Follow the Mud Brown Road...

Today was a great day.

Yes, it was cool outside this morning, and we had *snow* yesterday (PUKE!!!), but once the sun was up, things warmed up fast and the white crap started melting. The car was pretty much cleaned off by the time I got to my longtime friend D's place, about five miles from here. 

As y'all know, I've been back to my routine of walking to the stream and back, while listening to heavy metal cranked up in my earbuds on the MP3 player.

I didn't have to do that today... My pal D - who I've known for about 30 years, we met in elementary school - and I have decided we are going to be walking more, and on days we're able to, do it together. If I'm unable to make it to her house, or she's working, we'll just do our regular routine each day. 

I'm still trying to build up my endurance, so D decided we'd take it slow and go at my pace. Her youngest Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Lucy, tagged along, and it made the walk more fun. Our route went along a dirt road not far from D's house, and it was pitted with lots of mud puddles. Of course, Miss Lucy loves water, and was walking through the deeper and bigger ones when she felt like it. She even tried swimming a few times, but the water wasn't deep enough even for a dog with dwarf legs. It was cute. 

D motivated me to keep going even after I started getting winded. I'm still overweight, still not used to being on the feet constantly, and still feeling the effects of being a smoker for over 20 years, even though I'm almost 2 years into my quit. Each time I started huffing and puffing, we'd stop for a few, long enough for my breath to even out, and as soon as I felt ready, we'd start again. 

We walked all the way back to the beaver dam, not far from the former town reservoir... We stood on the bridge, noted a few things, didn't see the beavers swimming around, and kept Lucy from jumping off the bridge for a swim - I understand she loves to swim, and would have loved to go this morning. Unfortunately the water is too dirty and murky, so no swimming back there for the dogs. Or humans too.

The way back went so much faster, and I had a second wind. By the time we reached D's house, I was starting to get winded again but felt great mentally. 

We told her father where we stopped and turned back. He thought for a moment and told us it was a total of two miles to the beaver dam, or thereabouts.

Wait, two miles one way means the round trip was... 

FOUR MILES...?????

Seriously??? 

Are you fecking kidding me??? 

I walked four miles in ONE stint? My regular routine to the stream and back is a QUARTER MILE, ROUND TRIP. I'm just getting to the point of doing the entire thing without getting tired or winded. 

Whoa. *blinking!* 

I thought we were going to do half a mile one way, tops... Wound up doing four times that! LOL 

Well, it looks like I'm going to be able to add more to the routine, starting tomorrow. I'm still going to gradually build things up... Today was D's way of showing me I *CAN* do it, with motivation... And an adorable corgi loving me up when I needed it. It was Lucy's way of saying I can do this, and I did. :) 

My goal is to be able to go to the line for the next community and back without getting sick, tired or overly winded by the end of summer. That's one mile one way, or two miles round trip. D wants my endurance to be higher than that, but I'm going to set a goal I know I can reach on my own... I can't always get out walking with her, so I think a mile one way is good for the time being. 

Note to self: I am going to wear out the sneakers much faster now... Oh well! LOL 

Of course, my reward for the walk was extra loving from Lucy and the rest of D's dogs and her cat... Her cat seems to love me, because whenever I go there, she talks to me a lot and today, let me pet her on her head, and she even gave me a smooch. I just love Cat, and she knows it too... She's pure gray and so pretty. 

My old corgi pal Tucker, who was at the beach with D and I a couple of years ago, was very happy to see me once he clued in I was there. When I was copying a file from my portable hard drive to her computer, he laid on my feet and made a lot of contented noises. Yeah, I love him too and he knows it. LOL 

D has about six dogs at the moment, but one is her nephew's... That baby girl is staying with her "Auntie" for a visit. I just love each and every one of them, they are all sweet natured, and all beautiful... So easy to love. 

She gave me a LOT of tea bags too, various flavors. I've discovered I love English Breakfast, and she included other ones that look awesome... One cup of the brewed stuff per day, tea is loaded with anti-oxidents, and it's healthy. 

I may replace the old green tea with the English Breakfast. Fermented (black) tea is really good for you too... Tee hee. 

I'm tired, and sore, and I may not make it down the stairs without help tomorrow morning, but it's worth it. 

D proved to me that with a lot of motivation, some extra coaxing, frequent rests, a slower pace, and of course, the most adorable and sweet natured corgi walking companion, that I can do it... 

Taking a Vitamin B tablet before I went helped too, it woke me up and gave me extra energy... Natural too, no caffeine. Tee hee. 

I'm so grateful she did. Now that I know I can, maybe, just maybe I'll be able to get myself back on track and get back into my ultra small jeans sometime in the future.

Have a great week everyone, enjoy the remainder of your Wednesday! :)

Renovations

Whoa... 

Has it been two months since my last post here? I can't believe I've forgotten to update y'all on what's going on here in my neck of Canada.

First of all, we had a fantastic holiday season. It wasn't overly cold, we had a green holiday. No complaints here!

The reason why I haven't been around lately is that we're in the middle of reorganizing our house. We're finally able to get some work done on it, and because of that, I want to get this house shipshape inside and out. I've spent the last two months or so just getting rid of STUFF. Stuff we no longer use, stuff that's broken, clothing and toys my son has outgrown, and anything else we don't need or want. 

The most recent project is the closet under the stairs. I'm currently going through all of the boxes, etc in there, sorting out what to keep and what to toss. So far, the toss piles have been MUCH bigger than the keep ones! For example, I found an entire large recycling bag FULL of empty 200 g tobacco cans - the plastic modern ones. I was saving them for something... What, I don't remember. We decided keeping three or four of them was okay for Hubby's projects like nails, screws, etc, and we're recycling the rest, or giving them away to anyone who wants them. 

We checked all of the cans to make sure they were empty and we took the plastic liners out of them, they can't be recycled... When I was doing one can, I stuck my nose into it and took a whiff.

I used to love the smell of tobacco. Not anymore. I sneezed and gagged. Hubby thought it was great, because it's a sign of how far I've come in the last two years. Hard to believe that I'm almost 19 months into my quit. Yes, I'm still rolling with it, despite efforts to get me hooked on the nicodemon again... 

Meh, karma's a bitch, need I say more? ;) 

I hope to eventually put a lot of stuff we don't use a lot but like to keep handy in there - notably my stand up mixer, the coffee makers, and in time, a cabinet for canned goods - and some of Hubby's stuff too. 

I've been working on ideas, etc for Fourteen... It's slow going, but I think I'm starting to get how to proceed and the most logical way to work the "what if?" thing. 

I've been told to "ease" back into it considering how sick I was this past year, and how low my creative energy has been until recently. Rebuild that writing muscle slowly, by doing a little at a time until I'm back to spec kind of thing. Ideas, and a quick write up of a short scene - even if they are not used - is all I'm doing right now... Even though I'm going somewhat batty from not writing.

... SQUIRREL!!!....

^Damn things are always distracting me, even from my conversations with my best pal........ 

Something else I've started doing is cleaning out some of the pages I follow on Facebook. A lot of them have been sharing CRAP and I'm sick of it. 

For example, if your page has a theme of "hot guys" and talk about sex, etc, DO THAT... NOT share stuff like "He Found Out He was Dating His Brother!", and "Woman Cheats, Gets Pregnant, and Blames Jesus for Knocking Her Up" (Seriously, those two stories actually showed up on one of the hot guys pages I used to follow, just this morning and within half an hour of each other!).... If you have a music page, TALK ABOUT MUSIC, or share videos and photos, etc of MUSIC (any genre), NOT crap like "This looks ordinary until they finish, amazing!", or "Fat Guy Breaks Couch"... PUKE. 

As for my author page (I had to retire from ALL of the other ones in 2014 due to illness, and EVERY post on the author page is ME talking, not my other admins, they only moderate and watch if I'm offline or if I need backup for a troll)... If I don't have anything to share, I don't share anything. Yeah, I promote music as well as talk about writing, publishing, reading and other author related stuff on it, but anyone who follows me KNOWS I am a huge music person, and it's as vital to life as reading and writing are... And the theme of my page is "Love Is the Music of the Heart", as is the url for this blog AND my Facebook author page. I don't share bullshit like the pages I'm clearing off, nor do I make jabs at other people on it at all... yeah, I do it sometimes here but NEVER directly on the page or my author profile. Just sayin'. ;) 

I will say that there are some excellent pages on FB, and one not only shares pics of yummy men, but she also shares Freebies for Kindles in the Amazon bookstore... The US one, but I can still get the books for a small price Canadian... And I have.

I have the Kindle app on my Acer tablet, well, the old one and the new one. (More on the "new" one in a sec). 

You'd be surprised at the amount of GOOD books you can get for free or for a small price on there... Even Canadian prices are excellent. I purchased a few at Christmas for the Kindle on the old tablet, and let's just say that some were pretty darn "steamy" - a collection of short stories written by one particular author comes to mind... I am not even halfway through the one collection yet, and I'm about 25 stories into it. I have a couple of more on there waiting for me too. All good stuff, or I'm hoping they are. I've discovered I like MMF erotica books... The full "mix" to boot. Never thought I'd see the day when I said that! LOL 

Okay... What happened with the old tablet is that a couple of weeks ago, I had it sitting on the computer desk, and well, it kind of got knocked down by Cat. Son noticed the cracks in the screen and when I tried to get it working again, it wouldn't.

Hubby wasn't happy... But promised me we could get another one. 

So we have another tablet, the exact same brand, model and color as the old one, with a few differences, as well as similarities....

The new one has its own hard case, and has an extended warranty on it. It also has a few new things on it, like the newest version of a game that Son and I love to play on the desktop computer.

I got most of the old games back, without having to pay for them. Same with my Kindle content - Thank heavens! LOL 

The old one didn't have the warranty or a case... I was going to get one after the holidays but didn't have the chance to before CAT happened.

The warranty I purchased with the tablet will cover "Acts of Cat". I double checked with the young man who sold it to me, to be sure. If anything happens to it before February of 2019, including Idiot Cat knocking it off the computer desk and smashing the screen on my chair somehow again, they will replace it at no charge, with no questions asked. 

For the record, the tablet is an Acer Iconia One 7 B1-770, with 1GB of RAM and a 16 GB hard drive, but it also has a micro SD port... I have an 8GB card in it now but may upgrade to a 16GB card in time. It's white... I was going to get a black case for it - I love black - but since I'm not a fan of monochrome, I went with a case that's PURPLE. It's pretty! 

I do love purple... Tee hee...

And here's the old tablet, after "ACT OF CAT" struck it.......

Yeah, not pretty, is it? :( 

I hope this new one lasts me a VERY long time!

Have a great week everyone!