LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN….MRS. CLIFF CLAVEN

I love facts.  I never remember them after I read them but once in a blue moon, one will stick in my brain and I will amaze my friends with my tidbits of knowledge.  So I decided to write them down and share them with you so next time you are in a group of intellectuals, you can can drop a factoid into the conversation and everyone will look at you in shocked awe.  Or just in shock.

1.  Writing about a heart-felt issue will help you shed pounds.  A study showed that women who wrote a 15 minute essay about something they felt strongly about, dropped an average of 3.4# in the following three months.  Women who wrote about nothing special GAINED 3# in those same three months.  Well, shoot.  Now I know how I got so fat.  I have been writing about nothing.  I wonder what topic I feel strongly enough about to lose 100#?

2.  Eating off of red dishes help you eat less.  I obviously don’t own enough red dishes!  And besides, a whole pizza just doesn’t fit on my one red plate.

3.  Your tongue should be bumpy.  A smooth tongue could mean you have an autoimmune disorder.  It should be pink.  A purplish color could point to a blockage of energy (mine should be near blackish if that were the case) or of blood suggesting a liver or gallbladder problem.  A coating of yellowish-brown may indicate an acute infection.  Ok, everybody run to the mirror and check out your tongue!

4.   Sugar makes you look older.  Here I thought it looked older because I was born in 1954.  So if I quit eating sugar will I have a face like Demi Lovato?

5.  There may be a link  between drinking soda pop and asthma and COPD (a lung disease).  So not only does pop rot your teeth, it also rots your lungs.

6.   If you use an alcohol-based mouthwash, you may have a greater chance of oral cancer.   A family member drinks her alcohol and I don’t believe I have ever heard her complain of bad breath!

7.Body issues are seldom about your body.   Hmmm, I must have poor eyesight then, cause everytime I look in the mirror, I have issues with what I see.

8.   Time you enjoy wasting isn’t wasted time.   I love this!!   I waste more time than anyone I know.  Because of a chronic illness, I have to lay down often at home and I usually can’t fall asleep so I daydream.  I get my best ideas for art works or businesses  when I am laying down.  Must be the increased blood flow to my brain.  Sometimes I get so excited, my heart races and I can’t wait to get up and get online to order new materials.  Unfortunetely, by the time the new materials arrive I have lost my mojo.  I literally have thousands of dollars worth of craft\art materials just waiting for me to be inspired ( and two more years of paying off the debt incurred by these times I have let “my fingers do the shopping”).   But I am glad that I have now scientific proof (Vogue magazine) that all those hours spent daydreaming aren’t wasted!

9.   The upside to grand failures: they make great stories (or blogs!!!)

10.   If you are depressed, take a walk in the woods.   Now I know this one to be true cause a few years ago I was in a major dark place and I decided to take a walk in our woods at dusk and sit on a rock and wait for some man-eating creature to come and have me for dinner.  So as soon as dusk fell, I got my large-Marge butt off the couch and walked out to the woods and sat down.  As I was sitting there, waiting,  I began to realize that the thought of being eaten by a bear was alot more romantic while I was sitting on my large-Marge in the safety of my couch than sitting on a cold rock in the woods with night falling and hearing the aforementioned creatures rustling in the nearby brush.  I made an all-time record race-walk back to the safety of my  house and I sure felt alot better when I got home!

11.  Fruit flies are actually Vinegar flies.  They are attracted to the odor of fermenting fruit.  In the human species they are called, “Winos”!

12.   And my last thought for today is a new life motto that I found.  THE HECK WITH WHAT I WAS, THIS IS WHAT I AM NOW!  Don’t you just love it?   I have bemoaned the fact that my face no longer has that youthful glow and that my eyebrows now rest on my eyelashes and those body parts that used to be facing North have gone South.  I am a better person today than I was back then.  And really, isn’t that the best thing I could ever wish for?  Besides, I never liked what I saw back then either.

Well, I hope today’s tidbits made you a tad smarter and just think how great you will feel when at your next meeting about the global issues affecting our world, you will be able to pop up and say, “Yes, but did you know that fruit flies are really Vinegar flies?”    Yessiree bob, I’m sure that will get you noticed.    You’re welcome.

LOST POST….NOOOOOO

I just spent the last two hours writing a great post and I lost it in cyberspace….I have tried everything to find it but like my youth, it’s gone forever.  And it was so dang good.   Pride goeth before the fall.  So do I try to write it again?  I’m kinda like a one-hit-wonder.  Maybe I should just go off and lick my wounds (or eat some ice cream or do some online shopping..that always makes me feel better….for a few minutes) or should I just suck it up and start again?  It’s not like I don’t have the time.  I have nothing pressing to do (ok, there is laundry, ironing, vacuuming, dusting, orgainizing my studio) but nothing that I haven’t let go before.  It’s just that I spend so much energy writing that when I am done with a post, I’m usually spent.   Writing for me is like sneezing…..I build up steam, write, and then have a proverbial cigarette basking in the afterglow of the moment.   So with that said, I think I will go and eat something, maybe do some domestic chores and then think about writing again later today.

Why is it , that the really good ones get away?

TALES FROM THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

My normal route to town is still closed so I am still going down the bumpy country road which at times is much more bumpy than others.  It truly gets a “washboard” feel to it.  I wonder what makes it like that?  You can actually see the washboard ridges in the dirt.  And you certainly can feel them.  I think I have lost some dental enamel from my teeth clacking together while driving down it.

I have two stories about that road that I’d like to share with you today.  So grab a cup of your favorite beverage, turn up the heat, and get comfy.

The first story really isn’t mine but I’m sure my neighbor won’t mind me sharing it with you all.  Last year a trailer carrying a piece of equipment hit the bridge on Hwy 7 causing it to close for a short time so we had to use the dirt road (as we are today).  My neighbor, whom I shall call, “Mrs. X”, was coming home from dropping her kid off at the local high school and saw another neighbor, who shall be named, “Mr. Y” riding his horse down the road.  She slowed down to say hi, when all of a sudden, his horse went nuts and ran into Mrs. X’s car throwing Mr. Y over the roof and smashing in the driver’s side window, side mirror and some of the door and fender.  And doing great bodily harm to itself in the process.  Needless to say, Mrs. X was quite shaken by all this and had in fact, gotten a serious shoulder injury that didn’t manifest itself until a short while later and was so bad that she needed surgery months later.  Mr Y was “under the influence” at the time of the accident and seemingly incurred no injuries in his flight over her car.   A sheriff was called and I wish that I could have seen the expression on his face when he got there and saw what had happened.  How many calls a year do you suppose he gets where a drunk is riding a horse and it goes nuts and rams into a car?  It must not happen as often as you may think because he didn’t know if he should issue a “DWR” (drunk while ridiing) ticket or even if there was such a thing.   And Mr. Y had no insurance.  Can you even get a policy that covers horse accidents?  Oh sure….it’s called a rider!!!!!!  (ho ho, I kill myself).    I was driving down the road last week when I saw Mr. Y riding a horse and he went up off the road and up on a hill as I drove by.  I think he must have learned something in all of this as have all of us in the country…..”FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS RIDE DRUNK”

My second story involves another neighbor whom we all refer to as, “psycho guy”.  This person owns quite a piece of land next to the river and has NO TRESSPASSING signs all over the place and most of the property is fenced in and he even has a big gate that is always closed in front of his driveway.  Paranoid?  Ya think?  We once made the huge mistake of going on his land thinking we were on a piece of property that was for sale and while I sat in the van, my hubby and young daughter went to scope out the land.  They were met by a furious man, swearing a blue streak telling them to get off his land.  My husband politely told him we had thought it was for sale and he was sorry for the mistake.  The man didn’t stop his filthy tirade as he followed them back to the van.  I cannot remember if he had a gun or not.  I just know I was very happy when we got back on the highway.  Other neighbors have told similar stories so we were not the only ones to think he was a tad bit overwrought.  Hence the name, Psycho Guy.   Anyway, last month I noticed a beautiful apple tree on his property but outside the fenced in area.  It had the most gorgeous red apples on it that I had ever seen in my life.  Not a speck of green on them.  Perfect red apples.   Maybe 20 feet from the road.  Very easily picked.  It got me to thinking….how is it that here is this one perfect apple tree right next to the road with these gorgeous red apples on it and no one has stolen them?  And what kind of apple tree has fully developed apples on it in August?   And not an apple on the ground?   I think it was a decoy apple tree.  I think Psycho Guy put a fake apple tree there just to see if anyone would try to breach his private property warnings.  Call me crazy but not one apple was bad or out of place.  And why just one tree?  And the apples were on the tree for at least a month and not one was on the ground.  We have an apple tree.  It never has had apples like his.  I have never seen such red apples.   Real tree or decoy?  What do you think?

BACK IN THE SADDLE

HI Gang,  it’s been awhile since I have posted.  Someone had mentioned to me that they felt that the content of my blogs have not been in sync with my professed faith.  That really threw me for a loop.  It made me very angry at first.  And hurt.  I guess I never felt that this blog was going to be a mouth-piece for my faith.  I just write what I think about things.  And I don’t edit myself to be more Godly than I really am.  I am a sinner saved by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  I am not by any stretch of the imagination, anywhere near “finished” as far as being a perfect Christian.  I still sin.  Sometimes on purpose, but most of the time just because I am a flawed human.  I will probably be that way till I enter into Glory.  I will always purpose to be more like Christ but I will be “me”, too.   So this blog will stay true to myself.  I hope that if I say something that offends, you will comment on it so I may apologize if need be.   And to those who are concerned about my faith, please pray that God will convict me of my sin so that I may change, by His power.  I mean that sincerely.  It is the only way I know how.