Thank you medula!

For most of us, our amazing medula involuntarily manages some critical life sustaining functions...breathing and a beating heart. I am grateful for my medula!

Unfortunately for some of us, breathing can be a scary struggle when impacted by allergies, asthma, and other airway impacting diseases. When my son was little, he was hospitalized twice for reactive airway disease (RAD) - the condition small children have before being officially diagnosed with asthma. For the next three to four years, we went to the pediatric pulmonologist or his pediatrician at least every three months for them to prescribe more steroids and albuterol and sometimes prednisone. Being hooked up to a  nebulizer became a routine part his day. My son didn't mind too much as he took the time to chill out and watch videos - an activity that kept him still while he was connected to the machine. I hated that he was being pumped full of steroids every day. In my mind, it was a short term solution.

Mama Bear kicked in and I did everything I could to peel him off those steroids. Our home has hard wood or resilient flooring - no wall-to-wall carpet. We tried some essential oils. I paid close attention to what we were eating sourcing from the local farmers market and/or organic sources. We drank healing teas. I changed our air filters on schedule. Thankfully, my son has outgrown his asthma and has not been to a doctor for sickness for almost four years.

New filter on left. Three month old filter on right. Ick!

Americans spend 90% of our time indoors. The indoor air quality is critical to our health. Contaminants can come into our homes on our feet, on products we buy that off-gas in our home, on products we spray or burn inside our home, and in the outside air that is pulled in through our home's heating and cooling systems. Every time I change our air filters, I am amazed and disgusted as to how much dirt builds up in three months time. As we all hunker down for the winter months and spend even more time indoors on these short sunlight days, do yourself a favor and change out your air filters this month. Spring for the ones that filter more than sand (1200 filtration level or 1500 level or higher if your heating and cooling system can handle it). Your medula will thank you.

Living in a small rural community somewhere along an outdated, coal burning power source, it is not uncommon for our power to flicker or go out during high winds, snowstorms, or the errant bird/cow/vehicle tweaking a power pole/line. Such was the case yesterday. Friday at 1:30 pm I'm on a work conference call. The call lasts until a half hour before I have to head for the bus stop. Motivation to rig up the computer power was low. I crippled through the rest of the work day on my cell phones and collected water in five-gallon buckets from the yard hydrant fed by a natural spring. When the water source is from a well, one quickly learns the advantage of daylight trekking through the yard to collect water for later use.

Shrimp and sausage had been defrosted in the fridge in preparation for dinner. The power company had texted with an estimate for 10 pm for the power to be back, but it's always best to take that info with a grain of salt. With a gas stove and no need for spoiled meat, the paella for dinner proved to be a perfect power outage one-dish meal.

While I was cooking dinner, hubby connected the inverter to our marine battery and voila! The house was lit with LED rope lights. The wireless and computer were connected and up and running too. After a candlelit dinner, we gathered by the masonry stove. The dude played video games. Hubby surfed the web. I made paper flowers for the school dance. We survived satiated, warm and happy in each other's company until our power came back on just before 8 pm last night.

Warm Sunny February Day, I Love You.

Typically upbeat, there are rare times in my life when joy is fleeting. After a week of feeling glum, the sun's healing radiance on an unseasonable warm February day was welcomed with open arms.

It was a kite flying,

frog leg spinning, 

log-splitting,

chocolate chip cookie making, yummy day.

 Thank you, World. I needed that.