Morgan in the Morning*

You all know that I work for John Morgan Seminars. Since I've been with the company for almost 5 years, I've watched thousands of people go to our seminars to stop smoking and lose weight. I've talked to some very grateful people. The smoking seminar seems the most miraculous because it's the most immediate: we've had 2-pack a dayers walk out non-smokers after a 2-hour seminar. People who have tried everything. One guy who was a meth addict & said cigarettes were worse than any drug he'd tried to get off.

While the smoking stories are dramatic, the weight loss ones are more than just about losing weight. One guy who wanted to lose weight, yes. But the main concern was his high blood pressure that the 2 different medications he was on, couldn't control. Within 3 weeks, he dropped 17 lbs. AND his blood pressure was normal and he was off his meds. He went on to lose 40 lbs. This is like many people's stories; they lose the weight, but they also have other benefits. It's like the opposite of Big Pharma "side effects." Warning, attending our seminars could result in increased energy and smiles for no reason. But I digress.

We are having a holiday sale. I work to get our seminars across the country in as many major cities as possible. But sometimes it's not possible. That's where the seminars on DVD come in. You can get the smoking or weight loss seminar on DVD and it works as if you attended a seminar. I had a friend get the weight loss DVD & she said she didn't really feel any different. But she noticed the next day that instead of her usual lunch, she chose a salad instead. There was no will power, no conscious forcing herself to change her diet. She just did it. The beauty of this program is that it gets you in tune with your own body and what it needs. We all have an innate wisdom and it can guide you if you listen. John Morgan helps you to listen. And YES, we've had smokers successfully become non-smokers after watching the DVD.

Most people wait until New Year's and then they make some fluffy resolution that lasts until noon-ish on January 1st. Tap into your own innate wisdom and go with your body instead of trying to force it. It's just so much easier.

DVDs are normally $49.95, now more than HALF off!

YES, you can stop smoking!

Go to John Morgan Seminars to check out the sale. While you're there, we also have a lot of other programs. My favourite is still this:

I can't say enough about this. It's  an  amazingly simple process that helps you to transform your self-image, which drives everything!  The first time I heard this was shortly after I'd started working for John. I was on the phone with him, as per usual, and I was experiencing a lot of anxiety. He did this process with me for a few minutes, and the knot I'd been experiencing in my stomach for months, melted away. I felt a sense of calm that I'd not felt in a long time. This IMPROVE YOUR SELF IMAGE CD is the gift that keeps giving. I often fall asleep to it. 

The CDs are normally $29.95, so this is AWESOME to get them for over HALF off. GREAT stocking stuffers. There are lots of titles to choose from, but if you don't know what to get, get the latest-greatest, Accomplish Anything. You program yourself for whatever you want to accomplish. This recording was the answer to all those people who came up after a seminar and said, "I know this helps with weight-loss & smoking, but could it help me with ________?"

You can also get Virtual Massage, my CD. If you go to my website, it's $19.95. You can get if for half off if you order if from John Morgan. The only other time I sell it for half off is if you see me in person. So, enough of my yakking. Go check out the sale!

*Morgan in the Morning: John has had an illustrious, award-winning career in radio. This was the name of his radio show for many years.

Maggie on Monday

I'm writing this in the kitchen as Maggie is asleep at my feet. She is flicking her feet and running in her sleep. Catch the squirrel, Maggie! Catch the squirrel!

As at the River House, there are dog beds in every room, except that there's not as much room as there was at the River House! One of her favourite spots when I'm sitting at the table is to nestle in under the table, so I put one of her beds there. Here she is:

Zzzzzz . . . . Notice her bone & pig's ear chew? There they sit for weeks & months.

Here she is from another angle:

There are some things that happen that I don't capture on camera because if I interrupt them to take a picture, they are lost. One was watching Tabby Bobcat grooming Maggie. She was licking all around her head. It was so sweet. Another was when I came home from the gym and Maggie was in the LR thumping her tail hello to me. I was petting her and then in comes Tabby, and Maggie looks over at her and starts thumping her tail at Tabby. So sweet. She still gets snarly if Tabby goes near her food bowl, but I don't think that will ever change!

Yesterday was so GORGEOUS, I left the front door open and Maggie spent a large portion of the day on the front porch, going in & out. At one point, she was nestled into a pile of leaves and Tabby went and pounced on her tail! So funny!

She's sleeping thru the night most nights; altho I've had a few midnight / 2 AM feed me Bark Fests. I was really annoyed and then thought that I should stop being annoyed because at least she's here with me and she's eating. I'll have to take her for another vet vizzie, but she continues to improve. So that was our week. Not terribly eventful, which is fine with me!

In GRATITUDE of Cakewrecks

In case I don't get around to a Thanksgiving-ish post, I threw "gratitude" in there for good measure. Of course anyone who knows me, knows that it's heartfelt & sincere. [insert eye-roll from Mum] I ADORE Cakewrecks. It's my favourite blog, calendar & go-to birthday gift.

So last month, Jen & John of Cakewrecks came to my new town, Richmond to promote their new book, Wreck the Halls. WOO-HOO!  As if I didn't love these guys enough already, look at who is gracing the laptop:

<3 Hobbes. Brother Atlasta's 3 girls, 5-10 all LOVE Calvin & Hobbes. Youngest Marlene IS Calvin.  ;-)  "Daddy, when you were my age, was Calvin & Hobbes YOUR favourite book, too?"  "No, sweetie. It didn't come out until Daddy was in college."  "WHAT????!!!!"  She was suitably outraged. 

And this wasn't done intentionally, but look what they did on the cover of the new book:

*snort* PrEfessional!  This presentation was AWESOME. They need to put it on YouTube!

Shot of Glutonium (non-GF) cake with many homages to wrecks. 

Cupcake contest! Fans are invited to recreate their favourite wrecks:

V. appropriate for this T-day season. For originals, click HERE. 

Camo-wedding cake. I think this was the winner.

C-section cake. Ew. There was a little boy here who kept asking his mother what this was. She said THAT was going to make for an interesting convo in the car ride home! 

Ah, belly cakes!  See her matching finger nails to the one on the cupcake? 

This gal drove all the way from NC! 

john & Jen Yate. He took her name when they got married. And spells john with no capital because she's the head honcho of the Cakewrecks operation. These guy ROCK!

John & Jen stayed til the v. end. I was the penultimate fan (YES! Finally getting to use that 8th grade vocabulary word)!  right in front of Belly Cupcake Gal. So I asked Jen a few questions--now I wish I'd done something more official. While I was waiting in line, I called John Morgan and he asked me, "What are you going to ask her when she signs your book?"  I hadn't really thought about it. As a professional interviewer, he was the guy to give me some guidance. I asked him what he would ask. He said that one of the questions he asked any of the celebrities he spoke with was, "What was the first thing you bought after you made a lot of money?"

So I did a variation of that question and asked, "How did you know that this was bigger than just a blog that you did for fun?" Jen said the first time was when they'd been getting 200 hits a day and there was a review somewhere and the next day they had 50,000 hits. The second time was when they were on their first book tour where John landed in a Texas ICU with the plague. Kidding. It was pneumonia and the flu. They had just left the hospital and went to a laundry mat to do laundry because they were out of clean underwear. Cockroaches every where. John is still hacking up his lungs. And Jen's cell phone rings and it's her publisher calling to tell her that Cakewrecks is on the NY Times best seller's list. Cockroaches everywhere!  "It was the most surreal moment, standing there in a laundry mat, cockroaches everywhere and we're on the NY Times best sellers list."

I also asked about a calendar (no 2012, no time due to new book). I told Jen that I make cards out of Cakewrecks. This is my most recent one for my nephew, a die hard Cakewrecks fan:

So in this season of Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for Cakewrecks. :-)

Maggie on Monday

I've discovered something new about Maggie: she doesn't like closed doors! At the River House, it was wide open and I didn't close any doors. Here on a few cold mornings, I've turned on the heat in the office and closed the door. Except. Maggie gets up and barks at the door as if she needs to go out and then! Sits down so I can't close the door.

Here she is after breakfast, resting in her food bowl. (Still using paper, she doesn't like eating from metal or anything clangy from her dog tags, even if I take off her collar when she's in the house)!

My sweet eye-dot girl.  :-)

Outside:

This has become one of her favourite spots to nestle in; by the pruning-deprived, thornless rose bush.

In the meantime, here's Tabby Bobcat:

Lollygaggin' about.

And here comes Maggie, back up the ramp:

Does Tabby move out of the way?

Pretending not to notice Maggie.

*sigh*

Back in the office:

Another meal finished. 

 I've switched her food to Taste of the Wild kibble, and I'm mixing it with their canned food. She stopped eating the Precise, even when I was mixing it with homecooked, organic chicken. So she's eating more consistently now. One night, she woke me up, barking on her pillow, but didn't get up. I make sure she has water and food in the kitchen before I go to bed, because she's woken me up before if the water bowl isn't completely full--no half-way full for her. So I'm saying to her in my sleepy-foggy-stupor, "What is it, girl? Trouble at the old mill?"  Kidding. "What do you want?" She's just sitting on her bed. So I go get her food bowl and bring it in to her. That's what she wanted and didn't want to get up! [insert eye roll from Mum]  But then, the next morning:

*sigh*  Clean up time.

Brother Atlasta was over yesterday. GORGEOUS day! We were sitting on the front porch and he was watching Maggie walk about, sniffing and whatnot and remarked at how much better she looked, and how well she was walking. Yes, she's getting back to normal--as normal as she can be for an old gal. My sweet Maggie.  :-)

Maggie on Monday

I had a request to see the completed ramp. Well, almost completed. Brother Atlasta needs to put on the last 2X4, but it's completely functional. And if the end of the world happens, it will survive along with cockroaches & maraschino cherries.

Aaaaand this is where Tabby likes to lounge--especially when Maggie is outside!

Maggie coming up the ramp.

BEAUTIFUL fall day; Maggie on the front porch.

Looking over here domain.

Hullo. Her eye-dots get me everytime!  Left . . . 

. . . right.

Aaaaand Tabby on the ramp.

Hullo.

Saturday night I was going thru movies and found some ones I'd forgotten about. Maggie is a waggy gal. And this is classic Maggie wagging with Millie getting inconvenienced:

SO FUNNY!  Millie is appropriately grumpy.  :-)

Labyrinth Deconstruction

Last month, chiro-sis & I went back to the River House to dismantle the labyrinth. I was going to leave it for the new tenants to decide if they wanted it. But if they didn't, and the property manager had said they didn't express any interest in it, then what? They would destroy it. I thought it better to do it with care than to look at it as a bunch of rocks to get rid of. I'd already had my first labyrinth destroyed by my ex-husband, who for good measure had decapitated all my little fairy angels. I didn't want that to happen again. Labyrinths are sacred. I spent a lot of time in my labyrinth walking in prayerful meditation, so I needed to be just as conscious in the deconstruction as the construction. So here are a few pix from our journey back to walk the labyrinth one last time:

Long stretch of Page Valley Rd. along the river, just after Indian Grave Ridge.

View off back porch:

Where the hummingbirds rest.

Favourite poplar tree to left.

Where I saw my first backyard bear.

Overlooking clothes line. *sigh* I miss my clothes line!

First thing: get water. I REALLY miss my water!

Chiro-sis walking the labyrinth.

In the center.

View from the labyrinth.

Me.

Barn that I never used.

My dog Remi used to rub up against this bush until I reached the center of the labyrinth. Then he would trot over and sit beside me and lean into my leg. Bittersweet memories.

Last pic before we began the dismantling.

Found lots of these little guys.

All done.

We loaded about a 3rd of the rocks into the car.

We put the rest of the rocks along side the house. Just in time, Neighbor Dave & Carol pulled up the driveway. He eyed my car said, "Don't you have rocks at your new house?" And then suggested that I may want to get rid of a few to lighten the load. You know, so I could drive home. And then he told me all the things that could go wrong carrying all those rocks. So we took a few more out. It was so funny, tho. Ruth was taking one out and I said, "Not that one!" and I took it from her & put it back. I know Neighbor Dave must've thought we were nuts! But I'm sure that he came by just to save us from blowing out my tires on the highway.

On the way out, I took a few more pix:

I took a lot of pix of my favourite cow field. Hullo. 

This road doesn't look so steep going UP it. When it's not covered in ice & raining.

Aaaaaand here are the rocks in their new location, waiting to be in a new labyrinth:

Doesn't look like all that much! 

Site of new labyrinth. Coming soon.  :-)