cheerfulmonk.com

Both the diet and skin care worlds are popular social media niches that can quickly cycle through trendy ideas that range from reasonably effective to bizarre. The infatuation with tallow appears to be one of the few times their content focuses on the same product.
—Influencers claim beef tallow has health and beauty benefits. Not necessarily, experts say.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of the believers. Here’s an Instagram video of him frying his turkey in tallow last Thanksgiving. (Click on the picture for the video.)

I enjoyed the video, but I haven’t been converted. As I’ve said before, my job right now is to keep being as happy and healthy as I can be so Kaitlin doesn’t have to worry about me. No clogging my arteries with saturated fats.

March 22, 2025

Andy has been spending a lot of time clearing the road of trees that blew down in Monday’s wind. Most of them were small and only partially across the road, but this one took him three days to clear.

Notice the little electric chain saw in the picture — that’s the only one he can use now. He doesn’t even take his two gas-powered ones in the car — they are too heavy for him to use safely. Doing the best he can with what he has left.

March 21, 2025

As usual, March is windy. This is what it looked like Monday:

It was even worse up on the land. Andy didn’t try to take a walk, he even had some trouble opening the car door.

Another sign of spring — the apricot tree by the basketball court was trying to blossom:

Unfortunately the low temperature that night was 22°F.

March 20, 2025

Click on the link to see the video, and turn on the sound in the lower right corner.

March 19, 2025

Our internet and phone service were down again for most of the day yesterday, from about 8 a.m.to 8 p.m. That’s better than last time when it was out until after midnight, but clearly it was way too soon to happen again.

Apparently the problem is when they repaired it last time the tracer wire that was supposed to tell people where the cable was got separated from the cable itself. So even though the construction workers were following the right protocol, they severed the cable again.

The county is planning to put a Starlink internet source at the downtown park for residents to use if/when this happens again.

Anyway, it’s great to have internet and phone service again!

Mawrch 18, 2025

Fear grows in shadows.

Shine a light on it. You fear losing your job? Picture it. Imagine the fallout. What will you do next? That’s the most important part. Now, take action. Save money. Build skills. Prepare. Suddenly, losing the job seems smaller. You anticipated it. You robbed it of its power. It’s not about living in negativity.
—Thomas Oppong

This quote reminds me of a post I wrote in 2007, when I first started blogging:

What I Learned From Being Downsized

I’ve been studying/practicing personal development most of my life, and got into stress management about 16 years ago, when my husband and I were both threatened with downsizing. It was scary, but also one of the happiest times of my life.

My husband and I worked in different divisions of the same company and drove to and from work together. When we got in the car at night we would share stories about the latest idiocies of management and laugh. And we would discuss our options for the future. It was a shared adventure.

🙂 I take full credit for marrying someone who would do well in a crisis. I cheerfully admit this doesn’t sound very romantic, but if you believe marriage is for the long haul, not just temporary excitement, pick someone who will weather adversity well. You won’t be sorry.

Anyway, we both liked what we were doing, so we decided to make the most of our present jobs while they lasted. I had been working about 60 hours a week and dropped that down to 40. I had a lot of autonomy at work, which I loved, so I kept developing my writing, programming and people skills. In my new free time I joined a second Toastmaster’s Club and became certified in NLP (neurolinguistic programming).

When I looked around the division I asked myself one of my favorite questions, “What’s the opportunity here?” The answer, of course, was to become an expert in stress management. So that became another part of the adventure.

As it turned out, our jobs lasted another couple of years, when we were offered great severance packages. By then I was already prepared for my next great adventure, teaching/leading groups in stress management.

So, what did I learn from the experience?

• Be optimistic and have a sense of humor
• Always keep learning and growing
• Be patient and bide your time when it’s appropriate
• Generate new ideas and opportunities for yourself
• Enjoy the adventure of life and have friends to share it with

What about you? What life lessons would you like to share? This site is about sharing, so please tell us your thoughts in the comment section.

Picture from The Daily Puppy

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I have to laugh when I read this. I had so much more energy when I wrote this post over 16 years ago, let alone when the story happened over 32 years ago. I think our lives are in for big changes in the near future, but we still don’t waste time worrying about it. And we still laugh a lot and don’t fuss when problems come up, we just plug along and deal with them and enjoy what we have while we still have it. I don’t feel nearly as adventuresome now as I did then, but if anything I’m happier. It’s just quieter and less energetic than it was then.

What about you?

March 17, 2025

One of the bloggers I follow said her daughter was eating a gooey sandwich in the living room while watching television. When she was done she shut off the TV and went to her room. There were just the two of them, but a few minutes later my friend heard the TV going on and the channels being changed. What?? So she went in the living room and saw her pup happily licking the remains of the sandwich off the remote.

March 16, 2025

Almost 5,000 people waited for hours in the rain at a swabbing event in Worcester. To get tested to see if they were a match to help save the life of a five-year-old boy fighting a rare cancer, after his parents asked for help.
—Bored Panda

March 15, 2025

but he blames her anyway. Click on the picture to see the video, and turn on the sound in the lower right corner.

March 14, 2025

We didn’t have internet, cell phone service, or long distance service from our landline Tuesday. They were out early in the day and didn’t get restored until about 1 a.m. yesterday. Construction workers had accidentally cut a crucial cable to town.

I knew from the last time the cable had been cut that the library had internet access, so I phoned them (a couple of times) to get more details. They have two connections to internet. One was completely down like the rest of town, but they also had RediNet, which was intermittent because so many people were trying to use it. One person thought the county government might have internet too. I was curious and someone answered at one of the numbers I called. She said the county didn’t have internet, but her personal phone did. It was AT&T but couldn’t say if everyone with AT&T would have it.

I figured the outage would also affect the credit card/debit systems at the local stores. We didn’t have to do any shopping then, but yesterday when Andy went someone said they had had to accept only cash.

Anyway, I couldn’t contact Andy while he was up at the land, and we figured out what to do if we had to evacuate this fire season and he was up there and the cable was down. I also asked him if he could shelter in place up there if a fire blocked his way out. Oops! We’re going to try to keep our defensible space around the house clear but his smoke masks are out of date, so he’s going to buy new ones. We don’t worry, but we do try to be prepared.

March 13, 2025