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Great Time

I had a great time this weekend with the puppies traipsing through the neighborhood. I spent much of it at home binge-watching Sex Education on Netflix. The show is both well-written and well-acted. Gillian Anderson’s performance is amazing. Needless to say, the show was really entertaining and provided a good backdrop to my weekend and my weekend chores. I have to say it’s nice to have full authority over what I watch on television. It’s been a long time since that’s happened.

Saturday afternoon I made it out for my good friend Lisa’s birthday party. Lisa is one of my favorite Kaplan people and I hadn’t seen her in so long, so I didn’t want to miss it. The weather was looking a bit sketchy, so I was worried there’d be a shower or two, but the weather held out. This is important since the party was on a tiki taxi that cruises the Intracoastal. For $10, you can ride it for as long as you’d like and it comes back to the dock on the hour. It also has a bar onboard and a jukebox. Ok, probably not a jukebox, but the music covered all the genres much like a jukebox.

In addition to Lisa, there were a bunch of great people from Kaplan that I hadn’t seen in forever. I got laid off shortly before the pandemic, which really put a damper on all of our social lives. I’ve seen a couple of them at concerts, but it was so good to see so many folks in person again and reconnect. We ended up in the tiki taxi for a couple of hours. The weather was overcast with a nice breeze, which was perfect because it kept us from getting too hot. It was a great night.

Yesterday I spent the morning doing chores. After lunch, I headed to Terri and PJ’s house for coffee. It was nice to see them again. I haven’t seen anyone for months thanks in part to travel and an autoimmune flare. Thankfully, I think I’ve been on the upswing. Hopefully, my doctor will think so too when I go see her for a follow-up tomorrow. I ended my weekend with some sushi and more Netflix. It was a great weekend.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

The best advice I was given was to cherish and enjoy my kids’ childhoods. When you’re a new mom, the advice sounds a bit cliche. When you’re the mom of a screaming toddler, the advice seems absolutely ludicrous. And when you’re dealing with a teenager and big kid problems, woah the advice can feel dead wrong. When, however, your kids leave the nest, it makes sense completely. The bad days make up such a minuscule part of your life, but the good days and joys of raising your kids far outweigh everything else. So if you’re kids are young and you’re reading this, buckle up and enjoy the ride because it’s over really fast.

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Kitchen Sink

So I have a story that includes everything even the kitchen sink. I give your fair warning that this story is going to be gross and make you question life. Unless you have teenage boys, in which case you’ll strangely find this story believable and dare I say normal. It all began in a gate community west of the turnpike…

Our story starts off with a peaceful evening in our house. The parents and puppies have gone to bed and all is quiet. Anakin is trained to use a pad. Consequently, we leave him out at night and he usually sleeps in our bed. Sometimes, however, he misses the mark. Tuesday night he missed the mark Consequently, he left a land mine in the middle of the floor.

The Mayor, who has a weird aversion to lights, got home from hockey practice after we were already in bed. He doesn’t like the lights on, so he left them on. Unfortunately, this meant he didn’t see the land mind Anakin had left for him. Fortunately, he was still wearing his shoes, so it didn’t get all over his feet. It didn’t crunch or anything like that. It did, however, make a mess of the bottom of his shoe.

So you may be asking yourself, where does the kitchen sink play into this story? Well, I’ll tell you. Apparently, the Mayor decided the right place to clean the dog shit off of his sneakers was our kitchen sink. But wait, it gets worse. He also decided to use the brush we use to scrape dishes clean to clean his shoe. To be fair, he cleaned up the crime scene, so you wouldn’t guess what happened to the kitchen sink the night before. However, he also left the scrub brush there like he hadn’t just used it to clean up dog shit.

This all came out yesterday on my lunch break. At first, I was sure he was kidding. There’s no way he would wash shit off his shoe in the kitchen sink. But then I remember, he’s a teenage boy with the common sense of a toddler. In the end, we ended up throwing both scrub brushes away since he didn’t remember which one he used. He is also now acutely aware that messes like that need to be cleaned outside with the hose and a tree branch. As for the kitchen sink, it’s been bleached and cleaned. Yet, I still can’t look at it the same way.

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Dreams Are Made

Dreams are made of these is today’s prompt for bloganury. While I was in Savannah, I had the most vivid dream that Anakin, my sweet puppy disappeared. I never established if he was taken, ran away or dead; I only knew he was gone. Consequently, I searched high and low across the globe looking for my sweet boy, but he was nowhere to be found. It was awful!

Fortunately, it was just a dream and he’s currently laying down next to me on the couch. Outside of my vivid dream about Anakin, I find myself dreaming of traveling a lot. Obviously, I’m missing the amount of traveling we did prior to the pandemic. My dreams predominately take me to Europe and Scandinavia to be specific. It probably doesn’t help that I’m reading a novel set in Norway.

Work was the stuff that dreams are made of today. I had one customer that was frustrating, but only because she made absolutely no sense at all. As for the rest of my clients, they were buyers today. Moreover, I even had a few clients from last week that called back to buy today. You can’t ask for a better Monday than that. Of course, Athena had to keep it interesting by pooping right in the path of the Roomba, so that was fun.

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Becoming a Dog Mom

Over the past twelve years, I have been becoming a dog mom. Prior to adopting Maya, I was not only not a dog person, but deathly afraid of large dogs. And then we went to Petco to get a fish and found our Maya girl. Maya has been the perfect puppy for us from day one. She’s sweet as can be and easy-going. Several years later, we added Athena our delightful Piggie, who has been a character from day one. She’s a complete sweetheart until you mess with her family member. The pack was completed last year with our foster-fail Anakin. He’s a bit special, but he sure loves his mama, his sisters, and his family.

Unfortunately, Maya has been on the decline over the past year. She’s a notoriously picky eater in contrast to her siblings, who will eat anything and everything that they see. As I wrote in my last blog, Maya had lost ten pounds over the past year. Unfortunately, she has had a tumor in her lung since 2019, but it hasn’t grown larger than when we first found it. Also, It is unrelated to the cancerous tumor she had removed last winter. Nonetheless, it’s been a struggle to get Maya to eat anything this past year.

Last week, Maya and I both got sick with some sort of virus. I was laid up with back spasms, chills, and a low fever. Those were the only symptoms I had, but the back spasms knocked me on my butt. As for Maya, she started to get sick later in the week. She was extremely lethargic and by this Monday wasn’t eating at all. By Tuesday night, her breathing was way off. Honestly, I was scared she wasn’t going to make it through the night.

Fortunately, our girl is resilient. I was able to get some prednisone and appetite stimulants from the vet to help relieve her symptoms and get her to eat. The medicine started to work slowly. Once it kicked in, I fed her everything I could find. She was starting to look extremely emaciated. By Thursday, her appetite was improving. I made her homemade dog food with rice, chicken, and carrots, which she loved. Thursday night, after we ate, I used the carcass of the butterflied chicken to make homemade chicken broth for her. She loved it! I’ve since made it two more times for her. It’s a great way to get her some nutrients and also to entice her to eat. We also give it to the younger dogs as well.

Here’s the recipe:

Homemade Chicken Broth for Dogs
1 chicken carcass and bones (A store-bought rotisserie chicken works really well.)
4-5 carrots
Enough water to cover the chicken and bones

Steps:
1: Add chicken bones and carrots to the pot and cover with water.
2: Bring broth to a boil
3: Simmer on low for at least 1 hour. I prefer to simmer the broth for at least 4-5 hours
4: Allow the broth to cool before preparing to store it. I’ve been storing the broth in a pitcher, so it’s easy to pour into her bowl.

I don’t add onions to the broth as they’re not good for dogs. If I was making it for the family, I’d add both onions and celery to the pot.

On that note, I have to go finish the incomplete batch of broth I started earlier today. Then I’ll pack up the latest batch of fresh chicken broth!

Here’s a list of our day’s activities:

*I read Demons, by Dostoevsky

*Ran a mile and a half and walked a mile while watching Curb and listening to music. I was going to run two miles, but my knee was not having it.

* I made brownies, cooked dinner and cooked the dogs some fresh chicken broth. It was a productive day in the kitchen.

*I’m reminisced about becoming a dog mom today.

*I listened to my dogs’ bark with great urgency at the lizard outside our patio…. Sorry guys, they’re not a threat. Oh yes, becoming a dog mom has its moments.

*Today’s word of the day is patiently. I learned that part of becoming a dog mom was waiting patiently for them to finish their business.

*I took my puppies including sweet Anakin for a walk. Did I mention I hate gnats, flies and mosquitos?

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Adventure Time

It was adventure time for the Hubby and I this morning as we headed to BJ’s Wholesale Club for essentials. Obviously, this was a trip of last resort. Ordinarily I have my groceries delivered, but due to COVID19 all the delivery slots were full. In fact, it feels like we haven’t been there since the distant past (i.e. before Jake graduated.) It’s not that we avoid this store because we’re afraid of the virus. No, we avoid it because the snowbird clientele and the exercise in patience it takes to survive the trip. Ideally, we would have had the items delivered as that is the safest route.

Since delivery was not an option in the foreseeable future, we planned our trip for early Sunday morning. After a quick stop to pick up my coffee at Dunkin’, we headed to BJ’s to get in line to enter the store when they opened at 9:00. Fortunately, the line was not atrocious when we got there. However, Shortly afterwards the line grew exponentially. Thank God we got there early. By the time we were checking out, the store had already sold out of toilet paper and paper towel!
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As for the shopping experience itself, it was great. The store’s stocks were lower, but we were able to get everything on our list less chocolate milk and Nutella. Additionally, I thought they had good limits on key items, so nobody could hoard stuff. One thing I liked better was how they ran the checkout line. Ordinarily it’s pick a line any line and it can take forever. Today they had one line from which an employee directed the customer to the next open cash register. Consequently, it resulted in a speedier, less frustrating shopping experience. Truly, it was quite the clever setup!

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I feel much better now that we’re well stocked on the essentials. Previously, I was worried that we were going to run out of of something or everything all at once. Peace of mind sometimes comes from unexpected quarters, but hey I’ll take it! In a tremendous stroke of lucky, I was also able to place a Target order via Shipt for today, so we’re all good to go for a productive week. Translation: I was able to get enough milk today, so I won’t have to go back to the store until Wednesday!

 

As soon as we got back, the hubby put a Boston but pork roast in the smoker. Can I tell you how good our patio smelled today? While he manned the smoker and fixed our screen, I made sure the coffee cake dish got cleaned. Obviously, I had to contrive something yummy to dinner since the Hubby was smoking a roast. Consequently, I made up the gluten free brownies. They’re fantastic! To be honest, I think I prefer the coffee cake. Nonetheless both gluten free mixes from Krusteaz were really tasty and good texture.

The rest of the day was well spent cuddling with my puppy, who had a bit a of a stomachache. After vomiting this morning, he seems to be feeling much better. Nonetheless, we’ve tried to keep him calm and relaxing on the couch all day. Clearly, it was a hard sacrifice for me to make, but I was a good companion to Anakin today.

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Lastly, my hubby had to go check on a job yesterday in Miami.  He took a picture of I-95 in downtown Miami at 12:30 pm and there is absolutely nobody on the road.  We’ve been down here for several hurricanes and we’ve never seen I-95 empty like it was yesterday, but I’m sure the express lane was still charging an $11 toll.

Here’s a list of our day’s activities:

*Reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

*Watched Family Guy and some Nature shows 

*Started to re-build our garden

*Home Depot run for more supplies for our garden

*Took Anakin, Maya and Athena on a walk 

*Worked on Obedience Training with  Anakin 

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Winter’s Arrival

As I left the gym this morning, it became clear that the morning’s storms were our prelude to winter’s arrival.  When I left my house this morning, the temperature was 78 and it was humid.  No sooner had I parked my car when the cold rain started.  I made my quickly from the parking lot to the gym trying to avoid the rain.  I was moderately successful in this endeavor.

Fortunately, thanks to a heart pounding circuit burn class, I wouldn’t be cold for long.  My heart was soon pumping and the cold rain had given way to sweat.  Amanda’s Circuit Burn class kicked my butt this morning.  Post-class I started getting cold as you could feel the temperature had dropped and I was wet with sweat.  My yoga teacher turned up the heat in the yoga room, which helped immensely.

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Afterwards, I headed to my car in the light, cold rain.  The temperature had fallen immensely, which is not something that happens often in Florida.  When I was growing up in Minnesota, it wasn’t unusual to have a wild swing in the temperature (think 15-60 degrees) in short order.  However, in South Florida, it is quite unusual.  I plopped into my car, exhausted from class, turned on the heat noticing the temperature had dropped from 78 to 63.  Full disclosure, a South Floridians definition of cold is much different than most other people’s.  I would also say that being wet from two hours of hard workouts didn’t help keep me warm either.

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Nevertheless, I headed to get coffee and get on with the rest of my day.  Both the Hubby and Jake are working today, so its just me, Goalielocks’ and the Mayor at home.  Consequently, we decided to take our girls (Maya and Athena) to go and see Santa Claus.  Maya, our older dog, is a bit socially awkward when it comes dealing with new dogs, which makes me nervous taking her out.   Athena loves everyone and everything and is very social with people and dogs alike.

Maya, our socially awkward beauty, definitely gave Santa a run for him money.  She didn’t want to sit and face the camera.  Athena would sit nicely for a bit and then a new dog would come in distracting her from the mission at hand.  Thankfully, both dogs and both children behaved beautifully at the store.  There were no meltdowns or accidents on our excursion to PetCo.

On the way back home, I stopped at the Starbucks for a latte, hot chocolate and a couple of puppacinos for the dogs.  This was our dogs first time enjoying a puppacino and enjoy they did.  They made short work of the cups of cream.  We’ll definitely be treating them to those again.  Now its time to get ready for Goalielocks’ team party!

Finally, I wanted to again share the link for a family that is in dire need of our support during an imaginably difficult time.  If you are able to, please consider helping this family.  Here is the link: Youcaring

Tonight’s song is “Me and Bobby McGee” by Janis Joplin.  Thanks TW for the inspiration!

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Drama Free Monday

After last week’s truly manic Monday, this week’s drama free Monday was a welcome change.  Today was more productive than I had anticipated given it is a holiday week.  Thankfully, the day was was pretty smooth.  Since I’m exhausted from the busy weekend, it was exactly the kind of day I needed.

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My left knee and hip feel like they have a sludge stuck in them causing some pain and friction, hopefully some Aleve will put an end to that nonsense.  As I reflect back on the race, I’m still disappointed in my time.  Nevertheless, I had to stop running for awhile due to severe pain in my shins.  After taking a break for several weeks, my shins are feeling much better.  I’m excited to start training in earnest.  Unequivocally, I am definitely chasing a new PR.

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Meanwhile amidst all the craziness preparing for Sunday’s event, one of our chameleons had gone missing.  I am that lucky mom that has both a worm farm and a missing reptile in her house.  Are you jealous? Since I was busy sorting shirts and putting packets together, I couldn’t help look for it.  Consequently, hubby and Goalielocks looked for an hour to try and find the missing reptile to no avail.

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Goalielocks was distraught as the missing chameleon, who escaped when he mistakenly left the cage open, was  his little brother’s. Fortunately, the Mayor was at a sleepover that night, so he had no idea his creature had escaped.  Moreover, by the time he got home from the race, his legs were so tired that he never went up to  Goalielocks’ room to check on the creatures.

Today , Goalielocks’ called me while I was at work his voice was filled with both excitement and relief.   He excitedly told me that he had found the missing chameleon climbing in the Mayor’s room.  In the background, the Mayor was saying, “wait, what?  My chameleon was missing?  It was lost? What happened?”  Consequently, the Mayor was a little upset that we forgot to tell him his Chameleon had gone missing.

It’s never a dull day in our house.  Fortunately, for now, I can remove the chameleon’s from our milk cartons.  Not too mention, I don’t have to worry about accidentally stepping on it or it accidentally stepping on me. How was your Monday?

Tonight’s song,  in honor of my hubby’s favorite band and it’s co-founder Malcolm Young, is “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC.

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Kenny and Ringo

Today was all about Kenny and Ringo.  No, not Kenny Rogers and Ringo Starr.  Rather, our new veiled chameleons Kenny and Ringo.   Since we’re off hockey this weekend, the boys were able to spend the money they earned over the summer.  Both Goalielocks and Mayor had been vacillating  over what to buy for quite some time and I’ve been try to steer them away from video games or electronics.  Unquestionably, we were not in need of a new animal, but I’d rather get them a new pet versus a new electronic device.

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We headed to Petco for what should have been a 15 minuthe trip.  My boy’s indecision quickly derailed what should have been a quick trip.  Instead of merely picking up a pair of crested geckos, our trip turned into indecision hour.  At one point, Goalielocks even tried to try and enlighten me as to why the sand boa would be the perfect pet.  I hate snakes, so I was not going to buy him one.  Once he accepted that a snake wasn’t in his future, he and the Mayor vacillated between the chameleon and another bearded dragon.  My vote was for the chameleons and that they name them Boy George and Karma.

After about an hour or deliberation, they ultimately decided on the chameleon since we already have a bearded dragon.  Goalielocks decided against the crested geckos as their genders were unknown due to their age.  In order to make sure we got everything the chameleons needed, Goalielocks made good use of his phone to do some quick research.  Sadly, the boys did’t like my suggested names of Boy George and Karma.  Instead, they opted to name them Kenny and Ringo.

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We excitedly headed home with our new creatures, their home and all the accouterments that came with them.  It took the three of us about 25-30 minutes to put together the cage.   Amazingly,  nobdoy was harmed in the building of the cage.  After all was said and done,  I was pretty proud that I was able to put together the cage with Ikea-like directions.  With the cage built and ready for its new inhabitants, we set it up on the Mayor’s dresser.  He’s totally stoked to have new roommates.   After helping the boys build the cage, I left the rest of the setup to them, while I made muffins and dinner.  My boys are super excited to bring home their new pets.

Aside from our new pets, our Sunday was pretty low key.   The Mayor has been nursing a serious cold and wasn’t sounding fantastic.  I woke up to go to pilates only to go back to bed as my sinus headache throbbed.    Kids are definitely the gift that keep on giving. If I’m being honest, sharing is not always caring and I was really hoping the Mayor wouldn’t share his cold with me.  I certainly don’t have time to get sick.  I’m hoping both the Mayor and I are feeling better tomorrow.  If the sinus pain doesn’t abate for either of us, we’ll have to make a trip to the doctor.

While I’m wallowing in the pain of a sinus headache and likely sinus infection, the Mayor’s handling his cold much better.  As I wrote my blog, I began to hear the sound of the tennis ball hitting the front door.  You hockey moms know what this means. They’re practicing their shot in the house.  Good times!  The good news ts that they were using a tennis ball and not a puck.   Moreover, Goalielocks was shooting on the Mayor who was wearing Goalielocks’ gear.  As Goalielocks shot on the Mayor, they were recording with the GoPro.  This, of course, means they got some great action shots and some choice soundbites from mom and dad yelling at them to stop.

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Mighty Musings

Who’s mightier than mighty mouse?  This hockey mom with many mighty musings tonight.     Oh where or where should I begin?  I guess I’ll just tear off the band-aid and get right to my confession.  I have to admit it’s a bit embarrassing and well don’t judge me.

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My twitter bot is addicted to porn. Sorry Mom!  Oh the horror!  There’s definitely a flaw in the bot.  My coding skills are not in any way shape or form mighty.  How did this happen?  I setup my bot to look for tweets and re-tweet them based on several key words.  Apparently, twitter porn spammers are wise to the twitter bot game.   Moreover, hockey mom  is quite popular in the random words these spammers include in their tweets.  Fortunately or should I say unfortunately, I discovered this when a follower of mine re-tweeted some spam porn.  Consequently, I have to check my feed a couple times a day to make sure there’s no porn re-tweets sitting out there.  I have to admit that I never through I’d have to sort through my twitter feed to block any porn I accidentally retweeted.

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On to bigger and better things, no pun intended, the grocery situation in our household is reaching a Defcon 5 situation.  We’ve been to the Publix and Target several times since Irmageddon left.  Unfortunately, the shelves of perishables, the refrigerator cases, and the freezer cases have remained barren.  At this point, I’m getting a bit desperate.  Hopefully, BJ’s is fully stocked tomorrow.  I need to get some groceries for the house before Goalielocks and I head to Tampa.  Otherwise, the hubby, the mayor and Jake will be up a creek and hungry.

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Tonight before I left for my run, we added a new pet to the family.  Goalielocks caught a baby brown basilisk (a.k.a. the Jesus lizard.)  When I first started running in late 2015, I never saw a basilisk.  I would see our regular South Florida convocation of anoles, rock lizards and Geicos, I mean geckos.   As it stands, now when I run I see several basilisks each run of varying sizes.  Irresponsible pet owners who let their pets go in the wild are responsible for yet another invasive species let loose in the S. Florida.  How fortunate am I that I am the benefactor of this irresponsibility with yet another pet in the house?  I am so super fortunate.   Once the boys name said lizard, I’ll share the name with the blogosphere.

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In other news,  tolls have resumed on the Florida Turnpike.  I can’t believe I’m typing this, but thank God they’re back. Traffic on the turnpike has been unbearable since the suspension of tolls.   All the people who cannot drive, don’t take care of their cars, and are blissfully unaware of the minimum speed limit had found their way from I-95  and onto the turnpike.  My commute had been protracted by 15-20 minutes each way as a consequence of the increased traffic.  Alas, the state has turned the tolls back on.   In some small way,  it seems like my world has returned to normalcy.   Traffic still sucks, but at least it sucks less.

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I’m in my first full week of detoxing from my Irmageddon see food eat food diet.  It is patently unpleasant going from eating everything to eating nothing with carbs.  I’m exaggerating of course, but not eating processed food is tough.  The problem with hurricane food is that none of it is healthy.  Nevertheless, I could have rationed my food better.   Clearly, I should have anticipated the supply chain issues with the grocers and stockpiled some of the food I ate.   Instead I ate like a bear preparing for the longest hibernation of its life.  Thank God I live in Florida, there’s no hibernation and it’s always swimsuit season here.    Sweet baby Jesus!

Oh I did some serious damage during Irma.  On a positive note, I’m back to running on the regular.  My girls and I ran another 3.7 miles tonight.  Its still pretty hot here at night.   I wanted to puke like 3 times courtesy of the heat and the fact I’m out of shape.   Last week,  I wanted to puke during the entirety of every run, so I’d say this is an improvement.  Unlike the mad pooper of Colorado, neither my dogs nor I left any surprise packages in any yards, paths or swales.  Your welcome.

Thankfully with laser focus on a healthy diet and back to normal exercise habits, results are following.  Importantly, I need to make sure I stay on task with my diet and my exercise habits lest I  have another Irmageddon type diet emergency on my hands.

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We’re fortunate to have come through Irma unscathed, but others have not been as lucky.  Both Irma and Maria  battered the Caribbean islands severely.  There are several organizations that are providing hurricane relief.   I am including two links where you can provide assistance directly to Puerto Rico and another that will provide relief to all of the islands.  To assist in Puerto Rico’s recovery: United for Puerto Rico  The Miami Foundation is accepting donations to assist in the recovery in the islands including Antigua, Barbuda, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.  Miami Foundation  There are a number of other charities involved in providing hurricane relief.  Before you donate to any charity, please check them out on Charity Navigator.

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