Learning to focus on experiencing

I have talked about my struggles to accept the fact that I am retired, and how long it took for me to accept being fully retired. As part of that struggle I had to learn to focus more on experiencing rather than doing. 

Some would say I was/am a workaholic at each stage of my life, I focused on doing more than was expected and as a result, I was successful in my chosen career and was able to fill my life with stuff.

When I was younger I thought it was important to work to have things such as cars, homes, clothes, furnishings, etc. But at this stage in life, I no longer have a desire to buy the latest car, upgrade my home, wear the latest fashions, or show off the newest, latest toy I own. 

I have friends who still have such a need; they will show off their latest driver, putter, when we are golfing. My clubs are at least eight years old and they still work. 

I don't need the latest toys to enjoy the experience. I am learning to, as they said when I was younger, "go with the flow".

Try it, I  think you may find it a change of pace and I am learning it makes life so much more enjoyable.

Food Banks need our help

We are in near the end of summer, we have had warm weather and summer holiday are here, but food bank donations plummet.

And yet, more than 900,000 Canadians — about 340,000 of them children — continue to rely on food banks to get by, according to Food Banks Canada, a national organization representing 550 food banks across the country, serving 85 per cent of the people who use them.

The summer months are often most difficult for struggling families because children no longer have access to free or low-cost school breakfast, lunch and snack programs, says Food Banks Canada spokeswoman Marzena Gersho.

“When the warm weather comes, people think about getting outside in the sun and going on holidays,” she says. “The issue of hunger falls off the radar and the level of donations drop.”

Although the organization doesn’t keep statistics, anecdotally Gersho knows food banks scramble to keep up with demand over the summer.

Thousands of Canadians live in a state of food insecurity, which means they do not have reliable access to adequate amounts of safe, good-quality, nutritious food. The root cause of hunger in Canada is low income, which consistently affects more than four million of us at any given time.

Food banks are an important method of addressing this need. Each month, over 900,000 people turn to food banks for help; more than one-third are children and youth.

The people who visit food banks come from all backgrounds. They include families with children, employed people whose low wages do not cover basic living essentials, individuals on social assistance, and Canadians living on a fixed income, including seniors and people with disabilities. 

The need for food security does not end because we are on holiday and enjoying the summer sun. Take some time and help your local food-bank, either by volunteering or donating food or money. Every little bit helps.

Knock on wood

When I was young, I was told opportunity only knocks once, I learned through life that this is not true. 

Opportunity keeps knocking, the problem is that we don't hear it, or when we do, we open the wrong door, and go off in the wrong direction, and maybe we fail. 

However, it won't matter that 10,000 doors might be slammed in your face, because when door number 10,001 flies open, revealing pathways of jade and gardens of love, with flowers dancing, fountains sparkling, friends blushing, moonbeams glowing, and abundance abounding, you'll completely forget about all the other doors. 

Happens every day, so take the challenge and open the next door!

Are better off than before, you bet we are

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & Sold to the tannery.......if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor"

But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot......they "didn't have a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the low. The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell . ...... . Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting Married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof... Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.  Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old. Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would Sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive... So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.

Thanks to Wally for the post

Very interesting!