Living Life with Joy: A Funny Thing Happened on the way to Raleigh

Living Life with Joy: A Funny Thing Happened on the way to Raleigh:             A Funny Thing Happened...........      My sister was getting ready to move for the second time since she'd been marrie...

A Funny Thing Happened on the way to Raleigh

            A Funny Thing Happened...........


     My sister was getting ready to move for the second time since she'd been married to her forever love. She'd already moved from her home in Galveston to her new home in Birmingham. Now she was moving from Birmingham to Raleigh. She had just moved from Galveston when the Hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast. And her home, sadly, was one of the homes that were damaged. We are thankful that she was safely away, and prayed for those that were still there.

     After her husband's residency had been finished, she moved to Raleigh for his fellowship. It was when she was in Birmingham that we went to see her. I don't remember anything about the trip over because my sister was in trouble. It was Christmas, and her unborn baby was trapped in a toxic environment. What we heard, come now they're in trouble. It also happened that it was my birthday.

       I got the greatest gift in the world for my birthday that year. The life of my sister and a beautiful baby girl that to this day is my special treasure.

The second time I went to Birmingham was a lot different. I took my Mother, and I paid attention to where we were going. I had to; I was driving. But the thing is, The only thing you see on the road to Birmingham from Texas is nothing. You see trees. The road signs say things like, Chattanooga next right. No Chattanooga, just more trees. Until you cross the Mississippi river. Then the scenery changes. Look it's a bridge.

    The next time my sister moved it was to Raleigh. I never got the pleasure of going to Raleigh to see her, but my Mother did. She told me this funny story.  Thanks, mom.

     Since Fellowship only lasted a year, they thought they'd just take the bare minimum and just make do. They rented a nice home and got moved in. They had great neighbors a wonderful park nearby and a place for Brandi to play. Brandi was a beautiful Golden Retriever. My sister was getting ready to move back to Texas at the end of the fellowship and was making lists of last minute things that she needed to get done.

  1. Take out garbage
  2. Settle up with Landlord, turn in keys.
  3. Poop in neighbors yard
  4. Don't forget sani wipes for the car
     
       And the list went on, but these are the finer points. Poop in neighbor's yard. My mom was helping her with this list, and she got to that item. She was going to ask about it when my sisters husband came in. He also looked at the list of things left to do.

      He looked at my mom, shrugged, and looked at my sister who was just coming down the hallway a bag of garbage in tow, and said, baby, why do we need to poop in the neighbor's yard? And who's going to do it. Of course, he was laughing all the time.

       She came out and said, "that was a note to remind me that Brandi had pooped in the neighbor's yard, and I needed to go clean it up." Nice man that he is, her faithful husband did it for her.

        A good laugh was had by all. I hope you have one too.

til next time.,

Debbie

A Not So Joyful Experience

                                               
                                                       The Day of the Not So Dead?


     Yesterday I thought I smelled something off in my laundry room. My laundry room not only houses my washer and dryer, but it also has a pantry area where I store my unused appliances. That's not to say I don't use them; I do, just not all the time. Anyway back to the phantom smell. I looked around and decided it had to be the trash. Which, by the way, is also in my laundry room. There is also a large covered container for the food I feed my three fur babies. And of course, the water drinker that resembles those that you find on top of the ones you see in office buildings, that people are always talking around.

      Quite frankly, I never understood the fascination with the water cooler. I'd rather talk around a nice fire or a bottle of wine, but that's just me.

        I turned my laundry room upside down trying to find the "dead thing." Since I have three fur babies, one of which I know likes to bring in dead things and save them for me to come home. Laci gave me the gift of stink while I was away from home on a cruise. She decided that my recliner would be a wonderful place to put the baby bird she found that had fallen out of its nest. The problem is that it takes a while to find the smell when it's surrounded by an entire recliner's worth of material and stuffing. It seems the bird had gotten wedged underneath the seat and between the liner and the floor.

        Needless to say, we went furniture shopping the next day.

        I moved the dryer out of the way and found many assorted items that missed the garbage can. The person who's responsible, who's not me, lives in my house and shares my life. I just sigh, clean up the mess and go on with my mission.

        Next on my agenda was the dog food container, the water drinker, and the washer. Thankfully I only got as far as the dog food container. It appears my "dead thing" was a potato that was passed it's prime. It was a new bag; I wonder if I can get a refund for the smelly thing? Nah, I am now the proud owner of the cleanest laundry room in town. I think I'll have some potato soup for dinner with the remaining potato's that aren't "dead."


Til next time,

Debbie

Double Platinum

 

Double Platinum

  This has been one heck of a week for me. It started with a mosquito. A truly nasty pest that has invaded the peaceful sanctuary of my patio. It appears one of the nasty things left me with a nasty thing, West Nile Virus. Lucky me I only got the kind that affects 99% of the population. A man in my city was not so fortunate. He contracted the same thing, but his traveled to his spinal column. We are all praying for him to recover. 

 When the hateful creature bit me is undetermined as I have been fighting off the evil creatures all summer. When a mosquito takes up residence in your guest room toilet and your guest finds them, it's truly despicable. Thankfully the guest was my borrowed son and he thought it was funny until one of them bit him on the.....well I guess you can just imagine where he got bit. 

  Anyway, the evil virus that engulfed me was kinder to me. I had bone crushing fatigue that caused me to sleep twenty hours a day. Debilitating pain in every part of my body, and a migraine-like headache, for nine days. Thankfully it's over, on this, my last day before leaving on vacation for a month. So I have spent the entire day packing like a mad woman on a six-pack of energy drinks. 

  On Wednesday, last week, my Beau Jangles, decided to sit and spin on my rug. It was time for a trip to the vet to get his anal glands evacuated. As you can see he is a happy boy normally so he was totally up for the car ride and probably would have driven if I had been as sick as I was the next day. 

   The vet advised me that he thought he found a mass but would like to see him in a week to do a follow-up exam to determine if there was indeed a mass. I made the appointment and was on my way home when a headache from hell started. I'm always in pain due to fibromyalgia, and since migraines are a part of life for me I just went home and took an Imitrex. It didn't even come close to stopping that train wreck of a headache. Nine days later and I can still feel it in the background waiting to come back with a vengeance.

  I came back from the dead enough on Friday, that I could take my boy to his appointment with the vet. He did another exam, found a mass the size of a pencil eraser and we came to an understanding of what would need to be done to have it taken out. He is going to do a laser surgery to keep his sphincter muscle intact. This, hopefully, will keep him from being incontinent. We are all praying that it's benign.

  The thing is I take him and drop him off tomorrow morning. The day I leave for vacation. Thankfully my borrowed son will be here taking care of my home and babies. And I have a great pet sitter / vet tech who is going to pick him up from the hospital and check on him during his recovery to make sure everything is going as it should. I have some awesome people in my life and I hate to think about what my life would be like without them. 

   Since I was so out of touch all week, it affected people I care about a lot. But mostly it affected Diana. My best friend, Diana. She was anxious and had a feeling that something was wrong. Today out of desperation she contacted Lance to make sure I was still breathing. I messaged her back, answered another friend that I was okay and that I would call Diana. I accepted 19 friend requests. (none of them spammers) and messaged back to two other friends. That was on facebook. I'm afraid to look at the other sites.
 
  This would explain why I misplaced my phone after I used it to talk to Diana.

  Since I was still packing and doing some last minute things, it's understandable I misplaced my phone. My phone is my life. It is my computer, my social media connection, my business and my constant companion. My phone was missing. I do not have a land line with a phone hooked up to it. I have a fax machine, a television, and various other items that use it. Basically everything but a phone.

   I got Lance's phone and called my phone and walked around trying to find it. I searched the entire house and finally got to where I could hear it but still couldn't find it. I knew it was somewhere in the bathroom. Since it's enclosed in a Lifebox, I knew that even if it had fallen in the toilet it would still ring. Nope, not in the toilet. Not in the dirty clothes hamper either. It actually sounded like it was coming through the wall. Yes, it was in the linen closet on top of the sheets. I guess I put it there when I was changing the towels out.

    Some people have blonde moments, I have double platinum moments, but that's what makes life fun.  This is me and my Lance taking photos of the eclipse. As you can see, one of us was having fun.

Til next time,

Debbie

   

Time Management

 Time.

 It's what we all want, need, beg for, but never seem to have enough of. Most of us have at least some sort of time management skills. I have none. Zero, nada, zip, a big old goose egg, no time management skills. I did when I had a "9 - 5" which was actually never really a nine to five at all. It was more an 8 - 5 or some odd variation of the normal definition of a workday. Now that I'm "retired," and I use that term loosely, because as many "retired" people work harder when they retire than they ever did while they were working, it seems like I never have enough time. Ever. Because I cannot focus on one thing unless I visit my sister.
 
 This is why I lovingly embrace those times each year that I get to go on vacation. Which as it happens I'm getting ready for now. A long vacation. A month long vacation. But in getting ready for said vacation I had a hiccup, a glitch, a gremlin, a time warp. I was gone for four days doing the impossible task of getting my Mother's things ready for a yard sale. My sister, whom I love, is a slave driver. We crammed four weeks of work into  24 hours of work.

 Since my mom is in an assisted living facility and is moving into an efficiency apartment, we had a great deal to go through. It was hard for my sister and myself to do it. Because even though our mom is still with us, we had to let go of memories of our very separate childhoods. My sister is 21 years younger than me. I was already married when she was born and since we weren't raised together we don't have the same attachment to the same things. So we both had things that meant so very much to us in different ways.

 I wanted things that I remembered from my childhood. The Christmas ornaments that my mother lovingly put on our tree every year, or the garland that hung on the mantle. These items are as old as I am and mom used them faithfully every year.

 My sister, the more practical of us, wanted things she would use. So when it was all said and done, my Santa Fe was loaded down with treasures and my sister put her things in her cabinets as we went along.

 It was when we got to the clothes that the tears fell. It wasn't because we felt any attachment to the clothes, it was the scent when we opened the plastic tub they'd been stored in. It was the scent of our mom. I know that scent is the most powerful of all the senses, but to have it hit you in your heart when you weren't expecting it, that's when it becomes real. So we cried a bit, hugged a bit, and then laughed a bit because mom is still here.

 My sister is my greatest joy. Her children are my second greatest joy. I love them beyond measure. But my sister is still 21 years younger than me. I'm old, slow, and have lots of artificial body parts. Some days I get up and think to myself, I wonder what part is going to fail me today. Thankfully we made it through the sorting and pricing and got to the actual yard sale. At 11:00 I needed to take a small break. I was so exhausted I fell asleep at the sink in the bathroom washing my hands. It was when the hot water ran out and started running cold, that I came awake enough to go to my bed and tell myself, five minutes, I just need to lay down for 5 minutes. Right. Five minutes turned into almost three hours. When I finally came back from the dead, everyone else was asleep and Lance was loading our car. Bless him.

 The ordeal was finally over and we finally rested for the first time in three days. Lance and I came home the next day and he lovingly unloaded our completely packed car. The next day I decided I would get everything washed, dried, and put in it's new home. Always the optimist of course I failed at my self imposed task because it seems as if I have the squirrel syndrome. You know the movie UP by Disney/Pixar, (if you don't you are missing a national treasure), the dog loses all focus when he sees a squirrel, that's me. I lose all focus every time I try to do something.

 Tonight was a great example. I was unloading the dishwasher. No big deal right? Yeah, you don't live with me. It could take me 5 minutes or 5 days to unload the dishwasher. It really depends on how many squirrel moments I have during any given task. I took some flatware to the dining room and remembered that I had't finished the sorting of the canning rings that needed to be discarded from the ones that I can keep. Since I can so many things in the summer months I go through this process at the end of the season so I can start out fresh the next season.

 That job got interrupted by another job, then another task, and then something else, and well you get the picture. I like to chase squirrels and my husband wound up emptying the dishwasher. I think I'll keep him.

Til next time,

Debbie

Tears for the Fallen

It seems like every day on the news we hear of another school shooting or another sniper attack on innocent drivers on interstate 10 in Phoenix. Not to mention the soldiers that defend us whose lives are taken in battle or due to tragic accidents. Bad news seems to dominate every aspect of our lives.

I am always so sad to hear of another fallen due to negligence or pure evilness of another. Tonight I was face to face with another senseless slaughter, sadly, in my own home.

I guess I need to start at the beginning.

I love dogs. I love all dogs. I love all animals. Animals are non-judgmental. They don't care what you look like, what religion you belong to, or who you vote for. They love you because you love them. I have always had a very special relationship with all animals. My dad was the same. Animals have a sense about people and can tell when you mean them no harm. There were always animals coming up to my dad to eat from his hand. Little chipmunks, squirrels, butterflies and even the odd caterpillar. (But that's another story.)

I inherited that trait from him as animals have always shown me the kindness that I show them. I have numerous birds land in my hand to be fed, so many butterflies have landed on me I have lost count of the number. I have gotten vicious dogs to lay down at my feet with nothing more than an outstretched hand and a soft voice. The same for insects. I have never had fear of them because if they see you coming and you aren't invading their space, typically they will leave you alone. Any animal will defend itself if cornered. From the smallest insect to the largest elephant. I always approach with caution and care. I have taken some amazing photos because of that caution and care.

I took some amazing photos of an insect that because of his coloring, thought he was dead. I was saddened by the loss as he was a praying mantis. Praying mantis' are what are known as beneficial bugs. They, like my favorite insect the ladybug, eat other not so beneficial bugs such as aphids. I'm not sure what the diet of a praying mantis consists of but I know that as an organic gardener, I'm glad to have both species in my garden.

This praying mantis, however, wasn't dead. I know this because when I spotted him I thought he was trapped in a spider web and was going to dislodge the spider to greener pastures instead of my garage door. When I bent down to move the web and said praying mantis, the mantis moved. I couldn't get my camera fast enough. This was my chance to photograph a juvenile mantis.

This is the mantis. He is sitting on my husband Lance's hand. As you can see he is not the bright green color that you would normally associate with a mantis but a dull tan color. He was also completely happy to be sitting on this odd surface. I got multiple photos of him but this one was my favorite. He just kept moving his head and followed me as I photographed him.

This was a photo of him a few days later sitting on a rock in the planter for my hibiscus tree. He was just starting to turn a lovely shade of green.

This is my beautiful girl Laci. She was rescued in March of 2014. She is my Boston "Terror" and I love her unconditionally. She is one of the lights of my life. She is also an exterminator. An unpaid exterminator. A sometimes, like today, unwanted exterminator. She committed murder on my poor praying mantis. I knew she had a bug when she came in because of the way she was acting. I was thinking it was one of the usual suspects, probably a June bug or a cricket. No, it was my lovely praying mantis who was finally the beautiful green color of an adult. I hadn't seen him in a couple of days and was hoping to see him again when he finally turned his adult color so I would have a completed set. Sadly he was missing his head when she finally dropped him. I couldn't bring myself to scold her because it's what she does. But I was still saddened at the loss of my beneficial insect. 

So here's to you dear mantis. You were well loved while you were alive and sadly, you made a tasty snack for my sweet exterminator. 

Until next time,

Debbie

The Joy of Multitasking

                    The Joy of Multitasking


I've been multitasking all day. I'm the person who can do a load of laundry while cleaning a bathroom as I'm taking a shower with a phone conversation on the other side of the shower door. 

Yep that was me this morning. I had just gotten my shower ready to get into and my phone rang. I left it on speaker the entire time I showered, cleaned the shower and started a load of laundry. Why did I do this? And who was on the other line that wouldn't be offended because I was doing this? Well that's a story now isn't it. 

This morning my phone rang much the same as it does every morning. Usually it's from a number unknown to me and since I get so many phone calls wanting to sell me everything from janitorial supplies to printer ink for my home based business, I usually let it go to voicemail. I decided to answer it this morning because it's Monday, I felt like it, I just wanted to see what they were trying to sell me today, or maybe I just had a feeling that this was a call I couldn't ignore. It was priceless.

I answered the phone as I usually do with unknown callers, Design Styles by Deborah, how may I assist you today? Now to be completely honest with you I thought I was talking to a real person, the computer voice was that real, so kudos to the company on that one. But I, being the person I am, hate talking to computers. I really hate talking to computers that I don't know the company they are affiliated with. So by the time I figured out it was a computer I decided to have some fun. 

The computer proceeded to ask me if I was me. I looked in the mirror just to make sure. There's more of me than there used to be, but yes, still me.  So I said yes. 
Okay. Are you still living at your address. I went outside checked the numbers on the house. Yep this is where I live. So I said yes. 
Okay. Since I've confirmed that you are the person I'm trying to reach, can I ask you a few questions? 
Sure. That's when I figured out it was a computer. It didn't understand my response. 
*Rubs hands and shouts for joy.
I'm sorry I didn't understand you, can you repeat that? 
Yes. But first I have a question for you. Who is this? 
Holiday Travel. 
Okay, proceed. 
Have you ever traveled out of the United States?
Yes.
Have you ever used the services of a travel agent?
Yes.
Do you have a passport?
Yes.
Do you have a credit card?
Yes.
It sounds like you are qualified to receive this free offer. Would you like to hear about it?
Yes.
We would like to offer you a free cruise to the Bahamas. You would only be responsible for the port fees of $69.00 per person. This is a wonderful opportunity to visit the Bahamas on a luxury cruise ship for only $69.00 per person in port fees. Would you be interested in this offer. 
Yes.
Okay let me transfer you to one of our travel specialists. Please hold until someone comes on the line. 

Sadly I ended the call right then. Not for the reasons you might think but one of my own in addition to the ones your thinking. I have been to the Bahamas. I hated the Bahamas. I will never go to the Bahamas again. EVER. It was a steaming mass of humanity, sweat, and a huge rock pile that only offered a Straw Market for entertainment on one island and a trip to view all the rich peoples vacation homes on the other. 

Imagine if you will, A giant bale of hay with tunnels cut into it miles deep that only has one way in and one way out. Then add the fact that these tunnels are filled with "shops" much like those found in a flea market. Remember we are still inside a bale of hay. The only opening is the one we came in. The walkways are only large enough for one person at a time. There is no going back the way you came in. To someone who is claustrophobic, this was a living nightmare. It took me days to find my way out of that hay cave and by the time I did I had been manhandled by more humanity than lives in my current hometown. I wanted a shower, a nap and a Xanax in no particular order. 

The other island was just as bad but in a different way. We thought we were going to see the sights of the island. Yeah, we saw Oprah's house, P-Diddy's house, etc. you get the picture. Plus the tour guide went on to tell us the names of the people who care for the houses and their salaries and why it was such a great job. Really. 

Needless to say I passed on the Bahamas trip.  

Have a laugh today. I did.

Until next time.