Day 2 of It Works! Greens.....

     When I worked at ACMoore last year, one of my co workers would bring in this green drink she made for herself that looked like seaweed. She always kept trying to make me taste it and it just totally grossed me out. It was her own blend of vegetables and fruit and I am sure it was good for her, but not appealing at all-
just smelling it made me gag.

   Fast forward to a few weeks ago. My friend in Florida was very sick for awhile. I had no idea just how bad she was until a post from her on facebook revealed she was living one day at a time bed bound.
   She posted a video of herself up and about, raking leaves and doing great after drinking this product called (of course, what else) Greens.
   Needless to say I had flashbacks of ACMoore break room and having gross green stuff put in my face and hearing "try it....just take a taste....it's good for you.......". Nope---good for you but not for me!

  I've always been the kid who sleeps till noon, up till 2 am and walks around all day with no energy.
59 1/2 years later, I'm now the old lady who sleeps till noon, up till 2 am and walks around all day with no energy. I have a list of to do's all over the house, but never seem to get enough strength to get up and do any of them.
  And then my friend in Florida keeps posting about all her renewed energy because of this drink. So I give in and send for it. Yep, it's green alright. I mix a batch up with pineapple, orange juice. Yep, it's still green!
So to hide the color, I put it in a bottle that has a label on it so I can't see the color. Took it to work the next day and drank some. Yuck! Tasted green. Couldn't get it down. Now I trust my friend, if she says this drink gave her enough energy to get out of bed and rake leaves than I know it must have something good in it, so I went home and mixed more juice in with it. Instead of an 8 ounce glass with 2 scoops I poured a 16 ounce glass of juice with 2 scoops.

  And here I sit drinking my 16 ounce of green stuff for the second day.  My co worker would be so proud of me!  I'll have to stop in ACMoore and tell her what I've done.
No energy yet, but it's only been 2 days..............I'll check back in and keep you posted. Who knows I just might get out and rake some leaves myself soon!


 

Mosquito Truck

I just read in our local newspaper that mosquitos in our area have been testing positive for West Nile Virus and that our township is going to spray our area to control the insect.

What a memory that brought back!
When I was growing up, we had a summer house in Ocean Gate, NJ. This was about 1 1/2 hours from our home in Linden. My mom would pack us up the week after school ended and we would stay there most of the time until the week before school started.

On summer nights us kids would wait for the mosquito truck to come down our street. Ignoring the adults who told us not to, we would run in the cloud of spray behind the truck as it slowly made it's way in front of our house.

Reading that article today brought me back 40 years ago to those days. If I try hard enough, I can almost smell that cloud again, and I can see us running around in it. Most likely it was not a great thing for us to breathe into our lungs, but all these years later, I don't have any reason to believe it hurt us.
Unlike the ice cream truck, I run for the freezer everytime a bell rings........now that is another story.

Did you ever try to give a bull a bath?

That's exactly what I felt like I was trying to do tonite. We have 2 dogs: Binky who is a 4 yr old English/American Bulldog mix & Trixie who is an 8 month old Black Lab/bulldog mix.

Trixie has been getting a bath in our tub since we got her at 8 weeks old. Binky, however hasn't. I never thought of it. We just took him to the vet and they did it for us.But as time went on (we got Binky at 6 weeks old), he got bigger and bigger and he is very hyper, so taking him anywhere began to be too much of a hassle.

Trips to the vet are fun for him~ horror for us. He thinks he is still a puppy and wants to play, jump, run and lick everyone and anything possible. I know, our fault for not training him right away. (I kick myself every time I think how dumb that was!)

My daughter,Megan, works at a pet store. They have a 'do it yourself' dog wash. Ummmm...I wonder....So we loaded Binky in the car, but of course, we couldn't leave Trixie home alone (she has never been alone before) so in goes Trixie as well.

Driving with 2 dogs breathing down my neck wasn't bad enough, but the windows are all fogged up from the heavy breathing..(and, no , there wasn't anyone making out in my back seat!) Binky can open the power windows by stepping on the button so I have to keep windows locked.

OK. 5 minute drive to pet store. My daughter is there. My husband gets out first to scope the place and see if there are too many customers and if the dog wash area was clear. Slowly open the car door and hand the leash to my husband, Megan comes and is standing by the stores automatic doors, Dogs are dragging my husband to Megan, I am trying to catch up.

They are in the dog wash area by the time I get in the store. Binky was not having it. No way was he walking up the gang plank and getting into that tub. My husband breaks his back trying to pick him up and get him over the bin. Binky is holding onto the side of the tub with both paws. Now Trixie is upset and trying to get to Binky. I am holding Binky with all my might as my husband gets the water going.

Scrub, wash, scrub, wash.........sure wish someone would do that for me sometime! Binky begs to have his back scratched at home.........welllllll we are scratching.........yoo hoo...........relax and enjoy Bink!!

I take Trixie for a walk around the store and Megan helps my husband. Me & Trix cruise up and down the aisles. We stop at the back of an aisle to talk to a customer and out of the corner of my eye.......couldn't be........yep.....brown butt in motion.......Binky has escaped the dog wash!!!!!

Thank God he spots Trixie. He comes running over to us. My husband is right behind and nabs him. Still wet we drag him and Trixie back out to the car. Now I have to deal with the fogged windows AND the smell of wet dog in the car. A 5 minute drive was accomplished in 3. I was so glad to open the car door and get some air.

I learned my lesson.........pay the vet or pay for obedience school.......first thing Monday morning I will call them both!

The good ole days

Went to the movies Sat. nite. It has been a long time since I did that,
but it was my daughter's birthday so I joined "the girls" and we went.

Number One: I hate sitting in those chairs and having my shoes stick to the floor.
I am afraid to put my arm on the arm rest for fear of catching something and the chairs are very
stiff and uncomfortable.

Number Two: The price of the ticket and snacks is crazy! We went once and paid $10.00 for a drink and a soda!!! My kids suggested we stop at the Dollar Store this time and stock up putting our goodies
in my daughter's handbag, (which, by the way, was beautiful since it came from a wonderful website called It's A Woman's Bag which can be found by clicking on this link: http://www.itsawomansbag.com and who are now having
a summer sale ... )

Sorry, got alittle side tracked....

Now, where was I? Oh, the snacks. I didn't think it was a good idea to hide Twix bars, Hershey kisses, Snickers, Sweedish Fish, Chips, Dip, Crackers and Cheese, Slim Jims, Coke, Water, Iced Tea, and Dr. Pepper in a handbag and sneaking into the movies. My kids jumped on that one:
they do this all the time, the people at the cinema expect us to do that, nobody cares, we could do this or pay $226 buying snacks at the snack bar in the movies. The last one got me so after loading up my daughter's bag, we went through the doors hoping the secret cameras that beep when you bring in unauthorized food wouldn't catch us.

Number Three: I miss the Drive-in movies. They were the best. Summer nites, windows down except the one that had the speaker coz you had to roll up the window until the speaker held tight.

That is unless you pulled up to a speaker that didn't work. In that case you cursed as you pulled out from that spot and drove around to find another empty speaker and by now the movie was starting and you miss the beginning. Now you really are cursing.

But, you could bring anything you wanted to snack on -it was your car- heck you could even barbecue if you wanted to! Sometimes we would lay a blanket out on the hood of the car and lay there to watch the movie. And you paid by carload not each person so it was very affordable.

Well, we go into this cinema and we find it was almost empty. Maybe 15 people tops so finding a seat was a piece of cake.

Now to the movie. Sherlock Holmes. At first we were bored. The british accents were very thick and the dialogue was very fast. My kids suggested we leave that one and sneak into another one since this cinema had 6 movies showing at
the same time.

I was shocked! I told them they dragged me here and their feet were going to stick to that floor (literally) until the movie was over! Hiding illegal snacks is one thing-- getting caught climbing over the border is criminal!

After awhile, we got used to the accent and the story was interesting. Mystery is my thing so I was happy to keep watching. There was alot of fighting which I didn't care for. I mean really. How many times can someone get knocked down, crashed over the head, stabbed, thrown and kicked without calling
for 911?

In spite of all that nonsense, I recommend the movie to anyone who cares to venture out to a cinema.

As for us old timers--we can catch it on dvd. We can even wait till summer, hook up our portable dvd on the picnic bench , lay on a blanket on the hood of our car, and pig out on hamburgers and hot dogs from the grill and pretend we are in another place, another time....

Ahhh the good ole days!

I need to get some Curves

I had some of my family over for dinner last nite. My daughter is always taking pictures (usually of herself),and she was at it again as we sat around the table playing rummy. I hate to have pictures taken of me so I told her to take a picture of me without me knowing it so I could use it as my profile picture on all my sites. But not a side pic, and not from the head down, and not my back side, and if you take a profile I will kill you.....

Well, couldn't help it, I kept posing. Funny face, sad face, suprised face, SEXY face (well I tried but it was hard with everyone laughing at me!) Before I told her to take a pic, I wasn't really paying much attention to everyone. AFTER I told her to take a pic, everyone was paying attention to me. Now how can I get a spontanous pose with that happening?

My son grabbed the camera after me and my daughters kept goofing around and not playing our cards. He was gonna get the pic. He's "the man". OK, sure..could somebody just get a friggin picture of me!!!!!!!!!!???

I posed with the dogs, the grandkids, the apple pie. Just get a friggin picture of me!!!!!!!!!!??? I looked up and over and down trying to be suprised, trying to be happy, trying to be nothing at all....

At the end of the night, we did a review of all the pictures we took. Pics 1,3 &5- delete. Pics 8 through12- delete. One by one I wanted them deleted, my kids wanted to paste them on their facebook & myspace pages! My son said he would make it into a video and put me on youtube!

Well, I chased them all over the house until my dogs were going nuts and we had to stop before someone got hurt. I had news for them, someone was gonna get hurt if ALL those pics weren't deleted tonite!

I won of course, because I'm the MOM. But now I started thinking. I am going to be 55 in June (oh man, did I just type that?) sigh...and after 5 kids, I sure am starting to look alot like my mom now. Mind you, her mom was from Italy and life centered on food...so I was doomed to get alittle plump (oh man, did I just type that?).

That's it. Tomorrow I am going down to Curves and take advantage of their try a week for free deals.I'll show those kids.........next pictures will be of me laying on the beach in my string bikini.......and I won't care what part of me you are photographing...coz you will just have to make your way around the paparazzi........

One of the saddest days of my life

People say they can't imagine what it is like to lose a child. I can imagine because I feared that very thing for years when my child used drugs as a teen.

But in my church, there was a man who had compassion and took a liking to my son. He had two sons of his own and just pulled my son in as well.All through a few years of Royal Rangers, then into Youth Group , my son was a handful of rebellion. This man gave his time & energy to my son, who was polite, even liked the guy, but he paid no mind to making different choices.

If we said blue, he said black, if we said yes, he said no. No matter what circumstance came up, if there was trouble, my son was involved. And the worst part was everyone knew it. It never changed the love this man had for my son.

I would constantly pray for God's protection on my son's life and many times he came through accidents that should have killed him. But God kept him safe. He had to pay the consequences for his wrong actions, but he never lost his life. God was faithful to a mother's prayer.

And then tonight. I went back to that church I had brought my kids up in. In some ways it felt like 'going home' . I was greeted by many faces from long ago who recognized me. But standing up front was the most familiar face. That of the man who helped my son so many years ago. Next to him lay the casket of his son who overdosed on drugs and died.

How do I express my sorrow? How do I tell you that I know how you feel and but for God's grace, I could be in your shoes right now?

I was next in line, but I couldn't speak when it was my turn to greet him. I didn't need any words. He could read in my eyes everything that I wanted to say but couldn't express. He knew and without any words spoken to him, he whispered to me. "It means alot that you came, how's your son?"

There are some people you meet and are barely touched by their presence, but then there are those who's presence bring sunshine in the darkest of pain, even when the pain is their own.

I left the service with sunshine in my heart, because of one man, whose love reached out once again to me and my son . I am truly blessed.