Monday, June 30, 2008

Blah, blah, blah.

I don't have much to post about...work has been really hard this last week, lots of challenges and learning experiances.

I have been so enjoying not having to go to school and work and it's caused me to become LAZY! I have barely touched my gardens this year and I have yet to plant my window boxes or hanging baskets. At least I made the first step and bought all the annuals to go in my planters....they're just chillin' on my back patio waiting.

Trevor is starting his full sleeve tattoo tonight. That should produce an interesting story or two and rev my blogging engine. I'll post pics tomorrow.

As for today, I am heading over to a friends for yoga and then I'm going a little North to a farm called Ginger Blossom. It's s uper neat place that sells importes rugs, clothes, furniture, and home goods from all over the world. The woman who owns the place teaches yoga in the farm field on Sunday mornings and grows organic produce. What could be better than that?!

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Flickr Meme



1. Mice Parade – Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir, 2. a fairy cake, 3. drilling, 4. Beautiful old lady from Darap(Sikkim) village, 5. Eddie Vedder with Kings of Leon 28 June 2007, 6. Orange Wine, 7. Enter, 8. Handmade chocolate cupcakes filled with blueberry cream and topped with dark chocolate ganache and some more of these absolutely delicious wild blueberries, 9. Cute Calf !, 10. Watching the fireworks, 11. You And I Fly A Ship Seeking The Warm Unending Sky, 12. Fire ! / Argentina

I've seen these collages of photos before...but NEVER knew how to make one until I was over at Green Style Mom and saw her Flickr Meme. What a great idea....I had fun exploring Flickr in a way I have never tried before.

I hope you try it out and let me know if you do it....so I can see YOUR Meme too!

Try it yourself with the Mosaic Maker

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name? Kristin
2. What is your favorite food? Cake
3. What high school did you go to? Mundelein High School
4. What is your favorite color? Red
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Eddie Vedder
6. Favorite drink? Sangria
7. Dream vacation? Sweden
8. Favorite dessert? Delicious Chocolate Cake
9. What you want to be when you grow up? A Mama
10. What do you love most in life? My Family
11. One Word to describe you? Seeking
12. Your flickr name? T&K Cannon

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Dare to.....LIVESTRONG

You may have noticed that the bathing suit challenge is missing from the side bar over there---->

That's because I suck. I suck at taking care of myself. I excel at taking care of others, considering their lifestyles and how they need to change and what I can do to support them, caring for sick and sometimes dying people, caring for my husband who is a cancer survivor and a newly diagnosed type I diabetic.

I just can't manage to watch what I am eating....monitor how I am physically doing. This BREAKS MY HEART. I have regressed in my health habits and I have to change or else I am going to age ungracefully and feel like shit when I am 40. Even better, the heart attack trifecta of diseases run in my family: high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease. I will die much younger than my goal of 100 years old if I keep this up. I know that we can't control how long we live our lives, but we can certainly do things daily to prolong our stay and make it richer.

This is one of the reasons why I have taken the LIVESTRONG Dare to become healthy again.
Here's a description of the program from the LIVESTRONG website, "OUR MISSION: DARE TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE
We believe everyone has the power to make their life better. Our members are people who want to take responsibility and give 100 percent to achieve everyday victories to help themselves and then help others.
Demand Media and the Lance Armstrong Foundation built LIVESTRONG.COM as the definitive daily health, fitness and lifestyle destination. Through trusted content, interactive tools and an engaged community, LIVESTRONG.COM will help people take action to make the most of their life, their time, their body and their world."

This website allows me to plug in my daily activity and food eaten and does magical calculations! I can see calories, protein, fat, and carbs eaten in pie chart form! I can use a cool little gage to "rate" how well I do each day at working towards my "DARES": Lose Weight & Exercise Regularly. There are tons of articles and experts writing on all sorts of health related topics and a huge community of people just like me trying to better themselves.

I have always identified with the LIVESTRONG mission...and have owned a thousand bijillion LIVESTRONG bracelets since the very beginning of Lance Armstrong's campaign. Part of me did this because I am passionate for the search for a cure for cancer and also because I want to jump Lance's bones. Sorry, I'm just being honest! At one time we even had a Lance Armstrong poster on the side of our fridge for me to drool over each morning. My very good friend Grace sent it to me and Trevor allowed me to worship it for about a year and then mandated that it be removed.

Anyhow, here is my first "blog" post on my LIVESTRONG website(I haven't yet figured out how connect the feed to my new
LIVESTRONG challenge sidebar thingy ----> )

Hopefully my recently re-adopted LIVESTRONG bracelet will remind me of the biggger picture and my goals each day as I work my way through this challenge.



I will accomplish this goal if it KILLS me. I thank you all for supporting me through my schizophrenic quest for health. Your comments and words of encouragement really have helped motivate me and I hope you continue to read and support from afar.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

And this anger is after and HOUR AND A HALF OF YOGA.

I am the woman gritting her teeth behind you in line at Target as you bust out your CHECKBOOK and proceed to use six g-damn gift cards.

I am the one burning a hole in your back with my beady little eyes as you take your sweet ass time WRITING OUT A CHECK.

Seriously? You are the same age as me! You MUST have heard of these things called DEBIT CARDS. My God, woman. I am baffled by you. I want to rip that checkbook out of your hands and burn it. RIGHT HERE ON THE CONVEYOR BELT.
I bet those stupid ass checks have puppies and/or kittens on them.

FUCK.

Who is still doing this? WHO, besides my Mother??

Friday, June 13, 2008

Winds of Terror.

Growing up, I lived in a house built by my Dad on a Lake. It's one of my favorite places on Earth despite what I'm about to tell you. The house is nestled in amongst the tall trees, making windy storms somewhat frightening for my Dad who is always trying to protect us.
Whenever there was a storm that produced strong winds, my Dad would rip us from our beds and herd us down into the basement....waaaaay in the back by the furnace room away from ALL windows (our basement was a walkout) with all the necessary gear to live a comfortable life holed up in the furnace room for a week or two. I remember these moments like they were yesterday...I remember being asleep and then terrified for my life as we skipped every other stair in a mad dash to get to the furnace room to sit on the cold floor and dream about what sort of hellish fate we faced. Would it be a tornado that swirls us into the next county? A flash flood that would drown us all in that small room? A firey tree, struck by lightening...crashing into the house smashing us AND setting us on fire?!!

The only time I ever felt safe sleeping in stormy weather was when I was deamed old enough to move into the bedroom in our finished basement. Nestled away, where the only evidence of storm was the rain dripping on a vent...making sweet pitter patter noises. The thunder and lightening didn't even scare me because it would have to penetrate throught the floors above me...and THAT would never happen! I was safe!

Those moments have translated into a very strong adult fear of storms. The house I live in now, with my husband, is a little old 1940's Cape Cod nestled in amongst very large trees. Trees that would fall onto my house and squash me in my sleep (were I sleep in the TOP floor!) if they were blown down by storms. Lately, we have had a lot of thunder, lightening, 70 mile an hour winds, and sideways falling rain. This rain pounds the window next to my side of the bed and wakes me up. I wake in a state of panic, shouting unintelligible commands to my husband to get down into the basement. He, apparently, is not phased by the fact that at any moment we could be pinned beneath a 10,000 lb mature tree gasping our last breaths and saying our last "I love you's". He is not scared by this thought and just continues to sleep peacefully as I stumble out to the living room, do a quick check of The Weather Channel to get a preview of my possible fate, and then scamper down into the basement with the dog, sit on my treadmill in the dark with an AM radio, a blanket, and my cell phone while the dog pants in fear at my side.

I'm thinking that this is something I might want to work on BEFORE I have kids and perpetuate The Cycle Of Storm Insanity.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Last Day of Vacation

We woke up....I drove to Black Mountain to pick up brunch for the three of us at the Morning Glory Cafe. I got Dad's Famous Fish Tacos...I'm a sucker for good fish tacos. We ate on the deck, the mountain wind blew...and then Megs friend came to pick her up to take her off to Wellspring Camp were Meg will be the Field Staff Supervisor for the summer. It was her first day and she had a lot of work to do so we said our good byes....and then she left. Heavy Heart.

Lark and I putzed around the house for a bit and headed off to the airport. On the way we stopped and bought a bucket of fresh picked strawberries from the sweetest old man on the side of the road.


I could barely understand what he was saying between his southern drawl and the wet ball of chew in his lip....but Lark seemed to understand him and we left with a big bucket of sweet tender strawberries and headed into town for one last stop.

Mmmmm. I had been eyeing this place the entire trip but we never seemed to find the time to stop. I was determined to enjoy a treat before leaving...so we stopped in and I slipped in to bliss with a Coconut Cream Cupcake from The Sisters McMullen Cupcake Corner. Sweet Mother Of Pastry Heaven. Lark and I enjoyed our treats and drove peacefully to the airport. I hugged her goodbye...I grabbed my luggage...and with a full tummy and a fulfilled heart...I flew home to Chicago with cherished memories and time spent with some very special people in a very special place.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Day 4 of Vacation!

This day, we drove a few hours to The Nantahala River, rented a boat from the Nantahala Outdoors Center, and went whitewater rafting! Lark, Meg's lady, is an Outward Bound instructor and Meg and I both have had skads of outdoor education...so we felt pretty comfortable on our own. I say "pretty", because it's been almost 5 years since the last time I whitewater rafted in Alaska...and I'm not the most comfortable in fast moving water. But, I adapted and had a great time. The day started out mellow, then we stopped for a picnic lunch that Lark packed, and then we finished the day in a downpour of rain...but it felt good to have rain pelt my face while on a river, surrounded by The Smokies. It was beautiful....just what the doctor ordered. (of course, with a dry boot on my foot to protect my fresh tattoo. After, I peeled the boot off and hobbled over to bathrooms and received my first "stranger" tattoo compliment...I must say, it felt really good, even though that's not why I got it)

We finished the river in 3 hours, changed into warm clothes and snuggled up in the car for the hour drive back to Asheville. We ate carrot sticks & Reese's Pieces, listened to The Postal Service, and enjoyed the Mountain scenery.

After a warm shower at Meg's house we headed to her friend Maggie's for Maggie's 30th Birthday celebration. We ate poodle cakes,



played Root Ball & cards, drank good beer, and sat on the porch with friends on teal Adirondack chairs and enjoyed good conversation. I met some folks who went to Prescott College at the same time I did...we had fun reminiscing...everyone was so friendly, I never felt like a stranger.

We headed home...got into our jammies...and slept.
A long hard sleep.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Gone To Yoga

Yoga, Yoga, Yoga.

How I missed you. How my heart ached without you.
Once again, you bring peace to my hectic life.

I resumed regular yoga practice last week. It has been amazing. I didn't realize how badly my body and mind missed it until that first day and I couldn't believe I survived without it. Marlene, my instructor, and I talked after class and she told me that even the most dedicated of yogis need a break sometimes...that it makes you realize how vital the practice is to your life.

Boy, was she right.

"To allow ourselves to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence." - Thomas Merton


Will Be Back Later,