This information was in The New York Times several weeks ago as part of their “Spotlight on the Home” series that highlighted creative and fanciful ways to solve common problems.

1. Cucumbers contain most of the vitamins you need every day, just one cucumber contains Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc.
2. Feeling tired in the afternoon, put down the caffeinated soda and pick up a cucumber. Cucumbers are a good source of B Vitamins and Carbohydrates that can provide that quick pick-me-up that can last for hours.

3. Tired of your bathroom mirror fogging up after a shower? Try rubbing a cucumber slice along the mirror, it will eliminate the fog and provide a soothing, spa-like fragrance.

4. Are grubs and slugs ruining your planting beds? Place a few slices in a small pie tin and your garden will be free of pests all season long. The chemicals in the cucumber react with the aluminum to give off a scent undetectable to humans but drive garden pests crazy and make them flee the area. (WOW)

5. Looking for a fast and easy way to remove cellulite before going out or to the pool? Try rubbing a slice or two of cucumbers along your problem area for a few minutes, the phytochemicals in the cucumber cause the collagen in your skin to tighten, firming up the outer layer and reducing the visibility of cellulite. Works great on wrinkles too!!! (DOUBLE WOW)

6. Want to avoid a hangover or terrible headache? Eat a few cucumber slices before going to bed and wake up refreshed and headache free. Cucumbers contain enough sugar, B vitamins and electrolytes to replenish essential nutrients the body lost, keeping everything in equilibrium, avoiding both a hangover and headache!!

7. Looking to fight off that afternoon or evening snacking binge? Cucumbers have been used for centuries and often used by European trappers, traders and explores for quick meals to thwart off starvation.

8. Have an important meeting or job interview and you realize that you don’t have enough time to polish your shoes? Rub a freshly cut cucumber over the shoe, its chemicals will provide a quick and durable shine that not only looks great but also repels water.

9. Out of WD 40 and need to fix a squeaky hinge? Take a cucumber sliced rub it along the problematic hinge, and voila, the squeak is gone!

10. Stressed out and don’t have time for massage, facial or visit to the spa? Cut up an entire cucumber and place it in a boiling pot of water, the chemicals and nutrients from the cucumber with react with the boiling water and be released in the steam, creating a soothing, relaxing aroma that has been shown the reduce stress in new mothers and college students during final exams.

11.. Just finish a business lunch and realize you don’t have gum or mints? Take a slice of cucumber and press it to the roof of your mouth with your tongue for 30 seconds to eliminate bad breath, the phytochemcials will kill the bacteria in your mouth responsible for causing bad breath.

12. Looking for a ‘green’ way to clean your faucets, sinks or stainless steel? Take a slice of cucumber and rub it on the surface you want to clean, not only will it remove years of tarnish and bring back the shine, but is won’t leave streaks and won’t harm you fingers or fingernails while you clean.

13. Using a pen and made a mistake? Take the outside of the cucumber and slowly use it to erase the pen writing, also works great on crayons and markers that the kids have used to decorate the walls!!

Whether you’re an ant or a grasshopper this should make you smile.

. . . a little different…
Two Different Versions. . .
Two Different Morals.

OLD VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away..

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush for the grasshopper’s plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood..

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.

Physicist Stephen Hawking had to defend the British health care system against the conservative attacks. He said: ”

“I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.” Mr.Hawking suffers from neuron disease. These type of diseases for the average joe in this country have the potential to financial ruin a family. We all know pre-existing conditions as such are a threat to our current health care system, or they will never be 100% full coverage for unfortunate individuals like Hawkins.

A good friend of mine has to have a gastro procedure done in order to rule out the possibility of cancer. Her husband is a private music professor and pays $900.00 a month for their health care. Unfortunately this procedure is not fully cover by her insurance company and they have to come up with $3500.00 out of pocket. That’s A LOT for the average joe. They don’t think they’ll be able to afford it, or they might have to sale some of their possessions.

With the high unemployment rate, I worry all the families that are being left without health insurance, and we all know the cobra rates are ridiculous.

Anybody saying that we have the best health care system in the world, either they are blind or misinformed.

Gemma

ead more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2009/08/12/stephen-hawking-defends-british-health-care-system-against-u-s-conservatives.aspx#ixzz0gwI71StO
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I don’t normally write much in this blog that is personal.  But, recently, I have been challenged to write about relationships.  I have a son, a daughter, a stepdaughter, and a grandson, all of whom I am very proud.  But today, I want to talk to you about just one of my children,  my daughter.  I can still remember the day we brought her home from the hospital.  She had the most beautiful big eyes I had ever seen.  She was a great baby, very rarely cried with the exception of one little quirk. She hated shoes.  From the time she was a month old, she would scream at the top of her lungs if we tried to put shoes oh her.  So, we compromised, as all parents do, we let her wear socks.  All was well with her world.

Fourteen years later,  I would have given her all the socks in the world if that would have fixed what had happened to her world.  She was a good kid, never on drugs, very stubborn, but otherwise, no major problems..   Above all, she was delightful to be around.  She had the funniest way of saying things with her dead pan face that would just crack us all up.   She was blessed with a few good friends, who still remain her friends today.

I hate to use the words, “on that fateful day”, but it was a life changing, horrible day for us all.  She had been sitting at a desk doing her homework, like any fourteen year old would do on a school night, and I asked her, then told her to do something.  I had been moving my studio and there were empty boxes everywhere.  There was a young man, whom I had hired to  help with the move as my son had gone off to college, and the two kids had been eyeing each other with cute little grins all evening.  His job was to take out the empty boxes.  It was getting late, the next day was a school day, and we were all tired.  So I told her to go help him so that we could leave.  At first, she begged off, saying she had homework to do, then she finally gave in and grudgingly went to help him load the empty boxes in the back of the pickup truck that I had.  Being kids, and only wanting to make one trip to the end of the alley in the back, they filled up that truck to the brim.  By the time they left to go that half block, my daughter was sitting on the tailgate of the pickup truck to help hold those boxes.

The driver was unfamiliar with the truck and he didn’t know the gas pedal stuck a tiny bit, so when he took off,, he gunned the engine a little, maybe to show off, as teenage boys are known to do, maybe it just got stuck.  Who knows these things?  Only the one who was there in that truck.  That little gunning of the engine was all it took.   She wasn’t ready and when he took off, she slipped off the edge of the tailgate, hit the base of her skull, flew up in the air and landed on her head on the concrete.

When he came running in to tell me that she was hurt, I honestly thought he was teasing, as they had been all day, then I saw the look on his face and I started running.  She was on the ground trying to stand up.  I took her face in my hands before I realized that the blood was rhythmically pumping out of her ear, taking her life with each beat.  I knew then she was in trouble.  I also knew she would not make it if we waited on an ambulance.  I put her in that truck and drove like an insane mother to get her to the hospital in time.  As fate would have it, we happened to be only a half mile from one of the best trauma centers in that part of the country.  As I poured her into the hands of the nurses and saw the looks on their faces, once again, I knew she was very badly hurt.

Two hours later, the chaplain of the hospital came to me and said, so gently, “Why don’t  you call your Dad and let him be here with you?”.  My answer was to tell  him that I didn’t want to bother him until I had something to tell him.  He looked me in the eye and said, “You have something to tell him, call him now.  She doesn’t have much time left.”  My heart stopped.  I know it didn’t beat for a long time.  This was my baby, the little sister my son had gotten down on his knees for seven years and said, “Please God, bring me a little brother or sister.”  She was already my miracle child, adopted at birth after only knowing she was alive for two days.  How could this be happening?

My Dad, also a Chaplain at that same hospital, came when I called.   I didn’t lose it until he walked in the door.   At that point, a different sort of relationship took place.  I went from being the strong, I will fix everything mother bear, to the child who just wanted her Daddy to fix it now.  And he did.

I don’t know to this day how it happened, but he started walking the circle around the nurses desks, that made up the trauma center.  It was no small circle, but quite long, and I didn’t realize what he was doing for a long time.  I just thought he was upset and needed to walk.

He was praying.

He walked that circle ceaselessly for more hours than I could count.  He never stopped and his lips never stopped moving.  The doctors had already told us that she wouldn’t live until morning.  But, you know, that sun peaked over the edge of the sunrise, and started climbing high into the sky, and she was still with us.  I won’t say she was in good shape, but she was alive, had survived the night, with some very extreme pain and fear of the unknown.  I didn’t leave the hospital.  It was a beautiful hospital and I slept on the floor outside the door of the intensive care, just to be near her.  They let me see her every other hour, but she did not know I was there, and when she did open her eyes, she did not know I was her mother.

She lived, or I wouldn’t be writing this story.  Shortly after that accident, we went out for a drive on a country road and stopped at a beautiful little roadside stop.  The trees were waving in the wind, and there was a stream at the base of the little patch of grass.  As she walked away from me wearing that coat, it began to snow.  And as it snowed, I saw her come back to me.  She put her arms out to catch it and twirled around in a circle with glee.  She was not only alive, she was happy.  I sat on the tailgate of that same truck and painted this painting of her.

You can see in the way she is standing that she is happy.   It was a defining moment in our lives and our relationship.   She had always been a “Mama’s” girl, but at that point we both knew it.  We knew that we were bonded for life and her life was only beginning.  I was happy and sad, and that painting has tears on it.  Her live was changed irrevocably that day she flew off that truck, and so was mine.

I’ve never told this story publicly before, but it is time..  My daughter is grown now, lives a free life that she enjoys.  She still has problems from the accident and always will, but she is still the most joyous person to be around.  She has a sense of humor that can turn every one in the room into peals of laughter.  She has a determination to live a normal life that would make most Generals look like babies.  She is a survivor and I am so proud  of her.

She is My Girl.

She’s My Girl

© g.lynne 2010

“Death does not exist, for if it did, I would not be be here
Death does not exist, because I am here.”

January 16, 2010, originally uploaded by :Flockprinter:.

This is a al sunset without filters, Taken by my friend, sometimes known as Flockprinter …

Photo on 2010-02-12 at 12.46 #3, originally uploaded by abbeylane.

This is the set piece for a group of photos known at MY HATS, If you click the photo, it will take you to the photostream where you can find the rest of the hats. If lucky, you will heart the song that goes with it.