Cancer Survivor, writing about Health and Fitness as you age

In my never-ending quest to optimize my time, I've ventured into the world of audiobooks on CD (from the library because I'm cheap...I mean.. economical). I borrowed Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen . Audiobooks work for me because I could cook, clear up, fold laundry etc, while listening. (Watching television while doing chores didn't work out so well for me.) I picked a book that I wasn't salivating to read, a "second-tier" book if you will. It so happened that in Water for Elephants the narrator was in his 20s for parts of the book and 90 (or 93) for other parts. A different reader read each part so it was easy to follow the transition from one to the other. The readers were professional so I felt that they added to the positive experience of the book by using different voices for different characters. There were no extra sound effects to detract from the words and because the story was being told to me, I remembered the turns of the plot and quotes mu

I was wondering about this because I have a friend whose daughter started an all-girls elementary school from Grade 1 (and another who is thinking about doing this). I know there are lots of studies about the beneficial impact on education, confidence etc. for girls attending same-sex schools, but does it make a difference at so young an age? Are they missing out on social skills because of it? Is that a bad thing? I have no clue. I do know that I went to an all-girls secondary school (middle through high school), but I had gone to a co-ed elementary school. Throughout my secondary school experience I continued to meet the male friends I had made in elementary school, so I didn't feel totally inept when it came to talking to boys, but I certainly didn't feel terribly confident either (and I had a brother at home!). Lucas has a regular playdate with two sisters who live in our neighbourhood. Every Friday afternoon. Their mom asks me constantly, "Are you sure?" Yes,

I'm still making up for not having many posts about my Trinidad trip, but this time I thought I'd talk about the flight down...alone..with Liam...on my lap. Austin check-in was slow since the person behind the desk didn't quite know how to handle the passenger-with-lap-child situation. By the time we got our boarding passes, Liam had had enough. He turned to me, scrunched up his little face and said, "Home". It was heart-breaking since we hadn't even gotten through security yet! Liam was very subdued on the flights and didn't run about on the plane, but each time we got up from the chairs to board another flight, he told me, "Home". "We're almost there, baby, we're going to Grandpa's home." I kept him entertained with my 'travel packet'. Shown below, everything fit in a ziploc bag (not shown - my toy of last resort, lent to a friend). The stickers were a life-saver! He kept sticking and taking them off the board I

I had hoped to include a picture of a "doubles" up close and personal, but I am still waiting on that one. Instead here are some pictures of the doubles vendor plus some other pictures I hope you find interesting. Here you see doubles being sold out of the back of a pick-up truck. Forget about permits, sanitary requirements etc. This isn't the US. In the photo below you can make out other Indian delicacies (with lots of oil, pepper and fat), alloo pie (seasoned potato pie) and cachourie or maybe saheena (can't really see). Yummy stuff!! If you're interested in some Trini recipes, check out http://www.trinigourmet.com/ . Below is a picture of a walkathon we went on in Penal. Check out the telephone and electrical wires. As I said, this isn't the US. Finally, for all you flower-lovers out there, a picture of the arrangement on the head table for the religious part of my Dad's 80th birthday celebrations. Anthurium lilies - they were totally gorgeous.

I've often wondered myself, and now I know. The following is my Walmart rant, but feel free to look at the picture instead. I went into Walmart to get some rakes and garden refuse bags, so I parked near Gardening. Got the rakes, but they didn't have bags and sent me to Groceries. I hauled the rakes through Walmart and they didn't actually have the bags (and in fact the attendants seemed to be surprised that I would be looking there for gardening bags). So I hauled the rakes back through Walmart and tried to cash out in Gardening. They were closed, I had to go back into the main building to cash. Well, I left the rakes there because I was so mad that I had wasted over an hour walking around a huge, remodelled store that nobody seemed to know where anything was. If it is something I could get in the grocery, I will! It happened again with bug spray. I figured bug spray and sunblock would go hand-in-hand in Health & Beauty. Well it didn't. They sent me to..yes. G

(I know I need show some pictures of Trinidad and finish my post, but this seemed to be more important to post, besides, my BROTHER who owes me some pics, hasn't sent them on yet.) I can't exactly recall what we were talking about, but Lucas mentioned that he thought I was brave. "So babe, why do you say so?" "Well you try to play video games with me even though you don't know the games and you don't play well." At least he was honest about it and since I am very happy to accept any praise from my children, I lapped it up. But as we are on the topic of cowardice :) you might be wondering about my writing. Even if you aren't the least bit interested, I'm going to tell you. I went to a free writing workshop in the library which I enjoyed. (It was on memoir writing facilitated by Ms. Spike Gillespie ). One writing exercise was to write about one decade in your life using 3 words to describe each year. At the end of it, a few participants re