WELCOME BACK!!

A GRACIOUS PLENTY IS BACK!

What was intended to be a hiatus of a couple of months turned into a couple of YEARS!  How did that happen?  The short answer:  It took longer than I anticipated to work out how many Cool Things To Do were not too few, not too many, but JUST RIGHT.   

One of my early blog posts was entitled "Going Off The Deep End" and detailed my desire to do it all, and do it right now.  What a great time I had doing that!  As my work-induced adrenaline and the drive it engendered subsided, though, I found the level of intensity was no longer comfortable nor sustainable.  As a result, I've made appropriate, if sometimes painful, choices, and am finding my life much more livable.  It has some breathing space. Enough that it feels comfortable to come back to A Gracious Plenty.

I won't kid you, though.  If you were to ask if it was too much breathing space that brought me back, the answer would be yes.  Too much breathing space is as uncomfortable as too little.  It's a fine line, I tell you.  And I'm a prime example of a skunk who can't change her stripes!

This reboot starts with some highlights of what has stayed the same.

We're wrapping up another monsoon season.

It looks like this from a distance, and is powerful and frightening up close.  The first big storm of the season spent some time over Kachina Village, complete with lightning strikes close enough to smell  sulfur and thunder loud enough to take us to our knees.  Our evening walk afterward revealed lightning had struck a tree about 100 yards from the house, explaining one of the larger explosions.

Yes, that's the top of the tree caught cross ways in the trees around it.  A widow maker, it's called. Wikipedia says it this way:  "In forestry, the term widowmaker or fool killer describes a detached or broken limb or tree top and denotes the hazards that such features cause, being responsible for causing fatalities to forest workers."  If you click on the picture to enlarge it, it almost looks like the tree is bleeding in the split caused by the lightning. 

Gypsy is still terribly frightened of thunder.  Since the idea that spawned the Thundershirt for dogs was originally a t-shirt, I tried that with her.  

Not so much.  The blurriness of the picture is from her shaking so hard.  She's tucked in underneath my desk.  Poor, terrified girl!

The yard responded to the monsoon in its glorious way:  greenery and flowers galore.

 

Summer activities have stayed the course:

 biking,

hiking with constant companions Sue and Gypsy,

running,

 weight workouts and Pilates.

Still playing violin

and reading. 

In fact, it was the amount I was reading that made me realize I had time for blogging.  Yes, there's such a thing as too much reading and not enough blogging! 

Ron and I have traveled:

Big Bend National Park, TX,

A fall color trip to the San Juan Mountains, CO,

the Anchorage area of AK, including Denali National Park.

Late last year I was going through the storage area under the TV and discovered the 9 seasons +  finale of the TV show Everybody Loves Raymond that I purchased years and years ago-well before retirement.  It's one of the last things from pre-retirement that hasn't been purged.  I decided to watch it before purging.  At 25 shows per season, it's about one season per month if I watch almost every day.  I've just started Season 7.


 

  I still find the show funny, but there's enough cutting sarcasm that one show a day is plenty.  

And yes,  I'm still a huge fan of Dancing With the Stars.  The new season starts September 24.  I can hardly wait!

Even this first post has reminded me how much I enjoy blogging and have missed it.  I'm delighted to welcome you back to A Gracious Plenty.