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TECH TALK FOR BABY BOOMERS

Earlier this week, “National Dog Day” was celebrated on various social media sites like Facebook(SandwichINKforTheSandwichGeneration) and Instagram (KayeSwain). As you have probably noticed, I LOVE taking photos of my whole Sandwich Generation Family including my kids, my grandkids, and my granddogs, as well as houses, home decor, walking trails, flowers, parks, and so much more. In honor of Grand-Dog Day (ironically set in the midst of the Dog Days of Summer), I had fun playing with some of those photos with a cool photo editor online (Picmonkey) as well as fun iPhone apps like the Rainbow setting from My Sketch (for my grand dog photo below) as well as Sketch Guru for the grand dog photo above.
These are fun to use on photos of the grand kids as well. I have these two apps, along with Glaze, Portrait Painter and PicSketch in my “Draw Paint” folder on my iPhone. Fun tools for fun projects! Have you ever tried any of these? Or perhaps you have others? We’d love to hear about them. 🙂

CARING FOR ELDERLY PARENTS

Our senior parents are always watching out for us, aren’t they? My senior mom is so sweet and she hates to worry me. So if she takes a tumble or scratches a leg or arm, she often won’t mention it to me, even though I frequently reminder her to tell me. As a result, we occasionally end up dealing with an infected bruise. If your sweet seniors tend towards that as well, it can be a wise idea to keep your eyes open for any new “ow-eeeees” (to quote my grandkids). It’s definitely something to stay on top of as this quote from The American Physican points out that, “Despite advances in antibiotic therapy, infectious diseases continue to be a major cause of mortality in older adults.” On Facebook, we were just discussing how bad sepsis is. Per the U.S. National Library of Medicine:

Sepsis is a serious illness. It happens when your body has an overwhelming immune response to a bacterial infection. The chemicals released into the blood to fight the infection trigger widespread inflammation. This leads to blood clots and leaky blood vessels. They cause poor blood flow, which deprives your body’s organs of nutrients and oxygen. In severe cases, one or more organs fail. In the worst cases, blood pressure drops and the heart weakens, leading to septic shock.

Anyone can get sepsis, but the risk is higher in….

You guessed it – THE ELDERLY is on the list as well as:

• People with weakened immune systems
• Infants and children
• People with chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, AIDS, cancer, and kidney or liver disease
• People suffering from a severe burn or physical trauma

Common symptoms of sepsis are: fever, chills, rapid breathing and heart rate, rash, confusion, and disorientation. Doctors diagnose sepsis using a blood test to see if the number of white blood cells is abnormal. They also do lab tests that check for signs of infection.”

My senior mom discovered one of those ow-eeees recently and eventually did tell me. We headed for the doctor and she is doing well and busy taking an antibiotic. And yes! We have a great doc who immediately ordered a blood test as well, which came out fine. She’s not happy about the medication vs food timing restrictions but otherwise is hanging in there nicely.  And I now understand the whole thing a bit better from researching this info to share with you. Definitely a win-win-win for us all. 🙂

GRANDCHILDREN JOYS

School has started. Have you ever noticed that many kids do not like to talk on the telephone. The funny thing is, they all LOVED the toy telephones they had at 3-4 years old. But once they hit an age where they can really chat, they often aren’t fond of it. Fortunately a few are. I have one grandchild who is my phone buddy and we talk often – about school, fun projects, weather, etc. She keeps me updated on her brothers and sisters as well so it works great. A few other grandkids are good at texting and we enjoy keeping in touch that way. I will often send them my photo verses to encourage them, along with occasional funny chuckles or intriguing cake and cupcake ideas. (Can you tell we have some excellent bakers in our family!)   The older grandkids are also quite gifted artistically and I’ve “hired” a couple of them to create greeting cards that I’ll give to their great-grandma for Christmas. It’s a delightful way to help them with school fund raisers while treating my senior mom to something special. And occasionally I still get to play a Words with Friends or Carcassonne game up close or long distance. Not as much, though. They are all growing up beautifully and we’re having fun with different activities and projects. It is a constant learning challenge but well worth it. I have to admit, I miss our past adventures but I love our current joys, so I can’t complain.

THE ART OF SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT FOR THE SANDWICH GENERATION

SandwichINK for the Sandwich Generation stays busy on social media on a daily basis at:

Facebook

Twitter

My grandkids would love these! How bout yours? @GodsTinyAnimals – God is indeed amazing! pic.twitter.com/i4msvItyyP

— Kaye Swain-SI (@SandwichINK) August 28, 2015

AND

A quick reminder…. I’ve had several people I care about touched by this over the past years. It’s the third… http://t.co/DSnSLX37pN

— Kaye Swain-SI (@SandwichINK) August 26, 2015

Pinterest

Instagram

Do pop over and enjoy plenty more and while you’re there, be sure to say HOWDY 🙂

 

SWEET WORDS OF ENCOURAGMENT

It’s been a tough week for our world what with fires all over the west coast and more shootings on the east coast. Not to mention the stock market issues going on. It definitely drives me to seek out encouraging and comforting Bible verses for myself and to encourage others – in my family and for you, my dear readers. Here’s one that I created last weekend, BEFORE everything happened. It’s definitely kept a smile on my face and I hope it will do the same for you.

DEVOTIONALS FOR SENIOR CITIZENS

For those of you who might not be able to get out and about to church this week, here’s another lovely video and the link to the next in the sermon series on Revelation.

This is Newsboys singing the praise song, “We Believe.” The Newsboys are a contemporary Christian singing group that my grandkids and I all enjoy. Many elderly seniors may not even be familiar with them. But if they are like me, they’ll listen to the words and go, “That’s the creed I memorized as a child!” It isn’t word for word the Apostles or Nicene Creed. But when I sing it in my church, my heart rejoices to realize we are singing the same words that my grandparents used to say, my great great grandparents recited, and that the apostles and early church testified to, hundreds of years ago. I have to admit, I rarely sing this without tears falling – tears of joy at the power of God keeping His church going through all the different fiery trials over hundreds of years. And He will continue to do so until that blessed day our Lord and Savior returns! AWESOME! And AWESOME GOD!

This song seems like a lovely way to begin this devotional and this link to the book of Revelation series seems like a lovely way to end it.

Have a blessed and beautiful week!

Kaye

P.S. GUESS WHAT – my blog, SandwichINK for the Sandwich Generation, is now on AMAZON. Isn’t that cool?  You can subscribe for free by clicking here and getting it in your email. OR you can head to Amazon by clicking here and subscribing on your Kindle for only 99 cents a month. What do you think? 🙂