Sat, Aug 25th

Good morning!

I can't sleep. Don't know why.

From a food standpoint, I went to bed Thur night with a lot of unbidden thoughts that I wouldn't have enough food with me for Friday's hike. One self knew that wasn't true but another self kept interjecting that I would need to stop at the grocery store on the way to the trail head. Who is this extra self and why does she focus so much on food when I am tired? When I got up on Friday, that self was entirely quiet. In Untethered Mind, there is quite a bit of time focused on that inner voice and its entire lack of credibility.

Ok, food focus out of the way, the hike was an 13.5 miles and over 4000 ft elevation gain. It started with sweeping panoramas. Peps, I frequently focus on intentions/affirmations for a portion of a hike. I read somewhere that can count as meditation. Yesterday's panoramas seemed a particularly appropriate venue.

In the middle of the hike, I was at my top elevation eating lunch. It had been a bit hazy. The wind shifted and suddenly smoke/fog began to bellow out of the valley below. Very dramatic....it looked like something out of the Lord of the Rings. It moved fast, traveling upward and toward my location. By the end of the hike, it had enveloped the area, limiting visibility to just a few yards at time. Unnerving to say the least. (In the pics below, the last pic is that sweeping panorama that entirely disappeared, my view sometimes shrunk to just my feet on the trail)

But, overall, the hike was epic. Many deer with fawn. No goats. As always, more pics than really necessary. But, I have a hard time narrowing down.

Have a smokeless day! Shel

The first pic is what a lot of the trees looked like. I don't think they were dead. Perhaps a hard life.

Shel-your photos make me think of heaven on earth! I'm not very outdoorsy (allergic asthmatic) but I sure wish I was!

Devon-I so related to your post about how the "baubles" add up--a rolo here, a mini snickers there. Sometimes I almost "forget" those calories. It's AMAZING to me how many calories I consume in snacking. I'd say at least 1/3 of my daily calories. But it's not usually from satisfying foods--more of those *treats*. I do believe in moderation and enjoying those things. But it's becoming more and more apparent to me how skewed my idea of moderation is! Ugh. This is going to be hard, isn't it?

Weight: 165.4. Yayyy!!! Idk why my weight had gone up earlier in the week. But I sure appreciate this weight more.

didn't care for Crazy Rich Asians as much as I'd thought. But I sure did enjoy a date night with my husband.

I think Nugget has been sick. She's been refusing her bottle. She struggled to take her bottle at 4pm and then didn't take any more until this morning, and even that was a struggle! But she did kind of sleep through the night (put her to bed after the movie around 11pm and slept until 6:30).

Excited to maybe choose some fabric for living room drapes today. Previous homeowners left magnificent drapes in the rest of the house except the living room. So this has been in the making for awhile.

Oh, on the puppy front I'm so aggravated. Apparently someone (cough, cough Yorkie) pooped fresh poop while the robot vacuum was going and it picked it up and smeared it everywhere. Booo. I know, hashtag firstworldprobs. But really the pet hair here is ridiculous so I really have loved the Neato, but with poopy puppy idk if this is going to work.

Yuck - I never thought of that happening!!!

Yeah it's pretty gross :( Came home and was like "I smell poop." If there's a silver lining, it's that the neato got stuck, so it had only smeared across the wood floors in dining room. But now I need to figure out how to clean that up while DH has the unlucky task of cleaning the Neato brush!

What model do you have btw? I've considered those robot vacs but there are so many models to choose from!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I cannot un-see the picture ! Poopy pup Poop---EUWWWWWW. Not a cleanup job you asked or planned for, I am sure. I say, "Yorkie did it- Yorkie needs to take responsibility and clean it up." Nuff said.

I can not unsee the robot vacuum horror.

I allowed candy dish baubles back into my life. It has not gone well :) There is a frequent downstream domino effect where one chocolate kiss leads to a cheese sample which leads to pizza sample, etc etc etc. And, perhaps worst of all, eventually I feel that I am OWED the bauble so when I choose to skip it, I feel deprived and if I give in then I feel a failure. Such a swirl of swill that started with a Hershey kiss.

Even as you ponder that percentage, I do think you do a marvelous job at enjoying good food in moderation.

Roomba smears dog poop video

Just had to!

OMG!!!!!