Author Archives: grannyo73

February 5, 2022

Be the kindling. Be the kindling and get the fire of happiness started in those around you as they wake up. The first part of the word is kind. Be kind to those around you. Prepare yourself to appreciate and applaud those you love. Appreciating and applauding others for jobs well done is the greatest kindness you can give. You create wow moments for them. You put smiles on their faces, and you allow others in your life to do wonderous things. Self-confidence starts in the soul but is ignited by the world at large. Be kind. Be the kindling that will restart the fire in another person’s soul. Bring the magic back into their lives again. Energize each other, because being kind will also energize you. That which you give out will come back to you like a well thrown boomerang. The golden rule says it all. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” You will receive that which you give. If you are happy all well and good. People around you will be happier if you are kind, and if you appreciate and applaud them. Get in the face of those who you love and go crazy. Go crazy with kindness. Go crazy with appreciation. Smile. Everyone is a creation of God. Treat everyone as though that were true. Magic happens when you really know it is so. You do not have to wait for someone else to start the ball rolling. Be the kindling. Get the fire going. Help everyone relight the spark of happiness in their souls. It is 4:13AM and I am already ready to hear footsteps coming down the stairs. I am already so excited to see my family again. I am in the zone. Wow. I Can’t wait to hug each and every one of them. I am the kindling. I will welcome those I love into their new day. I so love these very important people. I am smiling. I am energized, and I am in the zone. Today is going to be a most marvelous day. I am so excited. Wow. 4 1/2 hours from now we will all be together again. I am so happy. I like being the kindling. Why don’t you try being the kindling in your world today and see what happens. Enjoy your moment and enjoy your day as the sky brightens with the morning light.

Granny-o

February 4, 2022

The generations. In the generations of olden times families took care of their own. There were sometimes not only two generations living in one house, parents and children, but there were also grandparents under the same roof. How cool was that? I am not sure, but I do know I love living in a three-generational house. Now a family of four has become a family of five. They had been a traditional family with a father, mother, two sons and a dog. Now our family is a father, mother, two sons, a dog and me… Granny-o. Three generations all with their own perspective on life, and all with their own needs. We have been living together for four months. We have sold two houses and have purchased one bigger house so we could all live together. We have lived in our new home for one week and one day, but who is counting? For the other part of the four months, I had slept on the living room couch. Now, my grandsons each have their own rooms, and I have mine. I am sleeping on my own bed with a featherbed and blankets piled high above my nose. We all love our new home. it is a nice house, and it is a perfect house for all of us. Painters are painting, and new furniture has been purchased for pretty much the whole house. They created a bedroom for me on the first floor so that I would not have to go up and down stairs. The fourth bedroom on the second floor will become an office for my son and daughter-in-law, which is perfect since they both work from home. My room used to be the dining room, now the dining room is a room off of the kitchen. It is a fine set up. I have two wonderful windows overlooking the front yard into the street of a very quiet residential area. I have had to downsize a great deal. After almost 48 years of marriage, it is impossible to fit everything into a space that is 12X12. So, I have donated many things to Goodwill. Now, other people can give my treasures a new life. I still have my bedroom furniture so there was no need for me to get new things. In this day and age to have five people living together who not only love each other, but totally like each other is fantastic. I am so grateful and so happy. Wow. As a new widow my life had come to a halt. A second chance. That is what I have… a second chance. I believe we are all benefitting from this new situation. It is a win, win, win, win, win woof situation. Family taking care of family. There is so much to learn about life from those who have lived it before us. There is so much to learn from the todays we are experiencing into our future. Life is great if you are able to adjust to the changes life affords you. Hug those near and dear to you, because family needs family. I like mine. Do you like yours? Have a great day. Remember what I always say, “Happiness is a choice.”

Granny-o

February 3, 2022

Is your faith…? Is your faith the steering wheel or the spare tire? I read those words as we were driving by a church yesterday afternoon. I do not know the denomination of the church because my eyes were glued to the marquis out on the church’s front lawn. The words I saw made me think about my own faith. How would I answer that question? It did not take me long to know that for me, my faith is the steering wheel. My faith in God is 24/7. As I move along the highways and byways of life, my faith is taking me in the right direction. Moment to moment I am moving into a life that has not happened yet. Through good times and bad times my faith is my companion. A spare tire is there if you have a problem with a flat tire. A spare tire does not lead the way. The spare tire is only there because of a potential problem. If you have a flat, then you pull out the spare. My faith in God is not locked away in the trunk waiting for disaster to strike. If I am in the car and the motor is on, the steering wheel is always in use. Day or night, rain or shine, forward or backward, right or left, I need the steering wheel to get me to where I need to go. The car is unable to move successfully without the steering wheel to guide it. My faith is definitely the steering wheel. The strength of my faith gives me the power to move ahead knowing everything will work out. It seems like there are always things in my life to remind me that life is a gift. I am not the creator of my life, but rather the recipient of God’s gifts. Wow. What fun it is to have cartoon eyes always on the lookout for messages and messengers. Today, I noticed something for the first time, and it was cool. Tomorrow I will be aware of more wonderful things…God willing. My mother-in-law used to always say God willing. She had an unfailing faith that traveled with her during her life. Her faith was the steering wheel not the spare tire. Take it all in. Take life all in. Be aware and be amazed, and then again say thank you. Then again say wow because your life is an adventure. Having faith in God makes me happy. I don’t need to be in charge. As a matter of fact, I don’t like to be in charge. Let God steer. He knows where I am supposed to be going. Smile. There are so many things to be happy about. 1:26AM.

Granny-o

February 1, 2022

Questions and answers. When I was 21 while attending a church in a faraway state, I asked God what I should do with my life. Right in the middle of the sermon a gigantic silent booming voice said to me, “Be a teacher.” I am not sure why I had not figured that out on my own, being as I had spent a great deal of time with children up until that point. When you are gifted to be good at something, you don’t always put value in what is so easy for you. My God given talent was being able to communicate with children. So, I go off to college and decide I want to become a doctor. Pre-med was my major. How stupid could I have been? It took a while to get my ducks in a row, but after that morning in church I changed my major to early childhood education and my cumulative average went from D to an A. When you are doing what you are meant to be doing high grades happen automatically because you are doing what you love. You are doing what God wanted you to do. I have been asking and answering questions for many years. Sometimes I have been the teacher, and sometimes I have been the student. At this point of my life, my questions are more philosophical. Answers are not black and white anymore. They are thoughts and discussions and with more than one answer. So here are some questions for you to contemplate:

#1 Are you glad you are not an orphan? Or if your parents have died, are you grateful you had them as your parents when they were alive?

#2 When a spirit from deep within your heart speaks, are you listening?

#3 When there is beauty and are miracles all around, who does the atheist give credit to?

Sometimes questions are harder to answer than the questions are to ask.

I am retired now. I am 73 years old, and I do not have a lot of answers. I do know happiness. I do know how to be happy. There are no tests, but you will know when you too know happiness when the corners of your mouths continually go up, and your cartoon eyes are wide open as they look around at all the miracles that are everywhere to see. Have a wonderful day. You and I might not be attending classes at school anymore, but there is so much to learn and to appreciate in the great world of ours. Go forth and prosper. Give your all to the world that has given you so much. Remember always, happiness is a choice. Hear it. Learn it. Feel it. Live it. We were all meant to be happy. Thank you for taking advantage of your talents to be the great person you are. God certainly knew what He was doing when He created you. Wow. Live it. You will be glad if you did.

Granny-o

January 30, 2022

Sunshine. As I look out of the windows of our new home this Sunday morning, I am feeling psyched and in the zone of contentment and happiness. Of course, there are still boxes to get out of the POD that brought my stuff from Florida. I have a lot of things put away now, but perhaps I will need to give a lot of the stuff to Goodwill because there just isn’t enough room for everything. I will have to go through boxes to pick and choose what I want to save, and what I can give away. The more I give away, the more I am able to give. When I moved back to New Jersey from Florida, I had to pick and choose. I gave many things to the thrift shop, and so many books to the library. I even had a large picture of Mark Twain that now lives in the children’s section of the Mark Twain Library. Then I had a humongous garage sale. It was the best garage sale ever because there were a lot of things that were all well staged, and everything was FREE. On that day everyone went home with the money they came with, and everyone had big smiles on their faces as they walked away. While at the garage sale everyone was talking and laughing. Usually at garage sales strangers would be silent as they thought about how they could dicker down the prices but not at my sale. Everything was free. Some of my treasures I kept, but a lot of stuff is now other people’s treasures. Now that I live in New Jersey some things are different. For instance, we had a huge snowstorm yesterday. There must have been 10-12 inches or more. Wow. I was just looking out the window this morning into the backyard as the sun is coming up. I am seeing the white snow not yet touched by humans or animals. Pure and pristine…so beautiful. In my childhood, my neighbor used to say, “Snow is the poor man’s fertilizer.” Snow slowly waters the earth as winter melts into spring, waking up the roots of plant life after being in hibernation for the long winter. Over my right shoulder, looking East the sky is blue, blue blue . White snow always makes the sky so much bluer. I am so in the zone of happiness. Wow to be alive. Wow. Thank you again. Thank you again God for making me possible. This is a most wonderful world to live in, and I say wow. What a gift. So much magic in the moments we are alive, and I say wow…over and over again. Let us all show God our appreciation and gratitude by smiling today. You are loved and you are blessed. Be happy. Goodbye.

Granny-o

January 29, 2022

The toilet paper is in the garage. The cars are in the driveway covered with marshmallows of snow on the roofs. We have just moved into our new home two days ago, and we have yet to get everything into the house. Hence the toilet paper is in the garage. I guess toilet paper was not a priority then, but my son found it a priority this morning at about 5:00AM. I now live with my son, my daughter- in-law and my two grandsons: Christopher T. 16, and Jonathan 13. I sold my house in Florida, they sold their house in New Jersey, and we bought a bigger house in New Jersey so we could all live happily ever after together. I had lived happily ever after with my husband of almost 48 years when he died last April. Now I have a second chance at happiness. Of course, there is snow, and the toilet paper is in the garage. Nothing is perfect, but everything is perfectly wonderful. You never know what is important until you find yourself stuck. Isn’t that the way it is in life? Aren’t we always wrestling with trying to decide what is important, and what really doesn’t matter at all? I am 73 years old, and I have found in life the only really important thing is love. With love there is happiness. Wow. I am feeling so very happy right now at 5:46AM. It is windy, it is snowing, and the snowplow has already been down the street three times. That will make shoveling a little more difficult. My grandsons are going to get a lesson about manual labor in a little while. I hear it is quite cold in Florida. Maybe we have to define cold. I think possibly today the toilet paper will move into the house. Object lessons are good for getting our priorities straight. Just ask my son…he knows about priorities. How beautiful is the snow? Have a wonderful day.

Granny-o

January 26, 2022

A miracle. Many many miracles have happened to me throughout the years. I am never surprised when they do happen, but I am always amazed. On January 26, 2015, a miracle once again happened in my life. It was about 10:00PM. My husband was going to bed. He asked me if I wanted my featherbed. I told him that I couldn’t use the featherbed on the recliner because all the feathers would be falling over the edge of the chair. So, we kissed, said goodnight and he went off to bed. I had been sleeping on the recliner because I had been unable to lie flat on a bed. I had been in incredible pain for nine years and no one could figure out what was wrong with me that made my stomach hurt 24/7. I had had a hysterectomy in 2005 and surgery in the summer of 2006 to get rid of the adhesions that were perhaps causing the pain. After the second surgery I had had no pain for one month, and then the pain came back on the next day. It had been worse than ever, and never went away. Like I said I lived with that pain for nine years, after all it would not have been possible to have surgery every month. That would have been much too excessive. Anyway, back to the night of this particular miracle. January 26, 2015. As I said, I was in the recliner. All of a sudden I reached my hands up towards the ceiling and prayed with as much passion as I could, “God please help me. I can’t stand this pain anymore. Just once more I would like to sleep in my bed under my featherbed.” I had my eyes opened. I wasn’t praying loudly, but I was praying with desperation, passion, and undeniable faith that God could help me. I put my hands down and started to move around on the recliner trying to find a comfortable position…of course there never was one. As I rolled over on my left side, there was no pain. As I rolled over on my right side there was no pain. I got up and walked into the second bedroom so that I could climb under my featherbed that hadn’t covered me for 9 years. No pain. I was so excited and so grateful. The pain, even up until this day has never come back. I would say that was a miracle. Okay here is one more. We had wall to wall carpeting in our house in Florida. Not my choice. It was there when we bought the house. So, over the years I tried to keep the beige rug clean, but it was never a total success. Mostly in the dining room, even without shoes on, the rug would continue to get dirty. So. one day in my “wisdom” I decided to paint the dining room section of the rug. If it didn’t work, we would tear it up and put down an area rug. I used watered down acrylic paint. I figured that paint is so hard to get off a rug when it is accidently spilled, it should also last if I painted the rug on purpose. So, I painted the rug on purpose. I used sponges and made a mixed design, pretty much one color next to another. I got it done and went to bed. The next morning when I woke up the entire dining room rug was wall to wall hearts. All the colors combined with each other overnight, and we ended up with a rug full of hearts. Wow. How did that happen? It was a miracle. The painted rug worked out fine. I think the secret is that you had to water the paint down. Anyway, what fun to see those hearts and live with them for as long as we continued to live in that house. Like I said miracles happen all the time in my life. I am telling you, because I would like you to get connected with God and his power to create miracles in your life as well. Or to have you tell others about your miracles so that if they have not experienced them maybe hearing stories of miracles will encourage them that miracles do exist for everyone. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to have God and miracles as a part of my life. Just as a word of advice. I am not an expert on miracles, but I find if you are asking for help with what you have the results are better than if you ask for something you don’t have that you want. For instance, I knew a woman who desperately wanted a new kitchen. For a long time, she prayed for a new kitchen over and over again. She got her kitchen because her house totally flooded out one day because of a storm. She got what she wanted, but she did not get it in the way she wanted to. Be careful of what you ask for… You might get unexpected success.

Granny-o

January 25, 2022

A dog’s life. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I guess it can go either way depending on the circumstances of a dog’s life. Does the dog have food and water? Does the dog have a warm place to live? Is the dog loved? It doesn’t take much to create a good life for a dog, but is the dog really and truly happy? You can tell if he is happy if he is wagging his tail. Usually a wagging tail indicates happiness, and a cold nose tells you the dog is healthy. The thing about a dog is that he cannot talk, and he does not have hands. A dog does have big eyes and acute hearing that helps him deal with his life. Think about a dog’s life for a minute. Let’s say a dog has seen his owner go into a closet to get him a treat. The dog knows the treats are in there, but there is no way that he can get them by himself because even though he knows how to open the closet door, he cannot open it because he does not have hands. The dog has to wait, and sometimes he waits for a long time to get the treat he is craving. Another thing that a dog might like to do is to chase squirrels. He is not allowed to chase squirrels. He is held back by his leash as squirrel after squirrel runs up tree after tree. The dog is restricted again and again, Is the dog happy? What would happen if he had choices? What would the dog say if he could talk? Is a dog truly happy? Or is he happy only when his owner figures out what his dog wants and gets it for him? Does a dog like to be scratched? Or is the dog thinking over there. Over there. My itch is over there. Is it frustrating for a dog not to be able to talk? A dog’s life. Again, sometimes good, and sometimes bad. I am grateful to be an old human. I have more choices. I am able to make choices that add to my appreciation for life. I can make choices that will make me happy. I have hands and am able to talk. My hearing and my eyesight are not perfect, far from it, but I am glad I am not a dog, because sometimes a dog hears and sees more than I would want to know. Be kind. It’s a dog’s life.

Granny-o

January 24, 2022

Lousy letters. Are you a Scrabble player? I am. I love playing Scrabble, perhaps because it started its life as a game in 1948. 1948 was the year I was born. So, we are bonded. Sometimes when I am playing Scrabble, I get good letters. Sometimes when I am playing Scrabble, I get lousy letters. Usually, people who get lousy letters say it is the reason they lost the game. I have developed a tutorial for people to use to become better Scrabble players. You still use 7 letters, but there is only one rack and both players have the same letters to play with. The person who gets the most points for his word gets the points and goes first on the next turn. He keeps going first until the other player makes a better word, and then that person goes first as long as his words are worth more points. Now, there is no excuse of why a person wins or loses. The person who plays better wins. The person who doesn’t loses. You might both have lousy letters, and that evens out the playing field. It is really cool when you compare the same resources with the outcome. Try it sometime. Maybe you will like it. My thirteen-year-old grandson wants to share with you how lousy letters in Scrabble can transfer to your life. Here is what he has to say. ” When you play with lousy letters it is a disadvantage, however other players may have worse letters than you. Now, you might be saying what does this have to do with real life. Well, if you are having a bad day just think about how many other people are out there having just as bad a day or a worse day than you. While that doesn’t change that you are having a bad day. It might make you feel better that you are not alone. In Scrabble or in real life, lousy letters, can be made better, by your own mind set. If you look at it, even if today is a bad day, there are many more happy days to come. Today can still be a happy day because it all depends on your mind set. Try to focus on the good things today, instead of the bad. At my school at the end of the morning announcements they say something, I would like to share that something with you. “Make it a great day or not the choice is yours.

January 23, 2022

Life. Life is what you make it. Everything is there in your world for you to use in order for your life to be all you want it to be. Pick and choose among your options and make your life, your Heaven here on Earth. Life is not about settling; life is about living. Everything is out there waiting for you to use it as you see fit. There is plenty to go around, so there is no need to push or shove. When something runs out it will be replenished. So, cool out and enjoy your day. Cool out and enjoy the moment. I remember when I was a little girl, maybe seven, and I had been moping around for few days. I am not sure what I was moping about, but my mother decided enough was enough. Usually, my mother did not bother to hang out with me, because I was her daughter not her friend. She would live her life. I was to observe how she did it, and then follow in her footsteps. Mothers were always right, and there was no need for conversation. Just do it. Well, I don’t remember the conversation, but I remember her words of wisdom to me. She said, “Look at all you have. Why aren’t you happy?” I don’t think I had an epiphany then, but I guess I got over myself. To this day I remember her words…”Look at all you have. Why aren’t you happy?”. I have known for a long time that she had not been talking about toys, a bicycle or my favorite doll when she had mentioned all that I had. She was talking about all I had to be grateful for. Things that were a gift to me. Things that would never go out of style, never break and would be mine for the rest of my life. We didn’t discuss it at the time, but throughout the years I got a better understanding of what all you have meant. Life. Life is an incredible gift. It is wrapped up in love. It is so big and so wonderful that you cannot even count the reasons why you should be grateful for your life. Right at this very moment, I almost stopped breathing for a minute because I was so overwhelmed by the magic. The magic of life. It is beyond my understanding. Here it comes. Get ready. WOW. Wow is my favorite word, but this is the first time I have ever written it in capital letters. WOW. I did it again. I just cannot get over it… I just cannot get over it. I am so grateful for everything from the time I get up until the time I again put my head on my pillow. Oh, by the way did I ever mention that the pillow that nestles my head into it is a feather pillow? Anyway, I find I do not have trouble sleeping. I put my head down, and before I can even start counting sheep, I am fast asleep. I find love, appreciation, gratitude and happiness are the best medicine for a peaceful night of sleep. I will always remember my mother’s words,” Look at all you have. Why aren’t you happy?” I guess mothers were always right most of the time. Thank you, Mother, for everything you ever did for me. I did not deserve you. You were a gift. A gift from God to me. Life. WOW.

Granny-o