Dirt under my nails again 🤸🏽‍♀️

Happy Saturday friends!

Guess what I'm doing almost every morning now? Walking I Love Lucy in the forest for a good 30 minutes! And I feel good! Oooooo happy dance, HAPPY! DANCE! 🤸🏽‍♀️💃🏼🕺🏽🤸🏽‍♀️ Some of you might remember when I wrote this "here's what's helping my chronic illness" post in June of last year but before I get into my happy healing, here is Lucy's happy morning!

She has beds around the house but this morning I found her here in my office, snoozing away in the sun (normally her bed is against the windows but she likes to drag it all around at night):

I asked if she wanted to go for a walk, biiiiiiig stretch:

Gotta stretch the back legs too:

Then we check the weather and see if there are any deer to bark at in the front yard:

And shake off the excitement of that idea, whew!:

Off to the forest we go! She smells everything that interests her:

And I take photos of everything that interests me:

Sometimes she gets following a trail and just walks right through fallen branches:

The forest on our property backs up to several other unfenced forested properties, so while this sweet little stream isn't "mine" I can visit it:

I tell Lucy to wait when I want to take a photo, so she sits and watches for deer. What a weird tree this is!

I often just follow her lead and she shows me cool new things all the time, like these interesting trees I had never seen before. She actually went up to them and touched them with her nose, like, "Look Mom!":

And a cute little turtle:

And this dainty moss:

She's just as happy as I am:

And it's not a good walk unless we circle around to "our" big tree:

Today I put my hand against it's bark and heard, "All will be well." As I continued on, several of the smaller trees repeated it, "All will be well, all will be well" as I walked by. It reminded me of being in a Catholic church at some point when I was a kid and the whole, "Peace be with you" feeling. Nice to once in awhile have a positive association with a church ;-)

As we get closer to the house and I start talking about being done and what a nice walk we've had, Lucy has to flop onto the ground and roll all around a few times, you know, just to coat herself in all the good smells of the forest:

She asks one last time if we are really done (because sometimes I give in and we keep going):

Then finally we have a big, wild tug session:

THEN we are done for the morning!

And to keep the happy going, I'm also now able to garden! Like the heavy stuff, moving rocks from a pile and creating a 4x4' bed edge, cutting back huge bushes, and weeding. I have missed gardening so much! I will be ordering three yards of triple shred mulch to be delivered next and am starting to wander Facebook Marketplace for deals on bushes, flowers, and ground covering plants. Since we cut down all of our trees in the front yard last year, we have full sun, so it's time to change some stuff up, move the azaleas and hydrangeas to another place so they are happier. I know this sounds like a lot of work to some, but this is where my heart is happy. I can feel Mom with me too, she was happiest digging, planting, weeding, watering, rearranging her yard too :-)

Three years since I caught covid and I'm finally starting to feel normal again. It's been almost a year and a half since I started to wear my Visible arm band with the heart rate and heart rate variability tracker in it. I've learned how to pace so my heart rate stopped spiking all the time and I've slowly healed. I also addressed my neurodivergent needs since finding that out a couple of years ago. I sometimes wonder why I thought I shouldn't? I think of people calling me "picky" and trying to be less so. Now at 56, they can all, as Brad says, "Go pound salt." Who cares what I do to make my life less stressful? Here are a few things that have made my life a lot better and have contributed to my overall health:

-I wear noise cancelling earbuds to stores, grocery stores particularly (and my GOD when I take them out to pay, the noise!)

-On the days when Rosie the Robot is sweeping my floors, I also wear noise cancelling earbuds—she is LOUD

-I moved my work desk from my office to my bonus room bedroom upstairs. It's just my room and the guest room (loft) up there so no one pops in for a chat like when I was in my office. 

-I bought supportive fuzzy Chaco slippers this winter, you know, for my old lady plantar fasciitis feet. But my feet were warm and no longer flaring up, yay!

All just low level annoyances but were adding up in my body to equal stress. I think someone should do a long covid research study and find out if the majority of us have undiagnosed and/or unaddressed neurodivergence!

Also, did you see that Kim Holderness (of The Holderness Family fame) has been diagnosed with ADHD just like her husband Penn?

ODDS AND ENDS AROUND THE RANCH:

I got out of bed one morning this week and when I came back found this:

The donkeys often fuss with each other, ears back, back feet flying, but then there are all these other times too...where you find them like this, two little peas in pod. 

Little goose slides around the pond:

Sweetness is loose, Tori is learning. I love having them hang out with me while I garden:

Found a DeKay's Brown Snake while I was gardening. I was sweeping up some leaves on the front porch when I uncovered it and it was curled up and upside down. Oh dear...but then I noticed that it seemed pretty plump, and a little shiny. I picked it up with a rake and carried it to a safe place and it promptly flipped over and unwound :-) I looked it up and yep, they do indeed try to fool predators by playing dead!

Artists like to take freebie classes too :-) A colored pencil artist I follow was teaching this little flower and I've never done water droplets so I thought I'd join. I haven't worked in colored pencil for years now but always enjoyed it for the nearly 10 years that I did it exclusively, might have to do more in it:

(You can see some of my colored pencil work by clicking here and scrolling all the way down to the last one–2000-2017 Gallery.) 

If you want to come play with me in my monthly freebie classes, click here to learn more! These are fun and easy and complete beginners can join in—I give you a line drawing to trace!

The tree is long gone but the...roots? trunks? still remain:

I was discussing my ridiculously short garden hoe with Claude AI, trying to find out what the style I was thinking of was called. We went back and forth a few times with me saying the the short hoe was not meant for someone 5'7", my back was killing me, and it gave me some options. Then it said, OMG!:

😂 😂 😂

ManChild's first time voting! Life is good:

Fairy dwellings:

Found this interesting moss, a kind I've never seen before:

I should have been a bryologist (a biologist who studies moss.) I'm always fascinated:

THE MEMES:

ManChild used to tell me this all the time, until I stopped:

(Actually, I think we would have empathy and would find a better way!)

HOW TO WORK WITH ME:

Equine Partnered Coaching! With horses, without horses, in-person, or online, your choice. 

Neurofeedback Train your brain to calm and ease. The most common response I hear about neurofeedback is, "I'm so much less reactive!" It really does smooth out the sharp spikes. Super helpful if the world feels harsh and spiky to you too right now. 

Reiki Another way to facilitate relaxation, calm, healing. In the summer an option is outside in the herd. This time of year, it's always in my office where it's warm :-) 

And of course Women's Circles! The Wednesday circle has a waiting list, I will add you to it if you'd like.

Monday night online art group anyone? Playing with watercolors with other kind women AND in your jammies? Yes please! The next one starts Monday, March 16th and runs 4 weeks. You can learn all about it and sign up here! We will be painting two of my harvest mice watercolors (there is a drop in option if you'd like to just paint one):

My monthly freebie art watercolor classes are coming up online! These are for all abilities, even if you think you have NO ability. There is a line drawing to trace and then we saturate our paper with water and play with dropping in colors we like and watching how they dance together. We finish it up with some splatter, a little black outline, and of course, EYELASHES!

Saturday, March 14, 2026 4:30-6pm ET, spring baby goat watercolor
Saturday, April 11, 10—11:30am ET, spring foal watercolor
You can sign up here!

•••

This is an AI-free newsletter! While I love to use AI to help me figure out a piece of software I don't understand, my intention is to use it to help me with the drudgery, never with writing, art, creation. All em dashes are intentional and mine, I was using them way before ChatGPT was a twinkle in Sam Altman's eye :-)

••• 

Thank you for reading :-)

If a friend forwarded you this email, you can subscribe to my Saturday morning newsletter by clicking here.