Looks innocent, huh?

I discovered something the other day that I forgot about snack type things.  They contain sodium and make you retain water!  The last time I ate anything like pretzels or chips or packaged cookies was like 5 or more years ago, so it’s easy for me to forget about what they do to the body.  I’d picked up a one ounce bag of little pretzels and nibbled on them through the day.  There were 120 of them in the bag.  You know, those little half dollar size pretzels with big chunks of yummy salt.  I was working away and thought, what a great idea pretzels are since they are low fat and easy to eat while I work.  I don’t usually eat in the office.  So I worked through lunch and dinner and didn’t feel hungry, although about 3:00pm I had the urge to make iced tea.  Which I had not done for maybe a year.  And I wanted lemon and sugar in it, which I haven’t done for several years.  The snack made me thirsty and I guess the salt made me want sugar and the sweet made me want sour.  Typically I simply drink water, but I made a big pot of iced raspberry tea and by midnight had drank all of it.  A day later I got on the scale and weighed 4 pounds more.  WTF?  My weight has stayed within 2 pounds for the past 4 years. I forgot that is what that kind of food does!  Two days later I was back to normal but I reflected on the body changes.  The tummy satisfaction made me forget the purpose of eating is for body fuel and to maintain cell structure so, since I wasn’t hungry, I skipped 2 meals of nutritious food that day.

Never-ending wheel

I felt sluggish about halfway into the bag, and had no real energy for 2 days.  My tum defnitely felt gassy for 2 days.  After a day of eating salads and veggies and protein, I felt back to normal again.  Interesting I’d forgotten about that whole salt and sugar hamster wheel that happens when I eat the processed food.  I wonder how many other people who have no energy eat stuff like this and don’t see the connection?  How many are on the hamster wheel and don’t realize it?  Hmmm.

Izzy my moose, stretched out in the window

I joke about my cat Izzy being so big since he’s a Maine Coon kitty.  He’s 28″ long with a 16″ tail and weight just over 30 pounds.  I call him my Moose.  He’s so much bigger than other kitties, and he has a very un-cat like personality.  YinYang, on the other paw, is my little masked harlequin kitty, white with black splotches on her.  I call her my little mini-cow since when she lies down, her body kind of spreads out and she looks like a little heifer.  Last night I had a dream that I was watching tv and a new show was coming on, and the title was The Moose and the Mini-Cow.  The song was “It’s about time, it’s about space, about 2 cats in the strangest place.”

Yinny the Mini Cow

When we used to sing that tv show theme song back in 1966, we would say the word “cats” for “men” since my Uncle Andy used all the beatnik phrases and we got it from him.   There’s no point to this story other than I thought it was funny.

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LISTEN TO FREE SAMPLES: Out of Body Experience
and Connecting with your Angels, Guides

I managed to wear out my right paw during the 14-18 hour days this past week finishing up the September Horizons, so this will be short. In fact, I cheated and wrote this a couple of months ago and had in fact forgotten it until now.  Recently, a client who had negotiated a particularly long term contract decided they wanted to back out and asked for a refund.  I’d spend considerable time on the phone with her last year making sure it was what she wanted to do, and I gave her a good price for the 2 year run.  Each month she couldn’t seem to get the info to her ad designer on time, so there was always a lot of back at forth at the last minute to get the ad in by deadline.  That was my first red flag.  My second was that although she’s a life coach for others to attract abundance (why is everyone that these days?), she cuts corners and solicits friends for business in social situations.  Instead of really listening to them, she dissects their conversations for words that she believes indicate they need her help.  She gives unsolicited advice to the point it’s hard for some people to be around her.  We all know someone like that, don’t we, or several? Continue reading →

I finished final layout for the September issue of Horizons just in the nick of time last night.  Now I just need to spend a few hours proofing it before sending it off to the printer. I used to freak out if I was this late finishing it up.  But now, 17 years later, I know I always manage to get it done on time.  And nothing changed but how I perceived it and how I reacted to it.  A change in perception can literally change your world. In 1995, I bought a Geo Metro.  You know, one of those little roller skate sized cars that got really good mileage.  It was the last regular car I had until the Toyota Prius I bought last year. In between, I had SUVs and vans.  I always needed to have a vehicle I could haul thousands of magazines in if I had to.  One day, I’d driven over to Tampa to pick up the magazines from the printer, and the job filled the entire car.  Typically a 7 hour round trip, I was driving home much later since I’d visited with my mom for a couple of hours.  I was about 2 hours from home and had a phone appointment in 3 hours.  Then I got a flat tire.  The Geo Metro had one of those little donut spare tires, and it was, you guessed it, under the floorboard of the hatchback area.  Which had several thousand magazines piled on top of it.  So here I was, after a long day, alone, having to unload stacks and stacks of magazines to get to the spare and change the tire.  It took me about 30 minutes.  I timed it so that I was doing all this alongside the after-work-Disney-area-traffic.  Perfect timing on my part.  Can you imagine how I felt that day?  How would you have felt? Continue reading →

I got a neat email from someone the other day.  She writes:  I read your Facebook blogs in addition to your Horizons monthly article and I admire your life. May I ask you an intensely personal question…are you in a relationship?   I ask because there is no indication that you are and if not, you seem supremely happy with your life the way it is. And I would like my life to be as content as yours seems to be. You seem to have found the key. Relationship or not. I so loved the email that I posted it on my Facebook Wall. I commented: “Well, besides being in a relationship with every single other being – physical and nonphysical – in the entirety of the Universe? No individual partner, no. I haven’t pair bonded in years. Maybe that’s the key :)”  I was only partly kidding. Continue reading →

I just awoke from an interesting dream.  In it, I was standing on a hill watching through binoculars as what looked like hundreds of small robots came crashing into a small village below, causing minor damage.  They all looked exactly the same and were about waist high.  I came in here to write the day’s post and, when I logged on to my blog, I saw I had 94 comments waiting.  I immediately thought there are my robots. It only took a few moments to delete them all.  I recognized how I had attracted them.  Earlier, before my nap, I wrote the post LOOK Before You Cash Any Rebate or Credit Card Rewards Checks. I don’t usually write about things like that, or pay much attention when stuff like that happens.  But I’d spent a few minutes getting the links right and wondering why I was doing a post like that at all.  Then I found the reward points rebate check that Advanta had sent me.  I felt a spark of emotional investment and, of course, that was the fuel that set the corresponding manifestation in motion.  Hence, I attracted the spam robots.  So COMMENTS are turned off until I am vibrating at a different point of attraction 🙂  And if I play my cards right, that may be any minute now.

LISTEN TO FREE SAMPLES: Out of Body Experience
and Connecting with your Angels, Guides

If you’ve cashed a rebate check or check for reward points recently, you may have just authorized a $150 annual fee to be charged to your account, or a monthly charge.   Advanta is sending reward points rebates right now.  And the Snuggie. You know, that comfy looking lounging robe they advertise on tv?  Apparently the Better Business Bureau had to get involved after massive customer complaints.  They say “rebate” checks for $8.95 have been issued to Snuggie buyers, snaring them in with an old trick used by credit card companies.  On the rebate checks, in fine print, it says that by cashing the check, you are automatically charged a $149.99 annual membership fee.  Here are some links: Don’t Buy A Snuggie Blanket, Don’t Cash the Rebate check.   Snuggie Scam: Pay $150 for A $9 Rebate and Better Business Bureau issues warning over Snuggie scam. And it’s not just the Snuggie. A lot of products offered on late night tv also get the same rap, as well as credit card companies sending checks for reward points:  Rebate Scams: How They Get You

ADVANTA IS DOING THIS NOW: I wondered why I even cared about this, then just now looked on my desk and have a “rebate check” for “reward points” from Advanta, who I used to have a credit card with.  The accompanying info had already been thrown away, so I could not read the fine print.  However, I simply tore the check up so I did not end up depositing it.  Synchronicity.  The Universe rescues me in the nick of time once again.  Vibrational match!

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LISTEN TO FREE SAMPLES: Out of Body Experience
and Connecting with your Angels, Guides

I’m doing final layout for the September Horizons this week and so I fielded calls and read emails all day yesterday, from 8am until 9pm.  This is the week of 12-16 hour days working on the mag and not much else.  But it’s a labor of love and so the time goes quickly.  I woke up feeling ready to start the new week.  I’d spent the weekend making sure every bit of filing and bookkeeping was done and, for the first time in months, nothing remained on my desk except what I need for the current issue. I ran to the bank and then to the market since I noticed I’d eaten the last bag of spinach last night.  I munch on spinach or romaine at night instead of chips or popcorn. Leaf by leaf.  As I shopped, I contemplated that for the past year I have been cooking just about every day, now that my diet has gotten a little purer.  For years I ate out 7+ times a week.  I know when I stopped eating (most) meat in 2005, my food bill was easily cut by half.  So when I got home, I sat down and looked through my records to see how my cooking at home routine compared financially to my dining out all the time routine.  I was surprised that my total was $8,887 less.  I thought, wow, that’s an extra almost $9k, which is kind of like the Universe giving me a raise. Continue reading →