March 2008

According to Dictionary.com, a Difficulty is:  -noun, plural -ties.

1. the fact or condition of being difficult. 
2. Often, difficul·ties. an embarrassing situation, esp. of financial affairs. 
3. a trouble or struggle. 
4. a cause of trouble, struggle, or embarrassment. 
5. a disagreement or dispute. 
6. reluctance; unwillingness. 
7. a demur; objection. 
8. something that is hard to do, understand, or surmount; an impediment or obstacle.

Most of us could come up with a few more adjectives, the “colorfulness” of each depending upon the difficulty at hand.

After all, difficulties are annoying, problematic, stressful, painful, headache causing nightmares.  They’re completely bad and we’d be infinitely better off without them, right?

Well, not exactly.  Actually, not even close.

Think about this:  When an athlete shows up for baseball camp, hoping with every fiber of his being to make the team, he spends painfully long hours in the weight room.  He eats vegetables, fish, chicken, and salads even when the brownies, fries, and potato chips are screaming his name.

The training isn’t easy, in fact it’s downright “difficult” but the rewards (strength, fitness, improved health, fulfilling a dream, and a high paying job) are more than worth it.

The temporary difficulties aren’t weakening him or taking power away from him. On the contrary, they’re strengthening him and giving him more power than he had before they rolled all over him.  He’ll be much stronger than he would have been if he’d never been tested and trained. 

The same can be said for those of us who are decidedly non-athletes.  When we’re staring squarely in the eyes of a particular difficulty - whether it’s an illness, finances, relationship problems, trouble at work, or a vehicle that has decided it doesn’t want to be in the transportation business any longer - we’re tapping into an inner strength that would otherwise be dormant.  Frankly we never know what we’re capable of until we’re tried, tested, and trained.

Think of problems and things that “just don’t go the way we want them to” as mental workouts.  We read and talk a great deal about mental fitness these days - we all know how vital it is to keep our minds active as much as possible.  So maybe, just maybe, our difficulties are actually blessings in disguise.

Maybe we should start thanking our difficulties when the jump out at us.  Even when several spring out at once (hate that).  I guess when a team of them jumps us at once, we’re getting a Herculean workout!

J.C. Penney said: “I am grateful for all my problems. After each one was overcome, I became stronger and more able to meet those that were still to come. I grew in all my difficulties.”
 

If you use GOOGLE Adsense, you should be aware that Google has recently implemented new policies.  Publishers need to be certain they read through the policies top to bottom.  (They’ll appear when you log in to your adsense account.)

One of the newest policies, and one that has most people pretty shook up, is the one that now requires all publishers to have a Privacy Policy in place. 

When I read that I was now to notify my visitors “specifically about cookies and web beacons,” my head nearly exploded.  Yeah, so, cookies, to me, are baked in the oven and eaten with coffee…. and web beacons?  Web beacons? 

Thankfully for people as out of the loop as I am, we have a guardian angel:  Jennifer Slegg at Jensense.com has developed a Privacy Policy template for us.

Jen, I love you.

You can copy the template, fill in the blanks with your information, and place it on your new Privacy Policy page.  And, of course, be sure to link to her blog.

….and thank God for her…. And light a candle in her honor……  And name your next child Jennifer.

One of the things that I love even more than a trip to Starbucks with my husband (even when he’s paying) is to see someone take a creative, brilliant spark of an idea and set themselves on fire with it!

Heidi Roizen (second from the left in the picture below) recently set her world on fire, and the really sweet thing about it is this:  We can all benefit from her combustion. 

Heidi has created a CD, SKINNY SONGS, as well as a website and line of tee shirts  that all put a great big smile on the face of weight loss - I’m sure you’ll agree with the that that’s no small feat.  The songs, which are also available for downloading on iTunes, are hilarious and, quite frankly, very well-performed. 

The cd is perfect to play while doing pilates, calisthenics, and aerobics. The music keeps you fueled while the lyrics keep it fun.  My favorite use of the cd is to play it while cleaning house. I find myself getting a little workout while chores are far less tedious.  Heidi, who must have a wicked sense of humor, wrote the lyrics for all ten songs:

1. Skinny Jeans
2. Thin!
3. I’m a Hottie Now
4. Use it To Lose It
5. The Incredible Shrinking Woman
6. Think I’ll Go To Saks
7. You Da Boss
8. Objects in the Mirror
9. Who the Hell is That?
10. Blowin’ You Off at 8

Jump over to Skinny Songs.com to read the great reviews and Press articles to give you more information.  While there, you have to check out the tee shirts (some are pictured below) - they’re further proof of Heidi’s humor.  She seems to be one of those people who “get” what one of my favorite people, Maya Angelou, once said, “Life loves the liver of it!”

And I love pizza, onion rings, turtle cheesecake, and Mocha Lattes.  Guess I’d better keep my SKINNY SONGS near the cd player at all times.

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. - Jane Howard 
 

A happy family is but an earlier Heaven.  - John Bowring

At the end of the day, a loving family should find everything forgivable.  - Mark V. Olsen and Will Sheffer, Big Love, “Easter”

The family is a haven in a heartless world. - Christopher Lasch

The family fireside is the best of schools. - Arnold H. Glasow

My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived and let me watch him do it. - Clarence Budington Kelland

* More Quotes about Family

* Click HERE for a “Wallpaper Friendly” version of the Polar Bear Family above - for larger monitors.  Click HERE for the 800 x 600 version.

* Finally…How’d you like to adopt a polar bear?  Better take two, so they can keep each other company.

My daughters and I rounded up all of our “retired” cell phones a few nights ago.  My current one decided it no longer liked to ring and Emily was pretty annoyed with her’s as well, so we thought we’d sort through the old ones and see what we could turn up.  They practically covered half of our dining room table.  Pink, gray, brown, black, blue - we’re nothing if not colorful.

Resident expert, Stephany, gave an off the cuff presentation detailing what each phone was capapble of and incapable of.  Some would take pictures, some wouldn’t.  Some would store all of the sent and recieved text messages you could ever want, while others would want to purge after 12.

Some allowed you to download “awesome” ring tones and others (the ones on the bottom of Steph’s list) stuck you with “crap.”  Knowing how high on my list the IM function is, she gave me a great tutorial on which had the hottest preset images (I’m all about that) and which were the easiest to use for sending IMs, etc.

So there they all were, a little community of cell phones.  On the outside, they looked equally capable of the same performance.  If it weren’t for Steph’s knowledge, I wouldn’t have known they were so vastly different.

As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I’m headed somewhere other than a tech-y destination with this.  Fortunately, since my Tech knowledge wouldn’t get us very far!

We’re all sort of like these cell phones.  On the outside, we look like we pretty much have the same capabilities and abilities.   As though we, too, will perform the same way as everyone else.

We’d all do well to remember that this is far, far, far from the truth.  Just as we each have different thumbprints, we each have different lives, experiences, mental abilities, drives, personalities, and “speeds.”  Yet, we often expect everyone to perform on the same level….and, to be honest, the level we want everyone to perform at is usually our own, right?  We fool ourselves into believing that if everyone around us thought and acted just like us, our world would be darn near perfect. 

Can you imagine if that were the case?  I just spent a minute thinking about it and nearly snapped myself out of it with a banshee scream.  Oh, the wrecks, the economy, and the lines at Starbucks….

The next time someone gets under your skin, remind yourself that he/she is wired differently from you.  They may, actually, be doing the very best they can.  Expecting more from them than they’re capable of giving would be like expecting a Go Phone to give you everything an iPhone would.  You can yell at the Go Phone, talk about it behind its back, and roll your eyes until you give yourself a headache - but what’s going to be accomplished in the end?  The Go Phone will keep on being a Go Phone.  The only thing to change will be your own level of stress and aggravation.

Very often, too, when we worry about other people instead of our own business, we lose out big time.  After all, if our eyes are on them and their lives, what might we be missing in our own?!

Think about reality shows - it’s when the players get overly concerned with what this person or that person is up to that they’re blindsided.  They never saw it coming because they were casting their vision in other directions.  On Survivor recently, a seemingly strong contestant became nearly obsessed with another contestant.  Their hatred and resentment only resulted in them being sent home before the thorn in thier side was.  (That couldn’t have felt good!)

Oops, my cell phone’s ringing.  Is that My Chemical Romance?

Keep on keeping on. Git ‘er done. Winners never quit and quitters never win. Don’t stop now! Keep plugging away…

We’ve all been there - times we would have choked on any combination of the words above. Face it, a lot of times, saying the words is easier than plugging the words.

But plug we must! After all, if we don’t, there’s no telling what fortunes we may miss out on. The story below is an excerpt from Napoleon Hill’s infamous and oft-printed classic, “Think and Grow Rich.” It’s a “golden” illustration of this very subject. (The last two sentences beg to be written down and memorized.)  Keep Reading….

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it. - William Osler

Okay, so, “Hellllllo” - this would be me much calmer since my rantings about parents, pulled hair and threats.  Part of what makes me me is a tendency to follow wherever my emotions lead me.  And if it involves children, animals, or anyone else I feel is nearly helpless, look out…anyone in the way may just get trampled!

I thought I should follow up with something very important.  I got a great comment on the post as well as an e-mail asking what I thought about spanking.  The woman who sent the e-mail agreed 100 percent about threats to smack a child and pulling hair (and even said she would said something to the woman and man).  She wondered what my views were on spanking, though, because she said she “raised 5 sons with the back of her hand on the back of their pants!”  5 sons?  Can you imagine.  Poor hand!

Allow me to say a few things:  When I was growing up, my own mom was fond of switches.  If I didn’t come home on her first call or if I did something dangerous, she’d pluck one out of the tree and….I can nearly feel the sting now!  I remember once when I was 4 or 5, I rode into the street in a toy car when she had said to stay on the sidewalk. The inside of her hand was redder than my leg was - but, as a mother myself, I know the hand didn’t hurt anything as much as the fear of her (hard headed!) daughter being harmed.

As for my own girls, sometimes, a certain “I’m not messing around” look that they called The Look would do the trick. (Especially with the oldest - the LOOK froze her every time….it still does!) Other times, a good heart to heart talk would get through.  However, for those times when their will was stronger than their age and size were capable of sporting, the hand met the backside.

I know there are people who feel that spanking a child is wrong.  But I feel that raising an undisciplined child is wronger.  The way I always looked at it, I’d much rather one of my girls have a sore bottom for a few minutes than to one day be harmed or killed because they didn’t understand limits.  Not knowing the difference between right and wrong ruins lives and destroys futures at best and kills at worst.

After my last post it may surprise you to know this, but I feel there is a lack of discipline with kids these days.  However, I don’t feel that a child being yanked by the head of hair is discipline.  Let’s not kid ourselves, it’s an irritable parent acting out.  The instance of the mother threating to smack the child was also an instance of a tired parent lashing out.  Discipline wishes to instruct, lead, guide, and protect.  It seeks to TEACH, not TAUNT.

I just think it’s a complete disgrace when parents act no better than the child.  But, yes, most definitely, I agree - spanking is a viable part of raising children.  Even when it’s done with a stinging, hateful switch! 

Excellence: Bengal Tiger Art Print
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“Don’t bunt.  Aim out of the ballpark.  Aim for the company of immortals.”  - David Ogilvy

Click the link for more quotes about Excellence.