Appreciation Award

In the last couple of days, I've been given the appreciation award by two different bloggers, Wenn and Vanilla Seven.

I am supposed to list 10 things that make me happy and then pass the award on to some other bloggers. I decided to illustrate the things that make me happy. These are not in any particular order at all. I bet you already know some of them, but maybe not others.

1. Maggie This week I ran across this picture of her as a young dog. This is how she looked just about the time she came to live with me.

2. A cup of coffee in my favorite mug

3. Cold Diet Coke

4. Being Outside Cooking, sleeping, being outside- way outside!


5. Marie My best friend, Marie. What can one say about a best friend? The relationship just works... no matter what. Here we are after the long 180-mile paved/road walk last summer.


6. Hiking OK, it's a lot like #4, but it had to have its own entry. This is last summer on the Border Route Trail of northern Minnesota.


7. Warm windy nights I'm going to share a poem that I wrote around 1993
Dream Dance

Deep green sweep of hemlock bough,
cradle of my dreams tonight, And now

barred owl starts his query, “who,
who... who cooks for you?”

Blue-black roof, velvet, high,
impaled by troupes of pin-point fire

arc-ing, marking my drooping lids.
Ignite a spark within, and bid

me rise, see dreams. Soul dance,
flame-led, I leap in sleep, entranced.

Wild, the child, this sprite within
dances her night-time, dream-time whim

Till dawn stills the whirling play.
Exhausted, filled, I greet the day.

8. The first pancakes of the fall I don't seem to have a picture of my pancakes (I'll have to fix that). So, I am using a picture of homemade waffles. "Close, but no cigar." As a child, it was always a mark of the seasons to get the griddle from its nail on the wall of the stairs to the cellar and mix up that first batch of pancakes. We always had them on the first really crisp night of fall. I love that pancake recipe. I like thin pancakes, not the thick, mealy things you get at restaurants. Surprisingly, so does Om. So, it's still a special treat to make a batch of pancakes and enjoy them with some homemade syrups. Om just likes the store syrup, but I love some mulberry or dandelion syrup.


9. The smell of clothes dried outside Similar to the pancakes in the fall, the first load outside in the spring is a mark of the seasons.


10. The smell of puppies This picture was taken in our kitchen in 1978. Billie the Australian Shepherd surprised us with a litter of puppies, and it was a great experience for the boys. (Steve left and Josh right). The one white one stayed with us and became the much-beloved Hezekiah. I haven't blogged about him- he was before Chips, but he was one of the special dogs of my life. There is something about the smell of little puppies that is just wonderfully satisfying.


OK... now the part where I have to pass this on to some other bloggers. I've chosen to bestow this on mostly newly discovered blogs. Again, in no particular order-
1. Tina of Hearts are Home. Tina, aka Frogdoc, is an internet pallie whom I met a couple of years ago. She got me started writing at Shared Reviews. Then she sort of disappeared, until she commented on a post here about a month ago. I didn't really recognize the name Tina on the comment, but when I went to visit her blog, realized who it was. She blogs about raising two children as naturally as possible while working full time. She offers "support for mommies who are dedicated homemakers working outside of their homes and away from their children. Each day we travel to work, but our hearts are home."
2. Julia of Our Simple Life. Julia is perhaps a little crazier than Tina, with alien chickens and nutritionally challenged horses. "Rural living with two households, four parents, five children, four horses, four cats, thirteen chickens, one rooster, a hand full of fish, and sometimes insane moms." Julia knows wetlands, and Tina knows frogs. I think they would like each other.
3. Nicole of Knit, Nichole, Knit. Nicole is a young woman from Canada whose blog I recently discovered, and really enjoy. It is focused on her knitting projects, but I'm very impressed with her goal-setting. I blogged about her 101 tasks for 1001 days a while ago
4. ZizzyBob of Just a Little Zizzy. This is another crafter whose blog I've discovered. She does beautiful fabric postcards, and is working on a "Be Attitudes" quilt that I especially like.
5. Duxbury Ramblers. has become one of my favorite blogs. I don't know if they "do" awards, but I'll bestow it anyway. If they don't want to post it, they can just enjoy knowing that I like their ramblings
6. Carmen of Carmen's Chronicles. Carmen has become a real blog buddy. She is a retired forensic nurse with a good eye for detail, and she writes some great poems.
7. Ivy of Spinning Lovely Days. Ivy often blogs about her little girl, Marguerite. I was drawn into reading her blog at first because that was my grandmother's middle name. But I stayed because I like her attitude toward parenting, and her ability to describe some of the everyday events in her life.
8. Chuck of Secondary Roads. Chuck is a long-time blogging buddy, and he has bestowed several awards on me, but I've never been able to get him back! If you like a glimpse of life on the back roads from a loving couple who are retired from the work force, but not from life, you will like Chuck.
9. John (nightblastz) of Irresistable SE Asia. This is a really new blog, but I like the pictures and the layout a lot. I think he'll soon be very popular. If you don't know why I have a soft spot in my heart for SE Asia, see #10 of things that make me happy.
10. Ratty of The Everyday Adventurer. I just had to send an award back to Ratty. He was my first blogger buddy, and we have so much in common with our love for things outdoors, that he just deserves the Excellence Award. Maybe one of those squirrels from yesterday which seem to belong in his blog will hand-deliver it!.

I hope you will visit these blogs, and if I missed bestowing an award on you, perhaps I'll catch you next time. (If I've really hurt someone's feelings here, let me know... I've kinda done this on the fly.)