Pictures From Turkey

Check out my Pictures from Turkey

How Not To Blow Bubbles

My daughter demonstrating

her bubble blowing skills!

Istanbul: I am so excited!

On Friday I will leave for Turkey to visit friends.
We will be staying in Istanbul and then travel to Ephesus and back. Istanbul is the only city in the world that is situated in two continents; Europe and Asia! Over the centuries it has served as the capital of three empires!

• Roman 330-395 AD
• Byzantine 395-1453 AD
• Ottoman 1453-1923
  

It will be surreal to walk on Roman streets and stand inside The Aya Sofia dedicated in 537AD by Emperor Justinian. I can not wait, I am so excited! I will keep you posted.

Sunshine "Peeps"

Today is one of my favorite days, I am massaging my Sunshine "Peeps"! I have five clients coming in throughout the day and they are such a joy to work with. Each one of them lives in a residential facility for individuals with developmental disabilities. They love having massages and they will have me laughing and smiling all day. I have one women who sings praise songs and hymns while I am massaging her. Another women whips off her wig and throws it across the room and grabs my hands and kisses them. I have one man who loves Kleenex and I must limit him to only two maybe three per visit otherwise he would never get on the table and my box would be emptied! There is no bullshit with these individuals either they like you or they don't, either they are in a bad mood or they are not, they do not pretend. I love them for this!

Two years ago when I started working on my peeps I honestly did not know if I could do this work, I had never been around individuals with developmental disabilities and when I came in contact with them at restaurants or the mall they made me uncomfortable. Yet, I though I would give it a shot, so here I am two years later telling you how they will make my day. I have learned so much about myself and the healing of massage through them. Many of these individuals have been abused at some point in their lives or are covered in scars from surgeries yet they still want to trust and be touched. It is my honor and privilege to be the one that they trust.

Click on the picture below to view my photos from Cuba

Confused

There are some days I am just plain confused! Mostly I am confused by people and I want to say, "WHY?" Today I had one of those moments. I was walking in a public corridor, I will not disclose the location when I came across a person that I could not quite determine the sex of. "Pat" was an understatement. I thought perhaps it was an older women who has seen better days. Yet, she still wanted to feel youthful by putting her hair up in a side ponytail! You heard me a side ponytail! The closer I looked I thought, Noooo, I think that is a man wearing a side ponytail. Maybe it wasn't really a side ponytail just a bed head ponytail that migrated to the side of his head! So I took some of my co-workers along for a walk past this person to help me figure this one out. The consensus is ....drum roll, it is a man! WHY?

Is that a skunk I smell?

One would think, with as much problem I have with my nose and sinuses that I would not be able to smell things. On the contrary, I have a great sense of smell. One time I was used to trace down a sewer gas leak! I was at a friend's office and she said "I do not know where this smell is coming from?" So, I got down on my hands and knees like a bloodhound and sniffed my way to her front door. I told her, "I think you have a sewer leak right outside your front door. She called the city and lo and behold I was right! I love smelling and sniffing things. My husband cannot smell many things and I could not imagine having his sense of smell, how depressing! Now if you know me you know there must be something weird in this story. Well here it is, I love driving down the road and getting a whiff of a skunk roadkill I like the smell of clean slightly sweaty arm pits. Mary Kathrine Gallagher, you go girl!! I also like the smell of diesel fuel, it was a sad day when buses could not spew out all of their exhaust into my waiting nostrils!! Hmm ...maybe this explains some of my issues!

Now, what do i do?

I was driving into work this morning listening to NPR that would be "National Public Radio" for my readers that live under a rock. Anyway, they were doing a piece on how the Internet and e-mail is used more often by people seeking answers to their medical questions. You can now e-mail your doctor or visit certain websites and ask questions thus eliminating a visit to the doctor. As you might know I have spent quite a bit of time in doctor's office lately trying to address my sleep and nose issues. I am all for not spend the time sitting for eternity in an office full of sick people spewing and coughing germs all over. They should issue you gloves and a mask before you enter the office! Once you are in hell, you have to pick a seat; do you want to sit next to the woman who is shaking uncontrollably, or dear god the boy with the pus-like stuff oozing his eyes?? Just a reminder, never touch the magazines in a doctor's office EW! Who in their right mind would touch one of those snot covered, drool soaked, germ infested things, just so you can be bored and look like an idiot sitting there pretending to read "Tennis" magazine! Now you wait and wait and wait ... You have no idea when you will be called. I swear at least four people who came in well after I did got called in by the nurse before I did. And at least one of them came back out and left the office before I ever had my name called. When you finally get called you are moved to the examination room to wait some MORE!! By the way, does anyone else look in the drawers when you are left in the examine room? When the doctor DOES come in, it's a real event. It's like the sighting of a rare species thought to be extinct, or meeting royalty. They poke and prod and pretend to listen to what you have to say, write out a prescription and leave before you're even done rattling off your symptoms. Or they look at you and say the dreaded " well it just needs time to heal!" I walked through the fires of hell to hear that!! Damnations!! Okay, enough of my rant on doctor's offices, what I found amazing was the last part of the NPR piece. They actually said "e-mail medical advice should not be used for certain things like "uncontrollable bleeding!" Hello!! You mean if I accidental cut my arm off with a chain saw I should not go into the house and drop an e-mail to my doctor? Now what do I do!!!