Healing Quotes Teens 645

“Kindness makes you the most beautiful person in the world.”

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~ dryyoureyes-startbelieving.tumblr.com

Healing Quotes Littles 562

“A tree of life. A tree of knowledge. A tree of soul. A tree of goodness. A tree of her. It was her core. Burnt. Scarred. Hacked. Cut. Chopped and carved in. It was still there. It was still there! Pushing the ashes out of the way, making room for sunlight and water – she nurtured it back to fullness, she nurtured it back to life. And she and her tree held the sky and its moon and together, they danced and together, they grew.”
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~ Terri St. Cloud

My Birthday Week

Well I’m sorry that I didn’t post more often about my birthday week, but I was just too exhausted by life. Being around family, even when they aren’t being actively emotionally or verbally abusive, is exhausting and I forgot to take that into account when I planned the things that I would be doing this week. Well, I am not very realistic about my/our physical limitations; it’s just not anything we have ever been good at.

I did watch some movies that I absolutely love. We listened to some audio books downloaded onto my phone more often, especially since I really try to spend time out and about with my headphones on. It gives me a lot more time to listen to books and that is a good thing.

We got out with our bike five times this week and that was great. I had planned on doing it today too, but it was very rainy so I decided to stay inside and rest up for an outing tomorrow.

The Teens didn’t get a lot of time to read graphic novels. But I made a point of giving them some time yesterday and today. We have some compilations from the library and I want to make sure they have time for that. Fitting in things we want to do is always a challenge.

The Littles watched some animated movies and enjoyed them a lot. We had several pizza parties with movies this week and that was great. I enjoy giving them things that they love and this was such an easy thing to do for them. Their joy and love of life and me just bowls me over and knocks me on my kiester. I wish that I knew that I deserved their love. I’m working on it.

We had lunch and supper with relatives and that went very well. We had a small piece of chocolate cake, though we surely would have loved a bigger piece and then a second one, but I was too full from lunch and we didn’t get an offer to take any cake home with us, bummer.

We eat pizza often so we planned on tacos for lunch and then to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and no it was not too much of one kind of food. It was wonderful and delicious. It was a wonderful birthday gift.

The day after our birthday we went to Culver’s and had a turtle sundae, which has vanilla frozen custard, hot fudge, butterscoth, and pecans, yum. It is usually the only dessert that I get at Culver’s. I always tell myself that if I went more often I would try other items, but seriously I don’t think so. 🙂

We enjoyed our birthday week so much that I decided that we would do an “Unbirthday Party” for ourselves, once a month, so I will try to post on how that goes as well.

Anyway happy birthday to you all. And a happy unbirthday as well. 🙂

Happy Birthday Happy Birthday To Me!

Today is my birthday! My birthday week is going good.

In honor of our birthday, there will be 24 healing quotes posted today, on books and reading, and they already started at 12:05, so expect one every hour after that. I know that there will be some who will like them. 🙂

I’ll try to write more tonight about how the week is going. We are having a great time and this afternoon and evening are looking like we will have lots of fun.

We are having lunch with some relatives, and some of them are kids, which will be lots of fun. Then in the evening we are going out to eat, to a place that we know we will have lots of fun at.

It’s My Birthday Week

It’s my birthday week and it’s my birthday on Wednesday! I’m very excited. We’re all very excited. This year I decided to have a birthday week with eight days, so it started on yesterday, Sunday, and will continue through next Sunday. Eight days sounded about right to us all, so that is what we are going to do.

Yesterday I went to the Dollar Tree store, our favorite dollar store, looking for some craft items to buy. Unfortunately they were out of stock of all the things that I was planning on buying. But I did buy a few craft things and a few puzzles for The Littles and a promise to get to another Dollar Tree store on Thursday, when I will be in the neighborhood, and to look out for some more craft things for them and for our beading crafting.

I had tentatively planned on biking each day of our birthday week, but then a terrible cold rain with wind came into town yesterday evening. There are still wind gusts today and when I checked the temp online I decided not to bike every day this week. It said it feels like 35 degrees outside! I think I would like to wait months to experience that again. It will be cooler this week and that is okay, but today is still too cold for me to adventure out.

Other plans for my birthday week are:

The Littles to watch an animated movie each day. We watched 101 Dalmatians yesterday. The Littles want to start doing some crafts, so we are moving around things today in our living space to make our crafts things near to the computer and tv, so that we will have them all close at hand.

The Teens to read comics. I have some compilations checked out of the library: Thor, X-Men, Hulk, and Star Lord Guardians of the Galaxy.

As a very special birthday gift to us all I have added a 2 disc netflix rental subscription. Previously I had just had netflix streaming, which has been very limiting to us since we love movies so much and since the only redbox movie box is on the other side of downtown, a good mile and a half from where I live. It should be very nice to have movies and tv series delivered in our mailbox. It should be very, very nice.:)

I’ll try to write each day about what the special things that we do throughout this week and I think that will help keep me on track by the reminders that will arise. 🙂

May is My Birthday Month

Well it is May soon and May is my birthday month. 🙂

Again I’m doing the usual special stuff on the blog for my birthday month. For day one through nineteen I will be posting a healing book quote and a healing bike quote, and a healing poem, each day. The poems will be on the topics of reading, books, and bikes, lol.

For my birthday week I am planning, again, to do something lots of fun each day and will try to post about each of them. I’m sure there will be a post or two, for sure, on ice cream, chocolate cake, and pizza. 🙂

On my birthday I will be posting 24 healing bike and book quotes, one each hour. As usual The Littles will start out with the healing quotes, but the Teens will take over half way through the day. So count on a couple of more adult quotes, as usual, towards the end of the day. We are still putting together the quotes and arranging them into scheduled posts, so we still have some work to do in that. We are enjoying ourselves a lot and hope that yous enjoy the countdown to our birthday in May as well.

Today is My Half Birthday

A very merry half-birthday to me

to me

A very merry half-birthday to me!

I am not sure what special thing I am going to do, but I will let you all know.

For those of you who think that half-birthdays don’t or shouldn’t matter after a certain age or god forbid should not be celebrated, I pity you, I sincerely do.

🙂

Love to you all.

Today is My Birthday

Today is my birthday. I love birthdays. 🙂

I am going to have chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. To me, there is nothing better.

Birthday Presents to Myself

For my birthday I decided to give myself some presents.

I’ve been a Star Trek fan since I was very little and the show first aired. I’ve been a science-fiction and fantasy fan since I was born. One of my strong connections to life and this world is through science-fiction and fantasy. I’ll write more about that connection in a future post.

My first present was to buy the book The Star Trek Concordance. I used to have a copy of this book years ago but had sold it to a used store during one of my desperately poor periods when I would routinely sell off my books. Normally I wouldn’t sell off a reference book like that, but it had been a Christmas present years ago by one of my sexual offenders and I didn’t want that connection to be with that book. Before my birthday I bought it used through amazon for $6. I had started watching the original series on netflix once again. I’ve missed it a  lot. I’m also pinning a lot of Star Trek photos onto my Pinterest account.

For my birthday I also gave myself the gift of commitment to find some inexpensive exercise equipment. I decided to go at least once a week to one or both of the closest used stores looking for something to buy that I can exercise with. I’ve seen some really good deals for older models for under $20. It is hard to find someone to help me transport items I may buy, but I have to try. I am proud to report that I have already found one machine. It is a manual treadmill. That means that basically the action of walking makes the belt move. It looks something like this. Pretty good deal. I use it every day. I am continuing to look for older model stationary bike and other exercise equipment.

I also took my bike in for a tune-up and necessary fixes. I deserve to have a bike that works properly so that I can travel safer and easier and more comfortably. This was something that I have put off for a long time. I am so glad that my bike rides will be so much smoother and more enjoyable. I’ve been averaging two to six miles or more on days that I am well enough to ride my bike. About a week ago I rode about fourteen miles, my top daily mileage ever.

I am also getting my Gyn exam and a mammogram done this month. My Gyn exam will be this Thursday, June 14th. My mammogram the following Tuesday, June 19th. Again, happy birthday to me.

I used to be a member of two museums and go to them. I loved that. I would be in a lot of pain to walk, but I still wanted to do it. Then I injured my hip while preparing to move three years ago.  I couldn’t go for visits any more. The often bemoaned how the city I lived in when I was in the warmer state did not have a museum. Since moving back to my home state over two years agoI haven’t been to a museum. So I decided to give myself the birthday presents of memberships to the two museums again.

So for my birthday, I bought the membership to the Minneapolis Institute of Art this month. I love this museum. I’ve been going there since a school field trip as a child. For the membership I get a free ticket each time I visit for exhibitions. Which is particularly wonderful since there is a new exhibition opening this month, Rembrandt in America. I’m really looking forward to it. There are also some of my favorite art pieces that I have got to see each time I go. I am so looking forward to that, I’ve missed them.

For my birthday, next month I am going to get a membership to The Walker Art Center. The Walker has more modern art. It takes a lot more work to appreciate and understand modern art. I remember going there once in my twenties and totally being clueless about a lot of the art installations. I just didn’t get it, not at all. I took a short class three years ago through the downtown library by a professor of a great art college nearby and it really opened up my mind and my eyes. So I love going to the Walker now. I particularly loved going to the Picasso and Frida Kahlo exhibits. And there are several rooms in the permanent collection that I love communing with.

I also have plans to go to some book club meetings. One meeting in August is on the first book in the Game of Thrones series. I am reading that book right now. I love it and I love the series on HBO as well. There is a downtown library book club and I keep hoping they pick a book soon that I want to read so I can go to one of their meetings. Guess I have to keep watching their posted choices.

Another gift that I want to give to myself is a wider social groups for interactions. There are several other groups that I want to join; one a science-fiction club, one a gluten intolerance group, and the last a large social group that gets together to play board games. I want to make my life happier and fuller and with more support around some of my favorite interests. Good gifts that keep on giving.

Finally, Birthday Cake

I haven’t had birthday cake on my last three birthdays. Mostly due to my hesitancy and worry about baking and cooking of any sort. The other part is due to my gluten intolerant issues.

So this year I planned ahead. I found and bought a gluten-free chocolate cake mix in advance. I was uncomfortable with the idea of making a whole cake. I kept planning on making a trial run cake in advance, but found that I was scared of doing it, kept forgetting, and then when remembering kept putting it off. It was overwhelming to me.

I looked for a good recipe for chocolate frosting, but there seemed to be far too many ingredients to research about being gluten-free and for buying. Each time I would go to the grocery store I would forget to buy any of them or wander the aisle not being able to decide to buy or not to buy. Many visits and I still didn’t make any decisions.

It was very frustrating. It was overwhelming to me. When I get frustrated and overwhelmed about purchases, especially gluten intolerant food purchases I tend to keep putting off buying things. This is exactly the same way about cooking and baking. I attribute all of those food related issues to being abused by my mother around food and her rejection and exclusion of me from “her” kitchen.

Finally I found a recipe online for chocolate cake in a mug.

Mix one cake mix and one 4 oz. pudding mix. This mix is enough for about eight or nine cake mugs.

Use 1/2 cup of this cake and pudding combination and then mix one Tablespoon water, one Tablespoon oil, and one egg white.

Use Pam or some other vegetable oil on mug. Spoon mix into mug.

Microwave mug on high for two minutes.

I thought this might be my solution for my birthday cake. I thought it would be very good with ice cream instead of frosting.

When my birthday came I found that I had not bookmarked the recipe and the evening of my birthday, after my dinner with a relative, I found that I couldn’t find it and really was too tired. Almost too tired for a candle, but I did manage that.

But on Monday night, finally, a birthday cake, in a mug. It kind of looked like a tiny muffin. Kind of funny. Kind of cute. It was pretty great.