I don’t really know why I was out of sorts because nothing went particularly wrong.
In fact, lots of things went right – I had two terrific Zoom conversations with friends, I spent some time drawing and writing, it was sunny out for most of the day – but I felt a little under the weather, I couldn’t really settle into my work, and I had to push myself to do even the simplest things.
I even had to push myself to go for a walk this afternoon – an activity that is automatic about 90% of the time.
I’m sure Khalee would have forgiven me if we didn’t walk today but I didn’t like the idea of her missing out on a walk on a warm, sunny day.
Since I was having trouble with the push to walk, I decided to try to add a ‘pull’ factor – I challenged myself to take a photo as many beautiful things as I could without Khalee losing her patience.
And that worked out pretty well – it made my walk into a series of small strolls between photos and I was reminded of how many lovely things I can see even on a short walk.
All in all, this small photo challenge was a good way to finish my Monday.
And if you’re having trouble getting out for a walk, I highly recommend going off in search of beauty.
I really liked seeing all of these clusters on white flowers on the tree branches reaching toward the path. Image description: a cluster of small white flowers on the top of a tree branch that has relatively small green leaves. The background is out of of focus but there’s grass and trees and the sun is shining through here and there. I really liked the contrast of the green branches and the purple cones with the blue sky in the background. Image description: a photo of the underside of a spruce tree looking up towards the sky. another set of branches, up very high, is visible at the top of the photo and the deep blue sky is visible on several sides. The tips of the spruce branch are laden with new cones that are growing. Some are green and others are a soft purple.When I was young, my friends and I played ‘spies’ in the small wooded areas along this path. Little alcoves formed by the trees were our favourite hiding places. Image description: a photo of a wooded area with a clearing between the trees, the entrance to which is partially blocked by trees that are leaning far to one side. Khalee, my light brown dog who is wearing a blue neckerchief is in the bottom of the photo.I take so many photos of the sun on the greenery and the river in this particular spot on the bridge. Image description: a photo of a river that is so overgrown that there are just two or three pools of water easily visible between the greenery and the rocks. The sun is shining down on all the trees and shrubs and grass making it area look very lush. Something about the shape of this cloud was really pleasing to me and I also loved how looooooong the street looked in this photo. Image description: a photo of a street near my house that seems to be leading me right toward the most prominent long white cloud in the bright blue sky. The sun is a bright shape with a kind of aura around it in the top of the photo and there is a series of trees, houses, and cars, as well a sidewalk along the left side of the photo, and a few houses, trees, and cars on the right.I took this photo on my front lawn where this lilac tree keeps blooming despite (because of?) my benign neglect. Image description: a close-up photo of a lilac branch with bright green leaves and with the lilac flowers still closed up in dark pink buds. There are houses and cars out of focus in the background and blue sky above.These small orange flowers are apparently a type of poppy and they also thrive under my benign neglect in a planter next to the lilac tree in front of my house. I will be pulling the grass out of the planter once I get around to it. Image description: a top-down photo of some small orange poppies amidst a variety of green plants and leaves and a smattering of grass stalks. On the right side of the photo there is the edge of the wooden planter and a few rocks scattered on the dirt that is part way under my front steps.I think Khalee is just as beautiful as the trees, the flowers, the river and the cloud, of course. Image description: a photo of Khalee, a medium-sized light brown dog whose face, paws and chest are white. She is wearing a jaunty blue neckerchief with blue daisies outlined on it. She is standing in a shadow on a patch of grass with a sunny spot just past her. Only her front paws and her head is in the shot and she has her head turned slightly towards us so she is looking into the camera.
2. Cheddar likes the after dinner digestive walls. No issues. Done all three days.
Cheddar!
3. I’m not so sure about the 30-30-30 thing. That’s 30 minutes of exercise and 30 grams of protein 30 minutes after waking.
West’s the wrinkle? I take medication that I need to take first thing in the morning and not eat for an hour. So 30 grams of protein in the first 30 minutes isn’t happening. I do have 30 grams of protein when I do eat though.
The 30 minutes of exercise is also hit or miss. It’s easy on Mondays when I ride my bike on Zwift. Tuesday is personal training very early. But I missed Wednesday because I had to travel to Toronto on a very early GO train.
More specifically, I said I would, “Here are some of the specific things I’d like to add to my 26 in 2026 list: Purchase a conservation area pass and visit all 11 local conservation areas plus the Luther Marsh, one per month, and a provincial park pass with the goal of visiting 6 new ones this year.”
This weekend, most other family members are off outdoor adventuring. Mallory and Gwen are backcountry canoe camping in Algonquin, Sarah is off with family in Prince Edward County, Jeff and Susan are both in Nova Scotia, and Miles, mum, and I are home sick. Blerg.
But even when you’re sick, the dogs still need walking, so we ventured out in the car to check out a new-to-us conservation area, Elora Gorge. (That’s different from the Elora Quarry where Catherine and I went swimming a couple of years ago.)
We had so much fun that on Sunday we did it again. This time we went further afield to Shade’s Mills Conservation area in nearby Cambridge. It’s more of a lakefront beach for families, less hiking. Cheddar went in the water for a bit to beat the heat, It got up to 30 degrees and we got heat alerts on our phones. That felt extra strange after the midweek frost alert.
Both days we logged more than 10k steps and enjoyed our days, talking, and hanging with the dogs.
Goal: 11 conservation areas + Luther Marsh
So far we’ve visited Rockwood, Shade’s Mills, and the Elora Gorge, and I feel like I’m getting to know the area better.
Elora Gorge Walk with Cheddar, Chase, and Miles
2. Shades’s Mills Conservation Area with Cheddar, Chase and Miles
Khalee and I have been working on a walking challenge – The Great Sniffari 2026 – and I chose for us to walk 21km over the first 10 days of May.
Often when I try to take photo of Khalee, she steps out of the way. This time she kind of photobombed my photo of this fallen tree with the roots exposed and a ‘witch broom’ tangle of branches on it. Image description: a photo of Khalee, my medium-sized dog with short, light-brown hair on most of her body and white paws, tail, and face, wearing a jaunty green bandana with cartoon bugs on it. She is looking to the right in the photo and her neck is foreshortened because of the angle so she looks a little squished. Behind her is a fallen tree with the roots exposed.
The challenge seemed like it would be fairly easy at the outset – a small extra effort on top of our usual walks – but things went a bit awry and I realized last Thursday that I was going to have to do a bit of a push to finish on time.
So on Thursday we walked 2.78km, on Friday we did 2.81, Saturday was 3km which technically brought us to the end of our challenge.* (In fact, we only needed .29km on Saturday to finish.)
I say technically because I didn’t realize the settings in the app wouldn’t carry over from my other, year-long, challenge and the Sniffari was pulling Apple Health step data.
I didn’t actually want to include steps from things like walking around the house or the grocery store but because they automatically uploaded at the end of each day, I didn’t realize they were being rolled into my total and I was surprised to find out that I was finished.
Once I figured out why I had finished a day early, I calculated my actual distances and then added extra amounts to my daily walks for the next few days to match the way I wanted things to play out.
No matter the details of the challenge, on Saturday I realized something important.
These longer walks were making me feel great.
I mean, I generally enjoy going for a walk – even when I have to drag myself out for them – but this was a different kind of enjoyment.
I was starting to feel those kind of intangible benefits I get when I exercise regularly – a looser feeling in my hips, a certain ease of movement, an overall feeling of wellbeing – after only 3 days of extra effort.
That seemed kind of quick but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in its proverbial mouth here. Instead, I decided to keep building momentum.
So, on Sunday, we walked 4.42km and, on Monday, we walked 4.08km, and it felt purposeful, straightforward, and kind of tiring – but in a good way.
And, on top of that, all of this extra movement seems to have flipped a mental switch for me and I have found myself doing a bit more yoga, a few more strength training exercises, taking a few extra trips up the stairs, and adding mobility exercises while I am doing things around the house.
So, it seems that, like the title says, moving more makes me want to move more.
And I like it!
Of course, I know that this has happened to me before – I’ve gotten into an exercise routine, started to feel the effects, been enjoying myself, and then something has gone sideways and I lost momentum or had to change gears.
So, I have told myself to keep an eye out for when that happens and in the meantime I am developing some backup plans.
I’ll let you know how it all goes, obviously. 🙂
a photo of Khalee, my medium-sized dog with short, light-brown hair on most of her body and white paws, tail, and face, standing next to a river on a bright, sunny day. She is sort of side on and she’s facing the left side of the photo. She has a harness and leash on. She’s standing on dried grass and mud, the river next to her is filled with brownish red rocks and there are trees and more dried grass and mud on the other side of the river.
This month’s camping trip, at the Pinery, would normally also be about bikes, but instead we brought Cheddar along. Cheddar loves the beach. Who was on the trip?: Sarah and me, my eldest adult child Mallory and her friend Sarah, and Cheddar the beach dog!
Mallory and friend Sarah went for a swim (brrr!) but Sarah and I mostly walked along the beach, admired the sunset and the waves. It still sometimes amazes me that Lake Huron is a lake and not an ocean.
Since I’m pretty committed to not driving around the park–and it’s a very large park–that meant a lot of walking. More than 16k steps of walking. My feet are sore, but my knees are fine. This sore feet thing is new. For years, it’s been my knees that limit how far I can walk.
What else to tell you about our weekend away camping trip? We borrowed the middle kid’s luxury tent. Thanks, Gwen, Cheddar loves having room for his own bed. I love the Pinery at this time of year when it’s only partly open. So quiet. So beautiful. (Okay, also cold. It went down to 3 C at night.) We played CrossCrib, and Wizard, and Mallory’s new Library game.
10/10 recommend. Will definitely go again. We stayed in Dunes Area 1, site 79, right next to the path to the beach.
I’m really tempted to say that I’m going to do one thing for the first month, but we all know that’s not true.
Except that it kind of is.
My themes for the year are practice and process and I’ve picked ONE particular aspect to focus on in January.
My focus is going to be on experimenting*.
In particular, I’m experimenting with scheduling my fitness and well-being practices.
So even though I’ll be trying lots of things, they’re really all in-service of that one thing – finding a comfortable schedule that lets me include all of the things I want to do on a regular basis.
It’s a practice that fits in nicely with my usual Planuary approach.**
I have found that evening is a good time for me to do yoga and morning is a good time for meditation, but I haven’t found the best time for journalling yet.
So that’s part of the January experiment.
I’ll keep you updated!
Speaking of updates:
Back in October, I started a walking challenge and I completed that on December 20. (My medal is in the mail!)
Last week, I signed up for a year-long challenge with the same company.
For these challenges, many people add their daily step count from their fitness tracker or that kind of thing***but I wanted to encourage myself to add more activity to my life on a regular basis so including my routine steps would be counterproductive.
Instead, I decided that I would only include extra activity that I deliberately chose to do- walks, dance videos, strength training – any activity that I did for the sake of moving. (FYI – the app converts many activities to an equivalent distance.)
And I enjoyed how my commitment to the challenge gave me extra motivation to seek out some exercise on a regular basis.
I’m following the same pattern with the current challenge – only adding deliberately chosen activities so I know that every kilometre was ‘travelled’ on purpose.
I’ll keep you in the loop on this, too.
Khalee approves of my walking challenge but she was very confused as to why I stopped to take her picture today instead of just continuing to walk. Image Description: My dog, Khalee, who is medium-sized and has short light-brown hair is standing on a snowy road that has one lane plowed. (It’s a suburban side street, we weren’t in danger!) she is standing looking to the left so we can see her entire left side, and her head is turned slightly towards us. She is wearing a light blue harness and a darker blue leash. The leash extends from her towards the lower part of the image on the right, where I am holding the leash in my right hand, but you can’t see that.
**As I said in one of my December posts, I actually managed to do a little January planning in December this time. Will wonders never cease?
I mean, I still have other things I want to plan but I feel good about having the capacity to think about January while so was still in December. Christine 1: ADHD 0 (in that situation, at least!)
***Zero criticism intended here. That’s a totally valid way to approach these challenges, it just wouldn’t serve my purposes.
This year is the first Christmas of being empty nesters. Our youngest is in British Columbia. Our eldest is over for a couple days. His beloved is on military deployment. So it’s just the 3 of us and we are finding new traditions.
Last night we had Tortiére, a savory meat pie, mashed potatoes and green beans. We made homemade apple fritters in the air fryer. Not too shabby. It’s a nod to the French Canadian tradition of Réveillon, celebrating the start of the holidays with food and family.
Today we are having turkey, wild rice & apricot stuffing, sweet potato casserole, bronzed onions and cranberry sauce.
If we get real ambitious we will make Cracker Candy. It’s a quick and easy dessert where the butter and sugar candy is poured over saltines and topped with chocolate and pecans.
One thing that is definitely on our agenda is giving Lucy and ourselves a good walk.
Our neighbourhood is quiet with students gone home for the holidays and many people traveling. It’s like we have the city to ourselves. I enjoy the peaceful, unhurried way everyone is going about the day.
Lucy the dog sits patiently by the door waiting for a walk.
As part of doing things differently this year there’s no alcohol involved. In previous years we’d have wine with meals and cocktails in the evenings. I’m surprised that I’m not missing it.
We’ve scaled way back on gifts as we are investing in house renovations next month. It’s a big change but one that feels good and aligned with what we really want.
Snowy walks are better in Santa hats. Nat and Michel smile while dressed in warm jackets covered in snow.
If where you are has today as a holiday I hope you are getting the day you need. I hope it includes the perfect balance of fitness, family and fun.
I know, I know! Since the advent of social media, we’ve been swamped with National Days and I’m pretty sure that National Dog Day (or Puppy Day or Rescue Day or I Love My Dog Day) happens several times a year.
And one part of me wants to resist falling for a trend or buying into the hype but another (very determined!) part of me says ‘Why not celebrate good things more often?’
Yes, I know that it is hard to celebrate things – even the very best things- every day.
And if you celebrate things every day, aren’t you just establishing a new normal and nothing is actually being celebrated?
Yeah, probably.
But maybe having multiple points in the year to celebrate important parts of your life is a good compromise between all of those things.
*****
With all of that wondering (overthinking? probably.) out of the way, I’m going to go ahead and celebrate National Dog Day today.
Even after 6 years, I still find myself somewhat surprised to have a dog.
It’s a good kind of surprise.
It’s delightful to have Khalee in my life, to take her for walks and to give her treats and to just have her company even though part of my brain is still astounded that she lives here.
You see, I have always been allergic to animals and while we had pets some of the time when I was growing up, my allergies kind of forced me to keep my distance.
I don’t think any of us realized that I could take an allergy pill daily. I only took them when my symptoms got really bad – they were a treatment, not a prevention – and as a result, while I loved our dog, Sox, and our guinea pigs and the like I didn’t get the same kind of close to them that other people got to their pets.
So, when my friends started getting pets for their kids – or when it was suggested that I get a pet for mine – I would comment that I couldn’t imagine having an animal living in my house.
Now, before you get all upstrapless about my tone there, I wasn’t judging them and I wasn’t saying dogs were bad. I was actually bewildered by the idea.
I liked dogs and cats but I didn’t understand them. I couldn’t get close to them (because: allergies) and so all I was imagining was having another creature to take care of and my brain just flatly refused to entertain the idea.
But once my ADHD meds were sorted and my kid’s therapist had recommended that we get a ‘tactile’ pet, I had a bit more capacity AND I had an extra reason to take on the responsibility of giving a dog a home.
This is a photo of Khalee from 2019 and I love how it looks like she is hoping I understood how important that secret she just told me was. Image description: a close-up photo of Khalee, a light-coloured, medium-sized dog, standing on a dark laminate floor with an orange wall in the background. She has her mouth slightly open and her eyes look serious.
In that post, I mention that I didn’t consider ‘dog person’ as part of my identity. I’m still not sure that it would occur to me to mention how I feel about dogs when having a casual conversation but I am a friend to dogs in a way I never was before and everypup recognizes me as a soft touch for a pat or a snack.
Khalee has branched out a bit since that post – she doesn’t follow every step I take anymore, unless I am in the kitchen or carrying a plate of food, of course.
She gets up waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too early and she sometimes needs to go out over and over and over and that can be annoying in the moment but she also keeps me company when I’m working on something challenging and she gives me a reason to go out for a (often very slow) walk and she’s happy to see me when I come home (even if I have just been out in the driveway) and, well, she’s just great.
And appreciating her for her mere existence – she’s good because she’s good, not because of anything specific she does – has made it a lot easier to feel that way about creatures in general, including people.
A recent, sleepy photo of Khalee. Image description: a photo of Khalee, a medium-sized, light-haired dog resting with her head on her paws, facing the camera. Her face takes up most of the image and she looks gentle, relaxed, and sleepy.
So yeah, I’m up for celebrating National Dog Day.
If you are looking for some other ways to celebrate National Dog Day, check out this list on the National Dog Day website.
Khalee is DEFINITELY a Feminist. Image description: a photo of Khalee, a light-haired, medium-sized dog resting on my bed. She has her mouth open slightly and she is looking directly at the camera. Next to her is a rectangular pillow that says ‘Feminist’ in red cursive with a pink, yellow, and green rainbow behind it.
As a bonus, here are some photos of some of my other dog friends…I mean, my friend’s dogs…hmm, maybe I was right the first time.
This is my friend, Gal, she likes highway driving but she is not a fan of driving slowly. that’s why we don’t let her take the wheel. Image description: a photo from the passenger seat of a car with Gal, a husky, poking her head out from the backseat and resting her chin on the center console. You can see my left arm next to her head and my friend’s shoulder and a piece of her hair on the other side of Gal’s sweet face.Archie! My friend Archie likes to sleep on the back of your neck if you sit on his couch when you visit. He is a fan of treats – that’s something we have in common. Image description: a small black, white, and brown dog wearing a plaid bowtie sits upright on a brown couch. He has true puppydog eyes – round and bright and very likely to convince you to hand over a potato chip.Maisie and I are good friends, especially if I am willing to share my snacks, scratch her head, or hold her chew toy at chomping height. Image description: a large grey dog with fuzzy hair sits upright on a weathered patio. She has her tongue stuck out a little ways and her hair hangs over her eyes. You can see my friend’s arm as she reaches out to pat Maisie’s back, and you can see grass, flowers, and trees in the background. Reuben is a new friend of mine and he is VERY fuzzy and he was wondering if maybe I had a treat for him. (I did!) Image description: a tall, light brown, curly-haired dog is sitting upright on a tile kitchen floor next to a table with a flowered table cloth.Spritz (a.k.a. Spritzie) is a teeny brown chihuahua who liked being up in my arms until he very much did not and then I gently laid him down on the floor. Image description: a photo of me holding a teeny brown chihuahua in the crook of my left arm while I take a selfie with my right. I am wearing a beige sweater and I have my hair pulled back from my face with a black cloth band.
And just in case you want to know more about how helpful Khalee is, here are some of my posts that feature her:
May is usually a time of transition for me. The school term finishes and I ease into my summer schedule, which often includes travel to see friends and family, occasional conferences, and summer-at-home activity and projects. This May, however, I’ve been running (and driving and flying) around. Last week I was in Vermont with a friend, hanging out, doing some work, and petting the resident cat Kasper. This week I’m in South Carolina, staying with my sister and seeing my mom and other family.
My sister’s kids are out of the house this week on their own travel adventures, so we are taking advantage of the quieter time to hang out together and also knock out some home improvement tasks. Her wish list includes the following:
replace IKEA wardrobe doors
paint IKEA wardrobe sides to go with new doors
buy new bed and mattress
get rid of old bed and mattress to complete transition
paint bathroom one
paint bathroom two
buy and install IKEA standing shelf unit for bathroom two
paint upper kitchen cabinets
miscellaneous car maintenance for her and kids’ cars
My guess is that we will achieve some from her list and some from my list. We have already made some progress, having gone to IKEA right after she picked me up from the Charlotte, NC airport and scoped out possible purchases. And last night we watched several episodes of Hacks.
I like domestic activity, I like visiting my family, and I’m looking forward to this week. I’ll update y’all when I get back (my flight takes me home on May 31). Then my actual summer will begin…
A patch of Rocky shoals spider lilies; hoping to see some later today!
I have started this post approximately 8 million times today and I just couldn’t get any momentum.
Some topics were too small to get anywhere with and others were too big to wrap my head around on this kind-of-low-energy, didn’t-sleep-well, had-a-Covid-booster-shot-this-morning day.
And I had actually posted to the other bloggers to see if anyone had something they wanted to post today instead of me but before anyone could take me up on it, I remembered my best ways of getting things done.
a) do the easy thing
b) make it small
For this post, doing the easy thing meant focusing on writing ANYTHING instead of focusing on writing something good. I didn’t have to be profound or comprehensive, and I didn’t have to have some actionable conclusion, I could just write about how things are for me today – fitness-wise, mental health-wise, or wellness-wise.
And making it small meant that I didn’t have to write an essay, I could write a paragraph, I could post a photo, I could write a list.
So I did!
Here are three things that are making me happy today and that have the potential to bring me happiness in the longer-term, too.
1) Usually, Khalee and I walk by ourselves in the afternoon but a few times over the past week, thanks to the good weather and brighter evenings, Steve and I have taken her for another short walk together after supper.
More time with my husband, more time outdoors, a bit of extra exercise, and a definite break between the different parts of my day? I love this new routine!
image description: an evening photo of Khalee, my light-haired, medium-sized dog standing on a sidewalk next to some grass. She is looking back over her shoulder towards the camera and she has her tongue stuck out. There are two shadows on the sidewalk between her and the camera because the streetlight that just came on is behind me and my husband. You can’t tell in the photo of course but I’m laughing as I take this photo because the angle of where I am holding my phone makes my shadow-head look kind of rectangular.
2) I saved this Instagram post this morning because I loved how the ideas felts and I appreciated the simple (but not easy) suggestions about how to incorporate yoga principles into daily life.
I haven’t really put this into practice yet of course but I am trying to figure out ways to remind myself to return to these ideas repeatedly so they can become part of my routine.
An imbedded post from Instagram in which @johuttonyoga is talking about small moments of yoga in their day – trying to stay present, to deal with uncertainty, and to live yoga principles in a way that is more being than doing.
3) I’m reading Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s book Tiny Experiments: How to live freely in a goal-obsessed world and, so far at least, it’s a marvellous match for how my ADHD brain likes to get things done. I’ll be writing more about it when I’m finished reading but I wanted you to know about it in the meantime.
Yes, I did think it was funny to take a photo of my (e)book with this post in the background. Gotta find your fun wherever you can, right? Image description: a photo of the ebook cover of Tiny Experiments on my Kobo ereader. The device is propped up in front of my monitor on my desk and this post is displayed on screen. On the lower left of the monitor is a white piece of paper with text reading ‘Own Your Time’ and on the right is a sticker with a human skull and text reading ‘Pick Your Poison’ both of which are notes-to-self reminding me to choose how to spend my time instead of just letting it gallop along. My reading glasses are on the desk on the left.
