I live for summer. Me and the heat? Best buds! Oh summer how I have missed you! I am taking off quite a bit of time this summer, relaxing, hanging out, eating well, sitting outside soaking up some much needed vitamin D. We have been through a year of hell around here and I just want some lazy long days of nothingness and everythingness rolled into one. My promise to myself is that I will only blog from my iPad. Which is much, much harder for me than the laptop. This will force me to keep it short and sweet. I can't figure out how to caption out my photos from here. But that poor little hanging strawberry is just so sad looking. I have been kicking off the summer planting, much later this year than in the past and I am keeping all the veggies in containers. The spring just was not as good to me with time as I would have liked. Here is a sneak peek at what is going on over at my house. Hope your summer is kicking off as beautifully as mine. ...
Blog Security For WordPress
*I don't know what is up with this formatting! It is spaced and bulleted correctly on my end but it is a mess published. GRRRR. I will look into it after more coffee* I wrote this a bit ago and was just going to pass it on to friends who need to increase their blog security but I have seen so many hacked wordpress blogs lately that I hope by posting it I am able to help someone else remove a blog virus and protect themselves from going through this in the first place. These steps apply to self hosted wordpress blogs. If you have been attacked then you should ideally get go through each step systematically. If you have not, it is still in your best interest to take action on as many of the preventative measures as possible. BACK UP USING THE EXPORT FUNCTION OF YOUR WP ADMIN BEFORE STARTING. IT IS ALSO A GOOD IDEA TO USE FTP TO BACKUP YOUR CUSTOM THEME FILES!!! Make sure you have the most current ftp download version on your computer. I like and trust Smart FTP. As of writing this the most current version is 4.0. It is a paid program. It initially costs around $60. It is worth it. Login to cpanel (at the host level) and change the password. Make it easy you are ...
Who Inspires You?
When my friends over at TravelingMom.com asked me to participate in a campaign sponsored by Sony about being Fearless and Inspiring I was in. This weeks theme was inspired by the show, the big C. Which truly is absolutely one of my favorites. If you haven't watched it on Showtime yet, you NEED to catch up on the first season. And when you get to the very end and her son finds the garage.....call me, and we shall cry together over a bottle of wine. It's that good. Promise! As with all campaigns, Traveling Mom provided me with some ideas for this post. One of those ideas was writing about a woman who inspires me. But when I came down to really ponder that question, I couldn't pick just one. I choose to surround myself with so many inspirational women that it is mind boggling. So, here are a few in no particular order. And I apologize in advance if I leave someone awesome off my 'list'. I hate 'lists' cause I always forget someone. But, like I said, I have too many people that inspire me to focus on just one. Above all, Mother Earth. I know, corny, but at this beautiful time of year how can one not be amazed and inspired by all this beauty? Katie Quinn-my great grandmother. ...
It’s Never the Big Things…
People seem to think that special needs parents have a super hero cape that was issued on the day our kids were diagnosed. If they do, I must have skipped that line. Or else the dry cleaner lost it. I think that perception is because so many of us are able to function beautifully in crisis situations. Yes, I can handle surgeries and hospitals and waiting rooms and tests and and and.... What you don't see are the meltdowns that occur over the little things. The things like it taking 30 minutes and a crowbar to get a pair of pants over a leg not shaped like everyone else. Or the destroying of a $15 bandage cause you dropped it. Or taking a crew of people to accomplish a simple shower. THESE are the times when that mythical cape lay torn and tattered in a crumple mess on the bathroom floor that hasn't been mopped in a month. These are the times you don't see. Me screaming and crying cause I can't find a shoe. Or being so exhausted that literally sitting in this chair hurts. Or going postal on the person driving too slow in front of me. My imaginary cape tends to hide all that from the world. Or maybe it doesn't. Lately I have been tired and cranky and judgmental. I have ...
Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock
As my last birthday passed I began to hear an odd sound. It started off in quiet whispers but is getting louder and louder as time passes on . It is so loud now that I recognize it for what it is....my biological clock warning me the alarm is soon to sound and final call is fast approaching. While we made the decision years ago to not have more children, I've waxed and waned with my feelings of maybe, possibly, reopening that door. I have researched adoption, even special needs adoption. I have researched foster parenting. I have researched genetic science if we did want to open the biological door. With two neurological defect pregnancies in my 20's I doubt I have it in me emotionally to chance our genetic match up in my late 30's. But tonight as my oldest roamed the mall with his friends, I had the chance to just sit. That is all. Just be. This is VERY hard for me. But I did it. I watched children come and go and play and I marveled in how they could make toys out of chairs and each other. How rolling around in the grass outside by the fountains at Park Meadows mall was as exciting to them as a trip to the Lego store. I marveled at their sense of joy and peace in just being. ...