Thanks to Shelly of This Eclectic Life for posting this on Facebook. This is not something I normally listen to, and every second into the song, I connected more and more with it. Old Time Feeling a good feeling, so is making new feelings to become old time feelings later.

Shelly is hosting a contest. You might want to check it out – just click on the link above for information.

!st Anniversary, waaaaay back then – in Key Largo, FL. Two exhausted belated honeymooners:

As some of you know, I decided a year or two ago that we would be married ninety years — we would only be one hundred and fourteen years old. I informed Leon of my decision, lol, and he agreed to go along with my plan. Assigning an end date to our marriage was not brilliant… so, I now add, “with option to renew”! Grin.

So far, so good. Day one of year thirty-seven was a good one.

We heard from the RV/solar tech! He should finish his work on Panoply this weekend. He had a family crisis – of the worst kind, and we told him to forget about our RV and use that time with his family. He did – and almost a full month later, he is one day’s work away from finishing the installation of our five (four new) solar panels, four new batteries, a controller, an inverter, etc. He is doing a few other items for us as well. It has been so long, it honestly, felt like we didn’t own an RV.

This put us way behind schedule – but humanity comes first.

(Listen up Hurricanes, we are not going to be ready to ‘run’ for at least another month. Too much more work to be done – and Leon’s clients have to take priority over building the slide out sofa bed frames, finding a sink and making it fit, and so on … and on… and on.)

May our days be filled with sun bright heart
our evenings lit by contentment’s glow
our nights silent in peaceful sleep.

We visited a recommended and long established auto upholsterer. I could tell the minute he saw Panoply, he didn’t really want to mess with it, but he kept us engaged in conversation for at least thirty minutes. Bottom line, he doesn’t want to put the upper carpet in with the screws and staples used by manufacturer, he insists the wool carpet I want to use (chemical and pesticide free) is too flexible not to glue and he only uses lacquer based glues. Now, he only looked at it from the door, that was my second clue. No matter how experienced, he should have at least looked at it closer.

He is convinced if we use a water-based non-toxic glue it won’t hold up to the summer heat. I told him I would rather have it fail years down the road and have to redo it than to have more toxins in the RV. He didn’t understand that, but then he has been breathing those glues for well over forty years. I don’t mind paying someone for their time, but his estimate of number of hours seemed insane. I could be wrong. Time will tell.

Mini rave, Yay:

• Found a company that can accelerate off gassing of formaldehyde (in theory?), waiting for a call back, no one local
• Spoke with the manufacturer of a radiant heating element, which in theory, cannot overheat. Can’t proceed until we decide if we are running it from solar or only with hookups
• Picked out a Flexsteel replacement driver and passenger seat, color undecided. We may color key them to the dark gray cab dash rather than with the maple cabinets since they will be curtained off most of the time we are stopped to conserve ac or heat.
• Found a company willing to build my weird chair should I go with a wild idea I had, though Leon stood behind me saying no no no no, but I caught him, lol.
• We are making time this week to tear out what carpeting we can get at, the shades, and passenger seat! Goodbye more odor.

May your day be free of toxic smells and disgusting odors… the wind blow smiles… your plans move forward

Poetry is very much a part of my life: rough draft poetry as I have said before, because most of life is done as a rough draft, we react. But there is something to be said for poetry that is edited and tweaked.

Now if I say I am writing haiku or senryu, many don’t know what the latter is (I didn’t) and others think haiku is nature and descriptive, and would rather just look at nature than read someone’s words about it.

On Twitter, we have allowed ourselves the freedom to play. Much of the haiku you find is so untraditional purists are closing their eyes as they grimace. There is a lot of beautiful and pure haiku posted, too.

One individual, an animal activist, musician, and poet – as well as an everyday human being, is also a collector. He spends extraordinary amount of time searching to post for us what he feels is the best haiku, senry, tanka, and micropoetry posted on Twitter on any given day. He is known as the Dragonfly Hunter.

But, he does not choose only the pure, but, also, the clever, well thought out, different. All are tiny slices of life: seen, hidden, wanted, cast aside, loved, hated; even the everyday. Real life.

Check out the Dragonfly Hunter’s collection. Let your eyes skip across the page and light at random. I dare you: The Dragonfly Archives

The above trail at Snoqualmie Falls, in Snoqualmie, Washington, was one of our favorite places to walk. On days like that one, when it was cold enough for light fleece, we were both as happy as could be. But let it get the slightest bit warm. Leave me at home! That and working in the yard were our main forms of exercise back then. We thrived.

But back in South Florida, most of the time, I am a hermit. Hot sun and humidity and I are not pals, but enemies! I’m not getting enough exercise down here.

Years ago my bone density scan showed some loss, I don’t get enough exercise. I didn’t know about jumping and being on the third floor last year, but I couldn’t have jumped anyway living above an elderly person. I no longer do.

I have jumped in place a few times recently – but since our floors are concrete and I was barefoot each time, decided that wasn’t my most brilliant decision, so I did only a few teeny jumps, as if jumping rope.

Today I jumped on the search engines (pun intended) and found a guest blog by Sherri Betz, PT (physical therapist) on the Pilates Community of Wellsphere.com. It is a much quicker read than it appears and has good information and cleared up misinformation.

All this time I thought walking up and down the stairs was good for my bones…. because I had been told weight bearing exercise was needed. Well, it is obviously good for other things, but not as helpful for bones as I was led to believe. I will continue to make extra trips up and down the stairs because it makes me feel good. Enough about me.

Go on then, head on over to Wellsphere and check out the research Sherri Betz has shared. But, seriously, don’t change what you are doing until you’ve spoken with a professional, aka someone like your doctor.

Besides being a Fab Grandma, and all that involves, Karen is an RVer and a reviewer of gluten free foods and other items that catch her attention. I chose one post on each to share with you.

Have you ever wondered what an Rv workamper does in a typical day as a volunteer camp host? It’s not all just cleaning toilets, y’all. And the site in Georgia was beautiful.  Fab Grandma shares their day here.

I’ve become interested in Gluten free cooking, not that I’ve tried it yet, but I intend to, as soon as this procrastination thing weeds itself out of my personality. After reading Fab Grandma’s review on this Heartland Muffin mix, I think I will start with these. You don’t really think I was going to make them from scratch do you?

While you are there, why not browse her sites? You never know what you might find you like.

NOTE: Fab Grandma moved her sites. The links above still work, but her new blogs are found here: http://fabgrandma.com and http://reviews.fabgrandma.com/!

Note: NaBloPoMo’s January theme is Best. Fab/Best, works for me!

I am so incredibly blessed right now. (OK, those who know me well, know I could easily rant at any moment – especially about South Florida drivers on the interstates crossing four lanes in a beeline for the exit.)

But, our niece whom we had the pleasure of raising for five years of her young life just had a healthy baby boy, we got to see a picture and we both got to speak with her and the baby’s father today. YAY!

But, this is about dreams. I never dreamed much as a child, content to read a book, go swimming, learn cool things in school – long enough to pass the test. I was so shy – and watched my parents everyday life push dreams right out of them, they were just trying to survive – but at the same time they enjoyed what they did have! So, possibilities in life seemed foreign to me, really.

As an adult I lived some dreams, but they just came on their own, more or less: managed to snag the man who would turn out to be my soulmate, talked him into having our son (grin), finally decided to try college, and had the pleasure of a temporary ‘daughter’.

Moving to Washington state for those three years was probably the biggest dream that I dared dream or that we actively pursued – we helped make it happen. The dream to own an RV came slowly, we tiptoed around it. Again, it partially came on its own, but we made the decisions that allowed it – and then we took a risk or two. And next week the transaction will be complete. We have more dreams to make happen. But, now, they seem less intimidating and more accessible.

I never dared dream as a child or teenager, but found that if you dare, the Universe may just help you a bit… but you have to go for it. You have to!

Oh, and for the record, the most time we have spent in an RV is driving it for the test drive recently, lol.

It’s every where. Granted there has always been violence, but there are times it seems more prevalent and crueler.

Then I realized shouting is not the answer. That will stop no one from being cruel. I don’t know the answer. But I do feel education and less sugar filled junk in systems would make a difference with some. Yeah, sounds like a ‘nothing solution’, but it is a step, and without a step, nothing is solved.

It won’t run an AC or water heater, but it will run just about anything else for several days even without solar aded.

It is a step in the right direction, I think, but only for those willing to fork out more money than most people would, or have. I won’t be purchasing it, I couldn’t get it paid for before Social Security became my only income, but I can see where it would be well worth any price to some people in their homes, and to many businesses that want to remain up and running in extended outages. So, I deem it well worth sharing, so, definitely, follow the link above and read about them.

The company is selling units in five states already. Kudos to Power Ready for designing it. Now, hopefully, they will realize they can sell it for a lot less than they are. Then it might just go viral.