It's Not Your Job To Make Others Happy

I like this message that came in email this morning:

t is not your role to make others happy; it is your role to keep yourself in balance. When you pay attention to how you feel and practice self-empowering thoughts that align with who-you-really-are, you will offer an example of thriving that will be of tremendous value to those who have the benefit of observing you.

You cannot get poor enough to help poor people thrive or sick enough to help sick people get well or angry enough to help angry people be at peace. You only ever uplift from your position of strength and clarity and alignment.

--Keep yourself happy and thinking good empowering thoughts. That's your only job.

Space Aliens in my Back Yard

Last night before we went to bed, I think space aliens came down and zapped a strange flower into the dirt in my back yard. I've never seen anything like it, and it came up overnight. Just this one flower. It has no petals, just this white circular thing with long legs sticking out of it with a green shoot coming up through the center.

Doesn't look like any mushroom or toadstool I've ever seen.

I think it may get up and walk away soon.

Anyone have any idea what it might be?

1915 War Protest Song

If you think the business of war protesting started with the Vietnam War you'd be wrong. Here is a song made popular in the era of 1915 to 1918 during WWI. The sentiment is that world differences should be handled through arbitration between countries, not by war.

Today we have Obama wanting to negotiate with other countries, and McCain wanting only military action and no arbitration and negotiation. Yet I think that if women ran the world, or at least MOTHERS ran the world, there would be no wars.

Differences would be settled through diplomacy, negotiation and arbitration. Just the way we teach our children to settle disagreements.

No decent mother would ever tell her child to get a gun and go off and shoot the person causing her child a problem.

Listen to the song below "I Didn't Raise My Son To Be a Soldier."
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Old Favorites on TV

This summer my 16 year old daughter has discovered I Love Lucy reruns on tv. She absolutely loves it.

Today she says, Mom come here. And she starts explaining what Lucy is up to. And she says, "Ooooh, Girl...that Lucy gets herself into a lot of trouble. Ricky better get rid of her!

Actually, Danielle, I think she eventually got rid of HIM.

She doesn't see the show as funny, just dramatic. Like a soap opera...

Think they won't remember what you did for them?

Sometimes with kids you really wonder if you have had any effect on them. Watch this video. You probably won't get as much of a proof from your kid, but, if this can happen, then...

...surely our input with a kid matters....

Where have the bees and butterflies gone?

My back yard is filled with wildflowers. But one thing is missing this year.

There are NO bees buzzing around those flowers, and there are so few butterflies that I rarely see one out there anymore. Last summer they were abundant. I think the powers that be are not telling the country the truth about colony collapse disorder.

For some reason (some folks claim increased cell phone usage that is interfering with the bees' homing abilities. Others say it is an unknown mite.) bee colonies are disappearing at an alarming rate. Until this summer, I thought it was hype, but now I see that it is true.

(Tests have shown that if you place a cell phone next to a bee hive, the bees won't come back.)

What does that mean to life on earth? Albert Einstein said that if all the bees disappeared we'd have only 4 years of life left on earth. Think about it. No pollination, no vegetables of fruit. No grass equals no meat or fowl. Now maybe there might still be fish, I don't know. But enough to feed the world? I doubt it.

Estimates are that 60% of the western USA's bee colonies have disappeared, and that 70% of the eastern USA's bee colonies have vanished. I think we just might be in trouble.

QUESTION FOR READERS: Have you seen many bees this summer?

Caitlyn's Ruptured Eyeball

At dinner time I got a phone call from a local hospital asking permission to do surgery on my 24 year old daughter Caitlyn who lives in a group home south of here. She has Down Syndrome and has been living in a group home for several years.

This is a profoundly MR AA kid who is also extremely self abusive. The lady on the phone wanted my permission to have surgery done on Caitie tomorrow AM. I asked "For what?"

She says, well she has a ruptured eyeball. Huh? And the group home never called me? And how the h*ll did THAT happen?

I said of course I'd give my permission. Then I called her support coordinator who also hadn't been notified by the group home.

They say that she had been rubbing her eye lately. Monday AM she got up and her pupil looked gray, but they sent her to the workshop anyway. The workshop got worried and called them and they finally took her to the eye MD, who says he's pretty sure that she has a ruptured eyeball. He is going to operate in the morning.

So I'll go down there in the AM to sign the permissions...Why do the lives of kids whose situations are already sad have to hurt as well?

Far Away Family

That's our second child, Adam (35) on the left with his two beautiful sons, Lucas( three months) and Liam (three years). Aren't those kids gorgeous? Sandy, their mom, isn't in the photo because she is the one taking it. But you can trust me when I say that she is gorgeous, too.

Isn't this what we all want for our kids? A good job, a loving spouse and wonderful children. You make me very proud, Adam.

Sadly they all live more than 1000 miles away. I haven't seen Liam since he was 3 months old, or seen Lucas at all. That's why all the pix Sandy and Adam sent me are so special.

Love you guys!

A fish story of another kind

For lack of anything interesting at all happening at home I thought I'd share an email I got today from a friend.

DH and I are voracious readers-something that we did NOT pass on to our children for some reason. Not one of them takes time to read.

Sometimes I think I was put on this earth to learn as much as I possibly could. So powerful is that yearning to know MORE in me. So here is that email:


Never Argue with a Woman

One morning the husband returns after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap.

Although not familiar with the lake, the wife decides to take the boat out. She motors out a short distance, anchors, and reads her book.

Along comes a Game Warden in his boat. He pulls up alongside the woman and says, 'Good morning, Ma'am. What are you doing?'

'Reading a book,' she replies, (thinking, 'Isn't that obvious?')

'You're in a Restricted Fishing Area,' he informs her.

'I'm sorry, officer, but I'm not fishing. I'm reading'

'Yes, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start a any moment. I'll have to take you in and write you up.'

'For reading a book,' she replies,

'You're in a Restricted Fishing Area,' he informs her again.

'If you do that, I'll have to charge you with sexual assault,' says the woman.

'But I haven't even touched you,' says the game warden.

'That's true, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment.'

'Have a nice day ma'am,' he said, and he left.

MORAL: Never argue with a woman who reads. It's likely she can also think.

This made me smile - and feel better

The daily email from Neale Donald Walsch this morning made me smile, and relax, like so many of his messages do:
>>

On this day of your life, Dusty, I believe God wants you to know...

.....that disappointment is your thought that God doesn't

know what God is doing.

That, of course, is impossible. So try to not be

disappointed in anything. Know that life is showing up

perfectly in every moment.

Today's disappointment could be tomorrow's springboard

to all that you've ever wanted. In fact, it probably is.

You will not have to think very hard to know exactly

why you received this message today...<<

Subscribe to these insightful daily messages at www.nealdonaldwalsch.com

Down Syndrome Lothario

Yesterday my husband and I took Jeremy to the shrink for the first time. His behavior over the three weeks between real school and summer school made us face the facts. He needed to be back on meds.

There should have been a security camera in the waiting room. He displayed all his ADHD symptoms quite well, except, of course, for the breaking windows, putting holes in the wall, stealing things and taunting his siblings. He was all over the place. Luckily for most of that time we were to only occupants of the room.

Then a young couple came in and sat opposite us and sat reading a magazine together. Jeremy, of course, goes over to them and puts out his hand to the girl and says, "Hi, I'm Jeremy."

She says hello and then Jeremy says "you're cute" and then stands there winking his eye about ten times. I guess that's supposed to be a big attraction factor.

The he comes back and sits down and tells the young man that he's sending him home. Then he tells the girl to meet him at ten o'clock. Actually, he says, "Girlfriend, meet me at 10 o'clock."

He didn't tell her he was going to marry her, like he normally does with pretty girls, but he did kiss her hand. The young couple took it all with good sport. The kid can crack me up.

The shrink, however, is a medicaid flunky shrink. Have you noticed that the psychiatrists that take medicaid are nothing more than pill pushers? This guy talked to me for a while without Jeremy, then brought the kid in and talked to him and prescribed two meds. One of which is a controlled substance. which means two things: 1. medicaid will fight paying for it and 2. we'll have to make the trek into town each month to pick up am RX form, because there are never any refills on these drugs.

It's probably going to take months before we can get him approved for this one drug, and then every couple months they will stop paying for it, and we'll have to fight for it again. I tried to talk him into Strattera, which worked OK for him years ago, AND isn't a controlled substance. Yes we'd stil have to fight medicaid to get it, but at least there can be refills. But, no...this new drug will supposedly work much better than Strattera.

I think all medicaid shrinks get a kickback from the drug companies when they prescribe a new drug. That's all these guys do. Kid walks in, parent says ADHD, he says to himself, "Which ADHD drug did the pretty drug rep in the gray suit, high heels, and black suitcase bring to his attention yesterday?"

There's no real concern for the child. It's like a revolving door. Kid in with ADHD, Kid out with the first drug that comes to mind. NEXT!

Actually I think the government could save money on their medicaid patients with a simple vending machine. You punch in your kid's medicaid number, select from a variety of possible mental conditions that you suspect your child has and press a button and out comes your script. That's all the medicaid shrink does anyway. Let's eliminate the middle man.

We had an excellent shrink lady for ab out a year. She actually spent a LOT of time discussing Will's problems and very carefully made an RX plan for him that actually works pretty well. Not just the top drug being newly sold right now, but the tried and true meds that she knew would fit Will's case. She was wonderful, and she really cared.

She stopped taking medicaid when they never paid her. I miss her,

My Beautiful UnGarden

I'm not a gardener like Cindy or Megamom. At 61, I just don't want to go back to playing in the dirt like I did when I was younger. Sure I'd love the fresh veggies...well, maybe next year...Naaah.

I guess what you could say is that I do natural gardening. Natural flower gardening that is.

This photo is of the west end of our back yard. I allowed the Wedelia to take over there, not allowing my husband to mow it down. I did allow him to mow a path around that edges so I can walk the dog in my "Garden."

Wedelia is also known as "creeping daisy, and most folks here try hard to get rid of it, but it is just so marvelously beautiful when it covers an entire meadow (we don't really have meadows here, but this will do.)

How can anyone walk through this part of our huge back yard and not feel happy? It brings me peace. It takes over a yard real fast, but I'm hoping by next time this year the entire backyard is full of the tiny little bright yellow daisies. I even picked some of the flowers and threw them into what should be a flower bed in front of the wheelchair ramp in hope, no, knowing full well, that it will take over and next year I'll have a pretty yellow flower bed out front.

I just realized tonight that the whole wedelia thing is sort of a symbol of my whole life. I find beauty in the way natural flowers spread out over my little peace of heaven. Just the way I've found beauty in the 21 kids we've raised or are still raising. They aren't the healthy white infants that most people want to adopt. But they are truly more beautiful because of how they were born. I love them just the way they are, just like my creeping daisies.

And like the wedelia, we let our family keep growing and spreading. No mowing or pruning-like those families we meet who always say, "I don't know how you do it. I only have two and they drive me crazy."

And this human garden has given me much more than green peppers and tomatoes. Thank you, God, for both my natural gardens.