On Thursdays, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990sor Captain Pontification.And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
As many of you know, we have a new member of our family in the form of a (probably) 14-week-old puppy. We have had her for about a month now and we got her when she was approximately 10 weeks old. She is a rescue puppy so her age is a close guess. Her name is Pogie and she is beautiful and amazing and also quite the handful at times.
We had to drive to Massachusetts to get her and on the way home we stopped at a big box pet store to get some supplies, most important of which was a small wire crate for training and also to hopefully give her a safe and cozy place to retreat to when she needs some down time.
Pogie spends a lot of her sleeping time in her crate and occasionally spends a bit of awake time in it as well, because that is where she serves her timeouts. For the most part, Pogie is well behaved, but on once in a while she will be simply too much to handle when you are trying to get something done or she will forget that puppies are only supposed to pee outside.
One recent night, after dinner, I was acting a little like Pogie. I was being very spastic and bothersome (albeit in a very humorous manner) while Carrie was trying to work. Now, who works after dinner, I just don’t know! But Carrie was obviously doing very important work on this money making (she claims) website. I could barely see the webpage but it said Face-something.
Spoiler from Carrie: He is lying. I was not on Face-something.
Anyway, she was holding Pogie, who was sleeping, in her lap. She turned to me (as I laughed hysterically at something I had just said to her) and said, “Get in your crate!”
I stopped for a second. I was totally flabbergasted! Where was her since of humor? How could she be so cruel as to tell me to get in my crate?
Then it dawned on me. I started to laugh even harder (and I am sure even more annoyingly) while I leaned down towards Pogie. I whispered in Pogie’s ear, “Momma don’t have no crate big enough for me.”
Pogie gave a barely audible whimper and I turned and laughed my way out of the room at a rapid pace. You see, Momma don’t have no crate big enough for me, but she can damn sure take away my favorite toy!
Peace!
And remember to always LOVE YOUR WAY THROUGH IT!
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
On Thursdays, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990sor Captain Pontification.And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
So, we have ourselves a new dog. A real new dog! In fact, two days from today we will have had her for exactly two weeks. It is another rescue and Carrie promised that we wouldn’t have to get another rescue. But at least this time it is a puppy.
The truth of the matter is that Carrie was browsing the available dogs on a rescue site, and she showed me this particular dog and I said, “Let’s get it!”
So, we did.
Actually, Carrie did, because she did all of the work filling out forms and speaking to people on the phone. But I drove the four and a half hours to pick her up, so I consider it even. It has been a fun couple of weeks, and we think that we may have lucked out again and gotten another good dog.
Of course, good is relative. I think this one is good. As a matter of fact, this may very well be the first dog (even a puppy) that I have fallen for to the point of letting her love up on me, snuggle quietly, and even lick my face frantically if that is her mood.
When we got this puppy, Carrie and I decided that we were going to name it ourselves and not let our daughters have a say in it because collectively they have named all of our previous seven or so pets. Somehow, we decided that her name was going to be Pogie. Carrie apparently knows that word from a song or something but when I heard it, I instantly liked it.
She is sitting in her crate right now barking and whining her head off because she cannot see us. She is in a timeout for peeing on the floor and Pogie and I are wondering when she will be totally house broken.
Okay, if you didn’t at least chuckle at that I want you to quit reading right now. Not really! Please don’t go, but I thought it was a funny non-mistake.
Pogie has kept us busy these last two weeks. It seems as though we have been doing shift work called, “Do you have eyes on the dog right now?”
Unfortunately, I have to work out of the house and that means Carrie has been pulling some overtime. But I appreciate her for it, and I always look forward to catching her with Pogie sleeping in her lap and her arms all askew while she tries to type and not wake the puppy.
I just realized that I basically wrote this entire blogpost solely so that I could make that joke about Carrie being in the kennel and other than that it really has no purpose.
I will give it a purpose.
If you forgot what it was like to be able to shower joy and happiness on a baby while not being bothered (except on the rare occasion) by all the extra work, go get yourself a puppy! There, that is my point. Having a little puppy will make you realize that you can have almost the same benefits without having a human baby. And the commitment is so much shorter!
Seriously though, if you have forgotten how to feel that loving joyfulness that only puppy belly smell can bring, you might want to remind yourself. Or you might just want to try and remind yourself by spreading your own love and joy to another person. It can make you feel just as good and sometimes much better. Just don’t try and pick them up and smell their belly!
Spread some love!
Spread some happiness and joy!
And, ALWAYS LOVE YOUR WAY THROUGH IT!
Peace,
Shaun
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
On Thursdays, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990sor Captain Pontification.And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
THIS IS ESPECIALLY TRUE TODAY!!!! HE IS SUCH A GOOBER!
The video was totally interesting! And not because I’m “lacking something.”
So, life can really bring you down sometimes. I know it, and you know it. There is no denying it! I am about to be brutally honest with you and tell you that in light of the fact that 50% of you are probably down right now, I am going to tell you a funny story. This story just occurred. It is literally the impetus of my sudden blogpost idea which I have been struggling with all day. Please remember that this story is 100% true and nobody here is better than anyone else.
I was in the kitchen performing my nightly husbandly duties of cleaning up after dinner and loading the dishwasher. Carrie was in the office supposedly working. However, I could hear a video playing and frequent bursts of enraptured, young girl laughter, dare I say giggling.
I asked, “What are you watching?”
Carrie replied, “A video entitled how to flirt with girls.”
Internally, I got enraged. I knew this day would come and she would decide that she wanted to be with a soft and caring woman instead of a butthead smelly man! But as I watched her and saw the smile on her face and how she was wiggling in her office chair I had a thought.
“Babe,” I said with a hint of amusement in my voice. “What do you think of that video?”
“I kind of like it.”
“Babe,” I was really confused now. “You do know that he is trying to teach guys how to flirt with women?”
“What?” Carrie responded without so much as a glance in my direction.
“Babe,” I had it figured out now and was holding back the laughter. “He is trying to teach guys how to flirt with women. He isn’t talking to you, personally.”
Carrie slammed her hand down on her mouse, clicked a couple of times, and shot up out of her office chair.
“You are a liar, Shaun!” she loudly accused before retreating to the restroom.
I have been having such a good time with this ever since it happened. I am afraid for Carrie to read this, but I know that the greatest woman in the world has a very good sense of humor. I also know that I have to find this video and watch it because my wife is lacking something, and I sure don’t want anyone else filling that void!
Remember to tell people that you love them as often as you can!
Remember to always LOVE YOUR WAY THROGUH IT!!
I hope that you laughed,
Shaun
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990sor Captain Pontification.And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
Shaun
Hey all! I just read the Tortoise and the Hare by Æsop. You know, I must have heard this tale a few times as a child because I remember hearing it. But I was just thinking of it after having a short discussion with Carrie about something or other.
Anyway, it turns out that the tortoise won simply because the hare fell asleep. I was so disappointed!
For some reason, I had always imagined the hare sprinting for a certain distance then just stopping to like . . . I don’t know, have some fun? Really! Run a mile and just stop at the neighborhood pub for a pint, a burger, and some socialization with some cute female hares.
And then I really thought about the story, and I thought, Wait! How far is a race that involves a tortoise really going to be?
Man was I disappointed. All of these years, decades really, I have thought that the hare was just a showoff party animal. Turns out that he was a lazy son-of-a-gun who didn’t take advantage of his life.
He could have won that race handily and enjoyed the spoils of winning after the fact for some good long time afterward. No, he chose to be lazy and take a nap and look what happened. That tortoise ended up winning and getting all of the play from tortoise and hare alike that comes with fame.
What a tale! People, it has a practical meaning to humans today. And it is not that keeping your head down, toeing the line, and working hard will get you great reward. It is that sometimes you just need to take time for yourself and enjoy life!
You see that hare didn’t care that the tortoise won the race. He could cover so much more ground than that tortoise in any given amount of time that it would never be possible for the tortoise to have as much fun as him.
You have to take time for yourself! It is okay to be the tortoise sometimes, but if you don’t take a nap once in a while, you will end up losing the race.
Now, go do something that you enjoy and remember to always LOVE YOUR WAY THROUGH IT!
Shaun
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990sor Captain Pontification.And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
Shaun
Spring is almost here folks! Here in Maine, in Bar Harbor at least, the vast majority of our snow is gone and it is steadily getting warmer. To me, this is cause for great celebration. You may want to know why I am celebrating the arrival of spring.
Well simply put, I do not like winter. I was born and raised in southern Florida and I am not into winter sports at all. Nor am I into freezing my butt off when I want to go outside. To top it off, I am very opposed to layers of clothing covering my body, and we all know that layering is the way to stay warm. It creates quite a conundrum for me.
However, there are many benefits to living where we live. We don’t have nearly as much traffic to deal with. Our town has literally two traffic lights and I believe that there are three total for the entire island. We don’t have long lines to wait in anywhere, except during tourist season when our small-town logistics are overrun.
Also, it is incredibly beautiful here! Carrie and I don’t spend nearly enough time enjoying our natural surroundings. We are working on changing that. We have recently adopted a pseudo-selfish outlook of taking time for ourselves in order to have smaller but more frequent moments of fun and happiness before we run out of time to do stuff that we want.
You know what being able to have some fun does for you? It makes you happier. You know what happens when you are happier? You have a higher likelihood of spreading some of that happy around and being kind to other human beings!
So, folks, take some time to do for yourselves. Carve out a few moments or a few days to do something that you want to do. Something that makes you smile and makes you feel refreshed and energized.
Then share it!
You don’t have to share your activity (although that would be awesome) but share your newfound happy. Share your reinvigorated heart and smiles. It doesn’t cost you anything to try and give away some of your joy. If you do it right, it won’t even cut into your joy savings account because doing something for someone else should make you feel good enough to replenish whatever you gave away.
Try it!
Now go love someone and remember to always Love Your Way Through it!
Peace,
Shaun
LET’S HANG OUT!
HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?
MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?
On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990sor Captain Pontification.And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
Shaun Farrar
Our beautiful, white, very fluffy and hairy dog, Gabby, passed away a week ago today. We tried to get home from our vacation early, in time to just let her know that we loved her, but we didn’t make.
That sounds very sad, and it is. I have shed a tear or two on multiple occasions, including right now, but I try to be stoically calm as the “big, strong man” of the house. I have been the discoverer of our last two doggie’s passing and I usually take those moments of private time to tell them how I feel about them and appreciate all of the love, happiness, and protection that they provide to my family.
Gabby
I did not get that alone time on this occasion and secretly (not so secretly now) I regret it. In fact, this will be news even to Carrie when she reads this. That’s okay. I am old enough to just be who I am and not try to maintain any pretenses for the sake of tradition any longer.
I guess that is kind of the point of this blog post. Which, if you haven’t noticed, is my first blog post in like four or five weeks. I mean, we have been on vacation and had a multitude of other things going on, but I am back, baby!
Anyway, I think people just need to start being who they are. There are plenty of people who live by that creed already, but I think it is a majority who don’t. Why live by societal expectations and the widely excepted norms? You know of course that I am not speaking of societal norms like don’t hurt others, etc.
Gabby with her perfect squint
What I am talking about is don’t try to emulate social media influencers. Don’t try to wear the most fashionable trends. Don’t attempt to copy someone else’s personality. Just be your damn self!
Life is so much more enjoyable if you feel free and safe to just be yourself and live your life as you choose. There is so much bull crap surrounding us and telling us how we should live our lives and how we should look. I mean seriously, it is as old as Barbie the doll (I know it is so much older than that!) and as recent as social media, but still just as useless.
All you need to do is be who you feel you really are and act kind to others whenever you can. I believe that most of humanity is kind and caring. Those that are not end up in jail or as politicians (sort of joking there).
Cry when you want to cry! Help another when they need it! Spread your love and goodness as often as you can! Enjoy yourself and this short lifetime that you have been blessed with! Act like a dog damn it!
Take my advice and always Love Your Way Through It!
On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990sor Captain Pontification.And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
Shaun Farrar
Last week I wrote about the four elements of long-lasting love. If you were kind enough to read my blog post then you remember that the fourth and most important element is forgiveness.
Today we will put that to the test.
You see, today is Friday. Yesterday was Thursday and that is the day that I am supposed to submit my writing attempts to Carrie. Carrie said nothing about me not writing a post last evening and has yet to mention it this morning.
Most likely it is her extreme kindness that is keeping her from telling me that I am a huge failure, again. Mind you, Carrie does not ever tell me that I am a huge failure (disappointing in the bedroom sometimes) but being human, I sometimes hear that in my head.
Side note from Carrie: I have never said anything about anything in the bedroom ever because I am an uptight New Englander. And I would not say that.
Back to Shaun: So, I am going to write this blog post this morning and email it to her without saying a word and see what happens. Please keep your fingers crossed for me!
I sometimes make out like Carrie is mean to me and hopefully you know that this is not true whatsoever! I just like to garner a little compassion when I can from whomever reads my posts.
Tomorrow, we are supposed to have a nor’easter that is forecast to bring anywhere from 11-18” of snow. I hate snow! While it can be beautiful at times and is fun to watch fall from the sky, I am not into winter sports that much and anything more than a couple inches means lots of clean up.
Remember that I am from Florida and never saw snow until I was seventeen years old. For me it was an exciting novelty for many years and even shoveling snow held a certain allure that made it fun. I am over all of that now, really over it!
Anywhere that you have snow and it stays around for a while you must have temperatures below freezing. Yet another thing that is not super attractive to me. I much prefer the warmth and humidity of the South.
However, knowing that I will have to do a lot of snow blowing and shoveling on Sunday actually makes me feel happy. I am alive and while my life is not perfect, it is a lot better than billions of other people in this world. Carrie and I remind ourselves of this almost daily and often do it together. If one of us is down about something and thinking that life just sucks all we have to do is remember what we don’t have to deal with.
I could list out the million ways that other people are suffering while we are not, but that would just be a waste of time. You can use your imagination or experience to know what I am talking about.
It is a rare life where you get out without having experienced horrible life experiences, and I would wager that if you leave this world free of super negative experiences, that your leaving was incredibly traumatic to someone else. Having written that, I realize that you could look at life as a circle of grief, a Venn diagram of sorts. Your circle may not include sadness or despair, but it overlaps with other circles, other lives, that most certainly do. It seems almost inescapable.
Of course, I never write to bring you down. So, celebrate! Rejoice in the life that you have now and realize that it could always be worse. I mean, you could have to shovel snow every day. Seize upon all of the positivity in your life, every day! Life truly is a wonderful thing and each and every one of you has a purpose of positivity that you must remember and try to grasp daily.
Now go out and make your life better, make somebody else’s life better and remember to Always Love Your Way through It!
Peace,
Shaun
BLIZZARD COMING YOUR WAY? HERE ARE SOME THINGS TO DO TO PREPARE
Buy some canned goods for the pantry or stuff that you don’t really have to cook and that doesn’t need to be in the fridge.
Buy some bottled water or bottle your own, which is way cooler. Just use clean, sanitized containers!
If you have meds, make sure you have enough for a week.
Make sure you have a shovel! And that it works!
Charge all your chargeable things like your phone and laptops.
If it is going to be super cold (think below 28 degrees Fahrenheit for four or more hours) make your faucets trickle. A tiny bit of cold water helps to keep your pipes from freezing.
Check the batteries/wiring of your smoke and CO2 detectors.
If you have the ability, check for tree limbs that might fall down.
NEW BOOK! THE GREED THAT KILLS!
The latest Rosie and Seamus book is out in the world February 1! That’s so soon, right? You should go order it because it’s super fun and also because it would make everyone happy!
THE GREED THAT KILLS
The discovery of a dead town councilor’s remains unearths yet another nightmare for reporter Rosie Jones in the romantic thriller by New York Times and internationally bestselling author Carrie Jones
Things are finally getting hot and heavy between Rosie Jones and police sergeant Seamus Kelley as they approach their wedding date. But now Rosie finds human remains on the edge of a popular hiking trail in Acadia National Park.
Seamus determines the bones belong to a local, somewhat beloved town councilor and the investigation threatens to derail both their adorable Maine tourist town and Rosie and Seamus’s relationship.
To keep the community she loves safe, Rosie is going to have to face both the town’s demons and her own.
On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990sor Captain Pontification.And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
Shaun Farrar
Carrie and I just finished eating our dinner and I was wondering what I should do now that we had cleaned up and I might have a bit of relaxation time. Then I had this horribly sinking thought, Sh*t, you forgot to do your blogpost! Carrie is going to kill you if she has to edit and post this late in the evening.
It is now 6:42 p.m. and what you have read is exactly what I have written. I am so afraid that my hands are going to start shaking in just a moment. You don’t know Carrie like I do!
I am just kidding. She’s a pretty good soul and won’t be all that angry with me. Actually, she won’t be angry at all. You know why? Because she loves me (or at least she says so). I believe this to be true, however. It’s because of Carrie that I have figured out the true meaning of love. Well, maybe not the meaning but the formula for long-lasting love.
Of course, there are a number of elements, and for the purpose of this blog, there will be four elements. I list them out below in no particular order.
Mental attraction.
Physical attraction.
Emotional attraction.
Now those are your three base elements but there is one more very important element. This one is the key to the long-lasting part of love. What is this all-essential element?
Forgiveness.
That’s the big one! It doesn’t matter how many of the basic three you have or how strong those basic three are because without the fourth element, forgiveness, your clock is ticking.
So, just remember that nobody is perfect including ourselves. With plenty of exceptions, there is nothing that we can’t forgive of those that we love.
The real point of this blog? My lovely wife Carrie has an incredibly large amount of the fourth element and for this, I am very thankful!
I have to get this emailed to her before she has to forgive me again.
Peace and remember to Always Love Your Way Through It!
Shaun
My little, creepy book baby is out in the world because who doesn’t want sad, quirky, horror with some romantic bits for the holiday season?
On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990sor Captain Pontification.And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
Shaun
So, Carrie has been bugging me all day to get this blogpost done. Right before dinner, she tells me that we should spend 5-10 years living on a sailboat, just cruising around, and enjoying life.
I said to her, “Hell yes! I am all for that.”
Then we sat down, ate dinner at the coffee table and watched some YouTube videos about live-aboard sailors while we ate. It was great! After dinner, Carrie cleaned up while I attended to some other responsibilities that were pending in my life. After the chores were complete, we both, almost simultaneously, sat down in front of our computers.
I said, “I am going to see what’s for sale in the world of used sailboats in Maine.”
Carrie replied in a very happy voice, “That is the best idea I have ever heard of! While you do that, I will check on mooring fees in the nearby vicinity.”
“Hey, look at this one!” was my response, because I was already knee deep in the used sailboat online market.
Then she started to read off some rates for moorings in our general area and then started telling me about the pros and cons of each different area.
I was getting excited! I mean, honestly, this is like one of my lifelong dreams. Sailing around, earning money with an online career, swimming naked in the crystal clear, warm water of the Caribbean . . . all with a beautiful wife. Who could ask for anything more?
As my mind began to fog over with dreams of my dream finally coming true (in a few years of course) I heard this crystal-clear siren call of a voice break through.
“Hey! You working on that blogpost or what?”
I jumped so hard it was like awakening from a falling dream. “Uh, uh, yes ma’am.”
But you know what? As soon as I send this off to Carrie via email so that she can get it posted (sorry it’s late, baby!), she will be right back on track to planning the dream. And the thing about Carrie is that once she has an idea in her amazing brain, she won’t let it die out! Especially if she knows that it will make me happy.
That is why I am still the luckiest man in the world.
Peace kids!
Remember to always Love Your Way Through It!
Shaun
My little, creepy book baby is out in the world because who doesn’t want sad, quirky, horror with some romantic bits for the holiday season?
On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.
He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990sor Captain Pontification.And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂
The Shaun
Happy New Year
Can you believe that another year has passed us by? Holy crap, whenever the end of the year gets here it always seems like it went by so fast! At least, to me it does.
It has been yet another tumultuous year, a roller coaster ride, some may say. But all in all, it has been a good year. I can say this with certainty because if you are reading this, you are still alive and breathing, and that makes it a good year for you. It might not have been the smoothest but we survived it, together.
Together.
Eight letters of great importance.
Without each other working together in some form or fashion, none of us would have made it. None of us will make it without one another. I know a lot of you are probably thinking about the others, you know, on the “other side of the aisle” and thinking that things would be a lot easier without them, but I have to disagree.
We never agree with each other on every aspect of life, and that is what makes it work. Any group, from the smallest neighborhood association to all of humanity, is ineffective if all of its members are aligned in their thinking. Heck, even a simple relationship is more dynamic if the people involved aren’t always agreeable with each other.
The trick, I think, is to be patient and openminded enough to listen to the other side. Listen and truly hear what they have to say. Take a while to digest the information that they have given you and then let them do the same with your ideas. This is how we are able to separate the best, most logical, ideas from the chaff.
Take these brilliant kernels, mix them with lots of love and understanding and the result is, frankly, the continuation of the human species!
I wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year and remember that in order to survive and be happy, you must always, Love Your way Through It!
Peace,
Shaun
My little, creepy book baby is out in the world because who doesn’t want sad, quirky, horror with some romantic bits for the holiday season?
