I Hope

Brooke Hampton-OurMindfulLife.com

Yo-Yo Expert

Super Fast Diet

My appetite is hale, hearty, and killing me.

I start each day determined to keep my mouth shut – and then life happens.
Choose whatever excuse and it applies to me. I have AGAIN gained some poundage and AGAIN am getting it off.

When I was young and living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, we knew a lady who owned a nice small women’s clothing store in an outdoor mall. She was very overweight. She was a really nice woman who made you feel happy you had entered her store. (She actually HIRED me to play my guitar and sing there, trying to draw customers in.) Later, I heard that she had entered the hospital and had had her mouth wired shut (REALLY – I’m not kidding) in an effort to lose weight. It worked. I don’t remember how long she was there. The next time I saw her she was slim and looked really nice in a beautiful dress, heels, etc. It wasn’t a good thing, though, because she wasn’t healthy. I don’t remember the details. I just remember the shock when I read in the paper that she had died suddenly.

That’s the first time I remember being aware of weight, as such. At that point, I had no problems. It wasn’t until I finished getting pregnant and having babies that I had trouble losing the lard. Now I’m older than dirt, have lost 30 lbs. and have become the world’s best ‘yo-yo’ expert – losing and gaining the same 3 or 4 lbs.

So, I’m a bit disgusted with myself at this point. So far today, I’ve done well. I will eat my normal lunch with my husband and then the temptation for the day begins. :0)

I have always had an extremely healthy appetite. I wish I were the type of person who ‘forgets’ to eat. Maybe in my NEXT life…

10 Thoughts

The Weight Loss Mindset: 10 Thoughts that Are Keeping You Fat and How Changing Your Mind Can Change Your Body Kindle Edition by Sarah Patterson

I read this book last night. A lot of it I already “knew,” but zeroing in on the mind games I’ve been playing with myself hit me right between the eyes.

This is a well-written book that doesn’t waste your time. It’s straight-forward, explaining the 10 “thoughts,” but not beating you into the ground with them. Two of them in particular grabbed me. I will keep reading this book again until I really SEE how I’m sabotaging myself, kidding myself, and slowing my efforts to be as healthy as I can be.

Another thing I like is that the purpose of this book is to really talk to you – NOT sell you a product. She says straight out that you will get from it as much as you are willing to put into it.

No nonsense. No fooling.

Funny

Clive Staples Lewis from RaiseYourMind.com

Good News for the Future!

Beingsalem Via Mara Spirig – LinkedIn

We just had people from Arkansas Valley Electric Co-op come to the door, saying they needed to measure our poles for the coming installation of a new fiber optic line. He went on to say that in the future, the company will be offering a bundle for people out in the sticks like we are, including Internet, TV, and Phone!  He said it would be a year or year and a half, but came back to bring me a brochure.

There is hope for much faster, more reliable service in the future – if we can live long enough!  HOORAY!

Good Thought

Simple Families via Carol Auclair Daly

Three Gates

Daniela Capdepon, MD, PhD-LinkedIn

Making the Most of 2019

Kelly Mizell – LinkedIn

 

“New Years is all about getting another chance. A chance to forgive, to do better, to do more, to give more, to love more. And stop worrying about “what if” and start embracing what would be….” 😊❤️� ~ Kelly Mizell – LinkedIn

3 Wishes for You in 2019

WISH 1 –

“My Wish for you in 2019:

May peace break into your house and may thieves come to steal your debts.

May the pockets of your jeans become a magnet of $100 bills.

May love stick to your face like Vaseline and may laughter assault your lips!

May your clothes smell of success like smoking tires.

May happiness slap you across the face and may your tears be that of joy.

May the problems you had forget your home address! In simple words …….

May 2019 be the best year of your life!!!”  ~ Unknown

Mag for Women

__________________

WISH 2 –

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.” ~ Neil Gaiman, British author

 

thesocialpoets.blogspot.com

WISH 3 –

sun-gazing.com via cathy ruggiero

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Today

Pinterest

My Favorite Christmas Quotes – 2018

May Peace be your gift at Christmas and your blessing all year through! ~Author Unknown

 

“Cold Sun” – Alina Ciuciu – LinkedIn

 

A hug is a great gift – one size fits all, and it’s easy to exchange. ~Author Unknown

 

Thumb Press

 

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful. ~Norman Vincent Peale

Ar Ali – LinkedIn

 

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other. ~Burton Hillis

Jeff Jett – LinkedIn

 

Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind. ~Mary Ellen Chase

Pinterest

I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar  of it every month. ~Harlan Miller

Shutterfly

 

Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.” ~ Peg Bracken.

Thumb Press

 

Like snowflakes, my Christmas memories gather and dance – each beautiful, unique and too soon gone.” ~ Deborah Whipp

“Dry Leaves” – Paul Militaru Photography

Christmas 2018

Lisa Bearnes Richey

 

R.J. Bennett – LinkedIn

 

Manish Sharma – LinkedIn

Christmas Eve Evening

123RF.com

We’ve had a wonderful afternoon. A good friend came over, bearing gifts, good conversation, and lots of hugs.  The turkey is in the oven, the beef stew is in the crock pot. All the side dishes are ready to be finished later.

I’ve been enjoying some coffee and a good book while my husband is watching yet another guy-fix-up-and-sell car show marathon.

Our son has been working on his computer, doing something for a client.

The Christmas lights are lit, the house is warm and cozy. The cooking smells are starting to make me hungry. :0)

 

Blingee.com

Merry Christmas Eve!

Good Suggestion

Zen to Zany via Cathy Ruggiero

Good Intentions

Kelly Corsino via Susan Phariss

 

I was GOING to do yoga and abdominal exercises when I got home from getting my hair cut this afternoon.

But FIRST I got us lunch (we usually eat at 2:30 on Nutrisystem, but we didn’t actually eat until about 4:00.

THEN I caught up on email and phone calls.

I got sleepy, so I got a cup of coffee – then found myself almost bashing my brains out on the computer screen.

So I took my coffee into the living room, sat down in my chair.

THEN I was cold, so I got my throw.

Next thing I knew, it was 6:15…..

SO –

I’ll regroup and try it again tomorrow.

Full Heart

The Girls With Glasses

I was up, unable to sleep, thinking sad thoughts this morning. There is something about not being able to sleep, up by yourself in the middle of the night that seems to encourage destructive thoughts. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen to me often.

I updated our son on a family situation. He encouraged me to tell him how I felt and we ended up having quite a discussion on life, priorities, the flow of life, and death. We talked a long time, sometimes talking through tears. In my world the parent is supposed to be the wiser one, helping their child see the larger picture. Today it was just the opposite. Our son is really serious about meditation, and will go to a retreat early next year to spend two months practicing in a monastery. He has gained so many insights already, just practicing on his own, that it boggles my mind.

The end result of our talk was that I’m able to see my sad thoughts of this morning in a different, more comforting, calm way.

I can’t tell you how full-to-overflowing my heart feels about how lucky we are to be close to our son. I’ll never be able to tell or show HIM enough, either.

Spreading Love

Cavalcantide Souza Augusto Cesar – LinkedIn

Comfort and Strength

Smile and Shine via Cindy Basnett Thurman

Christmas Honors

Christmas Honors – Fort Smith Nat’l Cemetery – Do South Magazine

My good friend, Carla, lost her husband a few years ago. He is buried at the Fort Smith National Cemetery. That year she asked me if I would go with her to help volunteers put the bows on thousands of wreaths honoring the veterans. I was honored to be asked.

We spent several hours with lots of nice people. There were lots of others, like my friend and I, who attached bows to the wreaths. There were others who brought the wreaths and bows to us at the tables. Others who gathered the wreaths on long poles to be taken out to the big trucks that took them to the cemetery.

It was an emotional thing to be able to help honor our vets. There are other volunteers, I think the Boy Scouts, who actually put the wreaths on each grave, and then, later, there is a nice ceremony.

I’m pleased I spent most of a day helping other volunteers. I’m happy I could support my good friend. I’m so glad this is such a beautifully planned and executed effort to help us show our support and never forget their sacrifice.

And when this is over for the year, volunteers return to pick up the wreaths and take them back to the convention center, where people remove the bows and put them in protective bags. The wreaths and bows are carefully stored for next year.

Thanks to all who made this possible.

A Candle

“A Candle”*

Poem and Photo by Kelly Mizell – LinkedIn

 

A candle is but a simple thing,

It starts with just a bit of string,

Yet dipped and dipped with a patient hand,

It gathers wax upon its strand,

Until it’s complete in colors and white

At last it gives a lovely light.

 

Life is so like that bit of string,

Each deed we do is a simple thing,

Yet day by day if on life’s strand,

We work with patient heart and hand

It gathers joy and makes dark times bright,

Giving at last a loving light.

Kelly Mizell

 

*Kelly published this on LinkedIn this morning. I was blown away and asked her for her permission to repost it here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

 

Infection

Oleg Vishnepolsky – LinkedIn

“Let’s infect the world with good.” Anneberly Andrews – AnneberlyAndrewscom.wordpress.com

 

One of my good, long-time friends sets a beautiful, inspiring example for me each time we’re together. She looks for opportunities to help others or to be kind every day.

She doesn’t ever say anything about it. We were spending an afternoon together and I watched in quiet amazement as she did good thing after good thing almost unconsciously. They were small things, like offering to return a cart to its place in the parking lot for an elderly lady, or opening the door for someone, or letting someone get ahead of her in line. She returned abandoned carts to the store. She retrieved the lid of a trash can and put it on the can so it wouldn’t blow away again. I realized, after watching her, that it was an attitude, a habit developed by lots of practice, and an unconscious recognition of what she personally could do to make the world a better, kinder place.

When I asked her about it, she looked surprised and then said she had been doing it for years. This discussion happened several years ago. I’ll never be as good as it as she, or get to the place where I do it unconsciously, as she does, but I’m really trying to emulate her wonderful example. She makes people feel special – like always greeting me with a huge grin and open arms for a wonderful hug. She makes people’s loads a bit lighter. She brings out smiles wherever she goes.

She’s not perfect. None of us is. But she’s one of the best people I know on the planet and I’m so lucky to know her. I’ll continue to try to look for opportunities each day to do what I can do to brighten someone’s day.

I Woke Up Happy Today

wallpaper-gallery.net

I avoid exercise DVDs where the people are SO pert, SO excited, exuding the joys of moving – telling you how GOOD it all feels. They make me hostile. Likewise, I greet cloyingly sweet pictures and people with at least a silent snarl.

SO – you may react that way to ME this morning, because I woke up happy.

Though things are far from perfect, I have a pretty great life. I fell in love with my husband almost 60 years ago. We’ll celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary in June. AND we don’t just love, we’re addicted to each other. That doesn’t mean – by ANY means – that I don’t want to punch him in the face on a regular basis, but we chose to share our lives and it was definitely a good choice. We lost a daughter when she was 2 months old to SIDS – but we made a son who makes us proud of the generous, caring man he’s become, who loves us, reaches out on an almost daily basis from halfway across the world, just to check in and make sure we’re okay. And we might spend Christmas together this year!

We have two dogs, Molly (a sweet, elderly cocker spaniel/schnauzer cross) and Amber (a 95 pound yellow lab PUPPY) who drives us nuts and makes us laugh every day; two cats (Abby (a tortoiseshell fat cat) and Smoke (a sleek grey hunter); plus 4 goldfish who have tripled in size since we added them to our family.

We have a home we built over 30 years ago on top of a ridge line in Arkansas and we still love it. Since the initial building, we added a shop, then later doubled its size, plus built a greenhouse that so far hasn’t succumbed to wind and rain. We’re reasonably close to town, yet enjoy complete privacy up here, a really nice combination. We have a view of several ridge lines – and since we can see them, seeing the seasons change – we can pretend we own it all. :0)

Our health is improving as we get some of our lard off and are trying to exercise. I’m mainly doing my elliptical trainer and yoga stretching for old folks. My husband is doing better and better trying to do sit ups. We are consciously trying to move more.

We are retired, so many days we can do what we want – or don’t want to do. I can try to be productive or enjoy curling up in my chair with a good book.  I can choose to check things off my to-do list or play in my art room. We have good friends who make our lives rich.

I woke up happy today. I hope you did, too.

What Day Is It?

A. A. Milne via Lisa Bearnes Richey

Just So You Know…

Bored Panda

I just bought tickets for Power Ball, Mega Millions, and I’ve been entering the PCH Sweepstakes daily for the prize coming up soon.

My husband and I have all sorts of great ideas for what we would do with the money. We haven’t actually made a LIST yet, but we’ll have plenty of time for that after we win.

We already won the lottery on family – even with our doggies providing me with such a day of ‘fun’ yesterday.  Since we have everything else with each other, our improving health, our son, our pets, our lifestyle – we figure winning these three things would definitely be icing on an already-delicious cake.

BRING IT ON!!!!!!

Beautiful Morning

rubemalves_oficial via cathy ruggiero

This morning almost couldn’t be better – unless we won the lottery or the PCH sweepstakes.

The weather has cooled off, at least for the morning. Three of the five iceberg head lettuce plants in the greenhouse are still alive. I was really expecting them to be gone when I checked this morning. Using a greenhouse wisely in Arkansas is proving to be much more difficult than I thought it would be. I have the exhaust fan on, a second fan running, and the door on the opposite end of the greenhouse open to encourage air flow. (All summer the thermometer in there has shown a steady 120 F. + no matter what I’ve done.) I’m hoping to find more lettuce plants tomorrow, and I’ll check in the planters for tomato suckers I can try in there.

My husband and I are almost well from the cold I brought home from my trip. We both wince if we have to cough, but that is more and more rare now.  His blood sugar this morning was 99!!!!!!!! And “I” lost another half a pound. :0)

My back has finally forgiven me for working it too hard recently with 3 hour-long sessions in the yard. I’ve found that a combination of yoga, Advil, Muscle Therapy with Arnica Gel, and a heat pad bring me back to normal. Of course, the best thing would be not to aggravate it so badly in the first place…

I connected with a relative I hadn’t seen in probably over 30 years, and he and I have written back and forth a couple of times now.

Life is good.

Good Things

Pexels

We had a challenging, but good day yesterday.

Our driveway detector was our alarm clock yesterday morning, telling us we were not alone. We had signed up for a CenturyLink/DirecTV bundle the day before, and it was the DirecTV installation guy. Soon after he left, the CenturyLink guy came and installed a new router/modem. We spent the rest of the day hooking up our stuff to the router/modem and then trying to figure out how to get the DirecTV system going and customized to us.

Just after we finished the preliminary basics for DirecTV we had a brief, but pretty fierce storm. The sky had gone night black and the winds picked up really suddenly, making our tree tops dance energetically. We had a heavy rain, and then the sky lightened and we saw a really beautiful rainbow! I didn’t get a picture of it, but I called my husband to come see so he wouldn’t miss it. It was one of the prettiest I’ve seen.

Today we’ll spend doing two things primarily:  Brunch Bunch and then calling or getting online to cancel all the stuff we don’t need anymore because of the new bundle. We’ll be getting faster Internet at half the price we’ve been paying, and the price will stay the same until we cancel. I was really missing not being able to record TV that was not on our over-the-air channels, so I’m happy that we can now record anything on the channels we get, and several at once.  The price for the TV package we’re getting is half as much as we paid DirecTV when we had them before. Hooray!

Life is filled with good things – being able to take advantage of good deals, and being treated to a gorgeous sight by Mother Nature!

Thoughts on a Friday

My husband and I are learning every day – and from surprising sources: our son and our pets.

 

Amber has taught us to remain flexible, stay as active as possible, and be aware of a 92-pound ‘puppy’s’ needs. We have learned to stay alert and vigilant in our efforts to stay on our feet around here, test our wills on who will do what, when – and continue working on adapting to each other. We’re really glad that we adopted Amber when we did. We were jolted out of our complacency, pulled out of our grief in having had to put our wonderful pit, Bambi, down. Amber opened our hearts to a new way of life and new challenges. We have to be careful when the love erupts, but Amber enriches our lives, making us laugh every day.

 

Molly has had longer to teach us. She brought laughter to the house, cheering up our too-serious pit bull, Bambi, and provided me with love I could actually embrace in my lap. As a senior citizen now (she is over 13 years old) she is teaching us to protect her from getting completely run over by Amber, but also to allow her to play “Fierce Doggie” with Amber, as well.  We watch her for times when she needs to rest, and delight when she’s growling, barking, jumping around, and saying, “Watch out for ME, world!” She is teaching us to treasure each day ’cause none of us lasts forever.

 

This is our son, Brian. He lives across the world from us, but has arranged that we can type at each other several times each day on a secure chat program, and sometimes actually SEE each other (when we’re all awake at the same time) with a conference call program.  He’s smarter than both my husband and me together.  He used to be nervous about traveling, but now handles tickets, reservations, passports, visas, transportation, housing, etc. with ease. He is teaching us that we can learn to face new challenges with more confidence, that we can figure things out if we want to.

The biggest thing he’s teaching us is kindness. I don’t know where he got it, but it simply oozes from every pore. If the two of us are walking along and we see a man sitting on the side of it, obviously poor and hungry, I feel bad for him, but would probably pass him. Our son sees the man, walks into town, buys a sandwich, some fruit, and a bottled drink and walks back, giving it to the man. When I get frustrated and angry at someone, mentioning it to him, our son responds that it’s sad that THEY are hurting and that maybe I should consider reaching out to them to see if I can help. He contributes much of the money he makes to causes he has researched carefully. He heard about a girls school where he lives that was in danger of closing do to finances. They were having a fundraiser. He walked to town and gave them money. The paper reported an ‘anonymous American’ contributing more than half of what they had received during the fundraiser.  He is meditating to ‘learn to control his thoughts and emotions better.’ I’m proud and grateful to know him.

Opening yourself to learning from whatever sources are around you contributes to your quality of life. Trying to become a better person each day, thinking of others rather than yourself, allows you to continue growing.

How to be Happy?

polyvore.com

 

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” –  Marcel Proust

“Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.” ~ Gretta Brooker Palmer

 

 

Leo Tolstoy -sayingimages.com

 

Happiness

Bernard Meltzer – SayingImages.com

My To-Do List Reminder

http://www.christianliteratureandliving.com

 

SayingImages.com

Priceless

Me Amore 5 on Flickr

 

“In terms of days and moments lived, you’ll never again be as young as you are right now, so spend this day, the youth of your future, in a way that deflects regret. Invest in yourself. Have some fun. Do something important. Love somebody extra. In one sense, you’re just a kid, but a kid with enough years on her to know that every day is priceless.” ~ Victoria Moran, Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit