Dive Shop

If you’re dog-tired at night, it may be because you growled all day.
–War Cry

“Negative attitudes wear us out. Assuming the worst will happen, focusing on just our faults, constant complaining, are attitudes that bring us down. If we stumble on a flight of stairs and feel embarrassed, it’s going to feel even worse if we growl and curse. We’ll feel much better if we laugh at ourselves and see the humor.

People want to be around those who are cheerful. The good cheer we send out will come back to us from others who are healthy. We can choose these cheerful people as our friends, and our happiness will grow and blossom in this good soil.

Today let me try to say something cheerful to another.”
–Nancy Hull-Mast



Dive Shop – 5″ x 7″ Watercolor

Another Belize painting, thanks to Li’s wonderful photography.   I just had to play with it and make it a little goofy. 

Li was on the mainland, but where we were on Ambergris Caye, everything north of San Pedro town was only accessible by piers and water taxis.  When we were there in 2002, there were still no cars north of the little wooden ferry at San Pedro town.   Belizian men would pull the ferry back and forth with ropes.  Golf carts, bicycles or pedestrians were all it could handle.  They have since put a bridge in, to replace the ferry.

The water taxis were the only reliable mode of transportation, north of the ferry back then.   When we got married on the beach, 9 years ago this weekend, our wedding planner (a local requirement back then) and our minister came to us by water taxi.



What great memories we have from Belize. 

But… here is that dive shop again.  If I leave the wedding photo as the last picture on the blog, it will post it to facebook and I ‘m saving that for another time. 

Nancy Hull-Mast is a contributor for the following Hazelden Title: Our Best Days.
Our Best Days is a book of daily meditations for those who cherish the simple truths of recovery. Its clear and practical ideas-and spiritual themes-give daily insights into the process of change. Our Best Days has been cherished by those new to recovery as well as by recovery old-timers.

Safe Harbor – Watercolor on Masa

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough, and more.
It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order,
confusion to clarity.  It can turn a meal into a feast,
a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace
for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
–Melody Beattie

WOW!  Good stuff!



Safe Harbor – Watercolor on Masa 3″ x 5″

Well, we have left Idaho behind and now we’re in Belize.  Li from WetCanvas had some great images to paint from in her WDE.  Li and her hubby recently spent 10 days exploring Belize.  The location is dear to my heart, because I was married on an island off the coast of Belize…   Ambergris Caye.    While Li enjoyed the ruins, the caves and the jungles, we loved the beaches and the quaint little town of San Pedro. 
The people are amazing, no matter what your vacation plans are. 


I think this one had masa written all over it!

Melody Beattie is the author of Codependent No More, published in 1987 by the Hazelden Foundation. The book was successful and influential within the self-help movement, selling over eight million copies and introducing the word codependent to the general public.^[1]

Following the success of Codependent No More, Beattie authored over a dozen other books, including Beyond Codependency and The Language of Letting Go. Her most recent book is Make Miracles in Forty Days: Turning What You Have into What You Want, published in 2010. Several of her books have been published in other languages.

On melodybeattie.com, she says this…  “They call me a self-help writer, but I’m not an expert or a guru.  I don’t give medical, psychiatric, or legal advice. I research, and then combine personal experience with what the experts say.  Then I turn that into easy stories for people to watch or read. Sometimes I show people how others (and I) work through certain issues and I suggest options, but I don’t tell people what to do.  I tell them they can do it, instead (a practice referred to as empowerment or permissions therapy.)”

That whole page is very interesting.  Worth a quick read. 

“Don’t look down.  Look up!  The steeper the climb,  the more important it is to laugh.”
–Melody Beattie