Kathleen Lordbock Keller Williams Realty Brainerd Lakes

RISMEDIA, June 11, 2009-(MCT)-“A California dream researcher has proven something that wouldn’t surprise Mozart or Keith Richards. It’s that dreaming is a great way to solve creative problems.

Dr. Sara Mednick, a sleep psychologist at the University of California, San Diego, found that subjects who, between morning and afternoon word-game sessions, took a nap that included a period of lively dreaming called REM sleep, improved their later scores by 40%.

Scores for those who merely rested or whose naps included no REM sleep didn’t budge, Mednick reports in Monday’s online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. REM sleep is the most conked-out stage of slumber, named after the rapid eye movement that characterizes it.

The idea that dreams have creative utility isn’t new. Richards, for one, has said that he dreamed the riff that underlies the Rolling Stones song “Satisfaction,” and Mozart claimed some of his music came to him in dreams.”

For those of us who have hit our extremely busy summer season – there are many opportunities – not to sleep. We need to pace ourselves better and get the rest our bodies so desperately need. In order to be really effective with creative scripting on the spot and inventive ideas to make some difficult contracts fly like the wind – we need to rest. True rest, where we dream. Dreaming of fishing, Para- sailing, the hogger of a life time – the dream doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you are dreaming. Real estate agents need to be creative. As a REALTOR/Staging Specialist, I am constantly tapping into my artistic side.
I started to just get so worn out that I spent all day tired. This morning I slept in a half an hour longer. I am not an early morning person and I had attempted to make myself into one out of necessity. The problem was, I was still keeping my midnight hours as well. All work, no play – no good. My husband is doing better after his nightmare of a back surgery so that frees up a bit more of my time and definitely takes down the stress level.
Ahhhh California Dreaming is – a good thing.

photo by: viZZZual.com Flickr

The Women's Health Speaker Class was on breast cancer, a topic that has probably affected most families. Dr Troy Duininck, who gave an overview of cancer, stated that one in eight women get breast cancer and in 2007 there were 178,480 new breast cancer cases that were diagnosed. He said that in Minnesota there were about 3000 new cases and that Brainerd St Joseph's hospital had 72. Duininck also said that 85-90% of breast cancer cases are not hereditary.

In my family my Grandmother, aunt and sister all had breast cancer. Doctors recommend that women have a mammogram every year starting at age 40 and I do. The Brainerd hospital now has available a breast specific gamma imaging machine that will give doctors a better look at the cancerous cells to better assist their patients. I got the opportunity to be screened by the machine this year as a tumor that was on watch mode after a core biopsy last year persisted and was joined by several others.

I was injected with radioactive dye by IV and then the rest of the procedure was much like a very slow mammogram - very slow - hours! My tumors are not cancerous right now and it was worth it to know that much, rather than keep "watch" and wonder. My friends teased me that I would now glow in the dark - maybe I did just a bit!

photo by:kamirufiasco: Flickr

A few short weeks ago my husband went in for back surgery. It was to be rather intense as he was having fusion, had a tumor on his spine and a disc that was protruding. They were to take bone from his hip to use in the back and that was to give him some pain during the proposed 5 months of recovery. We are both self employed and his part of that is roofing. So it is no small matter to take off another 5 months(he hasn't been able to work with the pain for 5 months). The doctors have varying opinions as to whether he will even be able to roof again.

There was really no choice as to having surgery so off we went to Minneapolis. He was overdosed with narcotics during surgery and that shut his systems down. They could not wake him up and his bodily systems then stopped. He has had people from all over the world praying and after 3 days he woke up, kind of. When he would fall asleep then he would stop breathing again. It has been a long hard battle but he is making progress. There is a nasty tube running through his nose to pump out his stomach as that is where everything that they pump in by IVs seems to be staying. He has some problems with chemical balances and all that stuff but as they tell me the actual surgery went well.

You just do not know what will happen at any point in time but God is a big God and a good God. God's people responded and two Master's programs of young people went to their knees. Missionaries in Lebanon roused their underground churches and they prayed. Russians were praying in their Christian school. The women and young girls who have been rescued from slavery & prostitution who live in the home that Art helped build prayed. Teens from Art's Evergreen group and Sundy School classes prayed for their mentor's survival and then recovery. Our local Teen Challenge group started talking to the God that they just recently committed the bablance of thieir lives to. He has been involved with many groups and many lives through the years

If things progress, I may be bringing him back home in the near future - first he has to be able to eat by mouth. He can walk a short distance and it is not far to get him in to our home.

UPDATE

ART IS HOME!

HE HAS VERY LITTLE RECOLLECTION OF WHAT TOOK PLACE IN THE PAST FEW WEEKS AND HIS MEMORY IS STILL NOT THE BEST FROM DAY TO DAY. HE EATS BUT SAYS THAT HOW FOOD TASTES HAS CHANGED. MOST FOOD HOLDS LITTLE APPEAL TO HIM AT THIS TIME. HE HAS ALSO DEVELOPED A BETTER SENSE OF SMELL ODDLY ENOUGH AND NOW LIKES THE SMELL OF ORIENTAL LILIES. HE HAS A NICE WALKER WITH A SEAT BUT IS DOING WELL WALKING A SHORT SPAN. HE TIRES EASILY AND SLEEPS OFTEN. HE IS VERY HAPPY TO BE HOME AND SAYS HE KNOWS THAT GOD STILL HAS WORK FOR HIM TO DO HERE.

We are grateful for your prayers.

~God is Amazing~

President Obama has swiftly moved the United States of America from our traditional American model of entrepreneurship and private initiative to something that quite closely resembles a European model of regulation and government control. He has the uncanny ability to get Congressional Democrats to give him things that will undermine their own power – they have 94% of the time in the House and 91% of the time in the Senate.
His Economic Stimulus bill that was in fact a pay back for the liberal interest base and future vote buying cost those people who actually pay taxes $787 billion dollars and more hands are coming out from under the covers to get treats. Do you realize that this moved along at a pace that no member of Congress even read the bill in its entirety before they voted on it? Just hand them a rubber stamp and an inkpad.
One of his big campaign pledges was to end earmarks, but the appropriations bill he signed had 8000 earmarks in it. That showed great progress in keeping promises.
The EPA has now ruled that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health, opening the door to strict regulation of American life, not to mention that of cows, by the government.
President Obama has felt an obligation to apologize for America and her people by labeling our country as “arrogant, dismissive and derisive” in front of foreign audiences – that should make them like us better and respect us more, don’t you think?
Here is what he thinks about those in small towns:
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

As columnist Jackie Cushman puts it “if we’re not careful, instead of change we can believe in, we’re going to have change in what we believe.

photo by jurvetson :Flickr

Kathleen Lordbock REALTOR/Staging Specialist licensed in Minnesota

Top Brainerd Agent

Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin in Thursday's Washington Times wrote:

"What and who exactly are President Obama's homeland security officials afraid of these days? If you are a member of an active conservative group that opposes abortion, favors strict immigration enforcement, lobbies to protect Second Amendment rights, protests big government, advocates federalism, or represents veterans who believe in any of the above, the answer is: You."

Patriotic Americans now pose a threat to the United States government. There are millions of them, they are everywhere.

People who believe the government is too large and taxes its people too much. All those who participated in TEA parties, anti-abortion rallies, those who attend Christian denominational churches, advocate for marriage and family in a traditional manner. People who realize that the government can not fix everything and should stop trying. If you are returning from active duty, you will be watched very closely because someone might want to recruit your US Miltary trained talent to their anti-USA cause - you are a bigger threat than an illegal immigrant or a Muslim militant.

You do not know where they are hiding, some are even undercover in the very government that is claiming this threat. You can not tell because they vote like all the rest - a very good undercover operation, indeed.

photo by - lautenbach FLICKR