Tag Archive for friends

For a Healthy Marriage

“AFTER the kids are grown and we retire, THEN we’ll have time for us!” Too many couples put their relationship last.  Wouldn’t it be better if our kids grew up with a different outlook, that Marriage, as the heart of Family, is important enough to nourish?  We can do this in our own homes and among friends.  Find out about Marriage Encounter weekends and couples’ group activities. Do a date-night exchange, taking turns watching the kids while one couple goes out on a date—or just goes back home alone for a few hours.  Give that extra set of tickets to friends who need a night out.  Or take their kids with yours to the Children’s Discovery Museum and turn over your pool or hot tub to the parents for an afternoon.  All these things are inexpensive or free to you but priceless to your friends.  Your reward comes when they return the favor, and the community benefits from healthier marriages, both yours and your children’s!

Idea for a Party

Here’s an idea: have an Immigrant Party and invite your immigrant friends.  Don’t have any?  Sure you do.  All of our kinfolk came from somewhere other than the U.S.  Ask your guests to come ready to share their family history—why they came to the U.S., where they landed, what type of community they lived in here, the support system they had (church? neighbors from the same part of the world?), languages spoken at home, hardships they encountered here, what they went through to gain citizenship.  Maybe each guest could bring pictures of people, places, and documents, as well as a family keepsake that reminds them of those times.  You might even want to ask people to bring food to share from one of the cultures each guest represents. 

Spend the evening sharing your food and your stories.  By the end of the night it will be very clear why you are all friends—because we’ve been given the oceans not as an obstacle to divide us but as a path to bring us together.

Family–Personal Note

I’m excited. Family I love very much is coming for a week’s visit in a few days. We haven’t been physically together for two years. Phone calls, emails, and texts just aren’t the same.

Anticipation of the visit has had me thinking a lot about family, whether blood-related or friends we consider family…how much of an impact they make on our lives. They’re there, if only in spirit, in my joys and sorrows, to bounce ideas off of when I’m making a decision, to agree to disagree with on issues and concerns, to remind me to take better care of my health (because it matters to them), to respect me as a person, to let me be me and still love me.

Dear readers, I wish for all of you FAMILY!

Get the Kids Out of the House

Remember playing out in the yard just about every day when you were a kid? Sixty percent of parents answering a survey said they did. Yet, today, only 30% of kids aged 3 – 12 have daily playtime outside. And they have five structured, mostly indoor activities per week rather than free play.

Experts say that the fresh air, opportunities to experience nature, and unconfined freedom of being outdoors is healthy for kids. Other experts say that unstructured play stimulates the imagination while helping kids learn to make and keep friends, keeping kids healthy, and fighting obesity.  As a 2013 American Academy of Pediatrics article said, such activity offers kids “cognitive, social, emotional and physical benefits.”

So let’s take our kids back to our own childhoods, to the park, the playground, or the trike or sandbox in the back yard. Or just into the yard and let their imaginations come up with a game, because they will.

 

 

Credit Cards and Disabilities

I may have to re-start paying cash for everything. I’d miss the cash-back percentage I get from my credit card company, but I may have no choice.

Go back a bit, when those card readers were installed for “our convenience.” Even at my doctors’ offices they’re up high on a counter. That’s great for people who aren’t in a wheelchair or scooter, like me, but too high for me to swipe. Then they added the chip, with a slot that was lower. But many of the card readers don’t angle down to a usable position for me–some don’t allow any real space between the reader and the counter top for a person to manipulate the card into the slot.  And as far as signing, forget it, because the screen is at the highest point on the reader. I’m lucky if I can scrawl an “X” or have the cashier do so, neither of which is exactly a secure signature.

Now they’re talking about using a fingerprint for ID.  Since I can’t lift my arms any further than straight out (on a good day), how will I be able to press my finger against their screen?  Also, I worry about my often-home-bound friends (especially in bad weather). They (sometimes me) depend on others to do their shopping, sending along their credit card.  We can’t send along our finger, so the card is useless.

Credit card companies should realize that people with disabilities spend as much (or more) money than everyone else, and that everyone else is, in fact, only currently non-disabled. If they want our money, they need to make it easier for us to spend it.

Sadness/Depression

Here’s a one-minute video that clarifies the difference between depression and sadness.  It’s good information for bad times we go through  ourselves–and for understanding friends and relatives.

 

My Irish Blessing for You

I, Jackie O’Donnell, nee Kelly, hereby proclaim each and everyone of you an honorary Irish person today.  Here’s my Irish blessing for you:

May the roof above us never fall in.  And may the friends gathered below it never fall out.