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    <title>Gaia Community: Melissa's Blog</title>
    <id>tag:gaia.com,2008,:Gaia</id>
    <link>http://melissa-cunningham.gaia.com/blog/feed</link>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <ttl>5</ttl>
    <pubDate>Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:14:24 GMT</pubDate>
    <description>Gaia Community: Melissa's Blog</description>
    <item>
      <title>Yikes, so long, no post!  </title>
      <author>http://melissa-cunningham.gaia.com</author>
      <dc:creator>Melissa</dc:creator>
      <guid>tag:gaia.com,2008:Gaia-210144</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:14:24 GMT</pubDate>
      <link>http://melissa-cunningham.gaia.com/blog/2008/8/yikes_so_long_no_post</link>
      <description>


&lt;p&gt;Sorry, I&amp;#39;ve actually started a stand-alone blog.&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Don&amp;#39;t you hate being &amp;#39;re-directed&amp;#39;?&amp;nbsp; I know.....&amp;nbsp; blah.&amp;nbsp; Anyway, I&amp;#39;ll try to make it worth your trip over to this address: &lt;br /&gt;http://eachdazzlingmoment.typepad.com/weblog/&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please do drop by, I&amp;#39;ve just posted some info about the &amp;quot;Candle for Tibet&amp;quot; event coming up on the 7th.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Love and Namaste, Melissa&lt;/p&gt;
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      <title>Fun with Nevena</title>
      <author>http://melissa-cunningham.gaia.com</author>
      <dc:creator>Melissa</dc:creator>
      <guid>tag:gaia.com,2007:Gaia-110843</guid>
      <pubDate>Wed, 22 Aug 2007 00:49:43 GMT</pubDate>
      <link>http://melissa-cunningham.gaia.com/blog/2007/8/fun_with_nevena</link>
      <description>


&lt;p&gt;I took a road trip with my four-year old granddaughter last week.&amp;nbsp; We went to Sea World in San Antonio.&amp;nbsp; We also stopped at the InnerSpace Caverns on the way!&amp;nbsp; ...No road trip is complete without some kitchy side-trip, right?&amp;nbsp; ;)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Surprisingly, she loved the cave!&amp;nbsp; It &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; pretty cool...and I mean that quite literally.&amp;nbsp; Very refreshing since it was in the 90&amp;#39;s outside! &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;We had a great time at Sea World! Nevena loved the swimming pools the best....maybe next time we&amp;#39;ll save the five-hour drive and go down the road to the local water park!&amp;nbsp; ;)&amp;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt;
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    <item>
      <title>Familial Bliss</title>
      <author>http://melissa-cunningham.gaia.com</author>
      <dc:creator>Melissa</dc:creator>
      <guid>tag:gaia.com,2006:Gaia-25058</guid>
      <pubDate>Fri, 01 Sep 2006 03:44:54 GMT</pubDate>
      <link>http://melissa-cunningham.gaia.com/blog/2006/9/familial_bliss</link>
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&lt;p&gt;Just got home from my daughter&amp;#39;s house and still feeling warm and fuzzy.&amp;nbsp; Being with her and the two babes is the best.&amp;nbsp; (Don&amp;#39;t mean to leave out my son-in-law!&amp;nbsp; He was just working late this evening....)&amp;nbsp; We had veggie burritos with some outstanding homemade tortillas.&amp;nbsp; Very yummy!!&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Still being distracted pretty significantly by pain in my leg muscles.&amp;nbsp; The doctor is still pretty clueless.&amp;nbsp; Says it could be my personal variant of &amp;#39;graft-vs-host-disease&amp;#39; (aka &amp;#39;rejection&amp;#39;).&amp;nbsp; A little of which is a good thing, actually (and expected).&amp;nbsp; Another guess is a reaction to the anti-rejection drug I&amp;#39;m taking....&amp;nbsp; see, we&amp;#39;re all over the place here!!&amp;nbsp; Whatever, I&amp;#39;m just tired of it.&amp;nbsp; Also tired of being my own guinea pig for various doses and combos of pain meds (plus the anti-nausea meds that I need to stomach the pain meds...it gets tedious fast).&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Hope to get back to my polymer clay project tomorrow.&amp;nbsp; I&amp;#39;m making a bird vessel.&amp;nbsp; I&amp;#39;m pretty pumped about it, so I hope it turns out well!&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
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    <item>
      <title>Retail Therapy</title>
      <author>http://melissa-cunningham.gaia.com</author>
      <dc:creator>Melissa</dc:creator>
      <guid>tag:gaia.com,2006:Gaia-22040</guid>
      <pubDate>Thu, 17 Aug 2006 00:10:41 GMT</pubDate>
      <link>http://melissa-cunningham.gaia.com/blog/2006/8/retail_therapy</link>
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&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#39;ve been a complete couch potato the last couple of days, so I really needed to get out and do something today.&amp;nbsp; I had some muscle pain (nothing dramatic, just like really sore muscles, mostly from the waist down.....) still, so that&amp;#39;s been kind of a drag on my motivation for a while....a big contributor to the couch potato syndrome.&amp;nbsp; (By the way, the doctor has no explanation for this that has panned out.)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyway....I have a vicodin rx for it, but had held out from taking any since the pain wasn&amp;#39;t that severe.&amp;nbsp; So today, I decided....*$#* it, no pain would be better than mild / moderate pain, right??&amp;nbsp; :)&amp;nbsp; One pill did nothing at all, so I took a second about an hour later.&amp;nbsp; Interestingly, the pain didn&amp;#39;t really go away at all, but my mood lifted pretty dramatically!&amp;nbsp; Cool.&amp;nbsp; &amp;quot;Huh, I have this pain, but I feel really good about it!&amp;quot;&amp;nbsp; Lol.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, I went out and did some shopping.&amp;nbsp; Always fun.&amp;nbsp; Old Navy has some cool fall sweaters out.&amp;nbsp; Got a v-neck in a really yummy aubergine.&amp;nbsp; Couple of kitchen gadgets from Bed, Bath &amp;amp; Beyond and a stack of books (for me and my little grandbabies...) from Barnes &amp;amp; Noble, and I was in a blissful state.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yikes, I&amp;#39;m an incorrigible consumer.&amp;nbsp; Well, some days.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Got a couple of books related to an abandoned hobby that I plan to pick up again - polymer clay.&amp;nbsp; I like to make jewelry, small sculptures and who knows what else.&amp;nbsp; I&amp;#39;m getting inspired.&amp;nbsp; It&amp;#39;s usually a winter-type hobby, but with the temp being 100-degrees-plus every single day lately here in Dallas, it might as well be winter as little as I want to be outside for any length of time!&amp;nbsp; I&amp;#39;m going to spend some time musing on some design possibilities first.&amp;nbsp; The thing I love about polymer clay is its amazing versatility.&amp;nbsp; Your imagination is truly the limiting factor.&amp;nbsp; So I plan to let mine run wild.&amp;nbsp;;)&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; If I&amp;nbsp;come up with&amp;nbsp;anything cool, I&amp;#39;ll post a picture.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My friend John is taking me out to dinner tonight.&amp;nbsp; I actually put on a skirt and some makeup!&amp;nbsp; I must be feeling better.&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
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    <item>
      <title>"blog it!"</title>
      <author>http://melissa-cunningham.gaia.com</author>
      <dc:creator>Melissa</dc:creator>
      <guid>tag:gaia.com,2006:Gaia-21874</guid>
      <pubDate>Wed, 16 Aug 2006 00:21:19 GMT</pubDate>
      <link>http://melissa-cunningham.gaia.com/blog/2006/8/blog_it</link>
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&lt;p&gt;&lt;p&gt;My new Zaadz friend, Shani,&amp;nbsp;suggested I start a blog to chronicle my recovery from my bone marrow transplant.&amp;nbsp; Great idea!&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Thankfully, the story of my recovery is not terribly exciting at the moment.&amp;nbsp; It&amp;#39;s a slow, slow process of feeling a tiny bit better day by day.&amp;nbsp; Some days are more valleys than peaks along this general trajectory, naturally.&amp;nbsp; I think a lot of this is due to how much medication I&amp;#39;m taking and the regular adjustments being made to it.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I&amp;#39;ve been doing some reading.&amp;nbsp; Today I read &amp;quot;The Alienist&amp;quot; by Caleb Carr (just for fun, I&amp;#39;d read it before...) and &amp;quot;Let your Life Speak&amp;quot; by Parker J. Palmer.&amp;nbsp; This last was a small&amp;nbsp;jewel of a book and brought tears to my eyes.&amp;nbsp; I recommend it highly.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last weekend, I participated in a &amp;#39;Contemplative Photography&amp;#39; class sponsored by a Buddhist&amp;nbsp;meditation group here in Dallas.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;We went to White Rock Lake. This is one of the pictures I took.&amp;nbsp; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
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