Thoughts of August

Thoughts Of August

A glimmer of hope;
Tiniest of thoughts
Darting in and out
Of your busy life.
Teasing you
Here I am.
Where are you?
As notes strung together
Riding on a midnight sky,
Something stirs, begins to come alive.
Can you feel me in your heart?
Can you hear me
In the breeze lulling you to sleep?
There it is…
The rhythm of
My heart beating stronger.
I know you hear me,
Feel my longing to find you
Before time takes you away,
Hides you away from me, again.
Dormant,
As light in our darkest hour.
Don’t forget me, I pray.
Come find me.
Hold me.
Tell me you didn’t forget
I was here in your life.
Cradle and lull me in a gentle lullaby,
I am stronger than you realize.
As are you.
The bond cannot be broken.
I am,
Found.

Things We Connect With

There are things we come across in during our lives that, somehow, we just connect with. Whether it be people, music, movies or whatever the case may be, we find things that seem to fit us.

Take, for me, the month of August. To me August used to just mean summer, my birthday and the start of school. Not that those were the only things it ever meant, but those were the big things. Over the last 6 years and some months, it has come to mean much more than that.

I started talking to my husband, Bob, in August on the phone, although we didn't meet until early September in person. We realized that we both had August birthdays, his being just one week after mine. As our relationship developed, we got engaged, on my birthday. Turns out, that was the very date that my mom and dad got engaged. How funny that exactly 9 years later, I was born! As we had dated for two years, we decided that a one year engagement would be appropriate. I originally wanted a December wedding, then April, but we finally settled, again, on August.

Needless to say, that August is a very special month for both of us. It is filled with anniversary and birthday celebrations. More often that not, we spend part of August on a special vacation that combines all our days at once! It is just Bob and I and nobody else to worry or think about. Just me and him and it's the greatest week of the year. It reminds me of the reasons I fell in love with him and we just have that chance to connect on our level. Awesome!

As I mentioned movies, Bob and I have seen a couple movies together that we have really bonded over. One of those is "Marley and Me", because of our love of our Chocolate Lab, Cody. The other being "August Rush". Not because of it being the month we got married or anything, but the music and the emotion. Good heavens. The movie is about a music prodigy, orphaned at birth and his quest to find the parents he knows are out there.

Bob saw the movie first. I admit I was a bit crabby and wasn't in the mood to watch it when he first put the DVD in. But he told me that he knew I would love it and just to relax. Well, let me tell you... I couldn't take my eyes off it. There is a symphony played at the end of the movie that has both of us welling up with tears. It is emotional and beautiful! Both of us have the soundtrack CD in our cars and we listen to those on a regular basis. We have talked about that movie and the reason we connected in the first place comes back to us in droves. Tonight, I will post a poem that I wrote specially with the thoughts of that ending symphony and what I think it says. For those of you that have heard it, I hope you agree with my interpretation!

Enjoy your day, and love to all!

Wonderful World

Status: MSNBC has a great News tab called "Wonderful World" full of feel good News stories about people who are doing great things to change their corner of the world. What a breath of fresh air! Peace and blessings to the Middle East as they slowly but surely make the change to democracy. Love to all!

Well, there is so much I can say about this. Where do I begin?

As I pointed out above, if you go to www.msnbc.com, you will see a tab for "Wonderful World". It's about people donating, doing nice things for people, all great pieces. I happened upon this when I clicked to read a very sad news piece. I needed something to make me feel good! I got it! Sad thing is, I had to wade through the bad to get to the good. I guess that is they way things go. Sometimes you have to go through bad things to where you want to be, where you can be happy. But the site is really good, check it out!

Wonderful World is also s beautiful song from Louis Armstrong, one of my personal favorites! "I see friends shaking hands, saying 'How do you do?' What they're really saying is 'I love you!' I love the line, 'The bright blessed day, The dark sacred night, And I think to myself, 'What a Wonderful World'. Oh, the whole song is just like a hug! :) How do you not love that?

I think it's also a good thing to reflect on just how small our wonderful world is! I had a Facebook friend who posted her wedding pictures, turns out,another Facebook friend performed the marriage ceremony! Wow! Two people i never imagined knew each other. Hopefully, that will be the reason for us to meet up and catch up again. I can only imagine the conversations we might have!

I hope you all take the time to think about the great things you have, the wonderful people surrounding you and take comfort in your greatest inspirations! Hope your day is a good one!

Love to all!

Turkey Burgers

I made these this morning and am taking some over for my in-laws to have for lunch. They are really good!

Here is a great recipe for Turkey Burgers, a healthy alternative to regular ground beef burgers.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil, enough to coat saute pan
1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 and 1/4 pound ground turkey
Salt and Pepper, to taste
1 egg
1 cup Italian Seasoned bread crumbs

Dice small onion, add to saute pan, coated in small amount of Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Add 1 clove minced garlic, add salt and pepper, to taste. Saute until translucent. In mixing bowl, mix together ground turkey, egg and bread crumbs until well blended. Form up to 6 patties.

In an electric skillet, or frying pan, coat with just enough Extra Virgin Olive Oil to cover bottom, add burgers over medium high heat, just season with a bit of black pepper. Brown 4-5 minutes, flip burgers, ad brown for about 4 more minutes.

To serve, plate up on your favorite style bun, your favorite low fat toppings, lettuce, tomato and low fat Swiss cheese.

These really have great flavor, especially with the sauteed garlic and onion.

Enjoy!

Love to all!

A Healthy You

In trying to help both myself and a special family member in our health and weight loss endeavors, I assembled this wordy, but helpful sheet for both of us to refer to. So I will share it with you as well! I used to work as a weight loss consultant with a national weight loss chain, but alas, I was terrible in sales, so the job didn't last. The rest of it did!

Helpful Hints For a Healthy Diet

First and foremost, eat breakfast at a reasonable time every morning, even if you wind up taking a nap afterward. Breakfast is your most important meal. Remember it starts the fire for your metabolism and eating on a regular basis keeps it going! Think of your metabolism as a fireplace that needs to have a continual fire in it. Feed it to keep it going!

Drink at least 60 ounces of water every day, like the one I showed you the other day. 60 ounces of water for you is a good target!

Take all your medications or vitamins, whatever the case may be, every single day, even if it increases your urine output. It rids your body of things that aren’t good for it!

Try to think of it like this: Eat healthy 80% of the time and you will be doing great! Or, eat healthy 5-6 days per week, and what you are used to eating 1 or 2 days per week.

Aim for no more than 3 pieces of fruit per day. While it is true that fruits contain sugar, the sugar is natural and will not affect your blood sugar level in a bad way for long. They are still healthy for you! They have fiber, vitamins and antioxidants!

Switch to whole grain brown rice instead of using white rice.

Don’t forget that tomatoes are fruit! Don’t forget that peas and corn are starches!!!

Instead of frying fish, eggplant or potatoes try baking or roasting them.

For vegetables, cut broccoli, cauliflower, bite size pieces of squash, onion and any other favorite and toss with a little bit of Olive Oil, sprinkle with salt free Italian Seasoning or any other favorite and roast on a baking pan for 30 minutes at 450 degrees. So yummy and very healthy!

For fish or chicken, coat bottom of baking dish with a bit of Olive Oil. Place chicken or fish in dish, and turn so it is all coated. Sprinkle with your favorite salt free seasoning and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to one hour, depending on size. Add a side of brown rice or sweet potato and lots of vegetables!

Eat across the rainbow. In other words, eat as many foods with different colors as you can. Strawberries, sweet potatoes, bananas, dark green lettuce or spinach, blueberries and purple onions or cabbage is just an example! The more color your food contains, the more appealing and the healthier it is!

Imagine your dinner plate as a clock, and place chicken or fish from 12-3, potatoes from 3-6 and vegetables from 6-12. In other words, 50% of your meal should be vegetables, while 25% should be chicken or fish and 25% potato.

Instead of ground beef, use ground turkey or ground chicken. The reason I say this is because although you have said you use the leanest ground beef, beef is naturally higher in fat and calories than turkey or chicken. If you don’t tell, they probably wouldn’t notice the difference! Bob doesn’t! Rather than using white rice and ground beef to stuff squash or roll grape leaves, use the ground turkey or chicken and brown rice for a really healthy alternative! If you can still have what you enjoy and eat healthy at the same time, it is a double win for you!

Don’t fry your fish or potatoes, or cauliflower. I know you said you use healthy oils, and while that is a good thing, it is still frying your food in pure fat. Not such a good thing!

Increase your exercise as the weather gets warmer. Try walking just a few driveways away and turning around. The next day walk one or two more, and so on until you are getting a great walk every day! That will not only help joints feel better, you will kick your metabolism up as well!

Don’t forget we love you and we want you to be healthy and happy!

I hope this helps anyone trying to be healthier.

Love to all!

Things We Remember

January 31, 1985. A day that will stay in my head forever. That was the day I had my back surgery. I was 12 years old and had Scoliosis.

I won't go into the details of the surgery, but I will say this: Sometimes in childhood there are things which make such a huge impression on you that you will never forget the details. Unbelievably, I still remember my phone number and room number, my nurses names, and other seemingly unimportant facts about that time.

It's just like any other important event. You remember where you were and what you were doing when something occurred.

I remember what was going on when the Challenger exploded. I was in school taking an English test. It was almost a year to the day after my surgery. I remember September 11, I was at work. It was surreal sitting with all our co-workers in the conference room watching the coverage on TV. It stopped us all.

There are certain events in history that will forever be burned in our minds. I remember all those events. I remember the conversations. At the time, all I kept saying to myself was 'Take it back'. I didn't want it to be real. I wanted to rewind it and do it all over again.

Unfortunately we can't do anything about some of these difficult things, we can only move forward. We can take what we learn and apply it to other areas of our lives. We can learn to be more tolerant of others. When these things happen, it causes us to take stock of what is really important. Family and friends are first on that list.

I used to work at a bar. On September 11, we left work early from my day time job as we all just wanted to be near loved ones. That evening I went up to the bar and sat with all my friends. We just sat there, together, and watched the news, together. I remember I wanted nothing more than to be with the people I cared about. That's how we came through it and rebuilt.

Let your family and friends be the ones you go to when important things happen.

Love to all!