I am among the ranks of middle class people who can’t afford health care. I can’t afford dental insurance and I can not afford glasses. My son needs his wisdom teeth pulled and I can’t afford to get it done.My husband needs a root canal, and we have to save up because it costs $1,500.  I am deathly afraid something serious might happen to someone in my family, because we don’t have insurance.

Without a national health care plan, how do we fix this? Now please understand, this is not a challenge that I am issuing, it is merely a question. They say America has one of the best health care systems in the world, but how can that be? How can it be good that a family of three has to pay $2,000 per month for Health Insurance?  How can it be that we can’t even get health insurance without applying through the Association of Realtors?

I think most of the people who think the health care system is just fine the way it is must be on a plan where an employer pays either all or part of their health care premiums, or they are on Medicare. I am sorry to point this out to my friends over 65, but Medicare is socialized medicine.

I am not for the government running our health care system, but we need something, and I just don’t know what, does anyone out there have a good idea?

I own a small business myself, and I closed a small business myself when it was no longer a viable means of earning a living. I  admit I stumbled around for a while, trying to figure out what to do next, and heaven forbid, I even tried to get a regular J.O.B.That didn’t work well. I was too qualified for some, not qualified for others, and truth be told, for many I was just not 25 and cute any more. Let’s face it, after 20 some odd years of running my own shop, I probably was not particularly suited to work for someone else again, so it may have been a blessing in disguise that the job thing did not work out.

My partner has been slowly and steadily building his web design business, and for the past two years, preaching the benefits of social media. In fact, he believed in social media so strongly that he built people blogs almost for free. As I have a background in training, he asked me to learn about building and maintaining blogs so I could then teach these same people how to maintain them. I did that, and I went out and trained the  people he built those blogs for. They blogged for a couple of months, and then the business of doing business got in their way and they blogged no more!!  That is when we decided to create social-cindy.com.

At first we were still working hard to convince people they needed to do this social-media thing, and now it is the other way around. People are coming up to us and asking if we can help them. For me, it isn’t just about social media, it is about people wanting to invest in their businesses. They are tired of hoping the economy will turn around and things will get better. They are ready to MAKE THINGS GET BETTER!!

I love that! I love that spirit, and I love that people will not let them selves be held hostage by the world economy or big business. Even in down markets, there are opportunities for success.  You can’t get someone to hire you? No problem, just start your own business. Mark Cuban was on CNBC this morning, and he said he is investing in private startups. People who are building their own companies from scratch with a cable modem and a $1,000 lap top. He is not even considering publicly traded companies, he is scoping out private startups only. In my case, I am a prime example of a privately owned company that is investing in itself.  My laptop was only $500.00, not $1,000, but everything else is the same…

That is how our country will begin to recover!!!

cindy fletcher

social media practitioner extraordinaire!!

All my friends and family were telling me that just doing nothing for my birthday was not a good way to go. They know me too well. So my husband started gently quizzing me with different options, like “Do you want to go to a club?” and  I said,” well maybe”. “Do you want to have just an ice cream and cake party?” I said,” well maybe”.” Do you want to go to Disney Land?” When he asked me that question, my face just lit up, and I said, “well maybe.” He said oh no you don’t, I saw your face light up when I mentioned Disney Land, so that is what we are going to do for your birthday.

We live in South Orange County, so Disney Land is only maybe 25 miles away. When our son Sam was much younger, we would buy the passes and just go whenever the mood hit us. Once he got older there were soccer meets, water polo meets, swim meets, and practices. There was work and homework and taking care of aging parents. In other words, our schedule was pretty full. Because of all that, we had probably not been to Disney Land for almost 10 years.

So, on September 18, 2011, my husband, my son and I went to Disney Land for my Birthday!!! When we purchased our tickets they gave me a big button to pin on my shirt that had Happy Birthday and my name on it. I wore that button proudly, because like I said, I love my birthday. And a lovely thing happened. Where ever we went in the park, the park employees wished me Happy Birthday with a warm smile. Other people who were also celebrating their birthdays  and we wished each other a happy birthday. Strangers wished me Happy Birthday. It was a wonderful experience.

Too often these days, we complain about poor service, high prices and customer service people with bad attitudes. We saw none of that at Disney Land. Every where we went in the park we were greeted with a smile, and when we had out Birthday dinner in the New Orleans style Restaurant , the service was impeccable and the food delicious. For me, the day at Disney Land was one of the best ever.

There was something else pretty special and that was my family members either sent cards or  who showed up on my birthday morning, before the trip, with champagne and birthday presents. Between the birthday wishes from Disney and the thoughtfulness of my family, this turned out to be one of my best ever birthdays.

My Birthday at the happiest place on earth, was truly a Happy Birthday, Thank you family, thank you Disney Land. til next year….

cindy fletcher

www.social-cindy.com

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I would like to share with you what one of my subscribers posted in answer to my posting. It changes the meaning of cure just a bit for me…see what you think;

“Is there a cure for anything? Very good question. As a practicing Massage Therapist with 31 years of working around bodies I have asked that question many times.There are treatments for ailments.. many kinds and theories are available , and all of them will work for someone. Healing has more than one component. When we ask a practitioner for help, they usually treat their patient according to what principals and theories they adopted in their training. They also seldom see the patient often to know or understand them and or their lifestyle.

I attained leaps and bounds in my knowledge when I was thrust into caretaking for a lady I had massaged for 24 years.Because i knew her history and was knowledgable in the medical aspects of her condition ,she refused to let anyone else caretake for her and I went on the journey with her.I attended PT sessions with her to learn how to wrap her arm(affected by history of breast cancer). I wrap her arm every day. I know the condition of her skin, when she has the slightest temp, remind her of meds she needs etc. She still has her chronic conditions of pain, but she drives her 92 year old self to bridge every day.

The reason she can walk is because I work on her feet every A.M. to reduce the shortening and pain. I cannot cure her, the condition started with polio 88 years ago. But I focus on what I can to improve her quality of life.The lymphedema wraps on a daily basis keeps her immune  system running and her skin is in great condition. Untreated it would be a much different case. Together we have learned to modify, adjust, home remedy etc. and have avoided costly medical bills and discomfort. However hard it is to measure , we will take the results we get.”

Written by Valentina Boonstra

www.valhealing.wordpress.com

There are members of my family who sleep the sleep of the dead, and then there are those of us, who if we do finally fall asleep, wake up every few hours. I took that one to the Dr, but all she could do was offer sleeping pills. I have tried several different types, none of which helped me to sleep the whole night through, and all of them had side affects for me. So, no cure there. I had a bladder infection, so the doctor put me on something, I guess it was a sulphur drug, and the next day my body broke out in red, itchy hives and my face swelled up to twice its size. No cure there, and once again, big side effects.

My son and I both have trouble sitting still and concentrating on things, unless it is something we are very interested in.  I believe in some circles it’s called Attention deficit Disorder. We have both tried medication for that, again, it helped mask the symptoms, but it did not cure us and the side effects were headaches, stomach aches, and if we didn’t already have trouble sleeping, insomnia. No cure there.

When I was younger, my stomach would hurt terribly and swell up like a beach ball. The conventional wisdom was I probably had ulcers, and at that time, if you had ulcers you ate ice cream or drank a glass of milk. That was supposed to soothe the savage beast. Well, after researching for myself for a number of years and keeping a food diary, I learned that I am lactose intolerant. Every time I had a bad stomach ache, I drank some milk or ate some ice cream and the pain would just get  worse. I found a cure, I don’t drink milk and I don’t eat ice cream. If the burning in my tummy gets really bad, I take a table-spoon of Apple Cider Vinegar, and that stops it. Or I eat a couple of saltines. Not a cure, but I feel better and there aren’t any side effects…

I think surgeons can cure things, because they find  a lump and cut the darn thing out, or a tear and they sew it up. But does anybody know of a doctor who has cured anything lately? I am not being sarcastic, on the contrary, I am looking for good news. I give time and money every year to help cure cancer, but cancer is not cured. I give money to help with Alzheimer’s, but Alzheimer’s has no cure. I give money to help people with all kinds of research, but other than Polio being cured by preventing it with a vaccine, what is there a cure for?

Can you tell me? Thank you

Cindy

For so many of us, the hopefulness that came with entering a new century was quickly dashed on 9/11. It seems things have just gone so much further down hill than  expected. The whole world is dissolving and morphing, painfully into something new. While I could drown in all the self-pity that comes from such a place, I have friends and family who refuse to let me live there. Once their butt kicking sinks in, I close down the pity party, dust myself off and get back to work.

Every once in a while I will check my horoscope, just to see if there are words of encouragement floating around in the universe and headed my way. My sign is Virgo, and though people who know me would probably guess my sign as Scorpio, I was born in September, so Virgo I am. There is nothing about me that is reserved or introverted, I am all out there and extroverted to an extreme. Some say too much, and for that, I am not going to apologize. I am older now and I have learned that it truly is impossible to please all of the people all of the time.

Anyway, back to my horoscope. The past 10 years have had some really good times, A cruise to Alaska, trips to see family in Florida, and great trip with my family and my friend Lynne’s family to New York City. They have also held hard times, which I won’t talk about again, you have heard enough of that. I was just feeling hopeful this morning, and whenever I get hopeful, being Italian, I always wonder if that is a good thing or not. So I checked my horoscope.

I like Jonathan Cainer’s forecasts. They seem less cookie cutter than some, and many times they hit the nail on the head for me. Here is what he had to say about the decade ahead for Virgo:

Virgo, The Next Decade
Daily, Yesterday, Weekly, Monthly, Year
Ahead Video

‘Things can only get better.’ This  song became the anthem, in Britain at least, of a political party. Soon after
they sung it, things did, indeed, get better for them. But the jury is still out  on how much better things than got for the wider world. So I quote it with  caution. After the few years you’ve just been through, almost anything would be an improvement. Yet the last decade started out so well. And are you now  destined to see another false dawn? Or will they indeed, keep getting better for  you, but only at the expense of others? If you weren’t a Virgo, I wouldn’t ask  such questions. I’d just big up your opportunities. If, though, there’s one  thing you’re good at (besides being incredibly wise, clever and kind) it’s  worrying. So if your forecast doesn’t reflect a few things you may need to fret about, you’re not going to relate to it. Are those enough ways in which it could all go wrong? Then let me tell you the truth about this decade that will take  Uranus out of your opposite sign and replace it with Neptune. It’s going to be as calm as the last decade was chaotic and it’s going to take you as close to the fulfilment of one of your dearest dreams as you’ve ever dared hope to get. “

Thanks to my handsome husband, I have a new career that I love. Thanks to our workload increasing, my son has a new career that he is good at. I look forward to this new chapter, and I think I shall keep this horoscope tacked up on my bulletin board. I like what it says, and it doesn’t really matter if I believe it to be true or not, because if I read it every day, I shall make it be true.

Cindy

What is the upside of all this turmoil? That is the question.  I don’t know the answer to that, smarter people than me don’t even know all the answers to that. . But I have some ideas. I think if people stop waiting for something to happen, and take advantage of the opportunities of a down market and economy, things will start to get better.

There are  two pieces of all this that I know something about, and those are  employment and real estate. Lets break down employment. The media says that jobs are scarce and will be for some time. That is the down side. The Upside is companies have money, some of them are feeling strong enough to want to begin to grow again. Is there an opportunity here? I think the answer is yes. You just have to figure out where your opportunity is. Can you form a company that performs services to businesses that formerly had staff to do those jobs? Can you use some of your savings to purchase foreclosed homes, fix them out, rent them and sell when the economy returns. Those are two ways I can think of to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Day after day, I read headlines that say certain states and areas of the country have low unemployment rates. What if you go where the jobs are?  I say, well are you going to accept one of those positions in another state? Most times the answer is, oh no,  I can’t leave California. To that I say, huh? You can stay here, possibly lose your home, and all of your savings, or you can move somewhere else, rent out your home here, have a decent job with a salary, or you can stay here and lose everything? That one scares me a little.

I was the daughter of a traveling salesman. He drove all up and down the New England Coastline, servicing grocery stores. When business dried up in one part of his territory, we just picked up and moved to wherever my Dad could make enough money to support us. We didn’t like it, it wasn’t fun, but we didn’t die from moving, if anything it made us stronger. Home is where you make it. Survival is most important, and family comes right after that.

I think this economy is scary, but I have been through scary economies before, and somehow managed to come out the other side.

Cindy

When I was 20 I was enrolled in Rivier College and working towards a degree in English. I always loved to read and spent all my spare time engrossed in books. I wanted to share that love of words with others. In fact I did. If someone in my class was struggling with reading, I always jumped in to help. Even a  child I was a teacher. I am still a teacher, although I never got my  teaching degree.

I moved instead in the relatively new career field of Data Processing and Computer Science. It was the beginning of the large-scale integration of mini computers into the business segments and out of the great mainframe environment. There were no computer science degrees. No high schools or universities teaching computers 101!!  I learned everything on the fly, taught myself and then in turn, developed courses and taught others.

With the advent of PCs becoming more mainstream, the mini computer industry began to decline. The economic downturn of the mid 80′s brought it pretty much to an end. So  I taught myself the Mortgage Business, then I taught others..I taught Borrowers how to navigate the turbulent waters of the mortgage process. I taught other loan officers how to market their business. I taught processors how to process and I taught myself how to run a successful business. I was now  a business owner, but true to my core, I was still a teacher.

It’s 2011, the year of social-media, and once again, I have been learning. Because of my background working with computers for so long, I was always somewhat in the know about new technology and software. I began to learn more, and now, I am in the midst of yet another transition. From Mortgage and  Marketing guru, to internet warrior,  and once again I am teaching. I am teaching myself how to use WordPress.com, WordPress.org, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Pages, Yelp and other forms of social media. I am teaching myself a new  and gentler type of marketing, and refining the process as I go. I am teaching others that people over 50 are not out of the picture. That you can teach an old dog new tricks, or in my case , the old dog can teach itself new tricks. It’s fun being me. And if I didn’t tell you , with this medium, no one even has to know how young or old I am. As long as I am having fun, and I can type, I can do this social-media thingy….

Later,

cindy fletcher

social-cindy.com

cinfletch@gmail.com

As for  Julia Roberts, she  is beautiful,  talented and  appears to be a well-rounded woman. She is someone the cool guys like to hang out with, who  has a successful marriage, beautiful, healthy children, and is financially secure. Why would Julia allow  someone turn her into something she is not?

The people defending these heavily air brushed ads say, ”everyone  knows these photos are retouched”.  They do? I didn’t. Until very recently, I had NO CLUE that every photo on the cover of a magazine was essentially a painting, an artists rendering if you will, versus a PHOTOGRAPH. Little 3 year old girls looking at the magazin covers at the check stand don’t know that. These are the women they are going to want to emulate as they grow up. What is the message for them?

When I was younger, I ate once or twice a week, and lived on coffee and cigarettes so I could stay thin. In those days it was called dieting, now it’s called anorexia. Who knew they would name it? I did it so I could be the magazine definition of beautiful. Now I am older, and starving myself no longer feels good, and as a consequence,  I am no longer thin. As a matter of fact, staying on a diet for more than three days has become impossible in my current state of mind. I think because I starved myself for so long.

Oh and let’s not forget all those stars hyping their beauty creams, selling us the dream while they themselves get gently smoothed and tweeked by the most efficient and proficient plastic surgeons in the world. And the only time we find out is when someone spills the beans on them. Even my namesake, Cindy Crawford, has had her share of tune ups.

I don’t blame them. Their careers and companies depend upon them looking amazing, and that is probably more pressure than I would care to bear. But , like Joan Rivers, just be honest about it. or don’t say anything at all, but please don’t tell me you can make me look like you with a jar of your best potions and lotions.

The blog I read was about certain countries trying to pass a law against ambushing, and I am all for it. This false sense of who people are and what we can look like is damaging. The people who say no it isn’t are lying. Maybe even to themselves. Julia Roberts is beautiful, smart and even if she has a few wrinkles, she will still be beautiful and smart. So will Cindy Crawford, and all of the other business women who hype their miracle creams on the Shopping Channel.

I challenge them to do what Jamie Curtis did a few years ago, come out with pictures in a magazine, looking like she looks in real life. Of course, after she did that layout, she went on a diet and had a face lift…

oh well….

Cindy Fletcher

A few months later, both my shoulders started to seize up. I could not lift my hands above my head, and my range of motion was severely impaired. My family got tired of watching me grimace, and although  I know better than to do this,( because Western medicine does not work well for me), I went to my doctor at Kaiser. She gave me muscle relaxers and a splint and sent me home. The pain and inability to move my hand and arm only got worse and the muscle relaxers helped a little, but they did not fix the problem.

Through my husband’s BNI group, I met Dr. Anna Chang. I am not advertising for  her here, but I am advocating. Dr Anna proceeded to  stick her long, slender needles into various parts of my body, she even lit several of them on fire. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall, watching me lie there, on the table, with needles sticking out everywhere, some of them smoking..it’s kind of a funny picture.  Now those of you who know me already, you know that I am deathly afraid of needles, but when you are in pain, it’s surprising what you let people do to you.

Gradually I noticed that my hand was feeling better, and over time I have gotten almost all motion back in my shoulders. It didn’t happen over night, the treatments took a few months, and I still go for a session  whenever I can. Dr. Anna told me the pain in my shoulders was the result of weak lung function. It was not something wrong with the shoulders themselves.  As I do have asthma, who was I to argue? Week after week, she continued to stick her needles in me, she gave me some Chinese herbs to take, plus some exercises to do. I did as she asked, and I am better.

And the side effects? You are going to laugh at this. The side effects of her treatment is I no longer have anxiety attacks when i am driving on the California freeways!! I did not have them every time I drove, but I would have them without warning, and let me tell you, you don’t want to be driving at 70 mph on the freeway, in the passing lane, when you start having an anxiety attack. I had not even told her about the anxiety attacks, and I myself did not even realize I was better until I was cruising down the 5, singing along with the music, and realized that I was NOT having an anxiety attack.

I sound like a big pile of mess here, I am not. None of these things ever stopped me from working or living my life, but they did cause it to be a little more difficult. Now that they are gone, everything is a lot easier. I don’t know why acupuncture, or massage, or chiropractor work for me. They just do. I have worked with Ambika Waters, on my homeopathic remedies for poor circulation and stomach issues, the roots of which were emotional issues from various unpleasant life experiences. My sister, Valentina always alleviates my back pain when she stretches and massages me.

I do know that  the theme in Western medicine  is to provide people with relief from pain. I also know most of the time, they don’t advertise a cure. I know plenty of good doctors, and many of them try their best with the tools they have been given, but even they are getting frustrated and are starting to prescribe holistic remedies.

I am not saying this works for everyone, to rise up and  throw away your pills and your doctors, all I am saying is for me, finding out why things hurt, and fixing those things, works better than taking a pill to make it stop for a little while..

Cindy Fletcher