A Picture is worth a thousand words

A painting of me (Kiki) by Owen. This watercolor painting has an interesting story. Read on:

So, I'm going home after dropping off Owen to his mum. My lovely painting is sitting on my dashboard, along with other papers and mail and such. I'm dinking around with the windows and open the passenger side and WHOOOOOSH!!! The paper with my portrait flies out the window on to I-5 in the oncoming rush of 5:30 pm. I see it flying at cars and then ... gone.

Of all the papers on my dash, this is one to leave. I'm weeping and trying to drive and think of what to do. I have only one choice: I must go back and try to find my precious paper.

It flew out between the 88th and 116th exits (those of you familiar with North I-5 will understand) so I make a full circle back around, taking back roads to get back on to the freeway and my quest begins. I drive to the halfway point of where I remember it flying out the window. I figure with the traffic and how light the paper is, it probably flew around a few cars then landed in the grass to the right and might also be carried by drafts north. I park my car way off the shoulder, lock it and start walking ... praying the whole time.

I know it sounds silly; it's a child's water color painting. But he was so proud of it and I was so happy to "sit" for it that I just had to try at least to find it. I had the foresight to take a pic of it earlier but I still wanted to attempt the search.

So with traffic clicking by me at breakneck speeds, I search the ground, looking for a piece of notebook paper with blue eyes and black hair painted on one side. I'm walking for perhaps 30 mins and I'm getting closer to the 116th exit, not seeing anything. I'm ready to turn around.

A voice says, "go all the way to the exit." I say, "yeah but I lost it clear back there." Voice, "go all the way to the exit." Me: "okay, okay. Might as well. I'm this far now." Surprisingly, I was not arrested for talking to myself while walking on I-5; it's fairly common.

I'm to the exit ramp, just where the transportation crew puts in guardrails due to the curve. I look up and over into the high grass and what do I see waving at me?? A piece of notebook paper with blue eyes and black hair painted on one side.

I scream and run and clutch it to me, thanking God for helping me out with this seemingly impossible search. It has small holes where tires ran over it and a couple of tears but all in all, for the journey it took, it looks great to me.

I haul back to my car, not realizing an hour has passed.

This lovely pic will now have it's own frame and find it's own place on my wall.

This was a good Monday indeed.

Heath and other things (cont. from previous)

Here I am, nine days aspartame free.


I read that it takes 60 days to de-tox and get the aspartame completely out of the body. There is even a test using one's hair to tell if it's gone. I'm not that Nazi about it; I'm just going to assume that I'm clean. I'll really be able to tell when my memory finally comes back. I truly believe that my unusual memory loss has something to do with my constant surplus of aspartame in my body.



This is used to be one of my most favoriate drinks. *sigh*



Gum, drinks, candy, and other "diet" foods that I have been consuming since about 1989 no doubt have something to do with the fact that I can't remember how to say certain words. Or that I can't remember which husband went with me to a favorite movie of mine. Chemicals played horrible tricks on my mom; I refuse to become like her.

Speaking of becoming like my mom, I have had someone look at my back problem (see previous rant about my back).

I went to a massage therapist (which is different than an actual massage which I can't STAND because to have some body rub my back or shoulders - it creeps me out) on Monday and he bent me like a freaking pretzel (said the girl to the boy at the picnic). It was FANTASTIC!!! I was finally able to stand up without pain and without hunching over while allowing my back to straighten itself. I'm going back next Monday and will continue until he's unbent, straightened, twisted, loosened, and otherwise fixed my back. No more Excedrin for me.

So in the same vein, I thought I would try to eat some healthy food too (since I consumed crappy Taco Bell last night followed by a bag of Nibs) and found a really interesting recipe using ............... wait for it .............. Dandelion Leaves!! Doesn't that sound like fun?? And with some other things from my starting-to-produce-finally-garden, I thought I had a total winner for dinner. Salmon from our fishing trip (puking trip) in Ilwaco, dandelions and spinach and onions and beets from my garden and mushrooms from .... well, Safeway actually. But everything else was from me. Kinda cool.






Yeah. Right.




You know how you read something and it sounds great



and then you try it



and it turns out ........................



not so great?



Okay. So the dandelions were a TAD bitter. Actually, they were more than a tad bitter. Really bitter. Those are now in the yard waste bin. I did convince the kids to try them JUST so they could say "Yeah, I've tried dandelions before" and sound cool.


The roasted beets were yummy as well as the poached salmon. So two out of three ain't bad (a nod to Meatloaf).

This, tho difficult to see, is half of a roasted beet. It's on the left hand side.



Then I washed the whole thing down with half a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Mmmmm!! I'm feeling better already.



Physician, heal thyself!!!

Aspartame Free

The whole reason I started the health rant was because of aspartame.

I am now four days free of aspartame. Why you may ask? Probably because it's a silent poison tauted as being "safe" for those of us who are trying to not eat sugar.

I've made my kids switch to sugarless gum for their teeth but in turn, have been poisoning their brain cells.

I wonder why in the last few years my memory has been going south.

Could it be due to what I'm ingesting? Possibly.

Aspartame has now been sneaking into foods without our knowledge; even foods that STILL HAVE SUGAR. Why?? What's the purpose?

Money.

http://sweetpoison.com

The health issue rant

Ok. So this post has absolutely nothing to do with anything except my health.

Which has been shit as of late.

All these years, I've sworn NOT to become my mom (those of you who don't know my mom, won't understand; those of you who do, will TOTALLY appreciate what I'm saying) and become a victim of illness.

I'm not talking about colds or flu or the minor things. Mom never had those. She was a walking textbook of medical ills, having something new at least once a year.

So .... about two years ago, my back began hurting. I wasn't sure what the deal was so I went to an acupuncturist in Seattle who helped a ton.

By the way, I have a complete distrust of the medical field (doctors mostly; nurses no) in general. I feel that they work like car repair people; the sicker you are, the happier they are. This distrust comes from my mom's illnesses again. The docs put her on so much medication that I think it was impossible to tell what was helping and what was not.

Anyway, the back pain went away ... for awhile. Then about a year ago, it started to come back but it was different. I could never find a time to get to the acupuncturist (it's in Seattle guys; the drive SUCKS bad) so just kept up with exercising and sometimes taking meds to combat the pain.

NOW, it's moved up into my scapula. Actually under it. When I put my head down, I can feel it pull.

So I've been trying to get a number from my spouse who has two clients who do massage. I don't like massages. I don't like people touching my shoulders or rubbing my neck. I can barely make it through a pedicure when they rub my legs. Ugh. But I am willing to suck it up to feel better.

See? Here I've become like my mother. Explaining her health problems. I've done it anyway.

My Garden 2010

I mentioned that I threw my garden in this year. Here is the story.

It's true. The spring weather was so bad this year. Rain almost every day. Mold growing crazy. Chickens doing the backstroke in the run. Awful.

Then suddenly, almost at the end of June, the sun began to shine (finally!) and I jumped in my car, ran to The Plant Farm (yes, that's the actual name) and bought every veggie plant they had left in the place. AND because the spring sucked and everyone else who planted early had to plant AGAIN because it all died, their stuff was marked 60% off! I got my entire garden for less than 60 bucks!!! Huge bargain!

I took three hours from my kids' summer activities with me and planted like a Whirling Dervish. By the end of the three hours, I did six garden boxes and loaded two new ones with eight wheel barrow loads of topsoil. My disks were bursting from the spine but I was so happy.

I'm very proud of the garden. I really like to plant and watch things grow. This is not saying however, that I'm any good at it; in fact, I think I'm rather bad at it. I can look around the yard right now and see several things which are dying due to lack of rain and water. The pine trees look terrible. I killed the tree in the house by putting it outside too soon. My avocados died - again. I forgot to water Robee's sunflower seedlings and now they're crispy sticks, drooping over the edge of the pot.

I fail at being consistent with things.

But I still enjoy walking into this fenced in place we've so painstakingly created last year and seeing stuff growing. Corn, peas, pumpkins, tomatoes, beans .............. and the occasional slug.



That's okay though. I expect those and I have found a wonderful, organic way of getting rid of them: I run them over with the lawn mower.


We added two more garden boxes this year which have herbs and beans in them. I've got the usual stuff I like: cukes and peas. I've never grown corn so I thought I'd throw some seeds in there and they seem to be doing quite well.


The pumpkins are exploding and I'm hoping THIS year to actually use at least one of ours for our Jack-O-Lanterns. My granola neighbor (who is also in my church) makes homemade pumpkin pie from hers but I'm like "Uh, if God had wanted me to make pumpkin pie from these, he wouldn't have invented the canned stuff."



I also have that excuse for scrap booking only with shoe boxes.

This is our grape arbor. Notice the pile towards the back of the row? That was all weeds. They were completely choking out the poor grapes, sucking the life and water from them. I spent two hours pulling, chopping, and yanking and finally cleared the mess out. Much better.

And so goes another entry in my blog book. Someday, I'm just going to print this whole thing so I can go back when my mind is completely gone (although, I feel I'm nearing that point now) and go through and try to remember what I actually accomplished in my younger years.

Why did I start this d#@% blog again??? Oh yes, to keep track of life altering events.

Yeah. Right.

And how's that going for ya so far??

June. July. WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH. Completely freaking gone.

I have no good excuse really. I mean, I do sit at the computer .. usually first thing in the morning or last thing at night, checking the news and my mail and finding info about dogs or goats or chickens or pigeons .......

Oh yes ..... and let's NOT forget that bloody addicting program called FACEBOOK. Ugh.

Yes. It served a great purpose during the whole High School Reunion thing (which is story all on it's own), and the Aunt Virginia/Uncle Ray Anniversary thing (and yet another interesting story), and the surprise birthday/retirement party for Cheri and Kathleen (which neither guest of honor attended due to illness).

But now that the dust has settled, I'm finding that I'm not as interested "sharing" my daily activities with the folks who may or may not call themselves my friends. I mean, does anyone REALLY care that I just washed my car? Or that my kids finished their school play? Or that I'm sad because my last puppy left for her new home?? I doubt it.

In this 24/7 news update world that we live in, I don't that it's really necessary to share everything that is going on in my life. Which one reason I never joined the Twitter league either.

Reality shows dominate the TV and we're all looking in through a peephole at someone else's life, watching their train wreck.

I feel the same about Facebook. I'm not saying I refuse to go on it anymore; I do still keep in touch with people that I don't talk to on a daily basis and I comment or send messages to friends, but I'm not sure now how much I'm willing to share on an open forum.

I don't consider this an open forum for several reasons. One, only a few people even know about this blog and two, this is sort of like talking to yourself (which I do a LOT) and not having to hear a response (which I also like a LOT).

So, my goal this month is to write a little bit each morning or night (depending on when my eyes are open the widest) BEFORE I go on FB.

Yes. I can do this.

Now, the latest event in my life was the Silvana Fair. Felix did really well showing the Spawn of Satan (also known as Cadberi) as her Fit and Show goat and Tyger as her type for Wether. She won Reserve Champion in the Overall Category for Fit and Show with Cadi and she was so pleased. There is more detail about the categories but I just don't feel like going in to it. Just know she did great.

Felix with Kristin, Amanda, Rhonda, Cori Wreggelsworth and there's me in the back.


Also, we sold all of our puppies to terrific people. Every single home was a winner and was meant to be. It's always a nail-biter when one is trying to sell their babies and hoping that they're not going to abusive homes or some person who is actually going to feed them to their 15 foot boa constrictor. Yes it does happen.

Our new puppy, Clyde, is now seven months old and I'm ready to kill him about every other day. Just like I did when we first got Porter. I sort of forgot what a young Golden was like for the first two years or so. And now that memory comes back with a vengeance. Ugh. I cannot COUNT how many things he has destroyed and I won't attempt to log them here.



My little baby girl turned 13 on July 11. Just as I have done for the past 13 years, I woke her up at 8:36 and sang Happy Birthday to her. I'm amazed that this Amazon Girl is the same tow-headed baby that I used to see over the end of the bed when she would come scurrying into our room in the morning. This baby now has feet the same size as mine, towers above one older sister, has another older sister looking slightly up at her and the third sister is eye-to-eye .... for now.



My garden was literally thrown in during a three hour free time I just happen to have and is finally growing. The Spring rain NEVER ended this year; it was very wet. Most gardens went to mold and lucky for me (due to the fact that I'm supremely lazy) I chose not to put it in when it was pouring down rain. Now of course, we haven't had rain for about a month I think and things are looking dry. I believe I've lost two of our live Christmas trees we planted due to lack of rain. Sad.



Thomas and I actually were able to get away by ourselves for a night and half a day. THIS is monumental. You have no idea. The kids were gone to camp for the week and it was planned down to the minute due to the fact that we rode the ferry to Orcas Island which is part of the San Juan Islands. We stayed in a wonderful B&B and relaxed for a night and slept in for a morning ... un-freaking-believably wonderful. I think we need about two weeks of that to fully appreciate the wonder of being together again. We truly enjoy being together and hanging out talking about whatever pops into our minds.

The view from our room looking at the sound and Shaw Island.

The Orcas Inn.

Ok. That's the best I can do tonight. My contacts are now sticking to my eyes and I'm worried that Clyde has destroyed something (pick ANYTHING in my yard right now and I'm sure it's gone) due to boredom and the fact that I haven't checked on him for the last hour. Sigh.

Ta for now.