A WINTER FRIEND

                                                                 

A WINTER FRIEND

AND THEN IT IS WINTER
You know the time has a way of moving quickly and catching you unaware of the passing years. It seems like yesterday that I was young, just married, and embarking on my new life with my mate. Yet in a way, it seems like eons ago, and I wonder where all those years went.

I know that I lived them all. I have glimpses of how it was back then and of all my hopes and dreams. But, here it is... the winter of my life, and it catches me by surprise... How did I get here so fast? Where did the years go and where did my youth go? I remember well seeing older people through the years and thinking that those "older people" were years away from me and that winter was so far off that I could not fathom it or imagine fully what it would be like.

But, here it is...my friends are retired and getting grey... they move slower and I see an older person in myself now. Some are in better and some worse shape than me... but, I see the great change... Not like the ones that I remember who were young and vibrant...but, like me, their age is beginning to show and we are now those older folks that we used to see and never thought we'd be.

Each day now, I find that just getting a shower is a real target for the day! And taking a nap is not a treat anymore... it's mandatory! Cause if I don't on my own free will... I just fall asleep where I sit!

And so... now I enter this new season of my life unprepared for all the aches and pains and the loss of strength and ability to go and do things that I wish I had done but never did!! But, at least I know, that though the winter has come, and I'm not sure how long it will last... this I know, that when it's over on this earth... it's over. A new adventure will begin!

Yes, I have regrets. There are things I wish I hadn't done... things I should have done, but indeed, there are also many things I'm happy to have done. It's all in a lifetime.

So, if you're not in your winter yet... let me remind you, that it will be here faster than you think. So, whatever you would like to accomplish in your life, please do it quickly! Don't put things off too long!! Life goes by quickly. So, do what you can TODAY, as you can never be sure whether this is your winter or not!

You have no promise that you will see all the seasons of your life... so, LIVE FOR TODAY and say all the things that you want your loved ones to remember.. and hope that they appreciate and love you for all the things that you have done for them in all the years past!!

"Life" is a GIFT to you. The way you live your life is your gift to those who come after. Make it a fantastic one.

Remember: "It is Health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver."

~Your kids are becoming you......but your grandchildren are perfect!
~Going out is good.. coming home is even better!
~You forget names... but it's OK because other people forgot they even knew you!!!
~You realize you're never going to be really good at anything.... especially golf.
~The things you used to care to do, you no longer care to do, but you really do care that you don't care to do them anymore.

~You sleep better on a lounge chair with the TV blaring than in bed. It's called "pre-sleep."
~You miss the days when everything worked with just an "ON" and "OFF" switch...
~You tend to use more 4 letter words ... "what?"..." when?"...???
~Now that you can afford expensive jewelry, it's not safe to wear it anywhere.
~You notice everything they sell in stores is "sleeveless?!"
~What used to be freckles are now liver spots.
~Everybody whispers.
~You have 3 sizes of clothes in your closet.... 2 of which you will never wear.

~But "Old" is good in some things:
Old Songs, Old movies ...
and best of all, our dear ...OLD FRIENDS!!

Stay well, "OLD FRIEND!"

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Roses from my garden.

Take this day one day at a time!

IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER – by Erma Bombeck (written after she found out she was dying from cancer).

~ When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. Proverbs 11:2

                                                        

~ A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW drove up out of a cloud of dust towards him.

The driver, a man in a fancy suit and tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?"

Bud looks at the man, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The man parks his car, whips out his smart phone surfs the web to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany

Within seconds, he receives an email on his smart phone that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his i phone and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized apple Laser-jet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says Bud.

He watches the guy select one of the animals and looks on amused as he stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the Cowboy Bud says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

"You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says Bud.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy.

"You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd of sheep.
Now give me back my dog"

~ When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.
Proverbs 11:2

Art by, Steve Devenyns

*God bless and keep sharing the Good News !!! ~ C4C

Cinnamon Muffins

INGREDIENTS

½ cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup buttermilk (or 1 cup milk plus 1 tablespoon vinegar or just use regular milk)

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

Cinnamon/Sugar Mixture:

⅓ cup sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 F. degrees, grease a muffin tin.

Hand mix ingredients together, be careful to not over mix the batter. Cream butter, sugar, vanilla, and egg together. Add milk, flour, & baking soda & until combined.

In a separate bowl mix ⅓ cup sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon together to create the cinnamon/sugar mixture.

Pour muffin tins half full of batter. Then sprinkle with cinnamon/sugar mixture. Add more batter to fill almost to the top of muffin pan. Then sprinkle tops with remaining cinnamon/sugar mix.

Swirl batter around using a toothpick in the muffin cups.

Bake at 350 F. degrees for 20-25 min. or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Let cool for a few minutes in pan then move to cooling rack.

You have what it takes to be successful. Go for it and make a difference

                                                   

At age 88 Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) Empire was a billionaire.

At age 5 his father died.
At age 16 he quit school.
At age 17 he had already lost four jobs.
At age 18 he got married.
Between ages 18 and 22, he was a railroad conductor and failed.
He joined the army and washed out there.
He applied for law school, he was rejected.
He became an insurance sales man and failed again.
At age 19 he became a father.
At age 20 his wife left him and took their baby daughter.
He became a cook and dishwasher in a small cafe.
He failed in an attempt to kidnap his own daughter, and eventually he convinced his wife to return home.
At age 65 he retired.
On the 1st day of retirement he received a check from the Government for $105.
He felt that the Government was saying that he couldn’t provide for himself.
He decided to commit suicide, life wasn’t worth living anymore; he had failed so much.
He sat under a tree writing his will, but instead, he wrote what he would have accomplished with his life. He realized there was much more that he hadn’t yet done. There was one thing he could do better than anyone he knew. And that was how to cook.
So he borrowed $87 against his check and bought and fried up some chicken using his recipe, and went door to door to sell them to his neighbors in Kentucky.
Remember, at age 65 he was ready to commit suicide.
But at age 88 Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) Empire was a billionaire.
Moral of the story: It's never too late to start all over.
MOST IMPORTANLY, IT'S ALL ABOUT YOUR ATTITUDE. NEVER GIVE UP NO MATTER HOW HARD IT GETS.
You have what it takes to be successful. Go for it and make a difference.

#kygirl #dontgiveup #jump — em Owensboro.

A Little Kindness Goes a Long Way;

                                                      

The day my father died, I was at the grocery store buying bananas.

I remember thinking to myself, “This is insane. Your dad just died. Why the hell are you buying bananas?”

But we needed bananas. We’d be waking up for breakfast tomorrow morning, and there wouldn’t be any bananas—so there I was.

And lots of other stuff still needed doing too, so over the coming days I would navigate parking lots, wait in restaurant lines, and sit on park benches; pushing back tears, fighting to stay upright, and in general always being seconds from a total, blubbering, room-clearing freak out.

I wanted to wear a sign that said: I JUST LOST MY DAD. PLEASE GO EASY.

Unless anyone passing by looked deeply into my bloodshot eyes or noticed the occasional break in my voice and thought enough to ask, it’s not like they’d have known what’s happening inside me or around me. They wouldn’t have had any idea of the gaping sinkhole that had just opened up and swallowed the normal life of the guy next to them in the produce section.

And while I didn’t want to physically wear my actual circumstances on my chest, it probably would have caused people around me to give me space or speak softer or move more carefully—and it might have made the impossible, almost bearable.

Everyone around you; the people you share the grocery store line with, pass in traffic, sit next to at work, encounter on social media, and see across the kitchen table—they’re all experiencing the collateral damage of living. They are all grieving someone, missing someone, worried about someone. Their marriages are crumbling or their mortgage payment is late or they’re waiting on their child’s test results, or they’re getting bananas five years after a death and still pushing back tears because the loss feels as real as it did that first day.

Every single human being you pass by today is fighting to find peace and to push back fear; to get through their daily tasks without breaking down in front of the bananas or in the carpool line or at the post office.

Maybe they aren’t mourning the sudden, tragic passing of a parent, but wounded, exhausted, pain-ravaged people are everywhere, everyday stumbling all around us—and yet most of the time we’re fairly oblivious to them:

Parents whose children are terminally ill.
Couples in the middle of divorce.
People grieving loss of loved ones and relationships.
Kids being bullied at school.
Teenagers who want to end their lives.
People marking the anniversary of a death.
Parents worried about their depressed teenager.
Spouses whose partners are deployed in combat.
Families with no idea how to keep the lights on.
Single parents with little help and little sleep.

Everyone is grieving and worried and fearful, and yet none of them wear the signs, none of them have labels, and none of them come with written warnings reading, I’M STRUGGLING. BE NICE TO ME.

And since they don’t, it’s up to you and me to look more closely and more deeply at everyone around us: at work or at the gas station or in the produce section, and to never assume they aren’t all just hanging by a thread. Because most people are hanging by a thread—and our simple kindness can be that thread.

We need to remind ourselves just how hard the hidden stories around us might be, and to approach each person as a delicate, breakable, invaluable treasure—and to handle them with care.

As you make your way through the world today, people won’t be wearing signs to announce their mourning or to alert you to the attrition or to broadcast how terrified they are—but if you look with the right eyes, you’ll see the signs.

There are grieving people all around you.

Go easy.

- John Pavlovitz

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-Lawyers should never ask a Texas grandma a question if they aren't prepared for the answer.

                                                     

In a trial, a Texas small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness, a grandmotherly, elderly woman to the stand. He approached her and asked, 'Mrs. Jones, do you know me?' She responded, 'Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams. I've known you since you were a boy, and frankly, you've been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, and you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you're a big shot when you haven't the brains to realize you'll never amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you.'

The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, 'Mrs. Jones, do you know the defense attorney?'

She again replied, 'Why yes, I do. I've known Mr. Bradley since he was a
youngster, too. He's lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. He can't build a normal relationship with anyone, and his law practice is one of the worst in the entire state. Not to mention he cheated on his wife with three different women. One of them was your wife. Yes, I know him.'

The defense attorney nearly died.

The judge asked both counselors to approach the bench and, in a very quiet voice, said,

'If either of you idiots asks her if she knows me, I'll send you both to the electric chair.....🤠

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One Morning she woke up different.

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9 Important Facts

Life Changing Affirmations

Smile for the day

Will an apple a day keep the doctor away?

 "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." Could the common apple honestly help a person to maintain perfect health?

The first printed mention of this saying can be found in the February 1866 issue of the publication "Notes and Queries." The publication printed the proverb like this: "Eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread." Nearly 150 years later, variations of this adage are still quoted. It's unlikely that the saying would have maintained such popularity if there wasn't some truth to it, right? With that in mind, let's consider some of the apple's components and their effect on our health:

·         Pectin -- Pectin is a form of soluble fiber than lowers both blood pressure and glucose levels. It can also lower the levels of LDL, or "bad" cholesterol in the body. Pectin, like other forms of fiber, helps maintain the health of the digestive system. Apples are an excellent source of pectin.

·         Boron -- A nutrient found in abundance in apples, boron supports strong bones and a healthy brain.

·         Quercetin -- A flavonoid, this nutrient shows promise for reducing the risk of various cancers, including cancers in the lungs and breast. It may also reduce free radical damage. Free radicals develop when atoms in the body's cells have unpaired electrons, which can lead to damage to different parts of the cell, including DNA. Quercetin may neutralize free radical damage, which has been implicated in a variety of age-related health problems, including Alzheimer's disease.

·         Vitamin C -- Vitamin C boosts immunity, which helps maintain overall health.

·         Phytonutrients -- Apples are rich in a variety of phytonutrients, including vitamins A and E and beta carotene. These compounds fight damage from free radicals and can have a profound affect on health, including reducing the risk of heart disease, diabetes and asthma.

Apples also act as a toothbrush, cleaning teeth and killing bacteria in the mouth, which may reduce the risk of tooth decay. They're also low in calorie density, one of the trademarks of a healthy food. When a food is low in calorie density you can eat good size portions of the food for relatively few calories. In addition, apples are affordable and readily available.

Are apples the secret to a long life?

An apple a day can reduce the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and many types of cancer. However, would you be able to avoid the doctor entirely just by eating a bunch of the forbidden fruit? Not likely. Various studies show health benefits when participants eat an apple between three and five times a week, but all ailments cannot be cured by diet alone.

Are other fruits just as good for you as apples? Sure. All fruits are loaded with nutrients that are building blocks to good health. Bananas are loaded with potassium, which is important for a healthy heart and proper muscle function. Blackberries are loaded with fibre, and strawberries contain vitamin C and fibre.

Like cranberries, blueberries help prevent and fight urinary tract infections. They are also a bit tastier than cranberries, which most people only enjoy when combined with plenty of added sugar. Apricots, fresh or dried, are high in beta-carotene.

When choosing drinks, apple juice barely makes the top 10. Pomegranate juice, wine and purple grape juice are high in antioxidants, with apple juice in the tenth spot, right behind tea. One of the things that makes apples so incredibly healthy is the amount of fibre they contain, but that has lost during juicing.

If all fruits are nutritional powerhouses, why are apples the only one to be included in the folklore? At the time the adage emerged, apples were easy to grow (and still are). Once harvested, they could remain in storage for nearly a year. Recent studies have shown that, unlike many fruits and vegetables, the nutritional benefits of apples remain relatively stable as long as 200 days after harvest.

While an apple a day will go a long way toward keeping the doctor away, most nutritionists recommend a varied diet. In addition to apples, fill your shopping cart with citrus fruits, tropical treats like mangos, and a variety of berries, which pack a nutritional punch. Eating several servings of a varied selection of fruits each day is truly the best way to keep the doctor away.

health.howstuffworks.com

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Ingredients

·         2 cupsunbleached all-purpose flour(10oz, 283g)

·         3/4 teaspoonbaking soda

·         1/2 teaspoonbaking powder

·         1/2 teaspoonsalt

·         1 teaspooncinnamon

·         1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

·         1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

·         2 large eggs beaten lightly

·         3/4 cup granulated sugar (5.25oz, 149g)

·         1 ½ cups very ripe bananas soft, darkly speckled, mashed well (13.65oz, 387g) (about 3 medium)

·         1/4 cup plain yogurt (2oz, 57g)

·         6 tablespoons unsalted butter melted and cooled (3oz, 85g)

·         1 teaspoon vanilla

·         6-8 ounces milk chocolate or semisweet chocolate chips (170-228g)

·         1-2 ounces chocolate chips for sprinkling on top optional (28-57g)

Instructions

1.            Preheat oven to 350F. Place rack in middle of oven.

2.    Prepare a 9 by 5 inch loaf pan by buttering and flouring the base only if it is non-stick. Butter also the sides if it is not a non-stick. Non-stick baking spray can be used instead of butter and flour.

3.    In a small mixing bowl, combine the flour, soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Whisk to combine. Reserve 1/2 tablespoon flour and mix with 6-8 ounces chocolate chips.

4.    In a large mixing bowl, whisk together eggs and sugar. Add mashed bananas, yogurt, melted butter, and vanilla. Whisk until thoroughly combined.

5.    Gently fold the wet and dry ingredients together, just until the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter should be thick and chunky, but without any streaks of unincorporated flour.

6.    Gently fold in the chocolate chips that have been tossed with flour.

7.    Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and smooth. Sprinkle on additional chocolate chips if desired.

8.    Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean, about 55 minutes.

9.    Remove from oven and cool on a rack for 5 minutes. Remove loaf from pan and let cool on rack. (If you did not butter and flour the sides of the pan, you may need to run a sharp knife in between the sides pan and the loaf.)

10. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Notes

For a no-yogurt Banana Bread:

*Replace yogurt with 2 additional tablespoons of butter, bringing the butter to 8 tablespoons (4oz, 113g).

*Replace baking soda with 1-teaspoon baking powder.

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread freezes very well. After cooling completely, either wrap the whole loaf or individual slices tightly in plastic wrap. Let the whole loaf thaw to room temperature. Individual slices can be microwaved for about 30 seconds directly from the freezer.

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Going Grey Gracefully

Beautiful women who are ditching hair dye in order to show off their natural grey hair aren’t just women saving money on trips to the hair salon. They are not just a bunch of older women who are fed up with social norms. Women shouldn’t be ashamed or embarrassed by the grey hairs on their heads or feel any need to cover up. They are brave and beautiful women of all ages willing to celebrate themselves, their hair, and their life in the face of questions and leers. They are paving the way for other women to resist social expectations and embrace their hair colour, eye colour, body shape, shoe size, or whatever. While social media, magazines, and social norms are all clamouring for them to “hide their gray hair,” these women are choosing to love themselves instead.

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