Best Sofa Cushions

When a sofa has been used for a number of years, the support of the seat and back cushions might leave much to be desired. The cushions might turn  lumpy or start sagging, which won’t do back muscles any favors. 
When shopping for a new sofa, there’s more to it than picking out a nice design. In addition to looks, the buyer should pay attention to the best sofa cushions. Basically, there are three choices.

Continue reading at: http://www.ebay.com/gds/Best-Sofa-Cushions-/10000000205714164/g.html

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Writing a Eulogy FAQ

While no one ever wants to write a eulogy, the day might come when you’ll be called upon to write one for a family member, a friend or a colleague.  Eulogies pay tribute to the deceased and finding the right words gives comfort to the living.  Frequently asked questions about writing a eulogy include:

What is a eulogy?

A eulogy touches on the life and achievements of the deceased.  It’s a tribute to his or her life and is an important part of the final farewell.  When asked to deliver a eulogy, it’s important that you prepare well in advance.  Your delivery is another vital component and should be given with sympathy and feeling.

What to include?

Anything you want, as long as you include only positive things about the deceased. 

·       If you’re a family member, concentrate on childhood memories and the mischief you both stirred up growing up.  Give your eulogy a personal and meaningful touch and share something others might not know about the deceased.

·       If you’re a friend, share where and how you met.  Include a few of the experiences you shared. Your eulogy doesn’t have to include only happy experiences.  You can also talk about ups, downs and disappointments so long as the challenges were overcome.  What you cannot do is criticise the deceased or make any negative or critical comments. 

·       As a colleague you can concentrate on work stories.  Under which circumstances you met, the things you worked on together and any after-hours activities you shared.  For the sake of the mourners, keep your stories respectful.

Ask for help

You don’t have to do it alone; you can talk to family and friends.  It’s a misconception that you might distress the family by talking about the deceased because many family members want to share their stories.  If nobody is available, ask permission to visit the person’s house, page through photo albums or read old letters.  You’re bound to recall a few good memories.

What if I’m not good at writing?

You’re not attempting to write a whole biography, notes are good enough to help you keep your train of thought. Write a rough draft and write from the heart alternating between emotional comments and humor.  The end product should have an introduction, a middle part and an ending.  If you can manage it, write something uplifting to make the mourners feel better.

How long should a eulogy be?

While there is no set time frame, a eulogy should not be too short or too long.  If it’s too short it might give the impression that you have nothing good to say about the deceased and this might be construed as lacking respect; however, if it’s too long you might upset the family.  If you talk about the person for five minutes, that is generally an acceptable time frame.

Some people feel that writing a eulogy might be too painful, while for others doing one could be the first step in the healing process.  It might be easier said than done, but it’s important that you attempt to hold your emotions under control.  If you don’t feel that you can, then perhaps you should be honest with the family and explain why you feel you have to decline writing and delivering the eulogy.

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Friday is Cat Day- A Day in the Life of Holly

Every cat owner thinks his or her cat is the most beautiful, the friendliest and the most intelligent creature. 

I’m no different. On several occasions, I’ve sang my cats’ praises. Holly’s in particular, as she is such an affectionate, smart and talkative cat. We'll get to the others later, but today it's Holly's day.

Just over two years old, Holly isn’t like any of the others. While Mickey, Chanel, Charlotte and Gabriel are content to merely sleep on my bed, Holly goes to sleep with her head on my pillow.

When Dieter gets up at 6:00 a.m. she joins him in the bathroom. On the rare occasion that he closes the door before she has a chance to follow, she meows (loudly) to be let in. When Dieter opens the door, she gives an appreciative krrr. 

While he showers and brushes his teeth, she waits patiently knowing that he completes his grooming routine by combing his hair, at which time Holly wants her hair combed too. 

When I get up, she comes with me to the bathroom too and sits on the mat while I shower. As I step out of the shower, she moves to the toilet seat from where she watches me intently as I brush my teeth and wash my face.
She knows what comes next … I comb her head. I deliberately say “head” because I don’t comb her whole body, just the top of her head and her cheeks.

On the rare occasion that she doesn’t make it into the bathroom, she waits for me outside and insists on having her head combed there.

After breakfast I do the dishes and make the beds and Holly comes to “help”. Have you ever tried making a bed where a cat rolls around on it, makes a dive for the sheets, or chases every move you make? Most of the time I just give up and wait for Holly to go the sleep to complete the job.

During the day there’s not much action. Holly will take a nap on the balcony, keep an eye on the fishes, or do whatever to entertain herself.

The strange thing is though, Holly can be seemingly fast asleep, but if I move to go to the kitchen, the bedroom or the bathroom, she gets up and comes with me. She doesn’t watch where she walks either. While putting one paw in front of the other, she looks up, at me, and yet she never bumps into a wall or door.
Another thing I should mention is that Holly is a very talkative cat. She has a large vocabulary with which she expresses herself, she’s even been known to “sing”. If she wants attention, and she doesn’t get it, she will start to serenade us, loud and insistent which will either result in one of us playing with her or an annoyed “Holly, enough already!” In which case she will grow quiet and sulk.

Which bring us back to bedtime. Holly might be fast asleep somewhere, but when she hears the TV being switched off and the computer powered down, she’ll get up and follow me to the bedroom. 

Friday is Cat Day - A Day in the Life of Miri Billie Joe

We have Debbie Manber Kupfer as a guest blogger today. Debbie loves cats and shares her story of Miri Billie Joe.

 

Is it morning yet? Oh yes, let’s go and have a look at my food bowls. Oh look, one of them is empty. That won’t do, where are those darn humans when you need them? They sleep way too much. What do you mean I sleep a lot too? Of course I do, I’m a cat, I have to get my 16 hours a day or I’ll get grumpy.

 You’ve seen that Grumpy Cat, right? That’s because his humans don’t leave him alone and let him sleep. He hasn’t trained them right. I know how to train mine. I could give him some tips.

They’re not bad humans really. The big one gives me treats and the younger ones play with me sometimes. And then there’s the one who sits at her computer typing – I bet she’s writing stories about me! I hope she makes me a super here. I can see it now Super-Miri, flying through the sky, vanquishing the evil Doctor Fido (and then coming home for a nap.)

Ah here comes a human now (all that meowing paid off). Food bowl first – and then maybe an extra treat or two and then I’ll go back to sleep. See I have them perfectly trained.

My Mother's Secret

For months I awaited Sheila O’Flanagan’s new book “My Mother’s Secret”. 

Once I had it in my hands I almost licked my fingers in eager anticipation, but almost from the first chapter it turned out to be a disappointment. 

Meet Jenny and Pascal Sheehan. The couple is about to celebrate their ruby anniversary (40 years), but as it turns out they’re not even married. They faked it all these years.

As young lovers they went to Rome, where Jenny found out she was pregnant, and so they decided to marry to escape the wrath of Jenny’s family.

Of course, marrying on the spur of the moment was impossible and so they forged a wedding certificate, shoved a ring on each other’s finger, posed for a few pictures, and pretended to the whole world that they were legally married.

When their three children find out about this, they flip. 

Personally I wouldn’t have a problem with this. I’m not in favor of marriage to begin with, so if these two managed to stay together for forty years, who cares whether their union was legal or not.

That’s not all though. After a few years and two kids, Pascal leaves for a month on a business conference and Jenny has an affair. An affair with consequences as it turns out, because she’s pregnant with this man’s child. 

You would have thought that after her first unplanned pregnancy she would have learned her lesson, but apparently she didn’t. What’s more, not only does her husband forgives her little slip, he agrees to bring up the child as his own.

When the lovechild (Steffie) learns of this little tidbit, she goes off the rails. Suddenly her father is no longer her father, her brother and sister are now half-siblings, she can’t forgive her mother for cheating and she doesn’t know who she is anymore.

If Steffie had been a teenager I would have said, okay, she has reason to be upset, but she’s a twenty-seven-year-old woman for heaven sake, a time when most adults know their identity.

If I had to choose between being a lovechild and an accident, I know what I would prefer.

Then there’s Roisin, Steffie’s sister, a character so nasty I would have loved to slap this woman around. She’s selfish with a capital “S” and a control freak beyond belief. She’s of the opinion that her sister should get married and have kids, for no other reason than that her two kids have nieces and nephews to play with. Nothing her family does is good enough, she knows everything better and does everything better. She is the queen and everyone must bow to her.

The rest of the characters aren’t much better. They are devious, jealous and conniving and whine non-stop. If it isn’t about their mother, it’s about their sister, or their marriage, or the kids, or just that things don’t go their way.

In the end all is well. The fake married couple marry for real (heaven knows why), the lovechild finds love and the rest of the cast finds happiness too.

All in all not Sheila O’Flanagan’s best work. Perhaps it was ghost written.

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What would change if you won the lottery?

Like millions of others, I play the lottery every week. I have a set of numbers memorized which makes it sort of necessary to play. Suppose I don’t play one week and my numbers come up … I would pull out my last hair.

Like so many others I often fantasize what I would do if I hit the jackpot: move to a nicer neighborhood, drive an exotic car, go shopping for clothes, shoes, and jewelry, donate to the local animal shelter and help a few of my friends.

Beyond that, I don’t actually have a clue what I would do with millions of dollars. Do you? Having no money brings problems, but having tons of money would no doubt bring problems too.

To find out a little more about a lucky winner I recently read “Lottery” by Anita Burgh.

Peggy, the main character wins the jackpot and as a result, her life, that of her husband and three children dramatically changes.

While the book was a nice enough read, the alcohol consumption of the main character bothered me to no end. I lost count of the amount of gin this woman guzzled. Gin and tonic in the morning, for lunch, at dinner, and while watching TV. Forget glasses, this woman went through bottles and bottles of the stuff, interspersed with red and white wine and brandy.

She drank when she was happy, she drank when she was sad, she drank alone and she drank in company. I got the feeling that whenever the writer didn’t know what to do with her character, she had her reach for the bottle.

Admittedly, her life was not without problems. Her husband hooked up with her best friend, her children treated her as their own personal piggy bank and friends and neighbors suddenly gave her the cold shoulder. Still, is that any reason to start downing gin and tonics?

Every person with a bit of common sense knows that alcohol doesn’t solve any problems, if anything, it creates more of them.

Fortunately, this is not the first book I’ve read from Anita Burgh. If it was, I might not go for a second.

Has the book altered my enthusiasm for winning the lottery … not at all. 

There’s no chance of a cheating husband as I’m divorced and will never marry again (not if you held a knife to my throat).

There would be no children fighting over financial favoritism as I only have one child and he would share in my good fortune.

Friends would most definitely not turn their backs on me, as I would pay them a visit and present them with a nice check.

And if neighbors were to give me the cold shoulder … who cares, I would soon have new neighbors. 

Neither would I become a drunken lush as I don’t drink at all.

So, next Friday I’m going to play my numbers as usual, keep my fingers crossed, expect the worst but hope for the best.

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Eat, Pray, Shove

After seeing the movie “Eat, Pray, Love” (a few times), I got curious about the book.

Some told me it was good, but not as good as the movie, some said the book was a disappointment, while others still loved the movie but downright hated the book.

With so many different opinions, I wanted to compare for myself.

The first thing I noticed was that Liz’s four months in Italy seemed weak. Having a thorough knowledge of Italy, in particular of Rome and Naples, I found the writer’s description of the cities amateurish. Almost as if she had researched the cities online, rather than actually spending time there.

Her description of the ashram and her spiritual journey in India I found fascinating, although it bothered me that she continuously grieved over her failed marriage. 

As a happily divorced woman myself, I can understand that she mourned lost love when she first separated from her husband, but she divorced the guy for heaven sake. If she loved him that much, she should have stayed with him. 

Still, I continued reading. That is until I got to the deep meditation part. I found it a little hard to swallow that Liz’s one and a half hour of pray singing every morning at the crack of dawn helped her nephew, who was thousands of miles away, sleep better. But okay, I could get past that.

What I couldn’t get past, and what I thought was complete baloney was her statement that she had seen God, been with God, even been inside God. That did it for me. I had enough of this and abandoned the book.

Now it so happened that a few days later I met Amid, a young Indian man from Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta. 

Ever curious about other countries, their customs and their people, we got to talking and I asked Amid if India  was as poor and desolate as some stories led on.

“Not at all,” he chuckled. “India is a thriving country with beautiful architecture, many businesses and young entrepreneurs, luxury homes and exotic cars such as Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bugatti and of course Porsche.”

One topic led to another and I asked if he had ever been to an ashram. Amid shook his head, an ashram was not his cup of tea. He knew about them of course, but he wasn’t keen on them.

“They’re for people who want to get closer to God, right?” I asked him.

“Ashrams are for rich people who want to get closer to God,” he corrected me.

“And the poor people?” I asked.

Amid shrugged. “They have to find God elsewhere on their own.”

He was familiar with Elizabeth Gilbert’s story, “Eat, Pray, Love” and had nothing good to say about it. He loved the movie and he loved Julia Roberts’ performance, but the book he classified as absolute rubbish. 

According to Amed, Gilbert romanticized the ashram experience and exaggerated shamelessly. He classified her as an attention seeker who had but one goal … to have her story published and would have gone to any lengths to do so.

I tend to agree with him. Some parts of the book were good, but Gilbert went a little too far, thus turning an educational story into a bunch of nonsense.

What bothered me about this author is that nobody can reach her. Plenty of bestselling authors have a “contact me” button on their website and a page on Facebook. They encourage their readers to get in touch with them and are happy to hear from them. 

Not Gilbert. She can’t be reached through her website and neither can anyone send her a message via Facebook. 

What is Gilbert so afraid of? 

After reading a few reviews on Amazon, I found a lengthy one of Lynne701 that hit the nail on the head. Rather than copying the whole review, I’ll limit myself to merely mentioning Lynne’s second last paragraph which states:

My biggest problem with this tome is that this 30-something woman basically is looking for applause for running off for a year, ostensibly supported by a $200K book advance, to "find God." I'm sure millions of women would love to leave their everyday lives and travel the world to do nothing but self-analyze. If she had done volunteer work, I may have felt differently. If she went through some real hardship, I could sympathize. But she was in an incompatible marriage, then dumped by the guy she left her husband for. She should perhaps speak to those battling life-threatening diseases, or raising children alone, or taking care of an elderly parent, or worried about where their next meal is coming from.

Lynne's review was appropriately titled "Eat, Pray, Shove".