Lawn Chemicals

If you ever wondered why we seem to have more cancer, more digestive difficulties, more autism, more everything bad, look at the picture. You put toxic chemicals, strong enough to warrant a warning sign that says kids, dogs and adults should stay of the grass because it's been chemically treated. And it's like on every other lawn. Think people.

That shit also goes straight into our water system too. Granted, our water treatment centers run by our utilities do a fantastic job of treating our water before it comes to that, the reality in big storms they just open the valves and all the crap goes right into Lake Erie. I am not ripping the water department, I'm ripping the people that think dark green grass is more important than our collective health which costs well over a trillion dollars a year in the US.

Meet Debi, a husky formerly known as Queenie

This last Friday night, Arisa and I did a rash thing. We adopted a dog from a local rescue, the Berea Animal Rescue Fund. We had gone to visit a German Shepherd, which I love, but came away with a Siberian Husky instead.

Having moved to the west side, we had finally decided we’d get a dog. I’ve wanted one for quite a while but with the long commute it didn’t make any sense - 8-10 hours is way too long to leave a dog home alone in my opinion. Now, however, being just a 10-15 minutes away, we can come home at lunch, we are leaving later to get to work, and we are home sooner. So maybe 4 hours at time alone during the week, broken up by walks at lunch.

So we’ve been looking at websites like Adopt-A-Pet, Petfinder etc. and visited both the Berea facility as well as they Cuyahoga County shelter at least three times. We never quite found the right dog. We were also looking at puppies but couldn’t find the right one, or they were too far away.

Friday night I wanted to head to Berea Animal Rescue because they had a German Shepherd I wanted to see. We signed the waiver that’s good for letting us see animals for 24 hours, and as we were walking out to meet Paulie (the shepherd, they way they were putting away the other dogs made it clear this dog reacted to other dogs. In the neighborhood we are in that’s not going to fly, and it was a *big* German Shepherd, we probably would have had difficulty stopping it if it really wanted to do something.

“Queenie” caught our eye as she was the dog they cleared out from the cage we were going to see

Paulie in. Her tail was so far under her rump, she was clearly terrified. In the end, we didn’t even stay to see Paulie, went to the Cuyahoga County shelter didn’t find anything we wanted. On the way home, we talked about various dogs, and what we were looking for, etc, and we kept coming back to the husky. So we decided to go visit the husky one last time since BARF was open until 8pm on Friday nights. And we found Queenie, aka Debi, sitting in fear in her cage.

We did a meet and greet with her, and decided that we were going to adopt. Arisa in particular really wanted to get her out of that shelter. We decided after some discussion to take her home that night even though we weren’t prepared in order to give her some time to adjust to her new home before we had to leave for a work day. So we took her home Friday night, complete spur of the moment decision.

She is still really skittish though she has begun to eat and drink water, sometimes in front of us. She’s great on walks but is afraid of everything, or any loud sound. She shrunk away from a sewer in the street because the sound of the water scared her. She shrunk away from a tree with several loud and chirpy sparrows. Needless to say she is skittish around us as well.

We are looking forward to seeing her come out of her shell and show us who she really is. Already I can tell she is a chewer, and when she is really comfotable playful. I am also guessing that she is going to cause havoc. She already chewed up one plant, and was playfully jumping around last night. I plan to keep a running “diary” here: Meet Debi

2019 Intention - Summary : It's a Matter of Balance

This post will recap all three of my 2019 Intention posts, wrapping them all up in a nice little theme. And adding perhaps one or two more intentions for the year. I also intend to keep the door open for some additional goals and/or things I may want to add as go through the year. To start with here are the links to previous 2019 Intentions posts.

2019 Intentions

Part I Journaling #journaling

Part II Meditation #meditation

Part III Reading #reading #spiritualreading

Part IV Yoga Studies #yogastudies #yoga

As you have already guessed from the title of this post, this year will be about regaining balance or perhaps establishing balance. Let me explain.

2019 Intentions - Part 4 ; Yoga Studies

This post is number four in the series of posts I am making with regards to my 2019 Intentions. So far we have covererd

Part 1 Journaling

Part 2 Meditation

Part 3 Reading

Today's installment is to talk about my intentions to apply discipline and rigor to my study of Yoga. This post will cover a relatively wide range of topics that all fall under this category.

So hold onto your hats! Here we go!

2019 Intentions - Part 3 Reading

My continuing effort to clarify my intentions for 2019. This is the third post in the series and I'm guessing that there will be may 10 posts all told to clarify my intentions for this year. If you were curious, I do have a bullet list of handwritten goals and/or intentions for this year but writing these out help me clarify what I'm actually trying to achieve with each of them. In some cases writing them out is simply that I already know what I'm intending. In other cases I have an very general, vague idea of what I want to do and the blog posts will help me figure out the details.

Next up are my intention for reading in 2019.

2019 Intentions - Part 2: Meditation

updateI started this last week and am finishing it today. Just so you know.

This morning I'm hanging out at Starbucks while I wait for my Mom's testing to get done. She has about two hours of testing with the Neuro-Psychologist to see where she is at. She has already had some preliminary tests done with the neurologist and a MRI scan of her brain. We have a wrap up meeting next Wednesday with the gerontologist again. We should have a good baseline of where she is at and can more accurately evaluate any steps we need to take.

so while I'm waiting I thought it would be a good time to start my post for my next set of intentions for 2019. As I mentioned in my Part 1 post, I have about 10 goals for this year that I want to try and achieve but some of those are the same as last year. Overall, they are all related to making lifestyle changes that I hope make me more mindful, kind, and healthy in mind, body and spirit. Even if I don't achieve them all the goals and the journey are worth it. As mention in the previous post, my dabbling in journaling over the last year and half led to a some benefits, realizations, and ah-ha's that motivate me to make it a more consistent, bigger part of my lifestyle. Similarly, many of the items that are "rolling over" from last year have provided some benefits or enough of something to think I want to keep trying. Some I did fairly successfully, some I failed at. In this and upcoming posts I'll take about what I'm trying and why.

Following journaling first up is Meditation.

2019 Intentions - Part 1: Journaling

Like every year, I hope to get back to blogging more. I'll touch on the why of that for this year in a later post - assuming I ever make more than one or two posts. This post is intended to be a post about just one intention or goal I have for 2019. I have about 10, many of which are interrelated. I am hoping that by delving into each one I'll get a little bit more traction towards accomplishing them this year.

So my intention is to journal every single day of 2019. At least once a day. Now, I'm not going to freak out if I miss a day, I've done enough all or nothing resolutions to know they don't work if you are really trying to create a change. My focus is to set an intention(s) or goals that I want to achieve by the end of the year. So when I say I'll journal every day I mean by the end of the year journaling on a daily basis will be an establish part of my day-to-day activities.

Weekly Tao Te Ching Week 33

Happy New Year!!!

May your 2019 be the best year yet!

Welcome to this week's Tao Te Ching verse. See here for what this is all about.