Category: Life

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Getting Prepared

One of my coworkers asked me if I knew anyone that used AARP today.  I told her that my mom is a member of AARP.  She saw one of the commercials on television and did a bit of research before joining.

She asked because she is helping her parents find a medicare supplement.  They are retired now and want to get things set up so when they need to have something done medical-wise they will have the appropriate insurance coverage.  Both of them are in good health but they do a have a family history of heart disease.

I told her my mom is very happy with her AARP insurance and hasn’t had any problems with them at all.  She also purchased funeral insurance so we wouldn’t have to find the money to pay for it ourselves.  My mom really likes to have everything laid out and ready to go to make it easy for herself and others.  She has a binder with all of her medical history, doctors, and insurance plans in it so if she ever needs to be taken care of by one of us it’s all in one place.  I love my mom and am so happy that she is so organized and well prepared.

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Summer is here!

It’s the 1st day of summer and I’m excited it’s finally here.  I can’t wait for the summer picnics with family and friends, trips to the park, movie nights on the lawn, swimming at the pool, and much more. Better stock up on sunscreen now so we can spend lots of time outdoors.

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Overslept

sleepy head

I guess I never even heard the alarm clock. Oh well. I’ll have to offer apologies to everyone for me being late. I can’t rush, so I’ll just beg forgiveness instead.

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Always Room for Kindness

What is it about today that has brought out all the rude people? I feel like no one wants to do a simple kindness for others any more. It’s not that hard to be friendly and gracious toward others. Both the person you help and you benefit – and even the people around you who witness the kindness benefit.

I encourage everyone to do something nice for another person today. A simple smile and “Hello” to someone you pass on the street, picking up a piece of litter and disposing of it, saying something nice to the clerk behind the register or the person in line behind you. There are endless opportunities to do nice things if you just make a little effort.

Thanks for at least considering it – and an extra thank you if you put my suggestion to use today. And tomorrow. 🙂

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Fresh Air

It sure got hot here quickly. It seems like just a couple of weeks ago the daily high temperatures were barely in the 60’s, but it has been in the 90’s for several days now. I guess that summer has truly arrived.

One nice thing about living here is the almost constant breeze. So even though it is very hot, I can open the windows and have a breeze carry the fresh air all through the house. I just make sure to keep the part of the windows not open covered with a shade or curtains to help keep the sunlight blocked and the rooms cool.

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Chicken Enchiladas

Although I really love to eat beef, my favorite meat for dinners is usually chicken. It is so versatile and easy to work with. And I believe that chicken is healthier for you in many ways.

I have a great recipe for chicken enchiladas and make a big batch of them about once a month. Then we feast on fresh enchiladas for a night, and I freeze the rest in serving size portions for a fast, easy meal once a week until they are eaten up. I found the recipe on the internet several years ago, and it was a hit with my family the very first time I tried it.

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Snowbirds and Retirees

So many people work all theirs lives with dreams of retiring someplace like Florida or Arizona. For many, they spend half of each year in their cold northern home states and the other half in a sunny warmer state. Those people are called “Snowbirds” because they come to Miami or Orlando or Phoenix to escape the cold weather and spend their winters someplace warm.

My grandparents have dreamed of retiring and moving to Arizona and are trying to make that happen now. They picked Sun City and have found a home. Just to be safe, they are have an alarm system installed in their new house before they move in. They wanted to stay with ADT, who they used back in Michigan. So they searched home security suncity to find someone locally.

Next, they want to get Direct TV hooked up so my Grampa can watch all of his sports shows.He says the best part of retirement will be watching all the games he used to miss when he had to work second shift at the plant. I think that is great – he deserves to watch whatever he wants to after all these years of working hard and missing out on his favorite games.

He loves the Lions and all the Detroit teams, bless his heart! At least his beloved Red Wings have been playing well these past years, but its 3 or 4 months to go before hockey starts back up. And Gramps will be watching!

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Arts and Crafts

art

Some things are so easy to do once you get the idea. For example, I have seen the saying, “Live, Love, Laugh” for years in a variety of posters, plaques and pictures. I thought it would be ice to print that in a pretty script font on a lightly washed canvas and then cut out tissue hearts and glue them onto the canvas.

It turned out just like this, but it is 3D and by changing out the tissue colors it can be color coordinated to fit in with any room decor.

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I Can Read That!

One of the coolest things about the internet is how every day you can learn new and exciting things, meet unusual and fascinating people that you would not otherwise ever meet, and you can answer life’s perplexing questions with just a couple of clicks of a mouse. I just discovered an online translation service that has opened a lot of new doors for me today.

It all started out with a blog linked to one of my friends blogs. I rad her blog every couple of days and just on a whim I decided to click on some of the links in her sidebar. One of the blogs was written in French, and mentioned service de traduction. Since I don’t speak any French at all, I was intrigued and decided to find a way to translate her blog into English somehow.

My same friend had a blog linked to hers that was in German. Now, I do not speak German, but my grandmother lived there for several years and our next door neighbors where I grew up were from Berlin. So I have heard German throughout my life, in little bits of this and that. So Übersetzungsdienst as a natural for me!

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Summer Reruns

Television has always been a part of my life. I watched cartoons on Saturday mornings as a kid, I was allowed to watch some comedy shows at night after my homework was completed, and then I watched movies and some drama shows as I got older. I realize that TV is a relatively new medium. I read somewhere that is was created in the 1940’s but that most American households could not watch anything because there were no networks and no shows being broadcast because of the War. In the 1950’s, a lot of Americans bought their first TV sets and some shows, especially the evening news began broadcasting.

What a long way we’ve come from the 1950’s to today, with cable and satellite and movies being downloaded over the internet to be watched on laptops, tablets and even phones! And yet, we still have very short seasons of new shows to watch and then a long drought of reruns and nothing interesting to watch all summer. When does the programming department catch up with modern life and change the length of the season to something the viewers want?