Not so inspired

Well. You may have noticed the lack of posts. I'm rather feeling like I've nothing to say. So I'm not. I will still keep up M&M Mondays (you're welcome), but that might be all for a while...until...I get re-inspired. Back when I am. :-) H.

M&M Monday: Mostly Millie

I love this girl.

Sweet Millie. :-)

Look at that face.

It's so interesting discovering the differences in Maggie & Millie's personalities. I love how she curls her toes when I massage her legs. And she likes me to scratch in the axillary area of her front legs (like under her arms). And she's so funny with her food bowl; she grabs it with her teeth and pulls it to her just where she wants it, to her side.

Millie is much more curious about her environment. She explores. And she likes to stick her nose in things and root around. Like when I bring the groceries in. I had a plastic food container that Mum had brought sushi in on one of our car rides. So I brought it into the house to clean, and Millie managed to pick it out of the bag and take the lid off! I keep the dog food in a big plastic container and she does the same thing! That's how she lets me know her food bowl is empty if I've not noticed it before.

Neither girls eat things off the floor. Crumbs and other tidbits stay there (unlike Remi & Barkley)! They never beg and they don't hover during food prep hoping that I'll drop an odd carrot. However . . . last week, I had a cup of tea on the coffee table. I was tippy-tapping away on my laptop and I hear slurp slurp slurp. There's Millie, drinking my tea! Too funny, so of course all I could do was laugh. I told Gareth at Mystic Pet & he said, "Oh, yeah. Dogs love tea." They do? I didn't know this. Perhaps all those years when I left my tea safely on the coffee table, Barkley & Remi were getting in a covert slurp. Eeeewwwww! Back to Millie:

Sunning herself on the back porch. Maggie looking on. Life is good! :-)

Funny One Liners

I found these on Twitter via the very-cool Dayna Steele, but since some of you are not on Twitter, (Mum) I'm going to post a few of my favourites here:

Zeus to Narcissus: "Watch yourself."

The best doctor in the world is the veterinarian. He can't ask his patients what's the matter. He just has to know. Will Rogers

You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. But you can fool yourself anytime.

Last night, I asked the hotel operator for a wake-up call. This morning, she rang and said, "What are you doing with your life?"

My pet donkey keeps coming up with all these proverbs. Wise ass.

What's the difference between a hunter and a fisherman? A hunter lies in wait while fisherman waits and lies.

Well, I see no one turned up for the first day of ninja school... Or did they?

I like Spring. Spring is when the ecology gets up and fights back.

M&M Monday

Here's Millie, hanging out in the back yard:

She's very sniffy.

Peek-a-boo! So SWEET. :-)

The girls have gotten to know the sound of the camera turning on. Maggie is particularly weary. She doesn't like the flash.

"Hehhhh . . . must you?"

And then she squeezes her eyes shut.

"Tum-de-dum. Yay! No flash!"

Day of Rest: Spring :-)

Prettt poppy from last year. :-)

Energetic

I have never been the most energetic person. Even as a child, I would get tired. Mum would say about me, "She's not athletically inclined." I did dance & play field hockey & soccer in school. I forced myself to be active and take aerobics classes thru the 90's, but I've never had much stamina. Energy has always been finite, and I've had to be picky about how I spend it.

I've always admired people who have a seemingly endless supply of energy and can do-do-do their way thru their day, because just the thought of that level of activity makes me want to take a nap. This is not to say that I don't get things done, because I do. But often it's at the expense of other things. I can only focus on one area of my life at a time. This week, for example, I finally did the dishes on Wed. Shocking, I know.

I used to think this was a quirk of personality; like how some people are all happy when they wake up and spring out of bed like Tigger. That is not me. I've learned not to be grumpy, but it's always been hard to wake up.

Where am I going with this? It harkens back to last year when I went to visit my friend Robbie in Florida. She is a dear friend and one of my Reiki Master Teachers from 20 years ago. She will be 84 next month. She was having a procedure done and had to go off her thyroid medication (which she was on due to a thyroidectomy). She didn't sound her usual chipper self, and I thought she could use a friend to be with her. I hadn't seen her in 2 years since she moved, but I was not prepared for what I saw when I got to her house. She looked horrible; she looked like she had aged 10 years. More than that, her personality had changed. She didn't want to do anything, she was despondent and generally droopy. Where was the Robbie who was never home because she was at Tai Chi class or at a lecture with friends?

"I feel like I'm going crazy. I'm going to jump out of my skin," she said. Me to the rescue. She wasn't scheduled to see her endocrinologist til the end of the week, but I got her in the next morning. You know those kind of doctors who don't take time with their patients and don't listen and just scribble off a script? This was not him. He was so kind and caring and compassionate. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, "Robbie. What you are feeling is normal. This shows you all the things that a thyroid does." As he was going thru the symptoms, I was thinking to myself, "Check. Check. Check." If I were 84, & had no thyroid, I might feel this bad. Here I was thinking that I was there for Robbie, and this was my own wake up call.

So I started on Armour Thyroid. And slowly I started to feel more energetic. Everything was much easier. I got more organized. I went thru stacks of papers that were piled up in my office for 2 years. I found that I didn't get stressed out as easily. I didn't take 20 minutes to get out of bed in the morning, and I didn't feel so achey. I didn't have to drink tea thru the day to stay energized. And more than that, I could focus. I didn't feel like I was in a brain fog.

And then. There was an Armour shortage and I couldn't get it anymore. I had to switch to a different medication. I don't know if it's not the right dosage, but gradually I've felt myself decline over the past 5 weeks. I've gained weight. Just walking to the post box wiped me out. Going up the stairs was an effort. I've had well-meaning friends suggest that if I just exercised, I would feel better. Normally, that's the way exercise is supposed to work. The more you exercise, the more mitochondria you create in your cells, and the more energy you have. I know that. But I've had to Tony Robbins myself thru the day willing myself to move. Yesterday, as I was sucking in air as I was walking back to the house, I got an image of a wilted butterfly trying to move. And I realized, thyroid (because it's butterfly shaped). That's why I'm feeling so crappy--but it was such a slow descent. And I thought it was the stress I was feeling about other things. And then Costco popped into my head. So I called and they have Armour again. I made it to the phamacy with 20 minutes to spare. I took one in the parking lot, even tho it was evening, I didn't care. It takes me an hour & a half to get home from Harrisonburg, but I noticed that as I was walking up the steps to the house, I bounced up. My legs didn't feel all heavy. Not only that, but I felt lighter, and emotionally better. I wonder how many people are on anti-depressants when they need to get their thyroids checked. Ditto for chronic fatigue. How about ADD & inability to concentrate? I will do my best to keep my thyroid HAPPY.

Suddenly, the world is a different place. Time for some spring cleaning. :-)

P.S. I found out about Mary Shomon from Dr. Mercola. She's a wealth of information about thyroid disorders.

Perspective

I've had a challenging week as I'm working to schedule the last of our seminars for the new year season. Yesterday was a particularly low point. I won't go into the details--nothing worse than a complaining blogger, but suffice it to say, it was a giant bowl of suckiness. So I made a big bowl of gluten free pasta and planted myself on the sofa to catch up on my DVR'd TV shows. I clicked on one, but instead got Oprah with the episode about the 200 lb. chimp that ate a woman's face off.
Well. That puts things into perspective, doesn't it? Magically, my day was looking a lot better! Yeah, it sucks--but at least I have my face!

Earlier today, I talked with chiro-sister & told her that story. And she talked about the Roger Ebert episode. Everything is perspective, isn't it? I'm taking a lot for granted. We were talking about getting older and she said this:
I thought it was rather quotable, so here's your quote-for-the-day. HAPPY Thursday, everyone.

HAPPY St. Patrick's Day

I don't have any shamrocks, and I'm not Irish, but I like Irish things like U2 & tea. Anyway, in honour of this day, here's a 4-leaf clover & wishing you luck o' the Irish. If (XM) Radio Guy still had his show on Lucy, he would have given away lucky charms & those little bars of Irish Spring soaps. Ah, good times!

Last of the Flood

We were flooded in til yesterday. I took a soggy walk to the post box . . .






See the nice patio Neighbor Dave & Carol built for the picnic table last week?

Spring is here!

Unless it's not. But look! the patio is still there! You
didn't want to keep the picnic table on it, did you?
Luckily the table is chained to that post.

Someone lost a glove. Love the duct tape.

I see hearts wherever I go.

Drying out. Blue skies.

M&M Monday

Maggie's Dots

Maggie has such an expressive face. And my daily entertainment is to watch the dots over her eyes move up and down.

See? Right up.

Left up.

Right up.

Here she is out in the shaggy-looking labyrinth:

Left up.

Neutral.

Right up. So SWEET. :-)

Day of Rest

Dripping wet.

Here you go, Mum: flood pix from this a.m.

Floating Dock is still safe.

Water is up another coupla rungs on the gate.
Still not going anywhere. Stop Laughing!

Another one???

Besides being a choclately brown, the river looked a bit . . . fast this morning. So I walked down to check it out:

*Sigh*

No venturing out into civilization today for me!

Another flood.

Life's a Sitch

I started this post off with: Everything happens for a reason. I think that has been a useful belief for me in the past because it took the sting out of a few situations. It has also encouraged me to look for the lessons. The conundrum comes when I spend my time searching for the reasons why a thing happened. There's a line between finding a lesson and going in circles.

I've been listening to Caroline Myss who says that searching for why something happened is looking to attach blame to someone else. It also keeps us in the victim role. So then I amended it to: Everything happens for a reason, but I don't need to know why. Because I may never know and some things are so horrible that no amount of human reasoning can make it a good thing. This is useful because it promotes acceptance of a situation. Acceptance is helpful in being able to move on.

Why is close sisters to whine. You can't whine and change your situation. One is a mind-loop, and the other requires action. One is waiting, and one is movement. And then I had a conversation with John Morgan, and he said:

Everything happens. And then you attach a meaning to it.

In other words: Reality happens, then the reason. Ah-ha!

Dave Dobson was anti-why as well. Why doesn't change the circumstances & it keeps you stuck where you are. Dave gave a simple exercise when something happens: take a deep breath. Trust your Other-than-conscious to create a solution.

There are all sorts of situations. There's the Situation Room with Wolf Whatshisname, and apparently there's a guy named The Situation on some New Jersey reality show. There are situations all around us. In short, life's a sitch. Now what? Remember those old bumperstickers from the 80's? Life's a bitch, then you die? Here's one for the 21st century:

Quote of the Day: Spring Cleaning

There’s a lot to be said for someone telling you to spread your wings and fly high, but I found you can fly an awful lot higher and faster sooner if, instead of adding energy and flapping harder, you look around and just get rid of the excess baggage that you don’t need and is weighing you down. ~Justin Locke

Oh, it's ON!

The last coupla days have been springish & warm. I noticed that the bird seed was going down faster than usual & I thought it was because there were more birds around. After all, it couldn't be the squirrels. They couldn't get up to the feeder. I watched them try. The birdseed was safe from squirrels. Hahahaha Stupid squirrels.

Sneaky squirrels. So smart. *sigh*

Until they cracked the code. Now the squirrels will be telling all the other squirrels, and my back porch will be the cool place for squirrels to hang out.

Spring

Spring is springing. So in celebration of the sunshine, I'm giving you a cake, a la Cakewrecks:

Is that a border, or a green sea of goo the sun is sinking into?

With its Medusa-like rays and skin-disorder sprinkles, here's a cake that says, "Goodbye Winter!"

And for some total randomness:

Is this what you gals are driving these days? Wee ha and pass me a gluten-free brewski. Back tomorrow. :-)

M&M Monday

Here's Millie. Asleep.

And then she started growling in her sleep.

Meanwhile, across the room, Maggie thought Millie was
growling at her. So she started growling at Millie.

Grrr . . .

Millie woke up, thinking Maggie was growling at her:

Huh? Wha? Grrrrr . . .

Her face gets all flat & she looks like an alligator.

Then she fell asleep again.

Zzzzz . . .

Day of Rest

Winter blooms.

Another Collage Page

Quote of the day:

Collage

This is one of the pages out of my altered book art journal that I started during Unplugged. Back tomorrow. :-) H.

Google Reader

I have a lot of blogs that I like to read. Some are crafty, some are more philosophical & some are just read-everyday-FUNNY.

So I can't believe I've gone this long without knowing about Google Reader! It's kind of like email only with blogs. You can manage them all in one place without surfing all over. Plus you don't have to keep checking to see when a blogger has posted, new posts show up automatically. It's also a great way to organize into categories & to save favourite blogposts.

I learned about it from Alexa, Swell Designer, who featured a tutorial from Sister Diane. Click HERE to learn how to do it--so easy!

Snow tracks

On my way to the postbox:

Fox?

Bobcat?

Turkey tracks.

M&M track. :-)