When you were little, did you try to get answers from daisies like, “he loves me, he loves me not?” Maiming daisies for answers seems a little cruel but there is another way. Have you ever asked a question and gone to a random book, on a random page for the answer? If you've never done it you don't know what  you're missing. 

Right now, I’m waiting to hear whether my project is going forward or not. My patience is being tested, because I’m excited to know. So I picked up a book, I’ve been currently re-reading entitled, Think and Grow Rich, which I’ve had in my library since 1968. I opened the book randomly, to a page and closed my eyes and pointed to a place on one of the pages. This is what it said: Faith removes limitations! Remember this when you are ready to bargain with Life for whatever it is that you ask as your price for having passed this way. Without telling you what the news is about, I will say that these words fit perfectly (which is almost always what happens when I do this) with what I’m waiting to hear.

Why buy bottled salad dressings when it's so simple to make them in your own kitchen.

It takes more time to choose a bottle and the store and pay for it, as it does to make it. See for yourself in this video from my kitchen.

In a courtroom, if a judge exclaimed, “You’re out of order!” you’d know to shut up, but when your home is out of order, there’s no one to shout at you but the stuff that’s been left out all over the place. When your house is out of order, it causes you to be out of order. Clutter has a voice and it won’t shut up until you deal with it.

Shut the Fuss Up!

There are only two ways to shut the fuss up! Either get rid of it or put it away. If you get rid of it, throw it away or give it away. Why not sell those unwanted items? Simple – because you don’t want to give yourself another task to do! If you give yourself that option, you set yourself up for a garage sale project with a mountain of pricing or a bunch of time spent on craigslist.org, both of which requires a lot of follow-through and dedication to the task.

15 Negative Words to Ignore to Be Happy

So many of you resonated with my blog, (A Daily Routine to Deal with a Cranky Hubby) on living with a critical person, that I thought I should write a little more, since I lived with a very unhappy and critical man for 15 years and received advance studies in the field.

Aristotle said, “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”  Hmmm that sounds fun! Let’s all go into
comas!

The truth is, we women have been dealing with criticism most of our lives and it can effect our self-esteem. We’ve been conditioned to not rock the boat. We want to be liked and throughout history a woman’s life depended on it. Many of us don’t voice our ideas or pursue our most important work because of our fear of criticism. We don’t take risks or speak our truth because we’re afraid of criticism and dependent on praise. But whenever we look outside of ourselves for validation, we’re looking in the wrong place and if we allow anyone to cause us to doubt our ability to succeed, it’s our own fault. That was the main reason I wrote The Joy of Being Disorganized. I wanted women to understand their value in spite of being disorganized. 

Turn a deaf ear to negative words

I decided to look up the negative words our society uses to describe women, especially in the workplace. For example, if a man forgets things easily he’s called an absent minded professor. If a woman is forgetful she’s called a ding bat. Here are the words used to describe women and what I came up with to describe men who exhibit the same characteristics.

Hormonal

Both men and women have hormones, so why don’t we ever hear someone say of a man who has just thrown a temper tantrum, “He’s hormonal.” But it’s commonly used to describe a woman’s outburst and especially in conjunction with PMS (which my sister’s husband thought was an airline). 

She struggles with disorganization. We had time to chat before we went on The Today Show and I share her very funny story in The Joy of Being Disorganized. Katie is just one of many famous people who are disorganized. Notice how serious she is with us, in this interview!

What would you think of a store that catered to SHEs (Sidetracked Home Executives)? Of course it’d have to be open 24/7 because we lose track of time and we wouldn’t want to get there and have it be closed. Also, they’d have a cloth shopping bag swap (try to say that fast) so there’d always be a good supply of shopping bags in case you left yours in the car. In the event you remembered, you could bring in several for the good of the SHE. 

This SHE store wouldn’t sell anything shiny or we’d get distracted from what we went in there to buy in the first place, and whatever the store sold, it’d only provide two choices of each product, because we get easily overwhelmed by too many choices.

It’d stock items like diaries that only have 14 pages; just for January, because SHEs never fill out their diaries and they waste all those pages made for the rest of the year. So guilt ensues.

SHEs love to “start” new projects, but in about 14 days most projects lose their juice, so this SHE store would not sell yarn to knit or crochet more than a small hat or a pair of baby’s booties. It would NOT sell patterns for sweaters or enough yarn to produce them.

Do you love your county fair?

Have you been going to the fair since you were a child? If you live outside the city, is there something in the air that tugs at your fair heart strings? What is it that you first think of when you think of the fair? The animals? The Ferris Wheel? The food?

There's a booth at the Clark County Fair in Ridgefield, Washington that's run by the "church ladies." They draw some of the longest lines, because the pies are homemade, fresh daily and delicious! Once you have a piece of the church ladies' pie, the memory stays with you forever! 

I love the Clark County fair and have been going to it since I was nine-years-old when we moved to the country.

Every summer, my parents used the fair as an enticement, with a list of extra chores I could do to make money for the rides, and trying to win stuffed animals and other must-have stuff kids want when they try to toss a poker chip onto a plate and have it stay there.

I don’t do the rides anymore, but I still love to watch others spin, scream, wave and occasionally puke up corn dog mixed with cotton candy. 

Stop Watching the News if it's Upsetting You!

If you stopped watching the news could you be happy for it?

Back in 1929 when the stock market crashed, we didn’t have CNN or FOX, or news or the Internet. Our grandparents (or great grandparents in some cases) didn’t get over-fed the news 24-7. They got a newspaper once a day (maybe) and they listened to the radio (maybe).

Because of this age of information we can be (if we choose) bombarded with bad news, because the access is as close as our finger on the clicker or the mouse on our computer. It’s one thing to be aware of what's going on in the world, our country and our community, but it’s quite another to watch the reruns and regurgitated opinions of “the experts” as they re-hash the re-runs while we click to another channel to watch the news covered from a different camera angle.

The GOOD NEWS is that to the media, the only newsworthy material is what is negative AND sensational. Dog Bites Man, is not “news.” Man Bites Dog (and don’t forget to put music behind the story) is. (I learned that from my journalist husband.) It's the extraordinary that makes “the news.” So most everything you see on the news is unusual and extraordinary. IT IS NOT THE NORM. But we, in our naivety (or stupidity) allow our sweet minds to watch what happened, not once, but on the hour until the next day when the next batch of bad news is ready. How many times do you have to watch the bank robber caught on tape? Isn’t once enough?

We cause ourselves needless suffering

I know we’re human and most of us are naturally curious about bad news.

All Kids Need Attention 

My reason for getting organized way back in 1977 was so that I’d have more free time to play with my family. I wasn’t having that much fun in my chosen career as a homemaker and it was mainly because of my disorganization and the messes it created. I knew that my attitude had to change about my life as a wife, mother and homemaker and once I nailed the reason to make the effort to change, everything fell into place (but not overnight).

I met Nelly, (my inner child; that part of me that’s about nine-years-old), in 2002 and in that meeting I realized she was behind my reason to get organized 25 years earlier. Over the last decade I’ve grown to adore her “take” on life. I see myself as her parent, always needing to monitor her thoughts and guide her into cooperating with all my “adult” plans and rules.

We just got back from a cruise with 3,000 passengers. I did a lot of people watching and I saw many well-behaved children and a few who were out of control. In every instance, I noticed that back of every child was a parent with either good or bad parenting skills. The well-behaved children stood quietly in lines at the buffets and the out of control children (they always stick out more) were always issued a variety of useless directives.

We were in line behind Jason (about six-years-old) and his parents and sister Becky (about four) and we watched him hit his sister when the parents weren’t looking, tug on his father’s shirt, kick his mother’s purse and sag to the floor several times in the five minutes we were in line.

But what about the Inner Child?