January 16, 2013 Greetings My Friend, It is 5:00 in the morning as I write. My sleep does not seem to settle into a routine. About the time I think I have a routine a new one begins to take shape. At first it frustrated me. Now I roll with it. I seem to wake up hungry so I eat breakfast and do my morning computer stuff until I am tired and then I go back to bed and sleep the rest of the night. It works. It is what it is. I’ve truly learned “it is what it is” and I tend to run with it these days. I wanted to retire because I was tired so much and wanted to be able to sleep when I needed to and frankly that is what I’ve been doing. It is nice I had that option. The night time up and down does not scare me anymore. That feels wonderful. I now feel like a grown up girl. The days of fearing I’d be hurt are long gone and I sit in the quiet house enjoying DIY programs, writing, whatever. When I go back to bed I sleep the rest of the night’s sleep out and I wake up refreshed and ready to face the day. I then finish my morning routine, pray etc. and then tackle some housework or we run errands. It works and I love that our home is looking more picked up these days. I made chicken and dumplings yesterday. That felt good as well. I have not been cooking and now I enter back into being a cook again. Today will be a run day when I get up. We will go to the Chiropractor and over to the funeral home. It will be busy enough and that feels nice as well. I go for days at a time not getting dressed. I stay in my pajama’s all day and I don’t mind anymore. When my kids were young I did not like that feeling of not getting dressed. These days I am fine with that. I have finally trained myself to floss my teeth at night before bed. For some reason the act of flossing can set my stomach off and I’ve been trying to do it later in the day. With it being at bedtime I think this will work and I won’t miss like I often did. I still vomit but not like I was after the accident. Thank goodness. I may even go a couple of weeks without vomiting and frankly I’m very happy about that. My hiatal hernia plays havoc with my need to vomit. Junior is still asleep which is surprising to me. He is generally up at this time frame. He did start a class yesterday and my guess is it wore him out. Not all bad. He has wanted to take some sort of college class for a while now and yesterday he began his classes. For me, I am not ready to tackle classes as of yet anyway. Now that I have a housework routine in place I’d like to get exercise into place. With the cold weather I have found going for walks to be not so appealing. I have yet to get on the ellipse for any amount of time. I long for the walks down the road. For some reason they are soothing to me. I love to look at the trees, the mountains, the dogs running along with me and life tends to settle quietly in my mind as I walk. It will be warm enough soon enough to be outside again. I am anxiously looking forward to my walks again. I am much more content in the warm weather than I am in the cold weather. Out here in VA though the weather is much more tolerable and I still prefer to walk when it is not so cold and even icy at times. It did warm up this past week and I did take a walk up the steep hill and back and I noticed how out of breath I was. That bothered me and hopefully soon I will be back to walking again. As life continues to settle my guess is I will keep up with my exercise routines better. We are thinking about finding a dentist out here finally. We tended to go back to MI so we could see our friends and family. The last couple of visits we haven’t been able to connect with our family like we would have liked to and we think we may go back once or twice a year now. We were going 3 times because Junior has gum disease and the dentist wants to see him more often. Again I am feeling settled. It feels wonderful to me. I like the idea of each day doing a housework type routine. I love my morning quiet time with writing and praying and reading the Bible. We still run one or two days during the week and that feels nice. I love looking at a picked up house more as well. I love the TV area being off to the side of the front room with a partial wall up. When people come in they won’t see the TV area mess and I like that a lot. Junior is slowly working on the kitchen and dining room. So that should be taking shape soon and this girl is one happy camper. Mary Jane is pregnant. She is the cat that invited herself into our home with her young one. The two have rounded out our cat population to 5 cats. Our dogs have thinned out. My fear is they’ve met a coyote. They seem to realize that going potty in the house means they stay outside at night these days and we have fewer potty messes now. Finally! We are down to 4 dogs. I still can’t believe we have so many pets. I have never in my life lived with more than two pets at a time. I always felt having two pets kept the animals company while we worked all day. Still these babies are such a comfort. Phineas loves to sit in my lap and get petted on. Petey likes being playful and will try to pounce on my fingers underneath a blanket. Each has his own personality and we love them all. Yup life is good. Retirement gives me the chance to slow down my pace and do life at a pace I can handle. I love being around Junior all day most days. We don’t have to constantly be talking or interacting. I love knowing he is not far. It feels real nice. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet