Walk the misty, morning path

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding happiness

“It’s gonna be alright, no matter what they say, gonna be a good day, just wait and see”

Things I am loving, things that are making me happy, things that I am looking forward to, in no particular order

SEATTLE! Next Monday morning, we get on a few planes (3 to be exact) to spend Thanksgiving week with big brother Aaron. I’ve never been to Seattle, can’t wait to explore a gorgeous city I’ve always wanted to see, get to spend five days with Husband and Brother Aaron. We are going to go to the Seattle Aquarium, and my camera will be working overtime next week, I’m sure!

ShutterCal – I am LOVING playing with my camera every day, and making shooting a habit. This morning, the fog was thick, the world was quiet and I got some great mysterious fog shots (to be posted later today or tomorrow).

For Your Entertainment, the new Adam Lambert single, ohhhmydoggg so incredibly fun to listen to, especially if you crank it in the car.

Bright colored polymer clay beads

Pinups, especially redhead pinups

Swoony color beads

Ferocious monsters (note, not really ferocious)

Too cute for words accessories

Brave, dear souls who set off onto bold new adventures of their creation

Pumpkin smoothies, yerba mate chocolatte lattes with almond milk,  raw vegan chocolate pudding, plain, with pomegranates, or mixed in a smoothie

 

What are some things that are making you happy, things you are looking forward to?

 

 

 

 

Care to play chess?

I feel like things have become a chess game…do I move to the side? Do I try to move forward even though the path seems blocked? If I stay where I am, the game will crush me, defeat me.

Where fairies dwell

In the misty morning light

Among fields of white fluffy sproutlings

In little nooks and crannies in moss and lichen covered roots

In leaves that catch and hold onto sunshine

 

Where do you find fairies and magic?

Creative writing prompt

prompt: Make the following the first line of your story

Catching the signal from one of her friends, Angela brushed her skirt, took a deep breath and walked towards where he was sitting. She threw one last look over her shoulder to where her friends were standing across the park, walked up and said, “Excuse me?”

“Yes?,” he said, looking up from the newspaper he was reading. Angela noticed it was the lifestyle section and decided to consider it a good sign, as it was her favorite section behind the travel section.

It was now or never. Everyone said the first time was the hardest.

“Duck.” She tapped him on his head, and promptly sat down on the ground near where he was sitting.

“What was that? Did you say just say duck? What is the meaning of this?”

But according to the rules, Angela couldn’t say anything further to the young man with the slightly windblown hair and the retro, almost 50s style leather jacket. If he figured out the game and started playing, Angela would also continue playing. The goal was to get a group of strangers to play duck, duck, goose, without telling them what was going on. If he got annoyed and left without playing, well, then Angela had to continue sitting there till her friends told her her part in the game was done for the day.

Life I love you, all is groovy

Time for a photowalk, with images that caught my eye and made me happy today.

Gray morning, after a windy, rainy week, but a few leaves are still clinging on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fuzzies and bright leaves on one branch

 

Would you like an apple, little girl?

The WonderPup, although she makes me happy every day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why, yes, Bliss is spelled Cupcake! And the other sign…Books. Cats. Life is Good. Why, yes it is, especially when you have all those things!

 

I can not properly explain how much I love streets like this!

Top of a birdhouse. I would be pretty darn psyched if I was a bird.

Ha! A rather ineffective sign, it would appear

Free wireless with hookah session. Good to know.

The writing is on the wall. Even if it is a very small wall.

MUST. EAT.HERE.

Side of the wall of the above restaurant

Yes, please. Times 50,000.

Ha!!!!!! You want a piece of me? David’s ear, $29.99 Ha!(my father-in-law, shouldn’t that be van gogh? Double Ha!)

Fresh pita from local, organic ingredients. Just because I can’t eat this doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the awesomeness.

The sign is empty, but still so beautiful!

Thanks for coming on my happy trip today!

Ready? Aim…and shoot!

Meet ShutterCal – a really awesome day-in-the-life social photo calendar site. The goal is for people to shoot every day, post it on the site, and see what your year looks like. There is no general theme, just to keep shooting, and share what you find.

I’ve wanted to get in the habit of shooting every day, and always having a camera on me. The iPhone, and the built-in camera, definitely help, but I want to just get in the habit of playing with my camera daily. It will help me grow as a photographer, and I really love photography, why not make it part of my daily life?

So, I joined ShutterCal and will be posting daily photos there.

Now, this week (when I started), I cheated slightly because not all these pictures were taken this week. But all of them were photo-edited this week in some way. The pumpkins, cranberries and light fixture were all taken this week, and the San Pedro and mermaid pictures were modified using iPhone apps this week.

I’m excited for this, and to see what I find when I make photography a daily habit 🙂

My ShutterCal page is here:

http://shuttercal.com/calendar/FlyingMermaid/

 

Happy clicking 🙂

Some yumminess

Generally, if you choose and seek out good health, it takes a lot of work. Bad health is easy – you don’t care what you put in your body, you eat what you want. It is very passive. But living that way has consequences, causes all sorts of health problems…and the usual solution to those health problems is to pop a pill or five. (Take this to lower your blood pressure, take this to lower your cholesterol, maybe take this magic pill to lose weight, take this pill for joint pain).

But if you choose good health, it is something you are always thinking about, always working on. And if you have food allergies, and are trying to control health issues through changes in your diet, it takes even more work. However, the payoff is awesome. But there is no such thing as just popping something into your mouth.

That doesn’t mean you don’t get to have awesomely yummy things though, even if you are trying to get rid of all processed sugar from your diet.

I’ve been on a pumpkin kick lately (yay fall). A few mornings this week, I made up some slow-cooking oatmeal, threw in some pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, some walnuts and maybe a teaspoon of agave syrup — super yummy, super healthy, keeps you full for a long time, and did I mention yummy?

Then I still had some pumpkin puree left but didn’t want to cook oatmeal. Solution, smoothie! Ice, almond milk, pumpkin puree, maybe a teaspoon of Oregon Chai concentrate, maybe a teaspoon of agave syrup, soy protein powder (no added sugar), ohmydogggg that is seriously good stuff. Liquid, kind of frozen, pumpkin pie. Yes please!

I’ve recently started reading Pumpkin and Pomegranate’s awesome blog, who eats very similar to how I am eating these days and she always has these fabulous sounding recipes. She has mentioned several times this raw vegan chocolate pudding that she made up, and I just had to make some. I had to adapt it slightly as I didn’t have dates on hand, so I used some agave syrup, but ohwowow, so very yummy. And you would never know the base was avocado. (yes, really).

I made up some of that pudding last night, and topped it off with some pomegranate arils, and felt like I was eating the dessert of the gods.

This morning, I was making up a smoothie, and threw in the last of the pumpkin puree, the last of the chocolate pudding I made last night, some ice, vanilla almond milk, soy protein powder and a bit of Oregon Chai for flavor and entered the land of smoothie happiness. Between the protein, the good-for-you fat from the avocado, the vitamins from the pumpkin, the potassium from the banana…it was serious health food and has kept me full from 8 am. till just after noon.

Who says healthy eating has to be boring?! And bonus…I went to the dermatologist for a follow up appt yesterday, and they checked my blood pressure. My blood pressure is always very good, but yesterday it was 98/66 – and since I’ve just started exercising again this week, the only big change has been working to remove all refined sugar from my diet. I’d say it is fixing and improving me in all sorts of ways!

 

Living with a dragon

My whole life, I’ve had skin problems, mostly eczema, and food allergies. When I was very little, I couldn’t eat chocolate, dairy, among other things. Those are the ones I remember the most. I always had to sleep with a humidifier in the winter and an AC in the summer to keep my skin from getting dry. Humidity or cold dry weather would trigger my eczema. I would have to sleep with socks, take oatmeal baths, coat my skin in Eucerin (especially if I wanted to go in my beloved ocean – the water would burn my skin horribly, but if I was heavily coated with Eucerin, I could stand to be in the water. Not being in the water was not an option for this mermaid girl). But it never really mattered…once the eczema would wake up, I would tear at my skin, because it was the only thing that would feel better.

I got older, I outgrew the original food allergies, I seemed like I was getting somewhat better at keeping the eczema under control.

But everything was just lying dormant, waiting. I think of it all now like a dragon, sleeping. Sometimes, it will be months, maybe years before the dragon wakes up, but you are always aware that it is there. And then you just start to feel just the slightest twinge, and you know that if you look at it too hard, or scratch just a little, the dragon, the very angry dragon, will wake up and devour you whole.

Lots of changes started happening in my life – I moved in with my first boyfriend (who was a dragon in his own right, but I didn’t see it at first). My life became very stressful, with my work like and home life. I began having health problems – stomach pains, weird back pain, headaches (I had a migraine for a week straight).

I left him, and began dating Tim (with whom I am still good friends with and I’m thankful for that). I wanted to lose a little weight, so I started the South Beach diet and began eating everything whole grain. High-fiber everything. Most of what I ate at the time was whole wheat pasta, whole wheat cereal, and cheeses. I lost weight but my stomach was always bloated. I began having more stomach pain, weird digestive issues, weird back pain.

And my skin exploded.

Tests, more tests, doctors, more doctors. Nothing helped. No real answers were given, until I went to a naturopath and learned that I have celiac disease.

Gluten left my life, my health improved. But I continued to have breakouts. I continued using the high-intensity steroid cream whenever I would breakout. I would think it was from eating out, where I would accidentally get glutened.

I finally decided to give up dairy (casein – milk protein- to be specific) as well, and again, my skin really improved and cleared up. My energy improved. I would go for a month, two, maybe more with my skin clear. I started to feel whole, I started to feel like maybe my dragon had finally moved on and I was free.

But the dragon was just in a deeper sleep than I realized. It woke up again.

In the past year, I started to have more breakouts again. I thought it was from eating out, that no matter how carefully I checked, I had eaten something that had gluten or dairy in it (I’ve gone to the same restaurant and told them very specifically about my allergies, have them say that the dish didn’t have anything in it, only to get sick, go back at a later date, ask again, and be told that yes in fact it did have something in it. Duh, and also, Not helpful). My stomach started bothering me again.

But I was getting married in May. I wanted to be healthy, I wanted my skin to be healthy, my stomach to be healthy. I worked really hard at it. And I told my body it had to get through the wedding. And it listened. And then after the wedding, it was no longer able to keep everything at bay.

I began breaking out maybe every other week. My food habits hadn’t changed and I wasn’t eating out much.

I continued to use the steroid cream, and it was helping less and less.

When I say I broke out, I don’t mean that I had pimples or acne or a few select spots of eczema. I mean I had this incredibly itchy, painful rash EVERYWHERE. When it was flared up, it hurt to shower. It hurt to wear clothes. I couldn’t exercise because sweat hurt too much. I felt ugly. I cried a lot.

And then it got even worse.

My hand had the worst of it. Everytime I would wash my hands, my hands would dry out. When my hand was dry, it would get itchy. I would try to scratch it just a little, but remember the dragon? Yeah, then the dragon would wake up and the itch would drive me mad and I would scratch my hand until it was bleeding, because it would give me a minute of relief.

And then it got worse again. For most of September and all of October, my hand barely looked like a hand. It never healed no matter what I put on it, and I tried, I tried so hard to not scratch it, not touch it, but I was no match for this dragon. It hurt, oh god it hurt. I am right handed, and I began brushing my teeth and eating with my left hand, because I couldn’t bend my fingers. My fingers began weeping. Just running them under water could get them bleeding.

My entire body, head to toe, was covered. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t eating. I had a cough and a weird shallow breathing thing that lasted for a month and would make it difficult for me to talk because I would be unable to breathe properly.  I had no energy at all. Just walking my dog around the corner exhausted me. I was trapped in my body, falling further and further away from myself, not able to do anything I love to do, and not knowing how to beat the dragon that had taken over my entire world.

I went to an acupuncturist. She said my liver, large intestine, stomach, spleen were all too “hot” and that was affecting everything else. Something that acupuncturists, and naturopaths, recognize that dermatologists don’t – all skin problems are actually the result of an internal problem. The body uses the skin to try to remove toxins…and of course the steroid cream that I was using nearly constantly doesn’t solve the problem, it just pushes the inflammation back inside.

I went to acupuncture for two weeks, and in those two weeks, I got so much worse. I don’t believe, and my acupuncturist doesn’t believe, that the acupuncture was making it worse necessarily, but it seemed that my system was so overloaded it couldn’t handle anything.

I had to go to the emergency room, to get seen by a dermatologist. They put me on a higher intensity cream, gave me antibiotics for the superinfection they found in my skin…and my skin finally started to clear up. I was able to start sleeping again. My energy started coming back. I don’t believe for a minute that it has fixed me, just given me a temporary solution that allowed me to live in my body again. But to be able to live in my body again is wonderful, joyous, cause for celebration.

I was able to start taking my dog for walks again. I was able to run yesterday. Huge celebrations.

The acupuncturist told me to get off sugar, because I have Candidia (yeast overgrowth). I am working very hard on that. I have eliminated almost all processed sugar at this point, and I am going to continue working at that. She also told me to get off soy milk and soy yogurt, as it is too damp, and she said what I had in acupuncture terms is damp heat. I’ve made good progress in that area as well.

In a lot of ways, right now I am feelign better than I have for a long, long time. My energy is high. I’m sleeping. No stomach pain or weird back pain.

But the dragon is still there. I can still feel it. There is the beginning of itching on my scalp, on my hand. I am not at full health yet, and I haven’t slain the dragon once and for all..but for the first time in a long time, I am fighting back.

And this time, I am going to win. I will find out how to control it and not be controlled BY it anymore.

 

Light, signs, window displays in Chapel Hill

Had a lovely little photo adventure today in Chapel Hill

Lovely trees and lights

lovely light, my favorite

quite possibly the best name of a restaurant ever

Neat oil and spices in a fabulous Mediterranean deli

I think the fountain bird would quite like this nest that was part of a window display

Hookahs. Didn’t see a hookah-smoking caterpillar though.

The leaves stay dressed up in fall colors longer down here

Perfect light, gorgeous afternoon, photo adventure, yes it is bliss!

I adore shooting light fixtures

Perfect happy street

this clock and staircase were just incredible

See? how awesome is this?? I want a house with these stairs

Light, angles, brick, i will shoot stuff like this every day of the week happily

Need a hand? Apparently a giant lives in Chapel Hill, and is a graffiti artist

Exceptionally Chapel Hill

Memories…of chicken butts, I guess

Yes please

I’m confused. Am I supposed to walk across the street backwards? Because the arrow is pointing in the direction you would be pushing the button for.

Thanks for walking around Chapel Hill with me!