Some Things I've Learned!

Even at forty-five I keep learning and learning and learning. Here are a few things I'm continuing to learn:

• Force feeding a kitten with a bottle is not easy. I imagined it would be cute and romantic, like breastfeeding my babe! It wasn't. It was a fight to get her to open her mouth. It was dissolved food mixed with Kitten Replacement Milk all over her face and neck and my clothes every four ours. It was stress and worry about whether she got enough, and then stress and worry about whether I was forcing too much into her. We had to do it for almost two weeks, but this little girl is finally motivated to eat her kibble on her own.

(And to use Santa as a sleeping pillow!) So glad of that! Now she's cleaner, more active, and finally growing! She was so tiny, and not eating, and I feared her demise. But now she runs and plays and is growing. She's still tiny for her age - she's got some catching up to do.

• Not eating dairy really makes me feel better! And that is so wonderful!

• I don't have much self control. Sadly that is true, as my attempts to eliminate dairy from my diet have shown. I feel so much better, but I still I struggle not to slip a little nibble of cheese in here, a dollop of sour cream in there, and butter, well, let's not talk about that at all! I need to have a mission to be 100% dairy free - no butter or milk in my biscuit recipe. No batter fried anything since batter has milk. Well, unless the milk in the batter is goat's milk. To that end, we are having Lemon Meringue Birthday Pie tonight. I just can't do frosting.

• People who say you can't tell a difference in temperatures below zero degrees are lying! Negative 25 is definitely colder than zero! No question in my mind about it! I know this because we haven't seen temperatures above zero since Sunday afternoon and personal experience is that yesterday's high of -2 was much more tolerable than Tuesday's high of -8 and much more enjoyable than Monday's high of -12. But there is hope to break that Zero mark today! Wouldn't that be nice. (By the way, just to be clear, we're talking temperatures Fahrenheit, not Celsius!) I'd take a nice comfortable 10 degrees! Not a loft goal, but a good one all the same. Supposed to get all the way up to the 20's by tomorrow, so a heat wave is a-comin'!

• Old dogs can learn new tricks - at least I hope so! You see, this old dog is going to be learning a new trick at her new full time job as the Development Director at Petra Academy! Yep, that's me, fundraiser extraordinaire! Who knew I'd go from high powered Bay Area law firm representing Chevron and Exxon and Waste Management to non-profit fundraising? Amazing how God has plans for me - and for you too, just in case you were wondering!) The school is building a new building, so I'm stepping right into a bricks and mortar Capital Campaign. This is a little different than my two experiences in silent auctions or my recent stint helping to run a Spell-a-Thon. That $10,000 raised in the Spell-a-thon is short a couple of zeros and then some for my new lofty goals. Haven't started the job yet, but will in the next three weeks or so! Until then, I'm on my knees conversing with God about His choices in my life and how I believe he can do this job and I'll be His vessel but only because he's asked me! Pretty humbling to realize how much I still have to learn for this job! And amazing I found a job where I will be with my child - he goes to this school!

• My heart aches to take better photos - and I need to improve my Photoshop skills. In fact, I need to upgrade from Photoshop Elements to regular Photoshop. I know, silly me to have something so trivial be part of my learning, but it gives me joy to see improvement. With this cold weather I haven't taken my camera outside in days! With the new job coming, I realize I won't have daily opportunities to trek around my neighborhood looking for interesting photo subjects. Heck, I haven't even done our family photo for the Christmas card yet! But I find myself prowling the Internet to learn more and more about photography and processing photos. It's not an obsession - yet - but it can be a distraction. I don't need distractions, so I'm going to have to work on keeping it in perspective. But just because I can, I'll share a little photo with you from a photo shoot I did in November.

• It is possible to do almost all homemade Christmas gifts for the various children in our lives! This I know now because I'm almost done. Just three more to go! Feels so productive. And the gifts are so cute! Totally inspired by others, but so cute.

• And even with a job looming, my artistic inclinations are continuing to fester. Here is a project I want to try before I start my new job - already gathered most of the supplies! Isn't it beautiful! And it opens up to show a rough quilted image. It is a bit of a jump for me from paper projects to fabric projects, but I'm super excited about it.

• There is a time to stop rambling on - and this is it!

Have a great day!