Today

(plans)
Sheila’s not sure she’ll go to a class today, we’re picking up the 6 yr old at school then taking him to ninja class, then bringing him back to spend the night. That means our priority from the early afternoon into night will be Max. A nice priority ❤️

Ninja class for his age group (he started last year), is predominately about having fun, having respect – for oneself and others, and learning to feel comfortable in one’s body. I sure could’ve used a ninja class growing up, lol!

When he 1st started he was naturally very unsure. I told him (more or less), that yes, this was a style of competition, and yes, fighting, but under very strict rules of fairness, supervised by adults who enforced that fairness.

Once he met and experienced the two great teachers there, and saw and felt their even hand across the whole class, he relaxed and began to have fun rolling, hopping, jumping. Great fun stuff! 😊

(carrot overload! part 2)
Yesterday’s My Day Ahead went a little bit into my early fascination with carrots as a favored snack food, and I sorta promised I’d pick up today around 3rd grade, when I somehow ate a whole 1lb bag, lol! I guess I just snacked away. I’d been eating carrots since before I’d started school, cooked of course, after my 1st bite into one had said, uh, not my usual soft food 😊 Luckily my mom knew what to do & I must’ve been very happy with the softer cooked version. But somewhere along the way I did finally get where my teeth could snap into a raw carrot, crack the outer portion, revealing a lighter more tender core that runs the length of any carrot. Get that inside stalk out without breaking it was a kinda reward I remember, and tasty! ‘Course I ate the whole thing, outer and inner.

So one fall day (I remember because we were having a fall festival at my elementary school) I was home for most the afternoon (maybe we got out of school 2:30 or 3?) and, while watching our tiny 50s b&w TV, I opened up a new pack of carrots that must’ve looked particularly orange and particularly yummy, because I ate one, then another, and another, and just kept going til the whole bag was gone. I remember distinctly feeling surprised and giving the bag a good long look. Like, hey, where it’d go?! No one’d paid much mind to me cause I was always eating carrots. Still do, though I have to have them soft again til my stomach and esophagus both recover enough. So no big deal, other than being out of carrots.

No big deal at least til my stomach started feeling funny, then not so funny, cramping, hurting a little.

Then a lot! Like bowled over hurting!

Well, my mom had my younger brother and sister there too and didn’t know what to do. Luckily one of our grandmother’s was visiting and there with us. She didn’t speak English, but mom called a cab and gave him directions where to take us.

Back then, in 50s Houston, and probably everywhere else in the country, there was usually one hospital, and it was downtown. No satellite hospitals, no ride shares or scooters (though our grandma wouldn’t’ve been able to ride one I’m sure!

So off we went to the hospital downtown in a cap, me bowled over in a ball in the backseat with my grandmother. Everybody there at the hospital seemed to know what was going, probably my mom’d called them, and the rushed me in and started poking on my stomach which of course made me yell out. My grandmother laughed with those super-twinkling eyes I loved of hers (she’d raised half a dozen kids on her own through the Depression and into WWII &’d seen my dad stuck through the heart By a fence spike when he was a young teen, and her laugh made me feel I was gonna make it through this, even if I didn’t know about what’d happened to my dad then).

The hospital seemed HUGE and we had to ride elevators up and down to this place and that and me in a child’s half gown the back side open probably and everyone we saw grinning when they saw my grandma and me, lol!

We finally ended up in some cold cold room where they laid me on my side and pumped water into me. Our 6 year old’s familiar with this story and thinks it’s funny. Anyway, there’s only one practical way to pump water into someone tiny without ripping out their thread, and that’s through the other end 😊 No one explained why they were doing this, though I think I did hear someone say I was stuck, but I didn’t feel like I was stuck in anything. Thing is, something was stuck in me, a 1lb bag of raw carrots that’d absorbed all the moisture from my belly!

Like I’d done a couple weeks ago trying to eat a one inch square of raw carrot I’d chewed into mush! That, though, went way better, lol!

The end result – sorry for the pun (on the bun 😊) but it all came out (sorry) ok 😊 – my grandma & I took a cab back home and that evening I still got to go to my school’s fall festival 💕

Some time soon, I’ll try and tell ya’ll how/why I finally learned to ride my bike w/out my training wheels 😊

Yesterday

(blogging, volleyball poster)
Woke much earlier, so early I lounged in bed stretching for half an hour before getting up, lol!

Sheila and I coasted through our 1st small (4 cup) pot of coffee before a short morning walk, cool, damp from a short rain or two in the night. It was nice. She wasn’t going to a class til late morning so we had more time than usual.

Plus I think I’m getting our morning cereal down in size just about right finally. I always preferred a huge bowl with berries rolling off the rounded top w/Sheila saying hers was too full, lol! Now we’re more in sync, or me w/her. It was kinda nice not to be so full after breakfast 😊

Then it was get back to working on getting my blog working like it used to, though I’ll settle for it being even better! 😂

Spent time responding to a really nice, competent sounding (via msg in the WP app & emails) rep, then implementing her suggestions, checking setting (JavaScript on, etc), then trying things out from scratch creating a new test post not using any previous post as a base, saving the draft, then testing how if it behaved as well as after the set up and save and during the setup. Mostly, but not entirely. Reported all that back to the rep. Then tested one of my prev saved templates to see if functionality’d improved there. Same. Most, but not entirely. Still, that’s progress. I’ve found the WP folks to be kinda like bulldogs (my old HS mascot in Houston btw!) and won’t let go of a problem till it’s solved. At least not yet 😊

Did update a volleyball post badly in need of it, and that came off pretty good, also mostly, but also glad it did. Volleyball setter’s one of my perennial most viewed, since Sheila & mine’s art show days in the 90s, to the beginning of my WP blog early 2011. It’s on par w/Step-Mom. And that’s saying a lot!

Plus, I finally got Volleyball Setter listed on eBay!

Uploading & listing it to Fine Art America’ll have to be another day. Same with shipping inventory of it to Amazon. I’m working on those 😊

And I did get my latest-paintings sold post up.

Paid a chunk of early month bills.

Not a bad day.

Plus a short evening walk w/lots of high clouds light streaked from behind by the low sun. Really nice!

And, planned my reblog for today (Tuesday).

It’s a little different from my usual, but so well presented, and true, regarding one courageous lady’s struggle with grief. Heart lifting & wrenching. Life.

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Related Amazon Search & Products

I do like to point out I pick my selections to showcase from my Amazon searches. May not always be the case, or wholly always the case, but for now, I prefer picking titles and book covers and gift items that just really appeal to me. There’s lots more to choose from, but only have so much room, lol! I hope you enjoy —

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My Related Blog Posts

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Thanks so much everyone! 😊

Adan

Twitter / Instagram / FB @FelipeAdanLerma
Amazon Author Page – https://amzn.to/2YpgyUf
Fine Art America (FAA) – https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/felipeadan-lerma.html