Virginia Breeze

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Maria?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o’-the wisp! A clown!

–The Sound of Music

Remember this song? Some nuns sing it about Julie Andrews. She just doesn’t want to adopt the program. Well I sing it about Evita.

How do you solve a problem like Evita?

Because every time i read one of her posts I end up throwing something out! First it was the rum!

And now it’s my teflon coated frying pan!

http://evolvingwellness.com/posts/160/green-teflon/

I really hope she doesn’t decide that dog hair is bad for us. Sparky would have a fit. Malarky would start reading the help wanted section of the newspaper. And I would have to sleep with one eye open.

But frying pans are not really the issue today. Because I am addicted to sugar. It’s in just about everything we eat and it’s very addicting. You go into withdrawal if you don’t have your fix after awhile.

And I can’t stand the idea of being addicted to anything. So now your blogging buddy is on a diet. And he’s also walking every day. This morning we walked for forty five minutes. That’s up fifty percent from yesterday. And it’s up 150 percent from the day before. Because way back then we were just walking from the living room to the kitchen and back again.

When I noticed that we might one day go in the medical books as a miracle of some sort. Because it looks from up here like we are going to have a baby.

Blogger this year. Reality show icon next year. Right after the cute show about the parents who got six kids at one time after they took fertility drugs.

When I read Evita she mesmerizes me. I’m not sure if I believe everything she says but it doesn’t seem to matter much. Because I was due for an overhaul and she is the only one I see who has a nice looking blog and seems ready to go there with me.

Because when you do stuff like this you need to become really motivated. It’s an extreme deal until new habits are established and pick up some of the load. And even then it’s not a piece of cake as we all know. Hhmmm cake. I have been carrying around a tube of Ritz diet crackers for those moments when death due to starvation seems imminent. And a bottle of diet Seven-Up.

Please don’t tell me they are going to kill me too Evita! I need something!

Sigh. Why am I doing this?

Because you can be a senior citizen who is healthy or at least trying to be or you can go the other way.

Choose. That’s why.

Grumps must move on. . . .have a nice morning.

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The Beatles/ I’m So Tired

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Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of my Wordpress blogging adventure. The earliest post I can find is here

Not much has changed since then. I am still trying to relax and you will still see photos here of subjects that are primarily attempting to help me (us?) do just that.

These early posts are part of a Wordpress.com blog that still finds a few readers each day. It is a nice little blog and has some interesting posts in it along with some pretty bad ones. It’s all part of learning to be a blogger I guess.

Now I have four or five blogs and three of them are very active. I am happy to have made it this far and appreciative of those who were around last summer and still hang around here sometimes.

Hopefully things will progress in the second year. But blogging is about having fun unless you are making a living doing it. Are any of us making buckets of money?

If the answer is no then we should be doing things we enjoy when we blog! Right? There are Template Tombstones littering the Internet and many of them in my estimation belong to bloggers who were not enjoying themselves. They were not happy with the “progress” they were making perhaps. They were trying to do what the experts said they should do instead of what their hearts hoped they would do.

And they were not making money either. I met some of them in the past year and thought they were pretty wonderful people. No doubt they still are. Wherever they are.

Let us have a moment of silence as we remember some of their most memorable posts.

Thank you. Amen. Have a great Monday.

Update:// I deleted Wordpress.com.   So the earliest post is from this blog now.  It’s the same photo but it’s in a different place and the date is different.

More Writing

I hate to complain but I do not feel well this morning. And isn’t that the way it goes? We are having a great time and things just continue to get better and then we hit the crest of our particular experience and head down. We can’t go up forever.

It’s just the way it is and it pays to accept the fact and try to enjoy the ride. So I have this scratchy irritation in my throat and my body feels about fifty pounds heavier. My stomach is rumbling and the computer is not working well. The hard drive sounds very loud. And then the metal chain in the toilet broke and now I have this black stuff under my fingernails from trying to fix it. What is that stuff anyway? It accumulates on the rubber parts inside the tank. So the temperature outside has probably reached one hundred degrees already like it did yesterday. And I have to go to the hardware store for parts.

Also Big Brown did not win the Kentucky Derby because he apparently was feeling yesterday the way I feel today. What’s wrong with him? Nobody knows. Maybe his roller coaster ride hit the crest on Friday and was on the way down yesterday. Too bad he didn’t mention it to anybody. A lot of folks are on the way down today as they think about how much money they lost on Mr. Brown.

What do you do when you feel events turning in this direction? Please tell me. I would really like to know.  But until someone gives me another idea that sounds better here’s the one I use.

I try to find something to do that I always enjoy doing. But it has to be a simple task. And it cannot involve anyone else because they may not want to participate.

Well I am feeling better now and the fact that I am writing this post is evidence of that. Why the turnaround? Because I found some photos from a wonderful day we had last summer and posted them over at PhotoLinkLove dot com. Posting photos takes me to a time and place that was very happy. It also increases the value of my blog. ( So would adding categories and tags but that would not solve the problem). It’s my theory that if you can’t find a way to do this you won’t be a blogger for a long while. And it explains why I have nearly one thousand posts in less than a year of blogging on one blog. And why I also have two other blogs.

I had a discussion yesterday about blogging and fumbled around trying to come up with something worthwhile to say. But what I really wanted to say was this. Find something you truly enjoy about this activity. Something that doesn’t require a lot of skill or sometimes lead to frustration. Something that doesn’t depend on another living soul. And do it when you can’t figure out what to do! Or you are just feeling bad.

At times like this don’t try to plan too much. Try to enjoy the day. Enjoy the ride. Nobody plans a roller coaster ride.

They just take one.

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More writing

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Good morning to you and a good morning it is except that Beth is outside raking the leaves from the infernal tree that has a backward internal clock and drops them all summer long.

Her presence in the front yard means that I have only a few moments before I must go out in the heat and start up the lawn mower.

But I am imbued with strength this morning after the nice comments that have found their way here. I am generally not worthy of these but feel it necessary to try and understand them. Wait. I hear a lawnmower. Never mind. It’s two doors down. That could have been real trouble.

A gentleman by the name of Robert R. Marsh who has developed the really cool similar posts plugin you see around here and many other places has been helping me with something this week. Go look at the photos over at Photolinklove.com and see if you see any difference!

These photo shadows have always put a twinkle in my eye since I saw them in Michael Brown’s blog. They are just so cool and Robert just figured out how to do it and put them here! You can’t just get these anywhere as far as I know. Sadish uses them in some of his themes. But hopefully now they will be available if Robert decides to make it so. Thanks, guy!

But that is not all! Things have progressed rapidly in an upward direction since a squirrel took his own life Thursday night and blew out the transformer out back leaving us without electricity all night long. It was like living in a cave only a very hot one.

But last night was much better as I conversed briefly but nevertheless in a very positive way with Jordin. Yes my dear readers. Just one year after she became the reigning American Idol (plus a few days but who is counting) your blogging buddy said something to Ms. Jordin that made her laugh.

I told Beth about it this morning and she was almost elated! But then she decided we needed to cut the grass. So I must leave you now.

Have a great, great day. And let me leave you with this.

Remember to follow your dreams. But also try to keep your grass from getting too long. And if possible set up some sort of outreach program for your neighborhood squirrels.

Mine need to understand that the metal tubes that are affixed to poles among their branches and homes are not rest stops. They are gateways to squirrel heaven. And it hurts me deeply when they go through that door.

Stay here and gather nuts my friends. And have a good laugh as you look down and watch the sweaty refections on the chrome dome going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth while you are bouncing and flying through the air.

Count your blessings but don’t try to make them all come true in one brief moment.