25 Things Every Kid Should Experience

Love this article. Wish I thought of it!

Here's the link: http://blogs.babble.com/kid-scoop/2012/03/23/25-things-every-kid-should-experience/?pid=4804#slideshow

Here's the List:

1-Being part of a team -"The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime." ~Babe Ruth

2-Camping - "The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man."~Author Unknown

3-Chores - "All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today."~Ralph Ransom

4-Snow- "A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship."
~Markus Zusak

5-Farm Life- "Growing up on a dairy farm, you certainly learn discipline and a commitment to purpose." ~Mike Johanns

6-A lemonade stand - "Once you decide to work for yourself, you never go back to work for somebody else."~Alan Sugar

7-Flying a kite - Don't be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against, not with the wind."
~Hamilton Wright Mabie

8-Bowling - "Having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain." ~Martin Mull

9-The fair - "Go to the Fair, Templeton. You will find that the conditions at the fair will surpass your wildest dreams." ~via "Charlotte's Web" by E.B. White

10-Cooking - "Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all."
~Harriet Van Horne
11-Fishing - "Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers."~Herbert Hoover

12-Horseback riding - "No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle."~Winston Churchill

13-Giving - "I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver."
~Maya Angelou

14-The library - "To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one." ~Chinese saying

15-A family reunion - "Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life!"
~Albert Einstein

16-A live stage production - "The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it's so accidental. It's so much like life."~Arthur Miller

17*-The beach - "Our memories of the ocean will linger on, long after our footprints in the sand are gone." ~Anonymous

18-Caring for a pet - "The dog was created especially for children. He is the god of frolic."
~Henry Ward Beecher

19- Helping fix stuff - "The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty as the son who neglects them."~Confucius

20-A friendship with a special needs child - "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." ~Albert Einstein

21-Riding a train - "If God had intended us to fly, he would never have given us the railroads."
~Michael Flanders

22-Being in a wedding - "Twenty-three is the best age [to get married] because you know the person FOREVER by then."~Camille, age 10

23-Gardening - "I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation." ~Phyllis Theroux

24-Learning to swim - What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? ...when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning - what do you find? That you can swim? Well - life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!~Alfred Alder

25-A slumber party - "I believe in angels, the kind Heaven sends. I am surrounded by angels, but I call them my best friends.~Anonymous

*If you're from Jersey, #17 would be "The Shore"!

Wow, I 'm only missing a couple from this list!
Off the top of my head I'd like to add: A family road trip, visiting a zoo, museum, school trip, building a fort/treehouse/snowfort, love/attention from a grandparent, aunt or uncle, riding a bike & roller skating, sleeping in a tent in the backyard  . . . . .

 . . . . and what would you like to see on this list? Email me and I'll add it to the post.

Oh My Goodness . . .

. . . how you all responded to the call out for your stories of how you found the Geranium Farm! Barbara's eMo's go far and wide! So next week, will be your week. So check in and read all the funny, unusual, personal, and some touching stories of how you found your way to the "Farm". You guys are great!

Debbie

How You Found the Geranium Farm (5)

Wow, this has been full of surprises and blessings to find out how you all connected with the Farm. Your "journeys" are funny, interesting, and touching.
You guys are the best!

How I Found The Geranium Farm (#5)

How You Found the Geranium Farm (1)

You have all been so generous with sharing your stories of how you came to find the Geranium Farm. With Matt our web dude's help, they will be posted a few pages a day as PDF file's.

(In no particular order, as they say.)

If you don't have the PDF reader on your computer you can down load it here:
Adobe Acrobat Reader

Thanks again everyone - Happy Reading!

How I Found The Geranium Farm (#1)

How You Found The Geranium Farm (6)

The last few stories about "How I Found The Farm" are found below.


How I Found The Geranium Farm (#6)

How To Outwit Squirrels

(The following was sent from Geranium Farm reader David Bendix.)

Subject: Kathleen Liebenow's brother, here.
I lived for many years in Wyoming, in a small town at the foot of the Bighorn mountains in the far northern part of the state, near the Montana border. We had the eastern variety of the big bushy-tailed gray squirrel there, and I spent the better part of two years trying to figure out how to squirrel-proof my bird feeders.
Finally, my wife found and gave me a copy of a book called "How to outwit squirrels.", a HILARIOUS read about the author's attempts to figure out a way to keep squirrels out of their feeders. The book really disappointed me, though: the first line in the dedication is that there IS no known way to outwit squirrels. I did, however, eventually (after a solid year of plotting and 
brain-crafting) come up with a foolproof way to prevent any squirrel from getting into my feeders.
First, I tried hanging one feeder from a very skinny clothesline wire.  That worked for almost a full day. The squirrels discovered that they could creep out along the wire by hanging from it like sloths.
Back to the drawing board. I obtained through somewhat illicit means a pair of disc plows. They look
like big cymbals. I hung them on the clothesline wire on either side of the feeder. They couldn't figure out how to get around them. That worked for almost a full day. The squirrels discovered VERY quickly, though, that they could simply jump from the ground up to the feeder, hang by their back feet from the wire, and eat sunflower seeds as long they liked - UPSIDE DOWN.
Little monsters. I tried shooting them with my pellet gun pumped up to just knock them off the wire, but not break their skin or injure them.   That worked, but you can't be outside all the time, and my wife pointed out that I was spending several hours a day in a nonproductive task that only highlighted the fact that the squirrels were both smarter and more persistent than I was. Me, with an MBA.
Next, I strung a wire from the house roof to a tree at a much greater height than they could jump straight up, and repeated the trick with the two plow discs. Aha!! Success!! For exactly 3 hours. My mistake was in hanging the feeder within ten horizontal feet of the house. Although squirrels can't climb up the side of a house, they CAN cross the street, climb up a utility pole, find an electric wire, telephone wire, or TV cable wire that leads to the house, follow that, cross the house roof,
and jump from the roof straight out to the top of the plow disc, and before the disc could spin around and dump the squirrel off onto the ground, hop neatly over the disc, hang upside down by their back feet, and clean out the sunflower seeds, leaving the grosbeaks, sparrows, finches, and chickadees to starve to death while it's 35 below zero. Actually, Wyoming squirrels stay in their nests when it's that cold, so I prayed for cold weather so I could delude myself into thinking that I'd outsmarted them.
Jane tells me that she's talking to a divorce lawyer. In fact, she's booked herself a trip to Jamaica to talk to the divorce lawyer. He's from a neighboring town in Wyoming. Hell, this is KILLING ME.
Finally, though, I move the feeder out from the house another twenty feet. The next morning, I take a picture of 5 adult and 4 juvenile squirrels hanging from their back feet on the "unproductive" side of one of the plow  discs, staring at the disc.   I feel a strong pang of guilt. I don't want the squirrels to starve to death, after all. So I go to the store and buy 10 pounds of unsalted peanuts. For ten dollars.
From then on, I feed the squirrels 1/4 pound of peanuts every day. By hand. I mean, they eat from my hand.   And not one ever bites me. And I never see them in the bird feeder again.
God, am I SMART, or what?
We have the WESTERN variety of the gray squirrel here in Yreka, but they're not as enterprising as the eastern ones, I guess.  They may not be as SMART as the eastern ones, but they more than make up for it in sheer meanness. Our cats - a couple of which are big, strong, fearless cats, are terrified of those squirrels. Hell, these squirrels are nearly as big as a small cat, and they have really terrible teeth.  One of my cats once mad the mistake of tanging with a squirrel in the yard, and he ran back to the house bleeding from an ear and a cheek that had been bitten through. Of course, they don't HAVE to be very enterprising squirrels: I have a huge walnut tree that provides them with a perfectly adequate living all year. Appparently not a damned thing I can do about it either, although I
lay awake some nights pondering the possibilities........h mmmmmmmmmmmm. I
wonder if I could figure out a way to squirrel-proof a walnut tree.

{Have an amusing squirrel story? Send it along and we'll post it on Hodgepodge.}

Sent in from another HP reader:

I have several three inch sections of PVC pipe on the long arm that I hang my feeder from.  The squirrels cannot balance on the moveable PVC and they fall off.  The branches above the feeder have grown stronger so now they just climb the branches above the feeder and bounce down and eat!  I mean eat – they cracked the plastic holes and ate the contents in one morning - - I quit after that…  I enjoyed David’s stories and I too made peace with the squirrels (and raccoon) that eat from the feeder.  Oh the mice eat the seed right out of the bag in the shed and through a plastic bin in the shed too!  I just made peace with the whole process and go about my day!

 Fran

and another  . . . . .

 

Hi, Debbie

Loved the squirrel story. Here's mine:

I once lived in a house that had a small bay window that jutted out from the house and was shingled on top.
I had a small feeder attached to the window by suction cups. It was about midway up the center of the window.

I was enjoying my tea one morning when I saw an arm reeeeeeeach down from the top of the window, followed shortly by the rest of the squirrel. It landed in the bushes below the window, and I thought that was that!

About five minutes later, there was a huge rustling, and the squirrel climbed up onto the sill. It reeeeached up and got one claw into the feeder, and then managed to get its whole body into the very small feeder.

At that point, I gave up and scattered some seed on the ground for it.

Adelaide Kent

Putting Faces to the Names . . .

Happy Easter from Linda and Hazel who started it all on how you came to know the Geranium Farm.
(http://geraniumfarmhodgepodge.blogspot.com/search?q=So+What%27s+your+story)
Your stories again if you missed them -
http://geraniumfarmhodgepodge.blogspot.com/search?q=How+you+found+the+farm

Linda went on a surprise visit to Hazel for this Easter. The picture above was taken previously but since Hazel loves Easter, her favorite holiday in the church year, she said to go ahead and use it!
(and just a few more of your stories will be posted back to 3/1/08)

7 Heart Attack Signs Doctors and Women Often Miss

Only because it can't be repeated enough, and maybe there is something here that wasn't said before, I'm passing along this article my brother found on the Internet.

Heart Attack Signs Doctors Often Miss


By CARING.COM
Conventional wisdom has it that heart attacks come out of the blue. We're also trained to expect a heart attack to happen a certain way; the victim clutches his chest, writhes in pain, and collapses. But for women, it often doesn't happen that way. Study after study shows heart attacks and heart disease are under-diagnosed in women, with the explanation being that they didn't have symptoms.

But research shows that's not the case. Women who've had heart attacks realize, looking back, that they experienced significant symptoms -- they just didn't recognize them as such.

In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, 95 percent of women (that's almost all!) who'd had heart attacks reported experiencing symptoms that were decidedly new or different from their previous experience a month or more before their attacks.

Even when a heart attack is occurring, women are often slow to realize what's happening and call a doctor. The reason? Women's heart attack symptoms are different than men's. This failure to recognize heart attack signs in women has led to a grim statistic: women are more likely to die from sudden cardiac death than men are, and two thirds of women who have a heart attack don't recover completely.

To prevent a heart attack from sneaking up on you, watch for these 7 little-known signs of heart attack:

1. Fatigue. More than 70 percent of women in the NIH study reported extreme fatigue in the month or months prior to their heart attacks. This was not just your run-of-the-mill tiredness -- the kind you can power through -- this was an overwhelming fatigue that sidelined them from their usual schedules for a few days at a time.

2. Sleeplessness or Insomnia. Despite their fatigue, women who've had heart attacks remember experiencing unexplained inability to fall asleep or stay asleep during the month before their heart attacks.

3. Anxiety and Stress. Stress has long been known to up the risk of heart attack. But what women report is the emotional experience; before their heart attacks they felt anxious, stressed, and keyed up, noticeably more than usual. Moments before or during a heart attack, many women report a feeling they describe as "impending doom;" they're aware that something's drastically wrong and they can't cope, but they're not sure what's going on.

4. Indigestion or Nausea. Stomach pain, intestinal cramps, nausea, and digestive disruptions are another sign reported by women heart attack patients. Become familiar with your own digestive habits, and pay attention when anything seems out of whack. Note especially if your system seems upset and you haven't eaten anything out of the ordinary.

5. Shortness of Breath. Of the women in the NIH study, more than 40 percent remembered experiencing this symptom. One of the comments the women made is that they noticed they couldn't catch their breath while walking up the stairs or doing other daily tasks.

6. Flu-Like Symptoms. Clammy, sweaty skin, along with feeling lightheaded and weak, can lead women to wonder if they have the flu when, in fact, they're having a heart attack.

7. Jaw, Ear, Neck, or Shoulder Pain. While pain and numbness in the chest, shoulder, and arm is a common sign of heart attack (at least, among men), women often don't experience the pain this way. Instead, many women say they felt pain and a sensation of tightness running along their jaw and down the neck, and sometimes up to the ear, as well. The pain may extend down to the shoulder and arm -- particularly on the left side -- or it may feel like a backache or pulled muscle in the neck and back.

In addition to the symptoms they do have, women differ from men in another significant way -- they may not experience many of the symptoms we traditionally associate with heart attacks. This, experts say, is a major reason why women's heart attacks go unrecognized and untreated. Almost half of all women in the NIH study felt no chest pain, even during the heart attack itself. Numbness is another symptom women may not experience, experts say.

How to protect yourself or the women you care about? If your body is doing unusual things and you just don't feel "right," don't wait.Go see your doctor and ask for a thorough work-up. And if you have any risk factors for cardiac disease, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, or family history of heart disease, mention these to the doctor. Time is of the essence, so don't count on medical staff to know your background or read your chart -- tell them your risk factors right away, so your condition can be evaluated fully and completely.

********************************************************************************
The Geranium Farm is up for nonmination again on divine caroline website for it's "Love This Site" Awards. We'd love to have your vote!
You have to be registered at this website to vote but I think you'll find it's really worth checking it out:
http://www.divinecaroline.com/awards/Aug-09/1787

How You Found the Geranium Farm (2)

Here's the second installment. Enjoy!
If you don't have the PDF reader on your computer you can down load it here:
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How I Found The Geranium Farm (#2)

How You Found the Geranium Farm (3)

More of your wonderful stories.

If you don't have the PDF reader on your computer you can down load it here:
Adobe Acrobat Reader


How I Found The Geranium Farm (#3)

10 Ways to Be Happier

From Shine on Yahoo
1. Don’t start with profundities. - Start with basics like getting enough sleep and not letting yourself get too hungry.
2. Do let the sun go down on anger.- " Expressing anger related to minor, fleeting annoyances just amplifies bad feelings, while not expressing anger often allows it to dissipate."
3. Fake it till you feel it. - Feelings follow actions so acting cheerier will help you feel happier.
4. Realize that anything worth doing is worth doing badly. - People learning new things are happier than those who stick to famliar activities that they already do well.
5. Don’t treat the blues with a “treat.” - Often the things that you may choose for a treat are things that aren't good for you and then the feelings of guilt and loss of control will make you feel lousier.
6. Buy some happiness. - "Look for ways to spend money to stay in closer contact with my family and friends; to promote my health; to work more efficiently; to eliminate sources of irritation and marital conflict; to support important causes; and to have enlarging experiences."
7. Don’t insist on the best. - Are you a satisficer or a maximizer? Satisficers make a decision once their criteria are met while maximizers want to make the best possible decision. "Satisficers tend to be happier than maximizers. Maximizers expend more time and energy reaching decisions, and they’re often anxious about their choices. Sometimes good enough is good enough."
8. Exercise to boost energy. - Exercise is one of the most dependable mood-boosters with even a 10-minute walk being most helpful.
9. Stop nagging. - Use wordless hints or do it yourself.
10. Take action. - About 40% of your happiness level is within your control. Take conscious steps to make your life happier.
To read more in depth go to:
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/health/10-ways-to-be-happier-295265

Some more information on Temple Grandin
(This will be posted back to the Temple Grandin Hodgepodge posting.)
Carol Stone of Ways of the World here on the Farm, sends along this interesting article she found about Temple Grandin. Life Among the 'Yakkity Yaks' The renowned inventor on how the insights she gained from her own autism fueled her career.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703525704575061123564007514.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_opinion

Video: Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds (19:44 min)
(TED - Ideas worth spreading)
http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html Also check out Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight while you are there. (18:44 min)
Thanks Diane for finding and passing this along.

Money-Saving Recipes

Dear Debbie,

This is not my own idea. I read it in an Australian 'grass roots' magazine years ago and found it very handy especially back when we had a house full of children. The contributor was from a dairy farm and suggested using cream instead of butter in baking. Of course, she was using up a surplus of it but for us nowadays, cream is often available very cheaply when it's close to its used by date. It's not so suitable for a Flyaway Sponge, but the great if you want to feed the hungry hoards with good healthy real food. ( God wouldn't have given us cows if he didn't want us to have butter and cream! )

To make cakes, replace the weight of butter with the same volume of cream. I used to multiply a recipe and use the whole 500 ml. The mixture would fill the roasting pan. You may get the chance to freeze some for later. I often used one of the all-in-together cake recipes because, unlike butter, the cream is already 'creamed'. This a good opportunity to throw in those over ripe bananas you have saved in their skins in the freezer. ( Peel them first, of course.) Bananas are sweet so you can reduce the amount of sugar in the recipe. Ring the changes with spices, dried fruit, cocoa and nuts. A friend told me that her mother used to add some jam to the cake mixture to add interest if she didn't have anything else.

Another suggestion was to add mustard to warmed cream to make Mustard Sauce and so on.

With butter, 500 gm is close enough to a pound, so work from there. (By the way, what does a stick of butter weigh? We are familiar with the term from the little girl going shopping on 'Sesame Street' but nobody ever says in a recipe how much one weighs. Likewise, 'half and half'. Half and half what?)

For people who don't have an electric mixer, using cream instead of butter saves a lot of elbow grease.

Best wishes,

Mary Round
Burnett Heads
Australia 4670

In answer your question about half and half. From the food Network: It is a mixture of equal parts milk and cream, and is 10 to 12 percent milk fat. Neither half-and-half nor light cream can be whipped. (It is sold here usually by the quart or pint, or it is given in little containers for your coffee.)
Substitution: CREAM, HALF-AND-HALF 1 cup = 1 1/2 Tbsp butter plus enough whole milk to equal 1 cup OR 1/2 cup light cream plus 1/2 cup whole milk
Butter is sold by the pound, 4 sticks, so that would be 4 ounces as a pound is 16 ounces.

How You Found the Geranium Farm (4)

More of your stories.

How I Found The Geranium Farm (#4)

A Quilt is Nice

My friend Helen found this blog. Check out the bright, beautiful, and quirky quilts. There are even some instructions to make your own!
http://aquiltisnice.blogspot.com/

Please don't forget to vote for the Geranium Farm. Yes, you do have to register at the site, but you can always remove yourself later. Just be sure to uncheck the box to get updates. This is where you can use a second email address. Don't have one? Get a free one at Yahoo, AOL, or MSN (Hotmail), just to name a few. It a handy thing to have when you don't want to give out your primary email address.

So . . . show everyone how much you love the Geranium Farm by clicking on this link & voting:
http://www.divinecaroline.com/awards/1364-the-geranium-farm

Voting ends Nov. 30th.

Temple Grandin

If you can get a chance to watch this movie I highly recommend it.
http://www.hbo.com/index.html#/movies/temple-grandin
It is being shown on various HBO stations.
Click on Full Schedule and when it comes up and you see the Movie title, click on it and then, Full Schedule again to find all the times it is being shown.
Here is her website: http://www.templegrandin.com/

For some more on Temple Grandin from NPR go to this link:
http://www.npr.org/search/index.php?searchinput=TEMPLE+GRANDIN

Carol Stone of Ways of the World here on the Farm, sends along this interesting article she found about Temple Grandin. Life Among the 'Yakkity Yaks' The renowned inventor on how the insights she gained from her own autism fueled her career.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703525704575061123564007514.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_opinion

Video: Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds
(TED - Ideas worth spreading)
http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html
Thanks Diane for finding and passing this along.