Full Disclosure

I am rarely, if ever, a quitter, but, in this case, I QUIT!!! See, I have naturally curly hair ~ very curly hair as you can see from this photo. This is me after simply drying my hair with a diffuser. It is , as I said, curly!!
I have painstakingly blown my hair straight to keep with the current trend. It does look nice when it is sleek and smooth, but I can never get it as perfect as it looks when I walk out of the salon (bless you, Nancy!) and it often comes out looking kind of frizzy and over processed on the ends.
I have decided to quit trying to mess with Mother Nature. I am going to let it be wild and curly for a little while. I am going to let it be a little natural and free. I am an aging hippie, I guess! I think I am going to find at least an extra half an hour per day that I would have spent carefully drying my hair with a round brush. What will I do with that time?? Maybe take the dog for an additional walk!! Now that's time well spent...and she couldn't care less how my hair looks!!

Imperfectly Perfect

This is a good depiction of him...kind of in the shadows but ever present. Often, he gruffly goes about his business of helping all of us in both big and small ways. He was probably tired this day from a week of work and yet he knew the bike ride would make me happy, so he went. He has always said that all he wants to do is make me happy....and it's no easy task!!! He is right.
I hope he never stops trying...

My Dog & Me

We went for a long bike ride at the beach yesterday, and I kept seeing people with these cute baskets on their bikes. I told Mark I wanted one and that I thought Callie Girl would love to ride with me. Mr. Practical, dream squisher, look to what bad can happen, said the dog would NEVER stay in the basket. I reluctantly agreed with him because, whenever we encounter another dog, person, bicycle or motorcycle on our neighborhood walks, she is, shall we say, less than gracious?!?! She starts barking, racing toward them, ready for a fight!! Someone has forgotten to inform her that she weighs 8 pounds, not 80!!
So, the dream went from a simple $20 basket to a bit more expensive. We found the Nantucket Bike Basket complete with the cage at REI. It is so darn cute and she looks adorable sitting in it. There was a 20% coupon going on AND hubby let me use his dividend money from last year. Now, that's love!!!

Olive You, Abbey

"A child has no trouble believing in the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It's only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and over think and hesitate."
Olive you, Abbey!!

Growing Older

I complain about gray hair, wrinkles & losing my fight with gravity, but the truth is, each day I find myself on this side of the dirt, it is a good day!
I laughed out loud MANY times today. Thank you Maddy, Jack & Abbey. You fill me with joy and awe that I get to be your grandmother. It is a gift of which I am probably not worthy.

Smile

A beautiful boy and his warm chocolate chip cookie. How can you not smile at this? He makes me laugh every day. It is in the small, simple moments of life that we often realize these moments are actually the only ones that matter.
Happy Monday, all!

Shake It Up?

You would have to be living in a cave not to know we are in the mist of an election year. The mud slinging is fast and furious and coming from all sides. This blog does not venture into politics as a topic, but I had to say something about all the talk this week regarding Romney's staffer who said his campaign was like an Etch A Sketch...."just shake it up and start all over again".
Now, I for one, LOVED my Etch A Sketch as a kid. It was back in the dark ages before computers, hand held games, "Draw Something" on your phone or iPads. We drew my turning two knobs...by hand!!!! Drawing a circle was nearly impossible unless you were an expert Etch A Sketcher.
I am less interested in its drawing abilities and more interested in the notion of "shaking it up and starting all over". It made be pause and wonder how many of us would like a chance or two in our own lives to simply "shake it up and start over". If it were that simple, what would you change? Would you change anything? If we allow ourselves to fantasize, for a moment, that we could easily erase some things in our past, would we dare do it? Maybe you look back on decisions about jobs we did or didn't take, risks we did or didn't take, mates we did or didn't take. Would these decisions have made a difference on where we are today? Would we be any happier or more successful?
For most of us, myself included, once we make a decision, we somehow make the best of it and live with it. We do our best to move forward, grow as a person, use our situations in life to learn more. It can be a painful process, but second guessing our decisions later on down the road doesn't have much value. It usually just causes us undue agony and worry. Of course we all could have taken another path, made another choice, ended up somewhere else. No matter the decision, our own skin follows us in all our choices. We have to love ourselves enough that the decisions we make feel okay regardless of the outcome. We have to love ourselves enough that we can stand up, dust ourselves off, and keep going. We have to love ourselves enough so we can truly love others.
Maybe we can't "shake it up and start over", but we can always be perfecting the picture that is our life.