Okay, I’m not a marriage counselor so I probably shouldn’t be going around giving advice to married couples, especially since I’m on my second marriage and so is my husband, but the idea of letting a little gin improve your marriage is really a good one at least for Terry and me and I thought I’d share with you why it is.

You probably should know that Terry is a workaholic because that’s one of the reasons I came up with this idea in the first place. He’s never without his cell phone or IPAD and he looks at weekends as catch up days to finish all the work he didn’t accomplish during the week because of overbooking. It seems when each day comes to an end, his “to do” list is longer because for every task he crosses off, he adds a couple more jobs.

My mouth gets me into more trouble than any other hole in my body. Sometimes it’s because of what comes out of it, but mostly it’s been because of what goes in. That’s why the title to one of my books is “The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here!”

"Unless you’re hooked up to an intravenous feeding contraption that continues to pump too much food into your system, the size of your body is entirely due to your mouth’s ability to open and let the food that has made you weigh more than you like, to come in and “accumulate.”  (Except from The Mouth Trap.)

If you just died, what would you have liked to have been doing today before it happened? Who would you have wanted to be with? What would you have liked to have eaten? What music would you have liked to have been listening to? Where would you have liked to be?

Perhaps the answers to these questions could give you a few clues as to what you should be doing as soon as possible. So many women have a hard time nailing what it is that they want. That’s probably because they spend so much time caring for others; their children, older parents and husbands.

A few years ago my son Michael and his wife Meredith were invited by the FOX network to go to the Super Bowl and Terry and I were invited to babysit the two grandchildren Jack age eight and Brooklyn age eleven. I have such fun with these two! (They're probably 2 and 5 in this photo of them taking a "dry" bath.).

The first night we were with them, when it was bedtime they both wanted me to tell them a bedtime story. Since they slept in separate rooms I sat in the hallway with the light on so they could both see me if they sat up and it was easy for them to hear me. I love to make up bedtime stories because I never know what I’m going to say myself. I guess I should say Nelly (my inner child) loves to hear 

my stories or maybe she’s the one who makes them up? Whatever, I love to do it.

Here's the story:

Rabbit Ears, Elephants, and Donkeys

December 1, 1963, we were on the second day of our honeymoon, traveling from Vancouver, Washington to southern California. We’d borrowed my parent’s car, a 1963 Ford Galaxie. They wanted us to be “safe” and our car was a ’49 Ford that didn’t show promising signs it could even get to the Oregon border let alone to the southern end of California.

The new car had a bench-type seat instead of bucket seats in the front and seat belts weren’t the law in 1963, consequently this car didn’t have them. We’d stopped at a service station to get gas in Pixley, California and it was my turn to drive, so my 6 ft. husband got in the backseat because I had to have the front seat forward as far as it would go in order to reach the pedals. I’m 5’2.”

It was dark when we got back on the road and the freeway was full of Thanksgiving, holiday travelers. As I drove on the on ramp to Highway 99, I could see it wasn’t going to be easy to merge as cars weren’t moving over to let me in and certainly slowing down is never an option for drivers flowing with the speed of traffic. I came to a full stop about 25 feet from the oncoming traffic and was waiting for a semi to pass when I heard my husband scream, “It’s going to hit us!!” as he reached around me from the back seat and cranked the steering wheel to the right (I had the wheel straight ahead to merge onto the freeway).

T'was the day before...

The day before Valentine's Day a few years ago, my husband Terry asked me what I thought of having our friends the Lapslys and Geocks over for dinner and to play cards on Valentine’s Day. “It’d sorta be a spur of the moment affair,” he said.

Since I love spur of the moment events and I have a passion for cooking, entertaining and playing cards, I jumped at the thought.

My husband is so considerate -

Terry emailed the two guys (no formal invites) and both of them got right back to him. I got busy planning the evening. I pulled out all my Valentine decorations and set a table with red candles in see- through red goblets with different length stems.

We really had a great time! I served a rack of pork and my recipe for Almost Carbohydrate Free Almond Bread and a Caesar Salad. After dinner I went into the kitchen and overheard one of the guys say to Terry, “Thanks for saving my ___. I’d entirely forgotten about Valentine’s Day!“ “Yeah, I forgot until two days ago when I invited you guys,” I heard Terry reply.

- and sneaky!

Did you know breads and grains turn into sugar?

Eating sugar in all its sneaky forms spikes your insuline and that's one of the main reasons our bodies store fat. Lower your intake of sugar in all of its tricky forms and you'll lose weight. 

In this cooking video you'll see how easy these tortillas are to make.

No flour. Low carbs. And they're delicious.

The Cleaner Guy is my nephew Jeffrey Jones. He offered to do these cleaning videos because I wanted a cute guy to show everybody how to clean the house. He was so kind fo volunteer! We had so much fun with this series and even though I've run them all before, we have so many new members, I'll just keep re-running them! Today's he's in my kitchen.

Excerpt from “The Sidetracked Sister’s Happiness File.”

From Pam: In our first book we worked out a weekly plan. Each day was devoted to a certain kind of activity. Included was a “free” day in which we could do whatever we wanted to do. But we’ve since realized that to tell a basically disorganized person just to do whatever she wants is meaningless.

When we developed the Happiness File we made a list of all the things we loved to do, the simple things that made us happy. We want you to make your own list of “love to do” things. It is the same as the list of things you made for your spouse in the February chapter, only this is a list of your loves. Sometimes we get so busy that we don’t take the time to do the things we love to do. It helps greatly to make a list. Decide how often you would like to do each thing and incorporate this frequency factor into your card file so that you can follow through.

Most of us want to get organized for several reasons. We think that if we get organized, we’ll save time, money and energy. That’s true. Disorganization causes us to spend time looking for our stuff, more money because we buy stuff we already have but can’t find and energy just being overwhelmed, discouraged, and angry with ourselves.

By establishing just a few simple habits, we can train ourselves out of many of our messes and save time, money and energy. Our brains were wired for establishing habits, and when we have a healthy brain, it takes about 21 days to establish a habit. So I think it’s logical we should take care of our brains first.

That’s why I chose these 3 important habits to establish, because they’ll lead to health and a healthy body makes for a healthy brain and a healthy brain leads to well-being.