WOMEN AGES 50+ FOR OCTOBER 2015

Thanks Ladies, Now I know what a NSV is. Sylvia- Adrienne is so blessed to have you in her life. Good job ! Carol in NC, your son should buy lottery ticket. He definitely has an angel on his shoulder.

Carol NC- he is fortunate to be able to walk away! God must have been watching over him!

Mary from Minnesota

nccarolb wrote: »

Boy child in accident on the way back to school tonight. Truck is probably totaled but he just has lots of cuts and abrasions plus being really sore. 2:30 am and just got him into bed. Nothing like seeing your child's vehicle upside down over the guardrail. I'm so thankful that he is okay!!

mollywhippet wrote: »

I'm sorry for jumping right to the end, but I had such a wonderful day I just have to tell you before I burst wide open!

Today I called my son and asked if he could pick up the younger two and let me pick up Adrienne. I said I would take her to my studio and I would help her with her homework. I said I would do that every day, just make that our new routine. He said ok. So, we went to the studio and used the table in the gallery. She had a set of 8 sheets of paper each with a dozen math problems on it. She had done part of it and turned it in unfinished and the teacher didn't even grade it, he just gave it back and told her to try again. So, looking at it I could see that the answers were wrong, do we erased them and started fresh. (There was a little hole in one page and I asked her about it. She said that a tear had fallen on the paper and she tried to rub it off. That truly broke my heart!)

So, we went through every problem, adding and subtracting fractions. I saw what she was doing wrong and when I showed her why that was wrong and how to do it right, it was like a light bulb went on. It was time consuming, and her dad called twice during that time demanding to know how much longer it would be, and saying that she's just wasting time so she didn't have to go home. (Not that I could blame her, but she really was working hard.) It took two hours, but when I took her home she hugged me so hard and told me she really likes doing her homework at my place. She said she's going to tell her teacher that her grandma helped her, but I told her to tell him that she did all the work, because she did. And I told her dad that he should be VERY, VERY proud of her because she worked so hard. I don't think I've ever seen her so happy!

And if that's not enough, tonight I ate the most delicious food I've ever put in my mouth. I saw this recipe online:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/158731/pecan-crusted-pork-with-pumpkin-butter/?ms=1&prop25=170842783&prop26=DailyDish&prop27=2015-10-14&prop28=Feature_1&prop29=Title&me=1&eaid=5302955

But I just used pork loin chops, Panko unseasoned bread crumbs, pecan cookie pieces, and Trader Joes Pumpkin Butter. It was an amazing combination of flavors. Massively yummy and very low sodium. And easy to make!

So, that's enough for me for one day. It's storming outside, but I feel like I'm on top of the world. Now il going back three pages to start reading what I missed.

Good night!
Did you use the pumpkin purée? Sounds wonderful!! Gayle Minneapolis

Lol about cat Facebook not your son!! Did he see the dr today? Showed my hubby pictures of the truck, he just shook his head. Gayle Minneapolis

Today did 1 hr of an advanced strength DVD. I like these workouts they are constantly changing things up. Then went to the bank for Newcomers since I was volunteering at the Green Room and the bank is just one block away.

The plan for tomorrow is to do exercise in the water.

You know that funny noise you heard a while ago? It was my crying....we closed the pool.

Margaret - we had a police officer come talk to the Newcomers a while ago. After that I got a debit card. We only keep like $200 on it, but I use that instead of my ATM card. I really only ever use that debit card at Aldi since they don't take credit cards, but by using the debit card I can get money back. Thanks for the very intersting information

Have to go back to the Green Room tonight. On my way home I think I'll stop at one store and get tangerines and apples that are on sale.

TerriRichard - what a great NSV!

Mia - if you were to regain the weight, you'd have the problems all over again.

Betty - good for you getting on that scale. I think Paul McCartney was a lot of girl's first boyfriend.

Sylvia - that's so wonderful you helping your grandaughter so much. And for her to get it! I can imagine that you are just about to burst. Kudos. That girl is so lucky to havae you in her life

Carol in NC - those pics gave me the goosebumps.

Went to the IDR (invitational dress rehearsal) at the Green Room. The show is really funny. One gal made these pimento cheese sandwiches and she brought donuts. The reality is that I'd had dinner right before I came. Not that I wanted a cheese sandwich on white bread or a donut from a package anyway.

Michele in NC

Sylvia: I nominate you for Grandma of the Year! Adrienne is so lucky to have you in her life. Personal help with her math is a wonderful gift of time and attention. Seeing the "light bulb come on" must have been a joy for you as well as for her. :flowerforyou: Thank you for the link to cat diaries. :laugh:

bwcetc: I increased my Vitamin D3 to 2000 IU per day after my bone scan revealed worsening osteopenia. I'm using the kind that is a capsule rather than a tablet. We'll see if it stops the slide for me the next time I am scanned. That will be about two years from now. My doctor has not recommended any particular medicines so I decided to give it a try after reading articles on the internet. :flowerforyou:

Janet: The new mattress is made of foam and is "off-gassing" for a few days. That means we can actually try it out Saturday or Sunday night. :huh:

Carol: I would likely have had a melt down, too, because of the traffic accident. Your son had a close call. I'm so glad he wasn't seriously hurt. Thanks for the D3 information. 3,000 IU is a thousand IU more than I'm currently taking. I'm interested in how the higher dose is working for you, and how your system tolerates it. :flowerforyou:

DJ: DH and I were quite impressed with our mattress moving achievement. Our DS thought if he and his wife could get theirs upstairs, so could we. It turns out he was right but it would have been nice if he'd been more impressed with our success. :grumble: :devil:

Michele: You have my sympathy for closing your pool. I know how much you enjoy it. You can start planning your "open the pool" celebration right away. :flowerforyou:


Tomorrow I have a riding lesson at the exact same time as my yoga class. Guess which activity will be skipped-- :laugh: Yoga will be lovely on Monday. :bigsmile:

Katla in Beautiful NW Oregon

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Thomas A. Edison

October Goals :
1. Log every bite and swallow.
2. Cardio exercise at least 3 days a week. Work on flexibility and back strength.
3. Have fun every day.
4. Drink at least three glasses of water daily, preferably more!
5. Eliminate alcohol.
6. Monitor sleep. Try to average 7 or more hours of sleep nightly.

Whoever was asking about the NSV, you had an NSV. Seeing that reading and being with us was keeping you from snacking is an NSV! Keep it up.

Oh carol, that car looks terrible. They truly took off the end of the truck. Hope he is OK, you have no trouble in insurance settlement and that more importantly that you are OK.

Sylvia, you sound so excited. It is so good you were able to understand the new kind of math so you could help her. You are molding what kind of Mom and Grandma she will be. I just hope the way you showed her doesn't confuse what the teacher does. Soemtimes in the tests, they have to show how they figured the answer.

Have a good time Heather. I am sure your husband will have a memorable 70th birthday.

Didn't make good choices today. Had a waffle from Bob Evans. I know I could have had it plain and had sugar free syrup but I had apple cinnamon topping. When I put it in was 1500 calories! Yikes!!!!

Joyce, Indiana

katla, you have been here about the same length as me, maybe a little longer. I have a lifetime membership here now!!!!!! LOL

Joyce

Just getting ready to eat breakfast, gym, shower, makeup and off.
Slept ok, amazingly.

Remind me I want a QUIET, small celebration for my 70th! ! ! ! !

Love Heather UK

Wonderful to hear about your afternoon session with your granddaughter, Joyce. Interesting also to hear that something clicked in her head when you were able to identify her problem and explain what she was doing wrong. A few little victories like that would be good for her self-image. I hope your son will agree to letting you two continue to meet for homework.

Living in a place where the sun doesn't go above the horizon from late October to late February, I have to get my vitamin D from some other source. So like a good Norwegian, I have a spoon of cod liver oil with breakfast every day. Also, since my goal is to prevent the osteoporosis I'm likely to have inherited from my mother, I take a calcium/magnesium supplement. And jog. And lift weights.

Beth, I'm not so sure about taking 10,000 mg of vitamin D per day--and I sincerely hope your "mg" stands for micrograms, not milligrams. The National Institutes of Health recommend only 800 IU (international units) per day, which is about 200 micrograms. 10,000 micrograms is 50 times that, which is okay because vitamin D isn't very toxic. But 10,000 milligrams is 50,000 times the RDI, and anyone who takes 100,000 mg per day is getting half a million times as much as they need!

Sorry, I went a bit science-geeky there.

It's time to head for the gym. I've really got to gird my loins today because we're in the midst of a snowstorm. Visibility is down to about 1 kilometer and it's rather windy. But the temperature is way high for a snowstorm - a couple degrees above freezing - so I should be okay.

Ooops! Just as I wrote that I'd be okay, we had a power outage. :noway: I'm writing on battery power now, but of course I've lost internet access. So it goes!

And now, five minutes later, the electricity is back. I'll post this and get going while the going is good!
/Penny at the

Still waving (though my arm is getting tired).

Carol, thinking of you.

Cynthia

Have been up since about 2:30 a.m., couldn't sleep. Not stressed (don't think I am) just not sleeping. We've been dealing with a couple skunks (four-legged ones, not two-legged ones) who are just terrorizing Daisy the dog, and I'm going to stop and buy a pellet gun while I'm in town today. Don't want to kill them, just keep them out of the yard. We think they may have dug a den out under the fig tree, so I'm going to look for some critter repellent while I'm in town, as well.

---

So, this is my final day at the Impossible Restaurant because, while the decision was made to fire the new manager, that decision was changed at the request of the owner. While the owner's daughter, who is nominally in charge of the restaurant, was fine with letting the new guy go, Mr. M has pretty much had enough of the whole shebang. The GM narrowly avoided having to shut down, and Mr. M basically said, in the black by December, or done. No more personnel changes, etc. Just do it.

I was able to answer all his questions regarding the financial picture now, what it will take to get in the black (about $900 more every day in net sales), what happened in the bar, etc., to his satisfaction, which made me feel good about my performance, but not so much for the future of the restaurant. Why? Couple things--one is that the goober new manager tried to construe a $19,000 week as being "in the black." Called him on it--it will take $26,000 a week to get to breakeven in the restaurant, as you can see by that daily figure above.

Then he said he could recover much of that amount in labor. The entire staff to run the restaurant (ALL OF THEM) besides him and me costs between $700 and $800 a day. By getting rid of a cook, you save less than $100 a day, and your service gets slower, customers get irate and don't come back. Get rid of a dishwasher, you save $54 a day. Getting rid of a server, at $3.00 an hour recoups a whole $24 for the company. And again, fewer servers, slower service, repeat customers dwindle. He doesn't get the basic equations at ALL.

There are, however, eight people at the restaurant who may be saving him the trouble of letting him go. They've all said they will be walking out--and they are, of course, the crew chief who was up for the promotion, and the best cooks in the house, as well as some of the best servers. Will they actually do it? I don't know. They all have families, and it's an employer's market right now. I don't want them to... I'd rather, even as much as I despise the guy, see the restaurant succeed.

But, on the flip side, his ego is such that he basically told Mr. M in the meeting that no matter who quit, he can do their jobs in half the time. There is one snarky, evil part of me that would really like to see that tested. Of course, he thinks the only thing a dishwasher does is wash dishes, when in reality, they also bus tables, mop kitchen floors, clean bathrooms, clean coolers, freezers, storerooms, pick up outside, empty trash all day, and on and on. The place will be back to filthy within two weeks. Arggghhh!

Anyway. Rant's over. Trying to put this one under the heading now that I've "changed the things I can, and there are things I cannot change."

Until it gets light, I will finish sending out the e-mails with the final documents I've built or am finishing up this morning, send my final billing, and then after I shower, I'll drive into town and drop off the six-inch stack of paper that I've generated in the last three months. Or I may just keep it. I will go in and hug a few necks to say goodbye, and then go buy that pellet gun. Not a good idea to have any kind of weapon in hand if I end up running into Mr. Smug.

I do, however, have a wonderful character now for the sequel I'm writing to my mystery novel--a bullet-headed, weight-lifting, smug four-flusher who presents himself as intelligent, knowledgeable, capable at first glance, gains the love of the heroine's best friend, and then proceeds to attempt to manipulate events in ways he believes are smooth and undetectable. The heroine will, of course, expose him as the goober that he is, but not until she has to extricate herself and her friend from mortal danger incurred due to his egotistical actions. I think I will make him break down and sob before I drop a rock on him.

Or something like that.

Maybe now I can get my head out of my own posterior and be able to interact more here instead of just telling my story.

---

Love you guys--you've been an amazing outlet while I struggled through this contract.

Someone asked if there was a retirement system at the ranch, where my husband works--and he works for the same people who own the restaurant. We live here at the ranch, so the 45-minute each way commute over the last three months has been no fun, either... The answer is, yes. Mr. M and family own a number of companies under the umbrella of the Riata Corporate Group, so my husband has a robust 401K. He contributes 20 percent of his pay to it, and they match 5 percent, so it's growing fast. I was working as an independent contractor, so no benefits, but less detachment hassle, as well.

My eating has been out of control the last few days--eating the right things, just too much and too often. Time to get it back under control. Running this morning as soon as there is enough sunshine so I don't trip over any wandering skunks!

Warmest regards, thanks for listening to my stories...
Lisa in West Texas

Lagopus wrote: »

Beth, I'm not so sure about taking 10,000 mg of vitamin D per day--and I sincerely hope your "mg" stands for micrograms, not milligrams. The National Institutes of Health recommend only 800 IU (international units) per day, which is about 200 micrograms. 10,000 micrograms is 50 times that, which is okay because vitamin D isn't very toxic. But 10,000 milligrams is 50,000 times the RDI, and anyone who takes 100,000 mg per day is getting half a million times as much as they need.

I used the wrong unit of measure .... I take 10,000 iu. And while my initial info came from a homeopathic practitioner, my medical doctor is on board with it as I've had positive results.

Beth

Linda in IA. I worked from home for years and found it really a good thing for me. I am very much an early morning person, so I could get all my "thinking" work done then when I was fresh, on the days I was home. I was giving presentations around the state of IA to mental health clients, agency staff, and DHS staff, as well as planning an annual conference for over 200 (with 75% of the presenters people that also have a mental illness), and writing reports on site surveys on some of our innovative programs like Intensive Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Peer Support. I could then use the middle of the day for my own activities, and make phone calls later in the afternoon/ early evening. Of course, on days I traveled, I often had 12 hour days, or stayed overnight somewhere. Travel time was considered work time, so I actually like that since it meant I could "play" during daylight hours more. The biggest problem for me was that I worked far too many hours. It was a salaried position, so I received no compensation for that, but I did such a great job that the company could never find anyone to replace me after I left! (The position required it be a person with a severe and persistent mental illness and most people who can do as well as I do will not tell a soul that they have one since discrimination is so rampant.)

O.M.G.!!!!!

I just walked in to work. It's in a 5 story office building. Lots of folks I don't know working here. As I went down the hall a woman who I have not met stopped me and asked if I had been losing weight. I said that I had. She then went on to tell me that it must be a lot of weight since she doesn't notice small changes. She then asked if it was a good thing and expressed concern that it wasn't because I am ill. I grinned and reassured her that I have been working at losing. I thanked her for making my day.

What a great feeling. I may have just found my motivation for the next week.

Mia in MI