Month: June 2015

The month of July can be a special start …

July can be a special month because it starts the 2nd half of 2015.  We have six months to accomplish all the things we had planned to do this year.

Personal appearance usually hits pretty high on everyone’s list, whether it is losing weight or just getting more exercise on a regular basis.  Why not start today.  I was so inspired by a technician at my cardiovascular surgeon’s office.  She is fit, trim, and she takes good care of herself.  She exercises by going running about five days a week, and she uses dumbbells to keep her arms, chest, and shoulders strong.  She even does wall push ups.  Her arms are beautiful.  Anymore, it is a rarity to see a person working in a doctor’s office that is in good shape, for those that are in good shape we appreciate your fine example.  When you see someone like that, you know it isn’t a person putting off their goal.

Getting things done around the homestead is usually a goal, whether it is repainting or deep cleaning, there is always something to do.  Instead of watching a movie maybe one eve after work you could go thru a closet or a couple of drawers.  It helps one to evaluate what will be needed for the season ahead.  There are great sales online for out of season clothes.  I was able to purchase eight vests, nice quality fleece vest for a minimal cost compared to what they will be in a couple months.  When I sent these off to my different friends teenage daughters, they were surprised to receive a winter item now.  They can’t wait til cooler weather comes and they can wear them.  I have a couple for myself and gave the navy one to my husband.  Still have many drawers and closets to clean and organize to start the next season out nice.  Another benefit to cleaning the closets and drawers, garage, etc. is that a person can have a yard sale and use the money for a fun daytrip or something.

Better diet, summer meals can actually be lighter ones.  A good salad for dinner with left over meat from previous evening put on top of salad with some good vegetables is great.  Light on our bodily system, no big mess in the kitchen.  Planning a few light dinners can save a person a lot of work in the kitchen, energy reserved for a nice evening walk.

Vacations, Daytrips, and visits to see loved ones.  We have six months to enjoy doing a few things.  Plan a midweek day to take off with our loved ones to see a local museum, park or zoo.  It is great to do these things while children or grandchildren have the summer off from school.  Is there a family member in a nursing home or rehabilitation center, go to a bookstore and get a couple bargain books with colorful pictures and interesting things to read to take them.  It doesn’t have to be a holiday or something to go visit and bring a gift.  A gift most precious is the one that comes unexpectedly.  The visit itself is a gift.  Teach your children to write a letter to a loved one, with a trip to the post office and letting the child buy the stamp and fill out the address and send off.  That is fast becoming a dying art.  I love snail mail, writing letters and receiving letters is a real joy.

The master lists can be a real help.  Put it up on the refrigerator.  Get the rest of your household involved, it can be fun.  I like to take a room for the month to get the room painted or trim finished, and rearrange it while I am deep cleaning it.  My mother when I was a child kept our home exceptionally clean.  In the spring she would pull all the furniture to the center of the room, wash the walls and windows, repaint if that was her plan, then put the spring covers on the furniture, and the spring curtains up and rearrange the furniture.  It all was a real event without the expense.  In the fall, we would pull the furniture in the center of the room and go thru it all again, and she would put up her fall winter curtains and covers and rearrange the furniture again.  It became a ritual we all looked forward to and enjoyed very much.  It helped us to look at the next half of the year with high hopes and optimism.  Although I am not organized myself, I still like those things she did, and I try to do it.  Yes, there is a lot to consider regarding all we want to accomplish before another year is behind us.  We have time to get a real jump on it.

Whom is movin’ in and why?

Background checks, what are you talking about?  We are friends, I know it will work out great.  We will help each other.  I am letting them move in.

People are movin’ in, or they are letting someone move into their apartment or home.  It will cut expenses, it will no longer be lonely.  We have it all worked out.

Step back and consider a few things, it could save your life, credit, peace of mind, and much more.

You say, “I know him or her, that would never happen.”  Do not let your own lonely situation make you vulnerable, do not let your financial situation make you desperate.  A situation you jump into without thoroughly looking may be very hard to extract yourself from.

1.  Does this person have debt?  Oh, they need help for just a bit.  Is there a chance you could end up carrying the load and have a freeloader on your hands.  Men or woman are guilty of the above.  Identity theft happens all the time.  My friend’s son moved in with a couple of his friends, they thought they would save money and have a great time socially.  Instead, my friend’s son disappeared and one of his roommates stole his identity, and with the other roommate they left.  My friend’s sons body has never been found and almost a decade later my friend had to have his son declared dead.  The one roommate killed himself and the other fled to another country.  This happens more often than you think.  Even if you are not killed, it is an expensive ordeal to get your credit sorted out after the theft.

2.  Can you be sure the person will help carry the load financially?  How long have they had the job they work now?  How much do they earn?  What debts are they carrying? Is there any children out there you do not know about, child support takes about a third of the paycheck.  How do they spend money, latest and greatest with the clothes, cars, shoes, pedicures, hair bleaching, manicures, and massages. Do they like to go out to eat a lot, and where do they go out to eat?  What other kinds of things do they spend money on?  It is a fun ride, but it incurs debt.  I let someone move into my apartment when I was 19, She supposedly was going to start a job.  She never started a job.  The money her father sent to pay her part of the rent, she used to get her hair done, manicures, pedicures, tanning, new clothes and shoes.  She ate the food I bought, and she came in late from the dates she went on.  It was painful to have to kick her out, and it was even more painful to let her stay.  I was riding my bicycle over 20 miles a day to my two different jobs.  She became a call girl after she left, she came for a visit to invite me to the glamorous life she was going to.  I felt great disappointment in her.  I could see that is where she was headed after she was living in my apartment.  What stress.  Whom knows what happened to her, and if she is even alive.

3.  Living habits, are they clean and organized, or is it a bit sloppy?  How is your habits?  If your sloppy, do not imagine you will be better with another around.  This can lead to a lot of fighting.  Let us assume you are clean and organized.  Do you really want to do all the cleaning, empying the trash, doing the dishes?  What if they leave their stuff around and they do not have the sense to help?

4.  Sleeping habits, do you go to bed early so you can get up for work early?  What if they were the opposite.  You like some peace and quiet and they like the television on all the time.  You like to communicate, but they like to play video games, and text all the time.  It can be quite annoying.

5.  Do they like to cook?  No one wants to do all the cooking and washing the dishes.  Can they cook and you do the dishes?  and visa verse’.  This is important to find out.  I love to cook, but I do not have the stamina to do the cooking of a fine meal and the dishes with kitchen clean up.  Showing appreciation for a finely cooked meal is helping to clean up.  Why should one do it all?  Whom cares if you worked all day, help make the salad, or sweep the floor, take the dishes off the table.  These are important things to find out.  You hate to cook, they do not mind doing the cooking, then help with the rest.  Anyone can chop vegetables.

6.  Is there any substance abuse or mental health issues a person should consider.  If there is any substance abuse, there is too easily other forms of abuse.  It costs money to support alcohol, cigarette, or substance abuse.  There are nice people out there that do some of these things, but there are many that are not so nice after you are committed.

7. How will you feel if you come home and people you did not know are in your place making it a nest, and using your stuff?  What if they are snoopy and get in your personal business?  What if you do not have the same friends, could there be interpherance?  Morality does make a difference, what do you know about the other person’s morality.  A young man I know gets with one girl and quickly moves in with her, then he drops her and moves right in with another, and this has gone on and on.  He never seems to hold down a job, and he is very handsome and charming.  He has children by a different woman, at least three that we know of.  He keeps on the move because it is hard to catch up with him for the support.  He doesn’t see his children, and there is no support.  He charms, and keeps the bed warm, and he eats the food you buy, and when your at work he is out charming others, but he is there when you get home because you support him well.  This is a very true situation I know of.  It happens all the time.  And there are woman whom have a child from this man, a child from another, and a child from another, because they are fickle.  Why do you deserve this?

Do not let your feeling sorry, compassionate side, cause you to be vulnerable and at risk.  Exercise wisdom, you cannot know someone you just met, or someone you have known a while.  Whose idea for the move in was it?  Is there a rush job going on?  You could be in danger of a complete disruption of your life.  Do not let your life become a Lifetime movie.  Does someone claim to need your help?  What were they doing before you came along?  Have they disrupted someone else’s life?  If you want to help someone, then help someone whom really needs it.  There are soup kitchens you could volunteer at.  Many children would benefit from a weekend foster parent, contact an state children’s agency and apply.  They will compensate you and you will make the difference in a child’s life.  There is too many sad stories out there, there are too many victims, if some would stop and think, there would be less of these situations happening.

Work for the success of your own life.  Eventually a positive situation will happen in your life.  Learn to live your life, enjoy your hard work, responsible living, and like yourself.  Your life needs to be fabulous because you make it that way.  No one can make it that way for you.  Others just add to your life if your careful about whom you include.  It is great to take this as an opportunity to learn to live joyfully all by yourself if that is your present situation.  If your already living with someone, talk about these matters.  If you are the one with some of these ways that could use improvement, then do not put off making positive adjustments in your ways of living.  The good and decent people in our life deserve the best we can give.  Our considerate ways are a great demonstration of love.

Creativity, has it’s orgins.

Creativity is an amazing thing.  A family I know, all the young ones are superior artists.  Most can see something inspiring in everyday things.  They also have the techniques down.  There is one whom is very good but just copies other peoples work because her mind just doesn’t recognize a creative venture on her own.

I once knew a twenty year old whom was a great artist and she copied other artists and sold the paintings to people she knew.  One of the artist was living.  I asked her if she asked their permission to copy their work.  She hadn’t.  I told her that I would not want anyone to take my work and capitalize on it.  I asked her why she is not doing her own paintings because her work was beautiful.  She couldn’t think of anything on her own.  I told her, take a picture of an animal or a landscape or a still life and draw or paint it.  Limit yourself to just one color group, like purple, with only the lightest or darkest hues of the color on your palette.  I do not know what she has done since, I hope she took the advise and that she is still painting.

Yes, I do feel it is a form of stealing and I would not want anyone to use my articles to fund their creativity.  Everyone must find their own inspiration.  If I am inspired by someone I mention them in my articles, but my information and the way it is presented is my own.  The experiences that fund my own creativity are priceless and personal.  I write to help inspire anyone to make positive adjustments in their life so that they and those that love them can all be benefitted.

It makes me so happy to hear that my work is appreciated by many.  It saddens me that I have had a couple different ones contact me to say they are using my work to rewrite for their own benefit.  I do not want my work rewritten for someone else to make money, I am working on my own projects and that is definitely a reward I look forward to.  I feel that my work is presented generously, but I do not want it copied or built upon into something bigger where a person used my work to instigate their creativity on topics I present.

If a person is short on inspiration, or creative direction there are many creative workshops out there that help so much.  There are books at the library that help people unlock the artists block.  There are magazines at the Barnes and Noble stores that give a person many opportunities to practice and become productive again.  Of course, personally, I use daily life as my inspiration, making notes at the time and writing up my articles.  Brainstorming is a wonderful creative outlet for me.  If I want to write about any subject, I just thought of the word CLOTHES.  Now my mind thinks of the origin of clothes, Adam an Eve, and their fig leaves.  When did a person decide to start being creative in their own community with their attire.  Standing out as different and not being submissive to the norms set by previous generations could affect their social lives.  And my mind goes on.  Any word, think origin, history, present day, and future, and what is beneficial.  That is a bit of a freebee for anyone out their that might want some inspiration.  Other than that, my work is my own and it is for others to enjoy and benefit from.  Just please, find your own work to write and present.  If you want to do something with my CLOTHES brainstorm, please do, and I would like to know what you did with it.  May success be yours with the clothes article.  Just do some of your own brainstorming and writing on any subject.  Or go to a life management skills coach and they may help you free the writing bee in you.

I have been writing for decades in notebooks and on computers, and now I am branching out and looking forward to publishing.

For anyone whom writes well but does not come up with their own inspiration, you can always be an editor, because you can recognize great work and you can help the writers you work for get their work published and distributed.  That is creativity too.  Agents are people whom look for work or recognize worthy work when presented to them.  Help someone to do something with their work, and you help yourself too.  If a person is determined to be a writer, start writing, be the Norman Rockwell in your life, if you see an odd or quirky situation, write it, every detail, and what is so interesting, why it captivated you, and how are we benefitted with this knowledge.  Paint the picture in our mind so we can see what you see in the words you present, present it in a way that we would want to stay there.  These are my own feelings on the matter.

Pleasurable endorphin releasing activities, natures natural anti depressant.

Is there an activity you like to do?  Do you enjoy golfing or bowling, or going to a museum or a show?  I am not suggesting that a person get into a committed every week situation with these activities, they take time an money to do.

It is important to take the time and money you set aside to go enjoy an activity.  About every three weeks I try to plan for an activity we can do as a family, or with just my husband or to go with a friend.  I love orchestras and I am hoping to go enjoy that. Planning a pleasurable activity  is very healthy for the mind.

Plan an hour or two to hang out at the library or book store.  A person can stroll through a garden center an plan a garden or just buy a few plants.

The library plans many activities for the public.  We have always enjoyed what they put together.  Some towns have Friday night movies at the park put on my the parks district, which has many other activities and classes available.

Of course there is always a massage or a pedicure. What a treat.

Then there is just getting at something that has been long put off. Just jump in an get something done. It is very important to replenish so you can come back twice as motivated.

It is really important to have something to do that is not stressful, but enjoyable.  This way a person is not practicing seclusion, but is interacting with the public.  A friendship might be initiated, loneliness may be forgotten as interest grows in activities.  Endorphins to the rescue when we practice the art of living, depression can release its grip on us.