Month: January 2018

Stretching Like an Athlete

Athletics were never my thing. As a card carrying klutz, I’ve shied away from anything requiring physical prowess for most of my life. Oh, there was a brief period during which I played racquetball, but even then I managed to hit myself in the face with the racquet on more than one occasion. I tried golf, but was soon spending considerably more on chiropractic treatment than on greens fees.

As a result, I kind of gave up on doing any activity that was physically demanding. I have tons of other excuses: a disdain for gyms, a dislike of workout classes, an allergic reaction to sweat….You get the picture.

Now, at 61, my body is telling me I should have done something to keep myself fit. My hips hurt, my back aches, and my arms are flabby wonders that wag even when I try to get them to play dead. I feel like a bag of lumpy gravy.

I see a chiropractor, Dr. Verrier, on a regular basis. He’s helped me a great deal. Before I began regular treatments with him I couldn’t walk without significant pain. He’s worked wonders, but I still had some issues with my hips that keep me awake at night.

Then Studly Doright suggested I also see someone at a Tallahassee business called Stretching Your Life. One of his golf buddies recommended the business and Studly wanted me to check it out.

Stretching Your Life is owned by kinesiologists who teach their clients to stretch like athletes. They’ll even spend an entire hour stretching you! I’ve had two sessions of intense stretching and am amazed at what I’ve missed out on all these non-athletic years. I still have a long way to go, but my kinesiologist, Jen, is upbeat about getting me to a healthier place in my life.

Here’s a link to Stretching Your Life. Their website alone has a great deal of helpful information along with exercises to do at home. (I receive no compensation for sharing this information, by the way, but I wanted to spread the word.)

https://g.co/kgs/Fbs46h

I’ll give updates on my progress with the stretching. Hopefully I can work out some of these kinks that have begun to feel like the norm. I don’t mind being 61, but I do mind feeling like I’m 91.

Peace, people.

Art or Nart

I had tons of time to come up with a blog post yesterday, but zero ideas. While I was watching Ellen Degeneres’s new show “Game of Games” I played with the doodle option on my iPhone instead of preparing something for this venue. So this is all you’re getting this morning.

I call this, “Art or Nart”

Playing Hole #5 on a Blustery Winter Day in Florida:

The Emperor Reimagined:

Beach Day:

Hello from the Other Side, Kandinsky:

I’m hanging on to these pieces of art. If I become famous one day perhaps they’ll be worth a fortune. Or nart.

Peace, people.

You May Say I’m a Dreamer

You may say I’m a dreamer, and in my household I am the only one. Where my dreams are typically vividly technicolored, Studly Doright’s are seemingly non-existent. So when I got this text first thing Monday morning, I was intrigued:

(Ignore the odd punctuation. If I’d known this was going to be blog fodder (blodder?) I’d have taken more pains with my text.)

According to Studly, he never dreams. Of course I’ve informed him that we all dream every night, but not everyone remembers their dreams. Stubbornly he persists in claiming that he is the exception.

All day I waited for him to come home, so I could hear the details. Part of me hoped he’d dreamed winning lottery numbers. Had that been the case, I’d have bought a dozen tickets immediately. Another part of me was concerned he’d dreamed about his soul mate–and it wasn’t me! As promised in the text I made potato soup for dinner, always with one part of my brain on Studly’s dream. Do I need a life? Most likely.

The second he walked in the door I asked the million dollar question. “What was the dream?”

“Mmmm, that soup smells good!”

“Damn it, you don’t get soup until you spill the dream beans.”

He said, “It was weird. The whole time I was dreaming I kept thinking it was the kind of dream you’d have.

“There was this creature, maybe an alien, maybe an animal, and a little boy. Somehow they communicated, and if there was any danger the creature would surround the boy with a protective cloaking shield.”

I managed to nod encouragingly, all hopes of a winning lottery number dashed.

“And this kid had family members he could pull inside the shield.”

“So, what happened?”

“Nothing! I couldn’t get past the shield part. The dream never moved forward. It was frustrating.”

As we ate our potato soup and cornbread I tried my amateur dream interpretation skills on him:

1) Studly is the little boy who feels like he needs protection for himself and his loved ones.

2) Or he is the outsider providing protection for others.

3) Or he had an upset stomach and as a result a weird dream.

4) Or he was hoping for potato soup for dinner.

At least he didn’t dream about his soul mate. Unless, of course, the alien filled that role.

Peace, people!

Look What I Made!

I met with members of the Tallahassee Women’s Social Meetup group Sunday afternoon to work on our hats for cancer patients. I’d begun working on the hat pictured above shortly after meeting with this group before Christmas and was anxious to find out if I’d remembered the instructions correctly. To my immense surprise, I had!

I’d taken the hat to a point at which I needed further instructions, and was pleased to learn I would be able to complete it this afternoon. The only thing I’d gotten wrong was the type of yarn to use. Apparently there’s a specific yarn recommended for cancer patients and mine is a bit on the scratchy side. Next time I need to purchase this brand:

One of the ladies knitted a hat for a preemie this afternoon. It’s so adorably tiny!

I had to try on my completed project:

Okay, I’m not a super model. I’m pretty proud of my hat.

Peace, people!

A Post About Something I Didn’t Get to Do

One of the MeetUp groups I’ve become involved with had planned to visit a local Tallahassee historical site, the Lichgate House on High Street on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately a private event was being held at the venue, so we ended up meeting for lunch at Newk’s, a local eatery.

I’d never heard of Lichgate, but it’s a site I’m eager to visit now. This is a place I’ve driven by dozens of times without realizing what lay behind the foliage. There’s only a small sign marking the site.

The story of Lichgate House is compelling:

http://www.lichgateonhighroad.org/

I hadn’t checked my email before going to the site, so I got a glimpse of the grounds from the parking area where I learned we wouldn’t be able to enter, but would instead go straight to lunch. We’ve had a cold front move into the area, so maybe the cancellation was for the best, and we can visit on a warmer day.

Pinterest had some photos from Lichgate:

I can’t wait to see this for myself.

Peace, people.

Morning Hug

So, I cried.

Jan Wilberg's avatarRed's Wrap

It is four in the morning. I check my phone and turn off the alarm just as it is about to ring. I have been awake for several minutes, looking out the window at the white stucco house across the street and waiting for it to be four and now it is. My husband is sleeping.

I go to the bathroom and while I am sitting on the toilet, I put on the clothes I laid out on the floor the night before. Underwear, socks, blue jeans, bra, black pullover, black hoodie. I stand up and zip up my pants, wash my face, and brush my teeth. I wet a brush and tame my hair. Then I look for earrings. I put in the small silver hoops with a tiny row of diamonds but then decide I shouldn’t be wearing diamonds to an emergency warming room for homeless people. It’s…

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Scraps from Their Pasts

For Christmas I put together scrapbooks of their early years for our two children. The idea wasn’t an original one. Studly Doright’s mom, Saint Helen, had given Studly and his four siblings scrapbooks several years ago as Christmas gifts and for him at least, it remains one of his all-time favorite gifts.

I’m not a very crafts minded person, but in preparation for assembling these scrapbooks I made multiple trips to Michael’s (for non-Americans, that’s THE place to go for creative types) in order to purchase the books and to find appropriate decorative touches for each page. I bought tons of stuff and ended up using only a fraction of it. Project ideas, anyone.

I’m so awful at this type of thing that I actually started all this at the beginning of 2016 and had planned on presenting them with their gifts at Christmas that year, but I got bogged down in the minutiae, and it took me almost two years to complete the task. I’m still not sure how my mother-in-law put together five such books without going crazy, because I’m fairly certain some of my sanity was lost in the process.

I’d looked forward to presenting the books to my kids in person when we were all in Nashville that Christmas, but since I was an entire year behind, and we weren’t getting to see them for the holidays this year, I had to put them in the mail.

Now, I’d worked my butt off cropping photos and arranging them with curlicues and doodads. I’d spent countless hours searching through old school pictures and awards. The thought of trusting these works of heart to the mail almost drove me crazy(er). So, before I boxed them up for shipping to Dallas, Texas, where our son lives and to Port Byron, Illinois, where our daughter resides, I documented each and every page with the help of my trusty iPhone camera.

I’ll spare you from viewing all of the pages (you’re welcome). While I wasn’t there when they opened the books they both assured me they’d enjoyed their trips down memory lane. I’m so glad I spent the time creating these, but even more glad that I had only two children.

Peace, people.

The Mission Trip

Great piece from eurobrat.wordpress.com. Sadly, I can see us heading in just this direction.

eurobrat's avatareurobrat

The Professor winced when he got out of his flight capsule.  He had to keep reminding himself of how crucial his assignment was, that every little bit counted.  No matter how hopeless it seemed.

“Remember, you’re doing sacred work, Henrik,” he muttered under his breath.

A rag-tag crowd of natives was already beginning to gather, gawking at his ship. A few of them cheered and applauded, but most just stared, stone-faced.

Naomi bounded out to meet him.  She looked energetic as ever, no matter how much human misery she witnessed on a daily basis.

“Thank you for agreeing to come here, sir,” she said after hugging him. “This is a rough area.”

“Rough areas are my job,”  he replied, his Swedish accent making the word “job” softer. Not all of his colleagues at World United agreed that the charity missions to Merka were worthwhile. He couldn’t blame them.  Visiting a…

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The Best of 2017

I have a confession to make. I’ve been blogging here on WordPress for several years now and didn’t realize I could go into my stats and identify my posts in order of the number of times they’d been viewed by year.

I kept wondering how fellow bloggers were posting their “best of” retrospectives with such confidence. Were they guessing? Had they kept daily notes? And y’all wonder why I haven’t yet had anything published–I’m overwhelmed by the details of such things.

At any rate once someone pointed me to the right tab I realized I, too, could post a best of 2017 article. Since we’re well into 2018, I’ll just do a list with links rather than reblogging the top five in separate posts. Of course, that’s if I can figure out how to do all that.

Without further ado, here are my top five posts in order:

#5 Not That Desperate

https://nananoyz5forme.com/2017/09/09/not-that-desperate/

#4 Shipping Label Humor

https://nananoyz5forme.com/2017/10/05/shipping-label-humor/

#3 When in Ireland

https://nananoyz5forme.com/2017/06/23/when-in-ireland/

#2 Vagina Wars: A New Hope

https://nananoyz5forme.com/2017/02/21/vagina-wars-a-new-hope/

#1 was my Home Page/Archives with almost 5,000 views this year. Not bad for a blogger who hasn’t figured out what the heck she’s doing here!

Above: irrelevant photo of Elsie Leslie Lyde, a mid-19th century actress. I figured she wouldn’t have figured out the stats tab thing either, plus I liked her name.