And I was thinking:
I was thinking how hard it was to be separated from the ones you love and in how many ways one can be separated from her beloved.

I was thinking about soldiers working far away, men and women having to travel for business reasons, or being separated for a short period of time because one is on vacation somewhere, somehow. I was thinking about mothers leaving their children at the daycare center and recalled how hard it was for me when it was my time to do this; it broke my heart each time to have to go to work and leave them behind in someone else’s care. I was thinking that physical separation is difficult but also, separation from the hearts was even more hard.

I read a book by Mitch Albom (For One More Day) and I was thinking what I would do if I would have one more day with someone I love who isn’t there by my side any longer. And it really hit home. What if, if only, we could have “that” person back for one more day, what would we do with that extra time.

I don’t know about you but I would let the floor a little less clean so I could be with that person instead, I would listen more and talk less, I would smile more and cry more too, I would refrain from any negative comments, would care more. Yes, that’s it: I would care more. In our life nowadays we simply don’t take the time to take our time. And we should make time.

Why not phone that aunt you love so much, or that friend you so liked to see and shared so much with back then; why not make time for your children and read that story they want you to read or go play for a moment that game they so like to play with you. There are so many ways, so many reasons with which we can make time, if only a little, to be THERE a bit more.

I am guilty as charged: many times I should have left the dust in its place (it will wait for you, trust me!!) and sit to chat with a friend or go to see someone that needed to be cheered up a little. We all have good reasons not to. Not to phone, not to go, not to take the time for.

In this era, we seem to have forgotten to live. A lot of people live to work and accumulate things but they don’t have the time to enjoy those things.
Others are caught on the internet (like you right now…LOL) for hours (not you of course!) instead of walking the dog or spending time in the real world.
Seasons are a marvelous invention from God an I live in a place where I can have the 4 of them! And each one has its own fantastic colours, moments, activities to do.

But I digress from my first idea.
The good thing about blogging is that it is up to you to do what you want with your blog and you can digress if you want — but I don’t want to, so I put myself back on track!

In a nutshell, it is never too late to begin: begin to live more, be more, feel more, enjoy more and most of all, love more!
Someone wiser than me said one day “each day is a gift not a a given right” and you can’t argue with the truth…So, like you, I will try to live more, love more,be more…

Our dog is a female Standard Poodle named Kia (nothing to do with the car brand, just that it is a name we like). She is a bit more than a year old and she is one funny precious girl! In fact, we did not know that a poodle could be so much fun!
When we were looking for a dog, poodles were not our first choice, nor the second. Well not at all (I still had the poodle of Barbie haunting my dreams with all its pompoms!).

It would be safe to say that after the death of our Siberian Husky, no dog breed was appealing to us.
But we knew we wanted to have another dog. Somehow, someday.

One day, we petsat for a friend: she had a standard poodle…And we felt in love with her dog: he looked like a teenager with its too long legs, its fur long enough for him to pass for a sheep ( he would have to work on his imitation though…) and was making us laugh so much with all the ways it would look at us and sit around that a simple look at my husband told me we had found the next breed of dog that would provide our future fur baby.

So we went in search for the standard poodle of our dreams. We had no clue where to find it.

We live in a small town and there was no way to get a standard poodle here. The first place we checked was the city pond: nothing there. As we don’t have any other form or shelter nor the presence of an S.P.C.A., we had to turn to breeders. And we found a few.

Now, I don’t know if they are made of gold but some breeders really wanted us to pay an extreme amount of money to be able to possess one of their baby dog. In my humble opinion, they were the ones possessed by greed…

After a few searches and selecting a few breeders, we began with the one that was the closest to us: about 2½ hours from here. We did not mind the distance simply because we knew what we wanted. We were willing to go all over this province to find our puppy.

We met with the breeder at the vet as the puppies were to have their first shots. each puppy had a little piece of colored yarn tied around their next so the breeder could differentiate them from one another.

Purple spoke to our heart! We took her in our arms and it was love at first sight!
We had to wait a couple more weeks before we could bring her into her new home and we could barely stand the fact that we would have to let her go back with her breeder for the time being. God! It seemed like we waited forever before our little princess arrive in her new kingdom.

Her presence made the whole household filled with those tender puppy moments and joy and laughters were a lot and still are on the menu here since she arrived.

So to come back on what I was saying sooner, it is a small tragedy when the dog is sick in our household.
Fortunately, we have a good vet and Kia will be up on her paws in no time! Meanwhile, she is entitle to a lot of TLC (our dog I mean but I am sure our vet would take some too)!

Photo of KIA

Well you got to begin somewhere, don’t you? How are you? Really, I am asking because I do want to know (if you leave a nice comment, I will surely answer you!).

My name is Dora ( no, not the EXPLORER) and for a very long time I have never heard or seen my name pronounced or written anywhere. Till that little girl hit the shelves of every store.
Although there is that one time in a store that someone called for Dora and I arrived…just to see THE other Dora with her mother looking at me puzzled. See, neither of them had met another Dora before. It was quite amusing. Yes, it doesn’t take a lot for me to have fun. To be sad neither but that is another story.

I am 50 years old. or like I say to people: half a century old. Makes me feel wiser although looking that way seems to add more wrinkles at the corner of my eyes! I try to say 50 years old a few times. There is a a circuit in my head hammering “BONG, OLD, BONG, OLD”. So as I hate headaches, I will stick up to my half century story, if you don’t mind. Anyway, nobody cares, REALLY.

I have 4 daughters. They are all beautiful, intelligent and stubborn like me. They look at lot like their mother..except maybe the little one, who is more a little Lady now than a little one: she is the copycat of her father, and obviously she came with everything to be a girl in this world while her dad lacks a few parts to claim the same thing.

These women are my poem, “une ode à la vie” (yeah, I am French too so I am sure you get used to those little phrases here and there). Some people write books, I made 4 living ones. Each one with its own story, still adding chapter after chapter in their story as life goes on. Each book is also a tome in my life.

There is Isabelle: she was the firstborn and like any good beginning of a suspense and/or funny book, she sets the tone for all the next tomes to come. It is with her that I will learn how to care, nurture, turn a page and also how to find back a book in my life library. Her book is filled with very good things. bad ones too but I prefer to look at her tome in a positive way. This tome is about a young woman who wanted to be a nurse and is living her dream.

There is Audrey: she was the one I had most waited to write and could not wait till the first lines were on paper, so to say. You might be tome number two but it doesn’t mean you are less important! She is the development of the story, which unfolds itself through the years passing by. This book smells of sea salt and marine life. Terribly interesting. She is writing her story now in concert with another character: her boyfriend. He is a very important part of this tome. He brings less suspense but adds more love, tenderness and knows how to play his role to perfection, which helps the story of this tome to unfold.

There is Rachel: from the minute she was born, each sentence would be written in perfect letters, all well aligned. That book brings us to a character that I would say is the most looking like the author she came from. She is a book that is having frequent similar pages than the one from the author. Quite a library here! I do, like for the others, have written a very good part of their tome but now it is for them all to continue their own story. I am not sure about those two last books: there is something missing and when I will find it, I will tell you. I’d say Rachel is the last part before the conclusion.

And there is Maïté (pronounce Ma-e-tay), the youngest and the last tome of my very own story. Like I said before, physically she looks a lot like her father and she is told so very often. To which once she answered she wanted to look like herself. This tome knows how to twist and turn to make a good story. But she is still at the beginning of her writing and who knows where she is going to bring us in the events to come!

I am also married, remarried to be more exact. To a Dutch man who left Amsterdam for the province of Québec for love, leaving behind language, culture, family and friends. Now, if you know a bit about Ams, you do know that you wouldn’t want to leave that place! 4 letters (L-O-V-E) were sufficient to make the world turn upside down and for the wind to bring that new part of my story HOME.