feet. Usually they are not an especially attractive part of the human body but of course they weren't created for that. They are intended to be functional; to bear the sometimes impressive weight of, not just the attached human being but also whatever that human is carrying or lifting!    They act as stabilizers so we don't fall over and shock absorbers for any and all impacts.  Feet are intended to allow us to walk, run, tiptoe, climb, skate, slide, dance and stand for hours at a time. We use them hard.

Sure sure, some folks take good care of them, not merely making sure they are clean but also lotioned, massaged, painted and bejeweled.  Oooo, pretty!   I make sure my feet are clean of course, lotioned when I think about it and shod most of the time.   But I'm not careful. Or at least I'm not careful enough.  And I know that because I have, at one time or another, broken most of the toes, some more often than others, as well as a few other foot bones, to say nothing of the occasional cuts from broken seashells, burns from hot sand and nips from cranky crabs.

But I, eventually, learned to slow down a little bit, be more careful and to always, always wear shoes and time passed, (as it does) until one day I realized that it had been quite some time since I had broken a toe or cut my foot or any other ridiculous thing.

The universe must have  heard my bold claim and laughed because suddenly my right foot is injured.  I didn't bash into a table leg or drop a bowling ball on my foot (at least that I recall) so I'm not exactly certain how it happened but one day, while walking, I realized that I was limping a little bit and strangely, the top of my right foot hurt.  Odd.  So when I got home, I took off sock and shoe to take stock of things.  There was no cut, no blood, no bruise BUT the top of my right foot was a little puffy indeed and walking was uncomfortable so I did what we always do in such cases in this house. I applied ice.

Ice is tricky to put on your foot, especially if you are a wiggly person like myself who has difficultly sitting still for long periods of time. So I had to come up with a better solution.  How do you hold an ice pack in place on the top of your foot and still stay mobile?   The answer my friends is a small ice pack and a sock.  I give you, my flamingo ice pack!!

It was a fun, silly Christmas Stocking gift quite awhile ago and it's been sitting in the freezer ever since then. Finally it was put to use!  And it works great!  Look funny, but works great and that is what matters.

I did a little research and odds are that either it's a teensy little fracture OR a pulled/torn tendon/ligament.  Well of course it is. What a stupid thing to have happen, again with NO idea how it happened.  But turns out my instincts are good. The solution was ice (!!), ibuprofen, rest  and the one thing I didn't think of, compression.

Great  idea.  I poked around in the medicine closet and eventually turned up with a 3" ace bandage and proceeded to wrap my foot. It does help, it does feel much better. ahhhhh.  

The downside being that it's bulky and my shoes do not fit with the wrap on.  So Tim suggested that I wear his shoes instead.  HAHAHAHAHAHAH!  Oh wait, it really does work on the right foot.  But the left foot is perfectly fine and normal and I rattle around in Tim's shoes like a marble in a cigar box on that foot. Seriously, I put it on, took one step and immediately stepped right back out.  heeheehee!  The solution?  One of each.

Does it look ridiculous?  Yes.  Do I care? Not much, no. Because it works and I seem to have passed the age where I give much of a damn what other people think.  Who knows, maybe I'll start a new fashion trend?  Remember a few decades ago when the little girlies were all wearing mismatched earrings?   There you go.

Feet are exceptionally complicated body parts.  In one foot alone there are 26 bones, most of them very tiny.  There are also 33 separate joints and it's all supported by tendons, muscles and ligaments that must work together for stability and mobility. Wow!  

Eventually it will heal, I've already seen signs of improvement and that makes me happy.  But in the meantime I won't be doing any hiking.  Instead, I'll be hobbling along with a flamingo in my sock and mismatched shoes on my feet.   Pretty sure you'll recognize me if you see me and then you can make the decision whether or not to acknowledge me.  LOLOL!!!   I promise  you , it won't hurt my feelings at all.  But it will make me laugh :)

Have a wonderful weekend y'all.

It's a classic, practically iconic.  A plain white tee-shirt.  Is there anybody who doesn't have at least one of these in their wardrobe?   Historically, in my mind, I immediately harken back to the 1950's ala James Dean. The Lords of Flatbush.  Marlon Brando.   But also Fonzie, right?

To my surprise when I checked to see the origin of the white tee it goes back a LOT farther. I mean a Lotalot!  Like all the way back to Medieval times!  I was shocked!  Of course it wasn't exactly the same nor was it worn the same way. It was never outerwear but under.  Initially it was the garment worn beneath armor and fancier, more ornate clothing,  And of course, it was made of silk, wool or linen as jersey not  yet having been invented.  

That didn't happen until the US Navy contracted with Hanes (yup those nice underwear people) to create the iconic easily washed, durable, lightweight white cotton tee worn by soldiers and sailors from the beginning of the twentieth century!  The white cotton tee really hit it's stride with regular folks in the 1950's - as I suspected.

I was surprised to learn that tee-shirts never had designs or graphics until the 1970's.  Oh  those fanciful Hippies and their anti-war protests. Peace!  I checked multiple sources and they all agree that's when it started.  Nowadays of course,  tee shirts can be plain, coloured, whimsical with designs or used as messages as to the wearer's interests or, essentially, walking billboards.  They can be seen in car repair shops and on fashion runways.   Variety is the spice of life, as they say.

I've never really been a 'message' tee-shirt kind of girl and I particularly do not care for tee shirts with pockets. Actually, it's usually just the one.  I refer to them as boob pockets coz that's where they sit on the shirts and they serve absolutely no purpose at all. Not a fan.  

I prefer either a scoop or a vee neck tee-shirt as the crew neck feels to me like it's choking me!  Almost, but not quite, as bad as a turtleneck. Just thinking about it makes me gag a little. Short sleeve is great for most of the year around here. If it's gets too chilly I can put a sweater or sweatshirt on overtop. Sort of like those old medieval folks eh?

As fond as I am of tee-shirts, right now I seems that other than my hiking tees, I only own the one white tee in the photo at the top of the page.  And that ought to be enough except that, it has begun doing that thing that tee shirts always do. It's beginning to disintegrate.  No really, that's what it's doing!  Every time it comes out of the wash, it's a little closer to its end as an article of clothing and its new life as a dust cloth.

I'm talking about the teensy tiny itty bitty little holes the keep cropping up.  Not tears, not cuts, actual separation of fabric just from being worn and washed.  sigh.  It's very sad.  This is what I'm talking about.  The photo is a little blurry but I think you can see it.

The only way it can be worn anymore is under something else. Dang.   I decided it was time to find myself a new white tee shirt (and if other colours happened to jump into the shopping cart, so much the better)

I guess I knew, from experience, that it wouldn't be a one store shopping trip. The likelihood of immediate success is very slim.  I am a rather picky, I will admit that freely.  I do NOT want boob pockets. I do not want crew neck. I specifically am seeking a white tee but again will accept other colours IN ADDITION not in place of white. And most importantly, I would like it to fit even somewhere close to my actual body shape and size.  That's the hardest part.  

I'm short. We all already know this.  I'm only 5'2" and most of that length is my legs.  I look basically like a box on sticks. Too long, disproportionate clothing is one of my arch nemesis'.  And they are legion!

I told Tim of my wishes and he was agreeable so we I headed out and decided to start with a store called Beall's.  It's nice store and a big one with Lots of choices.  There are loads of Beall's in Florida.  Sadly, their petite section is small. Very Very Very small. (to be fair it's small in most stores). I can get away with buying regular pants as my legs are quite long for a short girl but a regular tee-shirt on me would be closer to a nightgown in length.  I wish I was joking.  Therefore, I knew that I had to stick with the petite section if I had any hope of finding what I was seeking.

So there we are in the petite section. Very Few Tee-shirts in the already limited selections petite section. And in fact, as I looked them over, they seemed quite long for petites.  I held a singularly noxious shade of yellow tee  up to me and yes, as I suspected, it was Far Too Long. Not all the way to nightgown status but definitely mini-skirt length.  I do not want a mini-skirt length tee-shirt.   I suppose if I tucked it in it wouldn't matter so much but I strive for options. Again being picky, I want a tee-shirt that can be tucked in or not and still look good. It's possible.  I know it's possible because my one sad little disintegrating tee-shirt is the perfect length.

So Tim suggested that we just look at other shirts that could maybe serve the same purpose. Ok. I was disappointed, but open minded.  We divided, Tim headed to a few racks and me to my favourite - the sale rack - and we just started selecting solid colour tops in medium which is my size.  I tucked into the changing room and in very short order learned that, at least at Beall's, I am no longer a medium.  (gasp!)  I was horrified! But determined. "It's just a number, Sam", I told myself. "It doesn't matter."

I took a deep breath and we tried once again this time with size large.  Guess what, those didn't fit either !   What the actual heck?   Every single shirt was too tight across the bust and way too long. I was.... so.... hmmm, what was I? How do I describe how I felt?  I was disappointed of course. A little confused because every single shirt I own at home is a medium and it fits me perfectly. I guess honestly, I was starting to get a little pissed off. And not at the store, but at me.

Look, I've never felt good about how I look, not ever, not once in my entire life.  Moments like this in stores make me feel even worse about myself and nobody needs that. So without saying a word, but I'm sure my face looked like a storm cloud, I careful hung everything on the return rack and with Tim quietly walking beside me, we left.  When we got to the car he asked where I wanted to go next. I said "home. I want to go home". And so we did.

But I do still really need a white tee-shirt so at some point, I will have to get tough and get out there and try again, just at a different shop this time.  Beall's is clearly not my store.

 A  fan and some light, oh lordy, what is she going to talk about today?   Well, I'll tell ya.  It's a tiny bit of a rambly start so please bear with me coz it actually does go someplace.

First of all, despite what nearly every home interior decorator wishes, we have ceiling fans. We have lots of them. With the exception of the bathrooms and utility room there is at least one ceiling fan in every room. Why?  Because it makes a positive difference in keeping the house comfortable and the air circulated and we live in a place that is miserably hot and humid about six months of the year.  

But, in point of fact, we actually leave the fans running year 'round. Even in the mid to late autumn, winter and early spring when the weather is gorgeous and the windows are all open, the fans are running because it still does the same job, circulates air and keeps the house more comfortable.  In the hot months, obviously, (because we are not insane) the air conditioning is also on and we bless its little mechanical heart!   

One of the MANY things we've done since we've moved into this house was to add and replace fans and light fixtures.  Desperately needed to be done.  Tim was able to do the actual work of it, so we saved money there but the fixtures themselves?  Not cheap.  So it's all been done a little at a time, with eyes to the sales flyers. We are not stupid.

As it turns out, there is both good and bad to doing home improvement projects little by little.  The good far outweighs the bad which is great. And the bad really isn't bad, it's just less than ideal. We'll use that as the phrase of choice. Less than ideal.

The good parts of stretching out home improvement projects over your actual lifetime in a home are 1) it's far more affordable. All home improvement projects, whether you do them yourself or hire them out are expensive. They just are. It's a fact.  2) one has the time to really think about each choice and consider the best options. Never being rushed to a decision in the midst of five thousand other decisions is wonderful and, of course 3) the inherent stress of living through a renovation is done in bite sized, far more tolerable, chews instead of one massive migraine inducing horrible giant chunk of time that feels as if it's going to last forever and begins to take over every part of your life.

On the other hand, the less than ideal part of doing home improvement projects over a long period of time is that ultimately things don't match.    Turns out that, just like clothing,  tile selections, light fixtures, fans and even light switch styles change, all the time.  Who Knew?  Not us.

The funniest part to me is that I didn't even really notice this until the last night.  It was late, after 10 pm, full dark outside and I was heading toward bed but I have this quirk where I need to do a full house check before I can rest.  Are the doors locked, is there enough water in the kitty water bowls and hey, where exactly are the cats?  I guess I need to kind of call attendance.  No that's not it.  If they are sleeping, I don't want to disturb them I just want to know where they are.  Bed check, maybe?

So I looked in the usual kitty frequented spots and found one. But the other was missing, so the search continued. Eventually I made my way to the guest room but, y'know the whole black cat in the dark thing. I had to turn on the light. And in the dark last night, I had the dangest time, fumbling around trying to find the correct button. I kept blindly poking in various spots with no results.  Eventually I used the brightness of my cell phone to see what the heck I was doing.  Yes I used a light to turn on the light.  So sue me.  The point is, I was able to then successfully turn on (and then off) the light plus, bonus points, found the cat. He was fine.

That's when it struck me that very very few light switches in our house are the same. And isn't that the oddest thing. Is that how it works in everyone's house, or is it just us with our patchwork quilt of light switches?  A genuine question.  I don't recall it being the case in any other house we've ever lived in. Perhaps I am not remembering accurately, but I'm pretty sure that MOST light switches were pretty much identical.  This time, ours are not.

What do I mean by that?  Well, I suppose most of our lights witches are at least similar.  Toggle or rocker switches of one sort or another. Sometimes, just one solo switch: (note:  ignore all cat hair)

Sometimes, more than one. The tricky part here is which switch goes to which light. 

Sometimes it's a combo-platter:

All kind of schmancey with a dimmer bar:  (don't want to hear a single word about how I need to wash the tile around the light switch. I already know and it's on my list  of gotta do's.)

Then there's the old fashioned pull cord and there is no reason that can't be a little gussied up:

And a really gnarly old one in the utility room behind a ladder:

So as you can clearly see, they are similar but with small, rather insignificant differences (other than the pull cord but that one is easy, even in the dark).

Then we move on to the tricky bits.  Now these "light switches" and I use the term loosely also control the new ceiling fans in their various rooms which means more buttons.  Makes perfect sense eh?  Here's the sneaky part though, the buttons that turn the lights on and off are in  different places on each "light switch". Dang.  

As you can see, on the switch on the left the Onand Off buttons are near the top (outlined in blue). The On button is on the left and the Off button is on the right.  It takes me a second in the dark to find the top and then move down one row but just a second. No big deal.

The one on the right side however.....geez!  The On buttons,  all three of them, are at the bottom of the device (outlined in red) .  Just choose the "colour" of light you want, yellowish, white or blue?   Interesting.  Even more interesting is how the off switch is not close at hand.  Nope they opted to place it on the top right (outlined in blue).  So fumbling around without my glasses on for that one is hilarious and usually ends up with me going to get my spectacles to see what the heck I'm doing.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!  Isn't it bizarre that I only just realized this?  I guess you just sort of get used to things as you go :)

The other tricky bit that I didn't photograph is that when there is more than one toggle switch option,  I have to be careful to ONLY turn on/off the light and not the fan and it's ridiculously easy to hit the wrong buttons on ANY of our light switches for that.  Ironically enough, IF I accidentally turn off the fan in Some (not all) of the rooms, the only way I can turn the fan back on is to first flip the toggle switch, then pick up the associated remote and turn it on from there.  A multi-step project. Lesson learned. Do NOT turn off the fans.

So yes, remotes galore. They aren't just for televisions anymore. The new "light switches" are in fact, actually remotes that are mounted to the wall. Usually right next to the old actually light switches.  When we first got them it took me forever to train myself to not try to use the old switches but instead use the remotes.  I eventually got it but it can be filed under Old Dog/New Trick. Heh

Anyhoo, that's it.  That's what I realized late last night for the first time  and that's kind of crazy, but then so am I so I suppose it all works out in the end.  

Have a great weekend y'all!

t  
Nine?  What the heck?  Nine what?

It could a simple math problem:  3X3=9

A person can be dressed to the nines

It takes roughly 9 months to grow a new human being

In Numerology, 9 is a "master number" signifying completeness, wisdom and humanitarianism

Boston Red Sox Ted Williams proudly wore the Number 9

Speaking of baseball there are 9 innings in baseball, I think, and 9 players on each team

Dante wrote of the Nine Circles of Hell in his Divine Comedy

There are nine squares in a game of tic-tac-toe!!

But it's none of those things.

As of this past Saturday, October 4th, this Blog has been in existence for 9 years!  Wow!  Who could possibly have seen that coming?  

Definitely not me.  I had no end game in mind when I started. It was kind of an experiment.  I had never done anything like this before and it was more than a little intimidating initially.  Honestly, it took awhile before I settled into a comfy headspace and got the hang of it.  And at no point did I think, yeah, I'll still be doing this 9 years from now.  It was always a day by day, feeling my way through the darkness kind of thing.

Before I began I read up on Blogs and how to write them (of course I did) and it was interesting but, over the years,  I've probably broken every single "rule"  that I read. Not on purpose, I mean it isn't as if I read how to do it and then said, "well I'm going to do the exact opposite!" in an intentionally rebellious sort of way. It was more me saying to myself, as I went along, I'll give the rules a try.  Then, sometimes they didn't feel right to me. And one thing I've learned over the years is to follow my gut, listen to my instincts.  It may not ever make me rich but it will always help me to stay true to myself and that's far more important.

One of the big rules that I broke over and again was to write consistently.  By that they meant, establish the days and times the post will be published each week, every week, and stick to it.  I suppose it helps to keep readership up and honestly it makes sense. If this Blog were published at 10 am every Wednesday for example then readers might get in the habit of looking for my posts each week, year 'round,  on Wednesday mid-morning.  

Instead you have me writing whenever I have time and the mood strikes me.  I don't know about you but my weeks are not always consistent.  Sometimes I might have an early dental appointment or I pick up an extra shift at the museum and it's a morning shift or my hiking day with Joy moves from it's usual Thursday to a different day or the kittyboys need extra playtime and pets!  Then the writing happens later, if at all that day.

It's not that the blog isn't important to me, quite the opposite. It's that there are a lot of things in my life that are important and I'm constantly re-prioritizing things, not just through the week but throughout every day.   This isn't a 9-5 job, it's my creative outlet, a hobby, perhaps?  Hobby sounds too frivolous and as if I don't take it at all seriously which is not correct.  I do take it seriously, I do want to produce a good blogpost each time, but on a timeline that works for me.  Hmmm I'm not sure how to categorize this.  It happens, just, it happens whenever it happens, I guess.

I've also taken breaks from writing for vacations, visitors, medical issues and computer problems!  Sometimes those breaks were a mere few days or a couple of weeks but other times it's been bigger as in multiple months! Sometimes those breaks were doozies. Yikes! I was a little concerned after this last enormous gap (which was NOT my fault at all!) that no one would come back to read me .  I was prepared to say, well I guess this is it, the end of an era, it's over and done and great while it lasted.  :(   I was tickled beyond description to find that at least some of you came back.  YAAYAYAAAYAY!

You people, you wonderful, amazing and very forgiving folks, have stuck with me through it all and I cannot thank you enough.  This is like the worlds greatest partnership and I hope you all know how much I appreciate every single one of you

So Happy 9th Blogiversary to all of us!  Long May We Wave!

Look at those sweet little moo-ish faces! I kind of like cows and not just be cause they make delicious burgers!  Just as fellow creatures, I like them, their sweet natures (usually), their family orientated attitudes, how they interact with other creatures, and honestly, I think they are adorable.  

But what on earth do cows (whether you agree with my assessment of cattle in general or not) have to do with my life?? After all, is isn't as if I live on a farm or a cattle ranch, right?  There are no cows wandering around on our beaches or plodding slowly down Venice Avenue, I assure you.

The cow photo came about from the hike Joy and I did yesterday at Walton Ranch.  Walton Ranch is a 3,760 acre preserve AND working cattle ranch in North Port (so south of us) with more than 19 miles of trails (of which we only hiked 4 on Thursday - slackers!)  So yes this is the first in the long time of Photo Safari Reports!  I'll call this one the Bovine Trail Guardian Hike.    And I will get back to the reason for that specific title in a few minutes here.

First I wanted to, just as a blanket statement, say how much we loved Walton Ranch.  Joy and I hadn't visited in a few years and I'm not certain why not.  It's stunningly beautiful with a lot of different types of areas: woods, water, meadows, marshes and more.  Also, there are never a lot (or something any) other people there so it's peaceful.  And it's always a surprise, we never know what we will find and that may be the best part!

The trails are sometimes well marked, sometimes not, at times easy to traverse, other times not so much, but we had a trail map, a compass and gumption so off we went.  Here's some of the trails, just to start:

Our first enchantment, and that is exactly what it felt like, was discovering not one, but many Meadowlarks singing their little hearts out in the fields around us. We were literally surrounded by them!  What an absolute delight!

Then, as we left the open meadows and that beautiful song behind us, we entered a darker, cooler wooded area that had the largest collection of spider webs I've witnessed in quite some time!  They were abundant and silent and, in their own way, works of art:

But what about the cows?  I'll get to it!
​
Every time we turned a corner, as we crested each little rise,  each time we stepped out from around a large tree there was another surprise.  Sometimes a flower or a butterfly, maybe a flock of birds, now disturbed taking flight.  Once it was an unexpected little creek, the broken bit of fencing,  or the suddenly appearance of a deer (twice!).  There were golden masses of dragonflies and butterflies throughout the hike and every single sighting made me smile. There a small child that lives inside me whose heart surged with each new discovery:

Okay, now the cows.  About them. Every other visit to Walton Ranch that we've done, the cows were on the other side of whichever fence we happened near.  We would admire them, say hello, maybe take a photo or two and move on down the trails. This time, as it turned out, we were sharing trails. Oh my! That was certainly different and it would have been good information to have upfront.  The cattle gates were open so that the cows were free to wander as they wished.  What a great life for a cow, right?  But very unexpected to come around a turn, or step out from around a large copse of trees,  or hop across a little creek and suddenly come face to face with a couple of cows.  

'well hello pretty face', we said to the cows. They watched us quietly and calmly and we stopped to reassess the situation as it was unusual.  Neither of us is afraid of a cow, for heaven's sakes, but on the other hand, we are guests on that property and we don't want to upset anyone, human or otherwise.    Our first question to ourselves was, did we come through a fencegate  we weren't supposed to?  Definitely not.  Every cattle gate we came through merely had a sign to be sure to close it behind us. We did! So hmmm.  We approached slowly and gently, very aware that we were being observed and kept to the far side of the trail, giving them as much space as they desired.

At some point, we realized that it wasn't just those few cows, nope. Their friends were joining the group.  Hmmmm.  We stopped again.  Lots of cows, a small herd of them of varying sizes.  Some Mamas and young ones too which makes the situation a little more precarious.  Mama's go to great lengths to protect babies even when there is no harm intended. 

We were at the junction of three different trails and the cows were in the way of all of them. Decisions, decisions.  At that point we were hearing a racket of moo-ing. Somebody was upset. Oh dear. That was certainly not our intention. We had to make a choice and get out of their way, so we decided on the least cow-y trail and slowly, quietly, again as far away as possible, keeping our wits about us at all times, made our way to the shadowy, wooded non-cowish trail.  Whew! We breathed a sign of relief  a little too soon.

As we came around yet another corner we found a Very Large, Very Male, thoroughly unamused cow standing firmly across the entire trail. Thou Shalt Not Pass. Well crappola.  Now what shall we do.  You don't often hear of a person being bitten by a cow of course, and they are unarmed naturally, but they can kick and they certainly can trample if they wish.  We're talking about a half a ton of cranky potroast here. He can do whatever he likes.   What does one do in such a situation?

Well, I'll tell you what we did.  We sang.  I'm not certain why we did, though Joy told me later that she used to do that back when she was a Ranger in Yellowstone,  Upon occasion a herd of Bison would block the roads and she would sing to them.  It was instinct. Music to soothe the savage beast maybe?  Well not savage but absolutely not happy with us.  Joy started out and I joined in.  We took our time but didn't dawdle as we made our way around him, his eyes on us the entire time.  Finally through the gauntlet we laughed and took deep breaths of relief!  Nobody was traumatized, nobody was hurt, just a little singalong with cows and we each went on our merry ways.

Until it happened again, and later yet again!   It was crazy!  We kept coming around bends only to unexpectedly coming face to face with one or more cows blocking the trail.  And each time we would stop, then break into song and carefully make our way around them. The funniest part is that the singing began to attract other cows.  Come join the party!  Where there might have been two or three, suddenly there would be dozen giant animals, starring at us with their big brown eyes and physically imposing presence, listening to the songs.  Who knew??

So that's it,  the cow story as well as the rest of the hike. And now you too are privy to the Bovine Trail Guardian Photo Safari Report.   Hope you enjoyed!

​Have a terrific weekend!  Happy to say, I'll see you next week!

I'm still a little agog at how much time has passed since I wrote here regularly.  For a long time, sitting down to write these blog posts was just a part of the rhythm of my week, every week.  I made mental notes about things that I saw, or did or heard about all of the time so that I could come back and write about them.  Often the photos I took were specifically curated for posting here.  I kept a little notebook of ideas right here by my desk where I jotted things down so that I wouldn't forget, I wrote in the margins of my big old desk calendar and usually had a little stack of brochures, flyers, playbills, ticket stubs and bulletins to use as reference for my subject matter.

But then, that weird, bizarre, insane lock out thing happened and things changed.  For awhile, I still wrote down ideas and collected brochures always thinking that, any minute, the universe would self-correct and I'd be back at it.  But after awhile, somewhere during the 5 long months away, I cleaned off my desk, threw things away and so now we are basically starting from scratch.

Well, almost.  I still keep my big old desk calendar. I write everything on my desk calendar so that I don't forget important stuff!    So I'm relying on that right now as a memory trigger.  So let's give that a little peekie.

It seems that in the past 5 months I have worked 28 shifts at the museum, went on 14 hikes with Joy,  attended one City Hall meeting,  took the kitties to 3 different vet appointments and had 6  medical appointments of varying sorts for myself (all of them with no issues at all - yay).   Let's see there were 3 holidays too;  Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labour Day! There was one bout of kitty sitting for other cats, a few luncheons with friends and all sorts of fun weekend adventures with Tim that, unfortunately, I do not write on my calendar. Dang.  I did win several photo awards though so that was a nice surprise.

Tim's and my birthday happened along with a lot of other friend and family birthdays, all well celebrated, to say nothing of 5 months worth of laundry (which probably equals a metric ton), endless yard work, housekeeping, and enormous number of meals prepared, cookies baked and general housey stuff. 

I've been to the library at least 5 times (once per month) which means I read about 20 books and I've been on a minimum of 60 noonwalks with Tim.  Those noonwalks turn out to add up to roughly 156 miles. Holy Cats! We could have walked from our house to Pt Lucie Florida by now!  (it's on the other coast by the way) Let's see that's about 20 weekly grocery shops (ugh) and I refuse to work out the average cost because I know it'll just tick me off.

Well I guess it turns out that while we did a lot of stuff, most of it was just ordinary life stuff which is not terribly fascinating.  Sorry about that.    I do recall a few weekend fun things though.  One very hot day this summer Tim and I went up to the Tampa/St Pete's area to check out the Botannic Garden. It was amazing and gorgeous (and free!) but it was so hot that we didn't stay long but we will absolutely return when the weather is friendlier for outside stuff.  We also went to the James Museum of Western Art and Wildlife which was awesome!

You might not expect to find a Museum of Western Art in Florida, I know we didn't.  It was an amazing place, right down near the waterfront and around the corner from the Dali museum.   We spent a good long time wandering around admiring beautiful western themed art and taking a few photos  - to our surprise they did allow photography!  Here's a few:

Naturally, I took photos during all of those hikes with Joy but I won't try to sort through and post a ton of those.  I will however, share a few of my favourites.   I hope you don't mind:

I think we are pretty much all caught up now, at least on my end.  How about, from here we just move forward :)  

What happened with all of you during this past 5 months?  What's new and exciting in your lives?? Do tell!

​Hugs all 'round

​

hello hello hello!  It appears that I have returned! YAAYAYAYAY!  I am so excited! 

It's been a long time my friends, about five months? something like that. And I hope you know that I didn't just wander off and get lost. Or lose interest and give up. I didn't get abducted by aliens or join witness protection.  I have not been here because I couldn't get here!  Way back in May there was some bizarre computerish thing that kicked me out of my own blog creation site and refused to let me enter again, no matter what I did.  No matter what Tim did. Just nope, not happening and I almost (almost being the operative word) gave up entirely.

I say almost because clearly, here I am again.  I tried to make my peace with the idea of never being able to blogpost again, I really tried.  But I missed it. I missed writing. I missed getting feedback from all of you. I missed that creative part of myself. So every once in awhile, not often, just now and again, I would quickly try again.  And then be rejected again.

Eventually I would have these little conversations with myself about accepting the inevitable and moving on and most of the time I would nod along with myself and agree and say, "Yes, this is probably a good thing. It's time to find a new creative outlet". But then I never did anything further. I mean never even tried, which is unlike me.  

Perhaps way deep down in a dark and dusty corner of my heart, behind cobwebs and a rusty old filing cabinet, I still believed that one day I would be able to return and that's why I never bothered to find something new and shiny to play with. Maybe? Or maybe I'm just lazy.

Either  way, today is an exciting new start to the same old blog which sounds like crazytown opposite day!  what I mean is that it's the same blog and it's still me, but perhaps a slightly different version of me. The one that reallllllly missed writing this blog and kept trying despite being turned away (in a technological sort of way) repeatedly for 5 months!  Perserverance is my name!  Well, no it's not.  Sam is my name but we already knew that.

So now what?  I'm not  sure I will be able to adequately "catch up" on everything that's happened but over the coming weeks, I'll give it a good try. AND I'll move forward with anything new and exciting, or old and boring, or just whatever is rattling around in my little punkin' head.  And if you want to reach out with questions or ideas or just a howdy do, I'm ready for ya!

Fingers crossed that today wasn't an anomaly, it wasn't a one-off and I will be able to return again next week at which time I will write a real post (like this one isn't real?)  At any rate, I hope all of you are doing well, healthy and happy.  Have a Great Weekend and if luck holds, I will see you again next  week!  

I love saying that!

​Hugs and hugs

Oh My Goodness!  The cuteness of this bunny is too much!    Most wild rabbits will run like, well, rabbits as soon as they see a scary human, but this little guy not only didn't run away, but actually kept hopping closer and closer !    I guess as scary humans go, Joy and I are okay : )

This is yet another Photo Safari Report but it will probably be the shortest one I've ever written.  So short in fact that I considered waiting for the next hike and combining them.  And then, I changed my mind, as I tend to do.  At any rate, this one I am calling the Ten Bunny Hike. We've never seen so many rabbits on one hike before.  There were bunnies everywhere we looked! At every turn, every curve in the path,  behind trees and shrubs, in the wild grasses and in this case, even right in the middle of the trail, there were bunnies! They are sooo cute!  And they always look so soft that I want so badly to touch them..................but I don't.

I'm not even certain that the actual number was ten.  It was at least ten but we stopped counting after awhile. One of the things about wild rabbits is that they look an awful lot alike. I'm sure you are thinking, "Sam, how do I know that it was actually ten bunnies and not one bunny ten times."  There are some things you just have to take on faith. This is one.  Here are a few of our ten bunnies:

It was a perfectly lovely day for hiking in spite of that fact that, outside of an abundance of rabbits, we didn't see a lot of other things that were photo worthy. Let's face it, you can take just so many pictures of a palm tree.  Or any sort of tree for that matter.

We weren't bothered by it being a less than stellar photography day. It all balances out. There have been hikes where I came home with several hundred photos. No exaggeration. And others, like this one, where it was less than 50. And most of those I deleted as being, not quite up to par.  On the other hand, we hiked a decent distance in a relatively short period of time.  On high photography days, we tend to cover a lot less ground because there are places where we stop "for a minute" to get one particular shot and end up being there for 20 minutes taking dozens of pictures because it turns out to be a Mecca for birds, flowers, bees, butterflies and so forth.  

On those hikes we don't travel as far because we stop so often. But during those stops we are shooting constantly and in every possible direction: straight ahead, to our left, our right, above us, behind us and way down low.  So low that I have to either kneel, lie down, or sit on the ground to get the picture.  

This was obviously not that sort of hike.  This was the fewer photos but more ground covered type.  And that's ok.  The bunnies were a surprise.  Of course we never really know for certain what we will find. Although we were hoping to see the eagles.  Nope.  Not so much as a feather left behind.  Just their slowly disintegrating nest:

The other unusual thing that we saw were a lot of crabs. It was unusual in that crabs generally hang out at the beach or in swampy areas and this was neither.  The water is nearby but not near enough for this particular preserve to be considered beach or swamp. So that's kind of a mystery.  Here is the crab.  Kind of hard to make out.  Use your powers of imagination:

The few birds that we saw, I did not capture very well.  Ah well, it is what it is.

I did get a few botanicals, primarily wildflowers though I will be honest and tell you that my interpretation of what denotes a wildflower is fairly liberal.  Basically, to me, anything that blooms and is not a domestic specific intentionally created Flower is a Wildflower.  Which means most of these are probably blossoming weeds.  I don't care. They are wildflowers.  You heard me. I said what I said.

Looks like I have just enough photos left to post some randos:

Like I said, one of the shortest Photo Safari reports ever!   Still for all it's brevity, I wouldn't change the Ten Bunnies hike for anything because I wouldn't be able to give up a single one of those little rabbits.

​Let's see what this week's hike brings us!  It's always a surprise!

Remember a few weeks ago when I told you about Sydney the crow and how much fun I was having feeding him?  I also talked about how much the kittyboys were enjoying the CAT TV Escapades of  Sydney .  Well of course, it ended up being much more than just one crow. Of course.  Coz if you feed them, they will come.

The Grackles came right after the crow. Grackels are glossy black birds who, in the sun, show iridescent feathers that sometimes look deep purple. OOO pretty.  Then came the bunnies and a couple of squirrels.  That was pretty much it.   It wasn't much, but we were happy with it.  

Joy was totally on board.  She even offered up any old, stale, worn out bird-friendly items from her own pantry which was awesome.  Then she so generously offered something more. A bird feeder (SEE PHOTO ABOVE)  Note:  the leaves and branches on the ground in the background are from a big yard project Tim and I have been working on for a few weeks, trimming up all the greenery and oh my gosh there is SO MUCH OF IT!  But we only have 3 bins to put it in to be taken away each week so I keep refilling the bins every week and this is what's left right now.  Just in case you wondered.

Not just any kind of bird feeder you understand. This one is very fancy.  It has a camera in it!  Wow!  Joy received it as a very lovely and thoughtful gift. But alas, it really didn't lend itself to Condo Life.   Joy and Bob live, most of the time, in their high-rise condo overlooking Sarasota Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. It's a helluva view, let me tell ya!  But there is no place to put a bird feeder there so she re-gifted it over to us. Wow!

Tim set it up in the back yard near where I was already feeding the birds on the ground.  (There is also a dish of water for the birds that gets changed twice a day just FYI).  It took a little modifying to make the feeder stay put and stay stable enough for actual bird perchings.  Once Tim felt confident about the setup, off we went to find birdseed which was harder to find than we expected.  Finally found a small "starter" bag at Walmart and then much larger bags at the Tractor Supply Store.

I couldn't wait to get started.  As soon as we got home, I filled that feeder to the brim then I went inside and waited. And waited. And waited.  Brysco and Wyatt sat in the family room windows waiting with me.    I don't know why I thought that the instant that feeder hit the ground they birds would be flocking to it.  Flocking! LOL  Pun unintentional but apt.

So eventually I gave up waiting and set about getting other things done.  After awhile, I noticed my phone dinging at me.  Initially it was just one random ding, then more and more and holycats what's going on with my phone? 

It seems that there is an app (of course there is)  involved  which Tim loaded on our cells so that the pictures the feeder camera takes are sent to our phones.  How Cool is That?    I immediately began scrolling though the photos.  They were all of the Grackles and they were hilarious photos. Very Up Close and Personal.

Here's one just by way of example:

Too funny!  And for the first few days, that's all I saw. Various and sundry photos from the feedercam of the same bird.  But a few days later, we were in the car and just to kill a little time I checked the most recent photos from the feeder cam and oh my gosh, there was a wood pecker!  I didn't know woodpeckers at birdseed!!  Live and learn I suppose.

 From that point forward, we began to more of a variety of visitors and while the feeder/cam photos aren't perfect, they are still very fun:

But I knew there were probably other birds that weren't being captured by the feeder camera so I started spending a little more time with the kitties hanging out by the window, my real camera in hand and yup, I was correct. There were other birds, some I managed to get photos of and some I didn't. Oh plus a bunny and a squirrel just becoz:

There have been others too who have managed to avoid having their photos taken by either me or the feeder/cam brilliantly. So you'll have to take my word for it that we've also had blue jays, male cardinals and a host of others I haven't quite identified yet.  (they are so quickquick you see)  As time goes on I can only assume that the numbers and variety will continue to grow.  An exciting prospect to anticipate :)

Rather than go broke buying bird seed because the little oinkers will just continue to devour it every time I put it out, I am limiting myself to only filling the feeder twice a week.  I filled it this morning and already it's been a crazybusy birdie destination with as many as can possibly fit on the perch and the others waiting their turns on the ground and nearby shrubs and trees.  Lovely manners actually.

We are finding that there is something very lovely about watching those birds. It's fun in a quiet sort of way, it's really kind of serene and soothing, and I'm learning, without intending to, quite a lot about birds! Always a nice bonus.  The fact that the kittyboys are also greatly entertained is one of the best parts.

I still ground feed for the larger birds...there is no way that Sydney will ever fit on that tiny little perch. He is a big boy. And it turns out that some of what I put out for Sydney, the squirrels and bunnies also enjoy.  Who knew?  I do experiment a bit with that.  I'll stand in the pantry with a bag of stale potato chips and think..hmmm.. I wonder if birds would eat this?  The answer was yes.  They also like stale bread, crackers, cereal, tortillas (cut up) and cookies.  They were not fans of watermelon rind or orange peel however.  I am teachable.

Also found a source for ground bird food that isn't going to break the bank:  Dollar Stores!  There are three different ones in Venice. One is even on island which is terrific for me.  In their food and snack aisle last week, Tim and I found a box of off brand saltines for $1.25 and a large bag of pre-popped "Movie Popcorn" also for a buck twenty-five.  Not bad.  For an entire week the ground bird food has been dollar store off brand snacks that only cost me $2.50 in total.  I see another trip there in my near future.

So far I see this as a win all the way around.  The birds are being fed and watered, the kittyboys are entertained, Tim and I are enjoying their company and we are learning so very much!  It's awesome!

Have a Terrific Weekend Ya'll

It's a rainy Monday here, gloomy, dreary, wet and well, we need the rain after our long dry winter, so I won't complain (much).  It was dark and sporadically rainy yesterday as well.  And it having been Mother's Day, well, I can only hope that not a lot of folks around here had planned Mother's Day picnics!

I felt very celebrated all weekend and the weather did not impact it at all.  Even when it might have we just pivoted to Plan B!   Gotta be flexible.

It was a full weekend of celebration around here!  Wow!  In total I had an ice cream fest (3 different sorts of small batch locally made excellent flavours and of course I had to try them all), donuts (including the beauty at the top of the page that was ALMOST too pretty to eat), dinner out (ooo fancy!),  flowers (so pretty!), phone calls (love those so much) texts (also made me feel special!), brunch at a restaurant I'd never eaten at before (had avocado toast and it was fabulous) and cards that were funny and sweet and made me cry a little (which is to say, perfect cards).  Whew!  Sunday night the original plan was burgers on the grill at home but weather issues and all meant Burgers cooked inside instead!  Also excellent!

Saturday morning was relegated to yard work and we got a LOT done. Once we got cleaned up and changed, we were up and out and errands run including buying bird seed. More about that later this week.  A little teaser for you :)

It was a great get things done sort of day and I do love crossing things off the gotta-do list!  But Sunday was My Day.  It got to call all the shots.  I gave it a lot of thought. What did I really want to do yesterday?  I wasn't absolutely sure. The weather was yucky enough that while we did manage one walk without getting wet, I wasn't in the mood to risk getting soaked with an outside thing.

And as they day passed and I still wasn't coming up with a brilliant plan for what I wanted to do, I decided that perhaps I didn't really want to do anything at all. Maybe I just wanted to be a lazybutt. Perhaps I wanted (needed?) a do-nothing day!  And that is as rare as snow in July.   So, as it was my day and therefore my choice, we did little to nothing. We watched old movies and did some reading. We played with the cats and snacked. We talked and sent each other funny videos.  It was such a relaxing, no obligation whatsoever, glorious blob of a day and I squeezed every single second of enjoyment out of it that was humanly possible.  It was an Ahhhhhh day.

Sometimes doing nothing is the best sort of thing to do!!!  It was Perfect!

I hope you either felt well celebrated and appreciated, OR  made someone else feel that way on Mother's Day  this year.  I know how much I loved my day AND the people who  made it happen.

I believe I've mentioned before, (but perhaps I did not) that when Tim and I bought this house, which needed a LOT of work, that we decided to break it up into bite sized pieces.  We decided that every year we would do one and only one project.  Any sort of reno is not only very expensive but also very stressful, it's just the nature of the beast.  Our thought was that if we focused on doing only one project a year, it would feel a lot more manageable in a myriad of ways.

Some projects were very large, some were relatively small.  Several projects were the sorts of things nobody sees like electrical work or plumbing stuff. The end result is never visible but it's still of terrific importance.  There were projects that we were able to do completely ourselves, some that we had to hire out and others that were kind of a mixed bag:  us and them.

Then came that last huge project, the family room. That one was a bear. We knew it was going to be big, we knew it was going to be expensive and would take quite awhile to be completed, but of course we never could have predicted that the contractor would bail (with the $$ of course) partway through, that we would need to figure out how to finish it ourselves or that it would take so much longer and be so much more expensive than we ever anticipated.  Whew!  What a mess that was.  But somehow we muddled through, we came out the other side even  though I at some point I said something along the lines of never ever wanting to do another project again. Ever!  And I meant it when I said it.

Well that was then and this is now and this year's project has been a much smaller one. This year, we (I say we, it's been 99% Tim) tackled the courtyard.  It's not 100% finished yet but I'm so excited about what Tim already did that I'm going to go ahead and write this up as if it were.  He deserves all of the credit.  He is my hero!  I adore every single bit of it and I'm sure you will too.

The photo above says it best I suppose. This is our house.  Well the exterior of it.  It's an older photo and some of the greenery no longer exists. Lost to time due to various storms/woodpecker damage and the capricious nature of life.  But the house is still the house.  As you can see, it's basically just your basic circa 1962 light green crackerbox of a house.  The only thing that differentiates it from other houses of that era is the courtyard in front of the house.  

When we bought the house the courtyard consisted of some wobbly, faded, old adirondack chairs and a shade umbrella that was anchored by a very heavy metal base.  It worked ok right up until an unexpected gust of wind carried it off to parts unknown.  well dang!  We replaced the umbrella only for it to happen again. Rather than continue to replace the umbrella, Tim put up a sail shade.  It worked wonderfully though it only covered a small section of the courtyard.  The answer, obviously, was to get a second sailshade.  Two triangles, opposite one another makes a rectangle y'see!  Perfect.  It just needed a big post to anchor one corner. Tim took care of that!

It's so much cooler under the sailshades.  The plants and the humans are both big fans!

Next up was lights.

Our first Christmas in this house, we put up those exterior grade Command Strip hooks and boy oh boy, those things have lasted really well. It was a snap to put up and taken down the lights each year. The lights only ran along the roof line, so no big deal.  Until the first sail shade went up. Then it became a bigger dealio to take the shade down to put the lights up and then vice versa after the holidays.  I guess I got lazy because after the first time I just didn't take the lights down.  Yup, we became Those People with Christmas lights up year 'round.  Didn't bother me a bit.  Until the Christmas lights, after being up far too long, just gave out. Dang.  When we had to take the sail shades down for the next hurricane, we took down the lights too and out they went, right in the trash.

I decided that since you really cannot see the roofline with the sailshades up, I would forego Christmas lights from now on.  I would miss them, but I'd get over it.  Tim to the rescue.  He got lights :)  This time, no Christmas lights, but so called "partylights" Love it~!  AND for bonus points, he also got some dragonfly lights for my whimsical heart :)  Like I said, this guy is my hero.  They look Fabulous!
​

 The next addition, to my great surprise, was a wind chime that is so perfect.  Yet more dragonflies ( my favourite) with a sweet tinkly sound that's loud enough for me to hear, yet not a gongish sort of sound.  I can see it from the kitchen windows and if the windows are open, I can hear it to. Love it!!!  I hung it by the front door :)

Soooo the project isn't quite done because there is also the other side of the courtyard which we refer to as the Future Garden.  When we moved in it had a narrow strip of over grown ornamental grasses, anemic hostas and two palm trees on life support.  We had the palm trees cut down and I tore out the rest, digging up roots endlessly or so it seemed. But now it's ready. Or almost ready.  I learned that even though we thought the "soil" had been sufficiently amended, not true.  It needs more and more and more.  What passes for soil here is actually sand which makes perfect sense. It's good for drainage but not for plants.

But we found (on sale!) some mulch and some garden soil, Tim put in a watering line and we've been visiting nurseries, making notes and coming up with a plan.  Eventually it will be ready for fragrant, colourful, butterfly, dragonfly and bee attractive shrubs and plants and then the transformation will (mostly) be complete. I am very excited about it!

See!  Isn't that a great start!

The Courtyard Project is well on its' way. We are so pleased with the results so far and I look forward to sharing the finished or nearly finished results at some point in the future :)Small Projects are the best projects!  That's my new mantra

​

Well Howdy do to you. It's been a little more than a week and my eyes are a little bit better.  We'll see how this goes.

Thought I'd start off with a Photo Safari Report coz, as you can clearly see, Joy and I were out there again, tramping through forests, taking photos, and having a heck of a good time.  Yesterday's hike led us down paths we've ever never seen before, or at least it's been so doggone long that we don't remember them which is practically the same thing.  I will be calling this the Fairyland Hike for reasons you shall soon see.

The vast majority of the hike was along the river's edge.  That's the mighty Myakka River to be specific which is interesting all on it's own.  While the water was moving, it was such a slow, lazy current that the water surface was nearly a mirror. Very cool.  And we saw a few river critters as we went:

So there we are hiking along the water then to our surprise,  the trail began to curve inland and suddenly we were surrounded by wildflowers, some of them waist high! I mean surrounded! They were Everywhere!  The colour, the fragrance and that gorgeous early morning light made us feel as if we had gone through some portal to another world, a Fairyland of sorts.  There were butterflies and dragonflies, bees of all sorts,  and bird song ringing out through the dense forest growth. It was both silent and noisy at the same time.  No sounds of civilization other than our own footsteps but nature makes one heck of a racket all on it's own. It was glorious.

No photo will ever truly capture the magic of that  Fairyland but here's what I have for you:

We were cautious as we trekked along, especially along the water.  The trail is sometimes skirting rrriiiggghhhttt along the very edge of the water and while I'm sure we would survive the fall (dignity schmignity), we would for sure be very wet if we fell in and of course, you never know what's IN the water.  Well, there is this guy of course. Remember him?

And other times, we were stepping and even climbing over downed trees to say nothing of the uping and downing of small hills, bits of muckiness, unsteady precariously placed rocks,  exceptionally narrow pathways and the occasional unknown spider.  We are careful but unafraid.  A little out of breath and sweaty perhaps at times, but that doesn't stop us:

Oddly, while we heard birdsong throughout the hike, we didn't get many bird photos until we were nearly back to where we began!  Still they were worth waiting for. (along with a squirrel and a bunny)

So that's it for the Fairyland Hike, but I do have just a couple of photos that are not from this hike that I haven't shown you yet, so I'll tack them on here.

If you don't mind bearing with me, I think I'm back to posting speed.  I did have to write this up in two sessions to give my eyes a chance to rest part way through which is why this is posting so doggone late !  Sorry about that.  There may be a few more late day posts for awhile, but it feels good to be back!

Have a terrific weekend ya'll!

This is me in my natural state. That is to say, reading.  It's already been well established that I am a reader.  Not just a reader, I suppose, but an indiscriminate reader.  I will read just about anything.

I read on the computer, I read on my phone, I read things written on paper and even on television (captioning is one of the best inventions ever!)  I don't just read things, I READ things. My dad used to say that I ate books.  I devoured them whole. 

And it doesn't even have to be books. I will read magazines, newspapers, brochures, cereal boxes,  greeting cards, grocery lists and dictionaries.  If it has words, I will read it.  I am voracious. And worse, I am endlessly curious.  Which is why having my phone with me a great deal of the time is awesome.  If (when really) I have a questions, a query, a thought, an " I wonder" moment, I can immediately look it up and read about it.  Poor Tim, in the car a captive audience, gets to be read to.

I work at my computer be it writing the blog, curating the photo site I am a member of, emails, reading news articles on and off throughout the day.  And when I am doing other chores, say washing dishes, baking cookies, ironing or folding towels, I have my phone propped up so that I can multitask - reading while doing chores.  I read actual books while I am eating, relaxing in the bath or after dinner curled up all comfy on the sofa.  It's kind of an all day thing.  Seriously, it's probably an addiction at this point.

And I believed it to be glorious!  Turns out it's also sometimes an issue.  

Recently I began to notice issues with my eyes.  They hurt, they burned, they felt gritty and sometimes there were blurry spots in my vision.  I began to be very light sensitive, to the point where sometimes I was wearing sunglasses Inside the house and every once in awhile,  I would even experience double vision.  Ok this is a problem.

I began using eye drops throughout the day. Over and again, constantly.    My eyes would feel pretty good for a few minutes and then back to gritty, hurty burny, blurry, not good dangitall.    It's frightening to have issues with your eyes.  And in my case, especially scary because since my ears don't work very well, I am extra dependent on my eyes.

In two words what we have here is some serious eye strain. And the only thing to do for it is to severely limit my reading for awhile.  Which also means limiting my writing. And both of those ideas stink on ice.

I don't quite know what to do with myself without a book in my hands, or the computer mouse or my phone.  But I'm going to find out.  Starting when I finish this blogpost,  I will be taking a sabbatical from the blog, from the library (gasp!) from my cell phone and computer.  I'm not sure how long I'll be away, but however long it takes for my eyes to calm down.  Calm Down for heaven's sakes!  Just going to give them a bit of a break.

I'll be back eventually, I'm quite sure, and then  I will, most likely, have lots to catch you up on. But in the meantime, ya'll please be good, be safe and have fun.  Oh and take good care of your eyes!

​Hugs all 'round

That was intended to look so much nicer but apparently, I do not have the gift of being able to "write" nicely with my computer mouse!  ARGH~

Regardless of how messy it turned out, the intention remains.  With Easter right there on the horizon, just a couple of days away, I hope yours is wonderful no matter how you spend it!

Hoppy, or rather, Happy Easter ya'll!  See ya next week!

Hugs all 'round

How would you like an update on sweet, baby Brysco?  This is him looking pretty dang healthy if you ask me.

It was a long, sometimes scary, expensive and difficult road to get here but worth both surgeries, the money, the recoveries, the sleepless nights, the worry, the numerous vet appointments, the medications and specialty foods.  Absolutely positively do not regret any of it.  He is in a pretty good place right now and back to being the silly, energetic, fun, very sweet and loving cat that we first adopted a year and a half ago!  

Obviously we have to keep a close eye on him, make sure he doesn't go backwards. That would be awful. It took so much time and work and effort (on everyone's part including his) to get him healthy again, I would hate to see him regress.  

Right now the biggest part of keeping him healthy is medication.    He is down to only needing it every other day now and you would think that was very do-able.    Just one eensy tiny little itty bitty pill every other day. Nobody would blame you for thinking that.  But you would still be wrong.

 Have you ever attempted to give a cat a pill?   The difficulty level is right about on par with disarming a bomb or attempting a reverse 4 /12 somersault dive.  Think Bull Riding mixed with Coal Mining and add in a cranky Panther.  Something along that line, except you actually are quite fond of the cranky Panther and don't want to hurt him in anyway.

I will attempt to describe how it goes in case you have never done this yourself. First you must find the cranky Panther, excuse me, the cat.  In my case, with two nearly identical black cats, we must find the Correct cat.  The one who needs the medication, not the one who doesn't.    Somehow he always knows when it's medication time. Even if I've gone nowhere near where the medication is kept, even if I haven't even whispered the word pill or medicine or anything like it. I didn't even Think it hard but he always knows. Somehow, he just knows.

Brysco like to hide in dark places. Black cats in the dark, very sneaky and very smart.  If his eyes are closed, his is virtually invisible.   He hides in the backs of closets and under beds in the farthest, most difficult to reach corners possible.  Of course he does.  I suppose I could snatch him from those hidey holes but I don't.  It's too traumatic for me and for him.  Instead I wait.  Eventually he will emerge. He will relax and think I've forgotten about it.  He will lay in a sunny spot and stretch out looking quite pleased with  himself.  And that is when I pounce.

Well I don't pounce.  I'm not a good pouncer.  But I quietly approach with the pill in one hand and the other hand ready to scruff him.  Scruffing is grabbing the cat by that extra fur at the back of the neck, much like a Mama cat does. It does not hurt them at all but it usually (Usually) renders them very compliant.   In a perfect world, the cat is scruffed with say, your left hand  and with your right hand you put a small amount of pressure at the back of the cats jaw to force it open just a little bit, with your third hand (?) you pop the pill into their mouth and, while holding the mouth closed, you massage their throat until they swallow and taadaa mission accomplished.

It didn't work like that at all.  I did approach quietly while he was relaxed in the sun.  I did scruff him, but he did not relax into compliance. Instead he shifted over into survival-I-am-being- attacked mode.  A secret kitty button was pressed and all twenty claws popped out to play. I once heard a fellow refer to those as murder mittens.  Sounds kind of cute yet dangerous.   Yup that's accurate. Murder mittens.  

To be completely fair, my hands are not very strong anymore so I don't know how tightly I was really scruffing him. Severe Arthritis has rendered my hands far less useful than I actually require much of the time. But I always have the plan to do the best I can with what I've got and at this point, I am fully committed.  I knew that I could release him knowing that he would then scurry back into his hiding place and be extra leery of my existence for a while  OR I could move forward which is what I did.

Meanwhile, he has, telepathically I think, communicated to his brother that the humans were killing him or at least torturing him and Wyatt has now run into the room to rescue him and is getting in the way, trying to stop me from doing whatever the heck it is I am doing to his brother. Very loyal and sweet but not helpful at all.

I attempted to avoid the wildly flailing claws while literally holding him now in midair. He gyrated, hissing and growling, swinging those scimitars of death at me and I stepped into it, got closer, hugged him to me to hold him more in place.  Somehow, miraculously, I did manage to shove the pill into his mouth.  I could tell when he swallowed because his body went limp. But his eyes. Oh those eyes.  They were open as wide as they possibly could and he starred at me with absolute shock.  How on earth could I have betrayed him like this?  I was a traitor, I was now the enemy and I would pay dearly.    Sounds about right.  I gently put him back on the window sill and as soon as I let go, he took off like he was fired out of a cannon.  Back into a safe hiding place to glare at me for the rest of the day while I applied bandaids strategically here and there.

It was awful.  I hated doing it to him.  He hated me doing it to him too.  There had to be a better way.  I could not bear the idea of this being our life every other day for the remainder of his life.

I watched several extremely unhelpful videos of people giving cats pills. And in each video the example cat was so easy going, cooperative and downright helpful that it didn't apply to our situation at all. But I went ahead and tried several different suggested methods.

 The burrito method (or purrito as they adorably referred to it) only works if it's a cat that will allow you to wrap it in a blanket. Brsyco will not.  He was out of that blanket faster than Houdini.

Another one was to put the pill on a washcloth, put some liquid cat treat (we refer to them as lickysticks in our house and both of the boys love them) on top of it.  The washcloth is suppose to hold the pill in place so that kitty licks don't push it across the plate/bowl or floor.  Instead, Brysco licked every bit of treat off the pill and then walked away leaving the naked pill behind.

Making a very tiny kitty meatball with the pill at the center of wet kitty food.  Other than the grossosity of handling wet kitty food in that manner,  this actually worked at first.  I made a very tiny kittyfood meatball with a medication middle and put it in his dish.  He leaned forward and gobbled it up quickly then I put the rest of the food in his dish and he was none the wiser.  I thought, Jackpot!  We've finally hit on the way that works.  Until the day shortly thereafter when he ate around the pill. Dang.

I tried getting super sneaky and making multiple kitty meatballs, making sure one had the pill. Of course he didn't know which one did,  hehhehheh, medication roulette I gleefully thought to myself. I completely underestimated how strong a cats sense of smell is  doggone it.  He would eat the two unmedicated meatballs and walk away in triumph. Ratz.

Sometimes I thought he was eating the pill but I would find it somewhere later in the day, slightly soggy and beginning to disintegrate. Obviously he had walked way, me thinking he had taken the pill but when I wasn't looking, he spit it out. Such a smarty britches!

In desperation I tried grinding the pill into a very fine powder and mixing it into his wet food.  It did work a little bit sometimes. He never ate the entire bowl of food when I did that, but he ate some. The issue here is that I had no idea how much medication he was actually getting. 

Which lead to a far bigger issue was that I could see, literally see, that he was beginning to fail a bit once again, right before our eyes from receiving sporadic and uneven amounts of medication instead of the nice steady equal distribution he needed.  Dang it all.

Tim told me about transdermal application of medication.  Transdermal application is medication in ointment form which is applied to the skin and absorbed into the body.  That sounded like a great plan.  I called the vet to discuss it and they were onboard.  They ordered it and it arrived last week.   I approached it with great hope.

It has to be applied to the inside of his ear, alternating ears with each application.  It's applied and rubbed in and that's it!  Sounds super easy yes?  Well I will say this, it is getting easier with each application rather than harder which was how it went with the pills. At this point, he thinks he's just getting pets instead of medication.  

Once again, I  approach him only when he is already relaxed and snoozy.  First he gets lots of pets, which he adores, then the medication ear massage, then more pets and all is good.  Tim helped the first few times and we are learning the tricks of the trade so to speak, as we go.

And we are seeing such a wonderful difference.  He is more consistently playful, funny, silly, energetic and loving.  He spends more time each day awake and engaged.  Best of all, he is starting to put on a pound or two which was seriously needed.

I think finally, FINALLY, we have the medication method that works for us and for him and Brysco is on his way to the rest of a very healthy happy life!

Welcome to yet another Photo Safari Report.  I'm calling this one the WhirlyBird Hike for obvious reasons.  While Joy and I were tramping along,  fairly early in the hike,  I asked Joy if she could smell smoke. She agreed and we searched the sky for signs of smoke and saw nothing, but then our view was a bit obstructed by giant trees.  But it was no surprise when shortly thereafter we both heard and saw this bright red helicopter or whirlybird flying just above the tree tops, back and forth, over and over, in what I assume was a grid pattern,  perhaps searching for the source of the smokey smell?  Or maybe the fire had already been put out but they were making sure that the wind (it was a rather windy day) hadn't carried any embers off to begin another fire anew.  It is, after all, still our dry season and in a forest, it doesn't take much to go from small fire to raging inferno, y'know?  Safety First!

Still between the smokey smell and the very loud helicopter it was awhile before we saw much worth taking pictures of.  It's ok, some hikes have a zillion photos, and others just a few.  This one is the second type which means it'll  be a short post.  Ready, set go!

The first photos were taken as we were entering the Preserve.  Seriously, we had just turned onto the dirt road that leads us to the parking area when Joy glanced off to her left and saw them. Sand Hill Cranes~!~  Wow!  I was cleaning the lens on my camera in preparation so I handed her my camera and she quickly snapped these guys right out the window:

It felt like a great start!  Eventually, we did see quite a nice variety of birds, the best and most unique of which was an indigo bunting. We had just turned on to a side trail when Joy and I both saw him at the same time, but Joy was quicker with her camera than I was.  By the time I had my camera up and focused, he was long gone.  Luckily Joy was kind enough to share her photo with me so here is this little turquoise cutie:

The rest of the birdie gang, most of which you probably recognize is here.  The only kind of different one is a crested something that I cannot remember. Joy told me and I've already forgotten. Ah well, He knows who he is:

Time for some botanicals and a couple of randos

We've come to the end of the WhirlyBird Hike AND the end of the week.  Hope your weekend is a terrific one with loads of fun and laughter!  We'll meet again, right here next week.  No idea what I'll be writing about, but it'll be something.

​Hugs all 'round

Despite the cover photo (and isn't it a doozey!) this is not a Photo Safari Report.  Nope, Photo Safari Reports are exclusively reserved for when Joy and I set out, cameras in hand, together.  This was something else altogether.

Tim and I had the genuine pleasure of spending one morning this weekend with another photography minded couple who we had never met before in person.  I belong to a photography group online and I "met" the couple there.  As much as you can really get to know someone online, I enjoyed them and took the opportunity, when offered, to meet them in person this past weekend. I know, I know, general consensus is that is always a bad idea. Especially when their photography is something I greatly admire.   

They, especially the hubby of the couple, are seriously dedicated photographers and they travel all over the world taking the most amazing photographs.  The fact that such experienced, interesting, successful photographers were interested in meeting us at all was flattering in the extreme. I have long been an admirer of their work and now, perhaps, (I was hoping) to have the opportunity to learn at the hands of yet another photography master (Joy being the other one).  for some people it's singers, actors or athletes, for me it's artists and photographers.

Not only did I learn, but I was encouraged and even praised by someone I greatly admire,  The biggest surprise was that I was also relaxed into an easy comradery with these people.  Tim and I both enjoyed their company tremendously.  It was that rare feeling that was as if we had known them forever.  To our surprise, they expressed the exact same thing.  Awesome. Love when that happens.

Here are some of the photos that I took.  Hope you enjoy!

One of my favourites was this young bird who hadn't quite figured out how his wings worked yet. He was adorable, awkwardly attempting to flap around the nest while his parents calmly looked on:

Another favourite moment was watching this bird fighting with a vine while attempting to gather yet more nesting material.  PS the vine fought back:

There were quite a few nests, some with tiny baby birds in them, all being lovingly tended:

An impressive variety of birds were in the area. Here are just a few of them:

Managed to capture a few flowers too:

And even a few randos:

They say, "never meet your heroes" but  in this case, it worked out perfectly.  

This is a crow.  Just your basic crow.  A regular bird. I'm sure you've seen them and probably not paid a great deal of attention to them. Me either.  Until Sydney.

We have our own crow now and I've named him (or her)  Sydney.  Why?  I have no idea.  I tend to name creatures and that was the name I arbitrarily chose.

I first noticed Sydney when  we put a bird bath in the courtyard.  There were a few small birds that occasionally came by to use it, but it wasn't exactly a high traffic area.  I was considering moving the birdbath and debating where to place it when I looked out the window one day and saw this massive black bird perched precariously on the edge and helping himself to a drink.   Wow!

I thought it was great the cats weren't certain how they felt about it.  They were also watching out the same window and looked at me with big round eyes that kind of said, "What they heck?"  Crows are good sized birds y'see. The wingspan alone is more than a yard across! That's a wee bit intimidating to a small cat !

The second time the crow showed up at the birdbath, he actually used it for a bath.  Water went everywhere as he splashed around. It was very entertaining though I was concerned for his safety as the birdbath was originally not intended for a bird his size and the structure tipped a little this way and that as he enjoyed himself.  After he left and I replaced the water, I also took the time to make sure the birdbath was more stable for his weight.  He returned multiple times which was when I bothered to name him. 

And then suddenly, one day without warning, he was gone. Just disappeared. Awwww, bummer.  I read up on birdbaths and attracting birds. I moved the birdbath to the backyard to an area that seemed more bird friendly and still no Sydney. Nor any other birds either.  I stopped concerning myself with the birdbath after a few months. If nobody is using it, why I am constantly putting in fresh water, y'know?    Then last year's hurricane season happened, and the birdbath was damaged.  The subject became Moot.

A few months after hurricane season, I was cleaning out the pantry one day and noticed that somehow, we had collected multiple boxes of microwave popcorn that was very short dated. I started to just throw it away and at the last second held back.  I suppose I could go ahead and pop it all and put it outside for birds/squirrels/whoever wanted it.   I filled a large garbage bag with all of the popped corn, scooped one bowl of it and gave it a toss into the backyard without any real thought.  I figured that I would check the next day and if it was gone, hurrah, somebody enjoyed it.  If it was still there, I could always just throw it away. After all, it was already in a garbage bag, right?

To my surprise I had barely made it back into the house when a crow landed and gobbled up some of the treat, ate it with apparent relish and then grabbed some more before flying off with it.  As I watched, he returned for several more trips before the popcorn was all gone!  Hurrah! Sydney was back!

Every day, around the same time, I put a bowl sized scoop of popcorn outside in the same general area and every day, as soon as I went back inside, Sydney would come down and enjoy it before taking some with him to, I guess, share.  Huzzah!

Eventually I ran out of popcorn, but found some slightly stale cereal which he also loved, some broken granola bars of which he was also fond and currently I set out crackers for him.  He loves them all.  I hear him caw to announce his presence around 9 o'clock every morning now.  I go outside and yell, Hey Sydney!  and hold up my hand with the crackers so he can see that I have a treat for him.   I put the crackers on the ground in the same spot and, usually, he swoops from the tree to the rooftop and then, once I've gone inside, to the ground to eat.

I was thrilled a few weeks ago when he gracefully glided from the roof's edge to the ground while I was still outside.  I believe we have established a level of trust.  It is so amazing that Sydney and I have created this Trust between us. We cannot  communicate really, so it's not like there was a negotiation or a discussion.  But I suppose I've proven that I mean him no harm and that was good enough for him.  It's good enough for me too :)

In reading about crows, I've learned that they are extremely smart creatures. Apparently, they have the same brain weight to body ratio as humans.   They are inquisitive, curious and clever.  They create tools to use and are quite adaptable to their surroundings and situations. In my reading I learned that they are monogamous and that while some cultures believe them to represent death, other cultures believe them to be good luck omens.  I also now know that a group of crows is referred to as a murder, which is an unkind choice of words!

As far as intelligence goes, I have seen Sydney tucking crackers away in different parts of the yard, saving them for later so I know he's giving the situation a great deal of thought. He doesn't turn food down, but he doesn't waste it either.  Smart!

I took a few photos from the family room window the other day of Sydney and his crackers:

I believe I misspoke before. I said that we have our own crow now.  That's not true.  We don't own Sydney and more than he owns us.  He is his own bird, comes and goes as he pleases. Isn't the expression "as free as a bird after all?  So no, we do not have a crow, but there is a local one that trusts us enough to eat what we have to offer and isn't afraid of us. And that'll do.

I'm really glad that Sydney decided that we were ok.  Not as good as crows, of course, but as human go, we aren't half bad.

I went back through my recent pictures and found a few other non-Sydney crow photos to finish up with.  Hope you enjoy!