It’s Florida — the hot weather is here, and so are my hot flashes.  I keep the a/c on about 77, turn it to 75 at night and keep a fan blowing on me wherever I sit.  Despite that, last weekend I hot flashed so consistently that I soaked through several changes of clothes, my bed sheets and pillow cases.    Three loads of laundry later, I decided it was time to make up my bed summer style.   Off with the comforter altogether, I put fresh fitted and top sheets on my king size bed, and soft absorbent towels on top of the pillowcases.  Then I folded another sheet in half lengthwise  and that would act as the sheet I actually lie on.  I placed it diagonally across the bed, since that’s how I sleep.  I placed another  doubled king sheet next to it, to pull over me for a cover.  I can use one layer if I’m warm, or both layers if I’m chilly.  Then, if I sweat through the double folded top and bottom sheets, I simply pull those and the towel off to wash and don’t have to remake the entire bed.  I wish I’d thought of this 17 years ago!

RELATED:   I pickle myself into hot flashes and night sweats

The other day I moved my laptop out of my dining room and into my bedroom.  In the evenings when I want to check email and play on Facebook, I now have to step into my home office to do it.  That’s turned out to be a good thing since I get more work done, what with my In Box and To Do List staring me in the face each time I sit at the desk.   I figured if I was going to spend more time in here, I needed to unclutter.  My place stays fairly clutter free, but I get weekly deliveries of one thing or another, mostly books or supplies, and that creates boxes and bubblewrap trash.  Often I’ll leave a delivery unopened for a week, or put it unopened in the supply closet.  Eventually that catches up with me, and I have to pull everything out and unwrap it and put it all back in.  So my clutter is usually packaging material or stacks of paper I need to go through, and it’s easy enough to do. Continue reading →

My ginger in bloom

I was outside watering yesterday morning and happy to see that just a little bit of water made so many of the yard plants bloom.  A friend planted several pineapples a few years ago and since they are completely under shade, they have only grown a little. They won’t bloom and fruit unless they’re out in the sun.  I found a couple of  yellow allamanda that were barely growing just under the eleagnus, and I thought, “Well, they are existing just fine, safe in the shadow of the eleagnus bushes, but they are not growing much and they won’t bloom under there.”  I thought how it is the same with me.  I can exist fine in a shadow but if I want to grow and bloom, I need to get myself in a little more light and keep myself watered.  And some days I don’t care if I grow or not, and not everything that’s meant to bloom has to.  It’s nice to have choices.

Yesterday I was speaking with a friend and began to tell a story of an email I’d received from someone.  The writer was quoting inaccurate source materials, that is, she was complaining yet talking about something she had no experience of, as she was just repeating what other writers said.  When I mentioned the phrase “the conservative media,” my friend on the phone launched into asking me who I considered the conservative media and that segued into him telling me his thoughts on how the liberal media spreads misinformation.  He stated unequivocially that there’s no evidence anywhere that Fox News ever lied about anything.   He believes the liberal media spreads more mis-info; I believe the conservative media does.  It doesn’t matter who’s right, if we’re on this topic, it isn’t helping us achieve a happy life.

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OK so yesterday I contacted technical support for my bookkeeping program upgrade from MYOB to Acclivity/Account Edge and told them my problem.  My problem was I could see in the Recurring Transactions List an amount in the far right column.  In the old program, an amount there would signal me that there was a balance due.  That’s not what it means in the new program though.  Now it just means that’s the amount of the recurring transaction.  So I didn’t need technical support to tell me how to fix anything, I just needed them to tell me to change my perception and not look at the new info and process it with old beliefs.  Isn’t that the way it always is?  Nothing ever needs to change but my perception.  Good to know.

After meditation this morning, I sat down at the laptop as usual to check Facebook and see what I’d missed overnight.  No Facebook.  Hmmm.  So I went over to Twitter to see if anyone was talking about why Facebook was down and didn’t see anything about it there.  Then I went over to LinkedIn and it was down as well.  I switched from Google Chrome to Mozilla Firefox 4 in case it was a browser problem.  Still down.  I went over to Google News and clicked on Space Coast news, and Florida Today was down.  I decided for whatever reason, the Universe doesn’t think I need to be at the computer at 6:00am , so I’m going back to bed.  Maybe it’s just the eclipse.  Maybe it’s the rapture.  Whatever, I’ll be somewhere when I wake up.  And if this is my last day on Earth, it’s been a blast and I’m thrilled I’m the one who got to live my life. Continue reading →

I must remember that what I say is not always what the listener hears, and we may not be having the same experience even though we’re side by side.