My Hummingbird Cafe

 

Adults and teens wanting to lose weight but have a cookie craving can identify with this cute little cartoon.  I know that I identify with it all too well!

 

 

This brings back old memories….

In the line at the store, the cashier told the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bag because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, ”We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”

The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today.The former generation did not care enough to save our environment.”

He was right, that generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, they returned their milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over.So they really were recycled.

But they didn’t have the green thing back in that customer’s day.

In her day, they walked up stairs, because they didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. They walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time they had to go two blocks.

But she was right. They didn’t have the green thing in her day.

Back then, they washed the baby’s diapers because they didn’t have the throw-away kind.
They dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts - wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that old lady is right, they didn’t have the green thing back in her day.

Back then, they had one TV, or radio, in the house - not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief, not a screen the size of the state of Montana.

In the kitchen, they blended and stirred by hand because they didn’t have electric machines to do everything for you.

When they packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, they used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, they didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. They used a push mower that ran on human power. They exercised by working so they didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right, they didn’t have the green thing back then.

They drank from a fountain when they were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time they had a drink of water.

They refilled their writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and they replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But they didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked
instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.

They had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And they didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful the old folks were just because they didn’t have the green thing back then?

These are times when women need the support of each other more than ever.  We are facing financial difficulties, Internet porn, sexual perversions and promiscuity that are paraded as normal, and our time is challenged by menial tasks that take us from our families.

We, as women, can help each other because of our natural inclination to feel the suffering in others and somehow console an aching spirit. This is what we need now.

Families are being attacked from all sides, when at work, school, and home through books, television programs, and socializing. It is impossible for family members to not be exposed to the negatives of our modern times. As a result, we need something that helps us manage the repercussions of our times.

Women are especially being attacked because they are the center of the family. The evil one can take down the family when he takes out the nurturer, the teacher of values, and the stability of the family.

Today, we see women being led down the path of vanity and self-centered compulsions instead of attending to their families. We’ve seen this problem too much lately. Women are spending more time away from home every day now, where she not only earns money but spends it as well on things that make her feel good.

• Regularly going out to lunch with friends
• Getting her hair and nails done regularly
• Buying make-up and other stuff that makes her look better
• Spends too much time shopping and socializing on the Internet

Women’s modern activities, as discussed above, are causing marriage and family sufferings. As a result, families are being pulled apart. It is sad to witness the consequences of all this, so please women, help each other keep from venturing out into the ways of the world and lose track of what is really important to us.

We cannot be intrusive on judgemental, but we need to be a support when asked. Sometimes we just have to be blunt like my sister did with me. I told her that something was wrong with me, “I don’t know why I am doing the things I am doing,” I said. The next words out of my mouth was, “It’s not Satan’s fault because he gets blamed for everything we do wrong. I am the one doing these things and I am responsible for them.”

When I told her what I was doing she said, “Why isn’t it Satan’s fault? Everything you are describing is rebelliousness. I’ve never known you to ever do anything rebellious so why are you doing them now? It’s not in your personality to be rebellious, the problem is that all of these things are your weakness that were used on you at once. This alerted your spirit to something being wrong but you didn’t know what or why. Now that you know these are your weak areas, watch yourself because you will see them slip in again from time to time.” She then gave me some very firm instructions that were right on target.

I had changed so much in a two week period that it scared me to think about how much farther I would have gone before I stopped myself. If I had not picked up on the feeling that something was wrong, would I have been able to turn things around soon enough before it destroyed my family? I know I would not still be married (45 years now) and our children would have gone down the tubes because they were making bad friends. I would have been too far gone to pay attention to their needs.

The point is that we are all subject to the ways of this world and can easily be enticed into things because we are human. We need a good friend, a good sister, and good neighbor to be bold when we need it. Had my sister not been bold and challenged me on it, I would not have recognized my folly or made any changes in the direction I was going.

We women need to stick together and be willing to listen when someone needs to talk. We need to remember that being supportive does not mean we tell them what to do or judge them. It means we listen, ask questions that help them find their way through the challenge and only when appropriate, be bold like my sister.

If you need someone to talk to, send me an email that will be kept personal. Send it to Judy@JudySherman.com.

 

This video is so cute. Laughter is the best medicine.

Life is what we make it: we can make it a pleasure and more tolerable or we can make it miserable by the way we respond to it.

I believe I have learned a lot about responding to life’s challenges in a more appropriate manner than I used to ten years ago, and because I have, I live a much happier life.

I assume that you want the same things I do, that you want peace, joy, and happiness to permeate our lives in a positive way when we interact with those whom we associate and have dealings.

This blog is a way for me to share with you the lessons I’ve learned about “What Matters Most In Life”. I want to do this so you won’t become overwhelmed when misfortune hits you and give up on things ever getting better for you.

We cannot give up because nothing will change that’s good if we do. We can’t go backwards or stay in status quo, nothing good is there for us either! All we can do is accept the challenge and move forward, trying to change our perspective and the way we respond to life and it’s challenges.

If we cave in to the negatives of life and focus on what we don’t have, we miss the blessings and the joy that life also provides but we’ve become too jaded to notice. Doing this will NOT make our lives any more tolerable, just more miserable.

Look at your life and then turn around the negatives you see into a positive. It may take a lot of effort to find the blessings at first but before long, you will see them easier and more frequently.

Let me give you a few examples of what I mean.

Story #1: We had just received a huge income tax refund, which is NOT a usual for us. We actually had almost $5,000 in our tax refund check. We had the check for a short time before we had an emergency.

Our toilet had overflowed. Even though the water was clear, it was still considered black water and was contaminated. I didn’t know that at the time and so I was soaking up the water with towels and washing them. However, washing them added to the flooding…which I had not realized either.

Finally, a friend suggested we call a particular plumber to come out and see what was wrong. He discovered we had a pipe on our side of the road that had broken and the whole front yard had to be plowed up. It cost us a total of $4,000 after our cost of all the cleanup and plumbing work was done. We had to have new carpeting throughout the whole house except the living room because of the black water.

My husband was several states away for his father’s funeral and taking care of his dad’s affairs. I had an illness that prevented me from bending over to clean up or to pack up the house. The insurance covered the cleanup and carpeting but we had a $500 deductible. They also allowed ServPro to clean up and pack up rooms in the house. I had to make the decisions by myself because my husband couldn’t focus from all he was dealing with on his father’s affairs.

At first I was very angry because most of our refund check had gone to this emergency, and so little was left for us to do what we wanted to do with it. It took me about another day to ask myself, “What would we have done if we didn’t have that money? What if the problem had happened a few months earlier or a few months later, when the money had already been spent?” That’s when I realized the blessing in having the check when we did, and so I no longer saw the situation as a negativity.

Story #2: We wanted to see more of our grandchildren because most of them lived so far away from us that we rarely were able to see them. I had prayed and asked God if that desire would ever be realized. He assured me that it would.

Not long after the prayer, my husband was told that he and the company he worked for as a contract manager was being replaced. It was a very hard time for him, and that, in turn, made life hard on me too.

My husband had put in applications everywhere in Oregon (where we lived), he had even put in applications in Utah, Texas, and Indiana. Nothing was happening, so we decided to move to Indiana and stay with our son and his family until we secured a job. With so many states surrounding there, we thought that would give him a better chance of finding a job.

We left Oregon on July 4th 2000 and arrived in Indiana July 6th, on a Saturday. Sunday we went to church with our son and family. On Monday, my husband picked up the local sales paper and saw a management job right there in town near where we were. Tuesday, he called on the job and Wednesday they called him back and did a phone interview. On Thursday, he was offered the job.

My husband losing his job put us in Indiana near our son and his precious family. This was the beginning of my prayer being answered. Three years later, my son living in Texas called to tell my husband that his company was going to be calling him for a job interview in Texas. As it turned out, he did get the job and we moved to Texas.

Living in Texas put us only two and half hours from our son and his family and only thirteen hours from our son in Indiana. That still put us twenty-two hours from our son and his family in Utah and thirty-four hours from our daughter and her family in Oregon if we drove.

From then on, most of our spare money goes to plane tickets to Utah and Oregon to see family we are too far away from to drive. We are able to see them a lot more frequently than we had before moving to Texas. Do you see the blessing? The lost job and moving to Indiana actually brought to pass our desire to see family more often.

Story #3: Before we moved to Texas, my husband moved there ahead of me to set up everything for us to move there. I was working at the time, so I had to finish up my job. A month later, he came home to help me tie up loose ends and then planned on taking one of the cars back with him so he would had a vehicle to drive.

On Sunday, the day before he was to leave and go back to Texas, we went to a church conference about twenty-five miles away from home. On the way home after church, the car died right there in our town and about five miles from home. All we had to do was call our son to come rescue us. It couldn’t have been any more convenient.

The next day we had our vehicle towed to a repair shop. We were told the engine was dead and that it would take $2,500 to fix it. We only had $5,000 from the company to make our move with, which included the moving van. There was no money to fix the car and still have enough to move with so we had to get the other vehicle ready for the drive and tow the broken car behind the moving van.

Where was the blessing in this story? Do you see it? If we had not driven to church and put on those extra miles, the vehicle would have broken down somewhere late at night in the boonies and my husband would have been stranded. He would be stuck and no money to fix it. Instantly, he recognized the blessing and was thankful for it.

These are just three of the many stories I can tell you of situations where a calamity turned into a blessing. It was not always recognized as a blessing at first, but we did finally recognized it and felt grateful. Instead of feeling like life treated us badly and was always taking things from us, we saw the blessing and as a result, negatives were turned into a positive.

You can see blessings as well when you look for them and accept them with gratitude. As my stories reveal, you can turn a bad situation into a positive one when you accept life on it’s own terms and look for God’s hand in the situation.

The same is true when you see a negative situation that makes you angry, especially when someone does something that angers you, and then you do what I call, “Turn the penny over to see what’s on the other side.” In other words, you look at a situation and assume that it may not be what appears to be.

Turning the penny over means you consider what another scenario might be that would make it a different outcome that you had not considered before. Perhaps someone had a different motive than you immediately thought of or there were situations that you are not aware of that changes the situation dramatically from what it first appeared to be. In other words, turn over the penny and see what the other side presents.

Sometimes you just have to accept that “It is what it is!” and let go of it. If you can’t do anything about it or it won’t help the situation to create a commotion about it, then leave it alone. It won’t change things or make things any better, except to appease ego and emotions. It does nothing that creates peace or peace of mind in the situation, or do what’s best for the situation when the desired outcome is peace or peace of mind.

I hope my comments have given you something to think about, and that what I’ve said will help you see your trials differently.

I know God makes it clear in the scriptures that He is not pleased with people who don’t recognize His hand in their lives and then give the “enemy to peace” credit for the misfortune they experience instead of seeing the blessing that comes from Him. That’s not smart, and it’s no way to earn the Lord’s trust in our ability to accept His blessings in the future.

Warn your friends and family about these hackers that have gone to new levels to steal your information. It is so easy and so sly, any of us can be fooled if we don’t know what to look for ahead of time. I hope you will watch these videos and then pass the information on to your friends.

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See how easy it is for your credit card to be illegally scanned at a restaurant. No Embedded Inf0 Available.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO.

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Click Here To Watch A Video On A Law Suit Against Tagged For Identity Theft

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3 Ways to Get Scammed at an ATM Robert Siciliano Identity Theft Expert www.IDTheftSecurity.com

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ATM Skimming

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Are Criminals using Skype to Spy on You? Robert Siciliano www.Intelius.com

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Chip and PIN Fraud

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PIN Number Protection

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Electronic Medical Records, Are They Safe? Identity Theft Expert www.IDTheftSecurity.com

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Protecting Medical Records from Theft

What treasures will the new year bring us? We have much to be grateful for and things to experience in this new year. Let us enjoy whatever 2010 brings to us.

• Family
• Friends
• Job
• Associations
• Church and Love of God
• New Birth
• Beauty of the Earth
• Home or Shelter
• Freedom to Worship as We Please, Believe as We Please, and Say What We Please
• Our Government – Even With Its Shortcomings
• Warmth of The Sun
• Coolness of The Night
• Stars and Moonlit Night
• Sunrise and Sunset
• Peace and Serenity
• The Internet
• Access To Information The Helps Us
• Knowledge
• Love
• Experiences
• Blessings
• Joy and Happiness in Simplicity of Life

This video is worth watching. It could happen to anyone!
You just can’t trust people these days..

http://www.wimp.com/goodsamaritan

My daughter-in-law had something like this happen to her in line at WalMart. I was with her and neither of us saw the con. But they got her card and charged up everything left in her account.

I got an email today with this great message you see below. These links are from the same place: http://www.dumblittleman.com

I just learned about this site and was very impressed with the information. I thought you might enjoy these reports as well. If you find something good like this to share with us, by all means, share it. You can send it to me in ask a question, or a comment on the wall. You can also send me an email to Judith@myhummingbirdcafe.com.

THE LATEST: 5 Gym Benefits You Probably Hadn’t Thought Of

Read a good artical from dumblittleman.com by clicking on this picture or link above!

39 ways to live not merely exist! Click On Picture

Life A Better Life – Click Picture

“The proper function of man is to live – not to exist.” – Jack London

Too often we go through life on autopilot, going through the motions and having each day pass like the one before it.

That’s fine, and comfortable, until you have gone through another year without having done anything, without having really lived life.

That’s fine, until you have reached old age and look back on life with regrets.

That’s fine, until you see your kids go off to college and realize that you missed their childhoods.

It’s not fine. If you want to truly live life, to really experience it, to enjoy it to the fullest, instead of barely scraping by and only living a life of existence, then you need to find ways to break free from the mold and drink from life.

What follows is just a list of ideas, obvious ones mostly that you could have thought of yourself, but that I hope are useful reminders. We all need reminders sometimes. If you find this useful, print it out, and start using it. Today.

1. Love. Perhaps the most important. Fall in love, if you aren’t already. If you have, fall in love with your partner all over again. Abandon caution and let your heart be broken. Or love family members, friends, anyone — it doesn’t have to be romantic love. Love all of humanity, one person at a time.
2. Get outside. Don’t let yourself be shut indoors. Go out when it’s raining. Walk on the beach. Hike through the woods. Swim in a freezing lake. Bask in the sun. Play sports, or walk barefoot through grass. Pay close attention to nature.
3. Savor food. Don’t just eat your food, but really enjoy it. Feel the texture, the bursts of flavors. Savor every bite. If you limit your intake of sweets, it will make the small treats you give yourself (berries or dark chocolate are my favorites) even more enjoyable. And when you do have them, really, really savor them. Slowly.
4. Create a morning ritual. Wake early and greet the day. Watch the sun rise. Out loud, tell yourself that you will not waste this day, which is a gift. You will be compassionate to your fellow human beings, and live every moment to its fullest. Stretch or meditate or exercise as part of your ritual. Enjoy some coffee.
5. Take chances. We often live our lives too cautiously, worried about what might go wrong. Be bold, risk it all. Quit your job and go to business for yourself (plan it out first!), or go up to that girl you’ve liked for a long time and ask her out. What do you have to lose?
6. Follow excitement. Try to find the things in life that excite you, and then go after them. Make life one exciting adventure after another (with perhaps some quiet times in between).
7. Find your passion. Similar to the above tip, this one asks you to find your calling. Make your living by doing the thing you love to do. First, think about what you really love to do. There may be many things. Find out how you can make a living doing it. It may be difficult, but you only live once.
8. Get out of your cubicle. Do you sit all day in front of computer, shuffling papers and taking phone calls and chatting on the Internet? Don’t waste your days like this. Break free from the cubicle environment, and do your work on a laptop, in a coffee shop, or on a boat, or in a log cabin. This may require a change of jobs, or becoming a freelancer. It’s worth it.
9. Turn off the TV. How many hours will we waste away in front of the boob tube? How many hours do we have to live? Do the math, then unplug the TV. Only plug it back in when you have a DVD of a movie you love. Otherwise, keep it off and find other stuff to do. Don’t know what to do? Read further.
10. Pull away from Internet. You’re reading something on the Internet right now. And, with the exception of this article, it is just more wasting away of your precious time. You cannot get these minutes back. Unplug the Internet, then get out of your office or house. Right now! And go and do something.
11. Travel. Sure, you want to travel some day. When you have vacation time, or when you’re older. Well, what are you waiting for? Find a way to take a trip, if not this month, then sometime soon. You may need to sell your car or stop your cable bill and stop eating out to do it, but make it happen. You are too young to not see the world. If need be, find a way to make a living by freelancing, then work while you travel. Only work an hour or two a day. Don’t check email but once a week. Then use the rest of the time to see the world.
12. Rediscover what’s important. Take an hour and make a list of everything that’s important to you. Add to it everything that you want to do in life. Now cut that list down to 4-5 things. Just the most important things in your life. This is your core list. This is what matters. Focus your life on these things. Make time for them.
13. Eliminate everything else. What’s going on in your life that’s not on that short list? All that stuff is wasting your time, pulling your attention from what’s important. As much as possible, simplify your life by eliminating the stuff that’s not on your short list, or minimizing it.
14. Exercise. Get off the couch and go for a walk. Eventually try running. Or do some push ups and crunches. Or swim or bike or row. Or go for a hike. Whatever you do, get active, and you’ll love it. And life will be more alive.
15. Be positive. Learn to recognize the negative thoughts you have. These are the self-doubts, the criticisms of others, the complaints, the reasons you can’t do something. Then stop yourself when you have these thoughts, and replace them with positive thoughts. Solutions. You can do this!
16. Open your heart. Is your heart a closed bundle of scar tissue? Learn to open it, have it ready to receive love, to give love unconditionally. If you have a problem with this, talk to someone about it. And practice makes perfect.
17. Kiss in the rain. Seize the moment and be romantic. Raining outside? Grab your lover and give her a passionate kiss. Driving home? Stop the car and pick some wildflowers. Send her a love note. Dress sexy for him.
18. Face your fears. What are you most afraid of? What is holding you back? Whatever it is, recognize it, and face it. Do what you are most afraid of. Afraid of heights? Go to the tallest building, and look down over the edge. Only by facing our fears can we be free of them.
19. When you suffer, suffer. Life isn’t all about fun and games. Suffering is an inevitable part of life. We lose our jobs. We lose our lovers. We lose our pets. We get physically injured or sick. A loved one becomes sick. A parent dies. Learn to feel the pain intensely, and really grieve. This is a part of life — really feel the pain. And when you’re done, move on, and find joy.
20. Slow down. Life moves along at such a rapid pace these days. It’s not healthy, and it’s not conducive to living. Practice doing everything slowly — everything, from eating to walking to driving to working to reading. Enjoy what you do. Learn to move at a snail’s pace.
21. Touch humanity. Get out of your house and manicured neighborhoods, and find those who live in worse conditions. Meet them, talk to them, understand them. Live among them. Be one of them. Give up your materialistic lifestyle.
22. Volunteer. Help at homeless soup kitchens. Learn compassion, and learn to help ease the suffering of others. Help the sick, those with disabilities, those who are dying.
23. Play with children. Children, more than anyone else, know how to live. They experience everything in the moment, fully. When they get hurt, they really cry. When they play, they really have fun. Learn from them, instead of thinking you know so much more than them. Play with them, and learn to be joyful like them.
24. Talk to old people. There is no one wiser, more experienced, more learned, than those who have lived through life. They can tell you amazing stories. Give you advice on making a marriage last or staying out of debt. Tell you about their regrets, so you can learn from them and avoid the same mistakes. They are the wisdom of our society — take advantage of their existence while they’re still around.
25. Learn new skills. Constantly improve yourself instead of standing still — not because you’re so imperfect now, but because it is gratifying and satisfying. You should accept yourself as you are, and learn to love who you are, but still try to improve — if only because the process of improvement is life itself.
26. Find spirituality. For some, this means finding God or Jesus or Allah or Buddha. For others, this means becoming in tune with the spirits of our ancestors, or with nature. For still others, this just means an inner energy. Whatever spirituality means for you, rediscover it, and its power.
27. Take mini-retirements. Don’t leave the joy of retirement until you are too old to enjoy it. Do it now, while you’re young. It makes working that much more worth it. Find ways to take a year off every few years. Save up, sell your home, your possessions, and travel. Live simply, but live, without having to work. Enjoy life, then go back to work and save up enough money to do it again in a couple of years.
28. Do nothing. Despite the tip above that we should find excitement, there is value in doing nothing as well. Not doing nothing as in reading, or taking a nap, or watching TV, or meditating. Doing nothing as in sitting there, doing nothing. Just learning to be still, in silence, to hear our inner voice, to be in tune with life. Do this daily if possible.
29. Stop playing video games. They might be fun, but they can take up way too much time. If you spend a lot of time playing online games, or computer solitaire, or Wii or Gameboy or whatever, consider going a week without it. Then find something else to do, outside.
30. Watch sunsets, daily. One of the most beautiful times of day. Make it a daily ritual to find a good spot to watch the sunset, perhaps having a light dinner while you do so.
31. Stop reading magazines. They’re basically crap. And they waste your time and money. Cancel your subscriptions and walk past them at the news stands. If you have to read something, read a trashy novel or even better, read Dumb Little Man once a day and be done.
32. Break out from ruts. Do you do things the same way every day? Change it up. Try something new. Take a different route to work. Start your day out differently. Approach work from a new angle. Look at things from new perspectives.
33. Stop watching the news. It’s depressing and useless. If you’re a news junky, this may be difficult. I haven’t watch TV news or read a newspaper regularly in about two years. It hasn’t hurt me a bit. Anything important, my mom tells me about.
34. Laugh till you cry. Laughing is one of the best ways to live. Tell jokes and laugh your head off. Watch an awesome comedy. Learn to laugh at anything. Roll on the ground laughing. You’ll love it.
35. Lose control. Not only control over yourself, but control over others. It’s a bad habit to try to control others — it will only lead to stress and unhappiness for yourself and those you try to control. Let others live, and live for yourself. And lose control of yourself now and then too.
36. Cry. Men, especially, tend to hold in our tears, but crying is an amazing release. Cry at sad movies. Cry at a funeral. Cry when you are hurt, or when somebody you love is hurt. It releases these emotions and allows us to cleanse ourselves.
37. Make an awesome dessert. I like to make warm, soft chocolate cake. But even berries dipped in chocolate, or crepes with ice cream and fruit, or fresh apple pie, or homemade chocolate chip cookies or brownies, are great. This isn’t an every day thing, but an occasional treat thing. But it’s wonderful.
38. Try something new, every week. Ask yourself: “What new thing shall I try this week?” Then be sure to do it. You don’t have to learn a new language in one week, but seek new experiences. Give it a try. You might decide you want to keep it in your life.

Be in the moment. Instead of thinking about things you need to do, or things that have happened to you, or worrying or planning or regretting, think about what you are doing, right now. What is around you? What smells and sounds and sights and feelings are you experiencing? Learn to do this as much as possible through meditation, but also through bringing your focus back to the present as much as you can in everything you do.

These videos may help you with some of the basic repair work on your vehicles or home. I found these videos very helpful. Some of the things I had already learned, but most I did not know before hand. I hope these videos help you as well.