CALM

by sssmahh303, posted in Reviews

Mary Ann

Have you seen the Calm commercial where rain falls on leaves, and you are instructed to take a break for 30 seconds and breath?  It is a favorite because it does make me stop what I am doing and take a break.  That moment is what Calm is about.

I have been a member of Calm for several years now, and I can’t say enough good about the app.  I do the mediations and sleep stories.  I listen to the music and take the courses that are offered about anxiety, sleep, stress, being present, and many others about the human condition.  Some sessions are a few minutes, others are an hour long, and yet others can be a month of lessons teaching you how to mediate for example.  

I start my morning doing the three 10-minutes mediations led my Tamara Levitt with the Daily Calm, Jeff Warren with the Daily Trip, and Jay Shetty with the Daily Jay.  These three cheerleaders lead you thorough short mediations and give you a pep talk to help you face the day.  It is funny how just the right message seems to come when you need it.  There is also a session by Mel Mah called the Daily Move.  It is a short program of three exercises to do to help with back pain to anxiety to balance to flexibility.   Quite a variety is offered in a gentle way.

The day ends with me listening to a Sleep Story to fall asleep.  There are travel, train, kids, self-help, nature, fiction, and non-fiction stories, many with celebrities narrating the stories.  Some stories are 15 minutes where others can take up to an hour.  Most of the time I never finish the story because I am asleep. If I wake up in the night, I start the story later in the session.  There are also a whole catalog of sleep mediations with varying lengths and focus.  It is nice to end the day with a gratitude mediation.  

There is a seven-day free trial to introduce you to the programs. Then it is $69.99 a year if you decide to subscribe.   A life-time subscription is available for $399.99.  Occasionally, it is offered for less.  For me the life-time subscription was best since I use Calm all the time.  After a few years, you have paid for it had you done the annual subscriptions fees.  If you have a Prime account with Amazon, you can get three free months with that.  There are several ways to underwrite the subscription.  You just need to do a little investigating.  

Calm had made such a difference in my life.  When I have hit bumps in the road, I can find sessions on Calm that help me through those challenging times.  You can save them in your favorites.  I have so many favorites that I need to edit them since they are all so meaningful to me.    

Your pennies are important to you in your golden years. You need to be wise where you spend them.  For me, the money I have spent on Calm have been money well-spent and has brough me the gift of calm to my soul. 

Silver Foxes

by sssmahh303, posted in Lifestyle

Mary Ann

Covid was hard for everyone, yet there were also some silver linings for us.  And I mean literally a silver lining.  When we all had to stay home due to the pandemic, women were faced with the dilemma of coloring their own hair or going au naturelle.  I had decided I would go natural!  I colored and highlighted my hair for years, and I wasn’t sure what I would look like with a different color; however, there was no time like the present to check it out.

 So, I began letting my hair grow out.  An Adventure!  A Challenge!   A Mess!!  I could see I had a row of pretty silver at my roots.  I hated that silver streak peeking out each month prior to my hair appointment, but now, it could not grow out fast enough.  I also began cutting my own hair so figured I could cut off all the light brown with blond highlights in a few months, and viola, I would be a silver fox.   At first, I was a calico cat with three colors all over my head. Then I morphed into Cruella Da Ville with a line of white hair circling my head.  Finally, I ended up looking like Mrs. Claus with a lovely shade of platinum.  I found myself doing double takes in the mirror.  Who was that lady?   Well, Mrs. Claus, of course!  

Thankfully, I was housebound with the pandemic and could hide my head of messy hair for the needed time to become a silver fox.  I have come to love my new look and wondered why I didn’t do this earlier.  However, I would have had to leave the country for a few months to hide or fake a maternity leave which would have been a stretch.   So many of my friends have gone au naturelle and are loving it.  It is freeing to embrace who you really are.  And besides, you save a lot of money.  You just need a good hair cut to become the silver fox that you were always meant to be. I get many compliments about my hair color, and one child I have known for a long time told me I looked younger.  He still believes in Santa Claus, so I think he was hedging his bets that I might really be Mrs. Claus. At any rate, I am thankful for the unexpected silver lining of the pandemic and taking the leap of faith!  

Celebrating the Eclipse

by Cynthia, posted in Friends and Family

Cynthia

Celestial events are enthralling, and none more so than a total eclipse of the sun (thank you Don McLean). I was privileged to attend the festivities in Jefferson City, Missouri for the total eclipse in 2017. Let me tell you, they did it up right! Breakfast with some astronauts and NASA representatives, concert, street fair, corn maze, and of course, the blackening of the sky at 1:14:19 pm. I have the t-shirt to prove it!

Fast forward to 2024 and I am limited in my ability to travel due to taking care of my mother who is a hospice patient. So I create “parties” as she calls them – small gatherings to celebrate anything and everything to make life as interesting as possible in confinement. What better day to celebrate than on an eclipse day! Where we live, we expect to see 93% of the eclipse, providing the clouds stay away at 1:45 pm.

I was able to download and print on card stock some games from Creations by Touseeq; Enjoy My Printables; and Plan, Print, and Party all from Etsy.  AAS certified glasses were ordered from Amazon.

 Sun Chips, Eclipse Gum, and Chocolate Covered Sunflower Seeds from Target and Moon Cookie Cakes from Insomnia Cookies rounded out an eclipse-themed menu (see below). Guests included were my aunt and uncle and my cousin. All of us are retired so a Monday luncheon is easy to execute. (I keep the guest list small as mom becomes easily overwhelmed with too much activity.)

A fun little get together to share in a celestial phenomenon that some of us may not see again. One of the many approaches to making life more interesting and giving us something to look forward to. Being creative does not have to mean difficulty. And we are making memories.

2024 Total Eclipse Luncheon

Favors

Eclipse Glasses

Beverages

Sun Tea

Capri Sun

Food

Eclipse [Eggplant] Pizzettes

Crescent Moon Sandwiches[1]

Light and Dark Salad[2]

Celestial Slaw[3]

Sun Chips

Dessert

Moon Cookie cake

Ice Cream planets

[1] Chicken Salad / Tuna Salad / Lunchmeat Build Your Own

[2] Corn and Black Bean Salad

[3] Purple and Green Cabbage Slaw

Welcome

by sssmahh303, posted in Uncategorized

Mary Ann and Cynthia

As you begin reading our blogs, you probably wonder why we decided to write them.  When the Covid pandemic locked Americans in their homes, we were in contact with one another checking on each other’s well-being.  Cynthia had recently retired and within months began to care for her elderly mother.  Mary Ann had also recently retired, moved to a different state, and lost her father right in time for Covid.  Neither of our retirements were turning out as we had envisioned.  

Since we were house bound with the pandemic, we decided to contact one another through emails, texts, and ZOOM visits to share a daily creative endeavor. Those contacts grew and grew over the next four years, and we birthed the idea of turning those exchanges into blogs that we would share with others.  

We began writing blogs recording our thoughts and learning how to put them on WordPress. This was all good for the brain! We chose the name Silver Sage Sisters – Silver for being women of a certain age; Sage for wisdom, experience, and knowledge; and Sisters for the bond that women have with each other.  

We had some things to say and wanted to share them with other women.  Women of a certain age will understand our mutual experiences.  We hope that younger women can learn from our hard-earned life lesson and grow from them.  

Our blogs will be about family and friends, finance, some legal issues, retirement, reviews (books, TV, films, products, and services), and general lifestyle ideas that include holidays, travel, hobbies, decorating, and miscellaneous topics.  At times, guest contributors will provide additional content and alternative ideas.

We do not pretend to have all the answers. We are not providing professional advice or consult, rather these blogs are our opinions and our experiences. We don’t proclaim to be experts, just women who have lived long lives. We want to bring you glimmers — a term for joyful and peaceful moments coined by psychotherapist Deb Dana.  The world is full of so much negativity and many challenges. We are hoping, instead, to bring some positivity and good ideas into your lives.  We are simply passing on some of our hard-learned lessons.  Welcome to the Silver Sage Sisters blog!