delivery of firewood

Jody texted me that he would be bringing me a small pile of "old" firewood that they were not using. I said sure, that would be great! They brought this to me on Tuesday night...not a "small pile" of firewood...and this isn't all of it, they put some in the house and some by the backdoor on the porch...wow!!! Free & Delivered...MANY THANKS!

 

firewood from Jody & Linda







is it me???

I have followed several blogs for some time...and I am loosing heart.  Is it me?  or are you tired of these posts about how wonderful their life is?  It is all so perfect.  Nothing is amiss in the photos, everything is perfect...the sun, the lighting, the positioning, its all this grandeur that doesn't seem quite real.  My house doesn't look like that, I am not sure it ever has, even for company.  Does yours? 

Oh, and they buy these items here or there for like pennies on the dollar...then they either sell it for this nice priced amount or they display it in their home with this "look how much I saved/didn't spend".  If they don't like something, they redo it. If they don't want something, they find a way to get rid of it. Not much of "making do with" portrayed on these blogs.  I have mixed feelings...sometimes it makes me happy to see someone create a lookalike for real cheap because I do think that I am crafty (you might not) and I know that I enjoy making things, but I have to be honest, there are other times it makes me downright depressed.  If I choose to go to hire someone to make me a fake brick wall instead of do it myself (forget whether I could or would or want to), am I this awful person blowing money out the window? especially when you could do it for $10.00? (or maybe even for free with these leftover things you had from a previous project and this friend who had all the special tools.)  Or if I actually go to Pottery Barn and buy it instead of make it (forget whether I could or would or want to), am I considered now lavishly rich and not thrifty like you because I chose not to?  Don't get me wrong, being frugal is good.  I actually like to save money.  I promote being debt free.  I recommend living on a budget.  But when this frugality is portrayed as it is in many of these blog posts, it makes me feel like you dispise me and think I am wrong for not making all this homemade stuff just like you.  Yah, and sometimes, I must admit that I am even jealous.  I have to work my freaking life away and you can just have fun and be creative in all your spare time?  No, I will not have a million dollars in the bank because I hired a project out or shopped at Pottery Barn.  No, I do not and will not have the time to make these homemade stuff like you.  Maybe its "just me"...but all this impressive blogs creates a disturbance in me that I don't like.  Maybe I am the one with the abnormal life???  Is it "just me" or does it do the same for you???  Do you feel these are "real lives", not a fake dream world and so it is all good???  Share your thoughts...but realize, I have expressed mine and you don't have to agree with my opinion.  It is my blog and online journal.  Take it how you wish.

sick of being sick...

I really am!  I have been sick for 12 days now and counting and I am done...but I guess my body really isn't done being sick because it hasn't gotten well.  I had thought I was doing really well, no sickness beyond allergies this winter, which I attributed it to drinking Kombucha and taking allergy shots.  Well, that didn't last...I made it to February, but I got sick.  I have had a nasty head cold with a major raw throat and cough.  I have been doing the typical things:
-lots of fluids
-lots of sleep
-eat when you want
-Menthol rub on throat and chest
-cancel any work you can 
-work when you feel like it, when you don't, nap
-wash the laundry and let it stay heaped in piles in the laundry baskets
-live in pj's all day long
-forget the hair, its just gonna get messy again when you take a nap and it takes too much effort to make cute
-don't make the bed, you will just be back there shortly
-take another hot shower, it will make you feel better temporarily
-etc

Last Friday, I thought I was getting better and I posted on Facebook:
I am feeling "ALIVE" today...yah!!! So thankful to be some better and no antibiotic!!! Thanks to all of you who cheered me on to rest and sent well wishs in various ways (prayers, FB messages/posts, texts, emails,calls)..very kind!

Then on Saturday, I woke up feeling like a MacTruck had run over me.  I posted:
The sun is shinning! the beauty of the bright blue skies against the white snow is goregous!!! Gods creation is very pretty...even though my cough is worse.
As the day wore on, I knew I was not going to make it without the antibiotic...nasty cough, lots more yiky colored phlem...it was time to go to CVS and get the RX filled.  I did.  

I continued to try to go to bed early and sleep late, work for a few hours between naps, getting as much rest as I could...hoping that I would get better quickly. 

Monday night, I couldn't sleep until 4am...I wondered what was wrong? I have been so tired of late with this sickness, why couldn't I sleep? Well, I figured out the clue:
I took Tylenol Sinus Daytime (yah, the non-drowsy stuff)...it works, you won't sleep! :(  It was my own fault! snif.  But in self defense, wouldn't it make sense if the mint green tablets were night-time not day-time and the white tablets were day-time, not night-time??? Yah, I thought so too! :)

I finished my antibiotic yesterday...my cough is some better, my voice is slowly getting better...

But then today, I woke up with my left eye swollen, all blurry and very goopy.  I have a cold in my left eye, the technical name is Conjunctivitis.  Ugh!  The sickness just doesn't seem to want to leave me.  I now going into a mode of mega doses of VitaminC (3000mg every hour), I also started drops of silver directly in my eye (one dropper every hour) and did a parsley tea eye wash (once so far)...I hope this licks this nasty virus FAST because I am out of stamina.  

Why do some people rarely get sick???  oh and those some people that get sick and get better in 3 or 4 days??? they make me mad!  Then there are some of us that are blessed with the full range of sickness beyond the work sick?  I don't get it.  I know that I never do ANYTHING half heartedly, but must I always get this sick every winter???

Thanks for listening to me compain.  I know I shouldn't.  No excuses, I am just done with sickness.

verse to reflect on...

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.

- Hebrews 10:23

Faith is not denying reality, but courageously facing reality with hope.

living simply

I have been doing lots of thinking about the verse "Aspire to Lead a Quiet Life".  I would like to ask you to stop and think about it too.  What does this mean to you?  How do you achieve this? 

Since loosing my job in August 2010, my life has changed...dramatically in some ways.  There were things I did before that I absolutely have no time for now, largely because I no longer have a set "work schedule".  This might not make sense to you - and it actually was hard for me to accept that I accomplished more when I had to be at the office from 9am-6pm, 5 days a week, and yet I still ran a business and worked on it evenings and weekends and got tons of things done at home!   How could just removing something like that make my life now unorganized and chaos?  The difference is I work when there is work and when I am not "working" I am working on marketing, creating business blog posts, brainstorming ideas, cultivating connections, attending meetings/events, doing networking, reading business books/blogs/articles, educating myself on things I want to know more about in or relating to my field and aspects that can help my clients better their businesses, etc...my "work life" is now filled spent on developing my business and fulfilling the needs of my clients.  The clock can say 2.30pm and I realize I haven't eaten any lunch...or 8pm and I have noway thought of dinner.  It will take me some time to get into a new routine (really let me say I'm still working at trying to figure that "new" routine out).  How do you develop a routine?  A useful working routine?

So in my quest for creating a routine that works for me, some things have been entering my thinking.  There are things that we add to our lives to make things simpler, but I am finding a lot of these only make it more complicated.  "Sign up for our weekly coupons to be delivered to your email"...great, but when I have 50 of these come in each day???  "Want to learn more, sign up for our daily/weekly email"...great, now I have 300 unread emails in my inbox and counting that I have no time to read.  Nice (not really).  These are just two examples, both relating to emails, but you get where my thoughts are going.  I am not spending money. I need to make money.  I have way to much stuff, yah lovely stuff, but stuff I will never use as long as I am a working woman.  You say, give me an example:  I haven't cross-stitched since I lived at home, 14 years ago this summer.  It is time to get my life molded around the life I currently live, not a dream world I want to live.  One that fits me.  No husband.  No kids.  No extras.  The basics. 

What do I mean by basics?  Eat.  Sleep.  Work.  Faith.

As I look at the basics, I know it will take time to get my dreams, vision and goals into a perspective thru "The Wheel of Life" (a concept by Zig Ziglar), in order: 
Family & Friends...Social (Fun & Recreation)...Career...Financial...Spiritual...Health/Physical...Intellectual
Not necessarily in that order, just not all this other paraphernalia.  

This means I am going to have to make some changes and overhaul some items that I no longer can fit into the "Life of Misty" to achieve my quest to have a simply quite and peaceful life.  That is the facts...but how will I achieve this?  What will go?  What will stay?  I am still working on how to and what to change, but I know CHANGE is happening and the change will take time. 

I am instilling a lot of one word right now, No. 

Share your thoughts...What is a quiet and peaceful life mean to you?  How are you achieving this?

Quotes

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
– John Wooden

a dream wall!

the completed brick living room wall ~ all natural lighting...

It is fake...but it looks real!  It is something I have ALWAYS wanted, but never thought I would practically get.  I love the old vintage look and this to me adds so much to my living room.  I hired a lovely lady named Adrianne to do this for me.  She had never done this type of thing before, but with her enormous creative abilities, I knew she would do me a lovely job...and she did!  I highly recommend her if you are interested in any type of work done like this. 

Here are the samples I gave her as "ideas" to work off of:


this one was my favorite with all the muted and layered tones...




this was the type of color I wanted to achieve to match the fireplace on the opposite wall...



we discussed adding a design, but opted against it...

loved the texture on this wall...

oohhhh, even looks good in the Kitchen!

neat individually varied tones...

Here is the final product:

Let's not forget what we started from:

in case you wondered what it looked like "BEFORE"...plain cream wall

What do you think?  You would have to see it in person...it absolutely looks and feels real!  I am tickled pink red with it!  Thanks Adrianne for a great job!!!


She started this back in the summer and finished it early fall.  I am just now getting around to posting the pictures!  Please forgive me for being behind in one of many things.

you know your sick when...

~ you don't care to check your email
~ when just to take a shower makes you so exhausted, you go back to bed and pull the covers up over your head
~ you are tired of fighting the sickness on your own
~ the cough gets worse and you don't care
~ nothing sounds good to eat
~ when you have done nothing (almost literally) all week other than eat and sleep and though this bothers you, you know you have no choice
~ you can't focus to read a book and any music is too loud no matter the volume; makes your mind go crazy
~ you can stare outside for an undetermined amount of time and it is okay, it makes peace in your soul
~ you miss people, but not enough to pick up the phone, takes to much energy
~ you hardly remember what day it is, then again, you don't want to remind yourself because then the facts are facing you as to how many days have been wasted doing NOTHING!!!


yah...I have been sick.  I went and had the antibiotic my client gave me Wednesday filled last night at the pharmacy.  I will be better, just give me a few days, in the meantime, I will sleep some more and maybe have dreams about resuming the blogging that has been suffering of late for various reasons...

Winter Snow 2011

Last night/today we got snow...the second time this week, but the biggest so far of the season...

Bartlett Pear Trees in my front yard

look at the pot...that gives you an idea of how much snow we got on top of the ice and snow from 3 days previously...

looking up the street...

the backyard and pool...

it was 14* at 11am, can you imagine what the water temperature was???

love the snow on the bowie (chlorine container)...makes it look like a hat!

the snow was so sparkly...and the sun wasn't even out yet!

bushes and snow...

the tree outside my bedroom window...

an icy cold day in Texas...

...and I mean COLD!  It is Day 2 of an Icy Snowy Cold day in Texas!  I slept in till 10am only to wake up to a freezing house and no power. It would have been one thing, but when your body hurts all over and you feel like crud and want a hot cup of tea and can't have one, life is not too peachy. I hate to complain because we have things so good but I really didn't want to deal with that! I posted on Facebook that I was without power and a x-co-worker posted that they were doing rolling blackouts for about 15minutes to conserve energy. She told me that she thought I would want to know since I don't have a TV. I thanked her and told her it had been out for 3 hours so far (I learned that from a neighbor I texted messaged after texting her, Auntie Con and Sylvia). I then got a text from the girls at Dr. C's office letting me know that they were in today (2 of them were) and could I bring their checks. I said sure but then got to thinking how was I going to get my car out of the garage with no power? I tried for 20minutes to get the stupid thing unlatched, in the dark with a flashlight. No success. In frustration, frozen cold, no ounce of energy left in my body, I came back in the house, crawled under the covers wanting to cry.  I layed there and then texted Sylvia back that it didn't work. She said she would come help me.  I waited like 10minutes and she didn't come, so I went back out and tried again for like 10minutes.  I gave up.  I just couldn't get it unlatched.  Sylvia arrived, she was really kind...totally made my day and brought me a cup of HOT TEA!!!  I was a bit bent out of shape as it had been 2 hours and I had gotten nothing done and I was completely drained and exhausted! Sylvia got it unlatched on the second or third try...still have no clue what I was doing wrong and how she so easily got it done.  I then left for my clients office.  In one way, the driving conditions were decent, in another way, I have never seen them like this in Texas. Even last winter's ice/snow over December Camp was nothing like this year! The roads were slick and frozen even in the middle of the day, course the temperatures never got very high so it wasn't possible for it to thaw. I did fine, but saw several spin outs and wrecks. I am amazed at how many don't know how to drive during these times. I find they are either dangerously cautious, or drive way too fast for the conditions, and fail to watch for the other driver's mistakes.  I delivered payroll to Dr. C's office. He was concerned about how sick I sounded, so he listened to my chest, said I am wheezing (which I knew) and wrote me a script for an antibiotic. He said to fill it if I am not better tomorrow or the next day or if I get worse. I ended up hanging out at the office just to get warm and check my email since I had no internet at the house with not having any power. Even though I have wireless internet, it doesn't work if the hub doesn't have power and I can't check certain emails or my work email yet on my cell phone, plus it eats up battery fast and it was draining really quickly with all I had going on via texts and phone calls and internet usage for the morning. I charged my phone to and from the office since I didn't know when my power would be back on. I then stopped at Panda Express on my way back to get some hot food! It wasn't exactly what I was in the mood for, but I needed something warm and couldn't think of anything good or fast or close to the freeway that inspired me. I also went to the post office and mailed what should have gone out on Monday. All in all, I ended up being without power for a bit over 6 hours. It did not quit for 2 hours when it came back on. I had a fire this afternoon and it felt good to get real warm. I am now out of firewood. I have been trying to save money and felt it wasn't "a need" to have a fire in the house, so I hadn't bought more. This will teach me to always have a good stash as you don't know what kind of weather you will have and in light of all my appliances and house being electric only, I need to have some way to stay slightly warm.  Being sick, cold and not able to have HOT food was a whole new experience today.

verse to reflect on...

But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. 

- I Timothy 6:6 NASB

Contentment isn’t guaranteed when we get what we want, but when we want what we have.

Quotes

1. Free your heart from hatred.


2. Free your mind from worries.


3. Live simply.


4. Give more.


5. Expect less.

Quotes

Courage faces fear and thereby masters it.  – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quotes

People tend to make rules for others and exceptions for themselves.

thought...

I had a conversation with a friend this week...she told me that life is more complicated than it needs to be...been thinking about this the last few days. It is so true!

What are you doing to make it Simple? Uncomplicated? Peaceful?

Quotes

You can't manage time....everyone gets the same amount and it never changes no matter what you do! Time is like a suitcase, some people just know what to pack and others don't ever have enough room. Some people try to pack other peoples suitcase for them.....not good.  Have the vision and knowledge to pack wisely!  - Jonathon Smith

thought...

I am so ready for new events...new changes...new things to look forward to...new drama...forgot, that only comes with the new heaven & new earth!

Quotes

We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.  - Jim Rohn, Motivational Coach

thought...

His plan is perfect, and mine is not. His plan has all the answers, mine does not. I must have faith...I must trust...I must rest so that I can have peace.

verse to reflect on...

You will never exhaust God with your worries. You will never reach the end of his ability to hear or handle your fears. You will never disappoint him with the amount of times you cast your anxiety on him.  Why?  Because he cares for you, he cares for me, he cares for us! 

I Peter 5:7  Putting all your troubles on Him, for he takes care of you.   [BBE]
I Peter 5:7  Casting all your anxiety upon Him, for he careth for you.  [ASV]

Quotes

If you work hard at your job, you can make a living; but if you work hard on yourself, you can make a fortune. 
–Anonymous