Where's my &%$! magic wand?!?

 "I  have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers." ~ Khalil Gibran

It's sometimes so easy to get drawn into negativity, isn't it?  Sadness, anger, frustration...these emotions can often seem contagious, especially for highly sensitive people like myself.  If you're like me, knowing how easily you can get overwhelmed and how terrible that feels, you might attempt to diffuse negative situations by trying to explain, rationalize, or calm people...which sometimes does not go well!  I've gotten caught in a few "negativity sinkholes" myself recently, and it's been rather demoralizing and depressing. 

So what are we to do?  I wish I knew the "magic-wand answer" for that question, but I don't.  The best I feel I can do is to try to encourage, promote, and inspire positivity around me and hope it spreads!  As with most things, we can't expect perfection, and I try not to be too hard on myself when my efforts don't work as well as I'd planned.  It's hard to not take it personally when someone insults or rejects your attempts to be a good person, but it doesn't mean your efforts were not worthwhile; it just means that negative person was too wrapped up in their own issues to appreciate your attempts to be kind.  Try not to get discouraged, and don't give up!  Keep showing kindness to others, until you find people who will honour your efforts by not only reciprocating, but also by "paying it forward" and spreading kindness themselves.  And if you "slip up" and find yourself responding to negativity with even more negativity, be kind to yourself as well; realize you're not perfect, forgive yourself, and then get back to the business of trying to make the world a better place...one act of kindness at a time!

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." ~ Aesop

You can say that again...

"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans." ~ John Lennon

My husband was at a conference in California recently and was discussing social media and networking.  To make a point, he used his laptop to access some of my business pages (facebook, twitter, etc), one of which was this blog.  He thought something was wrong with his computer when he saw that it only loaded my old blog posts!  Umm, that's because there haven't been any new posts, Honey!  Ooops!

This blog used to be about my business and what was happening at my store: new products, new features, new causes, etc....but my posts "expired" rather quickly and I started deleting most of them...I mean, what's the point of keeping a blog post about the new colours and patterns of fall scarves when it's now July and all the scarves sold out months ago, right?  I don't want someone to see something on the blog, come in to get one, only to be disappointed when they discover that I no longer have any of them.  So now most of my online business time is spent promoting products on my other pages, where descriptions consist of just a few words or a couple of sentences, rather than complete paragraphs, and where it's easier to add and delete things as they come and go.

I've also been a bit busier than usual lately.  This will come as a complete surprise, I'm sure (sarcasm!), but we rescued two more homeless cats last December...they were hardly more than kittens, really...and it turns out that one of them has special needs.  If you haven't already heard about her via my fundraising efforts at the store, please let me introduce you to Ivy:

Miss Ivy was born outside to an abandoned and unspayed (obviously!) mother cat.  Because they were homeless, they didn't get enough to eat or enough nutrition from what little they did eat.  Because Ivy was severely malnourished, she developed some health issues as a kitten, the most serious being osteoporosis (brittle bones), which resulted in a broken pelvis and two leg fractures quite early during her time living outside, and before we were alerted to her situation and able to capture her.  Ivy's broken pelvis made it difficult and uncomfortable for her to walk, and being sedentary caused atrophy in the muscles of her back legs.  Rather than improving with better nutrition now that she has a home with us, Ivy's condition has gotten increasingly worse; Ivy can barely walk or even stand now, and we have to help her with things like using the litterbox, since she can't stand in the litterbox on her own.  Our Veterinarians referred Ivy to an Orthopedic specialist, and we're currently waiting for the report from Radiologists at the Veterinary College in P.E.I., although the Orthopedist's preliminary diagnosis is not good, as he is quite certain Ivy has a degenerative disease called Osteogenesis imperfecta, given the worsening condition of her bones.

So I'm sure you can understand how my time has been occupied lately...but in a wonderful (although sad!) warm and fuzzy way.

"You can really only enjoy life when you're extremely busy." ~ Josephine de La Baume

UPDATE: Our dear Miss Ivy did indeed have Osteogenisis imperfecta.  Her rapidly softening bones meant more greenstick fractures, and sadly, the inevitable serious fracture that we knew would mean the end of her life, as we promised we would "do the right thing" for her as soon as she began to suffer.  Miss Ivy left our life, but not our hearts, on August 14, 2014.

Photo courtesy of Rainbow Bridge ~ Celebration of our beloved pets lives