I found a post on one of my stamping forums the other day that really got me thinking. This lady was declaring a 90 day spending moratorium because she had been overspending and wanted to get it back under control. She was asking for support and to see if anyone else wanted to join her in her pledge. What I found surprising and very thought provoking were the somewhat negative comments she was getting back. The gist of most of the messages that were posted was "No way! I'll never stop spending. I couldn't possibly! And besides I deserve it. Look at how much money my husband spends on ___ ".

I thought that was kind of an interesting attitude. Lord knows, I've had my ups and downs with money. In my life, I've been deep in debt more times than I could count, managed to climb back out of it - inch by painstaking inch, and sure enough, I put myself right back into it in record time. My mother was quite the shopaholic and I'm sure I come by these tendencies honestly. But sometimes you have to really step back and think about the big picture. How does your debts and your spending affect your family? How does it affect your future?

I know mine does. There are lots of times when I'm spending the bulk of my check on utilities and credit card payments and other things get the short end of the stick. Not groceries - I like to eat too much to skimp on those, but extra money for vacations and stuff for the kids, and dinners out, and all those "extras" that make life so much fun.

And if I look at the credit card bills, it's mostly MY stuff. Not stamps, thank heaven! I made a deal with myself long ago that my business had to at least be self supporting, if not actually a contributing factor. If I want to buy something for my hobby, I have to sell enough stamps to pay for it. But I LOVE cute clothes - both for me and the kids, and little "stuffs" for the house, as Jen would say, and sometimes dinners out or movie nights end up on the credit card, rather than out of pocket like they should be. So it just adds up and up and before you look around, you're out of control again!

Now, I don't mean to sound "preachy" or anything. Writing is the way I kind of think things out and get them out of my head and if it helps you too, so much the better, but spending is a very personal topic and I would never tell anyone else what to do. I can just tell you, I've been on the debt side and I've been on the not-debt side, and I'll tell you, the not-debt side is SO much more fun!

So, I'm putting my credit cards into a "time out". They're sitting in a drawer right now and they're going to have to stay there, at least for the next 90 days. We'll give it a little time for the dust to settle and get them paid down a bit, and if I want something, just like my stamps, it's a cash deal or it's NO deal!

I love this little story. I got it from one of my Zig Ziglar publications and I've always found it very inspirational.
Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, "Mother, you must come and see the daffodils before they are over." I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead. Going and coming took most of a day--and I honestly did not have a free day until the following week.

"I will come next Tuesday, " I promised, a little reluctantly, on her third call. Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and so I drove the length of Route 91, continued on I-215, and finally turned onto Route 18 and began to drive up the mountain highway. The tops of the mountains were sheathed in clouds, and I had gone only a few miles when the road was completely covered with a wet, gray blanket of fog. I slowed to a crawl, my heart pounding. The road becomes narrow and winding toward the top of the mountain.

As I executed the hazardous turns at a snail's pace, I was praying to reach the turnoff at Blue Jay that would signify I had arrived. When I finally walked into Carolyn's house and hugged and greeted my grandchildren I said, "Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible in the clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these darling children that I want to see bad enough to drive another inch!"

My daughter smiled calmly," We drive in this all the time, Mother."
"Well, you won't get me back on the road until it clears--and then I'm heading for home!" I assured her.

"I was hoping you'd take me over to the garage to pick up my car. The mechanic just called, and they've finished repairing the engine," she answered.

"How far will we have to drive?" I asked cautiously.

"Just a few blocks," Carolyn said cheerfully.

So we buckled up the children and went out to my car. "I'll drive," Carolyn offered. "I'm used to this." We got into the car, and she began driving.

In a few minutes I was aware that we were back on the Rim-of-the-World Road heading over the top of the mountain. "Where are we going?" I exclaimed, distressed to be back on the mountain road in the fog. "This isn't the way to the garage!"

"We're going to my garage the long way," Carolyn smiled, "by way of the daffodils."

"Carolyn," I said sternly, trying to sound as if I was still the mother and in charge of the situation, "please turn around. There is nothing in the world that I want to see enough to drive on this road in this weather."

"It's all right, Mother," She replied with a knowing grin. "I know what I'm doing. I promise, you will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience."

And so my sweet, darling daughter who had never given me a minute of difficulty in her whole life was suddenly in charge -- and she was kidnapping me! I couldn't believe it. Like it or not, I was on the way to see some ridiculous daffodils -- driving through the thick, gray silence of the mist-wrapped mountaintop at what I thought was risk to life and limb.

I muttered all the way. After about twenty minutes we turned onto a small gravel road that branched down into an oak-filled hollow on the side of the mountain. The fog had lifted a little, but the sky was lowering, gray and heavy with clouds.

We parked in a small parking lot adjoining a little stone church. From our vantage-point at the top of the mountain we could see beyond us, in the mist, the crests of the San Bernardino range like the dark, humped backs of a herd of elephants. Far below us the fog-shrouded valleys, hills, and flatlands stretched away to the desert.

On the far side of the church I saw a pine-needle-covered path, with towering evergreens and manzanita bushes and an inconspicuous sign "Daffodil Garden."

We each took a child's hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path as it wound through the trees. The mountain sloped away from the side of the path in irregular dips, folds, and valleys, like a deeply creased skirt.

Live oaks, mountain laurel, shrubs, and bushes clustered in the folds, and in the gray, drizzling air, the green foliage looked dark and monochromatic. I shivered. Then we turned a corner of the path, and I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight, unexpectedly and completely splendid. It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it down over the mountain peak and slopes where it had run into every crevice and over every rise. Even in the mist-filled air, the mountainside was radiant, clothed in massive drifts and waterfalls of daffodils. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns, great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron, and butter yellow.

Each different-colored variety (I learned later that there were more than thirty-five varieties of daffodils in the vast display) was planted as a group so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique hue.

In the center of this incredible and dazzling display of gold, a great cascade of purple grape hyacinth flowed down like a waterfall of blossoms framed in its own rock-lined basin, weaving through the brilliant daffodils. A charming path wound throughout the garden. There were several resting stations, paved with stone and furnished with Victorian wooden benches and great tubs of coral and carmine tulips. As though this were not magnificence enough, Mother Nature had to add her own grace note -- above the daffodils, a bevy of western bluebirds flitted and darted, flashing their brilliance. These charming little birds are the color of sapphires with breasts of magenta red. As they dance in the air, their colors are truly like jewels above the blowing, glowing daffodils. The effect was spectacular.

It did not matter that the sun was not shining. The brilliance of the daffodils was like the glow of the brightest sunlit day. Words, wonderful as they are, simply cannot describe the incredible beauty of that flower-bedecked mountaintop.

Five acres of flowers! (This too I discovered later when some of my questions were answered.) "But who has done this?" I asked Carolyn. I was overflowing with gratitude that she brought me -- even against my will. This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

"Who?" I asked again, almost speechless with wonder, "And how, and why, and when?"

"It's just one woman," Carolyn answered. "She lives on the property. That's her home." Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house that looked small and modest in the midst of all that glory.

We walked up to the house, my mind buzzing with questions. On the patio we saw a poster. "Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking" was the headline. The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs," it read. The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman, two hands, two feet, and very little brain." The third answer was, "Began in 1958."

There it was. The Daffodil Principle.

For me that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than thirty-five years before, had begun -- one bulb at a time -- to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountain top. One bulb at a time.

There was no other way to do it. One bulb at a time. No shortcuts -- simply loving the slow process of planting. Loving the work as it unfolded.

Loving an achievement that grew so slowly and that bloomed for only three weeks of each year. Still, just planting one bulb at a time, year after year, had changed the world.

This unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. She had created something of ineffable magnificence, beauty, and inspiration.

The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principle of celebration: learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time -- often just one baby-step at a time -- learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time.

When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things. We can change the world.

"Carolyn," I said that morning on the top of the mountain as we left the haven of daffodils, our minds and hearts still bathed and bemused by the splendors we had seen, "it's as though that remarkable woman has needle-pointed the earth! Decorated it. Just think of it, she planted every single bulb for more than thirty years. One bulb at a time! And that's the only way this garden could be created. Every individual bulb had to be planted. There was no way of short-circuiting that process. Five acres of blooms. That magnificent cascade of hyacinth! All, just one bulb at a time."

The thought of it filled my mind. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the implications of what I had seen. "It makes me sad in a way," I admitted to Carolyn. "What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five years ago and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years. Just think what I might have been able to achieve!"

My wise daughter put the car into gear and summed up the message of the day in her direct way. "Start tomorrow," she said with the same knowing smile she had worn for most of the morning. Oh, profound wisdom!

It is pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make learning a lesson a celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask, "How can I put this to use tomorrow?"

Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards

Here's a repost of some little funnies someone sent me years ago.  I love stuff like this, they're so clever!  


The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supplying a new definition.

Here are the 2006 winners:


- Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.


- Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.


- Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.


- Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The Bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.


- Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.


- Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.


- Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.


- Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.


- Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.


- Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)


- Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.


- Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.


- Glibido: All talk and no action.


- Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.


- Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.


- Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.


- Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.