It’s now been almost four months that I’ve been in my Crohns Colitis flare up. There’s good days and bad days, there’s good days and REALLY bad days. It does get to you after awhile. You don’t have the energy you used to have, just going to a few stores and walking around gets you completely and utterly exhausted. You don’t ‘just get’ Crohns. Since it’s an autoimmune disease you end up with several other things piling on top of it….arthritis, muscle pain, gout, etc. There’s days when I really get depressed….but I try to think about the positives. We can’t afford health insurance BUT my husband runs his own company and he’s been busy every day, I work from home so I can be here at home every day. A lot of people who are sick do not get that luxury. Many of them have to force themselves to go to work no matter how absolutely horrible they feel. I’m just trying to rest my body as much as I can, I stay away from foods that have given me trouble in the past, and I’m basically just waiting it out.
I have also started my journey to quit smoking. Yep…during my flare up. What was I thinking? A friend of mine tried, The Safe Cig. It’s an electronic cigarette. You smoke it as if it were a real one but you’re not getting the damaging smoke in your lungs, you’re just taking in the nicotine. It’s similar to the patch, the gum, etc…. except it looks (and acts) like a real cigarette. I’ve been on it a little over three weeks now. The first two weeks I fell off the wagon several times, but now I’m at the point where I haven’t had a real cig in over a week. I’m very happy with it. If you’re interested in which one I use…it’s The Safe Cig Micro and it can be found HERE. The refills I’ve tried are Classic and Turkish, both are great. Classic is kind of like your typical Marlboro and Turkish has a flavor closer to Camels. Both are really good.
Here’s a photo of me holding the actual e-cig, with the box it comes in to give you an idea of the size and how it looks. If you’re looking to quit, I highly recommend this brand. Plus, it’s cheaper. A refill pack runs $16.95…that’s the equivalent of 7 packs of cigarettes. Normally, down here in Florida 7 packs would probably run you around $40.00 or more.
Recently, one of my Florida Panther images was used in a brochure for the FWC. We picked a few of them up at the Florida Panther Festival last weekend. Here’s a photo of me with the brochure and my photo 
Here we are…April 1st, and google has done it again. I just love what they do for April Fools Day
Check it out HERE
I’ve been pretty busy lately but none of it has involved a camera so I haven’t posted much on flickr or here on the blog. I’ve been wanting to get our Great Dane puppy Earl into the office again to do some more studio shots of him with my backdrops but just haven’t had the time, so I went through my older shots the other day and edited a few and figured I’d post them here. He’s now 9 months old, over 100 pounds and is possibly turning into the smartest dog we’ve ever owned. Which is weird, because I do tend to gravitate to the goofy and stupid dogs…since they don’t seem to get into as much trouble as the smart ones. I pretty much got lucky with my first Great Dane, Gunther…he was a big baby and never got into any trouble, and then came Duchess…who has figured out how to get her front feet up on top of the kitchen counter next to the fridge and grab things off the top of it. Let me tell you, it took several months and several rentals of a carpet cleaner to get out one gallon of vegetable oil from our carpet in the living room…..we have a stain on our ceiling we’re trying to figure out how to get rid of from Duchess biting into a brand new 2 liter bottle of pepsi and having it explode.
Earl hasn’t really gotten into any abnormal trouble or damaged anything expensive, just the typical puppy stuff. Pulling a napkin out of the trash and chewing it, finding a hair scrunchie and slobbing all over it, etc…..But, he’s doing extremely well learning commands. He knows HERE, drop it, go lay down, sit, load up (to get in the crate) and he’s doing super learning to fetch. This is the first dog that has actually chased a stick and BROUGHT IT BACK TO YOU. I’m trying to constantly work with him even if it’s just sit and stay in the house once a day so he’s always learning and enjoying it. If I’m stuck with a smart dog, we’re going to make the best of it, lol!
Happy Halloween!
Backdrops that is! Head on over to our online shop HERE to check out the variety of vinyl backdrops we offer in sizes 5′x8′ and 8′x10′! And have a peek of some photos the talented Chrissy Avila took using these backdrops… 
And to give you an idea of the size of a person as compared to these backdrops we’ve made up some approximate size charts for you…
The 8′x10′ backdrops are our newest, you can find them right HERE.
Also, you can check out our galleries of how we have hung these backdrops, the lighting we used, and more sample photos with models HERE.
And find the rest of the info (faq, facebook) on our main page at http://www.thedropshoppe.com
