spring?

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So today is the first day of spring and I couldn’t be happier. Really, I’m happy, whoo hoo it’s spring! The problem is (you knew that was coming didn’t you?) no one told the weather here in Michigan. We still have some snow on the ground, the temperature was 25 when I got up this morning, and we have a Winter Storm Warning for tomorrow. What the #%*? Now I try not to let the weather effect my mood, I’ve lived in Michigan all my life, I should be accustomed to snow and cold and cloudy days. But the older I get the less tolerant I’m becoming of the local weatherman and his gloomy forecasts. When I was younger I used to snicker at all the “snowbirds”, the older folks who took off for warmer climates the minute the first snowflake fluttered to the ground. But I get it now. Time is flying by and spending five months bundled up against the cold, shoveling snow, feeling like you’re taking your life in your hands getting to the end of an icy driveway just to retrieve your morning paper is getting old, oh heck, I guess I must be getting old! My question is, how much does the weather influence your mood?

Click here to take a quiz and see what kind of flower you are, I’m a Snapdragon (funny, I thought I’d be a Lily) .

snapdragon.jpg

think green

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In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, a photograph with plenty of green in it to remind those of us in northern climates what’s to come. Three more days until Spring!

Walk tall as the trees,
live strong as the mountains,
be gentle as the spring winds,
keep the warmth of the summer sun
in your heart, and the great spirit
will always be with you. ~American Indian Proverb

memorable memoirs

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ifyouneedme.jpgThe 6 Word Memoir Meme is still going strong, a big thanks to all of you who played and passed it on, it’s been a lot of fun! Larry Smith, one of the authors of the book, Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure contacted me and wrote, “I’ve been meaning to email you and say you’re: a) awesome b) [you have] fully set forth a dream I’ve had since I read the first issue of Wired a million years ago: to be a part of a meme.” I’m so glad you liked the meme Larry! While I’m on the subject of memoirs…I finished reading Kate Braestrup’s memoir, Here if You Need Me today. I like to have a non-fiction book going along with a fiction selection and I always enjoy a good memoir. Ms. Braestrup’s writing style is right up my alley; spare, lyrical at times, and it’s a lovely heartfelt story, all in all one good read. Other memoirs I’ve enjoyed are Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, The Color of Water by James McBride (he has a cool website, click on his name to check it out!) Blindsided by Richard Cohen, Saving Milly by Morton Kondracke, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, and The Camino: A Journey of Spirit by Shirley MacLaine.

inspire me

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I haven’t posted a generator in a while, or a Clooney pic, so here’s two for the price of one! Big Huge Labs has a fun photo generator that let’s you make motivational posters with your own photographs. It’s easy to use and you can link directly to your Flickr or Photobucket stream for fast and easy creations and saving. The quality is good enough that you may want to print them out and tack them up over your desk for inspiration. Click on either of my creations for the link and go have yourself some fun:)

sunday smiles

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Time to lighten things up around here and what better way to do that than with another joy filled laughing baby video. Come September I may be posting a baby video of my very own as my son and his wife are expecting their first child. We are thrilled, grateful, and just plain happy about the prospect of becoming grandparents. The baby is due the week before my 49th birthday and I’m thinking that this is one birthday gift Mr. bookbabie will never be able to top!

When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. ~James Barrie

fly away

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I did this painting some years ago when I was sick. I really wanted to be out there on that beach, out of my body and away from the life that I was living at that moment because it was filled with loneliness and illness. Not aloneness, but loneliness, there’s a difference. I was married and had two beautiful young children, so I wasn’t alone. Yet as my health failed and weeks became months and those months dragged into years of living in a body that had become a kind of prison, I felt isolated. I was like one of those mimes in an invisible box, I could see the life that I wanted to be part of happening all around me, but I couldn’t quite get to it, it was just out of my reach.

That is what chronic illness is, what it does to those living with it. If you’re lucky and have a supportive family and good doctors some of that burden is lifted, but even still, it is a journey that wears on the body and on the soul. Nietzsche once wrote, What does not kill me makes me stronger. I would sometimes think about those words back then, and the truth is, I sure didn’t feel like I was getting stronger. I think that what life’s trials really teach us is that we can survive. We can do what we never thought we had the strength or the courage to do. Are we stronger? Maybe, maybe not. But as we step out of that box, battered and scarred from the crossing, we take with us the wisdom that no matter how dark the day the wings of hope can take us anywhere we want to go:)

For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope.
~ Christina Rossetti

i dream of pizza

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So it was one of those good-news/bad-news moments when I found out that I would feel better by not eating food containing gluten. And most of the time I don’t miss all those carbs, mainly because I began to look at them differently. When I see a slice of chocolate birthday cake, a mound of spaghetti, or a basket of hot rolls I see poison. But the one thing I still missed after being wheat-free for many years was pizza. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself that I didn’t care, that it was gooey and fattening and no big loss, the truth is, I still longed to bite into a hot cheesy, crusty slice of yummy pizza! Last week, while standing in front of the gluten-free product freezer at my local market, the woman next to me asked if I’d tried the Kinnikinnick Pizza Crusts. She went on (and on and on) telling me how she prepared them and how great they were while I stood there nodding and thinking that she must be totally deluding herself. There was no way they could be as good as the “real” thing, but I threw a bag in my cart and figured I’d give them a try. I made two individual pizzas that night and she was right, they were fabulous! My husband even loved them and he can eat wheat. So thank you gabby grocery store lady, you were right, I was wrong, and now because of you I’m eating pizza again and I’m going to have to ramp-up my meager workouts on the outside chance that winter will eventually end here in Michigan and I’ll have to put on a bathing suit someday (4-8 inches of snow predicted tonight!).

Did you know that when man first began eating wheat it contained only 1-2% gluten, while today’s wheat contains 55% gluten? No wonder more and more people are feeling the effects. If you have chronic digestive problems, skin rashes, or autoimmune health issues, consider talking to your doctor about a screening and perhaps giving the gluten-free diet a try. It’s really not so bad, really, you can even eat pizza:)

don’t know? don’t worry:)

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Dr. Joan Borysenko, a Harvard educated pioneer in integrative medicine discusses “the dark nights of the soul”, that place we sometimes find ourselves during times of transformation and growth. I’m posting it today because it relates to the quote by M. Scott Peck in Wednesday’s post. I haven’t make a conscious decision to blog on this subject, I’m just going with the flow as they say, and for some reason this theme seems to keep popping up lately:)