It's time to get back into the swing of participating in Teresa's Friday photo hunt meme at her blog, Eden Hills . This week the hunt was for photos interpreting the letter J, week's favorite, and a cuppa. A Cuppa Joe I drank a sweet, amazing cup of mocha this afternoon, the first taste of coffee in more than three weeks. As I sipped my personality quickly changed to big smiles, floating contentment, and yakity-yak. Ahhhhhhh. If some of you are wondering, I'm still on my No-this, No-that food program. After 16 days, I'm  allowing myself a treat now and then. So, while we were doing our Saturday errands, the Husband and I stopped at our favorite cafe, Vertigo Coffee , in San Juan Bautista. The above photo isn't of today's wonderful creations by Ryan, but of the amazing mocha's that we had on my birthday in December. If you're ever in San Juan Bautista or passing through the area, check out Vertigo Coffee. The cafe also serves delicious artis

Last month, while I had Gone Reading, I came across the drawing I made in first grade that started me on my path of fear of drawing, painting, and doing anything in the fine arts. "Make the calves touch the ground," wrote First Grade Teacher. She even drew an example of a calf on the ground on my drawing. Sigh. Many moons later, I realize that First Grade Teacher was merely doing her job to make sure I knew that cows belonged on the ground and not in air. Teacher did give me an A for the assignment after all. But, it would've been nice if she had also written something like "You have a wonderful imagination, Susie." Or, "The cows look happy in the air. How would they look standing on the ground?" If only. Three or four years ago, I began to embrace art. To simply draw, paint, make collages, and whatever I feel like trying. The more I do, the less time I stay in a frozen-in-fear mode at the start of a project. Better late than never, right

I'm feeling productive and accomplished right at the moment. I worked in the garden with the Mama for 90 minutes, as well as took a ride on Tilda-Hilda this morning.  Whooo-weee. My "No-this, No-that Food Program" must be working. I got a lot of energy on this 15th day. It also helped that I fell asleep at 9:30 last night. Zzzzzzzz.  Because I want Tilda-Hilda and me to be able pedal our longer routes, I decided this morning we had to tackle our first hill. Heck, simply pedaling the first block on flat land had me wanting to go home. Puff, puff. We rode 5.77 miles in about 36 minutes. We stopped several times so I could take photos of the gorgeous views this morning. Would you like to see the most amazing sight we saw this morning?  Click here then. Tilda-Hilda says, "See you in a week or so after the rain." Yipppieee!

Hello Singular Live Oak Tree, So huge, so healthy, and so handsome! Thank you for helping make sweet oxygen for us as we walked through the Elkhorn Slough Reserve National Estuarine Research Reserve . It's the letter H at ABC Wednesday . Thank you, ABCW team!

Let's see. The last time time Tilda-Hilda and I went out for a ride was the first week in January. Yup. Pedaling was crazy tough. Puff. Puff.  Incline or flat land. Tough. It felt mighty good though. Big smiles. I don't know when our next ride will be because I need to do some garden stuff over the next few days. Then this weekend is supposed to start the first of several days of rain. Yaaay for the rain! We need a lot of rain. It would be fun to rid in a light rain.

The dog looked so happy fetching a red ball.  Its owner looked quite happy, too, throwing the red ball and getting it back. Ruff ruff! Check out what's going on in other parts of the world at Our World Tuesday .   

"Hey, kid, you want me." That loaf of sweet French bread jumped out at me as I entered the kitchen. "One slice won't hurt you," it purred, smiling seductively from the kitchen counter. Sigh.  Deep breath. Ignoring my yearning for a taste of the bread, I gathered ingredients to make sandwiches for the Mama's and the Husband's lunch. I simply pretended that I didn't like bread.  It worked, thank goodness. Turns out I still don't know better. Nine days ago, I started to limit the foods that I can eat because I was lethargic and scatterbrained. For the last two months, I had been consuming too many desserts, bread, potato chips, and beer without doing any worthwhile exercise to offset the yummy calories. In addition, my eczema was constantly raging and, frighteningly, an insect bite turned into an ugly fungal infection, which was a first for me.  Burp. Burp. Yeah, a lot of those, too. So, no gluten foods.  No fried foods. No desser