B IS FOR BLACK BEAUTY

Today my post if for my beautiful black flat-coated retriever ANNIE!
TAKEN: 2015,2016,2017,2018

A IS FOR APRIL ADJUSTMENT

Well, I'm definitely making an adjustment this April and I will go on the record with the fact that it's not the kind of forceful treatment you get when you land at a Chiropractic office. 

You see, it's that time of year again and I had quietly convinced myself that I wasn’t going to participate in the April A to Z Blogging Challenge again. Yet, when I got home from the cottage this morning and it was actually April 1st, I realized I truly wanted to.

So, even though I missed their master list registration (that closed yesterday) I figured I would once again forge ahead and play by my own rules; which coincidentally work especially well in my favour!

As I have in the past, I am going to post everyday. I will post where expected for the challenge (email  subscribers & Google+ peeps will be updated in real time) but I am only going to post to Facebook & Twitter once a week.  That way, you can easily scroll through the posts weekly, eliminating the feeling that you are being hammered with my challenge posts daily.

It's hard to believe that I was eighteen months into this silly electronic journey before I decided to register and get in the ring with this specific group of writers five years ago. In that moment, I had been seriously motivated by a couple of people (that no longer blog) and decided to challenge myself. 

Here's to my one hundred and thirty first consecutive April posts and my to extremely late decision to jump into this difficult challenge again. Here's hoping my minor 'April Adjustment'  in the sharing  department keeps my readers both interested and engaged this month. ~ Cheers, Rhondi.

Admiration. Ambition. Absenteeism. Adios Amigos. Amazing... Resulted in an April Adjustment!
TAKEN: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017

Here are the pictures from my last five April 1st posts.
2013: Admiration    (As you can see I hadn’t embraced how my camera truly fit in yet.)
2014: Ambition        (Dot proving to me that ambition is a true key to success.)
2015: Absenteeism   (Reflective that the two bloggers that got me started, had quit.)
2016: Adios Amigos (Starting by saying goodbye, as I'd fled to Mexico to learn to surf.)
2017: Amazing          (The selfie I shared was taken the night before my very first April A- Z post in 2013. What an amazing outlet this has truly become!)

MY CUP RUNNETH OVER

This morning I awoke and decided to stay in bed simply because I could. You know those kind of days, when you wholeheartedly embrace being a fornicating canine? Anyway, as the morning progressed closer to the noon, I text my daughter and asked if she would like to join me for lunch: she said yes.

As I landed at her apartment to pick her up, she appeared to be walking toward me carrying a relatively large cardboard box. I knew it wasn’t her laundry, because that is usually presented to me in a very task specific kind of basket, not a box. So, with my curiosity piqued and her wearing a cat shit eating grin, she arrived at me and announced, “...I have something for you.” Inside were more of the very treasured Petro-Canada glasses I obsessively collect!

Thanks to everyone for every effort
to help grow my special collection. *hugs*
TAKEN: MARCH 17th, 2018

Being in the middle of town and opening that box today made me realize that my more than decade long act of collecting these beautiful holder of anything liquid (in memory of my father) has evolved into a true tag-team effort. 

This lot came from a blog reader and personal friend of Staccs that I don't really know. So I want to say, yet again, that I am truly grateful to all that call, buy, deliver, and even text message location deets; while truly remaining on the lookout.

The interesting twist to this post is that when I got home and sat down to begin to write this one, I did what 99% of us do when we sit down at a computer, I checked my Facebook.  As soon as it populated, I discovered it was the anniversary of the death of a man that I spent a phenomenal amount of time with he and his family during my teen years.

Looking at the photo she'd posted and reading her tribute to her dad, embraced everything I would say to mine if I could. That I love him, and miss absolutely everything about him. Every... single... day.

I know there are so some naysayers out there may think the glass collecting obsession is silly, but it doesn't phase me. Instead,  if I could offer one vantage point of logic to their negativity it's that what they don’t know is, in the very minute I hold one of these new to me special treasures in my hand, I'm in a wonderful moment with my Dad. Today I could hear his laughter in the car with my daughter and I; and there's nothing even remotely silly about that.

Cheers to both these awesome guys today. Hope they are sharing a burger & a beer.

Not to mention having a good laugh about my asinine glass collection!

MADE YOUR APPOINTMENT YET?

So, it’s been a little over a year since I began my quest for a clean bill of health. It started in my family doctor's office with a clear vision of me needing to establish a starting point for my mid-life body, giving me the ability to embrace it for the next twenty five plus years.

It immediately kicked off with a ton of blood work that quickly led to a series of ultrasounds, smears, specialists & 'oscopy procedures; and although it took longer than I'd ever imagined, all have proven to have been very necessary.

My point is that I had an outpatient procedure yesterday in hospital about 30 miles south of me. It was at my request, as we had ruled out the medication dealing with what was a definite growth wasn't having the overall impact that was expected.

Because I was the one pushing for the procedure, I didn't find the idea as personally stressful as say if I’d been given less than a week's notice and told it had to happen as soon as possible. In hindsight, I wish I would have been more mentally prepared and done some clear research to understand what I was about to endure. 

Who knew OHIP supplied very sexy paper bracelets
for enduring one of their life changing spa experiences?!
TAKEN: FEBRUARY 22nd, 2018

As silly as this may read, I believed that I was going to pop in and out of the outpatient department as fast as one does locally when they have a mammogram, which wasn't the case.

I should have picked up my doctors' vibe when he asked me, twice, 'if I would prefer to have a general anesthetic' and not remain awake.

I declined because I felt I had prepared myself for having the lump removed, yet what I didn't know was how painful and stressful being awake for the procedure would be. I actually think I went into a little bit of shock... Because by the time I dressed and said my goodbyes, I began to shake all over. I narrowly managed to get into the car before I had a total meltdown. I cried all the way home from the sheer physicality & emotional anxiety of what I'd just endured.

Now that I have had time to calm down, I don't regret going forward with the procedure. I was a tad surprised with the number of stitches I received and that it would take close to a month for them to heal but the experience is all a part of the bigger picture and my own philosophy, which is that no one should ever take their health for granted.

If I have to take a glass half full moment from the experience, it would have to be that I am so very grateful that I have always been aware of my body and any changes that are happening. Between self-examination and the simplistic generality of Web-MD, I hope to have stayed ahead of my biopsy results being cancerous.

If you haven't kept up on your bill of health, make that appointment today. If my post doesn't spell it out, understand that there are a million reasons why you should with the #1 reason being the single most important one of all.

... You're freaking worth it!

MY BEAUTIFUL MIDLIFE BLANKET

I was texting back and forth yesterday morning with a trusted confidant and we began reminiscing about the summer of 2012. For a number of varying reasons we cheerfully remember that time, most importantly because it was the very first time I’d lived alone at the cottage & commuted to work since its purchase in 1999. In hindsight, I guess you can say that was the summer I officially learned to sew; simply because that summer was the first time I'd ever invested in mending... me.

It’s not like I was broken per se, more to the point that when the twins left for post secondary school in September of 2011, I felt a sense that my life was unraveling. The point being, when the nest empties I don’t think anyone can truly get to know themselves (what they want, nor what they need as a newly independent person) until they make the effort to try and figure it out. Midlife gave me the one thing I’d never had the luxury of before: time.

All these years later, I realize that nothing truly prepares us for midlife. And when that phase crept into my peripheral vision, I honestly would not have classified myself as unhappy. More elated, embracing a feeling of euphoria because I no longer had to focus on everyone around me, and could finally get to focus on my own needs.

It was in that moment, that I looked in the mirror and realized that I had no idea who I was. I remember my immediate assessment on the outside was that I was overweight, yet on the inside I realized I was resentful for being underappreciated. That very harsh personal reality hit like a ton of bricks… and trust me, I did NOT see it coming.

So, as things in my life began to quickly unfurl, I took matters into my own hands. I don’t know what I would have done without my very best girlfriend. She was a lifesaver. She had already survived something similar, so she was my beacon. Thank goodness I didn’t have to pay CJ for all of her hugs and words of support, I would have gone bankrupt!

The summer of 2012. Puddin' was just a wee pup and Dot got to spend extra paddle time alone with me!
TAKEN: JUNE, JULY & AUGUST 2012

The point of my post is that I don't dwell on that time and I have no regrets. I made some big personal moves, learned how to live my life on my terms, and over the eighteen months that followed suffered gut-wrenching heartache I don’t wish on anyone else to have to experience. At the end of the day, I came out the other side more vibrant and exceedingly more comfortable with the skin I’m in. If you’re in my life it’s because you deserve to be, if you’re not, you ultimately know & understand why.

Owning who you are is a lot harder than you may think. For years I just folded like a lawn chair until I would explode with frustration. Now a days, I wholeheartedly own what I want and openly communicate where I’m going: with no regrets.

A wise man once told me that life experiences are the threads that all have a part in our final blanket, which is very true. The other side of that coin is, who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

I taught myself to sew a beautiful midlife blanket six years ago... Didn’t I ?!

FEBRUARY, PLEASE BE KIND

FUN FACT #1: Did you know that there are roughly sixty four shades of blue?
FUN FACT #2: In the past, I've suffered a varying levels of many during February.

As I always try and own the second fun fact, I can’t help but go on record with the thought that this past month of January, felt like a really tough year. As we roll into February, I'll enthusiastically start the new calendar month with a smile on my face, simply because I've officially made it. 

When the children left for post secondary school, we originally began travelling in February. Not sure why really, outside the fact that we'd never done so & everybody in our neck of the tundra seemed to. A couple of years in, we took the twins and the pups and rented a pet friendly house in South Carolina. I couldn't believe how that early jolt of vitamin D aided with my symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder.

As that year rolled into the next, I soon discovered that we could very economically head into the light at the fall time change, skip mid-winter travel, wait until my birthday in spring and essentially get away twice for the price of an all inclusive week in February. So that's what our travel timing shifted to.

Then, this time last year, I took my daughter on a quick 4 night weekend jaunt to Cuba. It was intended to serve as quality time for the both of us, but at the end of the day, those 4 nights made the world of difference for both of us personally. 

By 1 pm that first full day on the beach, I could feel myself awaking from my winter slumber. But it wasn't just me, it was my daughter too. She was participating around the pool, running along the beach, and embracing every single minute. 

A weekend win on every possible level, it was upon my return that I realized that moving forward, some similar type of February mini vaycay was something I needed. So I baked a value into my annual travel budget and Bob's your uncle; I was on my way.

This year my daughter isn't coming with as she's spending this weekend in Ottawa with friends, skating on the Rideau Canal and enjoying the city in general. Instead, I am taking my other Sweetie; my husband, and we are headed to Bahamas for the very first time.

Photographic proof of my daughter kicking February's ass....Old school!
TAKEN: FEBRUARY 2017 & FEBRUARY 2018

I booked it Black Friday for less than what it would have cost us to return to Cuba for that same four day stint I did last year. The only downside is that I had to take a hammer to my piggy bank this morning.... Why?

Because when doing my due diligence, I figured out why it's "Better In The Bahamas." Everything has at least four dollar signs attached ($$$$) even the Starbucks in the lobby. With my birthday trip booked and the planning of our 30th anniversary in June underway, I don't care. We are totally worth it and we are gonna have a blast.

Not to mention... I get yet another brand new stamp in my passport!

Giddy UP!!

ONLY YOU CONTROL YOUR SHINE

I am a firm believer that only those whom truly care about you can hear you when you’re quiet.

I  also wholeheartedly believe that great friendships, and relationships to some extent, never actually end. Instead, it’s like they go into hibernation until both are ready to participate again. That, or until the overall effort is placed into a folder labelled life lessons learned; only for you to reflect upon when your life calls on you to verbalize to yourself about what NOT to do.

A cool streetlamp pic as I am walking to carpool
TAKEN: JANUARY 23th, 2018

My point is that I was sitting across from a co-worker today, sipping a bowl of soup, watching her describe a very unique and special friendship she'd had. It was amazing to watch. I'm not kidding, her entire face lit up and she was excited to be reminiscing.

In the end, she'd shared that her relocation & personal injury meant they had lost touch about two years ago. We finished our lunch, returned to the office and went back to business.

I couldn't help but continue to think about what she'd said. I grabbed my phone and walked over to her office. I showed her this picture, telling her its premise was to compliment a post I have been working on that speaks to exactly what we had discussed at lunch. I followed that with a very enthusiastic (picture the pompoms and cheerleader outfit folks)... "Get in touch with your friend. You never know where they are at in their life."

Any/all friendships & relationships are about finding a balance, and more importantly trust. I have a plethora of acquaintances in my day to day life, too many to name, and just a handful of true friends. You know the ones, that would unconditionally do anything for the other?

That may read a tad arrogant but I think Ed Sheeran explained it best in an episode of Carpool Karaoke, when he admitted that he had a cellphone for a about two weeks then no longer bothered to charge it. He said he would wake in the morning to fifty plus  messages and none of them would simply say: ‘hey, how are you?’

Instead, they would all be asking, ‘can I have this, can you lend me this, can you do this, can I get this?' Which he described as incredibly draining; and believe it or not, I can totally relate.

I have honestly stopped communicating with certain people because it became all about what they needed and nothing about overall balance. All they seemed to do was take take take. There would always be bait disguised as care, but their personal agenda was very evident.

In the end, I share with those I surround myself with something called 'my shine'. Truth be known, I stole the label about a year ago from my lunch mate today.

Though her personality makes mine look like an introvert, she's taught me a number of very valuable life lessons in a very short period of time.

I'm not bragging or anything but she & I are in true friend territory!

...and it's not just because we both like soup.

MY BEFORE THE SELFIE… SELFIE!

This coming March it will be 11 years since I formally became a social media junkie. As far fetched as this may read, I remember the day I got an official FB login and that’s the one I still use today. You see, the twins were barely teens and were telling me they wanted join this really neat thing called Facebook: my fixation kicked in.

My eldest was already online with My Space but when the twins were looking at jumping onto a bandwagon I knew nothing about, I decided to start to do my due diligence. Once I became a member, I remember that the pioneering group of us locally was small. All these years later, most of those folks still hit my newsfeed on a regular basis. 

My point is, this past week I sat with someone on our leadership team at work and had a great discussion, breaking down the aspects of social media and how said pieces fit strategically into our overall marketing approach. Explaining why I approach our/any audience the way I do, led to comment that he considered my mind a ‘vault of media marketing knowledge.’

After I quickly ran to my desk and returned with a ten dollar bill to thank him for his amazing compliment, we continued our discussion on how I handle privacy settings and how I approach individual platforms from a personal level. You see, he has discovered he’s resisted long enough and it was time he joined the masses.

I have about 5,000 people I interact with personally on Facebook alone, which doesn’t include the many businesses that have contracted me to optimize their online presence. Though I have shifted my focus in the last year, I am pleased to report that my strongest presence and best results comes from this electronic journal that went live November 20th, 2011. First and foremost because Google+ is my friend, blossoming primarily because I feed it content, to which I am pleased to report my views are in the millions. 

My 35mm picture taken with a timer.
(TAKEN: MARCH 2007)
CLICK HERE TO SEE MY FIRST SELFIE

As I sit here and think of how the blog content’s evolved since its inception (I chose for it to become more image driven) I decided to share the first profile picture I posted before selfies filled that space. It was taken with a 35mm camera, in my home office, with a timer. I needed a head shot for my business blog and I thought this was a valiant effort. 

Almost 11 years later, I had to laugh when I went back into my archived pics and noticed the cat on the desk behind me, the lamp on my assistants desk is missing its shade, and media clutter is stacked on the ledge; however, I absolutely love that I captured the picture of my dad and I in the top left.

Though I am pleased to report that I managed to crop the light bulb out of the photo for the blog: Facebook got the Full Monty!

More than a decade later, I was notified this week that 32,000 people have 'liked' my personal posts on Facebook... and it all started at this desk.

Wowza! Followed by a who the hell knew?

Not me, but I am certainly glad I've embraced all of the groundbreaking platforms.

FROZEN FUN WITH SWEETIE

At around 9:30am Saturday morning my phone chimed alerting me to an incoming text message from my daughter. ‘Let me know when you’re ready to go,’ it read.

I knew she was still in bed, so clearly the outdoor temperature didn’t matter to her. As far as she was concerned, we were headed on our bi-weekly trip to town. One of the coldest mornings on record and she decided to wake up early with an overwhelming amount of enthusiasm. (She can thank her fathers' DNA for that 'so not like her momma' trait.)

Armed with our lists of what we needed to accomplish, we hatched a plan. She needed a specific style of work pant, so we started by heading into the largest box store we have. We were both minding our own business, pushing our carts and getting what we needed, simply enjoying each other’s company: when out of the blue, coming toward us I spied one of her old high school chums. (Not the acquaintance type of chum you had a locker next to, but one you spent summer after summer with and to this day your families remain cordial.)

 
Anyway, with a great big cat shit eating grim on her face, my daughter spied her coming toward us. She turns to me and said ‘watch how she goes out of her way to avoid me.’ I watched and it was blatantly obvious.

It didn’t seem to phase my daughter. She explained how long the other'd been behaving this way and I found it quite sad. I suppose if the truth be known I felt sorry for the girl. My first instinct was she'd put far to much focus and energy on avoiding us, when walking by and saying nothing would have sufficed. Then again, we all know the skill of executing a true snub comes with both maturity and life experience.

My bestie enduring -30C so I could get the shot!
Armed only with a bluetooth touque, Sorel boots and a smile.
TAKEN: JANUARY  6th, 2018

By the time we'd exited our first stop & finished running around, we had decided she would come back to the house to grab some clothes she had left from when she last dog sat.

As we zoomed the backway to her apartment in the centre of town, I couldn't help but notice the amazing natural light of our frozen tundra.

I pulled into the park parking lot, grabbed my camera and headed toward the falls. As I trudged through the snow, I glanced over my shoulder to see my daughter following me. She followed the direction I gave, and headed out on the snowy dock ahead of me. This photo was just one of the results of our frozen fun; it's absolutely breathtaking.

I am so very fortunate to live and have a cottage in a town I love. When I look at the smile on my daughters face I realize that though she left, her returning has helped her hit her stride. She's surrounded love. That is except for the young blonde, with the 'I'm better than you attitude,' that we ran into at Wal-Mart.

I'm glad my Sweetie and I could talk about how her previous friends behaviour evolved and I could make her giggle as we tried to understand it. Knowing, after the fact, how the small idiosyncrasies evolved, her bizarre actions had me relating to a meme I posted on Instagram about a month ago that read...

Somewhere, somebody out there is thinking of you, and the tremendous impact you made on their life.

It's not me... I think you're an idiot!

WATER WAS DEFINITELY CHILLED

When I rose at 5am this morning, I immediately thought of my very good friend Sean. His standard joke for times when there was an extreme cold warning in effect was: ‘It was so cold outside this morning, that I saw a lawyer walking down the street with his hands in his own pockets.’ The reason that little ditty makes me smile’s because he was a lawyer. Taken too soon, I truly miss him. May he forever rest in peace.

My point being, when I woke up this morning it was -44C outside with the windchill, so I ended up staying home. Not because I couldn’t have gone to work, rather because our home was built in the late 1980’s, we have water intake pipes that run along an outside wall inside the garage. 

Again, nothing life altering, except the last time I heated the garage for the weekend during a deep freeze, the three day hydro bill was 600 bucks. Suffice is to say, I don’t take home 600 beans a day and this sucker's here 'til at least Sunday; so I was unanimously elected to keep the ice water running for the day.

It’s been a brutal week. After my December infusion of vitamin D, I usually manage to hit the ground running in the new year. You know, when most of the gloom is gone and the snow is bright white. But because the weather's been so cold, the only exercise I have managed to get is shoveling the driveway twice. (Noting that exercise, combined with my light therapy, is key to me keeping my seasonal affective disorder in check.)

Oh, my stupid SAD. Now that I'm aware, it makes me so very conscious of my overall ability to be a big hairy bitch this time of year. I have to be so regimented about my routine it feels like I should have been cast in the movie Groundhog Day.

At this point, I am just constantly grinding my teeth for the first of February to arrive, then, it will be full steam ahead to spring. I don’t expect you to understand if you don’t suffer but it is absolutely maddening that I feel that I can't wake up. I am serious when I admit that I just want to hibernate and it has nothing to do with being depressed.

I read somewhere that people don’t notice if it’s winter or summer if they are happy. 

I call bullshit. I’m very happy, yet I have enough common sense to know that when the hair in my nose freezes instantly it’s winter, and when my brain freezes fast it’s definitely summer; and said freeze is usually caused by a gigantic serving of tiger tail ice cream.

Ah, now I’m craving junk food. I can’t win! At least my snow shoveling photo ROCKS!!

Glass half full... right?!

Who other than me likes to shovel snow? I know, I suck!
TAKEN: JANUARY 3rd, 2018

REMEMBERING 2017

January: An amazing bonfire on the very first day of the year.

February: A long weekend jaunt to Cuba

March: Me...celebrating Spring!

April: My birthday trip to New Orleans!!

May: The murder of Wendy Boland

June: Finished a decade long project at the cottage.

July: Celebrated Canada 150

August: A beautiful wedding in the rain.

September: A team building fishing trip to the French River

October: Mourned the death of a Canadian icon.

November: Celebrated my Mother in Law's milestone 70th birthday

December: Ended my work year with a bunch of amazing people

Proud Mama Moment? Witnessing my son kill it in the finals of The Muskoka Voice singing competition.

She was one for the record books!
TAKEN: JAN-DEC 2017