Sweet Heart

Below is an article from the website, Calorie-count.com :
 
 Emotions are closely coupled with our desire to eat. More precisely, negative
 feelings are usually more conducive to binging than positive ones, and
 therefore you might be wondering why to worry about weight loss on Valentine's Day.
 The fact of the matter is, not everyone has a hot date or will be spending
 time with their loved one tonight. All you lucky ones - we wish you a great time
 tonight and feel free to commit all those little sins and then burn them 
 off later. And to everyone else - join Erik, Igor and the rest of the Calorie-Count
 Team in figuring out how to avoid gaining a couple of pounds tonight.
 
 In fact, avoiding emotional eating applies to all of us, regardless of our
 relationship status. It is estimated that 75 percent of overeating is caused by 
 emotions. Let's see what HK's Calorie-Count Diet
 (http://www.calorie-count.com/forums/post/12230.html) has to say on this topic. 
 
 This series of articles offers essential tips and information to help you 
 succeed on your weight loss journey with Calorie-Count.com
 (http://www.calorie-count.com/).
   
 Very often, you'll find that you've had a crummy day. Your boss yelled at you, your
 dog left you a surprise when you got home, and you just stubbed your 
 toe. Before you know it, you've just downed a pint of Ben and Jerry's Phish Phood
 and are looking sorely at the bag of Hershey's Kisses.
 
 STOP! And let's back up a little.
 
 There are all sorts of complex emotions wrapped up with eating. Often, how we feel
 affects how we eat. A lot of people tend to eat when they're miserable 
 or when they're bored.
 
 When starting off your new lifestyle change, grab a piece of paper and start writing
 down how you feel when you eat certain foods. Are you cheerful? Angry? 
 Bored? Achy? Bleh? See if there are any connections. If you find that you tend to
 overeat when you're achy and bleh, than you're probably an emotional 
 eater. Being aware of a problem can often lead to a solution.
 
 The next time you feel the emotions that lead to bad eating habits, try to be aware
 of them a little. Recognize "I feel crummy and I want something sweet 
 to eat." Then try to deal with the emotion without overeating. Call up a friend, put
 on your favorite music, go out for a walk, anything but sitting in 
 the kitchen with a box of Oreos feeling bad about your day and feeling worse about
 how you're eating.
 
 If you feel like you have a bigger issue such as full blown depression, please
 contact a counselor to help you deal with that. Often, creating one 
 positive change in your life can lead to other positive changes and even more
 positive changes, a veritable Domino Effect of positivity.
   

Fire! Water! Dog?

In my previous post, I said I was going to burn the photos of my parents basement. That turned out to be more difficult than I thought.

I had 4 pictures in a stack.

I had a deep glass pan.

I had a long nosed lighter.

I had a box of matches.

I had one pot lid.

I had the sprayer for the kitchen sink at the ready.

All I had to do was light the stack on fire and monitor, right? As if...

First I held the stack of photos and lit one corner with my lighter. I held the stack until a good flame was licking up the sides of the photo, so I set the stack inside my glass pan and watched. The flames STAYED in that one corner, fanning out to curl the four edges of the photo, but not consume them. HUH?? Where did I go wrong? Paper, fire.. should have been easy.

I then tried to re-light the stack of photos, but I couldn't pick them up because I didn't want to spread the bits of smoldering ash off that one corner, so I kept the lighter angled into my dish to ignite the rest of the photos. The edges would not catch. I put the lighter in the center of the picture hoping the chemicals would catch. NOPE! In fact, the flame from the lighter seemed repulsed by the pictures and instead looked to be traveling back up the long wand part. I figured this out because when I lifted the lighter and let go of fuel trigger, the flame didn't stop right away.

Ok, time to get tough. I got some olive oil and poured some on the center of the stack. I didn't want to catch the house on fire, just burn the darn pictures. I also got out a small funeral pyre of wooden kitchen matches and set them up over the oil in the center of the stack to MAKE SURE these photos went up in smoke. Guess what. I had a beautiful little fire going in my kitchen, and only half of the TOP picture burned by the time my bonfire died. A full 3/4 of the remaining photos were untouched.

By now, I had a pretty good smoke cloud in my kitchen, so I opened the back door to air things out. My dog, Piper, came in with nose atwitchin' at the smell and started running pell mell all over the house to find the source. I decided that maybe I should just give it up.

I doused the charred remains of the pictures in water, letting them steep for a few minutes to help them on their journey back to organic matter, and then took them outside. I'm not kidding you when I say I picked them out of the water and when I tore them into little pieces, the paper was STILL DRY. Now, fire and water didn't destroy these pictures, but I did tear them into little pieces and pitch them over the deck rail along with the ash bits and water.

As I walked back into the house, I noticed that Piper had followed me when I had gone out to dispose of debris and was nosing around the area I had just defiled. I went to see what she was doing and lo and behold, she was EATING the bits of photo that hadn't been harmed by my fire or water torture. I didn't really have the heart to tell her to stop...let's see if those things can survive a dog's digestive juices and trip through the intestines. And , no, I will not be inspecting Piper droppings to see if they do!

BTW, Piper is fine. She shows no signs of intestinal discomfort. Dog is a misnomer for her. She's more of a goat.

My Nemesis

The above photo is a picture of THE BASEMENT of my parent's home. If you have been reading any of my blog, then you know that for years, the only setting of a nightmare would be my parents house, with particular emphasis on THE BASEMENT. This photo shows the portion of the basement that was directly under the kitchen and had once been my brothers room. The huge crack in the foundation afforded my family the luxury of running water 24/7 in our home. Mother nature's version of a water feature. Drain tile would channel the water to a sump pump and then out of the basement. (Of course, the sump pump used to channel all our little rodent pets that escaped their cages out of the basement as well.)

Rumor has it that this crack was the result of a repair done on my parent's foundation when it was first being built, with the story being that a piece of heavy construction equipment had gone out of control and smashed through the wall. There is still some question as to whether or not there was a fatality involved in that incident, but I can tell you that both of my sisters and I hate to be in that house alone and won't go near the basement by ourselves.

The next photo is of an additional crack, just to the left of the one above, presumably the other side of the damage that the vehicle had inflicted. To the left of that is a bathroom and you can see my sisters converted player piano there. We had to leave that when we sold the house. Sadly, the basement flooded so many time that the piano was ruined. Imagine, living at the TOP of a large hill and yet every time it would rain, you would have to get out the shop vac and clean up a flood. Our house was built on red clay, so when the water came pouring in, clay and silt would come with it, staining everything.

Our basement used to be finished, and in the early part of the house's life, was fairly sealed, but as age and ground shifts occurred, its baseline faults became more and more obvious. After my father died, my mother tore up all the carpeting and ripped off the paneling to see if she could get the damage repaired and to be able to clean up the floods a bit easier.


This photo is of the front portion of the house, under the living room, and where we had our family room. Although it doesn't look like it, this was the more severe of the 4 major cracks in my parents foundation. (4 children in the family, 4 cracks in the foundation) This crack was not only vertical, but had also begun to move horizontally, meaning the foundation was on the move and making the house condemnable.

The last major crack is just to the right of the one above, basically directly across from the other one on the other side of the basement. At the time of her death, this is how my moms basement looked.

I used to sit on the steps, about half way down, and stare at the paneling, trying to will myself to go further down into the gaping black maw of the basement. An irrational fear would ride up my spine and I remember thinking that one of the knots in the wood paneling was a gigantic black eye, watching me. It was while sitting on the steps one evening, watching my brother play in the basement, that a suction cup dart he was playing with ricocheted off that part of the paneling and shot me in my right eye. It stuck there and my parents had to rush me to the hospital, where I spent the next few days after having the rubber suction cup removed from my eye.

My brother would beg me to come downstairs to play... and I really wanted to hang out with him...so I did. Frequently, we would play cops and robbers and he would tie me to one of the support poles in the storage area of the basement. He would shut off the lights and shut the door and run off upstairs. I was a big weenie and would get frightened very easily in that basement. It didn't help that he would go up to the metal ductwork upstairs and lay down at a register and begin to make eerie noises..."wooooooooo.....woooooOOOOOOoooo" I still remember tugging on the ropes and freaking out. Once he got the response he was looking for, he knew that I was going to be fun to toy with, and he got my older sister in on the game as well.

My mom would send me to the basement to get items from the storage area, usually from the freezer or the pantry area. I had to be asked multiple times to go, but when I went it seemed my brother would be somewhere making noises, or I'd open the door to the storage area to see my doll babies hung from various body parts. (My brother wasn't/isn't a sicko, he was just a boy and my brother)

Sometimes I wonder if my intense dislike of the basement, ok, hatred, was due to this or something else entirely. Is it the negative energy of the wound it received while being built? Was it the possible fatality that occurred there? Was it the tormenting of siblings? If it was the latter, then why are my sisters leery of the basement, too?

Strange how, after my mom died, I ended up being the one to clear out most of the basement.
Ever since I sold the house, bad dreams occur less and less frequently at my parent's house. In fact, the last bad dream I had occurred on the sidewalk across the street from that house. Kinda odd.

I was going through some stuff I had in my basement - a place I rarely visit although there are no bad vibes down there- and found these photos hiding behind a picture of my son. I decided I'd post them and then burn them. I'm done the postin' part... now where are those matches.

What Are You Currently Reading?

I was amazed by some statistics that I read recently. According to the book
I'm currently reading, "Shut Up, Stop Whining & Get a Life" by Larry Winget,
(www.larrywinget.com) on average people spend about 100 hours a year reading, yet they spend nearly 2,000 hours a year watching television. That adds ups to 40 hours a week in front of the television and only 2 hours a week reading something.

YIKES! Not that all television is garbage, but most of it is. And not that all books are great, but at least they aren't nearly as passive as watching television. Besides, I like the fact that books can now be "on the go" with downloads to your computer and audiobooks available in just about every digital format making them available to you while you drive to work or cook dinner. I guess what I like the best about books and reading is that you can absorb the information at your own pace.

I read a lot. I always have a book or two laying around, but what I don't do is vary my genre often enough. I still have the Hawkings books to finish and a few fiction works that I've started, but the book I'm currently reading caught my eye and although much of it seems to be common sense and things I've heard myself say to my own children, sometimes you need soemone else to remind you to kick yourself in the butt.

According to the American Booksellers Association:
Eighty percent of Americans did not buy or read a book this year.

Seventy percent of American adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

Figty-eight percent of American adults never read a book after high school.

Forty-two percent of university graduates never read another book.

According to USA TODAY:

43.6 percent of all American adults read below the seventh grade level.
Over half of all high school graduates could not read their own graduation diplomas or even fill out a simple application for employment.

Blows my mind!!

My Dream Man

I've searched about on the web to see if I could find a picture of my dream man, but I can't seem to find one. I found some extremely good looking men, but none that matched the man I dreamed about. Seems funny, but since I dreamed such an intimate dream about him, I figured I must have seen him somewhere before, but I did not even recognize him in my dream, so maybe he was a newbie.


I dreamed that I was subbing at an old job of mine to help out a friend. The place had changed drastically in both size and color, but some of the same people were there. I completed the work she had for me and decided to check at the front desk to see where they would like me to put my work away. As I approached the front desk, I remember having to duck under some wiring and to avert my face and squeeze my eyes closed as I passed a group of police officers who were all carrying fishing poles with wildly swinging hooks and lures.(C'mon now, this is one of *my* dreams so you knew something had to be odd!)

The front desk looked like a long counter, similar to the front desk in a large hotel. Just as I was approaching, a gust of wind came from nowhere and blew some papers about. Little slips of paper and shrieking women went scuttling across the desks. I waited for a moment at the desk while the blond haired girl began to get her items back in order. When she looked up at me, I said that I had finished my work and was wondering where she would like me to put it, because I know how it can be there. She just looked at me with a blank stare. I introduced myself and told her that I had worked there previously. Before I could finish my sentence, she said in a clipped tone, "I know who you are." I was not upset by this. In fact I was in a jolly good mood. The girl looked back down at her desk and I got the impression that my query was the least of her problems. I could feel someone else behind me in line and I noticed a friend leaning on the counter where it ran adjacent to the wall. I decided to step aside and allow the person behind me to speak with the girl.

He stood there in a chocolate colored suit with a tan turtleneck. His hair was dark brown, almost black and a little long, but not effeminate. He turned to look at me and had the darkest blue eyes and a truly devastating smile. Wow! At the time, he just seemed to be a nice man, so I smiled back at him and joked about the counter help since they were still having issues. He turned his head to look at me and I felt faint because he was just so beautiful. He said to me, "You could introduce yourself." As I did, someone said something to him and he looked away. I didn't find this offensive, in fact I laughed about it and decided to tease him about it as he looked back my way. I was still laughing when I asked him if he was going to introduce himself. He just stepped slightly behind me and to the side so that his arm snaked around my midsection and pulled me close. He was so warm. This was not a sexual contact. This was a contact that seemed so real that I could still feel him when I woke up. As he stood there, holding me, I felt calm and secure and happy. When he stepped away, the warmth stayed with me. He smiled and started to apologize and I told him not too. I remember saying that the experience had been like an intimate body kiss, without lips or sexual intention. It had been a soul touch and I thanked him for it. He just smiled at me.

When I woke up, I was still warm where he had leaned into me and I felt happy and whole. In fact, I've felt very energized and involved in my world today. So to the man of my dreams, I again thank you.

The Popes' Spies

We like to feed the birds and squirrels in our yard, although I have put down an edict that come spring, the feeders that are currently hanging on two posts of our deck MUST BE moved to hooks in the yard. Feeding birds is a very, very messy hobby. On Sunday last, there were no visitors to my feeder when I noticed it was beginning to flurry outside. Fifteen minutes later, the snow had picked up, which means it's time for some kind of warm beverage to sip on while you watch it come down, so I went to the kitchen to get some tea.

That's when I noticed the spies. Eighteen brilliant red spies alight in my Mulberry bush. (Ok, it's a freaking 25 ft tree, but a landscaper told me it was a Mulberry bush and until it's otherwise identified, that's what I'm calling it!) I got my camera to prove to the world that the Pope really did care about what I was doing on a snowy Sunday afternoon and the above picture is the best I could do from 40 feet away, in my house, through a glass door covered with dog drool, with a digital camera that has a cheesy optical zoom and my stability help was the door-frame.

Suddenly, it was a deluge of birds!! The more it snowed, the more showed up! Beyond the 18 male Cardinals, there were about as many brown females. And then this woodpecker showed up!!


It was nice to see such an abundance of nature.

My Neighbors

I don't live in the country, however I do live in one of the few areas left without a Home Owners Association, which means that my new neighbors may have this chicken walking around their yard. It's kind of nice having poultry 3 doors down. I now know that if I get just a little bit behind on the bills, I don't have to worry about where my next meal is coming from. I sent my husband to snap a photo of our little main course yesterday and the coq au vin was so interested in my co- I mean rooster- that she followed him around until he finally got closer to the dog. I think she just wanted to make sure he got a picture of her good side.