A Surprise Birthday Party!

Yes, for my dear prayer sister and myself. Our birthdays happen just days apart in late July but because of different schedules, we've been setting aside a day near our dates to celebrate both our birthdays together.

I think this was the first year that we had to wait about 3 months to find a convenient time to do our annual catchup with one another. In-person, of course.

I was excited for this special time - which seemed too short - however, we covered a lot of topics in about an hour and a half.

Long-lasting friendships are a great Treasure!

I still want to go car-shopping in short spurts, but this next weekend we will have a Missions Conference at our church and I hope to attend at least three of the meetings. However, I want to put together a handy check-list I can carry in hand or in my purse, so I can zero in on the right car for me, and when I find one that seems suitable, I plan to take it to my favorite mechanics' shop for confirmation that it is a reliable car in good condition.

(It has happened before that we have an early snowfall, then it disappears and we have a pre-snow fall again for a number of weeks before the snows that last about six months come.)

Furthermore, I have a number of downsizing projects for this winter... but that will depend on my stamina and strength. It is quite possible I will have to wait for others to lug some of the heavy stuff out of the house.

It's those hard decisions; what to keep and what has to GO - that I dread the most. I can't very well delegate those big decisions to others, but once I've gone over everything, I may feel okay about hiring someone else to come do my weekly house cleaning for me. ...Some time next year, eh?

<*> TIPS & SOLUTIONS: <*>

How to Eat Your Aloe Vera

Recently I've been demonstrating and explaining to some people when they are in my home, how to get the health benefits of the wonderful aloe vera plant into your body.

The healing part is the gel inside the thick leaves.

There's an aloe vera ranch down in Costa Rica, belonging to the Forever Living company In Arizona, USA. The plants there grow almost as tall as a human; the leaves are large and thick as your arm! Harvesters chop off the best leaves with large knives and throw them on the big trucks that drive up and down between the rows. They are delivered to a handling plant where people are lined up on either side of moving belts/tables, and they filet the leaves, dropping the clear gel parts into barrels that go through big blenders further down the line.

Forever Living makes lots of ointments, cremes, etc., from that gel. However, if you have an aloe vera house plant you can do the same on a smaller scale.

To treat a skin condition, I cut open a small leaf and smear the gel on my skin. (I did that when I got second degree burns on the heel of my hand one Easter. In about 2 weeks it healed very nicely, and when I hold up my hands, no one can tell which hand had that serious burn. There's no scar tissue!)

But to take it internally I look for one of the larger, thicker leaves, rinse if off under the tap, and then with a sharp knife I slice off a narrow ribbon off the one side of the leaf. Then I slide my knife between the front and back of the leaf to open it. Then I spread it open on a long oval plate, and using a spoon scrap the gel out of both sides of the inner gel.

(The outer green side is bitter and not recommended to take internally but I knew one woman in my home town who came to buy plants from me and she said she always buzzed the whole leaf, skin and all in a blender and drank it for her health.)

I blend the clear gel part with about half a cup of juice and prefer to chill it in the fridge before I drink it. I find a quarter cup at a time goes down nicely, starting to heal me from the inside. - If I take too much in one day, my digestive tract gets a thorough cleansing, (if you know what I mean).

I understand that some USA grocery stores now will sell aloe vera leaves. I haven't seen that in Canada yet.

My website, https://aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com has true stories of how my aloe vera plants healed not only me but my Dad's stomach ulcer and his shingles.

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