keeping it real...off kilter

Oh...this has been quite the week. I started off with all kinds of inspiration...but things quickly unravelled. I had big plans to post another recipe, introduce a new artist (might happen tomorrow). Interestingly, our meditation early Tuesday morning at Qigong was about letting go. Just how my instructor intuits what my needs are or will be so perfectly every week is a little amazing, and I am ever so grateful for it. Letting go...was exactly what I needed practice for this week.

I set out on Wednesday morning to make blueberry muffins. I used Ruthie's 8 Grain Muffin recipe which I have made countless times for really delicious muffins. I use the same recipe every time and change the fruit or add nuts. Everyone loves these muffins, especially my husband. Well, somehow I forgot the egg and the salt and made a general mess out them. They were still tasty, but of course their was no binder so they were a crumbly mess.

Later that day, I had some dental work done. It involved me being upside down for 3 hours. This triggered a condition that I have called benign positional vertigo. Now when I lie down or get up from lying down or move at all when lying down, everything starts spinning out of control. (See top picture) Fortunately, I am fine when I am upright, but getting up this morning was really challenging.

Apparently, there are tiny crystals that are suspended in a jelly like substance in our inner ear that help us maintain our balance. When you have a head injury (I've had a few) these can get knocked out of the gel and then they spin like crazy creating a very disturbing and disorienting sensation. The first time this happened to me, I was staying at someone else's house that I was unfamiliar with and I just remember not being able to see at all and running into everything. It's not fun. In order to "fix" it they have to lie you down and put your head in several different positions to get the crystal to roll out of the labyrinth that makes up your inner ear. I haven't gone yet this time, but if tonight is like last night I'll be going tomorrow.

I love finding feathers, but not like this. Apparently a hawk captured this little bird in our yard, and I came across these remains this afternoon. My husband claims that a weasle or other mammalian bird predator would have carted the whole body off and that this was the work of a bird of prey. About 3 minutes before I found this, I found a dead opposum (I didn't take that picture!). And right before I saw the feathers, I discovered holes all over the one part of our yard that the grass was relatively nice looking looking. This was the work of a grub hunting skunk. At least it didn't smell like a skunk.

In the spirit of keeping it real (that I appreciate on other blogs), this has been my week so far. And I'm just letting it all go in hopes of prettier pictures to come.