A few months ago, Greg called me into the backyard to help solve a mystery.  Our lawn was torn up, kind of rolled up in patches.  How could this have happened?   It was so strange – something I’d never seen before.  It didn’t look like a vandal, or something human – we had considered an alien invasion but thought better of it.  A quick search online suggested that possibly it was a raccoon invasion.  Since we have had raccoons in our backyard before, that explanation made sense.  It seems that the raccoons roll up the sod looking for little grubs to eat.  These grubs are not usually there, so the lawn is generally left alone – but somehow the raccoons know when they are there, and then they feast.

 So, to get rid of the raccoons, sites suggest you get rid of the grubs.  And that means all kinds of nasty chemicals.  No, not for us.  Poisons can go straight from our lawn to the lake, hurting our wildlife.  We decided to take our chances and hope that the raccoons would run out of food and move on to another lawn.  No such luck.  It only got worse.  We kept researching.

Finally, Greg came upon a natural solution: Cayenne pepper!  It seems a little spice mixed into the buffet would turn the raccoons away.  Ah!  Sounded good to me, red pepper can’t hurt animals, just maybe enough them enough to take their interest away from our lawn.  It is an inexpensive remedy, too – I went to the grocery store and got a bottle of the cheapest cayenne, came back home and sprinkled away.  Quite colorful, the green grass and the hot red pepper.  And so far, it seems to be working!  I’ll keep you posted.

10 Qs from Justin Sachs
I’d like to introduce you to Justin Sachs who is the author of a new book, Your Mailbox Is Full and is the founder of the Creating Possibilities Coaching Program in which Justin helps teenagers to increase their grades, eliminate procrastination, and create balance in all the areas of their life. 1.    What do you do?
I work with teenagers to increase their grades, eliminate procrastination, create balance in their lives, and overcome any obstacles standing in their way of success.
2.    Tell us about your new book.
Your Mailbox Is Full is a book for teenagers, that teaches them the tools they need to become successful in school and throughout their lives. They learn things like goal setting, time management, living a healthy lifestyle, and modeling and attracting success.
3.    Why did you write it?
When I was 14 years old I went to my first Tony Robbins Seminar and I was in a room full of thousands of adults thinking, “Where’s all the teenagers?” “Why aren’t other youth here getting these powerful tools and strategies?” It was with that realization that I found my passion: Empowering teenagers with life-skills and leadership development tools for success. That’s what my book is all about: Teaching youth the most powerful skills they need to know to create enormous success and fulfillment in life! Now, teenagers don’t have to wait until they are 30 or 40 to get these tools and strategies, they are available to them within Your Mailbox Is Full.
4.    What makes you an expert in your field?
After going to Anthony Robbins seminars for 3 years, I began working for his product sales team and non-profit organization at all his events worldwide.  I then began working for Mark Victor Hansen, the co-founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul Series, and learned even more about life-skills, writing a book, and supporting people in bringing possibility into their lives. I then read everything I could get my hands on from The Secret, to Jack Canfield, to Stephen Covey, to Eckart Tolle, among many others. I learned everything I possibly could about personal development and transformation such that I can now create transformation in others!
5.    What type of people should read your book?
The book is designed for teenagers and young adults, but parents throughout the country are reading the book and loving every page! The contents of the book are limitless, this is the perfect book for anyone looking to take their lives to the next level, especially youth!
6.    Are you on any social networks? Eg. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
Yes, on www.Twitter.com/JustinSachs or http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=511068642
7.    Advice for Teens or Parents of Teens
Follow your passions and never give up on your dreams! If you have a goal, a vision, or a hope for the future, hold on to it, focus on it, and take action to make it happen! You’ll be amazed at how quickly your dreams will manifest themselves when energy is focused on them.
8.    Favorite Quote
Every day, every week and every month, you must challenge yourself to continue to grow to new heights and to take your standards to higher and higher levels. ~ Justin Sachs
9.    Favorite Theme Park
Walt Disney World of course!!!
10.    How can we purchase your book? Learn more about you? Do you have a blog?
My book is available on my website: www.YourMailboxIsFullBook.com To learn more about my coaching services visit www.JustinSachsOnline.com and be sure to check out my new radio show at www.MotivationalMindsRadio.com

Last week I read an article in the Los Angeles Times about an auction that was scheduled through Julien’s Auctions.  They were selling items that had been a part of the household at Michael Jackson’s Neverland.  The next day there was another article, saying that the auction had been canceled.  Michael stated that these items are irreplaceable, and that he never agreed that they would be sold.  The auction company was allowed to keep the exhibit open, and for a $20 admission fee, anyone could come in and take a look.

Being a child of the ’70’s I feel like I grew up with Michael Jackson, and I was very interested to see his awards and costumes.  At the last minute I threw my camera in the back of the car, just in case they let me take some footage.  And guess what?  They did! 

So, here is the video that I made… fascinating stuff!

Michael Jackson’s Neverland Collections

Hi!

I’m doing a Satellite Media Tour for the Better Sleep Council.  I’ll be talking about Better Sleep Month, and how to get a good night’s sleep despite stress!

If you’re in any of these cities you can tune in LIVE:

KIMT, Rochester-Mason City 7:05-7:15 am ET

KHGI, Lincoln & Hastings – KRNY 7:15-7:25 am ET

KJTV, Lubbock 8:15-8:25 am ET

WHAM -CW, Rochester 8:40-8:50 am ET

KCWJ (radio), Kansas City 9:05-9:10 am ET

KCWE, Kansas City 9:15-9:20 am ET

Tell Rochelle (National Talk Radio, CBS) 10:05-10:10 am ET

KBFX, Bakersfield 10:40-10:50 am ET

Cable Radio Network, National 10:50-11:00 am ET

And we’re pre-taping shows in these cities so check your station listing for times and dates:

WICU, Erie

WCJB, Gainesville

WKMG, Orlando

KRIV, Houston

WDIS Radio, Boston

WYAM, Huntsville-Decatur

WYYZ Radio, Atlanta

WBFF, Baltimore

WWL, New Orleans

WWMT, Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo

WDAZ, Fargo-Valley City

You can find more sleep tips online at: BetterSleep.org

Happy Mother’s Day to all the wonderful, nurturing women in the world!  i think we are all mothers in some way.  We give birth through our creativity and our caring.  We garden, feed the birds, volunteer, parent our pets.  There is an intuitive sense of care-taking that just comes with being a woman.  We can’t help ourselves.

i was lucky enough to grow up knowing my two grandmothers.  I loved them both, and each had an influence on my life in a different way.   Grandma Granich was the more traditional grandmother, she doted on me and my brother and sister, constantly feeding us, catering to our every whim.  Her face lit up when she saw us coming.  She’d bake apple strudel from scratch, rolling out the dough to cover the whole kitchen table.  She grew figs in her front yard, and climbed the ladder to pick them herself.  Her garden was the pride of the neighborhood, colorful carnations and geraniums blooming for everyone’s enjoyment.  This Grandma never learned to drive.  Instead she walked to the market just about every day for fresh bread and vegetables.  She’s the woman who made the journey by boat from Croatia alone, at age 16.  She’s the woman who lost her daughter to cancer, and her husband to old age.  She’s the woman who lived a simple life, and gave the best hugs in the world.

My Grandma Penny was the sophisticated Grandmother.  She was a working woman, married three times.  She had style, and determination.  Grandma Penny drove a turquoise sports car, and had a lavender bathroom.  For most of her life she colored her hair a bright copper; she dressed beautifully and entertained elegantly.  Grandma Penny owned a radio station in Lake Tahoe for awhile, so she got to meet celebrities and go to fancy parties.   She always had something interesting to talk about!  And she had various little dogs to take care of over the years, each one lucky to be so spoiled silly.

My own mother is very much her own person.  She grew up in San Francisco and was a ballerina for awhile.  She graduated from high school at 16, married at 20 and had me at age 21.  Divorced at 30, she lived the life of a single, working mom until she met my step-dad.  My mother is smart, she started her own financial planning business.  When I moved to Los Angeles, my sister followed, and then my brother.  After I had my first child, my mother couldn’t stand being so far away from all of us so she and my step-dad moved down here, too.  She loved being “Nanny” to her grandkids and babysat regularly for both me and my sister.  Now all of our kids are grown, and my mom has taken on a new project: “Hugs from Home.”  She and her friends pack up boxes for the troops.  Not just any boxes, these boxes are packed with love, and it shows.  My mom has big binders filled with thank you notes, cards, and photos from men and women overseas who have gotten and appreciate these beautiful packages.

My first mother-in-law Kathy is still very much a part of my life, even though I don’t get to see her very often.  She’s smart and hard-working, and besides her 6 almost-grown grandkids down here, she has two little granddaughters up in Sacramento.

My second mother-in-law Judith passed away a couple of years ago.  I still miss her.  Judith was fun and flamboyant, a retired actress and opera singer who lived the country life when she married her race-car-driver husband in Australia.  Judith understood me, and loved me.  I took her only son far away to the United States, but she was never anything less than thrilled that we had found each other.  I’m so happy that she got to participate in our wedding.

Each of these women has been special in my life.  And I think of each one today, and every Mother’s Day.  Now I’m a mother, and I know my boys will have other moms in their lives who will be special to them.  And for that, I am grateful. 

Hunger

Food is huge right now.  We’ve got The Food Network with programming around the clock, cookbooks flying off the shelves as people spend more time in the kitchen, and chefs are the new rock stars.  And yet, for 1 in 8 people in the United States hunger is a reality.  Worldwide the statistics are much worse.  The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed, and one-third is starving.  Approximately 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, and about 8 million actually die from it each year.

September is Hunger Action Month.  And there’s no better time to take action than right now.  Feeding America, formerly named America’s Second Harvest, is one organization that is working hard to solve the hunger crisis.  It is a network made up of individuals, local food banks, and national offices, as well as corporate and government partners.  Feeding America secures food and grocery products on a national level and distributes as needed to local food banks.  For every $1 donated, Feeding America provides 10 pounds of groceries to hungry people.

Many children in the United States rely on free or reduced-priced school lunches during the school year.  And this is often the only meal they get each day.  During weekends and school vacations these children go hungry.  Feeding America has come up with the “BackPack Program” to help these kids.  The program started at the Arkansas Rice Depot, after a school nurse asked for help because hungry students were coming to her with stomachaches and dizziness.  The local food bank began to provide the school children with groceries in backpacks to carry home with them.  Now the program serves more than 90,000 children each year.

Action Against Hunger is working on a global basis.  Their program areas include nutrition, water and sanitation, food security, health and advocacy.  They have started the Campaign to End Malnutrition.  They say that the loss of life from malnutrition is all the more tragic because acute malnutrition is preventable, predictable, and cost-effective to treat.  And they have a plan in place to save lives.  Visit their website for all the details.

And while we’re online, there’s something we can do, once a day, everyday, to help eradicate world hunger.  Just go to TheHungersite.com and click on the “Click Here to Give – it’s FREE” button.  Since June, 1999, more than 300 million visitors have given more than 657 million cups of staple food.  The food funded by clicks is paid for by the site sponsors and distributed to those in need by Mercy Corps, Feeding America, and Millennium Promise.  100% of sponsor advertising fees go to the aid of hungry people around the world.  Besides clicking the button, which costs visitors nothing, we can also help by shopping in The Hunger Site store.  With each item purchased, shoppers generate funds for the hungry.  The store offers a wide variety of items to show support as well as fair-traded and handcrafted items from around that world that help families and communities pull themselves out of the poverty and hunger cycle.

Here’s another innovative way to help solve the world food problem.  I love it when I find a site where I can have fun, learn and also do something good for the world, and that’s just what I found at FreeRice.com.  With freerice.com you play a game to improve your vocabulary.  For every word you get right, 10 grains of rice are donated to hungry people through the United Nations World Food Program.  The game is challenging, even though it is multiple-choice.  If you correctly guess the meaning of a word, you get a more difficult one next.  If you get it wrong, you get an easier one.  If you’re online playing games anyway, you might as well play this one.  You’ll learn some new words, and help feed people in need at the same time.

Knowing about all the hungry people in the world gives us more reason to be grateful every time we sit down to eat.  And now we can take action to help feed people every time we sit down at our computers.  Every dollar counts, every click counts, every grain of rice counts to those who are hungry.

Divorce is Forever

My friend Sandy and I had had yet another one of our philosophical discussions this weekend.  She said, “I have a great title for your next blog – Marriage is Temporary, Divorce is Forever.”  Having been divorced myself I can understand her sentiments.  Yes, divorce is forever.  But now, truly happily married, I’m in the state where I once again feel that marriage is forever, too.  Maybe there really is no delineation – maybe it’s that these relationships we get ourselves into go on and on, and it’s just the definition of the relationship that changes.  Whether married or divorced, there is this person in our lives that we love – or loved – and through whom we are tied with children, or finances, or history. 

As celebrities give us this great illustration with which we can all better understand, let’s explore this theory with a few examples.  Bruce Willis and Demi Moore: married, seemingly happily, for enough years to produce three beautiful daughters.  They divorce amicably, and no bad blood shows up in the press.  She later marries Ashton Kutcher, and Bruce shows his support as the three attend many family occasions and holidays together.  One big happy family!  And when Bruce remarries, of course they’re all there, too.  Very civilized, very mature.  So Bruce and Demi, although married to different people now, are still tied to each other through their children, and have managed to maintain a functional relationship. 

Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt do not share any children, although they shared years of their lives together as husband and wife.  Will the press ever let them forget that?  I think not!  Even as Brad welcomed his 5^th and 6^th child, twins, with his current partner, Angelina Jolie, tabloids speculated about an Aniston-Pitt reunion.  What gives?  These people have all clearly moved on, but why can’t we?  Is it because Brad and Angie have yet to tie the knot?  They are clearly committed – and they certainly are looking to the future as they raise these children together.  I think it’s because we want to see that Jennifer is okay.  We want her to be happy, and in love, like Brad is.  That way it seems more “fair.”  But life is not always fair.  Life gives us lessons, and sometimes they’re tough ones.  We just have to trust that somehow, someway, through some power greater than our own, that it all balances out in the end.  Karma?  Destiny?  Maybe that’s it.

From Sandy’s point of view, her marriage was temporary.  She didn’t plan for it to be that way.  She went in with the best of intentions, until death do us part.  But as it goes, things happen, people change, and plans go awry.  So now she’s divorced, which she considers to be permanent.  This is the new definition of her relationship with her ex.  Can she “wash that man right out of her hair?”  No.  They have kids together.  They had a life together.  And now all of that has to be shifted to fit this new paradigm.  It can be painful, and certainly stressful.  There are unfulfilled expectations.  There is grief, fear, and uncertainty.  And what can we do about it?  Somehow we have to manage.  We have to redefine the relationship in such a way that it makes sense to us, and that we are okay with it, taking the good with the bad, however we choose to see that.  We have to let go of any anger or resentment because there comes a time when we realize that we are only hurting ourselves with it.

So yes, my first marriage is over.  But am I over it?  Probably not.  I’ve still got these two kids as constant reminders of the years we shared in it.  Those years don’t disappear.  They are a part of my memory, and my psyche.  They helped to shape who I am today.  But I still wouldn’t change a thing about it.  I know mistakes were made, but those mistakes helped both me and my ex to learn and to grow.  I know we are both better off where we are today.  I love my life, I love my husband, and I know that I wouldn’t have what I have right now had the divorce not happened.  So it’s all good.  And I am sure that my ex feels the same way.

Life is full of challenges and full of risks.  Marriage is a big risk.  Divorce is another.  Both take a commitment.  It’s a commitment to living life to its fullest, to being true to yourself, to doing what you feel is best, and to honoring the wisdom that you have gained through your experiences.