Tales from the Trenches: Unthankful for free

On Saturday, K- and I went to Lowe's for the building clinic. We make it 97% of the time that they have workshops scheduled. This week was a monster truck. It was nice and heavy. It rolls very well. A rather lovely project.

We got in, built the truck, got the patch and certificate and headed out through the parking lot. There was what I presume was a grandfather and his granddaughter having a discussion.

"You know, the cars for the truck to run over, I don't know how long those will actually last." (They were paperboard cars that you build, the car runs over them and you refold them.)

"Well, I'm not so certain about these stickers. I just don't know." (The medium weight slick stickers to decorate the outside of the truck with.)

Really? I'm surprised that they didn't complain about the design on the patch that you get free after having built the project.

I know that at work, we give out a free ornament to each FAMILY (though there are folks who abuse that) and people have complained. One year, they tried something new. They gave out something different. Of course, we had a few complaints:

"If you are going to be giving things out like this, I'm just going to stop shopping here."

It is a free ornament. It is thoughtful. We don't buy ugly, funky stuff. Get over it.

For the folks who complain about free items, they are free. Your taking advantage of them is purely optional. You do not have to fill your home with them. You do not have to enjoy them. You can say, "No thank you." Please keep your ungrateful comments to yourself.

There are plenty of times that I have declined free items that I would not or could not use. We declined a load of brown mulch this weekend from the neighbor. He got a little over zealous on ordering mulch and got way too much. We declined for several different reasons including the biggest reason-- we have black mulch. We also have mulch that is chunkier and not shreds that just won't last. See? It was a thoughtful gesture and as we thanked profusely for being asked, we respectfully declined the load of unmatching mulch. It isn't that hard. (By the way, this was the other Mike, not the Mike who gives us all of the electronics. We have Mikes that lives on either side of us.)

There are more examples that I could probably talk about, but oh. my. heavens.

Question of the day:
Have you run across someone completely thankless for something that was nice and free? Do tell!

Smiles in my day:
- All the rain that we are getting makes up for the watering that I haven't been doing. I've been watering the plants next to the house, but I've left the perennials to fend for themselves. They've been just fine and my water bill thanks me for it. Our rain gauge measure 2" in the last 24 hours.
- K- and Hubs went bowling today. What a riot. She went all prepared with a turquoise tank top, matching terry cloth shorts, a fabric headband on like a sweat band around her forehead, knee high socks and worn out brown shoes from school. Ah yes. She is a fashion plate. And yes, she won.
- The Amish gentleman was here replacing a lifted board on K-'s swing set tower when I arrived home. Realizing the time, I quickly packed him a dinner to go. Thankfully, I had turkey tenderloin, carrots and potatoes in the crock pot. It was 6:30 PM, he still had probably about an hour and a half before he arrived home and he was very thankful! We were grateful that he did a board replacement.
- I GOT A RAISE! It has been a long time, since my boss' have been a bit more conservative due to the economic environment all of us have been experiencing. I was so excited! I still am!
- My boss' decided to make Monday, July 5th a paid holiday. I will be painting part of our kitchen and getting paid for it. HOORAY!!!

Have a great day!

Have a great day!

Embracing baking soda

No, this is not a paid product review. Just my own personal thoughts here.

I've been working toward using some more natural things in our home/life. The turn of the year brought me to the conclusion that I would switch from deodorant with aluminum to something more body friendly. I started using Tom's of Maine Lavender Deodorant.

At first, I was pretty pleased. The smell was great. It seemed to work well enough. By the end of the day I could tell that I had overrun the effectiveness, but it was winter so it didn't matter right then.

I found myself digging near my underarms.

The effectiveness was lasting for a markedly shorter period of time when the warmer weather came.

Then I noticed it. Tom's of Maine actually burnt the area encircling my underarm. My underarm was the donut center to a very red, dry and large itchy area. Oh, it did not feel good and definitely wouldn't work for bathing suit season. I switched back to Dove Deodorant to clear the mess up. I used Dove for a few months and decided that I would try an aluminum free deodorant again.

My sister suggested Arm & Hammer Essentials Natural Deodorant. She found that it worked very well for her, particularly during warm days, and was effective for about 12 hours before a need of re-application came up.

I'm happy to say that I've been using it for about a week and find that the same is true for me. A bonus? No underarm burn! At $2.99/stick, it is a bargain!

I also buy Arm & Hammer laundry detergent. I figured that it wasn't probably 100% natural by any stretch, but went on the hunt for some more answers on that. Surprisingly, Arm & Hammer is being sued for not disclosing the ingredient listing of their cleaning products. Seventh Generation and companies of the like are in compliance, but sadly Arm & Hammer (according to this report) is not. Still, the detergent feels light and fluffy like baking soda. It doesn't seem gummy like the Surf detergent I was using previously. I have no problem with it dissolving in even cold water, which again was a problem that caused me to ditch Surf. (It wasn't a problem all along, I believe that they changed formulas and Sam's Club started carrying a different scent that I was allergic to.) It cleans our clothes well, isn't overly perfumed and is a bargain at $11.86/box (145 loads.)

I was talking to my organic chicken farmer friend and she reports that she has just started using baking soda to replace cleanser and other cleaners. My question-- does it naturally disinfect? I need to go on the hunt for more information.

What about you? Do you have a love for baking soda or other natural cleaners? Do tell.

Smiles in my weekend:
- Having a few weeks worth of breathing before 3 straight weeks of summer camp starts.

Have a great day!

Barnes & Noble free ship weekend!

Free shipping through June 27, 2010 with no minimum and no coupon code. Of course, some exclusions apply, but here's the scoop. I picked up 4 discounted Junie B. books for K- to add to her collection. My total with tax? $11.86.

If you feed your order through My Points, you get 12 points per dollar. Hooray!

Nothing says, "Jesus loves you!" like a good VBS head lice check.

It started last night at about 10:30 PM. My sister's friend called stating that she thought that her daughter got lice at our VBS. My sister called me. Since it was a suspected case with nothing afoot to speak of (including my sister's children and my child coming up free of feet), we were thinking that perhaps she was in a state of hypochondria. Still, this AM, I pulled the director aside and told her.

The VBS teacher asked my niece why her friend wasn't there today. She stated that J- was sick. The teacher inquired more as to what was wrong. That was when my niece whispered to her, "J-'s mom thinks that she found bugs in her hair."

At that point, we thought it best to pull the class (as per Health Department protocol since we do have a school on site) and check to be sure. After an hour and a half, we had three suspected cases and I cashed in on the one live case we had.

Oh joy.

Parents were called. Siblings were pulled. We have one family that wants to treat (a suspected case) and come to our shin-dig this evening. I told her that my advice was to call the Health Department to ask their take on treatment and holding.

How were the kids? They were good sports. We didn't make a big deal about it. If they had what we thought or confirmed, they went outside to the bench and waited. If they were cleared, they colored on the mural. No one made fun of anyone else and no one panicked.

Still, I could have thought of may other ways that we could have had fun other than checking kids' heads.

For now, my head is tingly after having been highly conditioned with tea tree conditioner. K- is still under treatment. I figure that for the two of us, it can't hurt.

:scratch, scratch:

Oh, and this is post number 2 today. Read on.

ETA:
The child that had the live lice looking back at me and waving? Well, the parents checked her head, saw nothing, chose NOT to treat her and brought her tonight to the end of the week family gathering anyhow! UGH!!!! Really? Another suspected case came, but he was treated per instructions from the Health Department.

When we arrived home this evening, K-'s hair got checked and scrubbed -- again -- and is smelling tea tree fine right now. I was also told that the lice buggies don't like Garnier Fructis, which I have a whole host of product from, so I used that on her, too.

UGH! YUCK! ICK!

:scratch, scratch:

Why use a knife when you can just use a playing card?

Today was library club. It's the day where we go to the library, K- turns in her book reports on what she's read for the week and we get to watch the program of the week that the library has scheduled. This week was a magician. It wasn't just any ole backyard magician, but the guy that my husband and I watched on Time Warp.

Y'all, he is great! The room was packed with kids and everyone-- adults included-- loved it.

Hooray!

Smiles in my day:
- My migraine management seems to be helping and daily it is getting much better.
- The library club today.
- K- and I will be handing candy out at a parade for Hubs' work. We'll be with him as he pulls a float and instead of being pelted with candy, we will be the ones pelting!
- The last day of VBS is Friday and though we've loved it, I'm very tired. Wow!

Have a great weekend!

My furnace had a sinus infection.

I woke up this morning to the racket of Hubs banging on the air ducts in the basement. I had no idea what was going on, but after about 10 minutes, it stopped. He came upstairs to tell me that the air conditioning tube needed to be cleaned since it had deposited water on the basement floor. He said that he'd deal with it when he got home. Since it was to be 90+, we debated the idea of leaving the windows cracked open at the top or just keeping them shut altogether. I checked the forecast, they were predicting Armageddon again, so I opted to keep them closed.

Good thing. 80 mile per hour wind gusts came through and knocked the plant clean off the front steps. That's getting away from the subject at hand, though.

Since Hubs went into work a little early, he got out earlier and came home first to see if he could unclog the tube. He called me on his way to pick K- up to let me know he was done, the air was on and plugging along nicely.

When he got home, the basement floor was wet again. He pulled the cover off to the furnace and it was all wet, too.

Fantastic.

He called my dad to confirm that there was another tube that needed cleaned. My dad was the one to install the furnace and A/C about 5 years ago, and he used sealer on the PVC piping he used. There was no way to get the pipe apart. My dad and Hubs discussed his using the air compressor to blow the snot sludge out of the additional tube.

I'm glad to say that our furnace is no longer experiencing an impaction of yellow snot.

Go now. Check your tubies and pipe things. Make sure that they are free of snot.

This public service announcement brought to you by the Bailey's Leaf Family of Fine Experiences to Learn From.

Smiles in my day:
- That Hubs is handy and my dad is his back-up.
- The migraine measures are helping. I'm not 100%, but I see improvement each day.

Have a great day!

Unconsciously self-destructive

I may have mentioned in times past that I suffer from the occasional migraine. There have been times that I've had a cycle that I had a difficult time breaking. I've had that happen twice. The first time, I was stuck in the old basement of our office building counting the very dusty artificial flower back stock. All that dust gave me an instant migraine that lasted for about 3 1/2 weeks. That one had stabbing pain. Recently, I've been stuck in another migraine cycle. Since the very end of May, I've been suffering from low-grade migraines. As I was walking home from leaving K- off to school, I was having pain in my jaw. I discovered the cause. I had been back to clinching my teeth. Not only was I doing it at night, but I found that I was unconsciously doing that during the day.

Stress my friends.

I decided that I would dust off the ole night guard and wear it to break myself of my nighttime clinching habit. During the day, I would have to be more in tune to my unconscious actions. After a few days of wearing the night guard, I thought I had licked the problem.

The migraine haze progressed.

The humming pain at the right back of my neck has continued.

I've taken Excedrin Migraine, Advil, Tylenol, cough syrup, Advil Cold & Sinus and Claritin. Each had their own smallish effect, but nothing has licked it. Off and on for almost the past month, I've continued with the migraine hum.

I don't know why I hadn't done it earlier, but I consulted with our staff Migraine Guru on Monday. Bless her heart, Cheryl stuck around after she had clocked out to help work out an action plan. Here is our plan:

1. Increase water consumption. I've thought I was pretty good at drinking water, but after really thinking about it, I'm not taking in as much as possible. Dehydration can give a mean headache.
2. Decrease caffeine consumption. I buy pop in the cans to help me keep track of portions better. If I buy it in a 2 liter, I tend not to keep control. I was consuming 1-3 cans of soda a day. 1 will be my limit. (It was before.)
3. Change pillows. I have two pillows. One is the memory foam dip kind of pillow that I bought to keep my head a bit more aligned. When I was suffering from the migraine cycle before, I found that it didn't help that I was sleeping with two pillows that had my head tilted weird, I was breathing weird at night (with Hubs waking me) and I think that I wasn't taking in the proper amount of oxygen that my noggin required. The dippy pillow helped with that. Now I've dumped the dippy pillow for the big, lumpy, comfy pillow and I slept delightfully last night.
4. Wear my mouth guard. It is a little weird to have something latched onto my top teeth, but it is key in breaking the cycle. I wore it last night and I do believe that it helped today.
5. Consider sweet talking the massotherapist that works in our office to work on my head. Believe me, I have cash and would definitely pay her.
6. Make a rice compress. I certainly have enough fabric to quickly craft one. Heat 1 minute, then in 20 second increments. I can handle that.
7. Stretching. Cheryl has instructed that I do some upper body stretching. Most importantly, when I stretch my head from right to left, I must follow up from left to right. I haven't mirrored my stretches and that could cause issue. Seems to make sense and it has helped.
8. Meditation. I used to do meditation back in college. When I was working as an office assistant for a psychologist, I was so stressed between work and school that my hair was falling out in chunks. The one mama psychologist on staff suggested meditation and brought me things to try. It worked. Wouldn't hurt to try it again.

Changes so far? Caffeine consumption, water intake (though that needs more help), pillows changed, mouth guard worn and stretching done.

If anyone else is a fellow migraine sufferer, my apologies. Do you have any tricks that work for you that aren't on my list. Yes, they must be legal.

Smiles in my day:
- My friend Heather came to my rescue, again. K- accidentally locked us out of the house (happens every year during VBS week). My purse, keys and cell were in the house. I knocked on 3 different neighbors doors before I finally found a neighbor up, called Hubs and basically confirmed that he hadn't replaced the outside key he lost. Heather came to pick me up, took me, K- and her kids to VBS.
- My mother-in-law brought her extra house key when she picked K- up from VBS, drove us back home and made sure that I got in, got my stuff and on my way.
- Yes, the key has been replaced and I placed it on nothing mobile, unlike my husband. He considered himself fired from extra key placement after last time.

Have a great day!