Kristy's Corner

Internet Issues

2008-09-18T00:30:00.001-04:00

If anyone had ever asked, I’d have denied it-and I’d have sincerely believed it as the words exited my mouth. But over the past eighty-five hours I know that to deny it now would be a lie.
I am addicted to the internet.

I am an internet addict. A junkie who hasn’t had a ‘fix’ since my combination modem/ router kicked the bucket Friday night at eleven.

It was clear when I glanced up and saw all three green lights gone that this was more than just one of those momentary lapses in service. The kind that lasts about two minutes, when the middle light starts flashing yellow for reasons known only to itself.

The tech support guy suggested I try plugging the router in some other outlets around the house to see if the outlet it had been plugged in to since we moved in January had suddenly gone bad.

Yeah, right.

It’s been plugged in to the same power strip the computer, monitor, speakers and both of my printers are plugged in to-and those things were still working. So what were the odds that just one little area in that whole long power strip just stopped working? Pretty slim odds, in my opinion.

But, having been in the middle of a ‘job,’ and it being late Friday night, I gave it a shot. Only to find, sadly, that I was right. The power strip was working just fine. Only the modem/router wasn’t. It had given up the ghost and there was no coaxing it back, beyond an extremely brief flash of lights when an electrician friend suggested I push the reset button with an ink pen (something the tech support guy failed to mention, hmm).

So...

I telephone my internet provider first thing Saturday morning to find they want eighty bucks for a new router that would take several days to get here.

Not good. I needed to finish the job by Sunday at midnight so thanks but no thanks. I need to find one today. And I’m hoping for far less money, too, since payday is more than a week away!
Another yeah, right. Try a hundred dollars at a well known computer store. Forget it. I’ll be kissing every cent (and then some!) from the thing I was working on goodbye. I’ll just wait for the second deadline-the middle of next month and turn in both months worth of work then.

Unfortunately I didn’t come to this conclusion until after the sales office closed for the day, not to reopen until Monday morning.

Over the course of the weekend I talked again with my electrician friend, as well as someone who builds and repairs computers. The router should have lasted about ten years, not four. So when I got through to the sales department yesterday morning, I mentioned that information and asked for a discount. The woman put me on hold for a minute and came back with a very surprising offer.

They would waive the $80.00 if I was willing to pay $13.00 shipping.

Hmm... Eighty dollars, thirteen dollars. Eighty dollars or thirteen dollars... Actually it would have been eighty dollars plus the shipping. So the choice boiled down to ninety-three dollars or thirteen.

Tough choice.

Not!

For that kind of deal-and I really was just hoping that they’d knock the price down by half!-I opted for the overnight delivery.

Except overnight delivery is kind of misleading. I ordered the router well before seven-thirty yesterday morning. It is now twelve-forty-nine in the afternoon on Tuesday and it still hasn’t arrived. But it’s coming via UPS and I know they have routes to follow.

Knowing that doesn’t help my impatience because, as I mentioned in the beginning of this blog, I’ve discovered that I am addicted to the internet. It’s kind of like the night before Christmas, waiting for dawn and the time to tear in to all the presents.

Only I just want to tear in to my email! I want to Google recipes for smoked sausage since I screwed up and thawed some out yesterday. I want to visit IMDB and find out when Minnie Pearl died (don’t ask...I don’t know why...).

And I want to finish September’s job so I can get started on October’s.

Mainly, though, I really want to check my email. I’m almost scared at the thought. It’s hard to believe but a good portion of the population doesn’t know what ‘inline text is.’ Nope. They send everything as an attachment.

And you know what that means?

That after three and a half days (is that all it’s been??!!), it could take two weeks for all my emails to download...

Sigh.

A Miracle Medicine

2008-09-10T01:24:00.003-04:00

I'm baaaaacccckkkkkk...... From a short vacation. And now it's back to business!

For anyone who has read any of my posts, you might have figured out that I'm kind of in to alternatives to 'modern' medicines. And I really am. If I can find something that doesn't need a prescription or over the counter drugs, and it works, I'm all for it.

But sometimes that isn't the case.

Saturday I got my four month old grandson for a few days. He won't go back home until Thursday, as a matter of fact. I love the kid to pieces, but I'm not that all that thrilled with watching a baby. I loved everything about babies when my own kids were infants, but I don't love it all now. Well, I have to admit that anything to do with the nose and diaper end of them never thrilled me.

But they thrill me a lot less now. Because I've developed a weak stomach over the years.

Tonight I wound up at the emergency room with Alex, who apparently had a bad reaction to his rice cereal, added to his formul to help reduce a reflux issue. Anyway, he had a serious gas thing going on, screaming for a couple of hours. And I got to deal with the nose thing, as well as getting thrown up on.

Yay.

After the doctor made sure there was nothing serious wrong, a nurse came in with Tylenol and a little brown bottle of something for the gas.

She took a very tiny dropper out of the brown bottle and put four whole drops in his mouth. I'm thinking dang! Four drops? You've got to be kidding me! How about half the bottle! This kid is in pain and he needs something that's going to actually work!

But, lo and behold, it did. In less than five minutes, Alex was sound asleep. And an hour later, he's still sleeping very peacefully. From exhaustion, I'm sure. You can't cry like that for as long as he did and not be a tad on the tired side!

So I have to say that there are some times when medicine is very appropriate. In fact, enough so that I'm headed to the store first thing in the morning to get a bottle of the stuff. I'm not taking a chance on this happening again before he goes home Thursday and not be prepared.

I'm also rather partial to another over the counter thing...and that's Advil. I try not to take it very often but just popped four. After two hours of having a baby flopped over my forearm-which was the only position remotely close to comfortable to him (and even more so when I was standing up!), my back, shoulders and arms need some quick relief, too!

And now you know, if you have a baby with gas (and I think they said colic, but don't quote me on that), there is something out there that works fast and works well. I don't know the name of it-the nurse didn't either (it's a different brand than the one she used), but your pharmacist will be able to tell you.

And now, given that it's almost two in the morning, I'm off to bed. So Alex can wake us up bright and early for a bottle.

Yawn.

I'm learning to ChaCha!

2008-09-04T23:10:00.003-04:00

But not the dance. Nope. I'm now, as of about 30 hours ago, an official ChaCha expediter. Sounds impressive, doesn't it? I don't know about that, but it's a fun way to kill a few hours-and earn a little extra spending money. "Little" being the important word here.

You'll never get rich doing this, that's for sure. But with gas at nearly $4.00 a gallon and the cost of heating your home expected to shoot up around 20% this winter (where I live anyway), every little bit helps! (and YAY! to winter being on its way-beats the snot right out of summer!)

Basically this is just kind of fun for me. All I do is re-word questions, categorize them and send them to 'guides,' who have to provide the answers for the people paying for answers.

I have to say, given the content of some of the questions, I'm really glad I'm an expediter!

Anyway, short post tonight because, having been learning the ropes all day, my fingers are tired, my body is tired and my mind needs some sleep!

I'll post more tomorrow...sweet dreams

Just a quick post tonight

2008-09-02T18:46:00.002-04:00

Winter lover that I am, I don't feel my best in 90+ degree weather. Which is exactly what we had today. At eleven a.m. it was 86...and I refused to look again until just a minute ago. Eighty-eight degrees.

Yuck.

It could be worse, though. I heard on the radio that this is only the third time this summer we've seen temps over ninety. Thank God! The disk jockey failed to mention how many mid- to high eighties we've had. Or the miserable humidity that's been around most of the season.

But this is September. And tomorrow's forecast is a high of eighty and Thursday gets even better.

Seventy-two degrees for the high!!!

I'm thinking we could see some nights dipping in to the forties! Which is so much better than the sixties. Even the fifties. No, I don't want to actually see my breath when I'm breathing, but I want it to be almost visible.

Anyway, I've spent the day parked in front of a fan, 'You-tubing' it in an effort to not sweat. Listening to Andy Gibb, The Village People, Heart, and the like.

Andy Gibb was such a waste of a beautiful, talented man...

Okay.

So I read at www.earthclinic.com, my favorite website for natural alternatives to just about everything, about baking soda as a facial scrub/exfoliant and decided to give it a try.

Fortunately there were warnings that the first few times might result with a burning sensation on your skin. And they were right. I do feel a burning sensation, similar to a mild sunburn. Or at least what I remember a sunburn as feeling like. I've been a shade seeker for years and, that being the case I sure hope I don't look like I have one now.

I've been kind of afraid to look in the mirror.

But I'll give it a fair shot because the reports on the benefits are too good to pass up. Especially at my age. I've yet to see any wrinkles on my face and I want to avoid them for as many years as humanly possible!

Some of the things people are raving about is that it helps to firm and soften skin, combat wrinkles, make your pores smaller, makes your skin look younger (yay!), evens out skin tone, and eliminates the need for makeup for some women.

Well, I don't have large pores or wrinkles, I look about ten years younger than I am and I haven't worn makeup in years so...

So why am I doing it? Because I'd like to continue to look ten years younger than I am for many years to come! At least!

If anyone is interested in checking this out for themselves, go to the website listed above and type "Fountain of Youth" in the search area.

The website is mostly things people write to the moderators about what works and what doesn't. The reason I like Earth Clinic so much is because they don't sell anything. They just share what's shared with them so that people like you and I can reap the benefits.

As far as skin care goes, there are a number of things people are doing. Including using apple cider vinegar as toner two or three times a week. I'll have to think about that. I was especially unimpressed when one woman warned to avoid getting the vinegar too high on your forehead because when you sweat, you've got that salad dressing effect going on.

Eww.

Okay. I'm done for the night I think. I just want to kick back, drink some more ice water and wait for the temperatures to drop. Only sixty-two tonight but it beats the snot right out of ninety-two!

I'll keep you posted about how the baking soda is working out for me. If I get carded for buying matches to light candles with next month, I'll be sure to let you know!

MSN's Top 10 List

2008-08-31T20:46:00.001-04:00

I just skimmed through an article as www.msn.com entitled, “10 things you should never by used.” And I have to say that I agree 100% with their suggestions that you stick to new when it comes to mattresses and shoes.

However, I was surprised to see that vacuums made it on that list, too.

Years ago I bought a used vacuum for around thirty bucks. And let me tell you, that sucker worked really good. I mean really good.

And I know this because one of those door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen came to our door one evening offering a free roll of paper towels if he could do a quick demonstration. Given that I was cooking supper and was, indeed, out of paper towels, I agreed. Had I not, I’d have had to drive about six miles to the closest store so a few minutes of my time seemed like a good trade.

This gentleman hauled in his extensive collection of vacuum paraphernalia and proceeded to set everything up, explaining how each attachment was used, and why we desperately needed it.
He then took out a box of salt and dumped a fair amount on to the carpet I had just cleaned hours before, instructing me to grab my vacuum while he inserted a black cloth somewhere inside the hose of his.

Basically he dared me to try and get the salt out of the carpet. It was his un-humble opinion that nothing could do as good a job as their name brand, couple thousand dollar piece of machinery.

And I figured he was probably right. After all, ours was old, well used and, well, used. Knowing I was going to get a world class sales pitch when all was said and done, I flipped the vacuum on and made a few passes over the salt.

When I was done, Mr. Salesman took his turn and made a couple passes over the same area. Then, with a smug smile, he took the hose apart to show me the black cloth with....

....about three grains of salt.

Gone was the smile and, in its place a look that clearly said, “How did this happen?”

It’s been long enough ago that I really couldn’t tell how he managed to change the direction of his spiel, but he was wasting his time. Why in the world would I want to make monthly payments for several years for a vacuum that didn’t work any better than the beat up looking one that was already paid for?

Oh well. I got the roll of paper towels, sent the disgusted salesman on his way and finished cooking our dinner.

Back to the MSN article though. It’s just my humble opinion but they should have made it a ‘top 11’ list. Because I’ve got to say that they were lacking one item that should be on every ‘don’t buy used’ list and that would be....

....underwear.

In Loving Memory of...

2008-08-30T18:47:00.001-04:00

So that no one feels mislead, I guess I need to make it clear that this isn’t some great piece of literature. It's not an answer to any research question. It’s just something I wanted to write in remembrance of someone I love very much.

Today is the fifth anniversary of my father’s death and I’m feeling a little, oh, I don’t know. Weird, I guess. It’s been that way for most of August. Like I’m in a time warp or something. Memories I’ve tried to ignore just seem to be coming at me, feeling much as they did then five years ago.

That’s a long time. On one hand it feels like forever. Then again, it feels like it can’t possibly be that long since I’ve spoken with my dad.

I try not to dwell on it too much because, when I do, I find that I am on the verge of tears. And I have to say that whoever said crying makes you feel better was nuts! All crying has ever done for me is bring on exhaustion and a headache.

But on this anniversary I find my thoughts turning to those final thirteen months and thinking about things I try not to think about most of the time. Like how terrified he was. How angry he was. How much he didn’t want to die.

I also think about how brave he was, too.

Brave enough that he put his family ahead of himself on many, many occasions. With everything he was going through, his top priority was that those he loved not worry or be anymore afraid than necessary.

And so Dad became an expert liar.

The distance between the state he lived in, and Michigan, was too great to allow many visits during that time. And so we relied heavily on the telephone, which Dad never had a great love for. Still, it was the only real way we could stay in touch for the eighteen years he lived there and he eventually got used to it.

It became even more important after the cancer diagnosis.

Over the phone Dad was just dandy. He felt great, was eating good and feeling better. His voice was strong and cheerful, and anyone would think that he had nothing more than a common cold.
Those infrequent visits, however, told the truth.

How the chemotherapy treatments were causing him to waste away to a shadow of the man he’d always been, making him look so frail it broke my heart and made me feel more helpless than I’d ever felt in my life.

But Dad refused to let go of the charade, and so we would pretend right along with him. That everything would be fine when all of us knew that, without some kind of miracle, it wouldn’t be. And so we made the most of every opportunity. Talking about things that made him laugh, about things that might help him forget, for a few minutes, that our time was running out.

About a month before he died, my siblings and I headed south for a final visit with him. A visit spent frying fish he’d caught at his lake property up by Mount Pleasant earlier in the year. And grilling steaks. Basically it was one big food-fest. Because it was important to him to cook for his kids one last time.

It was also his first introduction to the benefits of ear candles. At some point during his treatments, he‘d lost the hearing in his right ear, and it really bugged him. I was scared when he convinced me to use a couple of them on him. Afraid that a spark might burn him, or that the candle itself might cause him more pain. But he thought it was pretty cool, even though it didn’t help the hearing problem a bit.

We tried to make that weekend the best we’d ever spent together. To make it as normal as we could, while trying to get our fill of being with him. Something that was utterly impossible.
When it came time to leave, we kept right on pretending that everything was okay, hugging him goodbye, like it wasn’t going to be for the last time. And then craning our necks and waving, as he stood in his driveway watching us drive away.

Wow.

Typing that last bit out was a lot harder than I thought it would be. But then it’s never been easy to remember that last picture I have of Dad while he was still alive. I’ve always wished that I’d jumped out of my brother’s car at the first stop sign and run back to stay with him until it was over. I think we all felt that way.

Leaving him that day was one of the most horrible experience of our lives. We all knew that the next time we’d all be together again would be at his funeral.

I hate these memories. And yet I wouldn’t want to lose them, even if I could. Because as much as it hurts to remember the heartbreaking moments, there are also the special moments. When you know there isn’t much time, you tend to appreciate every one of them.

Was my dad perfect? Not even close. Like every human being on the planet, he had faults and flaws. Some of them glaring, some of them that weren’t shortcomings at all. Except in his mind. He set a pretty high standard for himself. And he held himself to it, right up until the end.

I don’t think I’ll ever like Labor Day weekend again. I know what I was doing five years ago today. I know what I was doing five years ago tomorrow. I’ll remember vividly the phone call I got five years ago this coming Sunday morning, because he died so late on August 30th, that my step-mother waited to let us know. There really wasn’t anything we could do, I guess.

And I know what I did on Labor Day five years ago.

I pulled in to the driveway and ‘saw’ my dad standing there. Like he’d been standing there when my brothers and sister and I drove away just weeks before.

I guess I’ll always see him standing there.

10 Things Every New Blogger Should Know

2008-08-28T22:40:00.004-04:00

I started blogging about a year ago and the following suggestions are things I’ve learned along the way. Of course I’ve only recently learned all of this, and am doing my best to put it in to practice. Unfortunately, the bulk of my blogging has been at www.myspace.com and I’ve only been doing it for fun. Regardless, it’s good advice, and what I’m trying myself to increase traffic to my site. If you have more suggestions, please feel free to share!

1. “Pinging your blog” is not something you will be sent to hell, grounded, or arrested for doing. In fact, you want to make very sure that you do ping your blog-by going to websites such as www.PingMyBlog.com. There you can enter two or three pieces of information about your blog and they will get it out to a large number of blog directories as soon as you agree to their terms of service (which I love!) and click the big red Ping My Blog button. Oh, you also have to click the directories you want to be notified. I just click, “Check All.”

What information do they want? Well, first they want the title of your blog. Second they want the URL for it. How do you find that? Well, I just right click the title of my blogs, scroll to ‘Copy Shortcut,’ and paste it into the appropriate space at PingMyBlog.

That’s all there is to it.

2. Be patient. Unless you have a huge and supportive family, you’re not going to get hundreds of hits-or comments-in your first week. Probably not even in your first month or four. You’re going to have to spend some time doing your ‘due diligence.”

In simple terms that just means learning all you can about writing and promoting your blog. Ideally you will have done this prior to creating your blog website, if you’re hoping to make money from your efforts. Not that it can’t be done afterwards, but it’s just good information to know ahead of time. And it might save you some grief if you decide it’s just not your thing after all.

3. Don’t try to save every bit of information you dig up to one folder on your desktop. Trust me, you’ll have such a mess it’ll take forever to find anything. Instead, create several folders, which you can then drag into one primary folder. You might label them: “Links and Back Links,” “Tags,” “Blog Promotion,” “Blogging Videos” (youtube.com has a lot of great blogging videos!), “RSS Feeds,” etc...

Whatever you discover you need to learn about. Just make sure that you don’t locate a treasure trove of wonderful information and not bother studying it.

4. Blogger help groups are a wonderful thing. Most are set up as message boards and, while there may be blogger chat rooms, I’ve yet to find one. Still, the message board format works. You can read questions that other newbies have asked, along with responses to that person. You can ask your own questions-just be sure to keep checking back for answers! It’s a great way to learn, often in easier, less technical ways than you might find elsewhere.

5. Blogger help groups are a wonderful thing II. These groups give you an opportunity to visit blogs by other people, where you are encouraged to leave comments. Well, I only comment on blogs if I can honestly say something nice. I’m sorry, but if it’s about sports I can’t, in good conscience, post a message. Because all I would be doing it for is a return post and not as part of a networking campaign. If all you want to do is get one post from one blogger, so be it. But by continuing to visit other blogs that interest you, you build relationships with people who can be a big help in your quest for successful blogging.

6. Blog consistently. If not every day, then every other day. And it’s not as easy to do as it sounds. Especially if you chose to write about one subject. Regardless, you need to have a folder of ideas so when writer’s block strikes, you’ve got a place to run for help. Producing a blog every day is hard work-if quality is important to you. And it should be. If you just want to write a bunch of garbage, buy a little diary from the dollar store and jot it down in there. Of course you could be the William Hung of blogging, I suppose.

7. Write when the ideas strike. Don’t try to limit yourself to one blog a day. Because some days you might have three great blogs just begging to be written! If you hold off on the other two, they may never be written. Plus it’s also a great way to build up a surplus for those days when you’re stuck in bed with the flu, have out of town company drop in. Or just feel like playing hooky for a day. Just open your rainy day blog folder, see what’s there that suits your mood and post it. Five minutes and you’re done. Including pinging it.

8. Carry a notebook with you wherever you go! You never know what you might see or hear that could inspire award winning blogs. A pet contest that included a snake was the catalyst behind (what I feel) was a cute blog I did about the fear of snakes my father passed down to me. A conversation about an infomercial brought about another one. And someday I’m sure I’ll blog about the guy whose pants hit the floor in the middle of a crowded restaurant. If you don’t take note of such things, you run the risk of forgetting about them.

9. Make ‘em laugh. Unless you’re blogging about something like 9/11, it’s always a good idea to add as much humor to a blog as possible. I’m not saying you should insert a joke at the end of every second paragraph. In fact, unless your blog is about jokes, don’t tell one at all. Just try to see the comical side of everything you write about. It’s all in the way you phrase it. “Johnny tripped on the step and was embarrassed,” can tell you exactly how Johnny felt about the situation. Instead, what if you tried something like:

“When Johnny tripped on the step, the expression on his face was nothing compared to the spectacle he made of himself . Arms waving all over the place in an effort to stay on his feet, made him look like psycho version of a ballerina. In the end, his efforts were futile as he spun in two amazingly graceful circles, on his toes, before landing on his fanny with a flourish.“

Granted that’s not the funniest example I’ve ever come up with but hey, it’s one-thirty in the morning, I’ve already written three blogs today and I’m tired (at least it was the night I wrote this!). One other point before I move on to the last tip. Expanding on a thought also increases your word count. Don’t just add extra words to make it longer, explain it in more detail!

10. Proof read!!! Before you post your blog, read it through two or three times. Look for typos, poorly constructed sentences and punctuation that should, or shouldn’t, be there. This is also a fantastic opportunity to expand on your theme, if needed. Could you be a little more descriptive here? A bit more humorous there? Is this sentence really necessary? Does the story flow well? Does it make sense (as in, did I jump from point A to point C and skip B altogether?)? Did I remember to spell check it? You want your blog to make an impression. The amount of effort you put in to it will determine whether that impression is good or bad.

I hope these suggestions have been of some help to you. Happy blogging!

Vinegar and Weight Loss

2008-08-27T23:53:00.001-04:00

As you might know from an earlier blog, I like vinegar. Well, I don’t like vinegar, I like the health benefits of vinegar.

I might have mentioned, in a previous blog, that it helps sore muscles when you haven’t ridden your bike all winter-and then overdo it the first nice day of spring. Or that it can help ‘wake you up’ when afternoon fatigue hits.

But lately I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on apple cider vinegar for weight loss. Mainly to drop the weight I gained when I quit smoking almost two years ago. The pounds crept on slowly and they appear to want to stick around awhile because, no matter how diligently I diet, I can’t seem to get rid of them.

A couple of interesting things I discovered about using vinegar for weight loss is that it helps to detoxify the liver. Apparently a liver that’s working well will help to metabolize fat. Vinegar also helps break down food so it can be more easily digested.

So...

After scouring the www.earthclinic.com website one more time, I decided to give a few of the suggestions a try. Let me tell you, people are getting impressive results!

Basically all I’m doing is drinking about a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar two to three times a day. I’m also trying to drink it just prior to eating. Unfortunately I tend to forget that third shot, but it’s getting to the point where I just kind of forget to eat.

Which reminds me of an email I got a long time ago that said you had to be a special kind of stupid to forget to eat. But believe me, you can get to that point.

Oh. This is very important! To the vinegar I add about 1/2 of a teaspoon of baking soda and about a 1/4 to 1/2 of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Although sometimes I use a heavier hand than I intended and have to fan my mouth for a minute. But I just kind of pour it in the cup rather than measuring it, so I might actually be getting a full teaspoon or two. Good thing I like a little spice!

To explain that bit, cayenne pepper is supposed to help increase the metabolism. And I occasionally add about half a teaspoon of cinnamon because it has been proven to stabilize blood sugar. Which affects our hunger and energy.

It’s also been proven, by me, to make the vinegar, soda and pepper go down a little easier! I’ll have to make a point of adding that to each cup. Not just for the flavor but for the benefits, too.

Before I forget, you never want to drink this concoction without adding some water. Not a lot. Maybe a quarter of a cup. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry. As much as it looks like the vinegar dissolved the soda, it doesn’t. Just trust me on this.

What results am I finding?

I’ve lost about ten pounds in the last couple of weeks. I had to step on the scales twice this morning thinking I might have been standing a little off center, or I’d looked at the numbers wrong. But I hadn’t.

Ten pounds. Can’t complain about that at all!

Now a lot of people would have a problem with this but I’m finding that if I start my morning off with the mixture, I often don’t feel like eating until one or two in the afternoon. Although some mornings I wake up starving. My cravings are diminishing to a large degree, too. Not that I have a whole lot of them right now.

But then I already knew that apple cider vinegar helps with PMS symptoms. In addition to regulating a cycle. I have no idea how that works, it just does. And I’m grateful.

Given that I’ve tried about everything to get these “stopped-smoking” pounds off, I’m pretty pleased. Not to mention impressed, since I’m still eating pretty exactly what I want to eat. I haven’t counted a single calorie or purposely cut back on anything.

Nope. Just the vinegar before eating.

All I can say is that it’s about time! Earlier this summer (at least two months ago), I eliminated most of the soda pop from my diet-and lost exactly nothing. Given that I was downing a two liter bottle every day, I was disappointed, to say the least!

I’ll be interested to see what the results are in another couple of weeks.

Top 10 Responses to, "Mom, Im bored!"

2008-08-25T22:19:00.002-04:00

With the first day of school fast approaching, you’ve got kids who are probably a little resentful that the their days of freedom are numbered, while at the same time you can bank on the fact that they’ve run out of things to keep them occupied. The following list is intended to help you over the next week or ten days, whenever you hear those whiney voices complaining, "Mom! It’s boring around here!"

My favorite responses are:

1. Well then, go clean the litter box. (This may require reminders that the cats belong to them and are, therefore, not your responsibility. It may also require blackmail, depending on what your house currently smells like.)

2. Good. My feet hurt, rub them for awhile. (If you’ve stepped in aforementioned litter box, do not wash your feet. This is a great object lesson and may promote more timely action from the kids in the future.)

3. Cool. Let’s go pick up pop bottles along the road and turn them in for the deposit! (While this may humiliate your poor, bored little darlings, you can remind them that some people get rich doing quirky things like this.)

4. Why don’t you go get the broom and knock down all of the spider webs. (If your kids are afraid of spiders this may be a challenge. Remember, you are the Mom!)

5. You can always go count the blades of grass in the backyard. (If you live in an apartment, have them count bricks or leaves on bushes.)

6. Great! You can give me a back massage! (This is at least as refreshing as the foot rub and you should milk it for all it’s worth.)

7. Thank Goodness. I’ll let you go scrub the toilet. (About as much fun as cleaning the litter box.)
8. How do you feel about clipping my toenails? (Makes cleaning the litter box and scrubbing the tub actually look like fun.)

9. Okay. We can go to the cemetery and weed around the headstones. (Good deeds are always a winner, aren’t they?)

10. Go take a nap! (By the time you get to this suggestion the kids will be so grateful they’ll head for their beds in no time. Which was probably your goal in the first place, wasn’t it?)

Sunday's

2008-08-24T22:59:00.002-04:00

I think I'm going to have to start planning my time a little more wisely and prepare blogs for Sunday's earlier in the week. Between church, visiting and various other things (i.e. the coveted Sunday afternoon nap!), I just don't have as much time as I do on other days.

Which is partly why I don't have much to say today. The other reason is, plain and simply, because I'm tired. It's been too hot to sleep the past two night and thinking is more than my poor brain can handle, now that things have finally slowed down today!

So...

See you tomorrow!

OCD

2008-08-23T18:38:00.002-04:00

Some people have insinuated that I have some obsessive compulsive issues going on. And I agree. At least in some areas of my life. Hand cleanliness is one of those issues. So much so that I tend to really annoy people sometimes.

In fact, I think my complaint was the straw that broke the camel’s back in getting a waitress fired from her job several years ago. Not that seeing her thrown out on her ear was my intention. I just wanted the manager to know that this girl came out of the stall in the bathroom, turned the water on, ran her fingertips through the stream so fast I doubt they got much more than slightly damp, dried them and went back to work.

I’m standing there, my mouth hanging open thinking, what about the soap?!

Yeah, so my daughter teases me about being like Adrian Monk. I’m not that bad. But seriously, would you want someone handling your food, dishes or silverware who hadn’t washed their hands after using a toilet?

I admit that I think hand sanitizer is the greatest thing since I don’t even know what. Its inventor is deserving of a Nobel Prize.

Well, maybe not.

In my opinion there’s only one thing that could make hand sanitizer better and that is more alcohol. And I make sure that all of it in our house has enough by pouring half of a new bottle in an empty bottle and filling them both to the brim with rubbing alcohol. When I’m finished doctoring it up, I make sure to fill a small bottle that I keep in my purse because I know I’ll need it whenever I leave the house.

Thanks to things like shopping carts, public door handles, and shaking hands with everyone Sunday morning at church. I even use it after touching money, though I do enjoy spending as much of it as I can.

I also think the person who invented those gloves used in the food service industry is a genius! For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, these little gems are a cross between waxed paper and cellophane and I can get a package of 100 at our local dollar store. We go through four or five packages each month.

Why?

Why not? I can break eggs, mix meatloaf, polish furniture, sort dirty clothes, feed the pets- And thanks to those gloves, never have to wash my hands. Actually I usually do wash them after messing around with eggs and meat, but at least the gloves prevent any germs from getting under my fingernails.

I truly with others were as careful about hand cleanliness as I am. It would make my life a lot easier.

A few years back, I needed to get out, and so did my mother. So I picked her up and we went to the county fair for a couple of hours. In between getting dizzy on rides and traipsing around after her so she could look at all the 4-H exhibits, we decided we just had to have some french fries.
You could smell them all over the fairgrounds!

So we get in line and, just as it’s our turn, there’s only enough fries to fill a cup for Mom and half a one for me. So I’m like, okay, I can wait two minutes for the other batch to finish.

Being mid-July, it was already hot. Add the heat of the deep fryers to the mix and it was obvious that the people working the french fry concession were miserable. The guy waiting on us especially so.

It was obvious when he reached down inside his sweaty tee shirt to grab a wad of sweaty paper towels in order to wipe his sweaty face and neck before shoving it back down inside of his sweaty tee shirt.

Just before grabbing a hand of fresh from the fryer fries and shoving them in my cup of cooler fries.

I’m thinking two things.

First, who in the world handles fries that hot with their bare hands!

And secondly, oh my word! He just handled sweat and now he’s handling food!

My food.
I wasn’t very outspoken then but wished I had been. I’d already paid for the fries I knew I’d never take a nibble of.

It didn’t help to try and convince myself that the heat of the oil on the fries probably killed any germs on those babies. Nope. They were deposited in the nearest trash can, which was a perfectly good waste of $2.00.

I never did ask if Mom had eaten any of hers. I think if she had, it wouldn’t have only been her cup that followed mine, but everything she‘d eaten earlier in the day, too.

Some things are just never excusable!

More on Politics

2008-08-22T14:14:00.002-04:00

I am so tired of getting emails slamming McCain and Obama that I can hardly stand it. And after the one that arrived this morning, I've decided to do something about it!

If you want more information, visit my other blog: http://www.writemikein.com

That's all I have to say about this subject this morning. I may, or may not, blog again later today. Fortunately it's payday and I intend to do some shopping! And, alas, bill paying.

My life would be so much more fun if there were no such things as bills....

How to Kill a Monitor

2008-08-21T12:38:00.004-04:00

My son was bored last night. And so he wandered out to my office to chat. I don’t particularly recall what we talked about but something on my monitor snagged his attention. Usually it’s because I’m playing Mahjong Safari at www.pogo.com. Except last night I was mostly reading information at various websites. He kept looking as he talked and finally asked what was wrong with my color.

Not sure what he meant, because it looked A-OK to me, I said nothing. He said, well how come it looks red?

I finally realized he meant the area around the browser window.

I’ve never been able to figure out how to use the buttons on the monitor I’ve had for several years now. It was ‘used’ when I got it so there was no manual to consult. And, given that it was much larger any I’d previously owned, I didn’t really care. It worked, why mess with it?
Unfortunately, the longer I looked at the screen, the more I realized he was right. The black area did have a red tint to it.

And it started to bug me.

It was still bugging me this morning so I thought, no time like the present to fix it. I wanted the black to be black.

There are tiny little buttons on the front of this monitor, rather than the things that roll just under the edge (which is what every other monitor I’ve ever seen has had).

It took awhile but I finally located the contrast option. One button made the option disappear. One brought up an entire menu. But a third, a plus sign, caused a little line to start moving.
Pay dirt! I held the button down and colors started to change. A lot.

All of a sudden everything on my screen disappeared.

Well, that wasn’t cool. But no problem. If the plus sign made it disappear, the minus sign would bring it all back.

Not.

The minus sign just made the option window close, same as the button next to it. Could there be a short of some kind between the two? Probably.

Oops.

What to do, what to do? A computer is pretty useless without a working monitor. I can’t read emails, I can write emails, I can’t compose blogs, I can’t surf the net, I can’t do any research, and I can’t play any games....if the screen is a blank!

My only option, much to my son’s disgust, was to filch his until I can get borrow one from a friend this afternoon. Boy is he ticked off at me right now! But hey, he has a Game Boy, a Playstation2 and Dish Network to occupy him for a few hours.

I don’t watch but about three hours of television a week. In fact, I haven’t watched anything since Friday night. Well, I did catch the last few minutes of a movie my daughter was watching yesterday... But until Burn Notice comes on tonight, I’m not interested.

Neither am I interested in video games. I good with card games, I’m good with Mahjong, but the speed and action involved in video games makes me want to head for the hills! I have zero desire to play them. Although I did like Tetris and Phoenix years ago. Phoenix had the coolest sound effects!

Now where was I?

Oh, I swiped my son’s monitor.

And you know what? He was right! The color on my monitor was pretty funky. I’m like, “Wow!” The sky and the water on my desktop wallpaper are really blue now!

The only problem is, the right colors are on everything now.

Is anyone familiar with this one kind of hard candy? It’s rectangular and clear. And the most beautiful shade of dark orange I’ve ever seen. Tastes really good, too! I think Brach’s makes it.
Anyway, that’s the color I thought was at the top of my website. I also thought the bold words were gold.

They were not!

I felt kind of like someone snuck butter beans on my dinner plate while looking at it. I’m not sure what the orange really was, but the bold words looked like they were written in...okay, that description is too crude. How about that one crayon in the box that no one ever uses because it’s too ugly for words?

Yuck.

So I’ve redecorated. Hope you like the new colors. Green is such a crisp and clean color. That’s probably why I like lime sherbet so well...it even tastes crisp and clean.

Now I guess I’m off to do some housework. My blog looks so nice and fresh I want to spread it around!

Puppies

2008-08-20T23:43:00.002-04:00

I think I mentioned Jack in an earlier blog. Jack is our 8 month old, tall, 70 pound puppy. Shadow is our eight year old, 65 pound black lab mix. Jack makes Shadow look like a puppy.

We got Jack back in April, when he was still a bit smaller than Shadow, because he was such a cutie. He still is. But the older he's gotten, the more energetic he's gotten. And he makes me tired just watching him.

Jack likes to chew things.

We found out very quickly that a time out in the bathroom wasn't going to work very well for us because he started eating the woodwork around the doorway. We found out that he loves to chew his leash and has, in fact, chewed through eight of them in the past four months.

He's demolished countless dog toys-that aren't exactly cheap, trashed three pairs of sneakers, one Dish Network remote control and various other household items.

This morning the last heavy duty rubber bone we bought about three weeks ago bit the dust. And payday isn't until Friday...

Uh-oh.

Jack looked high and low for that bone, repeatedly getting up on his back legs and knocking my laundry supplies off the dryer (because that's the last place he saw my daughter put it). He ran here and there, trying to jam his big head under the sofa, hoping it might appear there.

And I felt really bad for him because he really loves that thing. Unfortunately for him, bills ate up most of the last check and he's just out of luck for two more days.

So I headed to Google to see if there might be an indestructible toy we could get Friday, and found several options. But I also found a link about making chew toys for dogs who chew up the ones you buy.

I thought, why not check it out? At least it might distract him until Friday...

So...I got a couple of yards of fabric out of storage and tied four pretty big knots in it.

I'm going to guess that I paid maybe five bucks for that fabric maybe three years ago. Not very expensive, and certainly no trouble to knot up.

And Jack loves it!

He had a blast playing tug-o-war with us, flinging it around the house (he flung it himself!), and just laying on the floor chewing it.

The good news it's still in one piece!

Will we buy more dog toys on Friday? YES! Of course! Something he for sure can't chew through in under a month (please, God?!). But these knotted pieces of fabric will be good to have around, too.

Thank God for Google!

I know this is a shorter post than usual but it's been a really long day and my brain just doesn't want to think that hard tonight. What it wants to do is figure out what my taste buds and stomach would like for a bedtime snack...

Pizza anyone?

Politics

2008-08-19T21:07:00.002-04:00

I’m not really into politics. Mainly because my personal opinion is that politicians aren’t to be trusted. In an election year you have two choices. Vote for this liar or vote for that liar.
I particularly am not into politics this year. The only presidential candidate I liked is not one of the two we’re stuck with. So that means I’m going to have to start digging information up on both of them if I want to make an informed choice.

Because I’m sure not going to ask anyone for their opinion.

Good grief! I thought one friend and I might come to blows while discussing Mr.’s Obama and McCain. Or Mr.’s McCain and Obama, lest anyone think I’m showing any partiality.

People are certainly opinionated when it comes to ‘their guy.’

And I’m surprised at how many people will vote one party or another, just because that’s what they’ve always done. I used to say I was a Democrat. Now I don’t know what I am because I’ve voted both ways.

I just don’t know what to think this year. And it doesn’t help that James Dobson, Chairman of the Board at Focus on the Family, said: “I never thought I would hear myself saying this,” Dobson said in a radio broadcast to air Monday. “… While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might.” ( http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/07/20/christian-conservative-dobson-may-endorse-mccain/ )

Most of the Christian’s I know staunchly support McCain. But they also supported President Bush. And while I don’t hate his guts the way some do, I think the country has gone to the dogs under his watch.

Everything is such a mess now that I think it would take God, Himself, to straighten it all out.
I do agree with some emails I’ve been getting, though.

Whoever winds up winning the presidential election needs to consider this. Other countries have to eat. Let’s make the price of a barrel of wheat exactly the cost of a barrel of oil. That would go a long way toward repairing the American economy.

So would taxing the snot out of imports. Especially imports from American owned businesses that moved out of the country so they could pay lower wages to their employees. In fact, tax them double because they just deserve it for taking the jobs away from American’s in their lust for higher profits!

Another great solution, again in my opinion, is to let the government in Iraq know that if they don’t start shipping absolutely oil to America posthaste, at no charge to us, we’re pulling out troops out. Give them three days to comply and then follow through if they don’t.
I guess I’ll get off my soapbox now and say good night.

Top 5 Resources for an unemployed, handicapped relative

2008-08-18T00:25:00.002-04:00

By request from Beth in Michigan...

I am not making the comment public because the reader is concerned that she might be recognized and is concerned about hurt feelings. I will post the following ‘condensed‘ version, however:

“I have a fifty year old relative who lost her job when the place she worked for went out of business. In a matter of weeks, her unemployment will end and she’s not eligible for anymore. She also has rheumatoid arthritis, is homeless, bouncing from relative to relative and living in her car in between-but doesn‘t want to go to a homeless shelter for help. She also isn‘t very skilled at other work.”

I would say that living in her car, part time or not, is the first issue that needs to be dealt with. That’s just not a wise thing to do in this day and age!

1. With the economy being what it is, there are many programs for the homeless that could help her get on her feet. She could apply for emergency services at the Department of Human Services (DHS). If she can access the internet in a public library, she can find the location nearest her by visiting: www.michigan.gov/dhs

2. Most, if not all, counties in Michigan have a Community Services office and homeless shelters. She can access the main website for Community Services at: http://www.michigan.gov/mcsc to see exactly what they help with, and to locate an office in her area. They would probably have information on any homeless shelters in her area, or she could check the phone book.

3. The Red Cross also helps the homeless with shelter and food. Their website is:
http://www.redcross.org/more/commserv/hless.html. One of the things they can assist with is transitional housing, for up to a year. This could be in an apartment-type setting, or in a home with other families.

4. Rheumatoid Arthritis is considered a disability and your cousin should immediately register with Michigan Rehab (website: http://www.michigan.gov/mdcd). They have resources for training and educating people with disabilities so they can work at jobs they can handle. They might also be able to provide some options regarding her living situation.

5. If she is disabled, she needs to apply for Social Security Disability. And she should do it immediately because the process can take a long time! But the good thing about that is, when she is approved, she will get payments retroactive to her application date. Or at least a fair portion of it. Your relative can access their website by, again, going to the library and going to: http://www.ssa.gov/disability/ or calling their toll-free telephone number, 1-800-772-1213 between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.

6. Yeah, I know I said five but here’s an extra one. Have her call the nationwide help line at 211. That’s the entire number. She can explain her situation and see what they come up with. Tell her to make sure she has a pen and paper handy to write down their suggestions!

There are many options available to your cousin that she should look in to as soon as possible. Her only source of income is going to end in time to pretty much coincide with the arrival of winter. She’s not going to be able to live in her car then!

Encourage her to look in to all of these without delay. If she doesn’t think any are suitable for her needs, then tell her to make sure she asks each organization if they know of any other organizations that might work for her. A good policy to follow is, it doesn’t hurt to ask!

It’s just my opinion but I think her best bets at this point would be The Red Cross, Michigan Rehab and applying for Social Security disability.

The only thing left for her to do, once her unemployment runs out, is to mooch off relatives and that would get real old real quick! The cost of living is high enough these days that many people can’t easily afford an extra mouth to feed.

Blogs

2008-08-17T22:20:00.003-04:00

Blogging is not for the faint hearted. I wouldn’t actually say it’s as exhausting as climbing a ladder to paint a house, or shoveling a mountain of gravel in to a wheelbarrow in order to fill a drain field the size of Ohio, both of which I’ve participated in, but it’s not the gravy job some might think either.

First you have to chose what you want to blog about. Do you want to stick to one subject? Do you want to blog about just a couple? A few? What about a diary about your life. (Mine would take up a couple of paragraphs and bore a reader to tears!)

Then there are the technical things like pings and tags and RSS feeds, links, linkbacks and one-way link exchanges. Truthfully? I’m not a technical kind of gal. When I first read the phrase, “Ping my blog,” I thought I had stumbled in to some kind of kinky internet porn!

What I know about computers and the internet is on a ‘need to know basis’ only. If I need to know it, I’ll learn it. If I don’t need to know it, I could care less.

When people were raving about how much better Windows XP was than Windows 98, I went with the flow and trusted that the experts knew what they were talking about. The same as upgrades from Win 3.1 and Win 95, although a couple of those upgrades came by way of new computers.

The only differences that I can find between XP and 98 is that XP has Spider Solitaire and a pinball game. Oh! And the system restore feature, which I find to be a very cool and useful tool. However, on 98 I could win 75% of my regular solitaire games. I’m lucky if I win 10% on XP.

Seriously, though, I don’t see much difference when it comes to what I need. And that is? Just a few things.

Internet access for relaxing at websites like www.pogo.com and www.popcap.com-except if you try Rocket Mania at Popcap, it’s anything but relaxing. In fact it’s downright stressful!

I also use it to do things like check out urban legends for people at www.snopes.com, look up the correct spelling of/meaning of words when someone calls needing a quick answer. For finding out what actor was in this movie or who sang 'that' song they can kind of recall the gist of, even one complete sentence of the lyrics just escapes them.

And I do need it for...research.

Yes, I need the research capabilities for this blog, but I also research a great deal for my books. In fact, I’m gathering all kinds of information on ALL (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia) and bone marrow transplants, because a fifteen month old character in the book I’m currently writing is afflicted with that particular disease. Granted I’ll only use a fraction of what I've learned, but I need to know enough so that I sound like I know what I’m talking about.

I can guarantee you that I know more about ALL than I do about successful blogging!

But I’m learning. Learning that I need to make a serious commitment to educating myself about it, if nothing else.

Promoting blogs seems like an overwhelming, not to mention time consuming, challenge. The ideas flying around the internet are legion and the successful blogger wannabe has to ask herself, do I apply little effort to many suggestions or massive effort to few?

And whatever effort I decide to expend is only in addition to
continuing to study the volumes of information I’ve collected so far, as well as continuing to come up with interesting (I hope!) blogs every day.

Although I’m thinking about rethinking the blog a day way and, instead, taking the advice of an extremely successful blogger-only posting every other day. But making them longer blogs, anywhere from 1,000-5,000 words. Actually I’ve been doing an average of 1,000, on most posts anyway, so that won’t be much of a stretch.

And since my ’readership’ is minimal at this point in time, it probably wouldn‘t matter much anyway. Maybe. I don’t know.

Well, yes I do. I need to make some decisions about how I’ll promote my stuff, then promote it diligently and...be patient. It’s just not realistic to expect five hundred readers my first week.

Nope. I’ll need to drop that goal to 499 instead.

Obviously patience is a virtue that I can’t lay claim to...

But I’ll work on that, too.

So, to my very few, but hopefully faithful readers, any suggestions from you about promotion? How are your blogs doing? Is there anything that would make you throw in the towel and do something a little easier?

Like maybe heading off to college so you fulfill your life’s dream of becoming a physicist?

(by the way...feel free to leave a comment, okay? :o)

Potlucks and Picnics

2008-08-16T19:00:00.003-04:00

I think this is going to be the shortest post I've ever written. Mainly because...at two minutes after seven p.m., all I want to do is sleep.

Why?

Because my family reunion was this afternoon. I loved going and visiting with the very few who showed up this year (changing it from Sunday to Saturday was not the brightest move we've ever made!). But dang, it wears you out.

First you have to prepare your dish to pass, plus a dessert, get yourself ready to go. Which included getting all the paperwork since a cousin and I took over the reunion planning committee (or whatever you want to call it) last year. Actually, we volunteered to do it at last year's reunion. This was our first year dealing with it.

Then you have to load the car wtih all of your food and picnic paraphenalia and start off on the nearly hour-long drive to another city.

Next you unload everything at the hall, help with set up, eat more than you should probably have eaten, spend a fun, but exhausting, few hours visiting with everyone you can possibly vist with before loading the car back up, cleaning the hall and taking off for the hour-long drive home.

Where you have to unload the car and take care of the mess before you can sit down and wish you'd planned the reunion to start a few hours later because if you had, it would be okay to fall into bed and sleep!

But it's too early for that so I'm off to make some sense of the business meeting notes, to type them up and send them off to everyone with an email address.

Maybe that's why picnics and pot lucks make you tired.

Yawn.

Teen Parties...by request

2008-08-15T23:59:00.001-04:00

The first thing I think you need to ask yourself is this. “Did I ask my daughter what she might like to see happen at her party?”

If she’s left all-or part of-the planning up to you then the second thing you need to do is thank God. Because by that age, most teens are making life just a little tough on their parents as they strive for independence!

That said, have you considered a theme party?

My personal favorites would be: the “Let’s Wash the Windows Luau,” “The Grimy Garage Gala,” the “Basement Cleanup Bash,” and the “Get Down and Scrub the Floors Fiesta.“

But then I’m not thirteen. Which is why I think I like them so much. Let the teens with too much energy have all the fun! :o)

So...

A classy, dress to the nine’s tea party might go over well. Have the guests wear their classiest outfits, let the girls have a ball with blush, eyeliner and the works (with parental permission, of course!), and then serve fancy finger foods and a variety of flavored teas.

Of course that would probably been a better idea for Beaver Cleaver’s sister, if he’d had one that is. But today’s young people, the majority of them, aren’t as thrilled by the old fashioned stuff we were over the moon about.

This website, http://www.partypop.com/Forums/General/m14079.htm , has some ideas posted by young teenagers, telling other teens what they’ve done. Including having Mom and Dad foot the bill at a hotel with a pool and hot tub, and doing such fun things as going up to the service desk in the lobby and asking for a tampon.

Have things really changed that much since I was thirteen?!

At that age I’d have gone out and waited in the car for fear of standing too close to my mother when she put a box of tampons on the checkout counter! Even if she had a hundred other items!

Http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/643655/fun_sleepover_party_ideas_for_13yearold.html , has some wonderful ideas for slumber parties, if you have the courage to let six teenage girls awake most of the night. In your house.

One particular idea there would probably appeal to any girl, from five to seventy-five, and that’s to make it a spa party. They suggest going to your local dollar store and purchasing items for facials, manicures, and pedicures. (This would work for a party that didn’t include sleeping bags, too)

Based on what I see in my family (including extended), Miley Ray Cyrus, Zac Efron, Corbin Bleu and The Jonas Brothers are so wildly popular that some parents are tempted to throw a brick through their television screen, drown their stereos and smash computer speakers in an effort to get some relief from having these four people shoved down their throats.

If your daughter is a fan, lucky you, rent Camp Rock, High School Musical, or the first season of Hannah Montana (although I think they only made four episodes and are just rerunning them over and over and over...), order a couple of pizzas, pick up a gallon of ice cream, toppings, potato chips and sodas, and you’re good to go. For an afternoon get together, a sleepover, or whatever. You can hide in your room until it’s over.

You wish!

No, it would be in your best interest to check on them from time to time, making sure you don’t wind up with pepperoni, mozzarella or hot fudge ground into your carpet.

What it all boils down to, though, is this. What does your daughter want? Ask her. Unless she wants to invite girls and boys, and a disco ball, romantic music, candlelight, dancing and spin the bottle games, you’ll probably be able to come to an agreement on something acceptable to you both.

Having been volunteered to be the one-member game committee for my family reunion on a number of times, not even counting other events, I feel safe in making the following suggestions.
If it’s a nice day have it outside. No pool? Set up a sprinkler and they can play tag in the water.
A game everyone had fun with was a relay race of sorts. I’d gone to a second hand clothing store and purchased two sets of huge pants and tops (and washed them, of course!). I divided the group into two teams, placed them about forty feet from a tree.

They had to pull the big clothes on over the top of what they were already wearing, race to the tree, circle it, get back, take the clothes off so the next person could repeat the process, and on and on until one team finished first.

You could go a step further and add a hat, necklace, scarf, gloves... Whatever you want. You’ll get more laughs though if the clothes are ugly and clash as badly as possible.

Just serve them burgers or hot dogs, chips, a veggie tray, maybe potato salad and cookies. Bottles of soda and water and you’re set.

Good luck, Kathryn!

Kids and Pets

2008-08-14T21:14:00.004-04:00

I’m getting by on about four hours sleep right now so I’m probably not as clear headed as I could be. Okay, I just plain and simply am not. But I swear! It has absolutely nothing to do with the decision I came to this afternoon.

I can’t just write blogs about health.

Having to stick to just one subject makes me feel claustrophobic. So, if you have a question of any kind, bring it on!

Well, let me qualify that just a tad. I won’t do “R” or "X" rated searches. I also won’t look up the origins of curse words. And you should know if you want sports or map related stuff, they'll probably be the shortest blogs in the history of blogs.

But ask me about most anything else and I’m your girl! I’ll do my level best to find the best information I can for you. Which I will then ‘blog’ about. Using as much humor as I can get away with, because that’s just what I do.

I like to laugh. Even more, I like making other people laugh.

For instance, if I could adequately describe my kids, getting Jack-our seventy pound puppy-into the bathroom for his monthly bath, you’d probably fall out of your chair. One was dragging him, one was pushing him and Jack was digging his claws in for all he was worth.

A seventy pound puppy?!

Uh-huh. He just turned eight months old. I don’t even like to think how big he’s going to wind up being. At the moment Jack pretty much walks us. He also thinks he can sit in your lap.

That works out real well...

Whatever. Jack’s been a very interesting addition to our family. A highly energetic puppy who eats like a horse. And he eats pretty much everything that isn’t nailed down. And even some stuff that is! We had to stop giving him time outs in the bathroom when we discovered the woodwork around the doorway was worked very nicely as a snack. But he’ll eat your socks, your lip gloss, a clothespin, rocks and grass. Obviously he’s not a picky eater.

His favorite thing chew, though, is a leash. And he’s gone through six of them in the four months we’ve had him. I finally gave up wasting my money and just bought clothesline, braiding it together over the metal thing that hooks to his collar. That was the only heavy duty thing about the last leash that really was heavy duty.

Yes, I like writing about Jack. And Shadow, our eight year old black lab. I also like writing about Sam, our twenty-plus pound cat, Sophie our dainty looking cat-who is the biggest klutz on the planet, and I might grow to like writing about the kittens someone dumped off in our yard about a month ago. The kittens that my daughter pleaded with me to keep.

And I said no! Four pets is more than enough! No way, no how, get ready to take them to the Humane Society!

But wore me down, relentless, merciless brat that she is.

And so we have added to the menagerie, “the boy cat,” and “the girl cat.” Emmy is being tossed around for the female. But it’s the male that’s causing an uproar. My daughter is voting for Dean or Li’l Dude. I’m leaning toward Li’l Dude.

But she thinks Dean would be cool, since we’ve already got Sam. Obviously we are Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki fans around here. For the record, that is the only show I watch that’s scary. And sometimes it’s so scary I have to take a pass on it.

It’s because of that show that I became a fan of Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Wow. God sure did a good job on that guy!

I know. I’m rambling tonight. But four hours of sleep can cause you do that....

So I’m going to stop right now and go hunt up a little thing I wrote awhile back. Although I should give you some background first.

My son is autistic. High functioning, but autistic. And he tends to see things just a little differently than I do sometimes. He also tends to get extremely annoyed with me when I’m not interested in purchasing any of the “great deals” he watches on infomercials. That’s what this particular story is about.

One Saturday night my boy came peeling out of his bedroom, extremely excited over an infomercial he'd just seen. About a knife set, of all things. What follows is pretty much the word-for-word conversation between us:

Mom! Mom! This is so cool! You get a LOT of knives, Mom. Stainless steel knives that won't get dull no matter what you do with them. You can cut cans, you can cut wood...ALL for just three easy payments of $13.33!

That's cool, son, but we don't need knives.

But Mo-om, you get a lot of knives-and it comes with not one set of steak knives but two! In case you have a lot of company!

Sorry, son, but if we had that much company we'd be having sloppy joes.

But Mo-om! That's eight steak knives! All for three easy payments of $13.33!

I'm really sorry but we don't need more steak knives.

But it comes with kitchen scissors! So you can cut up chickens and other stuff, Mom. And the first knife they showed is guaranteed so if it gets dull they'll replace it. But only the first knife. The rest of them aren't guaranteed.

WE DON'T NEED KNIVES!!!

But you can have them all for three easy payments of $13.33!

No!

Those knives sell for $840.00 and you can have them for just three easy payments of $13.33!

I don't really care. I'm not buying them.

That's stupid, Mom! You'd waste $800.00 when you could have had those knives for just three easy payments of $13.33? That's just stupid! (he is livid by this time)

Well, I'm not wasting $800.00 on any set of knives, so you don't have to worry about it.

(he's walking back to his room muttering...)

That's just stupid. You could have had all those knives for just three easy payment of $13.33....

A Sad Farewell to Mishmash...

2008-08-13T22:07:00.005-04:00

Yes, it's time to bid Mishmash a fond adieu.

Because I finally figured out a title for my blog!

So welcome to: Research by Kristy...

Hot Flashes....by request

2008-08-13T20:24:00.006-04:00

By request from “Barbara,” here is some information I’ve gathered in regards to that peachy little side effect of perimenopause...hot flashes. The sources for my research are: http://www.breastcancer.org/ , http://www.mybreastcancer.org/ and http://www.earthclinic.com/.

According to www.breastcancer.org, hormone changes, lifestyle and medications can all contribute to hot flashes. Aging wasn’t mentioned as a cause, but I’m sure it plays a pretty major role for most women. ;o)

They also state that lower levels of estrogen have an effect on the hypothalamus, a cone shaped thing in your brain. But it’s a very important thing that affects your appetite, how you sleep, sex hormones and body temps.

Hypothalamus. Say that fast five times! Actually I just tried and it can be done. But I guarantee you don’t have a chance in the world of saying “unique New York” and “cheap ship” and having them come out right. If you do it fast, and there’s not a thing you can do about it, you’ll be saying “unique-u-nork” or “newyeek New York,“ and... Well, I’ll bet you can figure out the other one all by yourself.

Time to get back on track here.

Apparently lessening hormone levels tend to ‘confuse’ the hypothalamus, causing a hot flash.

Symptoms of a hot flash can include feeling hot (Gosh! Really?) in your face and upper body. You could also experience rapid heartbeat, sweating, nausea, dizziness, anxiety, headache or weakness. And here’s one I didn’t know about before. You might feel like you’re suffocating. Does this sound like fun or what?

Personally I’d have to choose, “or what.”

In addition you get-literally-red in the face thanks to what I’ll call “THFF” or...The Hot Flash Flush. I’ll probably only use this term once but it sounds fun, doesn’t it? Like a dance.

A quick word of caution here. I guess a hot flash might make you think you’re having a heart attack.

After a lifetime of periods, cramps, PMS, pregnancy and childbirth, this has just got to be the icing on the cake.

Will hot flashes ever go away?

Probably.

The odds are you’ll have them for the duration of the perimenopause phase, and maybe another year or two more. However, up to fifty percent of women will experience them indefinitely. The good news is, they get more tolerable. Eventually.

Another thing to take note of is that heavy women-and women with plenty of muscles-seem to have it easier than women closer to their ideal weights. But, if you smoke, they may be worse.

Many sources recommend trying to control hot flashes more naturally before resorting to hormone replacement therapy (HRT). For one thing, it increases the risk of breast cancer. And given what I found at www.mybreastcancer.org, I know I’ll be looking for alternatives when my time comes!

According to them Premarin®, which is what nearly 90% of women use, really is made purified urine from a pregnant horse. They actually said ‘pregnant mare’ but you know what? I kind of figured if it was pregnant then it kind of had to be a mare...

Horse urine?!

Oh puh-leeze! Perimenopausal bodies might be lacking in something, but I would bet big bucks that it isn’t horse urine! Purified or not! And even if mine was lacking it, I couldn’t imagine swallowing a pill knowing that the main ingredient was something I wouldn’t want to step in.

Jeez, I flush public toilets with my foot and use half a gallon of hand sanitizer (to which I add a generous amount of alcohol!) when I touch door knobs and shopping cart handles!

Horse urine!

What genius came up with that?

I can just imagine some man sitting down one day, tapping a finger on his forehead as he ponders menopause. Suddenly a light flashes on in his head (something has got to take up all that empty space)! “I’ve got it!” he exclaims, jumping up and running down the hall to where his colleagues sit, watching football and picking their noses. “Let’s give them horse urine!”

So what are some of the things you can try, without resorting to that disgusting measure?

Watch what you’re wearing. Go for layers. That way you can take off a sweater or a jacket when the heat gets to be too much for you. If you're not wearing layers and start taking things off, you may find yourself in an air conditioned cell in your local jail.

And think “Cotton, cotton, cotton.” Whenever possible wear cotton and use cotton bedding.

One suggestion was to get a bigger bed if snuggling too close to your husband made it worse. Or if he likes more blankets than you do. Sounds like a Lucy and Ricky or Rob and Laura solution to me. (If you’re old enough to be reading up on menopause, you’re old enough to remember these television couples) Seriously though, I guess that would depend on your financial situation-and the size of your bedroom.

Get a Scarlet O’Hara-type fan (or a battery operated, hand held one). Try cool showers before bed-or opening the freezer and sticking your head in it. (that was a real suggestion!) Heck, I do that now and I don’t have hot flashes! Exercise is supposed to help, as is learning relaxation techniques. What about Chinese medicine?

Vitamins can help. Up to 1000 I.U. of E, up to 250 mg. B6 and two Peridin-C three times a day. Apparently it has other antioxidants in it.

My favorite website, http://earthclinic.com/CURES/hot_flashes.html, has these recommendations from their readers: apple cider vinegar, apple cider vinegar and baking soda, apple cider vinegar and cayenne pepper, B vitamins, Blackstrap Molasses (note...can affect your iron levels so I wouldn’t advise taking it unless you’re already anemic!), eliminate coffee, soda (pop) and sugar, iodine, cold baths, soy, and turmeric.

I would like to add here that some studies suggest that soy can increase the risk of breast cancer, the same as HRT, as well as contribute to other health problems. (See http://www.mercola.com/article/soy/index.htm for more information)

You could try keeping a diary to see if something (or some things) seem to trigger your hot flashes. Just before, or as it hit, what were you eating, drinking, doing or feeling? Were you stressed out (a very common trigger)? If you can pin it down, then avoiding the cause could help.

Other triggers include: alcohol, caffeine, diet pills, spicy food, hot food, hot tubs, saunas, hot showers, hot beds, hot room, hot weather, and smoking.

If all else fails, and you just can’t tolerate feeling like you‘ve got the mother of all fevers, it’s time to visit your friendly neighborhood doctor and see what he or she can do for you.

Or you could just move to the North Pole, live in an igloo, eat nothing but popcicles and ice cream, wear a bikini year round and swim with the penguins.

A Depiction of Addictions

2008-08-12T17:23:00.006-04:00

I don’t think there’s a person on the planet who hasn’t, at one time or another, suffered some form of addiction. Certainly there are the obvious ones, like alcohol and drugs. To a lesser degree, in many minds anyway, you also have nicotine and caffeine.

Some people are addicted to horrible things like cutting themselves. Some are addicted to pornography. Still others to less harmful things like food, video games, exercise (which wouldn’t come close to being an issue with me!). Even house cleaning, also not something that’s ever likely to be a problem for me. If you look hard enough you can almost always find beauty in things. Unusual things. Dust.

The list is probably a long one. And I know I’ve dealt with several of them myself.

For instance, after the birth of my first child, those prescription diet pills seemed like a perfect solution for the post-pregnancy pounds. Not to mention the serious lack of sleep that all mothers experience!

The first day I made the mistake of taking one as soon as I left the drug store. It was, oh, around four in the afternoon.

Not one of the smartest decisions I’ve ever made. In fact, twenty-four hours later you might have said it was one of the ‘stoopidist‘ ones I‘d ever made. But not without its rewards.
You’d think that there was only so much cleaning that you could do in a four room apartment. Not so! If you do it repeatedly, from shortly after you finish your miniscule dinner until five the next morning, that sucker is gonna shine!

The energy benefits aside, did they help me lose the weight? Yup. But I made a nasty little discovery about three months later. When most of the weight was gone and the doctor decided I no longer needed them. Something that same doctor, bless his li'l pea brain, neglected to mention.

They happened to be extremely addictive!

I’ll tell you what. It made for a pretty miserable couple of weeks, when I was getting over the worst of it. But even several months later, I still craved them. It’s not a problem for me today, but there was a time I’d have done just about anything to get them. And did. I’m ashamed to admit that I actually changed doctors in order to get more.

But I guess the second time coming off was enough misery to last a lifetime because I never did it again.

Then there was the caffeine. God sure knew what He was doing when He created that stuff. I’m not as bad about it as my mother-you could feed her coffee intravenously and she wouldn’t get enough-but it was definitely one of my favorite things. (just a side note here. Decaf might taste just as good but your body knows it’s a fraud!)

Turns out, though, that being pregnant wasn’t the breeze for me that it is for many women. Nope. After the first one, the rest were high risk. It took seven tries to get the three kids I have. And during one of the unsuccessful pregnancies, it was strongly suggested I give up caffeine.

No problem.

Enormous problem.

While it didn’t seem possible, giving up coffee and cola was even harder than giving up the diet pills. Maybe my subconscious remembered the misery from the other two times and was saying, No! No way! Not again!

But stubbornness prevailed and, after two or three weeks of horrible headaches and some serious irritability, I was fine. And smart enough, finally, to not pick the addiction up a second time. Surely, somewhere down the line, another doctor was going to tell me to quit-and I wasn’t willing to risk going through those withdrawals again!

That left one addiction for me to deal with. Cigarettes. The worst of them all. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to quit smoking.

I need to insert a quick warning here... Do not call it a habit. Them’s fightin’ words! :o)

I have a habit of washing my hands fifty times a day. I have a habit of saying, “It occurred to me...” (something my mother points out on a regular basis) I have a habit of going barefoot.

I was addicted to cigarettes. Or more precisely, the nicotine in the cigarettes. But I did love smoking.

So much so that I’d light one before heading to the bathroom first thing in the morning. That I would choose to smoke rather than eat-and often smoked while I ate. That I would avoid places and situations where smoking wasn’t allowed. I even smoked when I’d get bronchitis and pneumonia.

But I finally licked it on October 31, 2006.

It took a lot of stubbornness, a lot of praying-on my part and by people who cared. And a lot of nicotine gum. Having never been much of a gum chewer, I’m a little disturbed to still be chewing it, nearly two years later.

People try to tell me that the gum is a lot better for me than the cigarettes were. And they‘re 100% correct.

I love not coughing and clearing my throat all the time. I like being able to walk and not get out of breath. I enjoy going to the theater, restaurants and events where smoking isn’t allowed.

But I hate that I still have this one last addiction in my life.

My pocketbook isn’t too thrilled with it either. Because even though, right from the first, I bought the highest milligram gum and broke each piece into thirds, it’s almost as expensive as the cigarettes themselves were. Especially since I started out with seven a day (twenty-eight thirds), and have increased to eleven pieces every day (thirty-three thirds).

Nicotine gum is one addiction I fear I’ll never be able to break. Although I’ve heard some good information about Chantix. Even though I don’t like taking prescription medication, I may break down and give it a try. One of my brothers quit eight months ago using it. But it didn’t work for the other one. That’s a fifty-fifty chance for success right there, based on sibling results.

It’s also a fifty-fifty chance to fail. And Chantix, too, is pretty darned expensive!

I’m curious to know if anyone else has tried it. And if so, what happened? Can Chantix be used to break a nicotine gum or patch addiction? Has anyone even tried? Successfully?

Please feel free to let me know. Or if you’ve found another way to get this particular addiction out of your life.

Vinegar for your health? Eww!!!

2008-08-11T19:44:00.005-04:00

At least that’s the most common response I’ve gotten from people. People who are looking for more natural ways to good health. Apparently they’re also looking for good tasting ways to good health. The only problem is, ‘good tasting’ has very likely contributed to our unhealthy states.

Well one thing you can be assured of, vinegar is not-in any way, shape or form- pleasing to the palate.

Of course, from time to time, you will run into people like my sister-in-law and niece. They would probably like vinegar. Straight from the bottle. Why? Because when they finish snacking on their pickles slices, they drink the ’juice’ that’s left in the jar. Much like you or I would guzzle a glass of Pepsi or Sprite.

Given that I don’t much care for pickles in the first place, the very thought makes my throat constrict a little.

But I was talking about vinegar here, wasn’t I. Specifically the health benefits available to those who can get past the taste.

And that can be quite a challenge.

Truth be told, it’s not very pleasing to my taste buds. In fact, it tastes downright bad to my taste buds. In fact, my taste buds think I’m torturing them and stage strikes when I try to drink it without anything to mask the putrid flavor.

And I work very hard to try to mask the taste.

Well, not so hard anymore. Thanks to a website I stumbled on a few years ago, I discovered an incredibly simple way to solve my dilemma. That is to add half a teaspoon of baking soda to every two to four tablespoons of vinegar, five days a week.

Why not seven?

For some odd reason, your body doesn’t like baking soda seven days a week. And I‘m not drinking vinegar without it! (I might do a little more research and get into the health benefits of baking soda in another post.)

And before I forget, here’s a handy little tip should you decide to give it a try.

Make sure to add some water to the mix.

Why? Because while it may appear as though vinegar dissolves the baking soda, it doesn't. If you fail to add water, trust me, you’ll just wind up with a mouthful of wet baking soda. And let me tell you, it’s really not the most pleasant feeling in the world.

Is this the voice of experience speaking.

Yup.

Unfortunately it is. I thought I’d never get the stuff rinsed out of my mouth. And the gritty feeling on your teeth...

Remember when you were in school and writing a math problem on the board with chalk? Did you ever have the chalk kind of catch, like it had a piece of stone in it? And it would squeal so bad you felt it all the way to your toes?

That’s kind of how wet baking soda in your teeth feels. So don’t do that, huh?

Now you've gotten to this point, you're probably asking yourself a very important question.

Regular apple cider vinegar or organic apple cider vinegar?

While some people are obsessed with the need that it be organic, I’ve actually used both. And I can’t say as there was an appreciable difference between them. Except regarding the taste and the price. The organic version is a lot milder and easier to handle. But you‘ll pay through the nose for it.

I, myself, balk at the thought of paying twelve or fifteen dollars for a gallon of vinegar-just because it tastes marginally better. Of course it does have brown slime (mother) floating around in the bottom of the jug. And there are companies who actually, through some process I don’t even want to know about, manage to break the slime up and mix it with the vinegar so that it forms a liquid that looks like- Well, maybe I should just leave that thought alone...

Yum.

Are you wondering if there really are any health benefits to vinegar?

I can only tell you the benefits I’ve experienced. One of them might embarrass any males that stumble upon my blog. In that case, guys, just cover your eyes when you get to that part, okay?

Let’s get that one over first, hmm.

Ladies, you know ‘that time of the month’ can be a big headache. And that’s when everything is normal. But try two-week long periods every two weeks! Heavy, painful ones at that. For about a year and a half.

Within a month of starting organic vinegar, at least once a day, five days a week, things returned to normal. And even my PMS symptoms lessened. From a voracious craving for chocolates to a take it or leave it attitude.

Yeah, right.

That was a slight exaggeration. You never get to the point where you can just leave chocolate. It’s just not possible. Isn’t that the first word that little girls learn? :o)

Are there more benefits?

Absolutely.

It helps the pain from bursitis in my shoulder. It sooths sore muscles when I overexert myself. I can now eat spaghetti and other tomato based products without suffering for it the rest of the day. I'm rarely sick anymore.

And most important of all.

I plain and simply have more energy. When I use it like I should, anyway. And that would be two to three times a day, five days a week.

So as not to get into plagiarism issues, I won’t tell you what other people have to say about the health benefits of vinegar. But I will direct you to what, in my opinion, is the best ‘natural’ website I’ve ever found. The one I referred to earlier in this blog.

I think it’s absolutely amazing!

Interested?

Then pay a visit to: www.earthclinic.com

I have to warn you though. The first night I found it, I wound up until three in the morning wandering around the site.

Good thing it was a weekend!

Was it a miracle in the making?

2008-08-10T23:33:00.001-04:00

To say that professional blogging is a learning experience is an understatement. My guess is that there are as many theories on how to ‘do’ your blog as there are bloggers. And about that many opinions on the theme of your blog.

Some believe that you should have an extremely narrow focus and, if you want to branch out into others, do a separate blog. Some believe that you can write about whatever you please.

So what will I write about in my blog?

Good question.

As you might note, from my profile, I’m a writer. I’m also extremely interested in good health through natural alternatives. As often as possible anyway. Because there are most definitely times when I’d want medical intervention! Hopefully those times will be few and far between.

It would be easier if my interests were limited to those two categories. Unfortunately they are not. In fact, I have quite a number of interests, which can change on a daily basis. Actually, they have been known to change on a minute-by-minute basis!

I guess all I can say is that my blog will be just what my page is titled. A mishmash of thoughts, ideas and opinions.

As a writer it’s tough to limit yourself to just one or two topics, ignoring all the rest. But I’ll try to limit each blog to one specific subject-and hope for the best!

Having given some thought to today‘s blog, I’ve pretty much decided it will be about my father. He’s on my mind a lot right now, because August thirtieth will be the fifth anniversary of his death-from ’cancer of unknown origins.’

Until about eight months before his diagnosis, in July of 2002, he had been in good health. At least it appeared that he was. But that Christmas he sounded like he had pneumonia. And when it turned out it wasn’t, he refused to have further testing.

Needless to say when he finally did give in to pressure and pleading, he was given six months to a year. Even if he had chemo and radiation. He did agree to the radiation after a test, two weeks later, showed several brain tumors. Dad wasn’t in to the possibility of developing seizures.

I wasn’t in to the idea of losing my father.

Before continuing, I’ll put a quick disclaimer in here. While I did sign up to ‘sell’ Immune 26, I didn’t actually sell it at all. I am not, and never will be, a saleswoman. I think there’s an old saying that goes something like this: “I couldn’t sell a glass of water to a man who is dying of thirst.”

That would describe me to a “T.”

However, being a distributor of Immune 26 allowed me to apply my discount so Dad could save money, which helped a great deal when it was recommended he take eight or more servings a day.

Immune 26 is not cheap.

It took some convincing to get him to give it a try and, before the MRI found the tumors, he was kind of hit and miss with it.

Afterwards was a different story.

His doctor hoped the radiation would shrink the tumors enough to prevent seizures. Upon completion of the treatments he commented on how good Dad looked. And then told him that the tumors hadn’t shrunk a little. They’d shrunk significantly.

That changed everything. Dad started taking Immune 26 religiously.

In milk.

A quick note about the plain Immune 26, which is what we all used-Dad included. It tastes terrible. And unless you’ve damaged your taste buds to the extent that you can’t taste anything at all, you probably don’t want to drink it in milk! My family and I always mixed it orange juice. And mixed it and mixed it and mixed it.

Not Dad-and his taste buds worked just fine!

Anyway, with the great results from radiation, he decided to give the chemo a try. Even though the oncologist warned that it would only slow the growth of the cancer and maybe give him a few extra months.

He started very harsh and aggressive chemotherapy treatments in September. By November he was keeping very little down in the way of food, including the Immune 26. But his blood tests didn't show that the cancer’s growth was slowing.

They indicated that the cancer was starting to go away!

The levels were lower with every blood test until December when his doctor started hinting at remission, and saying something to the effect that perhaps his cancer could be ‘managed’ like diabetes.

That all changed in January, and Dad was gone August 30, 2003.

It’s just my opinion but, had his doctor and oncologist looked in to the health benefits of Immune 26, instead of passing it off as about the same as Carnation Instant Breakfast, if they’d eased up on the chemo just a bit, the outcome might have been different-and Dad might be here today.

The point of this blog?

Doctors do not know everything-and anyone who thinks that they do should maybe rethink their position.

Many doctors are also unwilling to acknowledge that complimentary treatments, or alternatives on their own, are viable options.

If your doctor, or the doctor of someone you love, is this narrow minded, perhaps it’s time to look elsewhere? Because my dad is proof positive that unwavering trust in the medical profession can be a deadly mistake.

People need to take their health into their own hands. To look at all options out there.
Well, maybe not all of them. I mean, if you find a website that instructs you to boil rattlesnake heads and bat wings, then drink a gallon of the ‘tea’ from it every day, that’s a little out there and you should probably cross it off your list. Immediately.
But if you use your head, there are viable treatments. That you could use instead of-or as a compliment to-traditional offerings.

Wow. Was this a depressing post or what?

Another post today (duh)

2008-08-09T20:39:00.001-04:00

Hi again!

While trying to familiarize myself with this website, tweaking the first blog and trying to come up with appropriate 'key words,' I've come to a couple of conclusions. As well as a thought (we're in deep trouble now!).

One, Bruce Willis and Jeffrey Dean Morgan have a great deal to do with health. Just looking at their pretty faces improves my mental health dramatically. And two, the Jonas Brother's improve my daughter's mental health dramatically which, in turn, reduces my stress levels.

Therefore...

Bruce Willis, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and the Jonas Brother's will be staying in the keywords. Not really. Much as I like the first two, and kind of like the 'kids,' that's not really the purpose of this blog.

Now...

I did mention something about a thought, didn't I?

Actually it has a little to do with the main subject matter of my first post. In this day and age, when gas prices make you want to faint (or punch someone!), when the cost of living would make your great, great granny roll over in her grave and when utility bills are through the roof, how does one not only survive, but thrive.

If you're not Bruce Willis, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the Jonas Brother's, or the rest of the 'have's?' If you're one of us lowly 'have not's?' Or 'not have as much of's?"

More specifically, how do people manage to eat healthily? It's one thing to walk, do crunches and lift weights. Those are vital aspects to good health and fitness.

Food is another matter entirely.

When a gallon of milk or orange juice goes for roughly $4.00 a gallon (pretty much the same as gasoline!), and you can get two-3 liter bottles of Faygo soda at the local dollar store for half that price, what are you more likely to drink?

Granted it would probably taste terrible on a bowl of cereal (although OJ probably wouldn't go over any better), as a beverage you can still get a whopping three gallons of soda to a single gallon of the others. For the same price.

Then there's the fresh produce dilemma.

Five bucks for ten pounds of potatoes! A dollar for a tomato or green pepper! Forty cents per ear of corn!

It kind of makes you cringe at the 5-7 servings a day recommended by the FDA, huh? Especially if you have more than one in your family. Just the minimum would be twenty servings a day per household for a family of four!

So where does that leave someone who wants to lose a few pounds? Out of luck? Probably not. There options.

Beans are still pretty affordable. And high in fiber so they'll fill you up. In more ways than one! You'd just have to decide if the....um....side effects were worth the benefits.

Portion control is another-and perhaps the best-option. Yeah, you'll feel hungry for a few days. Or a week or two, depending on how much you're used to eating.

But face it, unless the government does something drastic, the days of your munching on fruits and veggies to fill you up and keep you from snacking on foods that taste better are over.

And for those of you who love healthy eating, I apologize. But you know what? America wouldn't have an epidemic of weight problems if an apple tasted as good as a brownie. If a carrot tasted as good as a Frito. If a half a cup of tuna tasted as good as an inch thick rib eye steak, charbroiled to medium and eaten with homemade rolls and baked potatoes dripping in butter. If a glass of iced tea was as satisfying as a hot fudge shake.

Nope. No epidemic at all. We'd all be at our ideal weights and heart disease, high blood pressure, many cancers, etc... wouldn't be nearly as prevalent as they are today.

So what are you doing to keep healthy in this economy? Those of you have normal incomes, anyway.

Hello all

2008-08-09T16:16:00.001-04:00

For anyone who read my first version of this post, you will note that I have changed the title of the page. Upon further consideration, however, I realized that the original title might bring in an invasion of people whose opinions and lifestyles do not reflect that of my own.

So what is my blog about?

Only God would know the answer to that particular question. At this point in time, my guess is that it will be quite similar to my myspace.com blog, which is filled with random thoughts, opinions and ramblings.

I'm very into natural health solutions (whenever possible), Bruce Willis, exercise that doesn't leave you panting for breath and ready to collapse, my family, the economy, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, some politics, our pets...and a lot of other stuff. I try to look at the comical side of life as often as possible-and my writing often reflects that tendency.

My particular thoughts for today?

Hmm

I guess it would have to be regarding the present state of our American economy and the absolutely staggering burden it's placing on all but the very wealthy. And I'd bet, if things continue the way they're going, even they will be taking a hit to their wallets eventually.

But it's 'normal' people like us whose jaws are hitting the floor every time we turn around.

Here's a 'for instance.'

I usually do my grocery shopping on Saturday's. Not the wisest day of the week, considering I'm not all that thrilled with big crowds and long lines at the check-outs. Regardless, that's when I tend to go.

And when I go, I tend to purchase pretty much the same items because I'm what some might consider a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to trying new foods. Not that I serve a boring menu. I'm a good cook and I have quite a repertoire of recipes.

Okay. That's an exaggeration. I don't generally use recipes. Sometimes not even for cakes or cookies. Unless they're special ones, like for Christmas. The once-a-year kind you don't want to take a chance on screwing up.

I guess this would be where 'ramblings' came in.... Sigh.

Okay. So what happened today?

Well. A couple of items I bought two weeks ago have had a price increase.

Big deal, you might say. Actually it is a big deal. One item went up by $1.54 and the other went up $1.11. Those are pretty huge increases. In a matter of days.

And I find it annoying as all get out.

Annoyance aside, it's time to do some clicker training for Jack, the 70 pound, eight month old puppy who has chewed through five leashes in the three months we've had him. Not really surprising since he's a strong dog. Both in will and muscle. If you like your arm where it belongs in your shoulder socket, you probably wouldn't want to try walking Jack.

***Just a quick P.S....my daughter said I should put the Jonas Brother's in the search part of this because a lot of people search for them. So I will. And I'll do some future blogs about them, too. Especially Nick. I think he's a cutie! My daughter, however, likes Kevin. (She's looking over my shoulder right now so I'm doing this to embarrass her! :o)

Privacy Policy

2008-08-09T00:01:00.004-04:00

First for the disclaimer:
I am a writer, not a doctor-or expert in any field. I love reading and research, and I have a serious interest in good health. And usually good health through the most natural means possible. I will, however, try to include as many medical solutions as time permits.

That said, I am not, in any way suggesting that you try any treatment or remedy listed in my blog, ever. Only you can decide what you want to try. You and your doctor. But I would like give you fair warning. Many doctors frown upon anything considered natural.

Policy regarding all research requests: All requests will be answered in the order in which they were received. If I've already answered the question in another blog, I will make sure to give you that information. All blogs in answer to requests will include the URL's of the websites used to gather the information.

Requests for research for homework purposes: I do not do homework for anyone. I merely help find sources needed for the requester to use in preparing his/her assignments.

Now...

I'm going post the privacy policy Google says I need in the blog, change the date to the day I started everything so it's at the bottom of the blog, and then create a link to it on the side of the screen.

Anyway...here's the privacy policy I've come up with:

"Unlike other privacy policies, this is going to be short, sweet and to the point. Because I have sponsors for my hit counter and ads, I need to let you know that they will be exercising their rights to collect third party ‘cookies’ when you visit my website.

I don’t even pretend to understand everything involved in cookies, only that I need to allow them to visit some of the websites I visit. I also need to delete them from my control panel periodically or my computer will run slow. That is the total extent of my knowledge about them. Maybe if they had chocolate chips or nuts, I might show a little more interest but they don’t so...

Que sera sera.

I also know that if I don’t allow my sponsors to collect third party cookies, I can’t have the counter or the ads, both of which I want on my blog.

So...

Having passed this information along, you have two options. Continue reading my blog, which I will try to make as interesting and entertaining as possible, and deleting the cookies you pick up here along with the cookies you pick up at other websites. Or stop coming to my blog...which I sincerely hope you don’t decide to do.

If you continue visiting, it shall be understood that you agree to the collection of third party cookies and will hold me and the sponsors blameless from anything that might happen because of said cookies, whatever that may be.

And trust me, I have no clue what those things might be because, like you, I just clear them out from time to time."