Can I borrow your loaf of bread? I need to beat my better half!

Did I ever tell you how much I detest grocery shopping. Oh lord, it's like having teeth pulled for me (not that I have had any of my teeth pulled, nor have I ever had the need to have teeth pulled, in actuality, I have pretty spectacular teeth, no cavities, no fillings, no braces... Oh sorry off topic). Anywhoo, I really despise it.

I suppose if I was going to get to the crux of the matter, it has to do with my better half.  He loves grocery shopping, and in fact, he is one damn good shopper.  He is like my own personal walking coupon.  Sales, sales, sales... he can sniff them out like a drug dog at an Airport.  But along with his freakish ability to seek out and find outstanding sales, comes his habit of complete pokiness in the grocery store.

He wanders down every aisle and reads the price of every product and small things like picking out juices for his lunch can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 minutes for him.  He has to compare quantity, quality and price, and sometimes after 20 minutes, he will throw up his hands and say, “too much money, nothing is on sale!” and then move on. And all I can think of is Really, Seriously? It took you that long to come to that conclusion?  Well now that is 20 minutes of my life I will never get back!

The ironic part of this is that he is not frugal in any other part of our life, just at the grocery store.  He’ll put a product back on the shelf because it is five cents cheaper somewhere else, and while I can appreciate his thinking, it will ultimately cost us $2.00 in gas to get to the other grocery store just to save the five cents!  Unfortunately for me, grocery shopping has become nothing short of an excruciating torture-like experience.  It’s my own personal version of bamboo shoots being shoved up my nails, and I have to tell you that some days, it takes all my effort not to run down the aisle and tackle him and scream at the top of my lungs: “JUST PICK THE DAMN BOX OF GRANOLA BARS BEFORE I BEAT YOU WITH IT!”

Yup, grocery shopping just brings out the worst in me.  I often fantasize about knocking my better half into the shopping cart and strapping on some in-line skates and going down the aisles in record speed while knocking products here, there and everywhere right into my shopping cart and when I am done, the only thing you can see of my better half is his feet hanging out the end of the cart and some breathing movement underneath all the groceries.

And you know, shopping with him has become a two hour excursion at best, and while I try to wander down the aisle enjoying just being with him, I can’t shake this vision of us in 20 years from now where we both are hunched over, wearing depends, doing the old people shuffle and having to schedule a whole day just for grocery shopping.  Eeee Gads!

Pray for me tonight will ya! Our fridge has been empty for far too long and it is time for me to suck it up and get it done. But if you happen to see a girl in the aisle cramming broccoli up some guys nose, best you look away. It might be better for your safety!

Until Next Time. 

Tracy

He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named

Just a quick happy 1st blogoversary to my friend, Simple Dude, or better known as "He Who Must Not Be Named". Okay you guessed it Voldemort is alive and kicking in Minnesota!  Just kidding!  Lucky for me tho, I do actually know his name and count myself very fortunate for all the things he has done for me in the past, like pimping me out a zillion times, asking me to guest post for him, being an ear for me when I wanted to chuck my blog into the wasteland, and to top it off, he has me up in his distinguished link page, and even kept me there after I quit blogging and shut it down.  How's that for loyalty.

This guy has always had my back and my blog's back, and well, I kinda adore him!

If you get a chance, please go over to The Simple Dude and wish him a happy blogoversary!  

SD, in my book you rock, my friend!  Here is to your continued success!

Tracy

Under the warmth of the cherry tree

Silently, I stood staring at the face of the woman in the mirror as I desperately searched into her eyes for a shred of who she once was. The vacant look staring back at me frightened me to my core and I noticed that she was devoid of all emotion.  She stood still and quiet as if to say "what more do you want of me". 

With a previous evening of pleading and praying for her body to heal, nothing was left but the defeated shell of her former self. Sadly, she could only reflect back a drawn, pale and exhausted look.  Her once youthful appearance was now etched with deep lines marking her with the tale of chronic pain.  With resignation and sadness, I turned away from the mirror, snapped off the light in the bathroom and hunkered down for the day realizing that today the pain had won and I had become a prisoner in my own home.

I shifted back and forth from seat to seat in an effort to find comfort. Covered in pain sprays and ice packs, I was to find no relief.  Later the zombie effect from the pain medication I would succumb to taking would eventually take hold of my mind and I would feel devoid of all personality.

In a final effort to find relief, I slowly and awkwardly dragged my favourite supportive lawn chair from the garage to outside and positioned it under the young cherry tree that I had planted three years ago.  With a soft creamy pashmina wrapped around my shoulders, I climbed into the chair and reclined back and watched as the speckled sun cast it's beautiful glow through the dancing shade of the cherry tree leaves that were silently casting their shadows upon my body.

I sighed within and closed my eyes tightly while allowing the sun to lightly reach out and caress my tired face.  A soft warm sweet breeze drifted about me carrying the heady scent of lavender from my front yard garden. The sweet wind gently created a lovely song of summer as it swept thru the leaves of the poplar trees across the street.

Bees buzzed happily around the garden and once and awhile would dive towards my face but would abruptly pull up in swift precision as if to show me their uncanny navigational skills.

In the distance, I could hear the lovely sounds of the neighbourhood children laughing and my chimes lyrically singing their sweet gentle song of summer.

With sunglasses on, I looked around to see that the colours of late summer were intensified dramatically.  

Above me, soft rolling clouds were slowly overtaking the sky and every once in awhile they would claim victory over the mid August afternoon sun.  They seemed to meld into each other creating new kaleidoscope images every few seconds or so and I realized that nature was providing me with it's own dramatic theatre and that all I needed to do was lay back and watch.

Down below my feet, my adorable pooch snored happily as he sprawled out to feel the heat of the earth.

With quiet resignation, I once again closed my eyes and listened to the gentle sounds of nature and asked that the powers that be please grant me my wish of a fulfilling life that was pain free.

With a heavy heart, I snuggled deeper into the softness of my pashmina and let the all encompassing heat of the afternoon sun envelop me in it's soft embrace until I fell silently asleep under the warmth of the cherry tree.

Until Next Time.

Tracy

WHERE HAVE ALL THE BLOGGERS GONE....

I have this song lingering in my brain, and every now and then it pops up.  It was a song from the early 60's made famous by Peter, Paul and Mary.  By the time I was a child playing in the 70's it was already a classic that was constantly being played on the “oldies” station.  It was called “Where have all the flowers gone”.  Haunting tune, I loved it so much as a child.

I hadn’t thought of that song for years, until the other day when I caught myself humming it in the shower but I had, for some reason, replaced the word “flowers” with the word “bloggers”.  It went something like this:

Where have all the bloggers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the bloggers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the bloggers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

If you don’t know the song, I highly recommend that you Youtube it. Perhaps, a tad sad but a beautiful song nonetheless.

Blogland has been bothering me lately, especially when I view my blogroll.  So many of my favourite bloggers have gone awol and I am missing them.  In fact, I am downright concerned and worried about some of them.

It’s been almost four months since Andrea from Maundering Mutterer stopped blogging.  I fell in love with her straightforwardness.  Living in Africa, educating her loyal followers on life there, teaching me things I never new, sharing her heartaches, such as her mother passing of cancer, her finding out she had the same cancer, her kind heart that adopted a wide range of animals her mother left behind, the nasty brother who was all for the money, and her finding the strength to take him on.  I think of her often and hope that she won her battle against the cancer.

Then there was “J”, also known as the International Woman of Mystery.  Her blog started off as an expat from the US living abroad in Europe.  She had been there for nine years and it was her tale of life and seeking love over there.  Abruptly, her world changed when her job transferred her back to Boston. She was having culture shock living back in the US, she was mourning the loss of her life in Europe, she was trying to fit in, she had lost her beloved grandfather and she was coming to terms with the changes in her family and personal life. She was one of those ones I wanted to hug and tell them it would be all okay.

And then Deborah from the Adventures in Ceredo, one of my first and most loyal followers, broke off from blogging.  She only posted a pic or two per week, but I looked forward to seeing them.  I knew that was all she was able to give of herself, and I felt that it was such a precious part of her. I always anticipated a comment from her on each post and am sad that I don’t see her in my feedjit anymore.  It was like losing a friend and I wish so much for her.

There have been others that have gone MIA that I think about often too, like:

Hannah from Erratic Questions about a Simple Life - I was just getting to know her.

And Tracy from Life's Little Stepping Stones

And let’s not forget the lovely Paul from I took the Road Less Traveled  He was one of my favourites and I often hope that his wife’s pregnancy went well, and that hopefully, he is just so happily involved with the newness of fatherhood that he doesn’t have time for the demands of blogland

And Bruce Johnson... I could always count on a daily giggle from him.

There are many more, I am afraid to say...

It’s funny how involved you can get into a stranger’s life and how much it effects your life when they are struggling or happy, sad or delighted. Eventually, they work their way into your heart and become your equal, your little sister, your support system, the older brother, the girl next door, the funny guy at the party, a mother figure, but mostly your friend.

So for Andrea, “J”, Deborah, Hannah, Tracy, Paul, Bruce and all the others, I hope you are safe, you are happy, and that life is so wonderful you have no need for blogland, but mostly I want to thank you for touching my life, you have impacted me in ways words cannot describe.

Until Next Time.

Tracy

FOR SALE....

I stood in my kitchen exhausted and frazzled.  I was ridiculously worn out from the constant cleaning of my house for the sole purpose of showing it to potential buyers.

I had once been in love with my quaint little home.  It was the first place that my better half and I had built. The first place we owned together as a couple.  It was where we would find our love of our life, better known as Fred our little pooch.  It’s where I would create myself a garden of my dreams.  It was the place that I had lovingly and painstakingly decorated to suit both the female and male personas living there.  It was where we had displayed our art together, our dreams together, our joys together and our hearts together. It was, simply put, a reflection of our love.

We knew at some point we would out grow our little nest and so begun the process of selling our home.  We had listed it last year, but after two and half months on the market and seeing countless homes for ourselves, I had second thoughts and pulled the listing.

I knew however at the beginning of this year, that time was running out and we needed at some point to reconsider our options.  And with resignation and a heavy heart, we came home two weeks ago to see the “For Sale” sign neatly placed amongst our garden.

With a little too much pride, I had began spending an inordinate amount of time polishing, dusting, vacuuming, sweeping and cleaning my little home.  And last night was no different with the exception of the players involved.

Standing beside me was my mother who silently stared off into the distance and neither participated in any conversation or assisted me in any way possible.  Curious I thought and this was so out of character for my mother, whose love of cleaning I inherited.

I followed the direction of her gaze and saw a strange woman standing in my living room.  She was my new realtor she said.  Stunned, I wondered where Richard, my actual realtor was. Unfazed, I accepted her explanation of things and carried on with my nightly cleaning ritual.

I noted that she was busily moving things and placing things and creating a disaster. I kept questioning this new relator’s motives.  And she kept asking me to trust her.  With a glance at my watch, I realized that I had less than 10 minutes to pull my house together, and too boot, I was still in my pajamas.

With one more gaze at the time, I heard this horribly screeching sound from outside. In a furiously, hurried pace, I ran out the door to spy people sitting at my neighbours across the street singing and playing a guitar and smoking weed.  What the heck was going on?  Who were these people and when did my neighbourhood become a 1960's flower power show?  At the top of my lungs and in a voice I did not recognize, I bellowed “SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP”.  I had lost my calm composure and ran back inside my home!  Seriously, how on earth was I going to sell my house with a realtor who had just messed up my freshly cleaned home and with the local neighbourhood hippies strumming their guitars outside my window.  I was doomed.  I was tired.  And damn, I was still in my pajamas.

And then they came, the potential buyers.... and with a ring of my doorbell....

I woke up.

Relieved that it was a nightmare, I got out of bed and with a pitter patter of my feet and a deep long sigh, I quietly opened the blinds and peaked out the window, and there it was, gleaming in all it's glory in the soft creamy haze of the moonlight, the “for sale” sign. And with a furtive glance at the clock on the wall, I realized that I had only 2 more hours of sleep left before I had to get up and get my house ready for a viewing, all for the joy of selling. And as I went to pull down the blinds, I realized that I was wrong, the buyers were coming now and that I had overslept, and damn if I wasn't still in my pajamas.

And then I really woke up!

Until Next Time.

Tracy

Trust me... I don't got it!

Some days you have it and some days you don’t.

I love the days when I decide to write a post and I don’t have to reach for any words.  It’s like my fingers are on fire and they are spilling out exactly what’s in my heart, or my soul, or just on my mind.  No effort required.  Oh how I am missing that!

Unfortunately, I am a tad uninspired today, well the past week or so.  Whether that is a case of my ridiculously sore legs being my focus, or the fact that I have been eating cherries all day and I am farting so much that I have burned out the hair in my nostrils and am actually disgusted with myself, or that I went to touch up the roots of my hair and I did it with the wrong dye and now I have a copper penny head with blonde long strands and it has been horrifying me straight now for the last two days, one can only guess.

Needless to say, I have nothing to talk about except that I am kind of a disgusting oozing mess who has been gobbling and sucking up cherries like an ant eater on speed!

 

Ain’t I a beauty!

PLEASE SAVE ME FROM MYSELF and someone
suggest a topic for me to write about in my next post!

Cheers for now.

Tracy

Have you lost JEWELS TURNING 30?

Life is too short to loose your jewels, whether it be ones you wear around your neck, ones you were born with or ones that you read!

So if you were a follower of the lovely Jewels over at Jewels turning 30, you might have noticed that her blog went capoot, finito, disappeared into the ether, slipped down a blackhole, was a return to sender with the address unknown, goodbye, farewell, sayonara... well you get the drift.

Well never fear my friends.  She is still around.  She decided that she preferred wordpress over blogger and you can now find her here:

ACCORDING TO JEWELS

She has lost all her links to the blogs she has followed, so if you get a chance, please skip over and say hi to the lovely Ms. Jewels and pass on the word!  Nothing worse than building up your readership to have it all vanish in the click of one button!

By the way.... thank you all for the lovely comments you left me yesterday, you are way too kind and you made me feel significantly better!

Until Next Time.

Tracy

Wandering aimlessly

No words today as I have had a significant setback on the pain front.  So much so, that its been a real effort to get out of bed.  It's unfortunate that it scrambles my brain and makes me sound like an idiot.  Sometimes when the pain is this intense, I grasp to find words that make me sound normal. In the long run, it does not really matter though, especially when I can go out and see something as gorgeous as the below.  Makes me realize that the world will revolve whether I am participating in it or not.  And in some corny way, it kind of rejuvenates me...

Hope you have all been well.

Until Next Time.

Tracy

In a blink....

Three more days and my holidays will have come to an end.

I am already mourning the loss of them and counting down the days until I can rebook my next set.

Tired and worn out, my holidays have been jammed packed full of everything and anything.  It's been about reconnecting with my better half, warm cuddles with my pooch, aimless wandering amongst the flowers, sitting on the ocean and listening to the crashing of the waves.  It included spa treatments, artisan markets, finding new stores and eating at little bistros. From lying on my back watching the clouds soar by, to nodding off in the car whilst my better half navigated down forgotten winding roads, to sitting at my mother's bistro table and staring at her beautifully animated face as she intently discussed the things that were on her mind, I must say that these two weeks have been nothing short of memorable.

They were not anything I expected and still, they were all that they were suppose to be.

My soul is tired from the non stop movement and yet my spirit feels ridiculously free.  I know, you are shaking your head over the corniness that I tend to out pour in my personality and in my writing.  I suppose, it's just who I am.

And after a long, arduous trip today that included going to a ridiculously expensive world renown gardens only too fight off the zillion rude tourists that inhabit my part of the world every summer, I came home and sat in my pergola and reflected upon the fact that I needn't to have gone very far as beauty was right here in my own little garden.  

And as I sat and gazed out into my little place in the sun and listened to the comings and goings in my neighbourhood, I couldn't help but smile when I heard the gentle snore of my poor exhausted pooch after a day of being mauled by the masses of little ones with their sticky ice cream hands, screeching at their mothers "a wiener dog a wiener dog, can i pet the wiener dog!!!"  Poor Fred, he was trooper by all means.  

It's funny how life can drag on and then other moments you wish to cling to for all eternity whip past you in a blink.  

These holidays were a definite blink, a colourful, bright, memorable, exciting blink. And I have to tell you that I would happily take a blink over a drag any day of the week!

Here is some of our blinks:

Sandcastle competitions

Just chillaxing after a picnic

Reveling in a new pedicure

Attending an artisan festival

Eating at one of many bistros

Listening to a live Barney Bentall concert on the ocean 

Sky gazing

Moments with my mom

Discovering new stores

bubble bath mishaps

Intrigued by an ingenious water fountain

Looking and locating many of these!

Attending a very over priced flower garden in the height of tourist season

Taking a break and making sure the pooch is well hydrated!

Extremely Exhausted!

But mostly elated!

Whatever else this summer brings, I do hope that

for you, it is a beautiful, enduring, long lasting blink.

I hope you all have been well!

Until Next Time.

Tracy

Spas, Gas and Bubble Baths! (And maybe a naked girl)

Every year, my better half and I lock up our house, drop off our pooch too his adoring grandmother, pack up our most relaxing of clothes and traipse an hour and half north to a spa situated on the ocean and surrounded by the lush green forest of the pacific northwest.  

We often choose to stay in what is affectionately known as the spa bungalows. They consist of various four little connected units set in a wooded area, away from the beaten track, with a king size bed, kitchenette and a jetted bath tub for two that opens up to the fireplace.

It's a place to unwind, rewind, kick back, relax and let your cares just drift away.

The spa part itself is unique in that it has this fabulous cave like mineral pool and a tree top tapas room that is only accessible if you are 

a. getting spa treatments; and 

b. are wearing one of the resorts fluffy plush robes.  

Thus ensuring that the spa remains quiet and uninterrupted.  

And while this is all incredibly decadent and a lovely way to wash away the stress of my job, the thing I love the best is the deep jetted bathtub for two back in our bungalow.

Now being a bit of a bathtub hog, I have to say, romantic or not, my better half is never included in my jetted tub moments.  I am kind of selfish that way.  I just want to light some candles, add some bubble bath, turn on the jets and melt away into some exotic fantasy that no doubt includes Shemar Moore, body oil and me.  Not that my better half is not a wonderfully handsome fantasy man, but every girl should have a fantasy man that does not provide the reality of stinky room-filled farts, random wedgies and who asks if his ears and nostrils are clean!

Needless to say, I take full advantage of my lovely jetted bathtub friend every night we are there. 

However, I fail to learn the same lesson each and every time I am there and about five minutes with the jets on you will often hear me start to panic and freak out and flail my arms around like a maniac as I reach and search desperately for the "off" button to the jets.

Yes my friends, note to you and myself, when being piggy and selfish at bathtub time and adding bubble bath to a jetted bathtub, use only one cap full of bubble bath, not a half of a freaking bottle, or you will find that you will have to swallow your pride, do some serious begging and ask that farting, random wedgie, ear wax and booger free nose man of yours to come and rescue you!

Yes, it is a naked "Average Girl" under all those bubbles

UGHHHH!!!!

Moral of the story:  greedy bubble bath girls should always include their stinky, booger free better halfs into their fantasies and into their jetted tubs!

Until Next Time

Tracy

PS  Thanks to the latest and greatest to join my site.

I look forward to getting to know you!