How do you encourage yourself or other’s each day? Whatever you do or someone does to help you keep your spirits up each day, Pass It On! Tell yourself and friends and family-YOU GOT THIS!
You Can Do Anything!
Whatever you want to do, you can do it! One saying that sticks in my head-If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again! My list is quite long, and I have my down days, but I get up early and take my classes and writing seriously.
One Foot In Front Of The Other& Reach Out To Others
Having an especially difficult time putting one foot in front of the other? Something that might help is reaching out to someone else. Send out a message that reads, You Got This! Or, So Proud of You! Attached with a heart <3 and a smile. Every day someone will call me and cheer me on. As I was typing this, my husband called because he wanted to hear my voice and tell me he loves me. Reach out to people. Even smiling when you pass someone might make their day and yours. You Got This! <3 🙂
Downtown, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1949. A grandma and her granddaughter are walking on the sidewalks among the many other people. These girls are going shopping at L. S. Ayres. As they walk, they hold hands. Taking their time to notice the shop window displays, as the crowd rushes by, on their way to work.
Grandma is in a predicament
They had come by bus since they lived in the city of Indianapolis. Grandma has her five year old granddaughter by the hand when she has to make a quick decision. The elastic waistband in grandma’s underwear broke. She did not have elastic in the legs, so those underwear were coming down. And, fast!
What to do?
What to do and how fast could she do it? This question ran through her mind in a split second. Grandma stepped herself right out of her underwear and kept walking!!
In honor of Elvis Aaron Presley, I fondly remember a very special moment and a very sweet woman who was battling cancer. She played his songs every morning. My last memory of her before she passed away, was the screen door made a sweet sound as I went outside to find her. It was a sunny morning, sweet tea was ready, and Kentucky Rain was gently playing.
I was about 7 years old, 1975, a couple of years before Elvis Presley’s death. We lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the snow cone man had just come around. He had become a friend of our family.
We would all stand outside and my parents and him would laugh and talk and he would spoil us with extra snow cone flavors as we ran by. This man was not only an amazing snow cone man to us kids, but he had an amazing voice. He could sing and sound a lot like Elvis Presley.
One night, he stopped and I remember my mom asking if he would sing to her dear friend who was the “Hugest Fan of Elvis Presley”! She was very sick with cancer, it was her birthday.
Shag carpet of gold. Striped couch of green and brown. Yellow wall phone with a long cord. This man stood in our kitchen and sang song after song to this kind woman.
“Thank you, thank you very much, ma’am, he would say, then he would laugh like him. He was ever kind like Elvis would be.
In my mind, then and now, I knew this is what Elvis Presley himself would do. If he had driven by, he would have stopped and enjoyed a snow cone with all of us. He would have walked right in to our home and sang song after song to her. Like this man, he would end the call with the happy birthday song and say “good night, sweet dreams ma’am.”
They are both in heaven now. She is enjoying song after song, his laughter and kindness.
Proverbs 17:22 A merry heart doeth good like a medicine:but a broken spirit drieth the bones. From the Bible. King James Version.
Merry and Bright
Over the weekend, I woke up to this verse. I must have read it a dozen times. I pray I am a merry dose of joy for myself and others. I began to mentally list ways to reach out to someone, so I wrote them out to share with you.
Smiling
Letting them vent
Praying not only for them, but also with them
Sending them a letter, text message, and/or email
Being a cheerleader boosts their self-confidence
Give them a hug when you see them and when you leave them and wave good-bye. My Grandpa Virgil greatly appreciated this human contact. He had been a widower for over 30 years.
Tell them you love them
Tell them how proud you are of them
Bring them lunch or a gift
The List could go on and on!
What are your ideas? Please share!
Daily Bible Study
I have a daily verse delivered, from a Bible app, to my phone and computer. www.bible.com You can choose what version you would like to read or choose audio for travel, walking, or resting.
Have fun getting closer to the Lord!
When you go to the app, you will be able to choose from 1200 Bible versions and 900 languages. You can read the verse and the full chapter. You can choose a Bible Plan, devotional or bible study, for the year, just for you, for free. Share verses, highlight and bookmark.
Spread Joy! It does a body good!!!
The last part of the verse talks about being a broken spirit and our bones drying up. There are several times I feel the pressure of being positive and happy rocked by the real struggle of life. If I am not careful, I spread a virus of unhappiness to everyone I talk to, instead of a healthy dose of Joy and Confidence. Spread Joy!
When you work really hard, and you want to stop for lunch, mixing up this extremely tasty Power Salad is simple. There are many different varieties. Please comment and share your Power Salad Creations! Just the aroma from blending Kale and Chickpea’s together is incredible.
I use our Ninja, which was a blessed gift from my husband when he saw me cutting up veggies for salads, soups, meals, and side dishes each week.
I make enough for him and I to take to work for a few of days. Pulse the Kale & Chickpea’s first. Quickly pulse the Beets so they stay in an assortment of bite sizes.
Mixing them all together, I lay them on a pile of Romaine Lettuce, with a sprinkle of Spinach. Drizzle with Salad Dressing!
Poach an egg, and add Ground Rainbow Blend Peppercorn. Then enjoy a delicious and easy lunch that does not take up a lot of time :)Jen
Every morning I wake up, all day long, and in my dreams, I am writing something down. Even riding in our van, I am creating a scene. But, I don’t know if you do this or not, ???, I sit down with paper and pen and try to begin. How to get this thought on to paper?
I shared this problem with my husband and in another blog I said how sweet of him and my daughter. She got me the Forky notebook to write my poems and story ideas and he bought me a year of masterclass.com
Since then, in the mail, as a surprise from Gary, arrived a 2019-2020 PRETTY SIMPLE WEEKLY & MONTHLY PLANNER. Go to their site, prettysimpleplanners.com and just Enjoy Shopping! I got excited seeing that they have planners and journals 🙂 Love all the room for notes and each month has a saying. August is-The secret of getting ahead is getting started.-Mark Twain.
So, I have the classes and the writing material and I put hours in to writing! I love creating stories and poems. What do you like to write about?
I was the skinny little girl stepping out of the car looking up at the two-story farmhouse. We had arrived at Aunt Sandy and Uncle Heck’s farm.
I wondered what would happen during this visit that would stay in my mind for a long time. So, I was already planning to sit in the closet at home, among the coats, boots, and shoes and remember each word, each look, each spanking with the razor strap, from these few days.
they were probably up early taking care of the animals
Aunt Sandy and Uncle Heck had a farm in Indiana back in the late 1940’s. My parents and I lived in Indianapolis. We would pack one suitcase between us, and drive for a little over an hour, to Bainbridge, to visit my mom’s youngest sister. Most times, when we arrived, the house was unkept, no one was around, and always unlocked.
mom is meaner than a pirate
Listening to every word my mom said to daddy, I would watch as she dissected each room. The bed was unmade. The sitting room was not swept, the couch littered with newspaper. Dishes in the sink. Who leaves the house this early and does not clean? Who leaves this house knowing company is coming?
donna jean’s superpower would be invisibility
Mom would begin cleaning, as daddy went out to the barn. But, I tried to be quiet, and invisible, as her personality surfaced. Obscenities seeping through her lips, as her anger mounted, mixed in with the words, lazy and filthy. She was crude enough to make sailors blush. For that matter, she was mean enough to scare them away.
do you know what a razor strap looks like?
The farm had an outhouse, but no bathroom inside. I refused to use the outhouse, so daddy would spank me with the razor strap. When we would first arrive, I would tell him he could beat me if he wanted. I was not going anywhere near that outhouse.
aunt sandy is a jerk
Aunt Sandy did not care because she would not let me poop on her property. Being adopted, she said I was not a blood relative and I would have to poop on paper. The paper would be destroyed. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom in the field where the cows shit.
swish
They did not mow their front yard, which seemed strange to me. Daddy always kept our yard nicely mowed at home. I remember hearing the swish, swish of the reel mower at home, wishing it could lull me in to a nice daydream.
gabby and my fond memory
Gabby was their dog. She loved me, even though I only saw her once a year. She would follow me through the tall grass, always by my side. One memory was me pulling grass and putting it in my pants. I pretended to be a hula dancer, except I had the grass held by my waistband, sticking up towards my face.
eating honeycomb
They raised bee’s. I can remember chewing on the honeycomb. The sweetest, most natural flavor. I wish to be a little girl for just a moment to chew on the honeycomb. Stand there chewing,and watch the cows swing their tails patiently at the flies. Their bodies were so big and moved slowly, their brown eyes watching me lazily.
keeping milk cold till it sold
All three mornings, because we only stayed three days a year, I would be standing at the window upstairs, wide awake. I would be waiting for Uncle Heck to walk out of the house around 4 a.m. He would go to milk the cows in the barn. When I was allowed to go out, Uncle Heck showed me where he put the milk cans. He placed them in a cement trough with an actual spring running through it till the milk truck came and bought the milk.
lye soap and cold pump water
She made her own soap. Lye soap. It was so strong, my skin should have come off. One night of my stay, I was bathing. No bubbles. No sitting in warm water, relaxing. I stood in a galvanized tub as pump water was poured over me, quickly rinsing the lye soap away. Lye, grainy, soap. Running hand over it,felt like it had sand in it.
These are true stories I gather from family. Do you have memories of how you were raised? Places you went for a few days or weeks out of a month? Please share your memories or those memories from a family member!
My husband took me to Lake Meadow Farm in GranvilleTN. I need to heal from something that happened to me last year and we wanted to see if we might want to have horses on our new farm 😊 The last photo of just me:My horse, Stella an I, we’re saying goodbye
