January 5, 2013 Another intention manifests!

Without even realizing it, I am manifesting another intention!  A few days ago, my knees started giving me some trouble so I decided to get up a little earlier and do some of the knee exercises I'd gotten from my physical therapist.  One thing led to another, and I added some crunches and a few minutes on the foam roller.  Today, I added even more exercises and increased the reps on the ones I was already doing.  So I'm 3 days into setting another habit!!!  Now how in the heck did THAT happen???

I'm also pretty psyched about the fact that I've gotten my eating habits back on track so that when I shared a piece of after dinner cheesecake with the kids last night, I ended up going DOWN almost a half a pound today!!!  How cool is that??  Time to start keeping up my spreadsheet of weight and measurements again!


Today was a pretty amazing day (and I still don't have that darn Joy Jar!!)  I met an old high school friend for lunch and talked for a couple of hours, then headed home to get gas and run errands, only to find out that my daughter and I had practically been following each other around town and I was headed for the place she already was!  She found an amazing dress for the cruise!  She'll look sooo purty!!!

I brought a large paper bag full of vitamins and such home today and set it on my bed while I had an early dinner.  Suddenly, I heard the bag come crashing to the floor!  Clearly, it had gotten in someone's way as they looked for the perfect sleeping spot, or so I thought.  I walked into my bedroom to find the contents of the bag scattered all over the floor.  When I bent over to pick up the bag, asking who the culprit was, I found the bag to be quite heavy, especially since the entire contents were no longer inside.  Apparently, Loki felt that a paper bag had only one purpose, and it was NOT to hold my purchases!    Never let it be said that my cats don't have entertainment value!

I received a wonderful assortment of comments from my post on feminine energy so I need to think of something else to get some dialogue going.

Aha!  I have it.  The topic tonight is Tough Love.  Some people have perfect children who are star students all through high school and go on to some prestigious college, finish in four years, go on to graduate school and are offered a dream job when they graduate.  But in the real world, our kids struggle to find their way, some more than others.  At what point should a parent stop giving an adult child a financial safety net, kick them out of the nest and allow them to struggle and maybe even fail?

I raise this question because I have seen many extremes, from the child who moves out at 18 to the one who has married, divorced, had a couple of kids and still lives off of the parents at 45.  And it seems that, in this era of entitlement, some people have no conscience when it comes to living off of their parents for as long as they can.    Although I've had to sit back and watch my daughters struggle, one more than the other,  I am fortunate to have raised two fiercely independent girls who may not have made all of the choices I think they should have, but they live with those choices and have never come back and asked me to bail them out of something that was a result of those choices.  Somehow, they always find a way to work things out, and for that, I'm very proud.  But I speak to a lot of parents who throw their hands up in dismay because one child or another just can't seem to get it together without Mom or Dad pitching in financially.

It's not that any of these kids are bad, it just seems like there's a certain lack of ambition or motivation.  Could withdrawal of support give these people the motivation they need or would they, like one of my daughters, choose to live on the streets until they really hit bottom and decided to pick themselves up out of the gutter?

Which raises another question which I first encountered in speaking to an alcoholic who had turned his life around.  How far down must a person go before they hit the point which is low enough to either get them to seek help or somehow drag themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps and get themselves to a better place?    I've seen so many different responses to this question in the past, and realize that it really depends on the person, but as a rule, what motivates a person to wake up?  Health?  Family?  Living situation?  As we can only speak for ourselves on this one, I'll be interested to see what my readers consider their "bottom" or the point where they'll do whatever they have to to turn their life around.

My gratitudes tonight are:

1. I am grateful for strong, independent daughters.
2. I am grateful for wonderful friends who exude love whenever I see them.
3. I am grateful for a sense of humor, without which, life would be very flat.
4. I am grateful for the mind meld I have with my daughter, Heather which puts us in the same place without communication, or on the same wavelength so much of the time.
5. I am grateful for my wonderful son-in-law who has fit into our crazy, non-conformist family so very well!

Love and light.