Beautiful music from a Louis Vuitton commercial, " Where will life take you?"

This guitar piece by Gustavo Santaolalla, is romantic, sad and hauntingly beautiful at the same time, I can't hear it enough.
Crank up the sound, excellent photography.

A bird made my day less stressful.

Red shouldered hawk.

Keep reminding myself

Theraputic lying is acceptable..

There is no doubt that care giving a parent is extremely stressful. A few days ago I finally convinced my mother to get her hair done at the salon that I have been taking her to for about 5 years. This was very difficult to convince her go, it had been many months.
Recently her dementia has become worse and she insisted that she didn't need a flu shot, because she already had one. I would ask her when and where did you get it? and her reply was "I just did."
After her hair work was done and I had her in the car, we drove to her doctor's office, (I secretly made an appointment for a flu shot) she was not happy. She got her shot. I then took her for some soup at the bakery, she panicked a little, and telling her I wanted to show her off with her new white hair "do", softened her up a little. She can barely walk even with a walker every move takes time, I am a very patient person and have been all my life, to the dismay of many of my "type A" personality family and friends. We had a nice lunch and I was able to get some sunlight on her, she prefers to be inside with all window blinds shut. That's another story.
Tricking her for her own benefit is OK, and I felt better after reading this from the Family Caregiver Alliance website:

Therapeutic Lying Reduces Stress. We tend to be meticulously honest with people. However, when someone has dementia, honesty can lead to distress both for us and the one we are caring for. Does it really matter that your loved one thinks she is the volunteer at the day care center? Is it okay to tell your loved one that the two of you are going out to lunch and then “coincidentally” stop by the doctor’s office on the way home to pick something up as a way to get her to the doctor?

Remnants of Buddha Found in 1,000-year-old Asoka Pagoda

Archeologists on Saturday removed an about 1,000-year-old miniature pagoda, believed to hold the top part of Buddha's skull, from an iron case found at a former temple site in Nanjing in July.
It is believed to be one of the 84,000 "pagodas of King Asoka (273 BC - 236 BC) that contain Sakyamuni's sarira, or his remains found in the cremation ash. Sarira are highly sacred for Buddhists.
Asoka was an Indian emperor who converted to Buddhism after a bloody war with a king in the eastern part of the country. According to Buddhist records, Asoka collected all the parts of Buddha's sarira, divided them into 84,000 parts, and stored each one of them in a pagoda-shaped shrine. Then he sent the sacred relics to different parts of the world. China is considered to have 19 of them.

Photos and full story here from. Sina English