Today's best 'lobsterquotes'

Lobsterquotes is the twitter handle of an optimist (I'm assuming) who posts inspirational quotes.  I can't click "favorite" fast enough to save all of the ones that catch my attention. 

I had a good evening with the kids, forcing myself to breathe peacefully and FOCUS on the end of the kids movie we were watching, rather taking the opportunity to fret about work/legal matters.  And if my mind wandered there, I thought healthy thoughts about what a healthy perspective would look like.

So when I opened my computer after they both went to bed, each twitter lobsterquote came with a calm breathe that took absolutely no thought or effort, and with a calm little wave of endorphines.

These are the ones I could "favorite" fast enough to save (gems, all of them).

A contented man is always rich~proverb

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back~Chinese Proverb

If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you'll die a lot of times~Dean Smith

Family is a haven in a heartless world~Lasch

If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought~Peace Pilgrim

We cannot rise higher than our thought of ourselves~ Orison Swett Marden

Happiness lies, first of all, in health~George William Curtis

Little chickadee 'medicine'

You definitely have to hear this song to fully appreciate it, but the words are wonderful.  A (semi) local npr kids show, the pea green boat plays it often and we've had time to listen to the show after school lately (like right now). Luckily, another blogger found it a shame that the lyrics are not on line and posted them (http://ayoureadorable.livejournal.com/4944.html).  I seperated the lines where there are pauses as far as I remember....at least these are the spots where there's a little pause when I sing it in my head.

I want to collect these kinds of little trinkets this month in honor of national health blogging month.

She is only, a little chickadee
Just a common backyard bird

And she knows
no care or worry
She is happy in this world

Some of Katie's Wedding Photos....my little shutter bug

Before the wedding, I was talking to the photographer about a girlscout that is passionate about taking pictures and he was telling me that he has seen amazing pictures taken by kids.  Katie had started taking lost of picture in Vegas, running out of space and batteries each day.  At the wedding, Judy Edwards, a fellow bridesmaid, told Katie she could take as many pictures as she wanted on her fancy camera.  When Katie really got going, she didn't put the camera down for hours.  Judy had about 5 minutes with her camera, but she was comfortable with Katie going to town.  and she started emailing selected photos the very next day.  She's amazing.

But Erik, the wedding photographer (photos posted in previous post about elegance and cfids) was right...I couldn't beleive what I was seeing.  Katie's pictures are really something.  He commented multiple times that she may have found a career and that we will need to be buying her some good equipment.  This is just a smattering so far.

8:48 pm, October 22....my third recovery

Me dancing at Cheryl and Miguel's reception,
photographed by my daughter

At that moment, a wave of certainty washed over me.  One big, invigorating, epiphany-style, see clearly through the CFS-fog wave.

I have little moments like this from time to time, but three moments so far (including this one, at a random moment during Cheryl's wedding reception) have brought monumental waves of certainty that I will be okay.

The first was watching the sea turtles the day we first saw them this June in Waikiki and the second was watching them roll in the waves at the same spot in September.  These moments are gripping, like the rays coming down from the top of a fancy cathedral and falling into the hands or onto the faces of statues of angels and saints when you are a twelve year old being raised catholic, or focusing on a rare species you are dying to see and having it cross your path just then.

Kids in Vegas Part 2 (video, photos, Christopher's hat, lion king tickets, and 3 mile goal)



Katie doing math by the pool



Monday was our first full day, and we sat through the time share gig, as planned, to earn 3 free lion king tickets.  It was still worth it, but of course it went long.  The kids were awesome for the first hour and a half of what was supposed to be a half hour (not that we ever thought it would be that short).  I did get a bit agitated with this one becasue my patience with subjective math is pretty short.  But its comical to watch them turn to Greg, as if he'd be more likely to accept their creative reaoning.  Trust me people, if I'm not buying what you're saying, you lost my husband a long time ago.

Our goal was to get to the Mandalay bay to book our seats and see as much as we could along the way.  It was a lot of fun zig zagging through the crowd and looking up at everything.  Christopher's hat disappeared in the Mandalay and he was pretty distraught until we (very luckily) found it.  The kids didn't know we where we were headed or why, and Katie couldn't stop trying to get me to spill the beans.  The video below shows her face when I finally told her.  They were pretty excited to have tickets to the Lion King for Christopher's birthday (Tuesday).

We're here.....Kids in Vegas Part 1 (video)

Sunday night we made it to Vegas.  The craziest part is how crazy it wasn't to get there.  We left our front porch at 11 am and were checking into our hotel by 5 pm.  Christopher cried when we landed because I mentioned that Vegas was in the desert and he didn't want to be in a desert for his birthday.  But now that he's seen the pool he is completely over it and back to being excited.

We packed what food we could and checked a regular sized suitcase and one of our carry ons instead of taking just carry ons.  In addition to saving money on food, it was nice to have less with us from plane to plane and it was nice to be able to protect my bridesmaids dress, which made it nicely to Vegas.

We signed up for a 30 minute time share schpiel in order to get 3 free lion king tickets and free breakfast.  It will save us at least $160 and let us see a show, which we would definitely not be able to do otherwise.

Heaven is a cookie

Last week Greg made 4 giant chocolate chip cookies, one for each of us.  They were non-dairy, so I could eat them too.  My first chocolate chip cookie in a very, very long time.  It was so amazingly wonderful.  I was full after 1/3 of it, but managed to eath the whole thing.  I haven't been doing all that well with sugar, but this was very worth it.

Then, yesterday, we went out to lunch for Greg's birthday at a new restaurant in town.  The panini I got had goat cheese in it.  I had it without the full amount of cheese, since this was an experiment.  I am intolerant to dairy, probably as a CFS symptom, and also casein (a dairy protein that's in everthing, even non-dairy products, because they put it back into non-dairy foods).  I seem to have done just fine with it--no noticeable stomache pain yesterday, a little bit this morning but I'm not sure its even related.

So....soon I will try pizza!  Yay!

Also, I ordered a latte, but they didn't have soy...they only had almond milk, which is soooo much better.  Their almond milk was frozen, so they had to give me chocolate almond milk, which was terrific with their peppermint flavor/syrup that they make themselves.  Plus, it took him a while to bring it out, so the best latte I've had in months was FREE!

Food is wonderful.

The picture above is a non-dairy mocha cupcake I had in Hawaii that was also heaven, though it took me three days to eat it all.

Video for Greg ~ Northern sky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rea3GN5rwGs