Taking a Walk

Walking is man's best medicine.

                 -- Hippocrates

Hi! This is a picture of  my dog, Sardis (not Hippocrates :-) and he is my walking partner!  For a couple of years we were walking every day for at least two miles around the neighborhood.  We visited with neighbors, admired gardens and flowers, spoke to other dogs, and just walked along enjoying the breeze! It was wonderful! Sardis pulled on his leash the whole way and I looked up into the trees and around and thought about nothing.

Few people know how to take a walk.  The qualifications
 are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for
 nature,  good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, 
good silence and nothing too much.

                                                             -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Then,  I started having some health issues not related to walking, but I stopped walking anyway. ( I was a wimp!)  My health became worse and I knew I needed to go back to walking.  

The most common objection that I hear to walking 

as exercise is that it's too easy, that only sweaty,

 strenuous activity offers real benefits.  But there 

is abundance evidence that regular, brisk walking

 is  associated with better health, including lower 

blood pressure, better moods  and improved  

                                      cholesterol  ratios.                                                                                             -- Andrew Weil

Sardis and I went back to walking together, but only for a half a mile at a time.  Some days we felt good enough to walk morning and evening. I was amazed at how good I felt each day.  Then I went out-of-town for a week and got out of the habit. I began to feel miserable all over again.

That leads me to the purpose for this post.  Today I got out of  the recliner and put on my walking shoes!  Sardis ran to the door and like a good boy, waited for me to attach his leash.  We had a wonderful walk and visited with neighbors, admired other yards and talked to neighborhood dogs as we passed. I felt the wind blowing across my skin.  And I felt better than I did all week!  If you have been reading emails or blogs all day (or even for an hour), get up out of that chair and take a walk.  You will feel so much better!
 

Walking is the best possible exercise.  Habituate 

yourself to walk very fast.

                                                                                                   -- Thomas Jefferson

I better work on "habituating myself" to walk a little faster. ;-)

Thank you for visiting today!  What do you do for exercise?
Love,
Lottie

 

Lace Curtains and a Red Ceiling!

When we bought Miss Willie's House four years ago, we concentrated on urgent things, such as replacing the roof!  I hunted for sales and found these beautiful lace curtains. That first week we were in the house, DH put up his ladder and washed the windows! Then he helped me hang the curtains in the dining room.

I bought an extra two long panels to hang in the butler's pantry..

I loved the lace panels at first, but the rooms seemed dark.  The woodwork is dark and it didn't look quite right. But our list was long of things to do and I went on to the next task.

Still, this didn't seem to be the right place for the curtains.  Last weekend I took them down, washed them, and intended to pack them away. In another post soon, I'll show you what I did with in the dining room.






 Suddenly I thought of the front room by the porch.  The lace curtains might be more appropriate hung there since the woodwork is painted white. The sheers  that were hanging there never "thrilled" me and I couldn't see out windows on the porch.

  
Poor DH had to go get the ladder again and help me hang curtains AGAIN!

 

But I'm thrilled with the change!

 

I like the red ceiling now with the lace curtains and the windows look better from the outside on the porch, too!  Thank you for visiting today.  Hope you have a great week ahead!

Love,

Lottie

 

Update on Progress on Miss Willie's House

Dear husband has been painting the porch on the house we purchased for retirement.  For those of you who don't know the story, DH and I have all our families in Alabama (I was raised in Texas) and we bought a house in Alabama to retire to one day.  We have lived in South Carolina for over thirty five years.  We are retired now and the big problem(s) with moving is that we love our house in SC (my blue cottage),  we hesitate leaving a really nice town where we know a lot of people, and our two grown sons are staying in South Carolina.  That's the story and we are torn between the two houses!  Meanwhile, DH is working on the house in Alabama.

 Almost every column needed some attention. DH did ALL the work himself!  

Miss Willie Welch, a local librarian, lived in the house all her life.  Wish she could see what a good job DH is doing with her porch!  He hasn't finished the bottom yet.

Oh, how beautiful!

More progress was made on the extra bathroom built off the back porch.

BEFORE

AFTER

 

(Big improvement! ;-D)

Thank you for dropping by!  Hope you have a great week!

Love,

Lottie and DH

IT WAS FUN BEING A KID!

Father's Day will be here soon.  I have one of the greatest Dads in the world because my dad talks to me.   He always tells me what he really thinks!  He is 89 years old and loves working.

His favorite saying is Life is What You Make It!  Whenever I complained as a kid, he always brought up the fact that I had it pretty good in life and someone somewhere had it worse.  Hard to argue with that!  I think that way now.  But when I was a kid, I didn't understand why we didn't have everything we wanted.  I asked him one time why he didn't spoil me and my brothers?  He stopped his work and looked right at me.  He said because kids grow up and move away.  I didn't understand that logic until I had my own kids and they grew up and moved away.  Ouch!

Dad loves to work. He says the word "fun" is not in his vocabulary.  Well, I know for a fact that is not true because I remember lots of fun as a kid.  He took us to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky several times.  Each time he had as much fun as we did!  .

Thank you, Dad, 

for stopping work every once in a while and having fun with us!

Thank you, too, my bloggy friends for visiting today!  Please share how you had fun with your dad when you were a kid.

Love,
Lottie

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Happy Birthday, Dad!  89 years young!

  Guess you were right about exercise!

 

(LOL! I probably need to update my photos!)

Love,

Lottie