BALLERINAS IN THE WATER

Oh the water lily, so feminine, graceful and with such beauty, the pond is their stage and we are the audience in awe of their stunning performance.  They do nothing but pose, while being surrounded by the many lily pad admirers who protect their beauty, but oh what a pose it is with a tilt to the right or a tilt to the left, they allow you just enough ability to glimpse the centre of their existence and leave you in awe that something so spectacular could come from something so ordinary. They are astounding.

They are Little Ballerinas in the water to me with their colourful and classical tutus and their beautiful faces stretched far towards the sun dancing forever in our memories on their stage of water.

Happy Soon to be the Weekend to All of You

From Wispy Little Old Romantic Me

Until Next Time

Smooches Pooches

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.

Smooches Pooches

POTS, POTS, GLORIOUS POTS

One of my all time favourite things to do is container gardening. Simply because I love pots.  In fact I am addicted to the sheer beauty of the created pot.  Big ones, small ones, ceramic ones, copper ones (hate those plastic ones), teracotta ones, wrought iron ones, I love them all.  In fact, I would be happy having a shop catering just to garden pots!  Mostly, I am overwhelmed by the beauty of urns.  Two years ago, I scored this spectacular deal on this 3 foot high, hand cast stone urn from Italy! I got it for 80 percent off it's asking price due to one tiny in sequential chip and they delivered it to me for free using three men to haul it's heavy glorious butt into place!  I adore it so much, I am thinking about marrying it and having it's children! (although, my better half may object.)

The irony is that I actually suck at container planting.  I put many lovely little fleurs here and there and either they don't drape right, or they get spindly, or they get eaten by earwigs, or it's just me.  Personally, I like to blame it on the water.  I blame everything on the water, even my craziness!  It's a great answer to things, you know, like: "hey why are your plants dying - It's the water", "hey, why do you have a rash - It's the water", "hey, your kind of bizarre - Yup, it's the water".  It works for me.

Anywhooo, I love to go to this lovely well known Public Garden a mere 60 minutes from my home where I can  always find inspiration on container gardening, and I thought I would share three of my favourite photos which ironically are all of the same couple of pots (so much for imagination!)

Today I am joining Outdoor Wednesday.  If you would love to check out more of Outdoor Wednesday, please click the icon on the right side of my blog entitled the same name to see some more fabulous photographs from some seriously talented individuals.  And big thanks to asoutherndaydreamer.blogspot.com for hosting same.

Until Next Time.

Smooches Pooches

WHEN ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

When is enough really enough?  A question I often pose to the fates.  I throw it out there all the time.  I am serious when I say this isn’t quite the life I signed up for. I am tired, in pain and fatigued and at what I believe is the beginning of a state of distress and I often wonder if I was born under some bad sign. 

You see, I was a very sick child. Suffering from yearly bouts and hospitalizations due to pneumonia and extreme hay fever with weekly shots at the hospital (which thankfully I have outgrown) along with asthma, eczema and an aptitude for complete klutziness and it is amazing that I did not cause my poor mother premature greying. In my last year of high school, I was suffering from a constant state of “flu like” symptoms and after repeated requests from my doctor asking me to take a pregnancy test, I finally stopped with his nonsensical diagnoses and quit going for check ups.  Eventually, I just lived with the “flu like” symptoms for many years to come.  And finally, ten years later, several hospital visits and many physician changes, I found a fabulous doctor who sent me for one simple blood test that confirmed that I had hypothyroidism. She also confirmed that she caught it in the nick of time.  She said that everything was running so slow on me, I had about a year of life left.  It was scary to say the least.

During this time and years to come, I would suffer more weird health issues from a doctor who lost several of her family members and unconsciously gave me two sample drugs that interacted with each other causing me three days in the emergency followed by two years of numbness in one arm, to developing hives daily for seven long years, to an ulcer, to a broken ankle, to a broken leg in three places, to several car accidents that left me with a dislocation of two ribs and a clavicle and created the need for a breast reduction, to my all time favourite: the blood squirting eyeball that could have secured me a job in a Stephen King movie.  These are just the tip of the iceberg. Luckily for me, I am not a hypochondriatic, and every thing I suffered from had some medical explanation here or there.

Through it all, I had my very weird sense of humour to get me thru the day and I could spend a lot of time looking at every incident and finding the humour in it and it always made me chuckle.

But these last couple of years have taken their toll on me in terms of strange medical problems from dry eyes, to trouble swallowing, to unexplained rashes to swollen joints, to days where I can barely move because the pain is so bad, that putting one step in front of the other is all I can do and it is getting worse.  My life has been segregated into two groups: tolerable days and bad pain days and I am hating how it is dictating my life.

After several mis diagnosis, I finally had a partial answer.  I am suffering from connective tissue disease or diseases.  Apparently I have many symptoms from many forms of it and my inflammation levels are off the chart.  Of course, I did the worst thing possible and did an in depth search and what I read freaked me out on all levels.  I could have Lupus or Sjogrens or gawd forbid Scleroderma.  They ruled out Rheumatoid Arthritis although I have a dormant gene, lucky me I suppose.  Now, my life has become a waiting game.  I see a specialist in August and will undergo several tests and have already been told that the tests that I had already done are so complicated in what they showed that it could take up to five years to pin point exactly which one I have and start me on a proper course of treatment.  What they could confirm with me is that I will never have a pain free day again.

So I ask the question again: when is enough really enough.  Today, for me, at this moment, I have had enough!  I am sick of it (no pun intended).  I cranky, bitchy and miserable and am starting to take on the personality of my crotchety 95 year old grandmother, which puts me into a whole other level of freakiness.

This is not the life I wanted or imagined and no matter what you say, today the rainbow is covered by clouds and my face is swollen from how much I have cried today.  And as I type this, I wonder why I am sharing it with the cyber world.  I suppose I am just hoping that someone out there will read this and say “it’s okay Tracy, I know what you are going thru”.  In the meantime, I suppose you could say that I am suffering from a bad pain day that has taken hostage of the logical side of my brain and unleashed the monstrous emotional side which I am having difficulty controlling.

In any event, you will just have to forgive me, I am presently visiting pity city.  And even though I like the architecture there, I don’t plan on staying for too long, just a short visit and then I will be back to crazy old me.

As for tonight, I am thinking that a nice glass of wine followed by a great big jar of my favourite pickles is really what the doctor ordered, followed by me laying on the couch with my ice pack, some advil and my lovely pooch who will be more than willing to slather his love all over my face.  And no matter how miserable I am today, that is a prescription I can’t wait to take.

Until Next Time.
Smooches from the Queen of Pity.

THE HEAT PUMP KEEPS ME COOL BABY (but it gives me boogers too!)

Five years ago when my better half and I were building our little home during the summer, we had the fortunate and unfortunate experience of living in an apartment owned by a family member.  The apartment was clean, bright and large enough that we could store everything there and came with the monthly price tag of zero and we were certainly blessed and thankful that we could live there for free.  The unfortunate problem was that it sat on a tarmac parking lot and received the all day sun, and by the time I came home, the place was so sweltering that you nearly passed out the moment you walked thru that door.  There was no relief and I spent the next four months living in a perpetual state of a hot flash.  From my hair, to my toes, to the back of my knees, to between my breasts, to the base of my lower back all I felt was a constant trickle of sweat.  It was my own free version of a sauna!

So when it came to putting in our heating system, well you only had to say two words to me:  HEAT PUMP! Keeping our home warm in the winter and so wonderfully cool in the summer, not once in the five years have I regretted the installation, or the price.  

But along with its blessings, comes it's problems when it comes to the cleanliness of my house and the cleanliness of my nostrils.  At the time of building our house, I had gone out and purchased every piece of furniture in one shade or another in the colour of espresso.  Of course, the style at the time.  Deep rich chocolate, surrounded by varying shades of tan, linen and moss green.  Still beautiful in style now but oh so wrong for the heat pump.

The heat pump, especially in a new subdivision with ongoing construction, has spewed more dust around my home then Carter's have got pills!  Compound upon the problem that the chocolate styled furniture shows every freaking spec of dust and well I have written more messages on my coffee table with my fingers than I did as a kid on the sand!  Dust dust dust... I have come to hate dusting.  I can dust and the heat pump kicks in and woooosssshhhh my coffee table is covered again, and not just my coffee table, my side table, my bistro table, my leather dining room chairs, my bar stools and my entire bedroom set... Eeeee freaking gads people!  I have become Molly Maid without the pay!  And please don't tell me about filters, we have a stage 5 filter that we clean once a month and it does not make a bit of difference!

This year my house went up for sale for three months, we pulled it off the market before the summer as I am in love with my heat pump that much that I was willing to not sell my house to stay in air conditioning for the summer.  But during the for sale stage, I literally had to dust every day.  I think I sucked back so much Pledge that if they did a cat scan of my brain, the only abnormality would be how shiny my brain looks!  But, I have to tell you that when we pulled the house off, I went on strike for one whole month from dusting.  I am afraid to say that I pressed my face on the coffee table today (why my face, don't ask, I'm just weird) and made a permanent dust impression. I'm calling it "dust art".

If that's not bad enough, you might as well bestow upon me and my better half with the lovely name of Mr. and Mrs. Booger.  It seems our noses have become filters to what is being spewed out by our lovely heat pump. Our noses have unfortunately been in a permanent state of snotville for 5 long years.  I pretty much walk around with kleenexes stuffed up my nostrils.  I am afraid if I pull them out, 5 pound balls of lint and dust will just drop out at alarming speed.  In short, it's embarrassing! I am constantly checking my nostrils in fear that I will be talking to someone as the next nose lint ball drops down to an area that can be seen by the naked eye.  I don't want to be remembered as the girl who went out for lunch and had a visible booger in her nose!  You know what I am talking about.  No matter how much you like that person, if you see a booger in their nose, you remember that forever!

I suppose that I shouldn't complain that much as this past week was smoking hot and I felt incredibly fortunate to go home to a cool, delightful home with a very happy pooch who wasn't locked into a hot house all day while I was at work.

The fact of the matter remains that while I remain the human equivalent of a Swifter Duster and my nostrils house enough lint to build a bird's nest, I am still happy with my choice of the heat pump.  And I would happily recommend it to anyone else interested in one, just remember to stock your house with bottles of Pledge and boxes of kleenex and you will do just fine.

In the meantime, I am off to hose out my nostrils.  I saw a bird circling around my nose earlier looking for a new home and I had to scoot it away, especially when it brought it's family. 

Until Next Time.

Smooches Pooches

LE PETIT JARDIN

White and bright and clean and light, the little garden I spotted today was full of blossoms and beauty with little fleurs reaching towards the sky to soak in the heat of the day. This sweet little garden was no bigger than a postage stamp but retained the dignity and impact of a botanical garden of enormity.

It really was the epitome of strength in beauty as oppose to strength in size and it was a joy to behold.

(Please click to enlarge)

This weekend I am joining

Summer Sundays and Today's Flowers.

Please feel free to click on the links

to the right to view some spectacular

photographs by some incredibly

talented individuals.

I hope this weekend brings you 

some much needed respite from the hot sun

and some joy to your heart.

Until Next Time.

Smooches Pooches

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!

Feel for me tonight as tonight is the painful night. 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.
Smooches Pooches.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Have you ever stepped out of your front door and just taken a good long look at what is moving, breathing, living, and just simply being.  I do all the time.  Something strong was ingrained into me since the day I was born into this phenomenal world. I really and honestly take the time to notice where I tread and I do as much as I possibly can to tread lightly. Since I was a child, and even more as I have become older, I have saved my fair share of insects that have been trapped, I have released snakes that the boys in the neighbourhood caught, and once, I even tackled a boy bigger than me because he was being cruel to his reptiles.  Besides my mother, most people are not even aware of the fact that when I drive down the road and see innocent animals killed by our vehicles that I say a prayer for each and everyone of them to ensure that their little souls are blessed.  No matter how older I become, it continually breaks my heart and brings tears to my eyes when I see them lying there. I feel this odd sense of vibration from the earth, and some may say its crazy, but the fact remains that I feel that I have been blessed with this incredible connection with nature and I can feel the life in everything.  In all honesty, there are actual times I feel cursed too because I am more heart wrenched then I am heart warmed.

The beauty of living on this breathtaking planet is a privilege and its right there on every side road, street, highway, forest, backyard, mountain, valley, lake, river, ocean, sea and sky.
 

Now that you think I am crazy, and perhaps I am, I did decide this weekend to take photos of what you can find on the side of the road, if you take the time to look ever so closely... And what I found is that the beauty of nature springs where you least expect it...

Today I am joining asoutherndaydreamer.blogspot.com and if you click on the button to the right entitled "Outdoor Wednesday", you will see some fabulous pictures by some incredibly talented individuals.

Until Next Time.
Smooches from the Crazy One.

THE FORTY FATIGUE SYNDROME

I am pooped people!  Literally, falling over backwards into a pile of fresh out of the dryer duvets Poopedness... Somewhere between 39 and 42 I developed this love of sleeping. I feel strangely worn down and I can’t wait for slumber time.  What’s more pathetic is that I get excited if I wake up in the middle of the night and see that I still have 3 hours before the alarm goes off.  And when that alarm does goes off, I still catch a couple of “zzzz’s” on the toilet and then again in the shower.  I just close my eyes and pass out.  The fact that I haven’t fallen head first into the wall or drowned in the shower is amazing to me!

Somewhere, somehow I went from being Snow White to her dwarf Sleepy!  And if I don’t get enough sleep, well you might as well label me Dopey too!

Life has become so fast paced that I often feel like I am on a merry-go-round that keeps spinning at an alarming rate.

At work, it's just a series of faxes, emails and letters, oh my!  Faxes, Emails and Letters, Oh My!  FAXES, LETTER AND EMAILS, OH MY!  And I am starting to feel like I am Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz walking thru the enchanted forest, but my forest is a series of continual communication and a never ending workload of paper, people, demands and pressures.  And I stand there with my trusty, sturdy Clarks slip ons and I click my heels together three times and say “I just wanna be rich, I just wanna be rich, I just wanna be rich” and then I open my eyes, and I am still there buried beneath a pile of refuge! And what’s worse is that I go home, and it is clean the house, pay the bills, play with the dog, water the yard, make dinner, do laundry, go to bed and repeat. There is just no ending to it and by the time the day is over, I am so exhausted, I can barely get my large junk in the trunk into that bed!

There are days that I think I could sleep a 1000 years.  And just last weekend, I had such a weird Sunday.  I had gotten out of bed, had a shower and breakfast, and then rolled back into bed where I promptly passed out and didn’t bat an eye until 3:00 p.m. and that is only because my bladder was telling me to get up.  I never do that, mostly because my back won’t let me lay on it that long, but also because I absolutely love being out in the day.  And this past weekend, Sunday rolled around again, and I was hard pressed in getting myself mobile!  Half the day was over before I was even dressed.

I hate wasting precious minutes of life and time is moving faster as I get older and it is freaking me out.

Ironically, I am tired of being tired.  I am always preached to in one form or another: drink more water, not enough oxygen to your brain, exercise, exercise, exercise.  I love all these forms of advice.  Especially the exercise motto.  Seriously, how can I exercise if I am to bloody tired too?

As it is, I just keep chugging along in my everyday life and wishing that someone would cram some Energizer batteries up my ass so that I can keep going and going and going.

In the meantime, if you happen to see a girl leaning against a shelf in the grocery aisle with her eyes closed, would you mind giving her a nudge, be gentle though, she’s utterly pooped!

Until Next Time.
Smooches Pooches

HAZY SHADES OF SUMMER

And so I was kissed with the colour of summer today in all it's splendor, and it's sweetness still tickles my nose, and my eyes are still swimming in the beauty brought before me by the kindness of Mother Nature and I realized how simply and utterly blessed I truly am....

Here's Hoping that Mother 

Nature Shares a Kiss with you too!


Today I am joining Summer Sundays and
Today's Flowers.  If you have a chance
please click on the buttons to the right
and see some amazing photographs by
some incredibly talented individuals.

Happy Weekend
and Happy 4th of July to 
my neighbours to the South!

Until Next Time.

Smooches Pooches