Sawyers-Specialties Blog

Recently I’ve had an interesting experience with someone I know. When I first met her, she seemed so happy-go-lucky, good hearted and joyful about life. Recently I’ve spent more time with her and it’s been quite a different experience. Why…. attitude. Some of you might be suffering from this as well.

Negativity. It’s amazing how negativity and bad attitude can really hurt us and keep us from reaching our goals and our full potential. This once joyful woman now constantly complains, no one ever helps me, my parents did more for my brother than they did for me, my parents don’t believe I can finish college, and other similar negative statements.

Now, what I see, a woman who’s parents bought a second home so that she could live rent free with her children while she got back on her feet, a woman who’s parents put her through college right after high school so that she could learn a marketable skill….but didn’t stick with it long… a woman who wants a lot of things done… but doesn’t want to take the responsiblity for doing them. It’s sad when we take for granted the things that truly are gifts to us every day. We start to feel that we are entitled to these things and that we deserve even more. Sometimes we complain that nobody is helping us get back on our feet (without realizing how many people have been trying to push us up while we continue to keep our butts on the floor or worse.. dig deeper holes).

I’ve spent many hours at her home trying to help her learn to break the cycle of CHOAS (see Flylady.net), but she still doesn’t want to do more than the absolute bare minimum (or less). We have our fate and future in our own hands. We have to stand up, shake the dust off ourselves, give ourselves some direction and start moving. I know, this is much harder than it sounds, but many of us sit, waiting and waiting for someone to tell us where to go and how to get there. Most of us don’t have that person to tell us.. and if we did, we would resent them for telling us what to do. It’s up to you. It starts with ending the negativity. Find something positive in your life every day. Stop taking things for granted and tell the people who are helping you how much you appreciate them and what they do. Tell your spouse or significant other that they are important to you. Spend time with your children, even if it’s just cuddling on the sofa under a blanket watching a TV show that they enjoy (you’d be surprised how entertaining the shows are Disney Channel are even for adults if you give it a chance).

You can see the theory of negativity around you even in some of the strangest places. “My name is Earl”. Watch the opening of the first season… the main concept.. I did bad things and bad things happened to me, so if I do good things, good things will happen to me. This concept is true. If you see only the negative things around you, only negative things will happen. If you choose to see the positive things around you, more positive things will happen.

A few weeks ago at my workplace, we were having communication issues that were leading to a lot of bad feelings. Someone left notecards on each desk stating “What I like about you is….” that had a positive message in them. No one will admit to doing it (we’ve asked at each of our staff meetings but no one has confessed), but it was a nice gesture on someone’s part. Even a small gesture can go a long way in letting people know that they are appreciated.

Try an experiment. Nice time you go to the grocery store, smile at everyone that you pass. Now, how many people smile back (it’s a lot). If you get stuck behind someone in an aisle. Don’t fume, smile, wait patiently (Don’t huff “EXCUSE ME”). I’ve on occassion simply turned around and gone around the aisle the other way. You can act angry and feel angry and shopping can be a bad experience or you can walk leisurely, act friendly and shop reasonably stress-free (this works best if you leave small children with a spouse).

Try seeing the positive just once a day. Try smiling at strangers for no reason (OK, not a crazy smile, just a small friendly greeting smile). Tell the well dressed woman in front of you in line that you admire her outfit, speak kindly to the cashier, especially if she seems rushed or rattled). Small gestures are meaningful to the people you share them with. Good things happen to you when you end the negativity, you will be more relaxed, you will be less angry, you will feel more loved. What can it hurt?

The Flylady system encourages menu planning for several different reasons. 1) it’s simply more efficient to plan your meals in advance and make sure you have all the ingredients you need 2) it’s cost efficient… use what you have, buy only what you need. No more… I don’t know, what do you want to have, let’s just order out 3) it’s time efficient. Nothing worse than starting dinner only to realize you’re missing a key ingredient and need to run back to the store for rolls.

I’ve been getting tired of having the same couple of meals all the time, so this week I decided to have a “new recipe night”. Double bonus, it was a crockpot meal that didn’t need a lot of attention. This week we tried Slow-Cooker Orange-BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches from the Kraft Food & Family magazine.

To find more recipes like this, you can visit the craft site for an archive of this free quarterly magazine with issues going back to 2002. If you sign up on the site, you can request new issues to be sent to you.

I can’t promise that I’ll be doing new recipe night on a weekly basis but the first experiment went very well.

Several years ago, my best friend introduced me to Flylady.net. If you haven’t heard if it, now’s a great time to check it out. Flylady is an empowering process of cleaning your house without crying in frustration, wearing yourself out from frenzy or yelling at your children for whatever it is they haven’t cleaned up this time. I was overwhelmed by keeping a household and just never knew where to start. Funny how we never are actually taught how to clean our homes, yet, we’re expected to know how and know how to do it well. Some of us just aren’t “lucky” enough to be born with the natural instinct to clean. I always said I needed a list, this infuriated my husband who thought I should just know what needed done and do it. The problem really wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do.. just had no clue where to start.

I come from a long line of human packrats. “I might need it someday” was deeply imprinted somewhere in our DNA. This makes for a very messy house, bookshelves packed beyond the limits with things, closets filled from top to bottom, front to back with things. Nothing was too large or too small to keep forever. Of course, it didn’t help that the few things I did throw out, I almost immediately needed the day after trash day. The Flylady system was introduced at almost the same time as The Freecycle Network concept of giving things away to local people (with the possiblity of getting a needed item back again if the situation occured). Between these two things, I felt amazingly free to get rid of the things I really didn’t WANT. I spent weeks “decluttering” things that I simply didn’t use and didn’t treasure for any reason whatsoever. It was so liberating.

So, fast forward awhile and I stopped making time for the Flylady routines, my house didn’t go back to nearly the state it was in initially, but still it wasn’t were I needed to be. My neighbor was struggling a few weeks ago with a large amount of clutter, tension and frustration. Friends would come help “clean” the house, meaning they would come in one day, throw stuff in boxes and move it to another room “out of the way”. These binge cleaning sessions may make us feel better short term, but without a real system, we simply cannot maintain our homes this way and again we’re frustrated. So, I introduced her to Flylady and together, we’re forming our own support group for the housekeeping challenged :).

I’m lucky in that I have a husband who’s pretty tidy and wants a clean house and is willing to help achieve the goal. He does dishes, cleans the stove, empties trash cans and makes the bed. He’s also not afraid to clean the bathroom as needed. My problem was that for years, I simply could not meet his standards. We’d binge clean, and he’d chastise me to “see if you can keep it this way”. When I’d make what I felt were significant achievements, my reward was “It should look like this all the time”. I always felt like I was met with constant criticism and that my best was never good enough. Ironically, it seems like some of the worst homemakers are the ones who have the highest level of perfection. I’ve seen this in my own son as well. “If I can’t do something perfectly, I simply won’t do it at all”. Flylady gives us the positive feedback we so desparately crave. She tells us that “Housework done imperfectly still blesses our home” and that we’re not behind, we simply need to jump in where we are. She breaks our home into 5 zones, focusing on a zone each week with short missions to accomplish each weekday (weekends are family time).

Flylady sends us constant reminders all day to make our beds, get up and get dressed, do our laundry, exercise and drink plenty of water, and clean our homes 15 minutes at a time (even working mom’s like me can manage this most days).

Because I hadn’t been doing my daily and weekly chores for so long, I have a lot of work to do. Today I was going to do my weekly dusting. Seemed simple enough. I have the coolest feather duster from Flylady.net’s store and I love dusting with it. I was going to dust my mini-blinds (the duster works great on these), but it had been so long since I dusted that the blinds were filthy. Sigh, I took each one down in turn, washed them in the tub and used a Mr. Clean magic eraser on each slat of the blind (these erasers are my absolute most favorite cleaning sponge. If you haven’t tried them on your soap dish, pick up a box on your next trip to the store). Of course, once the blinds were clean, I realized my curtains hadn’t been washed in ages and were covered in dust as well… time to wash these too. Now that the blinds were clean, I could see every cat hair on the loveseat where he loves to lay, so.. it was off to a good brushing with the lint brush (I got my exercise from all this brushing, sponging, reaching and washing today). So, all in all, had I been doing my 15 minutes of weekly dusting, I would have saved several hours of washing blinds and more. So, the next time we think we don’t have time to do housework, let’s think of all the time we save ourselves to enjoy the weekend by spending a bit of time every day cleaning our home.

Check out Flylady.net if you’re a Sidetracked Home Executive looking for a “how-to” for housekeeping

It’s been quite a few months and I’ve fallen behind on my blogging (and a lot of other things recently).

Of course, the Christmas season is always hectic and my oldest son was home from college again for a few weeks. How strange it still is to only see him twice a year as he attends school 1,000 miles away from what I still think of as his home. He’ll be graduating in only a few months and we’re still uncertain what part of the country he’ll end up in. He’ll be receiving a degree in computer science, but his actual major is Video Game Design and Development.

Who would have thought, as we played our commodore 64 in college and wrote our reports on DOS based programs that our children would have such an amazing world of opportunities with computers. I still recall wanting to take Vo-Tech courses in data entry which involved punch cards. What a difference just over 20 years makes.

In January, my step-father was diagnosed with a new brain tumor and received surgery soon after. This is his second fight against a very relentless illness. It’s been quite a struggle for he and my mother and of course, we’ve been doing anything we can to help them. We’ll be celebrating his 65th birthday next week, one we weren’t sure we’d see a year ago and with each one we pray it won’t be his last.

Earlier this month, our 27-yr-old nephew committed suicide after a long battle with a Bi-Polar Disorder which kept him constantly at war with his demons. We still don’t know how to make sense of this, including the fact that his two young sons have lost their father, the youngest one as he grows won’t remember the sound of his voice or the glimmer in his eyes. We loved him and we may never come to terms with the fact that we couldn’t help him because he wouldn’t help himself, refusing to take the medication which kept the demons leashed. So frustrating when I’ve heard it from my own son “I don’t like the way it makes me feel.” We’ve lost him in body only, his spirit lives on in us and his children. We can only hope he’s found the peace that he so desparately searched for in vain while here on earth. Goodbye Randy, we love you, we miss you, I wish you hadn’t had to leave us, I hope you found what you were looking for and that you’re whole and well now. Our hearts are broken as we try to hold on to the good times we’ve each had with you.

When our nephew was stationed in Kuwait, he’d send emails periodically, often complaining about the taste of the sand as well as the difficulty sending email. Here’s a blurb that summed up his personality:

“The post I work on has set up a firewall that doesn’t allow me to get to my hotmail account. The only way I can get on hotmail is to drive for about an hour and a half and walk into a 5-star hotel like I own the place.”

That was his way, no matter what was going on, when he walked in the door, he’d yell, “alright I’m here, let’s get this thing started.” Wherever you are now Randy, I know you walked in like you owned the place.

This content is provided by the Philadelphia Fire Department and is a reminder to all to prevent tragedies such as the one that took the life of local 2nd grader Amanda Shoenberger and her parents in a preventable Christmas Eve fire. The only smoke detector in the home had no battery.

Take a moment NOW to prevent a holiday fire tragedy. This is a timely reminder from the Fire Prevention Division which urges everyone to keep fire safety in mind when handling trees, lighting, decorations, wrapping, and gifts.

Here are some suggestions for keeping the Holidays “Happy.”

ELECTRICAL

• Check light wiring and sockets for breaks and shorts; replace as necessary
• Never connect more than three strands of lights to one extension cord.
• Use only UL (Underwriter’s Laboratory) listed decorations and cords
• Fasten outdoor lights securely to house, trees, or posts, with sockets pointing down to keep moisture from collecting. Don’t use indoor lights outside.
• Do not use electric lights on metallic trees. Use spotlights instead for illumination.
• Turn off electrical decorations when you leave home or go to bed.

CANDLES

• Do not use candles near decorations in your home.
• Avoid placing candles near drapes or curtains.
• Place candles in a safe base to prevent tipover.
• Keep candles out the reach of children, and where they won’t be knocked over by pets. Do not leave candles burning in unoccupied rooms.

TRIMMINGS

• Live decorations such as evergreen boughs and wreaths, laurel and holly last longer and are less of a safety hazard when displayed outside. Indoors, place them in water if possible and keep them away from heat sources. Discard promptly when dry.
• Make sure artificial decorations are labeled “flame resistant,” or “fire retardant.”
• Apply artificial spray “snow” in well-ventilated areas and avoid using near ignition sources.

TREES

• If you buy a natural grown tree, be sure it is fresh. When the tree is brought home, cut the trunk about one inch above the original cut. Place the tree in water and leave it outdoors, if possible, until you are ready to decorate it.
• When you bring the tree into your home, place it in a sturdy stand with plenty of room for water. Check the water level and add as needed. Keep the tree away from stairs, doorways, and exits. Never run electric trains under the tree, a spark could set it on fire.
• Take the tree down as soon as the needles start to fall off; place the tree, untied and free of decorations, outdoors in a safe area until rubbish removal day.

ALCOHOL AND CIGARETTES

• Overindulgence on holidays by those who drink, particularly if they also smoke, contributes to thousands of house fires and other accidents every year. Droppd cigarettes, often associated with drinking, are the nation’s leading cause of fire deaths.
• Check ashtrays carefully, letting them stand overnight before emptying.
• Check furniture, carpets, and wastebaskets for smoldering cigaretters after entertaining.
• Keep alcohol and smoking materials out of the reach of children

HOLIDAY GIFTS

• Having trouble finding a gift for a family member or friend? Lithium batter smoke alarms make thoughtful gifts. Escape ladders and carbon monoxide alarms show your concern for your loved ones and make Holiday shopping easier. Install smoke alarms on every level of your home and plan a home fire drill.

Some other general holiday reminders include: keep children from playing under or near Holiday trees, to avoid the danger of it falling over; be especially careful with matches and smoking materials; and review the family’s home escape plan for quick exit in case of a fire emergency. Also, even with the pressure of last-minute shopping and errands, never leave children alone or without proper supervision.

If your family is financially unable to purchase smoke detectors for your home, please contact your local fire departments. Many fire departments offer programs to donate smoke detectors or provide them at greatly reduced rates.

MomsBreak.com offers some cute printables, great to occupy kids while other work is going on.
Pilgrim Coloring Pages and Turkey Banner Making are a few of the items available.
http://www.momsbreak.com/

Send a friend a (Paper) Turkey
http://papertoys.com/turkey.htm - a fun project for older kids (or even grownups)

For moms with some last minute time and older children, here are some nice projects including wreaths and table decor
http://www.dotcomwomen.com/crafts/thanksgiving.shtml

Family Crafts is always a wealth of ideas and instructions for kids and parents
http://familycrafts.about.com/od/thanksgiving/

Making Friends is always a favorite for children
http://www.makingfriends.com/Thanksgiving.htm

Family Fun offers some kid friendly foods for the holiday’s as well as crafts
http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/kids/specialfeature/thanksgiving_kids_ms/

Of course, you’re welcome to visit our recipes section for new recipes to try.
Chocolate Eclair Cake is still one of our favorite desserts, but it needs a day in the refridgerator, so don’t wait til the last minute for this one.

Normally I don’t pass along this type of information, because by the time I receive it, the information is so outdated that the family is begging people to stop sending whatever it is that was initially requested. In this case, it’s quite current and there’s a blog where you can monitor the status to see if your support is still wanted.

This call is being sent out to truck drivers, but we can all reach out to help a child/young man in need of moral support during a very trying time fighting a terrible disease, neuroblastoma. Ray is going to feel much worse before he starts feeling better, so at the very least, say a prayer for the families dealing with cancer.

The information below can be found at www.operationroger.com’s bulletin board

POSTCARDS OR BASEBALL CAPS ETC NEEDED
RAYMOND JONATHAN YEAGER, 14, went water skiing on Friday, July 6, 2007, woke up Saturday morning with a severe stomach ache, and was taken to the hospital. Exploratory surgery revealed an advance tumor called neuroblastoma, level 3, cancer. He is currently facing 5 - 6 months of chemotherapy followed by 6 months of radiation hoping to shrink the tumor so it can be removed. Surgery currently cannot be performed because the tumor is wrapped around blood vessels. Doctors stated Raymond will be hospitalized for approximately one YEAR!

His father, Raymond Yeager, Sr, is currently a team member with Operation Roger … Truckers Pet Transport and drives for Shaffer Trucking. Raymond, Sr., told his son truck drivers from all over the country would probably send him postcards or ball caps. At first Raymond, Jr. scoffed at the idea then after thinking about it, brightened, and said “That would be way cool.”

We, at Operation Roger, are asking everyone reading this to take a moment to send Raymond a postcard or whatever to show him your support at this trying time of his young life. His NEW address is:

Raymond J. Yeager, Jr.
Ronald McDonald House
621 Oak Street, S.E., Room 137
Minneapolis, MN 55414

Updates can be seen by clicking on the Form Name “POSTCARDS…”

If you wish to forward this on to someone else, please feel free to do so.

Classy Lady
Operation Roger … Truckers Pet Transport

For up to date information, visit http://www.operationroger.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=565

Articles have been added for Financial aid and college planning. If you have a high school junior or senior, it’s time to start seriously planning. Graduation will be here before you know it.

Get An “A” In Financial Aid 101
Feeling Tense About Applying To Colleges? Tips For Parents

We’ve linked an Amazon store to the site to help keep us online through affiliate marketing. If you’re looking for a new craft or recipe book or a cool new calendar for 2008, check out our store.

We’ve added several articles on lawn care, including tips for those in areas that aren’t getting as much rain as they need.

• Helping Your Garden Survive A Dry Spell
• Make Your Lawn Livable
• Remedies For A Stressed-Out Lawn

Like trying new products? Here’s a useful product for anyone, whether you have a home or an apartment. Have a squeak, need to prevent rust, what about water repellent, Jig-A-Loo is a multi-purpose “lubripellent” which can help with all those things. For more info, read about it here.

My friends all consider me to be “thin” and laugh at the idea of me going to a gym, I’ve always been one of the lucky ones that could eat anything I wanted and not gain an ounce… but here’s how it happened. Last year, our receptionist got pregnant with her first baby. It’s a small office and we’re all pretty close and she was constantly bringing in goodies.. of course, she’s eating for two, but as she put it “If I’m going to get fat, I’m taking you all with me.” We thought it was funny. That was around May.

My son graduated High School and the real rush to secure his apartment for college 1,000 miles away, find a roomate, obtain financing to pay for college and apartment and all the stress involved in the move and sending my son off into the unknown…. This was June to September…. In June, I turned 37. (My mother warned me that after I hit 35, that eat anything you want and don’t worry about it won’t last much longer).

Around September, my pants started getting tight and I was unbuttoning them during the day to be “more confortable”. My son left for college and we had a whirlwind drive over 2 days, moving into an apartment, getting furniture (some was purchased in advance to be delivered the day after we arrived, the rest from our staple Wal-Mart to be assembled under less than optimal conditions (pop-pop was wonderful enough to donate a toolbox with all the bare essentials for on-your-own living), and the hunt for an affordable used vehicle for my son to get around town in (and the sticker shock of car insurance in a major metropolitan area prone to strong storms and hurricanes vs rural PA where an occassional blizzard or large hail is the extent of our weather catastrophes. Our receptionist is still force feeding us sugary sweets and my pants are getting even tighter.

In December, our world fell apart with my step-father (aka pop-pop) was diagnosed with a very aggressive brain cancer and needed almost immediate surgery, followed by a complication of blood clots in his lungs that hospitalized him a second time just a week before Christmas (the nurses and doctors were fabulous in working together to be able to discharge him on Christmas morning so we could be together as a family).

Late April… I get up and get ready for work, only to discover that the pants I’ve been unbuttoning to be more comfortable in… don’t fit AT ALL!! It was quite a mad panic as I went through my entire drawer to find a pair of pants that I could force myself into. I step on the scale showed I’d gained a good 20 pounds. Considering that my normal weight was 112-115 pounds, this was a substantial jump for me. I’d never gone up more than 5 pounds while not pregnant ever.

In May, I got sucked into watching an infomercial. I was watching TLC which I love for the Flip This House and Property Ladder series (and now The Real Deal as well). Anyway, they were showing this cool little contraption called a Jump Snap. It’s the coolest little computerized jump rope… without the rope. Of course I bought one LOL. I mean, all us girls jumped rope as kids, it was great fun, we could do it for hours, what fun, I’ll jump rope and lose weight. WOW, things sure change when you get older. The Jump Snap worked exactly like they said it did, it came with a great little workout video with a couple of perky girls doing the beginning 8 minute workout. Phfft. Eight minutes I thought, I could do 8 minutes standing on my head surely….. Well, I gotta tell you, jumping rope at my age wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. The workout is broken down into 2 minutes sessions with water breaks. I won’t need water for just 8 minutes, how ridiculous…. ok, after two minutes, I’m gasping and heaving… pausing the video.. filling a water bottle to chug and I’m ready for the next 2 minutes….. they want us to do jumping jacks!! I think I’m going to die… pause video…. more water…. I made it almost 5 minutes on my first workout. Almost 6 on the second workout… 7 1/2 on the 3rd workout and on the 4th.. yeah for me, I made it through a whole 8 minutes. The Jump Snap itself will tell you exactly how long you’ve jumped and how many times you’ve jumped. So, I know when I’m tired and not jumping as many times as the workout before (I keep a spreadsheet of my progress… date, length of workout, and jumps… to keep myself committed and accountable for keeping up with a routine. I tried to keep up 4-5 times a week with the 8 minute program and was almost instantly gratified with losing an inch off my waist, and half an inch of my hips. I got back in to several of my pants that I couldn’t button just a few weeks earlier. Unfortunately, I’ve plateaued at point

In Late May, I had the opportunity to join a gym and a reduced rate for doing some freelance work for them. Now, while many people may not appreciate something that isn’t really costing them much, I’m taking as much advantage of it as I can, going to the gym 3-4 times a week for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. My routine is up to at least 5 miles on the stationary bike, “circuit” a series of 20 machines (I don’t do 2 of them because of previous back problems) that are designed for strengthening different groups of muscles, I’ve recently added at least 15 minutes (nearly 1 1/2 miles) on the cross trainer.. similar to a step machine or eliptical, and other 1 to 1 1/4 miles on the treadmill… I still haven’t dropped a pound, so it’s very discouraging, but the tell me it typically takes at least 3 months. I’m clinging to the fact that in just a month, I’ve more than doubled my workout stamina and my clothes are feeling better (I rarely unbutton my pants during the day now LOL). So, I’m entering a new phase of the.. watching everything I eat. I’m having a terrible time cutting out the snacking after years of.. don’t worry, you can eat it.. mentality, but, I’m getting there. Hopefully my friends will stop laughing at me soon (sigh).