And Seriously, is that so bad?

Life isn’t about setting a goal and being so laser focused on it that you never stray from the Path.

I don’t mind ending up anywhere, anywhere might be more interesting than either here or there.

I was just reading about a stay at home Mom who had become very successful in her business, but she is giving it all up

for the family  that she stayed at home for in the first place! See, she realized that she just never got to spend any real quality

time with her husband or her kids so for her  that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow  just doesn’t shine as brightly

as the two bundles of joy she had given birth to.

I’m not saying that you should give up on your dreams and aspirations, oh I would never even suggest such a thing!

What I am saying is that the road is your life.  You’ve  heard it before,  it’s the journey not the destination.

So enough about you, lets talk about me…

As a child, I thought I would be a doctor when I grew up.

As a teenager I thought I would be a writer when I grew up.

As a twentysomething single mother of two I thought I’d do something with computers when I grew up.

As a thirtysomething wife and mother of three I finally got my Bachelors and planned to be paid more than my age when I grew up.

In my early 40’s I found myself a musician’s wife and thought that I’d just travel a lot and say “I’m with the band” when I grew up .

In my late 40’s I thought I would become the next MLM success story when I grew up

And as I prepare to hit that half century mark, I can honestly say - I still don’t know what i want to be when I grow up, but man I have had so much fun and met so many nice people  while I’ve been trying to figure it out.

I can’t wait to see what’s next!

First a little background - I’m a web developer or programmer or whatever they call the people who create the stuff you use every day to get your job done and get on with your life - my official title is “consultant”. My job requires sometimes making a size 6 shoe fit a size 10 foot, what I mean by that is that clients will purchase a piece of software and then expect me to make it do things that it was not intended to do.  And that’s OK, as one of my project managers puts it “That’s why they’re paying us”.  As you can imagine, I sometimes find myself gnawing on the problem of how to get that big foot into that little shoe for days on end - you get the toes to fit and the heel pops out, heels are in but the big toe pokes a hole in the front, you know what I mean.

In addition to my day job, I am a serial entrepreneur who is currently trying to grow her handmade items business. Handmade requires energy and clarity - these hats and bags and capes and shawls just ain’t going to crochet themselves!

Enough about me, let’s talk about what Xyng has done for me (sorta stole that one from Beaches-:). I’ve been working on a project  for the past month, that just seems to be my Waterloo, none of the features have ever been implemented before and everything that could go wrong etc etc.  Yesterday I was found myself so close to the finish line, just one last little issue to tackle and I’d be done. I just knew I could fix it by lunchtime and move on to something else; unfortunately, lunchtime came and went and I was still stuck. I was so frustrated I screamed at my project manager and then - frustrated and embarrassed - I went out to the bathroom and had a little cry. Well of course that didn’t help, by 2:30 I was no closer to a solution and I was falling asleep sitting up!

I hated to take a Xyng so late in the day because of that hours long burst of energy thing,  but felt that I had no choice. By 2:45 the Xyng had kicked in and …holy crap, how did I miss that?!? I found my problem, fixed it, tested it three ways from Sunday and was on my way home by 3:40.

Now this has happened to me before, I take a Xyng, I get a lot of energy and I get stuff done (it really powers up my workouts and turns me into a one-woman house cleaning machine!). But it wasn’t until yesterday that I put two and two together and realized that it wasn’t an anomaly and that  Xyng really does clear the fog out of my brain and helps me to find solutions too!

So there is my little Xyng testimonial, but more than that, it’s just me telling you that if you’ve got things that need doing, you probably ought to give Xyng a try. My hubby the Woodchuck will be happy to send you a free sample, just email him at cni5star@gmail.com and tell him I sent you.

You can learn more about Xyng at www.deniseleeporter.com

You can view my handmade products on ETSY

And you can read about why I didn’t put any links in my post here

Oh Yeah and when I got home I made a shawl and two hats

Strawberry Fields Capelet

This blog dances around the theory that everything you need has been or will be provided for you. So while I was surprised when Mamapedia invited me to the “Get Real About Health” webinar recently, I shouldn’t have been. The webinar was sponsored by the California Milk Advisory Board in celebration of National Dairy Month (which is in June) and centered around two major topics :

1. Eating real (good) food for health , weight loss and pleasure

2. Debunking commonly held myths about dairy

Before I get into the details, let me tell you why this was Kismet for me. I have spent the past couple of years coming to the realization that I don’t want to spend the next 30 years  the same way that I’ve spent the last 30 years, namely dieting and failing (the fail part being where you fall off the wagon for whatever reason and gain all the weight back). I  know that I like food, I  have a husband who is a mahvelous cook and likes to experiment in the kitchen - this sucks when what he has whipped up looks and tastes great but “isn’t on my diet”.   At any rate I decided that:

1. Life is too short to deprive oneself

2. There has to be a way to lose weight and stay healthy when you’d rather be crocheting than exercising

3. Given 1 and 2 I will still lose the weight I want to (in time for  my son’s wedding in July)  and keep it off

That brings us to “Real Food Has Curves: How to get off processed food,lose weight, and love what you eat” the 18th book by food authors  Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarborough. Mark and Bruce pointed out that milk ( which we all tend to avoid don’t we?) and dairy products are “fabulous” real food, which is what you want to incorporate into your diet because when food tastes better we are satisfied much more quickly and for a longer period of time. Furthermore, people who spend more time thinking about and shopping for food, actually weigh less than those of us who find this a mindless/tedious exercise.

“Real Food Has Curves”  presents a simple 7 step program:

STEP 1: Learn The Secrets To Satisfaction -  In this first step you will train your palate to taste your food. One of the reasons we overeat is because we crave satiety, pleasure and taste. The authors recommend that you put your fork down between bites and really enjoy what you have put in your mouth.They discussed the “chewless” society we have become (of course I just inhaled a slice of buttered toast while typing this and will be hungry again in the next 15 minutes or so). Satisfaction also involves eating good real food - for example in my house we only use butter, seriously, it’s a whole different taste game.  Little bit of science from the authors:  Taste is one of the only senses that connects to memory cells - so taste is measured by past experiences and food memories are connected to pleasure centers in brain.  When you begin to eat real food you will find that it has ” layers of flavor”, the more processed the  food is the flatter the taste will be. It is the layers of flavor that help us to feel satisfied, sice “satiety comes from multiple tastes and textures in a dish”.
Test this theory - splurge on real ice cream  or try my my personal favorite a really good apple sliced and combined with slices of  real extra sharp cheddar cheese.

STEP 2- MAKE INFORMED CHOICES
The authors suggest that we are afraid of food  becaus ewe mistakenly believe that it is an  ‘either/ or’ proposition. Real food does not have to be organic veggies and fresh home made tomato sauce; but do “take your glasses to the supermarket” so that you can read labels and compare ingredients, because there is “real” food that is also convenient.

STEP 3 - RELISH WHAT YOU EAT
Why did your last diet fail?  You probably think it’s your fault. Bruce and Mark say that is just not so. Diets fail because we are not motivated by deprivation - we are motivated by pleasure. [imagine that!] They sugggest that we slow down and  focus on our meal, spend more time at the table, and  spend more time shopping and selecting good real food.For example: if you are at the mall and want to have a cookie , then have the cookie but do it right - sit down, relax order a good coffee and the best cookie and savor the tastes and flavors, don’t wolf it down on the way to the next store - eating should be an event. I once worked with a woman who brought her own dishes ,silverware and table linens to the office everyday - she made lunch an occasion.

STEP 4 - DETOX YOUR PALATE FROM USELESS SALT, FATS, AND SUGARS - meaning if you are going to have fats anyway go for olive oil or butter which are much more flavorful than canola or margarine. Use real brown  sugar instead of Sweet and Low or Stevia.  Agave, by the way is real sugar and is recommended.
STEP 5 - TAKE THE LONG VIEW -  Don’t try to change your world, your life, or your kitchen in one fell swoop. Try one new thing a week - a new  way of cooking a vegetable or a new spice,meat or vegetable. I recently discovered turnips which I use in lieu of potatoes.
STEP 6 - UPGRADE YOUR CHOICES - but don’t go over budget trying to afford your upgrades. Use online coupon sites. The California Milk Advisory Board website has a couple of coupons that you may find useful.
Step 7 - TREAT YOURSELF WELL - enjoy real breakfasts and make desserts with real dairy products and real sugar. Eat food that is made of this earth and gives you pleasure.

Finally a few facts about MILK:

1.  Drinking milk does not cause early puberty(excessive weight triggers early puberty). Today’s girls drink less milk than their mothers did , on average girls need 1300mg calcium daily.
2. People tend to misdiagnose themselves with Lactose Intolerance .But it is far less common than believed. Get yourself tested if you think that you may be lactose intolerant. Try eating  yogurt to test tolerance, move on to other forms of dairy but be sure to take with other foods. Eat a little dairy often rather than a lot of dairy less frequently.
3.  Children who drink a lot of milk are not fated to be overweight.
4. Organic milk  and  regular milk are both equally nutritious.
5. Dairy foods are easy natural sources of calcium - you would have to eat 8 cups of raw spinach to get the same amount of calcium in one glass of milk or a cup of yogurt etc.
6. Milk is primary source of Vitamin D in  the American diet - 4 glasses of milk per day(400 IU)  helps prevent some cancers etc.  Get 10-15 minutes of sunlight to allow vitamin D synthesis (more if you are darker, less if you are lighter).

Visit the California Milk Advisory Board to learn more about how real dairy products can help you and your family to be healthier.

This is an excerpt from an eBook  I wrote a few years back, enjoy. It was inspired and informed by James Allen’s “As A Man Thinketh”

You are what you think you are – rich, poor, slovenly, useful, use-less, shrewd, stupid, knowledgeable. However, if you think too hard about it, you may just realize that you have no idea what this means.

If we are what we think we are, then why can’t I think of myself as the person that has Jennifer Anniston’s body, Oprah Winfrey’s money, and a friends list as long as Tila Tequila’s – and make it all reality?

Well actually you can be and have all of that and more, if only you would take the time to manage your thoughts. Everything that you want to see, do, and be is in reality and actuality quite possible through thinking “aright”. Unfortunately, most of us are not masters of our own minds and are content to let our thoughts drift like so much flotsam and jetsam. Were we to harness and control our thoughts, not only would we become self-aware, but we would create an unstoppable success train!

Your Mind is a garden and if you do not cultivate it then someone or something will (and not in a good way, believe me).

This means that if you don’t plant the seeds yourself then you will most likely end up with a garden full of weeds.

Truly successful men and women know this: “Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life. He also reveals, within himself, the laws of thought, and understands, with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought-forces and mind elements operate in the shaping of his character, circumstances, and destiny.”

To control your thoughts means also to not be contrary in your thoughts. Metaphysicians teach us that we must prepare for the thing that we hope for – so we cannot hope for the best of times, all the while preparing for the worst. Nor can we anticipate an avalanche of abundance with one part of our minds, while our fingers Google debt consolidation loan options, or bankruptcy lawyers.

This contrariness causes blockage in the channels we use to turn thoughts into substantive things. You are what you think you are, and in the end, you will get only that which you think you deserve.

In “As a Man Thinketh” we are given three examples of contrariness in thought. The first is a man who lives in poverty and “is extremely anxious that his surroundings and home comforts should be improved, yet all the time he shirks his work, and considers he is justified in trying to deceive his employer on the ground of the insufficiency of his wages. Such a man does not understand the simplest rudiments of those principles which are the basis of true prosperity, and is not only totally unfitted to rise out of his wretchedness, but is actually attracting to himself a still deeper wretchedness by dwelling in, and acting out, indolent, deceptive, and unmanly thoughts.”

The second example is that of a rich man who is eating himself to death and “wants to gratify his taste for rich and unnatural viands and have his health as well. Such a man is totally unfit to have health, because he has not yet learned the first principles of a healthy life.”

Lastly we have a crooked employer who places large profits above the well being of his employees. He is “altogether unfitted for prosperity, and when he finds himself bankrupt, both as regards reputation and riches, he blames circumstances, not knowing that he is the sole author of his condition.”

So we see that “man is the causer (though nearly always unconsciously) of his circumstances, and that, whilst aiming at a good end, he is continually frustrating its accomplishment by encouraging thoughts and desires which cannot possibly harmonize with that end.”

What is a Victim mentality? My dear husband describes this as your inner martyr. That part of you that gets pleasure out of thinking: “Poor me, I will never be pretty enough, skinny enough, smart enough. I’m just a waste of human DNA; someone please put me out of my misery”.

The victim is your excuse for:

• not getting the pretty girl or rich guy

• coming up short on the promotion at work

• not closing that prospect

Just fill in the blanks on what you don’t deserve and why. If things are not going your way, you can just call in the Victim, and shed a few tears over your own ineptitude as you just quit trying to succeed at anything at all.

Just fill in the blanks on what you don’t deserve and why. If things are not going your way, you can just call in the Victim, and shed a few tears over your own ineptitude as you just quit trying to succeed at anything at all.

The Victim in you survives by replaying your inner DVD of errors and missteps in your life thus far. If you want more out of this life you have to quit reliving your past. Learn from your mistakes and move on!

I am going to use celebrities as an example here: I am sure you’ve read in the tabloids about some star that, early on, got everything that they wanted. But their Victim tells them everyday that this is not a life that they deserve; the Victim is judge and jury and causes them to make decisions on a daily basis that are guaranteed to prove this out. Driving drunk, committing suicide at the height of their careers, being publicly promiscuous, the list is endless when it comes to the damage that some celebrities inflict on themselves and the people who care about them.

We get out of this life exactly that which matches our expectations, and if you are expecting the worst you will get the worst. If your inner Victim insists that you don’t deserve any better – well, then you don’t. To gain small victories we must let go of our Victim mentality. Lose the Victim and gain a life of happiness and abundance.

How do you let go of your Victim mentality? Well you have to put different thoughts into the compartments of your mind. Fill those spaces with thoughts of future successes small and large; don’t focus on your lack of funds, instead think about what you are going to do with all that money when it’s just sitting in your bank account; replace the words fat, chunky and overweight with thin, healthy, and svelte. In short, you must spring clean your mind and rearrange the furnishings (and change the locks while you’re at it) so that the Victim becomes a homeless person.

Stay focused on your desires, live in the moment secure in the belief that you deserve to live your best life.

Well what woman doesn’t like a cute bag? So to save one lucky reader the trouble of purchasing too many Mother’s Day gifts, I have decided to give away one or more bags within the next two weeks. Here’s all that you have to do:

1. Visit my Etsy site and use the Share link on the right to Tweet about one of my items - make sure that you include #Niseylee in tweet so that I can search for it

2. If you don’t have a Twitter account, become a fan of my Crochet From The Heart page on Facebook, share one of my pics or items  and leave a comment on this post to let me know that you did.

3. Read and comment on at least one of my blog posts

4. Add a link to this post on your blog (if u have a blog that is)

5. On Saturday April 24th I will choose  someone to send a bag to, I will rinse and repeat on May 1 st, so be sure to participate both weeks!

I haven’t decided which bags to give away yet, but here are pictures of likely candidates (the two red sparkly bags on the top left are included). If you have trouble with any of the tasks please let me know!

I looked in the mirror this morning and noticed that my nose is still broad, my lips are thick, and my skin is still brown (and about to get positively black now that the heat has returned to Georgia); I was thinking about having a nickel for every time I hear someone wishing for the good old days and returning our country to what our forefathers dreamed of , or some such.  I remember the good old days just fine thank you and I like our present days much mo’ better, imperfect as they may be.

I don’t want my kids or my grandkids to be afraid to even drive through certain neighborhoods because they could be mistaken for black people who had come there to start trouble.  When my husband was on tour with El Pus they stayed in some really nice hotels - back in the good old days they would have had to stay at people’s houses or sleep in the car just because they were “colored” .

Back in the old country,  I  lived in a town I lived in a town where bauxite was mined for the Reynolds company. Their executives were all southern whites ( I assume) and they lived on “the hill” where black people could not go unless they were housekeepers, gardeners etc. If a piece of fruit fell on the ground and you picked it up you would be accused of stealing and jailed. When they shopped at the town’s only grocery store, the local “coloreds” were not allowed to shop that day (at least they were nice enough to designate a day for this).  They were OK with us dying in the mines and getting mangled by the equipment though (worker’s comp, disability, pension - all that socialist claptrap, not here man).

When our forefathers wrote the Constitution the certainly weren’t thinking about the rights and freedoms of my husband’s ancestors - neither Cherokee nor African. As a matter of fact, they weren’t thinking about their slaves at all, after all slaves weren’t actually human or anything like that. Giving consideration to slaves would have been like writing provisions into the Constitution for their horses! That would have been Ridiculous, right?

Back in the good old days I most certainly would not have moved TO the South FROM the North. That would have been something like suicide or genocide or some kinda ‘cide.  But don’t get me wrong, the North wasn’t always no crystal stair either. My Mom wanted us to have a house so she moved us to East Flatbush - 3rd Black family in the neighborhood. I heard the word jigaboo more than once, and not in a nice way either (is there a nice way to call someone a jigaboo?) We couldn’t always go play at the neighborhood park, and I remember cowering with Dianne and Cathy in her foyer because Big Rocco and Little Rocco were coming down the street and they would have beat my ass for being Black and beat her and Cathy’s asses for hanging out with ‘niggers’.

What I know is that the world is not now, nor has it ever been, perfect. But it is moving towards perfection every day and in every way. When we try to hold on to the past or roll it back like Walmart rolls back prices, we are actually retarding the progress of the entire world.

So I’m asking you nicely to quit throwing all those prayers out there for a return to “the country of our forefathers”, that is of course unless….OH, I see.

Since I started blogging here on the interwebz, I have struggled with the desire to say what I want, when I want  and still maintain my privacy and some sense of anonymity. Sounds strange I know. However, a good writer has to sometimes set their other half free, otherwise you just become some chick with a marketing blog, right? Right, so this morning I was thinking about what I believe to be true (not what some unknown “they” tells me is true) and good and right; and why it is that I think we the people  have strayed off the reservation so to speak.

I believe that life is more about the journey than it is about the destination and you absolutely have to live in the “NOW”. If you are the one sitting in the backseat impatiently asking “Are we there yet?” then please let me remind you that the only “there” involves a box and a hole in the ground (or ashes in an urn, your choice).  Life is after all, to be lived - that means that you have to experience everything in equal parts whether it’s the high of being in love or the messy events leading to the breakup; your first paycheck with 4 figures before the period or the check wrapped in a pink slip. Today’s lows will be tomorrow’s memories, heck you will probably talk about them with a smile someday.

I believe in Karma - I agree that the game of life is a game of boomerangs and “what you throw out comes back to you star”. Someone called me the other day to explain why they were unable to do something that I desperately needed them to do, their excuse was word -for -word one that I have used frequently in similar situations! The higher your spiritual awareness, the faster those boomerangs come back, so be careful out there and temper your truths with kindness - it’ll soften the blowback:)

I believe that it is done unto you as you believe.  For example, if you believe that the world is a bad place, then your world probably is, or is surely about to become so. If you believe that things are “getting better all the time”, then your conditions will begin to improve and will continue to do so . On the other hand if you are the patron saint of gloom and doom, whining and complaining constantly to anyone who will stand still long enough to hear it - well then you know where that puts you.

I believe that there’s a little God in all of us, which gives us the ability to formulate and create the life that we want to live. I believe that if we use this ability in a bad way , we will eventually reap what we sow.

I believe that before you can receive a lot, you have to give a little.

I believe that we’re doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, until we learn our lesson.

What do you believe? Do you believe that I am full of it?

Sunny yellow flower by Sharee Basinger

Shortly after Christmas last year I received one of those sappy forwarded emails which I usually scan and then delete. I kept this one because the message it contained resonated on some level. It was the story of a father saying goodbye to his daughter at the airport, and he told her “I wish you enough”. There was a lot more to it of course, but this is the part that drew my attention.

The question is what is enough? Once upon a time in America, a good job, a roof over your head, clothes on your back, and food in your belly were always enough. This was the good life , when cars and vacations were paid for in cash; “bills” meant utilities such as water, heating, electric, and a home phone; and a house large enough to fit the family was  more than enough.

Very slowly, we decided that enough was no longer enough. Suddenly we needed a cell phone(for everyone in the house) in addition to the home phone, two cars instead of just one, vacations that cost several months worth of paychecks,  a mini- mansion in what used to be the country and is now the suburbs. And suddenly, home cooking wasn’t good enough - I know stay at home Moms who buy the kiddos lunch at McDonalds!

Of course we could no longer pay cash for all of this, so we had to have a credit card or two or three. For the most part we took out  large loans with exorbitant interest (any interest is excessive if you ask me) for the cars. And I won’t even cover what we’ve agreed to so that we could have those mini-mansions in the suburbs.

When the economy tanked in the past couple of years, I think (I hope) we all realized that we had gone past having what we needed, to having things that we wanted just because we could pay monthly on them.  I hope that we have learned to pay with cash, and that buying “on time” means giving up years of your earnings for something that will have very little value at the end of that time.  I know that many of us have had “enough loss to appreciate all that we possess” and I hope that we take this lesson learned with us and pass it on to our kids.

In closing I wish you enough:

• Enough money in your bank account to pay your bills .
• A roof over your head that is paid off or at least paid for on time each month.
• Enough time to enjoy your children because they are grown and gone so quickly
• Enough gratitude for the people and things in your life so that you may attract more good things and people
• Enough winter so that you appreciate spring and summer when they finally arrive
• Enough despair that you appreciate hope and the smallest bits of happiness
• Enough clarity to explore the alternatives
• Enough hate and war,  so that you appreciate love and peace

I am especially fond of Ernest Holme’s “Living The Science Of The Mind”.  The following treatment is my favorite and (if I recall correctly) is one that I  promised to share a while back.  You can say this one for yourself , for your family, for a friend or coworker, or any person or persons who could use a hand up.  As with prayers, they don’t have to be there or even ever know that you did this for them. Also, your level of belief and sincerity will determine your result sor lack thereof..

The words I speak are the Law of Good and they will produce the desired result because they are operated on by a power greater than I am. Good alone comes from me and good alone returns to me.

This word is for myself. Everything I say is for me and about me. It is the truth about my real self. There is One Life, that life is God, that Life is perfect, that Life is my life now.

Everything that I do, say, or think is governed by Divine Intelligence and inspired by Divine Wisdom. I am guided into right action. I am surrounded with friendship, love, and beauty. Enthusiastic joy, vitality, and inspiration are in everything I do. I am aware of my partnership with the infinite.

Every thought of not being wanted, of being afraid, of uncertainty and doubt is cast out of my mind. My memory goes back to God alone, in whom I live, move and have my being. A complete sense of happiness, peace, and certainty floods me with light. I have confidence in myself because I have confidence in God. I am sure of myself because I am sure of God.

The Spirit within me knows the answer to any problem which confronts me. I know that the answer is here and now. It is within my own mind because God is right where I am. I now turn from the problem to the Spirit, accepting the answer. In calm confidence, in perfect trust, in abiding faith, and with complete peace I let go of the problem and receive the answer.

I know exactly what to do in every situation. Every idea necessary to successful living is brought to my attention. The doorway to ever-increasing opportunities for self expression is open before me. I am continuously meeting new and larger experiences. Every day brings some greater good. Every day brings more blessing and greater self-expression. I am prospered in everything I do. There is no deferment, no delay, no obstruction or obstacle, nothing to impede the progress of right action.

I identify myself with abundance. I surrender all fear and doubt. I let go of all uncertainty. I know there is no confusion, no lack of confidence. I know that what is mine will claim me, know me, rush to me. The Presence of God is with me. The Mind of God is my mind. The Freedom of God is my freedom.

Today I bestow the essence of love upon everything. Everyone I meet shall be lovely to me. My soul meets the Soul of the Universe in everyone. This love is a healing power touching everything into wholeness. I am one with the rhythm of Life. There is nothing to be afraid of. There is nothing to be uncertain about. God is over all, in all, and through all. God is right where I am. I am at peace with the world in which I live. I am at home with the Divine Spirit in which I am immersed.