How to Make A Difference

Starting a "Tsunami of Good Will"

What would "YOU" do if you accidentally met a person who, in five short years, had accomplished more to help "children in need" than most people do in three lifetimes?

Through a series of "random coincidences", I met a young man who impressed me so much I decided to study internet marketing and blogging in an effort to help his "humanitarian efforts" to aid a group of orphan girls in Tanzania. What can I say? This young man changed my life.

In March 2009, while sitting in my doctor's waiting room waiting for an appointment I'd rescheduled twice, I saw a TV program I never watch because of my work schedule. That day, I listened to an interview with the "most amazing" twenty-two year old man I'd ever heard of. His name is Chris Gates.

His story began when he was just five-years-old:

At the tender age of five, Chris announced to his parents that he would be living in Tanzania someday. They chuckled and patted him on the head, but as he grew older, he never forgot his desire to live in Africa.


When Chris turned fifteen, his grandmother agreed to take him on safari to Tanzania, his life-long dream, but first she had to "gently" persuade him go on a mission with her to a boy's orphanage in Tanzania before the safari began. Little did he know how much his grandmother and this trip would change his life. While there, he recognized the poor nutritional state of the children and returned home to raise money to buy livestock for that orphanage.

The next year he returned to Africa with other teenaged friends to buy animals for the orphanage AND teach boys barely younger than he was how to care for them, a skill "he" learned while working at a local veterinarian's office in Oklahoma .

While in Tanzania on subsequent visits, Chris recognized the disparity in care for orphan
boys vs. girls and returned home to raise money to develop a non-profit organization (The Janada L. Batchlor Foundation for Children--named after his Grandmother). He used these funds to start an orphanage for girls only.

At the age of eighteen, he negotiated land purchase on the banks of Lake Victoria in Tanzania for the girl's orphanage and did all the contracting work for the construction of five buildings. All the while, Chris attended college full time in America to earn a degree in social work (ages 18-22)

Through the help of a family friend who worked on the Today Show, Chris met Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York. He impressed her so much that she went on the talk show circuit with him to help raise awareness of his "life's work". (It seems kind of funny to say "his life's work" at this point because he was only twenty-two years old at the time of the broadcast.)

In May 2009, Chris graduated from college and moved to Tanzania permanently to become surrogate father to forty girls and run the orphanage he started at the age of eighteen.

As I sat listening to that fateful March television interview with Chris and Sarah Ferguson, I thought, Gee . . . I'd love to help him but what can "I" do? I'm just one person.

Just as I finished that thought, the interviewer on the Today Show said, "Chris. You're just twenty-two-years-old. What made you think you could do all this?"

You wouldn't believe the goose bumps that raced down my spine as I heard him reply, "What made me think I "couldn't" do this?"

That simple statement galvanized me to action. If he can accomplish all that, there "must be" something I can do.

I was priveleged enough to speak to Chris before he moved to Africa and learned details of his eventful life. He never expected to spend his life this way but saw a need and decided "he" could make a difference.

Below are two links that show information about Chris. The MSN interview is not the one I originally saw, but it shows the young man's passion for his life's work.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/29860112#29860112

http://www.nyu.edu/socialwork/news.html?id=163 http://www.jbfc-online.org/

What would it take to convince "you" to help me start a "Tsunami of Good Will" to aid Chris's orphanage? A tsunami is an unmoveable natural force that begins spreading slowly outward from a central location. It gains in strength as it grows in momentum. Help me build a "growing tide" of support for Chris's orphanage's.

Visit http://www.jbfc-online.org/. Click on the "donation" link and leave a tax-deductable gift of $6.00 or more.


Consider this fact:

In the greater scheme of life in America, six dollars is less than the cost of buying both you and your sweetheart a "caffe vanilla Frappuccino blended coffee" at Starbucks. Six dollars in Tanzania will feed four people for several days.

Imagine what "could" happen if more and more people stop by and leave a donation. The "Tsunami of Good Will" begins and who knows where it will go from there.

Need Help with a Writing Project

Could "you" assist me with a open-heart surgery project I'm working on?



I'm looking for people experienced in the field of caring for open heart surgery patients who can answer questions for me. These include: nurses . . . both with intensive care experience ANd follow-up care on the "step-down" floors, certified nursing assistants, respiratory therapists, physical and occupational therapists, speech therapists, and anyone else who deals with any aspect of open-heart surgery that I've forgotten to mention.

I'm also looking for family members who provided care for the open-heart surgery patient after they left the hospital.

I especially need "your" input for this project. I'm looking for different challenges "you" faced during the recuperation period of your loved one and how "you" helped them overcome their difficulties. Examples of this include: lack of appetite which seems common after such a major surgery, forgetfulness and depression.

You can contact me at an email address I've reserved for this project. mailto:ThoseMomentsThatMatter@gmail.com. Thank you in advance.

We're home from the hospital

*deep sigh*. It's been a long time coming. We've got a lot of work to do in the next few weeks to get her up to par.

THanks for all prayers. I can't believe she's home again.

Cinderella's shoes

NEWS FLASH

"Cinderella seen in Bergner's store at Grand Prairie Shopping Center".

When asked for an interview, Cinderella inquired, "first... what time is it." When told it was 5 minutes till 12, she bolted from the store screaming "I'm late, I"m late," leaving only this confused reported and a purple sequined 3 inch pump respendant with a bow and a large purple and two crystal jewels by the open toe.

Just thought you should know famous people DO make it to Peoria.

BTW....WHO would wear such a thing? Ggggrin!

Oh wait, I do have a friend who could pull this shoe off and do it with style, but us ordinary folks, man....my husband would be laughing his butt off at this one.

What do light switches, ketchup dispensers, bananas, chairs and tables, a yellow-- Caution WET FLOOR sign and a tree have in common? I'm at the hospital visiting mom. SHe's asleep so I'm in the cafeteria wondering what I could write in my blog.

Sometimes, it's amazing to me how you can be in a place so very many times, but not "see" something. There are actually "3" trees in various corners of our cafeteria. Most likely fake ones. Ggggrin! ( I think) I've never seen them shed their leaves, but then again, since I never SAW the trees in the first place, one never knows. The darned things are actually dusty, so I assume they've been here for a while. (blushing faintly that I coulda missed the dumb things in the first place)

Oh well, guess I better turn my brain on next time I come to the cafeteria. Hope there aren't any pink elephants in the soup line. Ggggrin!

7 Rules to live by

1. Smile more often. It makes better looking wrinkles.

2. Take time to smell the roses (and if you're allergic, you can just wave from a distance. Even roses get lonely, ya know.)

3. Shave your legs more than once every 3 months in the winter. (You just never know when you're gonna fall on your face on the sidewalk and end up in the ER with a skinned up knee and a rattled brain.) And . . . IF you choose NOT to shave more often than that, tell the ER personnel that you are trying to start a new trend by wearing dread locks on your legs.

(Hey, wearing your pants around the bottom of your butt with your underwear hanging out came into vogue...I think you can away with this one!) gggrin!

4. When someone asks how you are . . . give them a spontaneous answer. None of that "fine, how are you?" crap.

Personally, when someone asks me how I am, I respond, "I'm reeeally, reeeeally, reeeeeeeeeally good, bordering on spectacular, but not quite there." That's been known to startle the person asking, but they almost always smile when I do it.

5. Be sure to listen. You just never know what you're gonna find out. Maybe it will be the winning lottery numbers. (Well, I can dream, can't I?)

6. Don't assume that someone should "see" you need help. Ask for it.

I know you think you shouldn't have to ask, but most of us are not mind readers, although I do "play" one on TV.

7. Pay it forward. Do a small kindness for someone and when they want to repay you, tell them to do something nice to another individual. I know for a fact that slowly and over time, you can influence an entire group of people to do the same.

Laughter reigned in the ICU

As many of you know, my mom’s occupied a room in the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital after undergoing open heart surgery more than a month ago. She experienced two respiratory arrests during the last five weeks and was on a ventilator/breathing machine most recently for more than two weeks.

Thank heavens . . . to quote a cliché, “she has turned the corner” and her health improves daily. The doctors decided to put a tracheostomy into her neck which sounds horrible but since then, her difficulty breathing has eased considerably. And as her breathing becomes better, her sense of humor erupts full force almost daily to the point she nearly made one of the nurses pee her pants tonight laughing.

Mom requested I place a cold rag for her head. A minute or so later, she made a grimace and gestured her fist towards her head several times like she was pounding something into her forehead. OH, NO, I think. She's got a horrible headache or is it a stroke?

Scared to death, I ordered her to tap out a message explaining the problem on an alphabet board. And this is the message I received:

“I need to tack the cloth to my brain. It keeps slipping.”

Relief swept through me. I laughed till I wheezed and me, being me, I told her I was going to ask her nurse if Mom could borrow her stapler. Tape would do if they didn’t trust her with the stapler. She chuckled silently and shooed me on to see what the nurse would say.

Of course, the nurse entered the room with a frown. “What do you need a stapler for, Mary?” Mom pantomimed that she wanted to staple the cloth to her forehead while I explained what she wanted. Thought we’d have to clean up the floor when the nurse finished laughing. I did end up taping the cloth to Mom's forehead anyway, just to tease her.

Candace, her nurse, told her that soon they would put a valve in her tracheostomy which would allow her to talk again. “Then you can cuss us nasty old nurses out.” Mom made the “who?…lil’ old Me cuss you out?” face and batted her eyelashes all sweet and innocent looking.

I told her I really wanted to know what word she said first when she could talk. That woman, my dear sweet 82-year-old mother, looked so pensive and thoughtful and onery (up to playing tricks) that both the nurse and I laughed till I ended up wiping tears from my eyes.

We’ll see what she says.

Report to follow . . .

New Slipper Sox

Mom's still in the hospital on a respirator. It's been almost a month since she had her surgery. Has had two respiratory arrests probably from a reaction to some medicine. Not as serious as a cardiac arrest, but serious none-the-less.

Her sense of humor is still there, however. She asked me to bring some slipper socks from home. She's tired of the icky old red ones they give you at the hospital.

I decided to make her day and bring her SPECIAL ones. BOught a pair of florescent pink one with heart shaped gripper thingies on the bottom. On the top is a picture of Ehyor, the donkey from the Winnie the Pooh stories. Just above his picture it says, LOVE ME.

I brought them in and said....don't feel like you HAVE to wear these. But she grabbed them and hugged them to her chest, her eyebrows wiggling their approval emphatically. It's so hard to talk when you have the equivalent of a fist stuck down your throat. Hard to read lips that way.

She's the talk of the ICU now. Gggrin! I don't suppose very many 82 year old ladies wear Ehyor socks up there. But then again, most 82 year old ladies don't wear ball caps with the caption ......
"Don't let the hallo fool you." (I'm not sure how to spell hallo...it's one of those round shiney rings that angels wear above their heads. gggrin)

Anyway, it made my day to see her eyes sparkle when she saw them.

One more thing about mom

One of the male nurses who had taken care of her earlier stopped by to ask her how she was doing. She opened one eye, arched her eyebrow at him and squinted her infamous "How the *e*l do you think I'm doing, you big dope" look at him. When he left, she looked at me and shook her head so hard, I could almost hear her brains rattle.

If she hadn't been tied down so she wouldn't pull her breathing tube out, she would have taken the palm of her hand and thudded it up against her forehead several times. But then she just shrugged and grinned.

Setback on the Mom front

Mom suffered a setback in her quest to get out of the hospital. She's been in the ICU for 10 days since her respiratory arrest. She started getting so lethargic that she would forget to breath so they ended up putting a breathing tube back in last night. Her fingers were quite blue by the time they got it done. aCk!

She's back again. Last night was a little worrisome but my ex-boss's dad had just had open heart surgery by my mom's doctor and he (the doctor) got outa surgery just in time to go put a breathing tube in mom. PErfect timing, I guess. My boss was there for me and gave me hugs and talked to me till I could deal with things.

My brother is coming back from Denver by Saturday night and my sister will be here all weekend. Yea me! Yea mom! Thanks for all your prayers.

Selling books before they are published

I made another sale for the novel my writing buddy, Joe, and I have written and it isn't even published yet. Whilst sitting in the ICU watching mother sleep, the nurse asked me what project I was working on.

I explained about writing the novel and how a professor had offered to edit the book for free. I decided to make her a beautiful hand embroidered crazy quilt quilt in return for her kindness.

The nurse then asked what the book was about and with very little explanation about the details of the book, she said...well, just let me know when it's published and I'll buy one. Ggggrin! Even gave me her email address so I won't forget to contact her. She was so impressed that a REAL person, someone she'd actually met, had written a novel.

I'm planning to publish on demand after the professor is done editing. Sooooooo, things are moving closer. I even had someone show up in my life who had self-published before and offered advice on things to ask so I make sure the the final product is made with quality paper and printing. Amazing how people keep showing up in my life to help me along the way.

Ain't life grand?

OOOOOOH by the way, Mom had had a relapse last week and ended up back in the ICU for the past 6 days. Not going to get out of the hospital any time soon, but she's getting slowly better.

When do our parents become our children?

Mom had open heart surgery two days ago. There were a few unsuspected complications once they got in there but she's doing okay considering. There were calcifications in her aorta (the major blood vessel coming off the heart) which looked like stalamites, sharp, pointy rock formations that develop over years of liquid dripping from a cave ceiling onto the floor.

The only thing now is that she won't wake up. SHe's ultra-sensitive to pain meds and I have to keep prodding her to wake her up. I have to nag her to eat. I have to boss her around like she's a small child.

I was never a parent, but if this is what it is like, I"m kinda glad I din't go through it. I know I've missed a few of the warm fuzzies that go along with parenting, but this is one of the hardest things I've ever done.

I"ll take a deep breath, tuck my head down and keep plugging along. I knew this day would come. We all gotta get old sometime, but it's giving me more and more thoughts about how to plan my own future for when I get old.

That includes more exercise now, eating less chocolate and caffeine, less fatty foods, more vegetables, less red meat. Now wait a minute!!! Did you just read what I wrote? WHO am I kidding? Gggrin!

Whew...glad I got over that insane before I went too far.

What Bugs Bunny taught us about classical music

I bought a CD of popular classical music. I love it. My husband doesn't. One day however when we got in the car, it began playing. I figured he would turn it off.

After twenty minutes, I commented on how odd it was that he was actually listening to classical music. He said ... "oh, is that classical music? I thought it was the soundtrack to Bugs Bunny cartoons."

Rossini, Mendelson, Straus, Wagner, Stravinski, and (if I could spell it right)...Betovan, Bethovan, Beethovan...you get the picture. It's 4:30 in the morning and my spell check is still asleep.

The background music for cartoons I'd listened to all my life were all there. I hadn't realized it until he said something.

As Richard Wagner's song, The Ride of the Valkyrie, played in the background, I could just close my eyes and "see" Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny dressed as vikings with Elmer proudly belting out the tune, "kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, KILL THE WABBIT".

Hard to believe, Bugs Bunny is good for something other than a laugh. He helped me learn to appreciate classical music too.

Squatter's Rights for Frogs

Is there such a thing as Squatter's Rights for Frogs?

Somebody moved in a few days ago. He may be
little and green, but he's a persistant little buck. My
husband keeps finding him hiding in various
places around our garage. It seems our
log cabin is his favorite place to vacation and hang
during the summer months.

Mr. Frog's favorite hidey-hole is under the lawn mower
hood. Good thing, dear hubby peeks underneath every
time before he starts the darned thing. Otherwise.......
Ewwwwwww!

Funny thing is, it seems to be the same frog each time.
I guess nobody's gonna tell HIM where to live.
Ggggrin!

Living in the country is fun. If you don't
have deer in the driveway, frogs in the lawn mower,
chipmunks chirping so loud they wake you up out
of a sound sleep, turkeys in the back yard taking a dust
bath, hawks circling the woods in back of your house,
racoons pooping on your back deck, squirrels getting
trapped inside your house and chewing a hole in the
window screen so he can get out, woodpeckers trying
to drill a hole in your house cuz it's a LOG cabin and
Gee...that's what woodpeckers do, and various and sundry
ground bee swarms to drive over with the lawn mower
and get attacked by, miscellanous bugs and once finding
a brown wolf spider in the middle of your bed when
you walk into the bedroom to go to sleep, life just ain't
worth livin'. Ain't life grand?

Bully Bird

"Hey Lady. Get outa my way. Ah'm flyin' heyah."

My walk today was punctuated with a moment of
of extreme surprise. I felt a thump and flutter
at my back. As I tried to see behind me, I
noticed the shadow of a small bird hovering
behind me just below my shoulders. It glanced
off my back again and then flew off.

What do I look like? A window? Hmmmmmmm...
on second thought...don't answer that. Gggrin!

Just thought I'd share. Odd things happen to me
but this one rates pretty high on the weird-o-meter.
Now I'm gettting pushed around by birds.

Oh to be young again? Not me.

I worked with an 18 year old who was graduating from
high school today. She's scared spitless about her future.
Has no plans on how to accomplish her goals of being a
kindergarden teacher some day. She physically shook
from nerves as I performed her sonogram.

I never thought about that sort of thing when I was young.My
future unfolded for me without a hitch. I got into college
in the x-ray school program by a complete fluke. Someone dropped
out at the right moment so I could just slip in the door. Exit
college, there's a job waiting for me. The next years crop of
graduates had no jobs at all.

A few years later, someone sidled up to me and whispered...psssssst,
there's a job in Ultrasound, pass it on. I hollered ... ME...ME...take
MEEEEEE! They did and there were no openings in Ultrasound for
another 10 years after that.

Everything I've ever wanted in the way of a job has opened up
right when I wanted it and I've loved my job ever since.
How lucky is that?

My advise to her is to always keep a positive attitude no matter what
happens. "We become what our thoughts are." Then I said something
utterly inane and made her laugh.

Don't know which helped more...being silly or being profound but
at least she wasn't shaking any more.

BUt all this made me realize I wouldn't want to be young again
for a million bucks.

Brain Development . . . is this a good thing?

I just bought a CD program called The BrainFlex Method. It talks about how to develop
your brain so that as you get older, you have less chance of developing brained related issues
like dementia and Alzheimer's by stimulating your brain to form new synapses instead of
decreasing them as usually happens when you get older.

The program talked about being a left brained person or a right brained persons. Left brainers
are logical people. They make lists and follow them; they make great detectives. They wear
watches and are almost never late.

Right brainers are those flighty kinds of creative people who "feel" more than they "see".
Not the most organized people in the whole wide world. In fact if they made a list,
they'd probably lose it. And watches? HA! What's time to a creative person?

Now just because I haven't worn a watch in over 28 years doesn't mean I'm a right brainer.
I just keep forgetting to take the watch to the jeweler's to get it fixed. Get the picture? The
list I wrote it down on to remind me is probably buried until piles of creative clutter on my
kitchen counter.

To stimulate the other side of your brain, they suggest doing things with your non-dominant
hand. Ever try brushing your teeth with the opposite hand? Oy! I got cramps in my wrist
doing that. I've been using my left hand on the mouse when I play solitaire. I have to use
my middle finger to click the mouse instead of the forefinger. *Mr. Left ForeFinger* has gone on
strike. It doesn't want to work right.

And soooo...they suggested a way of right brainer's developing the left side of their brain.
Keeping a blog every day for 30 days. You might think this is a creative person's forte but
it's not. It's organized and logical, *delicate shudder*, but I'm going to try to do this for
30 days.

oh yeah . . . just gotta share one last thing. They suggested using two pieces of paper and two pens. Draw a circle with one hand while you are drawing a square or a triangle or some other structure with the other hand. They offered about 12 different drawing scenarios graduating up to the more difficult ones of drawing two squares with one hand, a triangle with the other hand and trace a circle with your foot on the floor as you do it. By the time I got done, I felt like I'd pulled a hamstring in my brain. Aiyiyi! DO NOT do this exercise just before betime, boys and girls. I kept waking up wondering where I was that night.

Anyway, I'm gonna try that write a blog post every day. We'll see how far I get. ggggrin!

What makes you happy?

Have you ever thought about what makes you truly happy? TOday...I decided to make a list.

1. When a stranger responds to your smile.
2. The smell of cut grass
3. The smell of flowers as you're sitting under a busy overpass waiting for a traffic light to turn green. (can you tell this happened to me today? I've never smelled flowers there before in my life and I've been driving under this overpass for almost 30 years)
4. Seeing the sunshine after days and days and days and days of rain. (can you tell we're a bit water-logged here in the Midwest?) gggrin!
5. Finding the perfect pair of pants on sale for $2.99. (Okay...so my husband doesn't like them, but WHAT woman wouldn't LOVE to find a pair of bright red elastic waisted suede pants ON SALE and they actually FIT?) gggrin!
6. Having someone tell you the convoluted directions to a doctors office, but stopping after she says....go down this long hallway....NO...WAIT...open the door, THen go down the hallway. (That's my kind of sense of humor.)
7. Helping someone who is very uptight about having some medical testing done laugh through their procedure and reeeeeeeeally relax. (Of course, it's hard to be around me without laughing really hard. Hmmmm....I wonder if that's a good thing or not, she pauses to consider, then grins)
8. Realizing it doesn't make that much difference if you are one minute late to work or not, as long as you got there safely.
9. Getting to think about what makes you happy and then realizing you had a most excellent day.
10. Realizing you really only have nine things that made you happy today, but in sharing those nine things, you get to say you have 10 things that made you happy.

And so...what made YOU happy today? I wanna know.

The Serenade of the Tree Frogs

Have you ever heard a tree frog sound deleriously happy? We experienced a "gully washer" of a thunderstorm last night, one of many the midwest has endured in the past week or so. At 4:30 this morning, the sound of 30,000 happy itty bitty little frogs outside my window woke me up.

(Okay, so it might have been the hot flash that woke me up, but the "Halleluja Chorus dressed in green" prevented me from going back to sleep.) Gggrin!

I suppose most people never have the opportunity to hear tree frogs. Living in the country for thirty years near the woods and a big pond helps. There's something so soothing about their joy. Oh ... to be happy it rains ... and rains ... and rains.

Did you know most tree frogs sing soprano? Well, for years, one of OUR frogs sang bass. You'd hear chirp, chirp, chirp and then BA-ROOm. In fact, the "bass" frog possess what sounded like a smoker's cough. YOu'd heard chirp, chirp, chirp ...BA+ROOM....cough, cough, wheeeeeze. Life's interesting around my house. Even the tree frogs are different.

More later. I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted. Vacation, work related seminars and life in general have gotten in the way. HOpe to remedy that.

Names Have Been Changed to Protect the Innocent.

The following story, "The War Tattoo" is true. The name of the person involved has been changed to protect his identity. In fact, even though this man touched my life and changed it forever, I would not know him if he walked up and shook my hand. It happened too long ago.

Be forewarned. Grab a hankie before when you read. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Thanks in advance.