Melva Gifford

Many people love having a cat for a pet. Though I don’t currently own a cat, I think they’re wonderful pets. I thought today I would discuss some things to keep in mind when getting a cat.

• Consider the costs associated to maintain a cat. Not only in cat food but veterinary bills.
• There are pros and cons about having a cat de-clawed. Research before you act. You could decide to put soft paws on the cat to restrict damage to furniture.
• There are actually insurance plans for cats.
• Often the quality of cat food can influence the quality of health of the cat.
• Your budget should include emergency visit and licenses etc.
• It is often recommend to have a mix of wet and dry cat food for the cat.
• You may want to spend some time in a home that already has cats to make sure you don’t have any allergic reaction to them.
• Consider if you would be good in maintaining the kittler litter, otherwise everyone will know by the smell in your house that you have a cat.
• Bedtime for you does not mean bed time for the cat.
• Check kitty litter brands for function ability. Some manage the smell better than others.
• You can often determine a cat’s likes and dislikes by their behavior.
• Often a cat will avoid going to the litter box if it is littered with past deposits.
• Cat proof your house. That means cats can choke on little objects left on the floor.
• Consider how you will have your cat taken cat of when you need/want to travel.
• Many landlords will charge extra for a cat so be ready for that when you rent.
• If you anticipate a move, you may want to delay getting a cat for giving away an adult cat is more difficult than kittens
• Different cats have various traits and personalities. I love the beauty of a Siamese cat but didn’t realize that they can very high strung.
• There are pros and cons to having an indoor/ outdoor cat. Maybe discuss with others owners their experiences.
• Not all cats are mousers
• Many owners will borrow a cat from a pound or an adoption agency and try it out at the house for a couple of days to see how it acclimates to the lifestyle and others pets that might be in the home.
• The advantage of getting an adult cat over a kitten is that They are also often housetrained and they already have defined their characters.
• Unneutered males will want to roam and fight with other cats.
• Different breeds of cats have known challenges of health, you will want to do a little research on this to know what to expect.
• Have your cat tested for Feline Leukemia.

Linkes:
http://fanciers.com/cat-faqs/getting-a-cat.shtml
http://cats.about.com/od/declawing/Declawing_and_Humane_Alternatives.htm
http://www.softpaws.com/?gclid=CJzIkuvIx7ACFQOEhwodiDMHWQ
http://cats.about.com/cs/catmanagement101/a/cat_proofing.htm

I hope that today’s lesson can be useful to youth ministries, family devotionals and family home evenings. The theme today is about late bloomers.

We all like to eat our popcorn in different ways. Some like to pop the kernels to their full white fluff glory and add butter or salt. Others like a kernels that is only partly popped where there is part kernel and part fluff. Some like un-popped kernels to chew on for flavor. Then there is all the wonderful things you can put on popcorn to enhance it flavor or popcorn can be used in other ways besides eating.

Each of us achieves various things at different points in our lives. An important thing to remember is that though some of us might be late in the game, we can still achieve a great deal. Some people will spend decades in one business and then suddenly switch jobs and be successful in a totally new occupation.

Unfortunately many people will compare their successes with the accomplishments of others when we need to consider our specific successes as ours. Our unique perspective can influence an outcome of something that is totally different from others. One specific person came up with the idea of liquid paper while another came up with a stapler. The thing is that people who invented those things did so, by their unique ingenuity. Though some horses may not be the first out of the shoot during a horse race, they can still win the race.

Object lesson: Pop some popcorn and discuss as a group the different ways to enjoy popcorn and discuss the different talents given by members of the family or class having the discussion.

Well things worked out well for the line of story tellers I arranged for the Springville museum fair. Everyone arrived and did wonderful stories. This is a great way for me to learn from some talented people. It’s interesting to see how some use music to accent their concert and are ready to do alternatives to what they planned when the sound system goes haywire.

Others were very good in not only facial expressions but using their body to emphasize emotion in certain points of their stories. Others were very good in getting participation from the audience.

We’ll have to see if we can improve the location for the story tellers for the sake of shade for the teller and the audience and to maybe not compete with the music (performer or recorded) from the stage near us. Otherwise, it seemed to work out well and I had a chance to presents components of Traits of a hero, but time restraints prevented me from giving the full thing.

Now that that is done I can concentrate upon preparing the performances for the Patriot Camp and to finish up Pursued for the Utah arts council competition. Because of posting eBooks on line, they invalidate me from competing from most of the categories except three. Deadlines are very good to help me get off my duff. Monday to help a friend do more packing, one thing to another, and another, and another.

I have three friends who are willing to be alpha readers for Pursued which makes me happy.

Embellishments
Something that is added to an object to enhance appearance or function.

Men LIS BELL
MEN enjoy having a LISt of all the BELLs and whistles when buying a big screen TVs.

soliloquy
Means someone talking to him/herself.

SOL-I-LO-GUY
GUY who Is SOLo who Loves talking to himself.

The following are some things I’ve learned, or been told are good to remember when bartering.

First, determine how much you’re willing to pay for what you want. This does not mean just objects. You may have a skill you can swap with someone else who has a different skill.

Check with multiple people who may want to swap services or products with you. If there is an opportunity, check their reputation and the quality of their products, do so. You can do this if you meet others who have worked with them or there may be reviews. This will give you a better idea of whom and what you’re working with. You will want to see if there are local organizations that barter or you might want to see what services and projects are sought for by other people and see if you can provide what they need in swap to what you want. In my personal experience I have a time share membership and I host writers’ retreats at various locations to help pay the year fees.

One avenue for barter is to check the internet for sites that swap time of services, also known as time banks.

Confirm before any actual exchange takes place, a precise verbal and written agreement between parties. Upon this agreement, you may want to include some type of guarantee. For me I like the idea that material has to be paid but the services themselves might be exchangeable hour to hour. I’m still a bit paranoid. This would include at what deadline when both sides of the exchange needs to be completed.

You may want to check the normal cost for a product or service if you were to buy it outright to make sure you’re getting a fair deal in the exchange. Personally I also like to see some proof of the other person’s skills before I make a swap. If I want to write something for someone, I may want to let them see some of my past works to see if they would like getting similar items to their criteria.

Sweeten the deal. some people have gotten better deals at department stores by asking the clerk “is that the best you can do?” something similar might be done in bartering, but wanting the other person to be ‘fair’ or to give a good deal, goes both ways. You can under bid too far and a person will stop negotiating completely. I tried this when I was in Central America and wanted to get a chess set. I bit too low and the sales person walked away in a huff. This is something I am still trying to learn.

In the beginning of barter, I have learned that I can’t be desperate. This has served me well in buying two used cars. I had to be willing to walk way or have some excuse for NOT wanting to buy their car. That way the salesman or manger is motivated to ‘sweeten the deal’. I think I also had good success because I bought one of my cars at the end of the month and they wanted to help their stats at the end of the month.

For bartering in another country, you will want to indicate that you have a limited budget and they need to make it worth your time. I was given the suggestion once that when you in a shop of another country and a shop owner offers a price, give a alternative price of a little lower than half their opening price. Another suggestion I was given was that if you’re0 in the area for a while make friends with the owner. Don’t buy something for a couple of days then come and buy at the end and it’s likely they’ll give you a good price.

Don’t limit yourself on what you might be willing to barter. Some will swap home stays for traveling or mothers will swap babysitting nights. Bartering is a great way to off load items that you no longer want or need. Someone else may want it. Battering for services also promotes your skills or business to new people as they discuss their bartering experience with their friends.

You will always want to act professional and courteous in all interactions in the barter process.

I hope today’s lesson theme will be useful to youthful ministries, home devotionals and family home evenings. Today many of us are in a rush. We have shorter screen shots when watching TV, we frequently have a lot more quick action in books than time consuming characterization. The best books are those that can have both but too often one attribute is sacrificed for the other. The same complaint might be made of certain movies being dedicated to special effects rather than plot or character development.

I wonder if we would have the patience of construct the pyramids of Egypt today. I would certainly have a hard time waiting. I have enough hard time waiting for the next Hobbit movie to come out.

We want to drive at faster speeds, eat fast foods, have fast internet and seek fast solutions. Often some of the biggest goals we desire to achieve require great patience. Sometimes it doesn’t matter that certain local and national problem have taken years in the making, we desire a quick and painless solution when real solutions might require sacrifice as well as time to mend.

Discuss with the class or the family different examples of things that take time to be made. You might clock the amount of time it takes to bake a cake or even to put together a very complicated puzzle. You might discuss how long it takes to read a long book to build a castle out of blocks. Have a timer and do various tasks or chores around the house and see how long they each take. Discuss why they take a while and maybe brainstorm on ways to make a certain task easier and faster.

You might discuss how working together on a job might make it easier or planning out how you will accomplish a chore before you begin it so that your tasks have direction. Have some examples of short and easy tasks and ones that might take days or weeks to be accomplished. Growing a garden requires patience and attention.

Items needed: a board, paint, paint brush, a fan and a box of disposable plastic gloves (often used in the fast catering or medical industry)

One of the best examples I find as an example of patience is watching paint dry. Have a board outside and paint it with everyone watching. Have a timer. After you paint it have a family member put on a disposable glove and to touch the still wet pain. The paint hasn’t even had a chance to dry. Discuss why different objects are painted: some of the reasons include
1. to improve its appearance
2. prevent rust or erosion
3. soften the texture
4. Delay aging

Now put the timer on for 5 minutes, turn the fan on toward the wet board and do something else until the dinger goes off. Now have a new family member use a glove and touch the paint. Does any paint come off on the glove? Do the same thing an hour later after the family or class has done some other task. Does the pain come off?

Discuss various reasons for waiting for the paint to dry. Finger prints mess up the paint job and mess up the glove and the area you touch now have less paint than the rest or the board. Will it be more vulnerable to erosion than the rest of the wood that has thicker pain job?

Include some discussions of things that took years to accomplish. Some examples might include man landing on the moon, the civil rights movement, the technological age and building a new highway system. Discuss other, shorter examples. Maybe discuss some of the planning behind a big project that might explain why patience is required to achieve a task. Discuss how many smaller goals might contribute to a larger achievement.

Come back to the paint two hours later. Look for a still wet area of the board or rub the board. Does paint still get on a glove?

Meet 24 hours later and study the status of the board. Discuss the rewards of patience such as the birth of a child or learning how to play an instrument. By making a plan and organizing your efforts a goal may have a higher success rate. Something that is planned in advance and where the planners include possible worse case scenarios may be prepared to respond to an unpredictable occurrence because the people behind the project has already imagined different possibilities. 

The Roots and twigs story telling retreat got canceled due to insufficient numbers of attendees to make the event worthwhile. That’s a bit sad for those of us who have prepared presentations. Guess that means I can spend the weekend trying to finish up the new scenes to my YA book Pursued.

The cancelation makes me realize how important it is for people to support an event or cause. It’s not fun to work so hard on putting something together and no one shows up. My key example is when I did Etcetera One and had a movie director; a previous mayor, a judge and a historian give presentations at a local library on their specific fields. It was a bad turn out. I wager principals of the county schools didn’t think the event was worth notifying their teachers about, which is sad.

When I hosted a political gathering where two candidates spoke and greeted citizens, that worked out okay because I was able to invite state and county delegates. The delegates wanted to make informed decisions. Now the story telling retreat didn’t go through. I’ll have to remember to try to support activities just to support those who put them on. I’ll have to learn the trick to making people excited about wanting to attend or support something.

Kudos to anyone who hosts an event and extra kudos when you know how to get people excited about your event. Good job.

Well as I work on my latest book, I see that there are multiple words I keep messing up on. So we’ll see if these mnemonics may help me for remembering them in the future.

Debris = when items are broken up into smaller pieces
DE B RIS = debris
After the DEstruction dust Begins to RISe from the remains.

A state of something being very shinny
GlisTENed
When something is so cleaned it glistened, that is a rated a level TEN cleaning job

Moisture on the body when you’re hot of scared.
I get so scared seeing ghosts and SPIRits in a room that my body would break out with perSPIRation.