Posted in Uncategorized

Simple but Effective

Do you feeling like everything is just too much too handle? I know what you mean. Somebody is drying you crazy at work, you husband isn’t lifting a finger in the household when you get home (not you sweetheart, a coworker’s husband) and so on and so forth. There are some simple natural remedies to “live in harmony” and they are easy to implement into our daily lives.

Throughout history, humans have used natural remedies in traditional medicine, seeking alternatives for well-being. In these ancestral philosophies, the holistic and integral vision is the fundamental basis of the positive outcome of practice. The body, mind and spirit are seen as a whole, indivisible and integrally related. What affects one of the parts affects the whole. Yet, such simple actions such as smiling, breathing and drinking tee are used as basic self-help remedies, which are quick and efficient, producing immediate and lasting results throughout the day.

Smiling Often

The physical movement of the smile eliminates contractions in many facial muscles, none as important as the masseter muscles, located at the junction of the jaws. When you feel your face tightening you can smile and lift the tension. This action alone relaxes these muscle and eliminates tension and facilitates the production of endorphins and serotonin, which improve your emotional state.

At first it may be necessary to smile in a state of awareness, feeling the movement spread across your face. It might feel like you are performing the action, maybe even like you are putting on a fake smile. WHile even the best actors need to learn there roles in a play, smiling will come naturally at some point.

With practice you can continue to familiarize yourself with the movements need to express a smile. Then, little by little, we will internalize the exercise and at the end we will smile with our whole being, mind-body-spirit, one that is a smile of kindness and love, sustained during the day and night … what more could we wish for?

Controlled Breathing

Today’s society programs us in a negative way. It starts early, and little by little, from childhood, we stop breathing naturally and efficiently. We are taught to breathe only at the thoracic level (shallow), and when it is continued, this action produces altered states of mind, excessively heats the organism and decreases gas exchange in the lungs, resulting in less oxygenated and toxin-filled blood, which the is returned to the bloodstream. But instead of nourishing the organs and tissues, it only provides us with a small portion of what we need, leaving us at an oxygen deficit, and polluting our system.

Something as basic as relearning to breathe, an action we perform more than 30,000 times a day, can be very difficult to relearn.

To stay healthy it is imperative to remember our natural way of breathing, an action that quiets the mind, oxygenates the body and predisposes us to tranquility.

By increasing the level of oxygen in the brain, many clouds of everyday life will quickly dissipated, allowing a more detailed and simple analysis of the situations of our daily lives, which results in the acceptance of our present, without fear or resentment. We eliminate states of anxiety and stress and make us more peaceful and tolerant of others and ourselves.

Breathing calms the mind. But it often doesn’t have the same effect at work. For that choose a place outside the workplace. Take leave the office if you can for a while, take a breath, raise your arms as if touching the sky, slowly lower them, close your eyes and take three deep breaths and then enjoy a healthy drink.

Drink a Good Cup of Herbal Tea

During the afternoon, at my workplace, I take the time to savor a cup of tranquilizing mint tea, or chamomile. If you need to wake up you could try one with cinnamon (very strong), sweetened with honey. For a cold and cloudy morning a blend of ginger with lemon and honey is perfect.

Nothing can be more relaxing than a cup of tea, but make sure that you are doing so in the right environment. If you’re going to take a break at work, do it. But make sure that is a true break of at least 15 minutes, of tranquility, relaxation, allowing you to recharge your physical and emotional state of being.

These are just a couple of techniques I use frequently. Though healthy breathing is one that I try to do all the time it doesn’t work well when I am feeling stressed. For that I need to take the breather.

Hopefully you have read something that will get you searching in the right direction for calm and inner peace.

Posted in Updates

A Wrap Up of the Last Week

Not everyday do you get to look into a child’s eyes and see the joy and excitement when you present them with their gifts. It has been a great week everyone. Zachery just turned five and is so proud of how grown up he now is. As for his parents we’re just so thankful that we were able to have a celebration with our family. The last couple of years have been hard when it comes to celebrations, not everyone can come or wants to attend, but, knock on wood, everything seems to be going back to normal.

So, birthdays! I love them, my husband loves them (he got a set of LEGOs for his last birthday, and let’s just say he went wild*), and our son has just begun to grasp how fun they can be. Last year he just knew that he got to play more than usual and that he got toys, some socks, a terribly ugly pajama from his Aunt (as a gag gift), and he got to eat cake and ice cream (two of his favorite foods, after broccoli, strange I know).

Kiddo’s Birthday Party

As I have already mention we had a pretty big celebration this year. Last year for his birthday we only really had my parents, and my mother-in-law flew in for couple of days to visit her sister who lives in the area. My father-in-law wasn’t able to come because his company was short handed due some people falling out due to the VID. This year my husband wanted to host a BBQ Birthday, which in other words was his chance to fire up the grill one last time this year and pretend he was in one of those Norman Rockwell paintings. You know, something like this:

Norman Rockwell Painting

But without the dress shirt, belt and slacks, clean shaven, fifties look that resonates throughout Rockwell’s most famous works. My husband has worn kaki shorts, worn t-shirts, and a beard for over a decade now (since June 2010 to be exact). I don’t know if I would recognize him if he ever decided to shave. /s 🙄

In total we had about thirty people at our house this year, both the big sort and the small. Zach had a number of his school friends over and his cousins were also here. Our dog was a little over stimulated with so many little hands wanting to pet her, but she got over it pretty quickly. When everybody went home in the afternoon she and our son fell asleep together on the couch. I really wish I had gotten a picture of it. She woke up when I came in the room and there was really only a split second to catch the whole thing. Now that our son is a big boy, this was his fifth birthday after all, I think it will become more difficult to get him to take a nap. After all, naps are for babies and that he is most certainly not!

He loved the gift opening portion of the celebration, even though we coaxed him to open them slowly he tore through the majority of them. It was sweet when he got to the one from my parents. They had some custom gift wrap printed for the occasion, it was basically a photo montage of our family, their photo, and some moments with his cousins. The had it printed through a small company that specializes in such things, but also in other custom and hard to find themes. I intend to use them in the future. The wrapping paper was so cute, I wish I would have had a chance to save it (my sister cleaned the living room when we all went outside for cake and ice cream). The look on his face was priceless when he recognized who was printed on the paper, I think for a moment he thought that that was the gift. But my dad clarified it for him and he ripped it open, more reserved than the others, but still it came off in shreds.

The next morning Zach asked when his next birthday would be. Apparently he thought that it should be coming up again soon. My husband told him he would have to wait another 364 days, 52 weeks, or 12 months. Right now he thinks that that will be around Christmas since he knows he’ll get some presents then as well.

It is really a blessing to be able to watch him grow and make new experiences. When they are small it really seems like they are sometimes changing right before your eyes.

Thanks for coming everyone!

Zoey

* As it turns out my husband was a huge fan of LEGO blocks growing up. Every year his grand parents would buy him a big set for Christmas and it just comes with a lot of nostalgia for my darling husband. Since he got his first (new set) some months ago he has bought another half dozen for himself and he and our son have been putting them together as “father son bonding”. I guess I can’t complain, it has been fun watching them work together on increasingly larger projects. One drawback to the LEGO project has been that they take up quite a lot of room once completed. Our living room feels like a gallery with the shelves and floor, though goggy has left them alone thus far.
Posted in Uncategorized

All I Want…

Look closely at the flow of the first verse of this poem that Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr. not his son who was a jurist and legal scholar appointed to serve as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States by Theodore Roosevelt) writes:

There are words so delicious their sweetness will smother That boarding-school flavor of which we’re afraid, There is “lush” is a good one, and “swirl” is another,– Put both in one stanza, its fortune is made.

Now look at his second stanza:

With musical murmurs and rhythmical closes You can cheat us of smiles when you’ve nothing to tell You hand us a nosegay of milliner’s roses, And we cry with delight, “Oh, how sweet they do smell!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes was a physician, poet, and polymath, from Boston who had a long career in different fields. I would also say that he is a musician due to the way his verses flow.

This poem is musically aligned, in my humble opinion, a piece of modern art… the pictures it summons to my mind are not “far-fetched”, but you have to see that they have been very intelligently combined. The simplicity of the first verse setting the tone in the very beginning, if you every played the violin, you could hear them ensemble in the background, the voice that accompanies Holmes intermittently, as he “glides” and “plays a bit of orneriness in to close it with good mix of humor, the unfinished end, something that to my mind make it exceptionally exquisite.

What I want to tell you is that the poem “A Familiar Letter” plays and sounds in my mind, for day after I have read it, and honestly I can’t find a way to get rid of it.

To be very honest, although it impresses me, I think what has captivated me so much throughout the years is that it resonates with me. I went to boarding school when I was fourteen. But it is also timeless because it tells a story of separation and reunion.

I think the poem says in simple words what in recent months has become most important to many of us, a common desire in life, as such: I have come to the conclusion that all I want in my life, is to be able to find something true, genuine, authentic, a sincere and not false life, not one that is duried behind a facade.

The second stanza strikes me even more than the first due to the happy honesty.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to waste any more time on things that aren’t worth it (in the long run), on vain things (that satisfy the here and now). As Holmes puts it: “…cheat us of smiles…” No. On the contrary, if only I could apply his word to my way of thinking about my daily life, for example: being in my office, talking to other people… driving through the traffic, queuing in line at the supermarket, sleeping, watching TV, surfing the web, talking on the phone… Wow!…What a difference it would make! Don’t you think?

For me, this day, the only desire that competes with this is that you also adopt it into your life.

As the poem goes, it is not easy, but there it is, I leave it up to you.

Zoey

For those of you who would like to read the full poem:

A Familiar Letter

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
YES, write, if you want to, there’s nothing like trying; Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold? I’ll show you that rhyming’s as easy as lying, If you’ll listen to me while the art I unfold.

Here’s a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies, As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool; Just think! all the poems and plays and romances Were drawn out of this, like the fish from a pool!

You can wander at will through its syllabled mazes, And take all you want, not a copper they cost,– What is there to hinder your picking out phrases For an epic as clever as “Paradise Lost”?

Don’t mind if the index of sense is at zero, Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean; Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero Are much the same thing in the rhyming machine.

There are words so delicious their sweetness will smother That boarding-school flavor of which we’re afraid, There is “lush”is a good one, and “swirl” is another,– Put both in one stanza, its fortune is made.

With musical murmurs and rhythmical closes You can cheat us of smiles when you’ve nothing to tell You hand us a nosegay of milliner’s roses, And we cry with delight, “Oh, how sweet they do smell!”

Perhaps you will answer all needful conditions For winning the laurels to which you aspire, By docking the tails of the two prepositions I’ the style o’ the bards you so greatly admire.

As for subjects of verse, they are only too plenty For ringing the changes on metrical chimes; A maiden, a moonbeam, a lover of twenty Have filled that great basket with bushels of rhymes.

Let me show you a picture–‘t is far from irrelevant– By a famous old hand in the arts of design; ‘T is only a photographed sketch of an elephant,– The name of the draughtsman was Rembrandt of Rhine.

How easy! no troublesome colors to lay on, It can’t have fatigued him,– no, not in the least,– A dash here and there with a haphazard crayon, And there stands the wrinkled-skinned, baggy-limbed beast.

Just so with your verse,– ‘t is as easy as sketching,– You can reel off a song without knitting your brow, As lightly as Rembrandt a drawing or etching; It is nothing at all, if you only know how.

Well; imagine you’ve printed your volume of verses: Your forehead is wreathed with the garland of fame, Your poems the eloquent school-boy rehearses, Her album the school-girl presents for your name;

Each morning the post brings you autograph letters; You’ll answer them promptly,– an hour isn’t much For the honor of sharing a page with your betters, With magistrates, members of Congress, and such.

Of course you’re delighted to serve the committees That come with requests from the country all round, You would grace the occasion with poems and ditties When they’ve got a new schoolhouse, or poorhouse, or pound.

With a hymn for the saints and a song for the sinners, You go and are welcome wherever you please; You’re a privileged guest at all manner of dinners, You’ve a seat on the platform among the grandees.

At length your mere presence becomes a sensation, Your cup of enjoyment is filled to its brim With the pleasure Horatian of digitmonstration, As the whisper runs round of “That’s he!” or “That’s him!”

But remember, O dealer in phrases sonorous, So daintily chosen, so tunefully matched, Though you soar with the wings of the cherubim o’er us, The ovum was human from which you were hatched.

No will of your own with its puny compulsion Can summon the spirit that quickens the lyre; It comes, if at all, like the Sibyl’s convulsion And touches the brain with a finger of fire.

So perhaps, after all, it’s as well to he quiet If you’ve nothing you think is worth saying in prose, As to furnish a meal of their cannibal diet To the critics, by publishing, as you propose.

But it’s all of no use, and I’m sorry I’ve written,– I shall see your thin volume some day on my shelf; For the rhyming tarantula surely has bitten, And music must cure you, so pipe it yourself.
Posted in Conflict

Local Nuisances and the State of the Neighborhood

We’re just going to call him Brad for now. BUT the truth is that he can take on many different names and faces.

Let me set the stage. Here we have this famous individual (famous in his own mind, notorious everywhere else), who has caused us so many problems throughout his friendly career, so many moments of internal and physical conflicts have been caused – that we already have considerable respect for any dealings with him – that he has earned a reputation for his ruthless effectiveness.

To tell you about him, to say something new that you do not know, let alone shocking, is to tell you that you don’t know what it is like to be you. Brad appears when you least expect him, he is hidden, in hiding, some place until suddenly “zap”, like lighting he strikes, presenting himself with evil intent. Brad is a narcissist and can be very hard to avoid him (especially when you have a front facing job and he saunters in), nobody can do anything about him, not always, but most of the time he wins. Getting what he wants. Even if you manage to avoid him he will be back in a totally unexpected and surprising way. But we still allow him to invade our lives because of society’s social expectations of politeness put on us.

Many have suffered from the character assassination and attacks he has dealt out throughout the years. But they were able to overcome it thanks to the support that they got from others who suffered from this bully, but we have to stand together to be able to beat him.

“The bully always wins,” they sometimes say, “when you see him appear run and do not look back.”

Not anymore. Brad, fuck off!

Zoey

Posted in Updates

Hey Everybody – Here I Go Again!

Tonight, I am pleased to announce to all of you, the official start of my personal blog has begun anew (yeah, I know that it was 2015 when I started it). You could actually say that it never really got started but, then I guess it has been up for a while, that is a plus. I tried the other day to get a feel for it again and it was different than I remembered so bare with me, this might take a while before things begin running smoothly.

I had not really started when I first made the site, it was merely there before, because I believe – and I say this without false humility – that I still do not have the maturity or baggage like other people, whose edifying blogs and wise reasoning amaze me day by day. I will try, though, rather humbly, at the insistence of several of you (I’m poiting at you mom)… Thank you for believing that I must at least try.

It will be an effort, believe me, to put into words my appreciation for all of the things that happen to us in this life, as well as share what I hope will be a little common sense.

I am thankful for tools like this blog. I think that “bouncing” my ideas around with all of you is going to be a very pleasant and enriching adventure. Yes, I know that I have started down this path before. But, on one hand I had a lot going on and on the other there really wasn’t anything worthwhile to actually write about. In my advanced years (just kidding), taking the time to look at and comment on the different things happening in my life from time to time could even be therapeutic.

Hopefully the words and I ideas that I share here from this day onwards (promise), contribute even in a small proportion, bring some of us closer.

God bless!

Zoey

Posted in Uncategorized

Life According to Zoey

Hello all! You know who you are. I have had like two visitors so far in something like six years. I’m Zoey and I would like to share my opinions about the world, fashion, Ye (formerly known as Kanye West), and life on this blog. I welcome everyone, especially my family, to share their thoughts and stuff in the comments.

This will be my personal diary, though daily isn’t going to be doable. Still I will write how things are going and hope that you really like visiting my blog.

Zoey