Luna went home yesterday with Heidi but I stayed up at the cottage with Roland. Roland didn’t want Luna alone in the cottage whining while he was clearing snow off the roof and I was in town for a lunch after dropping Heidi home. We have a problem area of our cottage roofline: when there is too much snow the insulation it creates causes the snow immediately above the roof to melt. The melting snow sometimes works its way into the cottage. So frustrating. I think we’ll eventually need to fix the roofline, but that’s a story for another day.

So, I was out snowshoeing all by myself on the lake on another blustery morning. The wind had pretty much covered up the trail. Again! And so it was a lot of trudging through the snow. It was definitely easier snowshoeing when I could find the trail, and quite a slog when I went off the trail. And so, I thought of trail markers. Of how trail markers usually make it so much easier to stay on track. As I’m working to reestablish some good habits, until my trail is really well established, I should take advantage of some trail markers. Writing down the habits in my journal is a trail marker. There’s a good reason that habit trackers are recommended and popular. They help. Especially if you’re someone like me who enjoys checking off items from a ‘to-do’ list. Doing things in the same order is a trail marker. I didn’t head back upstairs after my walk until I did my ‘one and done’ 12 minute workout this morning. Being prepared ahead of time is a trail marker. It was so much easier to do my ‘one and done’ workout this morning than it was yesterday morning. Because I had booked marked that website. That bookmark was a like a trail marker. Yesterday I had to do a bunch of google searches and to search through old emails to figure out what the workout website because I used to do the workouts on my iPad which isn’t up here at the cottage. Now I have it bookmarked on my phone and my iPad. So it will be much easier to do that workout every morning, after my walk, before I do anything else.

A few other thoughts from my morning walk. The well-trod trail is easier to follow than to make new ground. So when you are trying to forge a new trail you may find yourself intersecting with a well-tred trail that you’re trying to avoid, perhaps it’s scrolling on social media without thinking about it, or grabbing a cookie instead of a handful of veggies. And that’s okay. It’s fine to enjoy cruise along a familiar trail while you take a bit of a rest from forging your new trail. When you’re ready to redirect your efforts you can take advantage of those trail markers to help get you back on track and to keep you there.

I was mostly able to follow the trail parallel to shore, but it was next to impossible to find the one that cut across the bay. So I enjoyed the snowshoeing along the trail while it lasted. Then simply (but not easily) forged a new trail across the bay until I again found the trail along the other shore.

Yesterday when I did the full loop into the bay near our neighbours cottage, a layer of slush had formed under the snow, making it pretty hard to snowshoe even though I was going along a previously formed trail. Even a well-trodden path can sometimes become a slog, sucking you in and no longer being the best path to be on. So today I made the decision to cut a fresh trail directly across the bay to our cottage rather than following the trail deep into the bay in front of our neighbours cottage. While it would have been nice to be on the firmer trail, I knew it would eventually suck me in and be even more work to battle the slush that had formed. So I chose to slog it out making a new trail, mostly keeping my head down to concentrate on what I was doing. But looking up occasionally for a guide post,our dock, to make sure that I wasn’t veerying too far off in another direction.

Shelli gave me a Spellbinders Crafty Advent calendar before Christmas. It has been so fun gradually working our way through the days. I was on a bit of a roll today and made about 5 cards. This is the first one. The gardenia flowers happened to be on the beautiful paper that was wrapped around the plant that my friend, Ivana, bought for me. Since I am very into gardenia flowers lately (they were the theme at my mom’s recent Celebration of Life) I decided to cut out the flowers and to make some cards with them. So that was the perfect backdrop for the card I made using the stamps from door number 13. I had made a similar card from a previously opened door (I’m not sure which door number) earlier in the week. I also made cards for doors number 14, 15 and 16. And so I was able to open door number 17. I’ll make a card using that die set tomorrow.