A Man’s Perspective on SHEs

The oldest kid’s room smelled of mold, the middle kid was pasting a sticker book all over the living room walls and the baby was throwing the contents of her bedroom drawers out the window to make room for hide-and-seek.

The kitchen was littered with busted crayons, three sleeping bags reeking of alder smoke were under the dining room table, the parking strip grass was as high as an elephant’s eye and it looks like it’s growing right up to the sky.

Do You Have a Blue Mouse in Your Life?

Here it is, a few weeks into 2013! Are you through ruining checks by writing 2012 instead of 2013 for the date? Scientists claim it takes 21 days to establish a new habit, so hopefully by now you’re getting used to this fabulous New Year.

What do you want to happen in 2013? Is it the same as what you wanted to happen in 2012, but it didn’t? Maybe you’ve been going at it all wrong.

Hors D’oeuvres Can Save a Marriage

Men are weird when they’re hungry (especially tall ones). I learned this early in my marriage to Terry. When it was dinner time he used to always be ravenous and, quite frankly, I didn’t like him when he was that way. He was six feet, three inches of uncontrollable hunger and he’d drive me nuts! He didn’t act mean or cranky like some men do; he just acted like he’d skipped his meds. He’s sort of a combination of Cramer (in the sitcom Seinfeld) and Barney Fife (in The Andy Griffith Show). But when he’d get hungry he’d be like those two characters on speed. He’d dart around the kitchen trying to get closer to the pending meal. He’d find difficulty concentrating and our kitchen just wasn’t big enough for both of us, when he’d be famished.

Laughter is Like a Spiritual Milkshake

Have you ever noticed that when something starts to heal it can get itchy? I think that’s what happens to us sometimes when we are healing from something intangible like a broken heart. As we start to heal, something reminds us of what happened (that’s the itch) and if we go scratch it, we re-open the wound.

When you start healing from a hurt from the past, you will be reminded occasionally by photos, conversations, music and those reminders can be like scratching the scab off of a healing wound. If you’ve ever had an itchy rash, you know how good it feels at the time to scratch it! However, after you’ve enjoyed the scratching of the itch you are in trouble because you have reversed the healing process.

Follow Mother Nature 'Cause She Knows Best

Nature doesn’t de-junk and say, “There!” De-junking is an on-going process. Plants grow and make flowers, fruit and vegetables. Today’s salad will be in tomorrow’s sewer. Today’s dirt is yesterday’s plants and animals, and then there’s the tide. It’s all a continual process of acquisition and elimination. We are smart when we use nature as our blueprint. Here’s what I suggest.

Nature’s biggest dumping and streamlining time is autumn and winter when all the leaves fall, and then the stormy winds blow, so let’s use this time of year to focus on de-junking basements, attics and garages. Garages were meant to store the car you know. Note: Nature doesn’t get rid of Her leaves in a day, so don’t think you will clean out the garage in a day especially if the car has been in the driveway all year. Remember Nature takes about two months to de-junk the leaves, so don’t get on a SHE production schedule, because you’ll burn out. Take it easy, and take all the time you need, just keep at it.

Clutter in your home comes from you and your family leaving things out after you are through with them. When Nature is through with something She puts it away. What if every time you have to go to the bathroom (#1) you use that urge as a cue to put something away before you go, and after you’re through and you’ve washed your hands put one more thing away?

I Can Tolerate Wal-Mart. . .But Not at Christmastime!

When I got organized in June, 1977, I’m ashamed to say I indulged in my first gloat shopping that Christmas. I had all my gifts bought and wrapped by Dec. 5, and went out on several gloating expeditions, where I’d watch hassled shoppers paw through merchandise searching for the perfect gifts. I know, I know, not really the Christmas spirit, but I’d spent so many panic-stricken shopping sprees in my chaotic past that it was kind of fun to be free to observe others and be glad that was a part of my painful past.

In this Young@Heart article and video I shared what I learned while being sick. The lesson will remain for a long time.

In this Young@Heart article and video; it’s embarrassing, but I shared it anyway.

Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree.

Okay, okay our eyes were bigger than our door hole! We are both well aware that a tree in the woods looks smaller than it really is. Hey, we weren’t born yesterday! And since we have been part of picking out Christmas trees for at least 60 years, we never dreamed we’d be off measurement when it came to picking out a tree. But this year we goofed! BIG TIME.

It all started when we went to a tree farm up the Lewis River Highway in Woodland, Washington to cut our Christmas tree. The drive into the wilderness made us so happy. The nice man who owns the tree farm, seeing we were senior citizens, offered to cut it for us. It was muddy that day and not wanting to trudge through rows and rows of choices, we sort of scanned the farm and sent the man off to cut what we deemed to be a beautiful noble fir about fifty yards away (that’s where we goofed). NEVER PICK OUT A TREE AT A DISTANCE! DUH!!

“This one?” the farmer yelled.

“No, the one next to it,” we yelled back.

“Okay! It’s a beauty,” he boasted.

His helpers drug it back and they hefted it into our borrowed pick-up while we blissfully stood in the barn with mugs of hot apple cider and listened to the Carpenters singing, “Frosted window panes, candles gleaming inside, painted candy canes on the tree. . . .”

We paid the man and set off for home, completely unaware of the events that would follow.

When we got home, we were able to get the evergreen treasure off the truck, but once it was down on the ground, we couldn’t budge it. That was the first clue we were in trouble. Our neighbor is big, strong, fit and young so we called him and he was more than happy to help us get the giant in the house. It was so fat it wouldn’t fit through the front door until we tied twine around the branches and cinched it in. Getting it through that door took all three of us pushing and shoving, but we did it! Then we stood it up! Now our ceiling in the living room is 22 feet so we knew we weren’t in trouble that way (the tree is 14 feet) but once we cut the twine and the tree popped into shape it was hard to admit it but there wasn’t room for anything else!

We had to go buy more lights and ornaments and the tree is now trimmed, as they say, but truthfully it looks like crazy people live here! We’d like to send a picture, but we can’t get back far enough to get the whole thing in the shot. We are having a New Year’s Eve Party and our first thought was, ‘There’s no room for the people.’ We’ve seriously thought about taking the tree down or uninviting the guests.

Guess we’ll just chock it up to a lesson learned late. Hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

Cheers

In this Young@Heart article and video I show you how to save 13 hours between now and Christmas!

You Take Yourself With You Wherever You Go

In this week's the Young@Heart article and video, you will feel so much better if you follow my advice.

I remember when I was a young mother there was a public service announcement on television that would come on around ten at night and the guy would say, “Do you know where your children are?” I remember thinking, ‘Duh, how could a good parent not know where their children are?’ (Recently I found out my son was often not where he said he was, but [ahemm] that’s not what I’m writing about.) I was interested in one of Flylady’s musing about “dreaming” of getting out of her childhood home as soon as she could and that she realized that getting out of that house only changed her physical location.

Somebody (it was either Shakespeare or Harrison Ford) said, “You take yourself with you wherever you go.” Hey wait a minute, I said that! It’s true and that’s what Marla did. She got out and took herself with her. Only until she realized that the only way to feel loved was to finally love herself was she able to make peace with her past and become a light of wisdom straight from her heart for all of us today.

Everything we can see, touch, hear, taste and smell is outside of us and we make judgments with our five senses about everything in our lives. If we don’t like what we see, hear, taste, touch or smell we have the power to change any of it and judging by the volumes of you-can-change-your-life books on the market (mine included) our society is certainly trying to do just that. The problem with self-help books is they won’t work if you don’t know yourself very well. “Do you know where your child is?” Ah, back to why I’m writing this.

Do you know where your (inner) child is?