Progress

I finally feel like I am making progress in the right direction. I accomplished more yesterday than I have in any day for months. I washed 2 loads of laundry, clipped the nails and brushed out Felicity our 100# very fluffy shedding dog. Her fur gets confused because she lives inside when it gets cold outside we turn on the heat so she sheds, she sheds puppy size hair balls. However she looks so much better when she's brushed and it keeps that hair from turning the carpet white, clogging the drains when Jeremy bathes her or keeps her from gagging up hairballs from licking herself. It needed to be done and I was glad that I was able to do it. I took some still life pics and edited a photo. I also wrote my blog. I know this does not sound like a whole lot to accomplish but for me these were MAJOR accomplishments even if I was not able to go on MSS or Facebook except to post the picture I edited. I remember when these were minor things squeezed in amongst all the other things I had to do that day.
However, there is something I realized today that make me feel great about the progress I have made. I have made great stride in my reading abilities. I used to keep anywhere from 3 to 4 books stashed around the house so that whenever I had a few minutes I had a book nearby that I could just pick up and read. I was able to keep all the plots straight and know what was going on in each book without backtracking. Then medications and fibro-fog hit. Fibromyalsia doesn't just make you hurt it also causes many other symptoms among them confusion, forgetfulness, and other mental conditions. In my case forgetfulness and confusion were real bad. At one time I ran into a friend (no I didn't hurt her ha-ha) at the store and she was in a panic because she could not remember were her car was. I had the same problem but had learned to hit the panic button on my key ring as I wandered the parking lot till I heard my car alarm go off. She thought that was a wonderful idea and it helped her calm down. It's amazing all the little coping skills one can learn to help keep oneself functioning.
My fibro-fog problem that bothered me the most was not being able to read I could not keep track of what was going on in one book much less 3 or 4. I would have to backtrack and reread many times to understand a book. So what I did was I started reading for my grandchildren more than I had in the past. In fact I didn't read hardly anything above a fourth or fifth grade level, because it was nearly impossible. Yesterday while I was taking my photos of my still lifes which was of what I am currently reading; I realized that I was reading adult books and three of them. I am reading "The Story of Pi" because Emily recommended it and was planning to read it this weekend and I wanted to be able to talk to her intelligently about it. I am rereading "The Light Fantastic" as my practice book for speed reading that Emily taught my how to do over the Holidays. You are supposed to read a book you have previously read to start out your speed reading practice. You will notice that I said I am learning to speed read quite an accomplishment even without the fibro-fog. Then I am also reading a book on perspective in drawing and I will have a picture of the book and a drawing to show you when I am done with that one.
I am so glad to have had this realization; It has definitely buoyed my spirits.
Photo edit notes:
My hands shake a lot and the book pic are done in HDR so they are pictures that are aligned and layered. The first attempt at this I could not get the pictures to line up even though I was using a tripod. I tried again using the tripod but also using the cameras timer set at 2 seconds so my hands were no where near the camera when it took the photo. This worked. I was using the free trial of Corel Paint Shop Pro Ultimate for the HDR process