Small Things Count

You’ve decided to give in to the kids and get a dog. But you want the perfect breed for your family.  So you go online and search.  Be careful! Some ¾ of those online dog sites are fake. They aren’t where they say they are or even have pups for sale. Right now, this is especially true for Yorkshire Terriers and French Bulldogs because they’re so popular. What often happens is that they end up claiming they never got the money you sent them, or they add new, usually large, fees after you’ve paid them (for insurance, shipping, etc.).

In 2020, more than $3 million was lost, with a median loss of $750.

To be safer, if you fall in love with a dog online, insist on seeing the animal in person or the seller and dog on Zoom or Facetime. Even then, they could pull a bait-and-switch. My recommendation is frequent trips to the local animal shelter or going on NextDoor or some other community-based social media where other people know the person. There are many dogs who have been abandoned or a family needs to re-home.

Once you add a pet to your family, enjoy its unconditional love. And keep reminding the kids that they said they’d take care of it.

We all have those thoughts. You know, the ones we know are bad and we feel guilty about thinking. Today’s Thursday Thought quote tells us how to handle them.

Do you have a nervous habit of tapping your fingers in a certain pattern over and over again? Or something you repeat to bring you “luck” when facing something stressful? Magnify that by 1000+ and you’ll start to understand what a person with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) lives with every day, every minute. It’s especially hard on children.

I recommend two excellent videos to help you understand OCD. After viewing one or both, you’ll have a good perspective on their challenges and some treatments, which can help you recognize the condition and be more patient with its sufferers.

View the James Callner, MA, videos and learn more at https://www.ocdcoachingvideos.com/

Seniors are prime targets of scams.  Learn what the most common ones are and why seniors are sucked in (https://scambusters.org/seniors.html) so you can protect yourself and your older loved ones.

I remember two decades ago, when we were all Americans. We clung to each other, cried with each other, consoled each other, and drew close as a unified family. As one, we got angry at what had been done to us and determined to rebuild rather than cower and give in. It didn’t matter what color our skin was, what part of the country we lived in, what version of God we worshipped, how rich or poor we were, whether we had a prestigious job or no job at all, what political beliefs and ideologies we held. All that was set aside, because our HOME had been attacked!

Over the last 20 years, that feeling has been replaced by hatred, suspicion, division, partisanship, acceptance of lies, and me-ism, and it saddens me deeply.

I want that American spirit back, the one that we had after 9/11. It shouldn’t take another tragedy. All it takes is each of us becoming determined to recapture the family-feeling we had back then.

Today’s Thursday Thought quote looks at trust–its cost and permanence.

Maybe this guy at a school board meeting went a tad too far in making his point about rules we follow & why we follow them. Put it into the context of the Board’s discussions leading to a decision about mandatory masks in schools, and I think he’s spot-on (even if his clothes are not).

For many people, their major source of facts and information is not the news media, which they deem biased, but social media, which they accept as reliable. For that reason, misinformation spreads like Covid-19.

The Cybersecurity for Democracy at NYU studied thousands of Facebook postings from August 2020 through January 2021. In those six months, the height of the Presidential campaigns, they found that misinformation (half-truths, truth-twisting, lies, etc.) were shared and liked 6x (six times) more often than news from actual news sites.

Part of the problem is people’s mistrust of the news media, or reliance only on biased news that supports their own views or promotes misinformation. Part of it is people’s unwillingness to consider the source of “facts”–what agenda the person saying it has–and simply, without thinking, passing it on.

No matter which, we’ve become a nation of lemmings, mindlessly following those who lead us over the cliff into the churning waters below. I’m normally a positive person, but this scares me.

Enjoy the last unofficial weekend of summer.  BBQ with friends and family.  Rest and relax.  Be a couch potato or get in some energetic activity. Whatever you do, remember that it took many people to arrange your day: grocer, bag-person, butcher, farmer, farm-worker, baker, brewer, grape-harvester, and many others for your food alone. Then there are those who worked the lines in the factory that produced your BBQer, swim suits, and cars to bring your guests together…and the lawn chairs and sports equipment you’re enjoying. Still working this weekend to keep you safe are the police, fire, EMTs, and their support–nurses, doctors, hospital orderlies and housekeeping.

Look at any object in front of you and think for a minute how many people it took to make this restful day possible for you.  It’s a crowd.

This group of people–laborers from all aspects of our lives–deserve to be thanked and honored.  Not just today, though, but each and every day.

This weekend, acknowledge a worker you wouldn’t have thought to thank before.

I had forgotten all about Walter Fauntroy. You may be too young to have heard of him. He ran in the Presidential primaries in 1972 and 1976. He was a former pastor, civil and human rights activist, and, as today’s Thursday Thought quote shows, a wise man who thought that we have a responsibility for shaping our world.