MY DIET QUEST!

I'm on a quest or mission to find a diet that actually works. I've tried high carb, low carb, count points, diet for my blood type, low food and no food .... and my observation is dieting is not a piece of cake. At the present time I am in Southern California enjoying the beautiful sun...the hot mineral water....and the FOOD!! My two favorite places to visit...and I'm thinking technically I may qualify as a squatter... is the date farm and their famous date shakes.... and my all time fav is the DOUBLE DOUBLE from the In-and-Out. So this week I'm back on WW and counting points. Well I really must be truthful about this and say, "I'm attempting to count points".  Some days I have to just give up and say, "thank God tomorrow is another day and I haven't eaten a thing in that day yet.


So in my quest to find the EASY diet I did a little surfing and read a few blog's on dieting and I found this.

  A diet where I don't have to do anything....the tape worm does it all.
PTL my quest is over I found the perfect diet....NOT. I wonder if this was a real add in a magazine or a joke.

So in my quest the only conclusion I came to is I have to eat less food. Eat less food?? So I guess that means giving up mashed potatoes and gravy. Mashed potatoes and gravy make me think of my Mom...they bring me comfort. Her theory was, "if something comes with gravy then use it". Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat. And always...always...make your mashed potatoes with cream or if your dieting then it's OK to use half and half. 

JIMINY CRICKETTS!!

Jiminy Crickett was a comical and wise little character who accompied Pinocchio on his many adventures.

Well I think this comical and wise little fictous crickett is alive and mating in my closet. Cricketts!!

We all remember warm summer evenings as little kids the pleasant sound of cricketts chirping away. They are field crickettts. Now I bet you didn't know there are also house cricketts...yes house cricketts....and they all reside in my little rented house in Desert Hot Springs. Also house cricketts don't have much of anything to do while living in  a house except make that "pleasant crickett chirp" and make more cricketts. Each adult female lays hundreds of eggs and those eggs my friend hatch into hundreds of baby cricketts...and those baby's grow up to "make that pleasant crickett chirp" and of course make more cricketts. Are you getting the picture??

Just in case your not getting the picture...                   

here they are....crickett's that make that "pleasant chirping sound".

Not only are they noisy but they are bugs...ugly bugs that hop just about the time I get my courage up to smash it into a brown gooey mess on my kitchen floor.

Yes I admit it....I hate spiders....bugs....bees...fly's.
My girlfriend was visiting me last week and she was my crickett killer and my daughter will be here in two weeks to visit....and she can be the crickett killer. But until then I'm totally alone...well almost alone...I have the company of hudnreds of cricketts "making that pleasant chirping sound".

Grandma's Christmas tree

As we age it seems it get's harder and harder to get the ladder and haul out the Christmas decorations...and then 4 weeks later we have to store them all away again for another year...and I guess I am no exception. For many years we had a tree 18 feet high and we had to bring the ladder in the house just to decorate it. Now my tree is a fiber Optic fake little thing and I never have to decorate it.

But last year I re-instated the family tradition that was started many years ago by my husbands mother. Grandma Schultz was never one to decorate much but she always had a tree. Then as she got older even the tree disappeared. But that only lasted for a year or two because I think she got tired of all the whining and complaints, "but Grandma you need a tree, where do we put the presents"?  So I think in frustration she started hanging Christmas tree ornaments on her lamp shade. She got a good laugh from us all but in the back of our minds we were all thinking and asking ourselves, "is Grandma loosing it?" But never the less she continued this tradition for many years.

Well I think this Grandma is also loosing it. Last Christmas as I got out my Christmas decorations I remembered with affection and Love my mother-in-law's decorated lamp shade and I just knew in my heart that I had to continue this  tradition. When my daughter saw my decorated lamp shade it brought a huge smile to her face remembering her Granadma.

This Christmas season my prayer is for everyone to remember those family traditions and try keeping them alive by telling the stories to your kids and grandkids and pass on the old traditions and maybe start new ones.  

Have a wonderful Christmas and remember Jesus is the reason for the season!!

THE MONEY GAME!!

Lately I have had more than a couple people ask me why no blog updates lately?  Maybe I have writers block...or maybe just not inspired. Then Sunday morning my Pastor inspired me. What a sermon!! He preached on James 4 ....the folly of money and the love of money. During his sermon I was thinking about stuff...and money.  Oh how I do love to accumulate money...money for buying hotels...money for buying more property...money for buying railroads....money for houses and then more money as I collect rent. I can't help from smirking as I count and stack my money...stacks and stacks of money. I love to play the money game. Buy lots of stuff and charge lots of rent and always...always pass GO and never go to jail. I am queen of the money game...in the past I have amassed quite a Monopoly fortune. But at the end of the game I have to take all my stacks of money...all my hotels...all my property and put it back in the box.

 

Sometimes in life we loose track of our main goal and instead of putting our trust in the BIG "G"   GOD,  we instead start putting our trust in stuff....or the other 3 "G's"...Goods...Garments...and Gold. I think that's called stuff-trusting. If there was no God I guess stuff-trusting would be an OK thing to trust in. But there is a God and he wants us to trust in HIM....not stuff or money.

So I think what Pastor Dave was trying to get across to me is yes we should plan for the future but our plan should include God. Do not be haughty and think for one minute that you had anything to do with your accumulations. Everything is God's....God owns everything and gives us all things to enjoy. Be rich in good works, ready to give, and willing to share. It's just yours to play with while you are here so don't take it too serious. After all it's just like Monopoly money. It all goes back into the box when the game is over.

Friends and Family!!

My daughter's gone....oh she's not gone-gone but she was staying with me for a few weeks until she found a more permanent place....now she's gone and I miss her already. The last time she and I spent time together in the same house was over 20 years ago during her hard teen years...and I must say I truly love and admire the woman she has become.

We would sit in our jammies and share our life and our hearts. What is it about jammies that inspire friends to share more deeply?

I just returned from Astoria and the "Great Columbia River Crossing". This bridge that starts in Oregon and ends in Washington

and crosses the mouth of the Columbia river is one of the longest of it's kind in the world. Every year they close one lane of the bridge for two hours and over 3,000 people sign up to walk or run it's mighty span of over four miles. Eleven friends and I rented the "Penthouse" suite overlooking the bridge and the river. We spent the weekend laughing...sharing...eating...and laughing some more. Friends and family that know me inside and out and choose to love me anyway...that's what it's all about!!!

BEACH FEAT...OR BEACH FEET??

Feat...an astounding act of courage...endurance...or strength!!

Feet...take me where I want to go...with courage...with endurance....and strength!!

See these feet...hard to believe they are 66 years old...they don't hurt....they still get me where I need to go...and the most amazing thing is while every other part of my body has grown...my feet are still the same size as they were in high school...and not wanting to brag to much I also need to say that my earrings from my high school days still fit.

Last Thursday my feet completed an amazing feat!!My four week 1,120 hour Parkinson's study at

OHSU in done...finished...completed.  The purpose of the study was to prove that with a daily exercise program you can delay or stall the progression of this disease. I also need to add here that this exercise schedule needs to include at least 3 varied forms of exercise. They had me kayaking...Yoga...boxing...and crazy agility stuff that involved tires and jumping....and then....they would have me do these different exercises while counting from 100 backwards by threes. Jumping through tires...now that was a feat for these feet!!

Two years ago I did this same study with OHSU before they had funding to do the actual study. Before each study began they would hook me up to all kinds of wires and electrodes and then do very technical testing of balance, agility and other things involving cognitive thinking tasks. My goal was to continue with this crazy form of exercise to see how it affected the progression of Parkinson's.

They called me the other day with exciting news. They compared my testing from two years ago with my current testing and I actually scored better now than two years ago. WOOT...WOOT

But....now I have to continue this crazy exercise program...and they have added skipping. So if you happen to see me skipping around my house....while pretending I'm in a kayak....screaming out numbers at the top of my lungs....please don't call the white coat people.


 

A few of my favorite things...

With my very very busy schedule this past couple of months I was thinking I needed to slow down...don't plan so much....say no more often...go back to when life was less hectic. I did have a very hard time remembering that far back...you know..back when life was less hectic. But I did remember a few of my favorite things.

I remember my Mom coming to my room every morning and singing "Good morning sunshine". When a teenager I hated to hear that song because I knew it was then time to get out of bed. Oh how I wish I could hear her sing it just one more time. She loved flowers. Flowers in the garden...flowers in a vase...or just pictures of flowers. I wonder if she would enjoy looking at the 179 pictures of dahlia's I took a couple of weeks ago at the dahlia festival. YES MOM...one-hundred and seventy-nine. What was I thinking??  I think I must have inherited Mom's love of flowers.

Today must be a day of reminiscing because I was also thinking about my husband and pay phones booths. Remember pay phones....oh what fun they were!!  My husband was the king of seeing how many friends he could cram into a phone booth. On Saturday night dates that was not only a past-time but a hilariously fun hobby. I wonder at times what fun things are left for our young teenagers to do now a days? While in the restroom at the hospital the other day the lady in the stall next to me was just chattin away on her cell phone. I think she also misses the booth and so she pretends while in her little stall chattting away on her cell phone. I could say something here about making her deposit...but I won't.

Another favorite thing that I miss is traveling in our motor home with family and friends. When you loose your husband you also loose your lifestyle. I miss sitting down at the dinner table and eating a real meal....yes I know no one does that anymore but I did for 45 years and now it's dinner on a TV tray or standing in the kitchen. My lifestyle this past 19 months has changed 360 degrees....and I miss my old life. 

I miss my husband's friends. He had three really close friends that would visit him often his last year of life...and I miss them. It was fine when I was married to sit for hours and visit with them while Reub snoozed...but now I'm a single woman and they are married and with that status comes a host of other issues.

But since I am a glass half full type of person I would rather count my blessings and list them one by one....but there's not time in this day to finish that list. But I think it did my heart and soul good to reminisce, because by remembering what I miss most....reminded me what I still have.

EZEKIEL 34:26 .....there will be showers of blessings.