Trippin' with Susan Straley

Tuesday December 10, 2019 Hello, I am excited!  I have a special gift for you, readers of this blog. But before I tell you about that, let me tell you about the book launch celebrations. The last I wrote I said that I hoped to update you on Saturday about the book launch and how it went.  That didn't happen on Saturday.  I am feeling a mixture of accomplishment and freedom from deadlines.   It feels pretty good! So excuse me if I took a break from writing for a few days. Book Launch Review The launch on Saturday at the Cattle Dog started out strange.  Last time (for the launch of the first book in the Trippin' Series) when I arrived they had a table set up for me facing the big, main room serving area. This time they didn't have it set up for me.  Instead they had a back room area reserved for me with one huge conference table.  It felt weird.  This was a celebration with friends, not a formal business meeting. As I began to haul in my stuff I realized th

December 3, 2019 Good Morning! Brrrr, it is a cold one here in central Florida!  Freezing in parts of Citrus County. Only ONE MORE DAY to the launch of the second book, THE JOURNEY CONTINUES! The 6th Annual Coping with Dementia Conference is January 22nd.  If you are a caregiver or know someone with dementia, this is a great resource to learn more about the illness and the resources available in Citrus County and beyond. Launch Celebrations 

December 2, 2019 Hi, Wow, can you believe it! Only two days to launch! So the call... an older man called me last night to wish me Happy Thanksgiving. It was obvious he was nervous and ... interested in not being alone... shall I say. He has never called me before and I have noticed him looking at me with interest. Gosh, here is the dilemma. I am documenting my on-going journey and now, as a widow my life continues. It feels really uncomfortable to talk about being single and the possibility of future relationships with men in this space. Certainly, I don't want to embarrass anyone or hurt anyone.  So putting up my thoughts and interactions here just seems not right.  No, I am not interested in sex or even romance. But friendship, companionship, that would be something of interest to me. But you know what I found going through my head as I talked? OH! I don't want to admit this because it so fits into the reputation of widows and older single women...

December 1, 2019 Today I get to go ride the Van Fleet Trail!  I don't know if anyone is going to be riding the trail with me.  It is one of the rides that the Withlacoochee Riders schedule during the winter season. I DO know that Will Byers and maybe Marie Adams will be riding toward me from Polk City.  (Remember I met up with Will and his group in the Everglades for a moonlight ride on the Shark Valley Trail?) I probably won't ride all the way to Polk City.  That is 60 miles and my hip doesn't like my trike seat much these days. I was thinking the other day that my hip started hurting after I changed the webbing on my seat.  The new webbing that Catrike has for the seats has more pockets in back of the seat, BUT it doesn't tighten as much.  The straps are pulled all the way and the webbing still sags.  I want to go back to the old seat!!!  I guess I will contact them and see if they still make them. Wouldn't it be great if all I have to do is change we

November 30, 2019 Good Morning! Yesterday I was going to ride down to feed the goats, but I felt low in energy.  So I got as far as Floral City and decided to go feed the Zebra and Donkeys instead. I have been wondering lately why I am doing this. I spend a lot of time trying to promote the book. And the needle isn't moving much at all. I feel like a dung beetle pushing a big ball of manure up a hill. I have advertisements up on Amazon. Do you know, when you search for an item and it pops up at the top of your list that you can look around it to see the word "sponsored". If you click on that ad, the seller gets charged for that click. But if you scroll down the natural algorithms have it there again without the sponsored. Then the seller doesn't get charged for your ad. The more I work with Amazon I am amazed at their technological savvy AND how they have an army of millions of "wanna be" folks out there advertising and paying not o

November 11, 2019 Hello! It is Black Friday!  And the Kindle version of The Journey Continues - Alzheimer's Trippin' with George is on sale until December 4, 2019 for only $2.99.  Who do you know that could use a little inspiration, lift, fun? Thanksgiving was wonderful, thanks to the folks that joined me and sent greetings. Someone somewhere created this cool image.  Who does it belong to?  I would like to give credit where credit is due... or get permission to post it. Thanks to the artist and the owner.  It is pretty cool.  I got it from Jim Cook an Ohio Trike-rider.  He doesn't remember which trike site he found it. Here is my Count-down video.  Only 5 more days to the launch! It is another gorgeous day in our area of Florida. I am going to ride my trike down to feed the goats (about 16 miles down the trail). I have stored my vegetable and fruit scraps from a couple weeks to share with them. Then, if I get back in time, some friends are meeting at

Happy Thanksgiving! Preventing Alzheimer's A fellow former caregiver told me this week that he thinks those who have cared for someone with dementia tend to worry more about getting the symptoms. I don't know if that is true, but I was comforted by an article I read recently. The Alzheimer's Association put out a magazine this fall that has a great article in about genetic testing. In the article it talked about the RESEARCH and the nature vs nurture, genes vs environment. I will post what they said further down in this post... but right now I have to post.... COUNT DOWN TO LAUNCH Well, the kindle pre-orders are still sitting at six (6).  Sigh.  It is what it is!  The thing is, it sure does keep me busy, promoting the books... video, Facebook, Twitter, events, emails.    After the launch I may send out my resume to places in Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota.  I want to find a seasonal job near a bike trail.  I think it will be good... but it is sca

November 27, 2019 This is so exciting! Only seven more days to the launch on ebook/kindle of THE JOURNEY CONTINUES! I am doing a series of videos as I count down to launch.  Just me, talking about the books and the process and life this week. Let me know what you would like to see in an up-coming countdown video. Who do you know that would enjoy our journey, or benefit from the positive out-look and caregiving information within it?  Share this post and this link to the book . Thanks for watching and joining me on this journey!

Hello, It is Wednesday, November 20, 2019 Today I was interviewed on our local TV station.  They were nice enough to share the program with me.  I added the captions to clarify what we were talking about.  It is about nine minutes. How do you like that cover picture?  Ha ha, what does it look like?  Leave a comment and let me know.  The big thing was I offered the first 20 people who sign up to Join the fun here on this blog a FREE download of the Audio Book of Alzheimer's Trippin' with George.  If you don't get email alerts to let you know I have posted, then you need to click the "Join the Fun" tab above and enter you email. So... first about the books and then about the rest of life... THE JOURNEY CONTINUES Some of you have been asking when book two THE JOURNEY CONTINUES will be out on ebook.   You have been anxiously awaiting. December 4th it launches!   And guess what!  You can pre-order the ebook now and it will download on Wednesday,

Hello, It is often said that to achieve great things, you need to focus your energy on one thing.  You can't spread your energy over many many things or you won't excel at anything. I guess I am programmed to be mediocre.  Ha ha. I kind of timed things wrong.  You see the audio version of Alzheimer's Trippin' with George has just been launched.  With that launch is the task of writing and sending out press-releases, putting posts up on social media, and giving out lots of free copies to experts and audio-book fans in the hope that they will leave a review on Audible or Good Reads. I just got my first review of Alzheimer's Trippin' with George on Audible! This book was great! I was a caregiver for my mother who had Alzheimer’s for 10 years! It was very hard when she did get angry and aggressive. This book gave a sense of calm and patience. I look forward to the second half when it gets much more difficult to see how it is handled. Being married

Howdy howdy! Can you believe it??? I posted yesterday that I was waiting for the audio book to be launched by Amazon and Audible and Itunes. This morning it was there! I made a short link for you. http://bit.ly/AlzTrippin1 So you can send the link to your friends and post it on your social media. Thanks again to Robin Siegerman the Voice Actor who put so much life and fun into my writing.  What a thrill. Here is a short link to the sample so you can share that with friends too if you want to. bit.ly /Alzheimers-trip-AudioSampl e Podcast Interview Coming Soon! And then, I went up on Twitter to let folks know and saw that the interview I had with Jennifer of the Fading Memories Podcast is going to go LIVE on November 5th.  It says 5 a.m.  Is that my time or her time?  She is in California. Whoo hoo! Can we stand any more excitement? Thanks for being part of this new "trip"!

 It is Tuesday, October 29, 2019 and my mind and body are all over the place. Before I get into what I have been up to, I want to share a statistic put out by the Associated Press.   More than five million people in the United States have Alzheimer's Disease. We have just over 329 million people in the USA.  So five million is a lot, but it is less than two percent of the population. Now that figure doesn't tell us how many have dementia .  Remember that dementia is the set of symptoms.  You can think of dementia as the umbrella of symptoms.  Under those symptoms are many reasons, diagnoses, or folders .   Debbie Selsalvage says the folder under the umbrella with the most papers in it (people or cases) is Alzheimer's Disease.   There are many, many causes of dementia symptoms.  Some of them are curable.  That is why it is good to get to the doctor if you or a loved one is showing symptoms.  Sometimes it is just a vitamin deficiency, a tumor, or a medication si