If Eustace and I can help it, wherever we go and whatever adventure’s we take you on this year… we’re going to try filling them with laughter!
Why?
Well…
Why not?
Laughter is good for the soul…
And, the One whom I follow and serve happens to be in the soul business, and He does have a sense of humor… I’m certain of it!
Where do you think I get my sense of humor from?
It runs in my family!
I’m not really happy with the pictures I used to update Journey With Me’s website for the new year, so I’m sort of on a quest to find a fun theme for this spring. What to do, what to do?
I could go full nautical, with short stories, ditties, and fun seafaring food recipes… stuff like that.
Or, I could head for the hills with a camping, hiking, woodsy theme…
I don’t think I’m up for foodie stuff on a large scale, and I doubt you are either. We’ll just keep to the cookies,
with an occasional review from Gabriel, who considers himself a pretty good judge of flavors…
What I am seriously considering is a fun mystery kind of theme. Some of you may remember when I did several episodes last year called Tuesday Tattler, which read somewhat like a journalist writing a column in a paper…
If I do a mystery theme, I think it would be really fun to take this miniature version of my persona and take her around the world on some hilarious assignments…
If you haven’t noticed yet, I deplore boredom… can’t stand wasting my brain!
And… if I don’t like reading the same old same old, I suspect that you don’t either…
As a writer, it’s important that I keep your reading experience fun and engaging, among other things. Your thoughts are important to me, so let me know what you want to see more of this year…
And I’ll get right to it!
As Castle says, “It’s what I do!”
We finally got to sleep in, with mom’s back hurting and keeping us up and all. She actually slept all night long… and barely even moved! I, being the older puppy (even if it was only by 12 minutes), felt some concern at first. I insisted that Bailey lick the inside of mom’s ear just to see if she would move. She did, but only to swat at her ear, nearly missing Bailey’s backside as she did so…
No worries… my sister slid down onto the pillow safely. But, you have to admit that it would be pretty funny if mom’s hand made contact with Bailey’s bootie at just the right time, flinging her onto dad’s head. On second thought, maybe not…
It’s really nice here, and we might both get kicked out of the bed… guilty by association, dad would say.
Anyways, as I, Gabriel, seem to be the only one concerned about sending you your Monday message (well, the only one awake), have taken the time to make breakfast for everybody.
Help yourselves and enjoy the goodies. I think I’m gonna snuggle back down with mom and sis for a bit…
Have a wonderful Monday!
I know that today’s prompt asked about my favorite road trip, but in December of 2023 there was a similar prompt that asked for my most memorable place visited… you say toematoe, I say towmotto! Either way, it’s a fruitegible… just sayin.
Enjoy…
My most fond memory of a place visited would have to be Kamloops, British Columbia.
When my oldest daughter was about eleven, I wanted to do something special with her… just the two of us. I packed her up and drove straight through from Seattle to Kamloops for a massive Native American Gathering… a Powwow! I had wanted to attend one for much of my life and finally had an opportunity for a Mom Daughter Road Trip, so I took it!
I woke my girl up during the night, packed her snoring little body into the passenger side of our Toyota Camry and headed for Canada. We drove straight through Banff National Forest, which was amazing, by the way. Once we got to Kamloops and dumped all our stuff in the hotel, we headed for all the noise!
We attended two days of amazing displays of incredible Regalia, outstanding music and intense dance performances… f.y.i. taking pictures willy nilly is considered quite rude. If you wish to take a picture of someone, it is sort of expected to give a gift in return. I learned this early on and left my camera in my purse.
We toured the local museums, got lost driving around in the countryside and ate whatever we wanted. I will never forget that trip. I honestly can’t remember what I bought my daughter, but she picked out a necklace for me that I have kept to this day! It is a bronze cast of a wolf’s face. Though the necklace bindings all gave out, I have continued to reset the cast all these years later.
While some may think I remember the Powwow as my favorite place to visit… in truth, it’s the time spent with my oldest that holds my memories fast! She and I haven’t spoken in some time. Many years have passed since we were that close. No matter how angry she is, no matter how unforgiving she tries to be… I know we will always have Kamloops, and that is enough memory to get me to the gates…
So, here we are…
Day 4…
Ladies and Gentlemen, I still can’t sit in a chair… let alone, move very far from the bed.
But, I can move slowly and carefully, with slow being the operative word!
In terms of progress and recovery, I’m getting there… even if it isn’t as quickly as I’d like for it to be. One would think that all the downtime would be welcomed rather than rejected. If I want downtime, it would be preferable if I had it on some sunny beach, with a fruity drink in my hand… not trapped in bed. The thing is, I do NOT like being helpless… it freaks me out!
I lay here all day feeling a mix of panic, frustration, guilt, and self-shaming over my own weakness. Yes, this woman of God still has pity parties and panic attacks! I think it simply comes from lack of sleep and being in pain for an extended period of time. Spirit, mind, and body work together to balance me out… and the body part is just offline at the moment, that’s all!
This girl has to show herself some grace, exercise her faith … and be at peace with her own fragility…
Thanks for listening, my friends 🧡
The truth of things is this, I got a bad back… have had for a number of years. While this has to be the first time my low back has gone out this bad, and for this long, once I get the pain and swelling down, things should balance out. Here’s where it gets tricky! While trying to manage pain from an injury, I have to deal with responses from both my Fibromayalgia and IBS. Fibro is lit up from laying in bed for so long without moving, and IBS has destroyed my ability to consume nsaids without my stomach starting to bleed. YAY!
I took an Ibuprofen for the first time in two years, this morning. I’m hoping I can get away with it just this once without too much trouble. I am eternally grateful for my Lidocaine patches, or else I’d have gone to the hospital by now. Actually, what I’m currently doing is probably the very thing the hospital would offer, aside from an x-ray that’ll most likely show that yes, I have arthritis there, and yes, I’ve probably herniated the disc from coughing, of all things.
If I can spend 4 days arguing with myself about whether or not to do a hospital visit… it isn’t an emergency! As long as I can see some improvement, even if it’s only a bit, I’ll resume my medical care after we resolve this homeless thing…
One thing at a time, right?
I know this prompt is a repeat, but my answer from last year still holds… and it’s always fun to look back on things we’ve written in the past, don’t you think?
As a girl of only eleven, I had already discovered the item I was most fond of… my survival!
Life has a way of sometimes being reduced to nothing more than a thing… an item to be played with, bartered, or thrown out when its usefulness has been expended!
For many souls, it can take an entire lifetime to figure this out, only really feeling the harsh bite of reality, as it begins to surface on or near retirement! Basically, most begin to take more notice of feeling less valuable to society as the body begins to slow and lose the ability to carry on at the same pace they’d once kept.
Then, there are souls like mine, who learned painfully early in life how little value they held, how they weren’t valuable enough to protect and care about… never worthy of being saved! This was my dark alleyway of existence, wandering through the night until I found a place to sleep… doing whatever I had to do in order to secure food, warmth, and sleep… never safety… just sleep! This life was not much, but it was mine, and I valued it above everything else!
I’m 55 now and nearing the age when most are preparing for retirement and their golden years… but not this runaway!
I’m just getting started, I think, striving to prepare and strengthen myself for something bigger, better, and still yet to come.
It has taken some considerably long years of running to find myself sitting here recalling what I’d valued so much in my youth. Over the years, I’ve not cared for nor cherished it, as one might expect. Battered, bruised, misused, and tossed aside is that item I valued so strongly as a child…
None the less, it’s still in tact, for the most part!
If you’ve any curiosity about what has become of the item I was so attached to as a youth, you need only read the letters I have written to you all, over this last year, here on WordPress.
As this site is really all I have to show for explaining things, it will have to suffice as my best answer!
I don’t know about all you, but I need a cookie…
Eustace absolutely loves his baby album that I put together for the big guy!
I think everyone enjoys being seen, noticed and/or appreciated, don’t you? The easiest example of this is kids, whenever you pull out their baby album… suddenly, you have a captive audience! Why do you think that is?
I guess we all just need to feel important to someone else, just for being who we are… even when life’s circumstances bury us beneath them, often distorting our appearance.
Even if the classroom is all messed up and the students are fakey cartoons… I still love the camel’s eyes, don’t you?
I think Eustace, like myself, became frustrated with always being at the back of the class,
left behind, forgotten.
What I love about the camel is his resilience, his choice to become better than what others thought his value was, and is!
For most of his live, Eustace had to exist and survive in places far beyond his young mind’s ability to understand. There were no other children or family to love him, for who and what he was.
He could have chosen to be hateful, and unkind to anyone who came near him… I fully understand that. I am so glad he chose to rise above it, and I think you probably are too!
Live life to the fullest… but keep your bags packed!
Some days, I pray He bring me home right then and there…
Other days, I desire to be standing there on the day He comes riding in on the clouds … what a glorious sight to behold, I say!
Either way, I shall walk each day with purpose, faith and love for others, as if we’ve years yet to go. When He calls to me… I will hear and respond, leaving everything of this world behind!
I know where my home is… where my hope is… the timing of my life span is not something I need to concern myself with.
Have a cookie…
Journey With Me! 