Pencil Thin

Working for yourself has so many benefits I can’t begin to list them. One downside I am experiencing is the toll that taxes can take on you. I really had no idea what I was getting into when I started working from home last year and failed to adequately prepare for tax time. This is a mistake I am not going to make next year. One thing I have decided to do is look into making more charitable donations. These are a great way to not only help other people but also help yourself come tax time.

One place that has caught my attention is Car Angel. Car Angel takes donated cars, boats, houses, and RVs are uses the proceeds from these donations to fund ministries that provide video and educational projects to improve the lives of people across the nation. Car Angel has distributed over 24 million educational videos financed by donated items to Car Angel. Examples of these videos can be viewed at http://youtube.com/user/boatangel.

Car Angel take the headache out of trying to get rid of your unwanted vehicles by making car donation a winning option for everyone. Not only does donating to Car Angel improve the lives of others in need but donations are tax deductible. Every little deduction helps when it comes to saving on your tax bill. Why not donate to a worthy cause like Car Angel today?

It is that time of the month again. No, I don’t mean “that time of the month” but it is almost as painful. The time I am referring to is that time of the month when I have to sit down and do my bill paying. Even with the ease of online bill payment I still dread sorting through all the mail to find my bill for life insurance, credit cards, and car payments. It seems like for every real piece of mail there is at least five pieces of junk mail that somehow end up in my stack of bills. Despite my best efforts, to keep things organized, it always seems to become a store all place for every bit of mail that comes in the door. I suppose it could be worse but I still dread entire process.

Since my husband and I have decided to move our choice of location has been a battle between us. He would like to continue to live in the north to be closer to our family but I would like a piece of real estate that is further south than he wants to go. Now don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy being close to our families and giving our kids a lot of grandma time but the prospect of moving further south and being more active outdoors for longer periods of time is something that I think would be good for us too. So, I see a compromise in our future but hopefully it will be one that is further south than Pittsburgh like Tennessee or Georgia.

If you are a woman who has given birth you can appreciate the subject of this post. I am the mother of two children both of whom were nursed for most of their first year of life. Now that I have lost all of the “baby weight” and a little bit more I can see vast differences in my body. Primarily, I notice the changes in my chest and mist section. Everything has lost its tone in those areas. I don’t know if I need better bras or maybe a couple really good bustiers but the “girls” could use a lift. I would never go under the knife but I can certainly understand why someone would. If two children did all this to my body I have to wonder what having a gaggle of kids does to a figure?

My previous post might have sounded a bit callous and I want to take a minute to clarify a few things. First of all I can completely understand what it is like to be an overweight child or teenager because I was one. The difference in my case was that I had no shortage of physical activity. Growing up on a farm there was hardly a free moment to sit and watch television the way kids today do. I know what it is like to be a kid who desperately wants someone to buy them diet pills or something to make it easier to loose weight. In my situation the problem was not about being active or physically strong because I was. The problem was simply eating more food than I needed to keep myself fit and strong. The kids next door quite literally do nothing all day for days on end. That is where my criticism lies. Even mowing the lawn would be a good start in their situation or for that matter walking the two blocks to school.

Being a teenager is supposed to be the prime of your life. Usually, I would never find myself talking about the weight of a child or teen but I found myself doing so today. Living next door are two teenage girls who seem to never to get any physical activity. Their mother drives them the two blocks to school. When she can’t take them somewhere they call taxi cabs. Today, I watch the older daughter struggle to shovel the little bit of light fluffy snow on the their steps. She really looked worn out by the effort. Instead of buying their kids iPods and video games parents of kids in this situation should be investing in elliptical and cardio equipment for their children. I just can’t imagine what life holds for an 17 year old who is so over weight that shoveling steps is a challenge.

Lately, I have been finding myself feeling not very motivated when it comes to getting things done. I don’t know if it is the cold or just the comfy feeling from sitting all snuggled under the blankets but I just feel like sitting. It really is a good thing I don’t have a fancy entertainment center with home theater lighting or my house would be in complete shambles. Everything that needs to be done is getting done but not with my usual enthusiasm. Maybe, I need one of those machines that produces fake sunlight? I would take even an elevation in the outdoor temperature at this point.

For the last week my wrists have literally been killing me. I can’t even stand to put on my IWC watch because I feel like my wrists have bruises all around them. About a month ago I began taking some online courses that require a great deal of typing. Because I will be typing over one thousand reports as part of my studies I finally invested in an ergonomic keyboard and some wrists supports. My hope is that these will help with the aching and prevent further damage to my wrists from what promises to be along road of study ahead. For now, until that bruised feeling leaves, I will just never really know what time it is.

This week I found myself sitting for what seemed like forever in the doctor’s office. As I scoured the magazine selection it became very clear that this office must usually see only men. From wall to wall the place was littered with sports magazines, fliers offering mens gold watches, pamphlets discussing prostate health, and pictures of famous golf courses. Literally there wasn’t even an outdated Good Housekeeping magazine to be found. Every doctor’s office seems to at least have this magazine as a staple in their reading stockpile. At least now I have a good gift idea for my husband and know more than I ever wanted to about prostates.

In our house there is a rule that I wish I could get people to break. That unspoken rule seems to be that once you get over one cold you are promptly going to get another. Both my children have had stomach viruses for the last several days and now I am quite sure my oldest has an ear infection. The poor kid is misunderstanding everything I say to him. Today, I was sending him upstairs to get ready for bed and he actually remembered to do everything I told him too. When he came back downstairs I said jokingly “that is absolute perfection man!” He then looked at me in a mix of confusion and excitement and asked “what is an absolute succession plan?” The poor kid clearly knows too many big words because after I repeated myself and was sure he understood what I really said it was clear my comment wasn’t nearly as interesting or exciting to him. Maybe I need to find bigger and more complex words to praise him?

One of our ongoing projects has been to begin clearing out our house in preparation for hopefully selling it. Because my entire family is down sick with some sort of nasty virus the brunt of the work has fallen to me this week. Thus far this week I had taken 19 lawn size trash bags to charity. I love donating and giving stuff away because it is somehow therapeutic for me. What I don’t like is getting to my intended charity location and having some guy on a truck sit and watch me struggle with these huge bags as if he had nothing better to do. Given that his job is to collect donations and load them on the truck I was a little perturbed when he told me to just “put my bags on the truck”. These bags weighed a good 40 pound each or more and he was asking me to lift them up onto this semi-truck that was well above my head. This truck didn’t have any fancy truck accessories, like a lift, but it sure ought to have one! My back is certainly paying the price for my good intentions. I can see why the guy asked me to put them up there.

My husband and I just recently bought a new computer. Supposedly it is better than our current one, at least according to my husband. It has all the bells and whistles including flat panel monitor, 80 gb of memory, a printer, everything down to the Cat5E cable used to plug into our high speed modem. Initially I wanted to get a better treadmill as I try to lose the extra weight that I put on over Christmas but I think my vote got trumped. Still, it is exciting to get something new and faster than what we already have although if it doesn’t work out I did get him to consent to getting a gym membership. I figure if he can upgrade, so can I.

The older that I get, the more things hurt, it’s just that simple. Recently I went camping with my family and found myself sleeping on a foam mattress and waking up with one heck of a back ache. My solution has spurred a continued morning routine and less aches and pains in my opinion, I get up and stretch every morning. Ten minutes of good stretching at least 5-7 mornings has improved my range of motion and wakes me up. Recently I find myself considering a course in Yoga as I have been told that it would fit into my “routine” quite well and allow me to meet new people. I also see it as a way to do something with my husband as he deals with the same aches and pains as I do, just more often.

My mother in law is a cancer survivor, breast cancer to be precise, and attributes her continued cancer free life to the use of progesterone cream. Her doctor sited several studies that stated that women studied with a low natural progesterone level dramatically increased there chances of getting cancer if they did not use a supplement of the hormone in the form of a cream of a pill. So a word to the wise ladies, talk to your doctor if you are aware of or are concerned that you might be lacking what has been proven to be a vital weapon in the fight against a horrible and non-discriminatory disease.