Monthly Archives: July 2018

Warning: Contagious!

Charles Dickens via Lisa Bearnes Richey

It was suggested years ago that a good experiment was to consciously give a big smile to each person you met during the day and to see their reaction. I did this when my husband and I went to one of the shopping malls in Fort Smith.

I told my husband a corny joke. He groaned and I laughed, holding the smile as we passed several people. They smiled in return and my husband asked, “Who were they?” I replied. “I have no idea.” He said, “You don’t know them? Why were they smiling at you?”

This continued the whole time we were shopping. The thing that surprised me was that “I” felt good. My spirits were up. I was happy. I started the experiment – apparently brightening some other people’s’ lives – and had a happy day in return. I now remind myself to SMILE, even if I don’t feel like it.

A great lesson.

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Companionship

Smoke apparently was up much of the night catting around. She isn’t saying much, but plopped herself down on my calendar this morning and seems not inclined to be particularly sociable until further notice.

 

She just allowed me to pet her. We have two cats, Smoke and Abby, neither of whom purr worth spit. They seem really happy and spend a lot of time either beside us, being companionable, or sitting on us when they get the chance, often for hours if we’ll allow.

We adopted Smoke from our vet’s office. She was in a cage with some others when we brought one of the doggies in. I went over to the cage and she came right up, rubbing up against my hand and much as she could with the cage between us. My heart melted, but we already had a cat, plus two dogs, and really didn’t need another cat. That night I dreamed of her and named her Smoke in my dream. I told my husband. Being a ‘keeper’ as far as husbands are concerned, he agreed that we did, indeed, have room for another.

This is Abby. We adopted her through a newspaper ad, describing her as a ‘lap kitty.’ It actually took us a day and a half of trying to calm her down in one of our bathrooms before she warmed up to us. In the end, the ad was more than correct. She is now fat, sassy, and a wonderful cat. Smoke is the head cat, though, even though she was adopted second. Abby defers to her in all things.

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Gorgeous Glass – Take 14

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Siamese Cat – Pastel Painting – Karen Margulis

Karen Margulis – kemstudio.blogspot.com

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“Grass, Trees, Water, and a Thinking Bird”

“Grass, Trees, Water, and a Thinking Bird” – Paul Militaru Photography

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I Picked the Tomatoes, But…

 

Our heat index is supposed to be over 100 today, so I decided I would get out and see if we had any tomatoes I could bring in. As you can see, we had several nice looking ones.

The problem is that an ant nest was nearby and I apparently disturbed the sweet little things as I walked to the tomato planter. All of a sudden, my left ankle was stinging. I looked down to find a gazillion (give or take) ants on my shoe and ankle. I slapped them off as best I could and came in with the tomatoes I had gathered.

I immediately took off shoe and sock and put Benedryl cream all over my ankle. Now I’m watching my ankle get pink and puffy while it continues to sting and itch. There isn’t enough spray in the world to spray our whole yard (8+acres), but I’m going to make a concerted effort to spray all around the civilized part of the yard around the house and garden as soon as this subsides….

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Bummed

I just went out to the garden to see what’s what. Our weather has been so bleeping hot that I haven’t spent as much time as I normally would.

My husband and I built a really nice raised bed square foot garden so that I could grow some of our veggies. We spent a lot of time on it, building 4 foot x 4 foot, 8 inches deep wooden boxes, lining the bottoms with plastic and mounting them on ‘tables’ of metal about my chest height so I wouldn’t have to bend over double or get up and down on my knees. We ran irrigation so that we can control the watering. We used Mel’s Mix, a combination of peat moss, vermiculite and as many different kinds of compost as we can find to create a really nice medium that plants love. It’s easy to plant, water, weed, and harvest.

Yet it was mostly wasted effort this year, due to our much cooler and wetter than normal spring followed by August weather in May. There is just no way that lettuce, broccoli and spinach can thrive in this heat. The plants practically boil in the ground.

 

As you can see, everything is bolting, wilting, or dying. Even the cantaloupe can’t handle this weather.

Today’s project is several sessions in order to clean everything out, harvesting the onions and leaving things ready to plant, hopefully if we have good fall weather. My greenhouse is 120 degrees inside, even with the automatic exhaust fan running continually, so I turned that off. I’ll concentrate on cleaning things up and trying to be ready for my next chance.

Meanwhile, we’ve been enjoying truly incredibly tasty tomatoes from the one planter in the nook created by the back of the house and our screened porch. They are YUMMY. If that’s all we’re going to get now, I’m still smiling.

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White

“White Ornamental Flower” – Paul Militaru Photography

 

“White Wild Roses” – Paul Militaru Photography

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Pencil Drawing – Take 29

Nick – rubiesxone.blogspot.com

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92 Pound Greeting

This is Amber. She is 16 months old now, weighing 92 pounds at last weigh-in at the vet’s.  Words to describe her include, “energetic, sweet, exuberant, loving, boisterous, cute, unrelenting, playful, and ‘watch out!'”

Each morning I come down the stairs half asleep. My husband usually makes it downstairs before I do, letting doggies out and starting to feed animals. Sometimes Amber greets me at the bottom of the stairs. Other times in the living room, or the kitchen. I’ve learned to ‘brace for impact’ as we TRY to teach her not to dive-bomb us.

This morning she caught me as I was going to my recliner to retrieve the shoes and socks I had left there last night. She caught me from the side, causing me to almost fall onto the couch while I was trying to sit down in my chair. I took some time to love her, rubbing her all over and cooing to her, trying to get her to calm down. She’s like a volcanic eruption, though. It’s hard to contain all that love and enthusiasm.  (I held my feet up off the floor while greeting her, having learned the hard way that allowing her to step on my toes results in soreness and bruises.)

 

I got her calmed down, only to have to start over when I tried to stand up. She finally heard, “SIT!” and complied – just long enough for me to get completely up and around the chair. She circled around, over and over, tail wagging madly, as I made my way carefully to the kitchen. I finally got through one of the dog gates and closed it between us.

I AM smarter than this dog – I THINK.

We WILL get her to SIT and STAY one of these days ‘real soon now….’

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Filed under Amazing Animals, Challenges, Family

What Will You Wish For?

“Dandelion Seed Blowing Away” – print by Terry Why – http://www.art.com

 

“Dandelion” – yuliartstudio – http://www.etsy.com

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Owls with Seeds and Beads

funfamilycrafts.com

 

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I’m Flexing

copenhaveerconstructioninc.com

The Nutrisystem program encourages you to learn how to cook and eat in a reasonable fashion (unlike what we’ve been doing) by having us eat or cook one breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack on our own each week, preferably each on a different day during the week. They call these “FLEX” meals.

I really like this idea. We were on Nutrisystem before years ago before they added the flex meal idea (or frozen food choices) to their plan. We lost weight and then gradually put it back on because I went back to poor cooking habits from the past. This time they’re encouraging us to plan our flex meals for the week and work this idea into our new lifestyle.

So far, I’m having two problems:

  1. I’ve prepared a couple of flex dinners from their Leaf Recipes section. We each ate a serving of it and I froze the rest in individual portions so we can pull them out, nuke ’em, and eat.  This is complicated by the fact that I’m eating “dinner” for ‘lunch’ at the counselor’s suggestion, trying to work my way out of a plateau on my weight loss. “I” pull out a flex dinner for lunch one day a week, but my husband either doesn’t think about it or the idea doesn’t appeal to him for HIS dinner.  We can only eat ONE of these flex dinners per week, so the ‘reruns’ are lasting weeks and weeks!
  2. When I cook completely on my own,  or we get something out, we gain weight back. Example, Sunday evening I cooked two 4 oz steaks. With them we had little bitty potatoes with a little bit of butter and no salt, plus cut up fresh tomatoes. I thought it was a good dinner and my husband thought it was ‘wonderful,’ but we were both up on the scales Monday morning. Last night we went bowling with friends and had a scoop of real ice cream afterwards as our “flex snack” for the week. We were both up AGAIN this morning. Friday we’re due to eat our flex breakfast (or lunch) at a restaurant with the “Breakfast Bunch.” This gain isn’t only for one day, either. It seems to take the whole week to get back to where we were.

My first reaction is to quit eating the flex meals because they’re messing us up. But then the more grown up part of me realizes that this is the whole point of the program. We’re supposed to be learning what a ‘portion’ is, how to choose foods more wisely when we’re out, and incorporating the ‘new’ healthier eating style into our lives as a regular thing.

I’ll probably get online and talk to a counselor about this, since I’m determined to learn the lesson and make it a larger and larger part of the way we live. Right now I’m frustrated, but hopefully a nice person at NS can guide me on a better path.

latestwhatsappstatus.blogspot.com

 

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Filed under Acting Like a Grownup, Attitude, Challenges, DIET!, getting the lard off, Healthy Eating, quality of life, taking care of yourself

“Ornamental Purple Flower”

“Ornamental Purple Flower” – Paul Militaru Photography

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“Dandelion Heads” – Watercolor

“Dandelion Heads” – watercolourflorals.blogspot.com

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When Wood Comes Alive – Take 19

“Woodland” -ellorawoodart.com

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Susan Gersch Supanich Art

“Sunflowers Seeds of Gold” – Susan Gersch Supanich – SusiesArtStudio – http://www.etsy.com

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Choices

Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter, via Lisa Bearnes Richey

As I get older – and older – I see that this quote is true. It IS our choices that shape our lives.

  • Do you choose to expand your life – try new things – learn something new?
  • Do you choose to actively try to get healthier?
  • Do you choose to reach out to a loved friend who needs you?
  • Do you choose to tell – and show – people you love how much they mean to you?
  • Do you choose to try to make each day count?
  • Do you choose to look at life in a happier frame of mind?
  • Do you choose look for ways to make others happier?

I’ve had several friends over the years seemingly make a conscious choice to allow their lives to implode. They resist change, refuse to learn new things, allowing their lives to get smaller and more insular until they’re gone.  It’s a pattern I don’t want to follow. I’m choosing to live each day to the fullest. What choices are YOU making?

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Filed under Attitude, Challenges, Changes, Encouragement, Favorite Quotes

I’ve Earned my Salt Today

“To be ‘worth one’s salt’ is to be worth one’s pay. Our word salary derives from the Latin salarium, (sal is the Latin word for salt). There is some debate over the origin of the word salarium, but most scholars accept that it was the money allowed to Roman soldiers for the purchase of salt. Roman soldiers weren’t actually paid in salt, as some suggest. They were obliged to buy their own food, weapons etc. and had the cost of these deducted from their wages in advance.”

I learned this phrase from my parents and just now realized I had no idea where the phrase came from or if I were using it correctly. (My parents meant “earning your food and upkeep.”)

I’ve been working most of the afternoon – inside – because it’s way too hot to be working outside at least until it’s almost dark.

amazing-creature.blogspot.com

The main thing I accomplished today was cleaning the floors on our first floor. I vacuumed the tiles and then mopped. (Pantry, kitchen, dining area, entryway to living room, two half-baths, and the utility room.)

I then vacuumed the carpeted flooring (office, foyer, and living room.)

We’re much better than we were, though it’s never all clean at the same time. I feel much better about things, though, and that’s good for the day.

I’m feeling as limp as the sweet puppy above, so I think I’ll get a bottle of water and go put my feet up awhile.

I hope you’ve had a good day, too.

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Filed under Acting Like a Grownup, Housekeeping - Maintenance, I'm a slob

When Wood Comes Alive – Take 5

Lani Walling Arts – earthyinsired.wordpress.com

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Fun with Beans and Seeds – Take 12

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Another of Life’s Character-Building Exercises

eighthrising.com

My husband is the technical person, handling computers, all things electrical, a LOT of things online, fixing things, etc. He was the one who figured out how we could cancel our satellite TV and save a lot of money. But, as he ages, his temper gets shorter and shorter – and – I admit I’m describing myself, as well.

Yesterday we had a power blip. Though the electricity was off for such a short time a lot of our things didn’t notice, it took us the rest of the day to deal with things that WERE affected.

We like DirecTVNow. All of a sudden, it wanted us to sign in with our user name and password. This is a really aggravating, laborious process of searching for one letter at a time, making our user name seem endless, and our password almost impossible due to the fact ours is quite complicated for safety concerns. I told my husband I would do the input if he would get me the password.

To make a long story shorter, we couldn’t get DirecTVNow to accept our password. My husband went into the office, then came back saying, “I deleted our Roku account because it wouldn’t take our password.” It turned out that he had confused the Roku and DirecTVNow accounts and had been giving me the Roku password. Now the account was deleted, so that meant ALL of our TV related accounts were toast.  His reaction to the problem and his temper in deleting the CORE of our TV watching ability was done in a fit of pique. He then decided to divorce himself from the problem – saying, “I don’t know,” to all my questions and not showing any interest in helping –  which had me tearing my hair out, and – at one point – going out in the back yard to yell a bit. (I wonder what the neighbors down in the valley think of the crazy woman who shrieks once or twice each year.)

I finally created a Roku account in MY name, and then got on my husband’s computer and added each of the programs and channels we had before, laboriously going from the living room to the office and back again, jumping through the various hoops each required.

We are both still alive and the TV stuff has been restored.

If you heard my head exploding or my shrieking last night, don’t be alarmed. Things are back to what passes as ‘normal’ around here.

It truly amazes me that the person I love most in the world is also the one who drives me completely nuts!

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Beautiful Pencil Drawing

humorsurf.blogspot.in

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Nutrisystem Orders

animals.ekstrax.com – via tailandfur.com

Our orders to Nutrisystem finalize at 6 pm this evening.

I love the fact that we can go online to our account and see what our choices are for the coming order and change them at any time. They also send me emails reminding me of the cutoff date so I have all chances possible to make my decisions.

My husband and I are still trying lots of new items, although our choices for the NEXT order are narrowing to the things we like the most.

On evening snacks, I like the ice cream bars the best, looking forward to mine all day long. :0)  I love both the fudge bar and the orange cream bar. My husband’s choices for snacks are much more varied than mine. He’s into their cookies, particularly the white chocolate chunk ones, but is ordering about 4 or 5 different ones he really likes.

I’ve changed from lots of egg type breakfasts to cinnamon rolls, blueberry muffins, and cold cereals. My husband likes their Cinnamon Apple Oatmeal the best.

Lunches and dinners vary, although this time we’re opting for more NON-frozen entrees than frozen.

I’m trying to zero in on our flex meals more and more.

  • “Flex Breakfast” is our brunch meal with Breakfast Bunch each Friday.
  • “Flex Snack” is ice cream after bowling on Mondays with our good friends.
  • “Flex Lunches” and “Flex Dinners” are more fluid. Tonight, for example, for “Flex Dinner” I’m grilling us little bitty steaks and we’re having little bitty baked potatoes.  “Flex Lunch” kind of got lost in the shuffle this week. It’s harder because we have very limited choices for eating out in Greenwood that go with our new diet, and we don’t want to completely blow it. We usually concentrate on lots of veggies and a small amount of dip with our NS Lunch anyway. I’ll work on it.

 

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Filed under DIET!, getting the lard off, Healthy Eating, taking care of yourself

Rita Kirkman Pastel Art

“Hunter” – Rita Kirkman

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Hahaahahahahahah!

Matthew Appleton on Linkedin

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Phil Bates Pastel Art

Phil Bates – artandwritings.blogspot.com

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“Bloom” – Wolfe Paw Stained Glass

“Bloom” – Wolfe Paw – artistsinspireartists.com

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“On the Bridge”

“On the Bridge” – Paul Militaru Photography

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Cute T’s – Take 8

Email from Bill Lites

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Small Rant

sites.psu.edu

I’m aggravated. I told you last week that I started with an online exercise guy who promised to make me feel better, look better, etc. I made it through a really long video and decided I would take him up on it. I paid $39 for a 0-6 pack abs video with safe exercises for a person of my shape, showing me exercises to help me make progress toward my goal without hurting me, the way regular exercises might. Also included was an online edition of exercises that would help me continue my improvement.

Meanwhile, they’re sending me several emails a day, plus their affiliates are also sending me several emails a day.

I made it through another long video which was supposed to give me an exercise called, “The Oyster” which I was supposed to be able to start right away. I like that, because I’m not a patient person and I want to get healthier, get rid of some aches and pains, improve my balance, etc. I TRIED to make it through this video, but it just went on and on with LOTS of repetition and endless detail I wasn’t interested in. I finally gave up before they supposedly finally got to the exercise.

Right now I’m playing the video again on another page while I’m typing this. I’m HOPING I can get to the exercise. There is no bar on the bottom of the video, so you can’t just move it toward the end. :0(

I’ve written to them a couple of times. (Yes, it was 4th of July week, but apparently they aren’t easily reachable to answer questions, before or since the holiday.)

SO – I’m HOPING I get the DVD in the mail today – or SURELY by next week – so I can start those exercises. Meanwhile, I’m HOPING I can finally zero in on the OYSTER exercise, which I’d like to try….

I HATE PEOPLE WHO DON’T ANSWER EMAILS TO ‘CONTACT’.

I HATE WAITING…

End of Rant

Madeleine Jacobs

 

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