Good evening. It is already Saturday night here in rainy Arizona. It is 51 degrees F/ 10 C same as it was for my last post as if no time had elapsed between last Saturday and today. It’s perfect for a cup of steamy decaf or tea.
I took my first winter-weather-coat walk this evening. I stayed dry and toasty. Puppy Girl moved fast and never complained about not wearing her coat yet.
Last week I kept my post short to get ready for our garage sale. Today it’s all done, and for that I’m relieved. We met some of Cindy’s neighbors and had lots of fun visiting as people came by. Most of the big items sold, and Cindy was able to park in her garage again! YAY!
We also hosted our first small group at church, so Vince is breathing easier, too. It was fun, and we had 100% attendance plus one.
No Books Read This Week
I sold some of my best paperbacks purchased in airports, mostly Lianne Moriarty books. It’s hard to part with books, but it’s better that someone else can enjoy them than to hoard them.
Thursday Trios
Mama Cormier hosts this fun challenge each week. It’s easy to participate, just take pictures of anything in groups of three.
I had much better shots of trios in Washington than in Oregon. Stores are the best places for me to find trios. Terri and Hans drove to a collection of farms/stores outside of Spokane called Green Bluff. There were probably 50 stores there, but fortunately for our pocketbooks we only stopped at three or four. If I shoot pictures, the theory is that I am less apt to spend money. Sadly, the theory has some pot shots.
Flowery Favorites
This week the Lens-Artist Weekly Challenge echoed Cee’s Flower a Day Challenge.
Moving from the dahlias of Oregon I shared last week, the traveling bloggers found quite a few picturesque flowers in Washington, as well. These all came from Ft. Vancouver’s garden. I particularly loved the dilapidated macro. To me, the petals look like a painting rather than a photo.
The larger picture had a bit of bokeh, which pleased me. I had never seen such a web of thorns around a bud before. No one tried to steal THAT bud! 🙂
I liked the groups of flowers because of the many colors nestled together. The third picture is better when you see the entire picture. Even though they are clear and colorful, there is nothing outstandingly artistic about them, but it’s hard to take a bad picture of a flower, right?
Cee’s Black and White Challenge
I love this week’s theme of trees or tree art. Oregon and Washington are rich in trees, so it was difficult to pare down the number of pictures that met the requirements. I was pleased to have a venue to use my underwater tree picture. It turned out better in black and white than in color.
The Problem with Goals
When I started writing this post, I was struggling to sync my frustrating Fitbit. Writing this post had a delightful calming effect even though the original problem was solved before I started writing, my data for today disappeared. I was striving to do 10,000 steps every day for at least a week. At 10:00 p.m. I now have 335 NEW steps, the past 5,310 steps I walked today disappeared. Oh well, I needed a break today anyway. I don’t have enough minutes left in the day to walk 10,000 steps.
Last night my Fitbit recorded that I needed over 5,000 steps to reach my goal before midnight. With my small condo as my track, I would have made it if I had looked at the right clock. I walk about 100 steps per minute, so I had it figured down to the minute that I could finish 5,000 steps by midnight. When I looked at my watch the last time, I had 237 steps and it was Saturday instead of Friday but the clock on the stove said 11:57 – plenty of time to finish if I walked fast! I ended up with 9,777 steps. Not bad, but no stars and buzzes to reward my efforts.
The Reason Behind Sharing Coffee Each Week
This post is written for Natalie the Explorer’s Weekend Coffee Share. Congratulations to Natalie who celebrates six years of blogging. Natalie shares the reasons she enjoys blogging, and unlike me, she never vents. She is always so positive and has so many beautiful pictures and stories to share. She also participates with so many of her readers in their own challenges. She’s created a great community of supportive bloggers. Well done, Natalie!
Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
62 responses to “Hot Coffee with a Sigh of Relief”
Great collections again, Marsha. All the trios are very photogenic. I love the colors and shapes in your kitchen trio and Green Bluff Store items are nice. I would want them as my room decor. Your flower photos are certainly colorful, and the dilapidated beauty photo and the thorny one look unusual and interesting!
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Thanks, Gift. I wish I could decorate like that as well. The store was beautiful.
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A great assortment of images. I love those tin pigs! You made me laugh with your fitbit story.
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My fitbit was a laugh a step. It’s back on track now, thank goodness. I got up to 11,000 + yesterday.
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Well done.
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Thanks, I was working up to 10,000 per day then Terri told me that they recommend 11,000 to lose weight now. I think my weight goes up with the number of steps I walk instead of down! 🙂
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I can say it’s a wonderful fragrance in your post. Nice floral collections prevailing amazing fragrances everywhere. Good job
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Thank you Asman. You must have an amazing sense of smell. I can’t smell a thing!!! 😂😂😂
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🤭🤭🤭
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Loved your flowers, especially the thorny one, (though I suspect the thorns are rather soft…)and trees, Marsha! And threes – the pigs really are adorable. Well done with your garage sale too. Thank you for participating – and sometimes a challenge must be a bit comfortable and not too demanding!
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It’s true that comfortable challenges are great. The more pictures you take and the more experience you have with challenges, the easier they are. But everything takes time! I love all the LAPC challenges, but life gets in the way!!!
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Thank you – and yes, I know…Life.
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🙂
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Love the threes, and the flowery favourites! Well done with the sale
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Thanks, Sue.
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Pleasure
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Great post as always Marsha. Love hearing about your adventures. I really like that trio of pigs.
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Pigs are nice.
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Congratulations on your successful Garage Sale, Marsha. That is something that I am just not good at. I greatly admire those who are!
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Hi Donna, I can’t say that I’m good at it, but we did get some things sorted and some more room in our garage. LOL
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That sounds like a huge success to me!
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Thanks, Donna. I just went over there, and there’s so much left! Yikes. It’s off to the antique shop next, and probably Goodwill or something.
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Tree art is a lovely photo challenge theme! Your first two are my favourite, especially the Watery tree grave.
How frustrating with the Fitbit! But perhaps that made you walk more than you would have otherwise? Enjoy your week!
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Thanks, for the kind words, Susanne. The trees in Washington and Oregon were magnificent. I couldn’t get enough of them. 🙂 Fitbit wise, I guess only yesterday was messed up, so I just have to let it go, LOL. It’s hard for me to get in 10,000 steps when I start at the beginning of the day. Much worse when they all disappear at 9:00 or 10:00 pm. 🙂
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Marsha, Thank you so much for your weekend coffee share and kind words about me, my blog and weekly linkup. Congrats on your garage sale success! Now try to keep the space that you’ve gained 🙂 Your pictures are all beautiful. I particularly like the flowers. I hope your Fitbit works well again. Have a wonderful weekend and week ahead!
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Thanks, Natalie. Loved your post with all your beautiful lava flowers. 🙂 I know Terri appreciated your tribute to Aero. 🙂
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Great photos Marsha. Love your flowers and trees 😀 😀
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Thanks, Cee!
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LOVE the flowers. Superb.
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Thanks, John. 🙂 Can’t go wrong with flowers.
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This is a fun update post. I feel like we’re neighbors, chatting over coffee–exactly the plan!
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That’s the cool thing about blogging, Jacquie. And then sometimes we do get together and chat over a real cup of coffee. 🙂
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I can’t wait to get back to walking again! And especially outside. Glad to hear of garage sale success!
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Thanks Kathleen. Let’s get moving, right? I can’t wait for the monsoon rains to stop. They just keep coming this year.
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Hi Marsha,
I share your struggles with this whole step counting thing.
It became a big part of my life;
— post back surgery when I was losing the ability to move much
— post getting serious about managing my blood glucose (good by to many tasty things)
— post covid, which left me starfished in bed for about 6 weeks and very weak
— post loosing lots of weight – finally – a good thing for this list.
I’ve been using the pedometer app on my but now realize that Samsung is collecting this information for who-knows-what reason, so I’m beginning the search for some means of step counting that leaves out any 3rd party who has no reason or permission to collect data on me.
I don’t think any on-line tool will do the trick. Does Fitbit collect this data on you?
I’d love to have a counter that keeps some kind of daily record, but I don’t want it shared with anyone I’ve not authorized. This is why I resist many IOT devices.
Anyway – fun post. Makes me wish I were a better and consistent photographer.
Blessings.
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Hi Gary, sorry to say, Fitbit servers are saving all my data. For a while I let it count calories for me and even wrote in all the water I drank. However, that’s too much work. I don’t care who has the data about me. What good is it unless I’m doing something that the government or mafia deems is worthy of death. When trying to stay healthy becomes a threat to society, we’re in big trouble, right? So far, I think I’m safe. 🙂
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I can understand why you are relieved, Marsha! Congrats on a successful garage sale and church meet-up! I’m so glad they went well. Hans just finished the second floor of the pole barn and added 400 Sq ft of storage for our stuff. Now to build the stairs, LOL–that will be a relief to have that all taken care of. After I read about your Fitbit woes, it occurred to me that the time on the Fitbit might be calibrated wrong. Did you check that? Maybe it is still on West coast time. Did I tell you I just read an article that suggests losing weight as we age, we need 11,000 steps a day? Erg, well I am up for the challenge cuz I don’t want to eat less, LOL! Great shots of the trios in Greenbluff!
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Next thing the experts are going to tell me is that I need 12,000, then 13,000…. Soon I’ll be walking 24/7, LOL. I bet I’d be pretty skinny. I think I can sleepwalk. I know I can eatwalk. One good thing about walking around the house is that I pick up as I walk. So the house should stay neater. Vince and I are both droppers.
Hats off to Hans! What in the world are you going to store? I’ve got a few items I didn’t sell that I don’t really want to sell. You could sell space to friends. You have 400 sq feet, but 4,000 cubic feet of storage space! That is unreal. You could furnish two more houses with the stuff you could store! You could win the storage wars! Anyway, bring down your pickup. Have I got a deal for you!!!
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Hahahha, I just laughed through this whole comment, Marsha! I may need to walk 24/7 at the rate I’m going, LOL! I think I can eatwalk too! So, didn’t you see all the cr@p we had on the ground level? I can’t even park my car yet! Most of that stuff can go to the second floor. We never realized that we could utilize the vertical space when we started the buying process, thinking it was more like a garage. Trust me when I say we need the space! We also wanted an area where Hans could drive a vehicle into the shop and work on it when needed.
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You’ve got it all there, Terri. Vertical space for enough storage for all that stuff on the floor. It will just be a drop in the bucket and you’ll be begging all the neighbors to bring you more stuff to store! LOL. Actually you need to build multi-level walkways between all the stuff that is stored up there. – or add a forklift to your polebarn collection to bring down things when you need them. 🙂
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Hahaha 😆, I’ll add the forklift to the house generator we should buy, oh and a small quad. Living the rural life 😉
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Got that right! 🙂 And lovin it!
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Ah, the trials and tribulations of technology! 🫤. I’m astonished that you stayed up that late to get your steps in. I’d be exhausted the next day because I’d still wake up early. We got lots of rain yesterday and last night as well and it’s actually cooled down here…but not anywhere close to coat weather. When I get back to Illinois soon, I’ll definitely be taking cold weather clothes. Can’t wait! 😉
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My brother and I went on 2013 – wow time flies. It was 80 degrees in early October. Beautiful, but you might get snow, too. Hard to tell. 🙂 Hope you have gobs of fun. 🙂
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Those tree shots are especially effective in black and white – loads of texture!
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I was thrilled to read that trees was the topic. Yay!
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Loved this one from start to finish Marsha, and of course special thanks for joining us this week. The trios images are really fun and beautifully captured and I loved the flowers too – especially the thorny one – YIKES!!
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Thanks, Tina. I loved that Anne Christine had an easy theme for me this week. Sometimes I run out of energy by Saturday! Ok by Monday, well maybe Sunday afternoon. 🙂
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Great photos.
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Thanks Phil. You are kind. 🙂
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It’s getting a little chilly by the sound of it. Puppy Girl will soon be needing that coat. 🙂
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Yes, not today, though. It’s warm and sunny this afternoon. Yay!
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Hi Marsha….
Loved the flower photographs and the great textures of the trees…You know I’m a dim-wit and haven’t mastered certain technological elements of life… I ‘push’ when a sign says ‘pull’! A shame because I took a mass of photographs years ago (BC: before computers…) I’ll have to get one of my three sons to assist. Have a good week Marsha! Cheers. x
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When we were preparing for our garage sale, I found the boxes I’ve been looking for for two years with all my photographs, neatly organized into plastic bags. I need to digitize them now.
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Great post, Marsha. Love the flower and tree images. KL ❤️
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Thank you KL.
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I never count but am sure that I do more than 10,000 steps every day, Marsha. How’s that for confidence? Or idiocy! My legs ache this morning because we are back to hill walking with the change of season-still 22-26C so not exactly cool. And I got stung on the back of the neck yesterday! A lovely lunch distracted me for a while, but we’re walking again this morning. Did I mention idiocy? Have a good week, hon.
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Selling the big stuff was awesome so I can have room for my car Marsha.. TY.. 🤣
Love the pics of the country statues and those flowers are amazing and so well captured❣️
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You are always kind, my friend. Have a great Sunday. 🙂
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Oh happy to be here dear as are you. You do the same❤️
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Yes, indeed! 🙂 Lots of love and hugs.
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And to you my friend 💕
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