And the Photo winners are.............

Drumroll please............ "brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" (okay that was a sucky drumroll, it sounded more like I was freezing).

Anywhooo, thank you for playing along with me on the photo giveaway.  It's good practice for me to be able to give my photographs away.  I am so shy about it, really I am!  And so ridiculously scared on what people will think of them when they are printed out on paper, so this has been a good exercise for me in learning to, as corny as it sounds, let a piece of me go.

Anyway, I decided to choose two people from facebook who participated and two people from bloggy land.

And I did that incredibly scientific way of writing down everyones names, chucking them in a bowl, having my better half mix them up and me reaching in and pulling out two names from blogland and they are:

The lovely Sherilin from LAUGHING MY ABS OFF

and

The equally lovely Beliza from A SERIES OF RANDOM THOUGHTS 

If you get a chance, make sure to stop by and check out these amazing bloggers!

Sherilin has already provided me with her mailing address and I would ask that Beliza kindly send me an email with hers to itsanaveragelife (dot) gmail (dot) com.

Pictures are in the process of being developed and will be sent out shortly.

Thank you all for playing along with me and leaving your very lovely comments.

And thank you Hazel from PABLOS ANGEL for giving me an award, lovely one... I just got back from holidays and will be over to check it out!!!

Resuming normal blogging posts tomorrow.

Cheers to all of you.

Tracy

A PHOTO GIFT FOR YOU....

I am about to embark on a week away at a spa.  Ahhh bliss.  I cannot wait.

But I was thinking to myself what wonderful people you are, great commenters, great supporters, and fantastically loyal.  

So I wanted to do a thank you.  And here it is, I would love to give you one of my photos in a 5x7 or maybe larger, and all you have to do is leave me a comment on which one is your fav, and I will chuck your names into an official hat (okay more like a grocery bag), shake it up really good and pick a winner when I come back.

However, with that said, you might think that they are all a bunch of crap and not want one at all.  In that case, pick the one you despise and you can chuck it up on your dart board for practice!  :)

So here they are in no particular order:

PLEASE CLICK ON EACH PICTURE TO ENLARGE

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Have a great week everyone

Until Next Time.

Tracy

Soul Searching

I silently stand on the edge of my lawn looking beyond my corner of the world, past my neighbourhood and deep into the cerulean sky.  With resignation, I close my eyes tightly and feel the warm wind of summer whipping its magic around me. It scoops up the tendrils of my hair and tickles me lightly with them.  I breathe in, I breathe out, trying to find that balance and centre that has been alluding me of late.

I stand there for what seems like an eternity with my feet firmly planted solid into the earth trying to find a connection that will ground me.  I am not lost but I feel my thoughts wandering aimlessly around and away from me.  I chalk it up to being tired.  I am tired.  The pain makes me tired, my job makes me tired, and lately, life is making me tired.

Slowly, I saunter back to my house.  I neither wish to go in nor do I wish to continue standing like a lunatic in the middle of my yard for the neighbours to watch. What a crazy girl they must think I am.

Reluctantly, I open the door and instantly feel the pressures come tumbling towards me. They are so slight in nature these pressures, but they are there, like some type of omnipresence coming to engulf me.  They come in all shapes and forms and they require decisions, but my decision making skills seem to be on hold for the time being.

And I see those pressures more firmly etched within the lines of my better half’s handsome face.  With a self absorbed sigh, I turn away from him and proceed to try and squat down to give my little pooch some much needed love, all the while forgetting that my knee won’t allow me to do this one simple maneuver. And with an ungraceful thud, I fall to the floor, shaking almost everything around me and causing a bit of commotion and worry with my better half.  Sadly, I am a constant worry to him. I have aged him, I think, and somedays I yearn to be a better and different woman for him.

Later in the evening, I am without words to add to the conversation and I kiss the two men in my life goodnight and slip into bed where I can be by myself.  I push my thoughts aside and wish. In the morning it will be better, I tell myself.  In the morning, it will be better.

And as daylight breaks, I find myself wandering outside once more, digging my feet deep into the earth, praying for answers.  I am soul searching.

Until Next Time.

Tracy

In moments of contemplation

The lights are bright and painful and unwavering in their assault to my senses to the point that my eyelids are heavy from the strain of it all.  The rushes of uniforms in and out and around me are making my head turn in dizzy despair. I hear panicked moans from those sitting across from me, along with discomfort, unhappiness and unease.  Some sit with their heads in their hands, others are sobbing softly to themselves, while some are so entranced in their handheld electronics that they are oblivious to their surroundings. And as for me, I feel kind of silly being here and I am anxiously watching the second hand of the clock go around and around and ache to go home. 

Somewhere in between the air has gotten thick, almost nauseatingly thick with a sickly smell, one that perhaps I am vaguely aware of, but I can't quite put my finger to it.  And then I see her run past me, and then another one, followed by another.  There is a sense of panic. They call for housekeeping to clean up the blood in room 13 that has now slowly flowed, almost like lava spillage, over and under the curtain into room 14.  I avert my eyes the best I can from that direction and try to focus on something else, although I make a silent prayer to whomever is now in the middle of this frightening crisis.

I look over at my beautiful sister in law and watch as her delicate nose wrinkles up to the bloody scent that has now engulfed the entire waiting room.  I wonder if she is having flashbacks to February when she almost bled to death in another emergency room.  She whispers low to me "I hate hospitals".  I smile at her with that all knowing smile that says that I couldn't agree more. With a big sigh, I look at the time on my phone and mumble to myself "gawd how long have I been here, how long."  And I wonder how much more time I will be relegated to this place until I get the prognosis.

A routine checkup at my doctor's office 4 hours earlier for grief I have been experiencing in my leg has propelled me to this moment and to this place.  A possible fatal blood clot in my leg, she explains.  I am not worried until I look deep into her face.  She grabs me by both arms and makes me promise her that I will go straight to the emergency room, kind of like I just pulled the jail card in a game of Monopoly, do not pass go Tracy, and do not collect 200 dollars.

I feel a small amount of fear growing in me as time ticks by.  I try to joke the moment away with stupid status lines on facebook asking for pizza to be delivered, and if its my last meal, to send me for desert Shemar Moore from Criminal Minds or a jar of pickles, because at this point, I am scared and humour is my best defense.  In my thoughts though, I am checking off my list:

• Last Will and Testament done - check
• Is my list updated on where all my finances are - check
• Although not written anywhere, does everyone know that I want to be cremated - check
• Did I tell my mom that I love her - check
• Did I do all that I wanted to do - no
• Did I become all that I wanted to be - double no
• Have I actually made a difference in the world - sadly no
• Did I make it to Italy and stand on the Amalfi Coast - damn, no!

Finally, after a few more hours of uncertainties, I hear my name called.  I limp my way over to the doctor smiling at him, believing in the power of positivity, or the power of naivety, whichever one works because at this point I no longer care.  He neither smiles at me nor stops looking me in the face, he is a factual man.

I do not have a blood clot.  I let out a long sigh and give him a grateful nod but not before he adds that I have damaged my knee and will require a trip to an orthopedic surgeon. Something I am not happy about, but a prognosis I am more than grateful to accept.

On the long hour and half trip home, I close my eyes and drift off into a moment of contemplation, but not for my life, but for that man's whose blood was on the floor, for that woman who was holding her stomach while they arranged an MRI, for that girl sitting there sobbing in the chair, for that young boy with a bandaged wrapped around his head, for that elderly man rocking back in forth in his chair while holding his wife's purse.  I thought of those still waiting there, sitting there, wondering there, praying there, hoping there and wishing there.  Were their prayers answered that night?  Oh gawd, I hope they were. 

Until Next Time.

Tracy

Oh honey, not the bloody watermelon again!!!!

While I cannot recall the date, I can pin down the exact moment the gerbils started spinning their wheels in my over-sexed, forty something, better half’s brain.

It was a morning several weeks back, I had just gotten out of the shower and was sitting at our bistro table in our living room applying the goop to my face that would eventually make me acceptable enough to step out into public.  My better half was sitting, still half asleep, on our love seat dozing while the television blared out the morning traffic news.  I don’t know where you live, but where I live they have this version of the morning news called “Breakfast Television”, just a revved up more interesting version of the regular daily current events with tidbits here and tidbits there, and something for both sexes.  Somewhere in the midst of it all, a quick blurb was made about the powerful aphrodisiac qualities of the bountiful fruit, better known as the bane of my existence, or by it’s proper name, the watermelon.  For men, it was nature’s inexpensive version of viagra.  For women, it was guaranteed to find your middle aged lost mojo.  As for me, I didn’t give it a second thought.

Later that week we went off to do the dirty business of grocery shopping, a chore that I vehemently abhor.  In the middle of the veggie aisle, my better half came walking towards me with the mother of all watermelons.  Shocked, I reminded him that there was just the two of us and that I was concerned that at least half of it would go bad or go to waste before we finished eating it.  He, gently reminded me that it was summer, and watermelon was the “best of summer foods.”  A little bit stupefied, I stood there quizzically staring at him wondering what summer he was talking about, since as of today, I am still wearing a coat to work.  I chalked it up to him looking for the rainbow in the grey sky and off we trotted home with our 20 pound bouncing baby melon.

For the next hellish two weeks of my life, I would wake up every morning to watermelon cut and laid out for me for breakfast, slices cut and snuck into my lunch, and a plate full at night to finish off dinner.  I was getting to the point where I waterlogged, bloated and ridiculously watermeloned out.  In fact, I ate so much watermelon that I spent every night peeing like a race horse, and so exhausted the next morning from having my poor who-ha permanently attached to the toilet, that I was starting to doze off at work.

In between the bladder overload and my exhaustion of sitting on the toilet all night, my better half was becoming ridiculously amorous.  Now listen, I like sex. But I have to admit that I have moments, of course, where the chronic pain is so bad, that I definitely do not want Tab A inserted into Slot B.  In fact, those are the days I would like to shred the human handbook of lovemaking.  But for the most part I am happy to oblige, partake and enjoy.

After two long weeks of eating that bloody pink atrocity and two weeks of peeing most of my body weight out, my better half finally pops up with “damn watermelon’s not working!” With a final dawning of realization of why a melon had been thrust down my throat for the last 2 weeks, I looked up at my better half and said: “Damn stinkin’ breakfast television!”  And then I got up and dumped that blasted pink seeded piece of horniness unceremoniously right into the garbage and walked away.

Oh now, don’t feel too bad for better half because after a good couple nights of sleep and some recuperation time, my better half was duly rewarded. But in the meantime, let's hope that he finally understand the definition of moderation!  And if I see another blasted watermelon, I am tossing it right out of my second floor window!

Until Next Time.

Tracy


PS Thanks to the latest peeps to join my site.  If you haven’t already, please go and write something about yourself on my Meet and Greet Page.  So everyone can get to know wonderful you!

SO WHAT'S IN YOUR FRIDGE? (Gee thanks Simple Dude and Mynx)

So it started innocently enough with a Simple Dude and his lady friend showing off the insides of their freezer, followed by a wonderfully humorous Mynx showing off the "dribble" in her fridge and freezer, to now an anally retentive Average Girl (c'est moi) who is jumping on the bandwagon and exposing the inner workings of her little kitchen and ice box:

Clean now, but give me a week..

look whose waiting for me to open the fridge!

just in case you had any doubts, it's clean on this side too

TA DA!!!!! Full of fruits and veggies
only because we bought them last night... LOL
Give me two weeks and they will most likely being decaying!

Gawd love a self defrosting freezer!

And for the girl who lives in pain, LOTS AND LOTS OF ICE PACKS!

Now you know about me... So what's in your fridge?

Oh c'mon... I DARE YA, I DOUBLE DOG DARE YA!

DRATS!!!!!!!! I have been thwarted!

With 45 pounds off my frame, and no unwanted sugar messing with my already haphazard lump that I affectionately call my body, I have to admit that I have been going thru the last 5 months rather swimmingly.  With a decrease in inflammation and increase in energy and positivity, I have been almost a bit of joy to be around.  I can even admit to the fact that I kind of like myself, of course not love myself, but like is a first good step in mending a rather precarious relationship between an active and independent mind with a crazily stubborn and unhappy body.

It's been amazing not being at odds with the mechanics of myself, and while I can't run a marathon (yet), I have been doing stuff and feeling more joyful than I have in years. And while there has been the odd setback here and there, for the most part, after a day of rest I feel exuberant again.

And just as I thought I was on the uphill battle reaching my goal of all encompassing happiness, or at the very least being painfree,  "it" came crashing down... "It" being the operative word for this pain in my ass autoimmune disease. I suppose I am having some difficulties coming to terms with the ridiculous nature of the autoimmune disease.  I never seem to have a prewarning and there is no precursor to when it will strike.  Such was this past weekend.

I had driven an hour north to one of my favourite home decor stores in an effort to perhaps redecorate my place.  I often do that every few years, it's the designer in me and I love change, well at least in my home.  Putting a new spin on my digs makes me feel alive and adding new bursts of colour gets my mojo all revved up.

So in my heyday of grabbing this candle holder here, and that pillow there, followed by this vase and that vase, and running from aisle to aisle like a kid in a candy store, I neglected to pay attention to some swelling I was feeling in my ankle and knee.  It seemed minor in nature and I wasn't concerned about it as to me it just represented a leftover from a breakage from three years ago.

But, as I was rounding the corner with my arms full of my new glorious finds, I experienced a sharp pain in the back of my knee that took my breath away, and without any warning, my knee locked and gave out, and down I went like the big bag of Russets potatoes that I am.  *THUMP*.  To my shock, and to everyone else's amazement, I realized that instead of saving myself, I saved my new found objects d'art.  There I laid  crumpled on the ground whilst still holding tightly to myself all the beautiful things I had hunted for over the last hour.  With a big sigh of relief, I checked to make sure nothing was broken (not me people, the home accessories!), and smiled when I realized that everything was intact (except myself).  Oh come on, it was all mercury glass from India, bowls from Spain and vases from Italy.  Sheesh, a girl has to have her priorities in place!

As I stood up and dusted myself off, I wandered quickly over to the check out, paid for my purchases and bolted before the whispering of "did you see that girl take out aisle number 5.  Yea I did, there's still a big butt print in the floor to prove it!"

Things haven't gotten much better over the last 5 days, as it locked again and I succumbed to a big *THUD* while watering my plants outside the other day (I am still apologizing to my poor plant that has my body print in it), not too mention the rather large *CRASH* as I fell into the linen closet last night whilst I was vacuuming, or the fact that while I sit here and type for a living, my whole leg has that dreaded pins and needles feeling.  In any event, the fact remains that while my mind may be yelling "DRATS! I have been thwarted!", my body is saying "hold on, give me a break, I am just trying to catch up to you."

And you know what, it's okay, because my body is teaching me patience, but mostly, it's reminding and re-enforcing in me that old adage "good things come to those who wait.."  So I am waiting for you body, you take your time to heal, you have already come a long way in 5 months, and I am so proud of you and I can't wait to see where you take me in the next year but for gawd sakes, next time you lock up and take me down, can we do it when my arms and hands are empty!  Sheesh!

Until Next Time.

Cheers
Tracy

DANCING UNDER THE MOON (when the neighbours aren't watching!)

I live in this wonderful little tucked away neighbourhood of friendly faces and kindly souls who all look out and care for each other. We tend to have many porch parties in our neighbourhood where one neighbour moseys out and sits on their stoop and other neighbours mosey over and sit with them, and then more neighbours come out and stand and we all just talk and giggle and vent and pet each other's pets. And the joy of it is, is that you can come out and join in if you want to or stay in and cuddle on your couch, no one cares, the open invitation is there all year long (weather permitting). Mostly tho, we are just a motley crew who consider each other as an extension of adopted family members and it really is a lovely way to live. 

But when my neighbours go in at night and settle down by their TV's, that's when I emerge from the shadows and come outside and fulfill my yearly summer dreams of dancing in the moonlight. I strap on my Ipod, blast on the music, grab my watering hose to water the rockery plants and I shake my rather large booty all over the place only to be viewed by the moon and the stars. And depending on the music and my explosive imagination, I sometimes imagine that I an exotic belly dancer from the middle east and I shake my hips in an effort to entice my handsome Arabic better half, other times I am a pole dancer with a smoking hot body giving my better half the best strip tease of his life and then there are the times I am back in the eighties with lace tights, big hair and some of the worst dance moves ever to come out of a decade. No matter what the night brings, my imagination is lit on fire and I can be whomever I want to be. The reality of course is that my only audience is my plants who don't seem to mind my hip shaking, grinding and gyrating, just as long as they get their nightly drink. Once in a while, my better half will come out to check on me, and give me that usual look of "good grief" and shake his head and goes back in, but he knows I am a tad weird, and frankly that's what attracted him to me in the first place. 

I love the freeness I feel when the music is pulsating thru my ears reaching deep down into my belly and I can't stop myself from wiggly and squiggly and downright jiggling. I have to do it, and for me, it is my moment of sheer, blissful freedom. Deep within the depths of my soul, I am a free spirit confined to the responsibilities of everyday living, and dancing under the night sky, just gives my soul the chance to be set free, if not for a mere moment.

Some nights, the music is from some velvety seductive voice and I imagine myself in some steamy love story with the wine flowing and the candles burning, my long hair cascading down my back and the waves lapping at my feet and I almost need to hose myself down! Other times, I am on a stage belting out a song to a crowd who is so in awe of my magnificent voice that they are brought to tears. Whatever is going thru my mind, one thing is for sure that under that moonlit evening sky, I am whomever I want to be, doing whatever I want to do and fulfilling dreams upon dreams upon dreams.

Of course, every once in a while, a car creeps into the subdivision and my back is turned and I only notice them after they have gone by, and I know what they think... Did you see that goofy woman dancing and singing again? But seriously, I just don't care, life is precious and short and you should be able to dance and sing wherever your soul yearns too.

Last night, I was some hot chick in a music video thrusting it here, there and everywhere, and while in reality, I may have taken out a few plants, bruised a hip and eventually had to take a muscle relaxer, the fact remains that while I was in that music video of my mind, I rocked it baby and I rocked it hard!

Until Next Time.

Cheers

Tracy

OOOOOOHHHHHHHHH CANADA!!!!!!

Hello darlins

Today my lovely country turns 144 years young!  And think, I have have been in it for 43 of those 144 years! Yikes!

I know we get pegged for saying "eh" which of course I do, but hey, we make good beer, great hockey, awesome actors, amazing singers and we are the inventor of many fabulous things in your household.  So in honour of Canada Day, I have compiled a list of my top 18 favourite Canadian inventions. Now now, don't roll your eyes, I know that you are curious about what these wonderful Canucks create in their spare time, so without further ado, and in no particular order, here they are:

1. Basketball (oh yes we did, and here you thought that was American!)
2. The first cardiac intensive care unit along with the first heart valve (won't you be thanking us after sucking back pounds of that good ole Canadian Bacon!)
3. The electric wheelchair for those moments when a scooter is not enough!
4. Garbage bags (and thank gawd, or you still be stuffing those dinner leftovers in your yard somewhere.. Yikes)
5. Gingerale... Oh c'mon, you know you love it when you are sick!
6. IMAX... yup give us a big building with a high ceiling and we will stick a 50 foot screen in there just for your viewing pleasure!
7. Insulin... Yup, we are all about saving lives!
8. Pictionary... oh giggle all you want, but you know that at some point in your adult life you had a pictionary party!
9. Rollerskates, what would the boardwalks and beaches of California have done, if we did not come up with a way for gorgeous girls to skate on by in their bikinis!  Yes I will take that thank you from you boys out there!
10. The lightbulb... Yessiree bob, we brought you light, no more striking of the flint! In fact, it's a well known fact that we Canadians light up your life!
11. The measure of footwear... That's right, if it wasn't for us, you would be trying on every shoe in the store until one fit! Or when the salesperson asked you what your foot size was, you be standing there scratching your head going "uuuummmm, I think they are big?"
12. Walkie Talkies... It's okay, you know you had them when you were kids, and you can admit you had a blast playing with them, seriously, I won't hold it against you!
13. The snowblower, snowmobile and the snowplow... I bet those people in Minnesota were really blessing us this last winter!
14. The Stanley Cup - need I say more?
15. The Stove - yup your days of cooking on a fire pit came to an end all because of some ingenious Canadian
16. The Washing Machine - It's okay, you can admit you love me even more now, don't ya!
17. The Zipper - now boys aren't you happy you have flies in your jeans, makes everything for you so much easier.
18. And my most favourite item - THE RETRACTABLE BEER CARTON HANDLE.  Yup, every time you go and buy a case of good old Canadian Beer, you can thank us with that little slot you can put your hand into to carry the beer!

As for Pam Anderson, Celine Dion and Justin Bieber... well I apologize, well kind of, they live in the States anyway, so unfortunately for them, that's their problem now!   Tee Hee

As for the rest of Canada, well all I have to say is this:

OH CANADA... YOU ROCK MY WORLD!

Until Next Time.

Tracy