I am so grossed out right now. You won't like what I am about to share, but please forgive me, I must. Okay. You know how I get a lot health & fitness assignments? I am constantly researching different diets and diet products. Admittedly, I am an addict. I collected diet and nutrition data before I ever thought of writing about it.  Today I was looking up Oxyelite Pro reviews and somehow "tapeworm diet" came up in the results. The information was not at all related to Oxyelite Pro and the research I was doing, but I had had to click it. I couldn't move my eyes away from the information, deadlines be damned. By the time I was done reading, I was physically sick. Ready to earl. Now it's your turn.

Did you know that there is a form of weightloss called the tapeworm diet? Where a tapeworm pill is swallowed and a tapeworm comes to life during digestion and immediately starts eating as it makes its way through the digestive tract?  It does its thing for a while then is elimated naturally from the body in the form of a long flat LIVING worm in your toilet. That's the perfect scenario anyway, and that even has psychological effects on people, the whole giving birth to a worm thing. But I guess there are risks involved and side effects and stuff. And oh my God! Who would do this?

I admit to doing unhealthy things and not taking good care of my body sometimes in the name of getting skinny. I'm a bulimia survivor. I'm starting the Master Cleanse diet TOMORROW for goodness sake. I am in touch with the world extreme dieting. But this just goes too far for me. Please tell me you feel the same way. 

 

 

 I am going to sound negative for a minute, but I really am feeling optimistic today so bare with me for a minute, I'm headed somewhere with this... Lately I am feeling overwhelmed and worthless. It seems like nothing I do flourishes like it should. I can't seem to accomplish anything, and my house goes in extremes from spa like tranquility to tornado like rubble. My mind is constantly churning out thoughts of what's late, what I have failed, what I'm about to lose, and that there is no hope. The reason I know I'm not really pessimistic at the core is because every once in awhile a positive idea shoots out of nowhere with such force. Something like, "What about this...?" "Try it this way!" "Here's a good idea..." and suddenly I have direction again. 

I have realized that even though I put a lot of thought into quitting real estate and focusing 100% on freelance, I didn't put a lot of thought into HOW to do it. How to deal with distractions and be flexible enough to bend with life. I didn't build a calendar or schedule and I didn't devise a plan to organize assignments and pursuing new freelance work. I had addressed all these things in my mind and acknowledged that success was achieveable, but I didn't lay out a good plan. I'm working on that and will share it another time.

Most importantly, I didn't plan enough financially. I didn't think I had to. Near the end of my real estate career I went for months at a time without a paycheck. It is common for deals to fall apart and for there to be delays. That's why it is important to work with several clients at a time and have multiple deals in the works. I couldn't do that, though. My kids were too young and with all the doctors appointments, therapy, homework hardship, and other special needs - I found that the only way I could juggle a number of deals at a time to make up for the ones that die, I had to neglect my family. First it was just rescheduling "one" therapy appointment. Skipping homework "just this once" because a client needed me that night. But then showing up late to pick the kids up from school became a habit, and so on. So - considering the stress of the job and the fact that I'd go months without a paycheck anyway, it seemed like very little risk to start a new career from square one. The potential to make lots of money is at my fingertips. Unfortunately, the TIME to access that work isn't always there. Therein lies the rub.

Over the last few years I had already learned to trim the fat fom my spending. My cosmetics & hair products no longer come from  Macy's but the Kroger clearance bin. My linens come from Target not Peacock Alley. I color my own hair and mani/pedis are a thing of tha past. Basically I just stopped buying anything and sold everything I could. Now where's this freedom I'm supposed to be feeling? The extra money I should have uncovered? I haven't made it yet, damnit. Because I continue to give my time away for free. 

I want to help you if someone needs me. I understand that it appears I am the only person available that can help because I am home, my own boss, setting my own hours. But I'm still at work. I still have a boss. I actually feel guilty not dropping my workload and helping whoever needs me because technically, I can.  But even though I'm not likely to fire myself, when I don't show up - I don't get paid. Just like everybody else but worse - no holidays, no sick days, no personal days. Work or don't get paid, it's that simple.  While I'm helping someone put out their fires, I'm creating my own and there's no one to cover me. Nothing you can do to put out my fires. Unless you want to write some articles or take my whole family away for an afternoon so I can make up the work time I lost. No? I didn't think so. 

The biggest error I made in planning my work at home career was in not designing and respecting a strict schedule and setting boundaries for friends, family, and any other entity that calls during those hours. I'm really working on that now and it's tough. I feel like a complete bitch NOT answering the phone and turning people down. But I am at work and I need to respect my company, otherwise how can anyone else?

So I started really working on this over the weekend and am actually having fun reviewing my budget, getting organized and being bossy with myself. I've always been a good employee and risen quickly at my jobs and it just occurred to me that I am not giving my SELF the respect as a boss that I have given other bosses, and I am not respecting myself as an employee the way I demanded it out of my other bosses. WOW! LIGHTBULB MOMENT! 

Like I said, I am feeling very optimistic and motivated. And I can't wait to experience all the goodness that comes from being more organized and dedicated. I'll share more as time goes on but right now I have to get my boss a cup of tea.  

 

I know there are statistics out there somewhere that compare illness and death by year. I just don't know where to find them. And I'm sure I would already know the answer. I have remarked frequently about the increasing numbers of people getting serious illnesses and/or dying this year. I'm 42 now so I'm getting to that age where my friends would start losing their parents and people my own age would start seeing age related health issues. But the losses I am seeing don't really fit those patterns. I have a theory that the damage done unto us by stress over the last few years is finally starting to show. Stress is dangerous and has adverse affects on even the healthiest people.  

I was painfully reminded of the higher than usual number of sick people last week when we had to get my father in Law to the hospital for complications related to his cancer. The ambulance driver told us that the hospital where he had been getting his treatment was almost at capacity and that there might not be any beds available with a patient monitor  on them. He asked us for a plan B location in case they wouldn't let him in. By the time they got to the hospital, there were not accepting any patients. When they got to plan B, that hospital was full too and Father In Law had to spend the night in the hall way until a bed was found for him. 

That is crazy to me. I, myself, had to spend the night in a supply closet at the hospital - right next to the nurse's station - in February when I suffered a kidney stone attack and they had no rooms for me. But that was the night of Snowmageddon and for some reason I think that such occasions tend to bring out an abundance of weirdness so I am not sure if that applies here.  

The way I see it, our "recession" has produced stages of suffering. Personal foreclosure, bankruptcy, financial struggles were followed by a rush of beloved small and family businesses closing their doors. Now we're seeing an abundance of illness and unexpected deaths. I am really looking forward to seeing some phases of happiness and good fortune sweeping the country. 

 

 

My car said it was 80 degrees today. Can that be right? I don't want to break my spell of awesome producticity long enough to check in with The Weather Channel so I am just going to allow for an extra 5 hot dash degrees and believe it was 75 out. Wow! The breeze feels so nice and is making the loveliest music with my wind chines. I honestly can't tell you when was the last time I felt this good. I didn't even have any caffeine today. Unless you llive some place that experiences cold, hard, bitter winters, you can't understand our appreciation of Spring and we we can transform from one person to another overnight, in the presence of warmth and blooming foliage.

In general I experience a decrease in appetite in the warm weather months. The exception being the first few weeks when I crave picnic food and soda pop. Chips and pasta salad. Fried bologna sandwiches and sweet tea.

As a younger person there wasn't much harm in 3 weeks of splurging. As I've gotten older, though, all that food makes me tired and I am too busy to slow down for a food nap. I also have kids now. Teenage ones with ADHD. We're trying to figure out how to remove pimples and improve focus and impulse control. Taking 3 weeks off that focus to indulge in grape soda and Mountain Dew to go with that "picnic food" doesn't work in our favor either.

Adding to the challenge is the fact that I got a new grill for Mother's Day, and it's screaming to me
Cheeseburgers and Ccoke Zero" from the pation.

Thanks to the 75 degrees and sunshine, though, the winter haze has cleared from my brain and I realized that the grill is going to be our savior for the next few weeks and beyond. Grilling is so healthy and I've een researching new delicious recipes that quence our hunger for fresh summer time food and manage to be healthy at the same time. I will share some of them with you in the days and weeks to come.  

I get how spam works. You're looking for people to take interest in your product. It probably works a good enough amuont of the time or it wouldn't be a continued practice. But here's what I want to know - why isn't there more attention paid to the demographic? For instance, why am I receiving emails for free online dating sites and viagara distributors? I can delete it easy enough, but wouldn't your sales campaign be more efficient and cost effective if you sorted by at least the most basic criteria of man/woman married/single? Maybe we wouldn't hate you so much Spammers and insist on finding ways of blocking you if you would solicit us with stuff that was actually appealing. 

There have been many times I have taken the time to appreciate the ane free blessing of mature skin. A couple of wrinkles and dry patches are a fine trade to me! They can't touch the agony of acne in middle school! But now my kids are suffering and I'm experiencing it all over again. As if middle school and all the freaky changes inside your body aren't enough - we have to look freaky too. 

My daughter is only 11 and she has breakouts worse than I ever had. They started for her at 9.  It's even on her back now which is a big concern because summer is almost here and the convenience of sweatshirts and turtle necks is not going to be so convenient anymore. I just learned there are acne pills but my kids are already taking pills for ADHD - and I don't want to get in the habit of a pill to fix everything, when there may be more natural solutions if we weren't so lazy. So for now we are using Stridex pads per her doctor's recommendation and drinking lots of water. If that doesn't work we'll try a topical prescription. And if we're not cleared up by July, we will try the pills.

How do you feel about a pill for everything that ails our kids? 

For the last couple of weeks the skin around my eyes really burns when I am washing my face. Two nights ago before bed I noticed I had these weird smooth red patches under my eyes. Yesterday morning it appeared as if a hundred tiny folds have appeared over night under each eye. It reminds me of a wind burn or how it feels when you've been crying a lot. But that's not the case. The more thought I put into it I realized I haven't been using an good moisturizers or eye gel lately. 

For the last 6 months or so I have been sharing my daughters ProActive because she doesn't go through the supply quickly enough before the next shipment comes so it's cost effective and I do like the results for keeping my skin clean. But it's not necessarily for maturing skin, as far as wrinkles and elasticity goes.  So I started researching some night creams and advanced wrinkle creams and holy MOLY! There's some expensive stuff out there. I found something called skincell vial #29a that costs $100 per bottle. Yikes! Although, after I thought about it for a bit, if I had the money right now I'd probably buy it. That skin around our eyes is so thin and vulnerable - it's important to protect it. 

Buuut since I don't have the money right now I dug through my skin care buckets and found a heavy, greasy, water based lotion. I slathered my whole face and neck in it and this morning the swelling has already gone down in my eyes and the burning is gone. 

Thank goodness cus I still ain't ready for puffy wrinkly eyes.  

I live just outside Flint, Mi. There's crime here. Even in my nice little neighborhood where kids freely roam and we walk our dogs at night - our cars have all been broken into and we sometimes find evidence of an element nearby that reminds us to lock up when we're not home. We have talked about a security system once or twice, but just haven't made the move. 

We don't go on a lot of vacations but we spent a lot of long weekends up north during the summer. Often we wonder what's happening at home. I love the idea of these new smart home systems that put you in touch with your house while you're away.

In addition to the basic alarm features of protecting your house from bad guys, the smart systems alert you of temperature changes, and water or fire presence. You can set certain lights, appliances, etc. to go on and off at certain times, or you can control them remotely. I think my favorite thing is being able to control the locks so that you can allow people access to the house (house keeper, family members, kids, etc.) without passing your house key around.

I don't know anyone who has one of these systems, do you? I'd like to hear about it from someone who has used it.  

You know what's a good thing about being broke? You're not likely to become a victim of identity theft or have the need for identity theft protection. Frankly, if someone wants my identity they can have it. I feel like I have made so many mistakes in the last few years and I'm growing tired of getting myself in trouble. Let someone else get me in trouble for a while.Several years back, though, my husband had to deal with a bill collector trying to get money from him that he didn't owe. It was nearly impossible to clean up.

My husband always has "stuff" to sell. Bikes, motorcyles, cars, etc. Stuff he used and wants to sell so he can get an upgrade. He sells his work car every few years and gets a new one because of the high mileage he drives. This particular time he sold the car to a friend of his dad's. He hand wrote a receipt but didn't keep a copy for himself. End of story - at least he thought.

A year or so later he started getting collection notices from a towing company for $500 or something crazy, I can't remember exactly. Harrassing phone calls & letters, though. We told the company there was a misunderstanding. As it turned out, the guy he sold the car to, that friend of his Dad's, had given the car to his son. The son had abandoned it somewhere and the towing company picked it up and impounded it. The Guy had never registered it in his name, so it was still in my husband's name. So the towing company was trying to collect two year's worth of impound charges from HIM.

Of course the guy wouldn't cooperate so we had to get a lawyer who somehow made it go away after months of fighting it. The scary thing was that for over a year this thing was on my husband's credit report and there was nothing he could do about it.

So I guess if you're someone besides me it's probably a good idea to pay attention to your business and try not to get hijacked. Products like IdentityHawk and Lifelock make it pretty painless to keep an eye on yourself and protect your money and reputation. Those things are more difficult to repair than you might think!