Scribbit is having a shoe contest! Bet you can’t guess what the shoes have to do to win. Bet you can guess what the prize will be. In order to win the shoes have to inspire a marvelous post about (all together now) SHOES. And when the winner is announced, the prize will be (all together now) SHOES!
Don’t you just love shoes? Do you love them as much as Imelda does? It was said that when she and President Marcos fled the Philippines in 1986, she left behind over 3,000 pairs of shoes. Now you know any woman who loves shoes that much just had to have taken her favorites with her. I wonder how many she rescued. She’s now back living in the Philippines and is still rescuing many more of those shoes. She’s opened the Marikina Footwear Museum in Manila. Although there are other exhibits, most of them are her own shoes. Marikina is the shoe capital of the Philippines. How fitting that it is also the home of so many shoes belonging to probably the world’s best known lover of shoes.
If you would like to enter the contest, follow the rules and whip up a bit of froth about shoes. Sounds like a winning recipe to me.
While I was at work yesterday, I picked up a bottle of the hand sanitizer and realized that we’re using a different brand. It’s called AprilGuard® Professional Hand Sanitizer and is manufactured by Chester Labs. A little background is probably needed before I share some thoughts. You need to understand that I work in mental health in a locked crisis stabilization unit. That means that sometimes we have to scrape people off the padded walls. Well, not literally, but they often are quite unstable when they come in and need a lot of attention to help them maintain control. I don’t know if maybe it takes someone whose mind travels the path less trod to work in this environment or if the mind just needs to wander a little in order to take a break from the tension that can build on a unit like this. Either way, I’m holding this little bottle of clear gel in my hand and thinking, “AprilGuard. I wonder if it will work today since it’s May instead of April.”
There’s almost always one like me in a crowd, if the crowd is large enough. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to crack me up, but really now. Why on earth would someone name a product for one month of the year when you know they want to sell it year round? Maybe it was named for someones daughter who just happened to be named April. Small children do get dirty when they go outside to play. Or maybe April was a little older, but a tomboy. Playing softball and climbing trees can be a dirty pastime. Or maybe April grew up and and decided to take up an occupation such as one of the building trades, or landscaping or digging ditches. Actually, I could be on the wrong track entirely. Maybe it was made to guard against someone named April. No one named April works at my facility. If the AprilGuard inventor was female, maybe it’s aimed at keeping April, the stealer of boyfriend’s at a distance. Or it could be guarding against an April member of that notorious breed known as mothers-in-law.
Oh, no! It might not be named for a person. What if it really is named for the month of April? That month could be a month of unpleasant memories. Maybe that’s the month this person got married, separated or divorced. Maybe that’s the month someone realized he’s going to flunk out of college, or someone turned down his proposal of marriage. Or maybe someone crashed his race car and realized he just blew his chance to drive in the Indy 500 the following month. Maybe someone is just sick to death of April showers. Or maybe it’s a name that just happened and no one really gave much thought to it at all.
Whatever the reason, I like AprilGuard. I’ve used a lot of different kinds of hand sanitizers in my career and I think AprilGuard is one of the best. It’s just the right consistency. Some people don’t realize that you don’t need a huge glob of this stuff for it to work. You just need enough to be able to rub it in all over your hands until it’s dry if you want it to do it’s thing properly. I’ve had some sanitizer that is a liquid. Now that’s hard to control. With AprilGuard you can get the right amount first try. Also, April doesn’t seem to dry my hands out so much like using a lot of soap and water or some of the other sanitizers. By the way, I haven’t been paid to review this product. I wonder if I should try using some in my shower to clean up some of that Middle Eastern mud. I wonder if Chester Labs would like to send me some of their other products to try? Hmmm, I wonder who Chester is.
It’s Women’s Clothing Month at Sew, Mama, Sew! This blog is a good place to go to be linked up with various kinds of sewing tutorials. All kinds of irksome sewing questions will be answered throughout this month. Right now they have a post on how to take measurements. Other areas to be covered include selecting patterns and adjusting their fit, making a sloper and mastering details and techniques.
Monday Mama will be introducing a sew along pattern of a vintage based smock top. Retro and vintage are two words that are turning up all over the place regarding women’s fashions. Mama’s also introducing a new forum. This looks like a good place to turn with specific questions that haven’t been answered elsewhere on the site.
Head on over to Sew, Mama, Sew! and check it out. While you’re there browse through the tutorials from recent contest entries. I like the cute little tie skirt. I have some of my dad’s old neckties and think I just may have to try that out. After you look them over, let me know which project caught your fancy.
In late November 2007 Patrick at Cash Money Life asked us to make SMART goals.
S – specific
M – measurable
A – actionable
R – realistic
T – timely
These are my SMART goals for 2008:
My main financial goal for 2008 is to pay off a no interest x 1 year purchase of a new central a/c unit. This will be $4,485 due in July. During the second half of the year my goal is to pay off all remaining medical bills from an unexpected 10 day hospital admit and two surgeries. Right now that is approximately $2,000. Being optimistic now my goal for the remainder of the year will be to pay off my car. I am so looking forward to no car payments (ever).
This is how I’ve done:
All money saved for A/C pay off. I’ll be sending that near the end of June.
All medical bills paid off.
$1288 left on my car loan. I’ll be putting a big chunk of our stimulus check towards that. $600 will be going into the emergency fund and $500 towards the car which will be paid off by the end of July.
I need a goal for the rest of the year. I owe $8450 on my credit card. God willing, that will be paid off by the end of the year. I’ve already decided on a plan for drastically reducing the cost and hassle of Christmas 2008. (No, it doesn’t have anything to do with gift cards.) Think RED! I will post about my new discovery next week.
Well, that nap I took lasted all night. I wanna go home! I’m achy from that hard ground, I’m dirty and I’m hungry. At least I’m not still water logged. Now, where is that blasted book? Okay, it’s here under some of this worthless brush bed I made. The book hasn’t helped all that much yet, but at least it’s something. I guess if I find something to eat I could rub a couple sticks together and make a fire. The pages ought to help get the fire going a bit. What a joke! Me rubbing two sticks together and actually making a fire? Yeah, sure. My Girl Scout troop went camping out in hotels. We were a city bunch.
So what other helpful information is in this book? How to climb out of a well. Do people dig wells on deserted islands? Maybe it’s deserted because people didn’t dig wells and died off from drinking that water that causes diarrhea. Ummm. Maybe I’d better not let my mind wander there. Here’s a section on how to navigate a minefield. Please tell me these people didn’t plant a minefield before they died off. Maybe they forgot where they planted the mines and blew themselves off this chunk of land. It really doesn’t look as if there’s been a bunch of blasts going off here. In any case, let’s see what it says. Keep my eyes on my feet. Freeze. Freeze? It’s too hot here to freeze. As far as not moving, I haven’t even started walking yet. And if I don’t like what I see, walk backwards. Run that by me again. If I don’t like what I see, walk backwards. That way I just won’t see myself stepping on that stuff that’s going to blast me right off this island. Let’s just pretend that there are no mines here. I think we’ll ignore the section about falling through the ice and needing to survive in frigid water. We’ll worry about that when hell freezes over.
I’m still hungry and thirsty. Here we go. How to find water on a deserted island. Maybe this little book is good for something after all. Collect rainwater in anything handy, such as a bowl, plate or helmet. Give me a break. I’m not going to go searching for a chunk of a downed tree to hollow out a bowl with some rock! Collect dew. This could work. Tie rags or tufts of fine grass around my ankles and walk around. No rags, but I can use my socks. Then wring them out into that container I don’t have. I don’t think so. I can just open my mouth and drink, as long as I hold my breath and don’t think about those dirty, smelly socks. Except now the dew is dried up from the sun glaring down. Catch a fish (bare handed out of the rushing current that landed me here) and suck the eyes. I don’t think so! Look for bird droppings. I’m not even going to read that section. My imagination is running wild and I don’t want to know. I’m not that thirsty yet. Maybe I’ll just find that river water that’s going to give me diarrhea. Now it’s telling me to find that banana tree that I couldn’t find before I took my nap. If I ever find that water I know how to purify it – not that I have anything that I need to do it. I’m still hungry and I don’t feel like fishing without a pole or building animal traps. I need something now, not next week.
Come on, let’s go tramping through this jungle and see if we can find some fruit or something. I’m tossing this book and leaving it to rot. I just don’t want to read any more scary novels. If I want to take a book on my next trip, it’s going to be something tame like learn how to speak Finnish in three easy lessons. Hey, this isn’t so difficult walking through the jungle. It’s almost like a little path. I certainly hope it’s not a lion path or something. Look. The jungle ended already. We’re almost out. Oh, no! What’s that? After all I’ve gone through, I can’t believe what I’m seeing. That’s a little hut over there. I wonder if it’s deserted. Are there people there? Are they friendly? And that? It’s a boat. There’s a river or something over there. Let’s go. Hurry! I want to catch that boat before they leave me stranded here. They’re coming back. They saw me. I don’t believe this. Those people look like a bunch of tourists. “Yes, of course it was a bad storm yesterday. Where am I? Who are you? A tour director? Where am I? One of the Florida Keys? Hey, I’ve been to Key West. It doesn’t look anything like this!” Marquesas Keys? I’ve never heard of those. Ummm This tour brochure says they’re 30 miles west of Key West. Overgrown by mangrove. That explains the jungle. They are protected as part of the Key West National Wildlife Refuge. The Marquesas were used for target practice by the military as recent as 1980. Shit! I could’ve been walking through a minefield!
I’m wondering why I never noticed that before. How many animals do you think Noah took on the ark? Bet you said two of each. I would have before this morning. I usually read the New Testament, but have recently been delving into Genesis. I’ve made it through Genesis 9 and have learned several new things – a couple of which have revised what I’ve “known” since I was a child. I also figured out why the Jewish day runs from sundown to sundown. Quick question. Who was the oldest man in the Bible? I hear a chorus of “Methuselah.” Yes, he was oldest at the ripe old age of 969. That’s only 31 years short of 1000. Man, that’s a century! And we make a big deal out of reaching 100. But Methuselah only made the record by 7 years. Jared lived to be 962. A lot of the guys back then lived to be over 900 years old. Noah was 950 when he died.
Oh, yes. Back to the animals. Do you know how long Noah and the other seven people lived on board that ark with all those animals? I know what you’re going to say. “Forty days and forty nights.” Wrong! That’s what I’ve always thought, too. It rained for forty days and forty nights. Noah and his family were actually cooped up with all those animals, birds and all the living things that “creepth upon the earth” for over a year. Think about that, folks. Think about the logistics of it. Noah, his family and all those critters had to eat for a year. We’re talking stockpiling the pantry big time. I used to work on some mighty large cruise ships and I still can’t visualize how much space it would take to store all that food. And you just know those animals multiplied. Just think what a pair of rabbits alone could do in a year. That would take a lot of rabbit pellets just to feed them. How much do you think the elephants and rhinos ate? Noah had his hands full. He had to have spent a lot of time tending the pets. It’s a good thing TV hadn’t been invented yet. The only spare time he had was probably spent on meals and sleeping long enough to recover and start over again the next day. I wonder if Mrs. Noah had to sit on her hands to keep from swatting the flies. Each female housefly can lay over 9,000 eggs.
I wonder how many mouths Noah had to feed during that year. Okay, okay. I’ll tell you how many pairs he took on the ark with him. He took seven pairs of the clean animals and the birds. He only took one pair of all the rest of the animals and creepy crawlies. That’s still a lot of mouths to feed.
Thanks to one of my readers, I now know how to Speed Lace. This is a very unique way to lace up your shoes. It appears that this system was designed for runners, but I see many applications for them. If your child has a problem learning to tie shoe laces or just won’t put his shoes on because he has to tie them, Speed Lace them. If you are elderly and your body doesn’t cooperate with you as much as you like, Speed Lace. If you are overweight and have trouble reaching your shoes, Speed Lace them. If you have chronic respiratory problems and the effort to tie shoes leaves you huffing and puffing, Speed Lace. If you have physical limitations that make tying your shoes difficult, Speed Lace. If you’re just lazy, Speed Lace. And of course, there’s the original use for runners. Instead of having the friction of regular ties while you’re trying to finish the Boston Marathon, Speed Lace.
Throw away your conventional laces and replace them with these handy dandy little jobs. They come with lacing guides which fit into the lace holes of your shoes. Run the elastic through these and use the cord-lock and these laces adjust themselves to the movement of your foot. These babies come in both elastic and non-elastic and in 8 colors: black, off-white, light blue, royal blue, navy blue, red, orange and yellow.
I’m going to become a Speed Lacer! I couldn’t wait. I just came back from ordering two pair. I’m already thinking about how much more comfortable my feet are going to be during those long 12 hour shifts.
A co-worker came on my unit several weeks ago with a new bounce in his steps and a smile on his face. He had been in an accident nearly two years ago and still struggling with pain and difficulty walking. It seemed that more often than not he had to use a crutch to get around. Not only did that make working more difficult, it just flat out messed with his quality of life. This particular weekend marked a new beginning for him. When we asked him what was making him feel so good that particular day, he pointed to his feet.
I’ve never seen anything like his shoes before. Those were strange looking suckers! The main thing though, is the freedom and comfort he experiences because of them. They’re called z-coil shoes. They have a shock absorbing design and are specifically engineered to relieve foot, leg, and back pain. They come in a variety of styles from the sneaker to sandals and dressier shoes for both men and women. They even have speed lacing. Don’t ask as I don’t have a clue. If you know what speed lacing is, please let me know. The company’s site has a very interesting section about foot health information. Add that to your favorites. If you don’t have foot problems now, you may well have eventually. 75% of Americans have some kind of foot problems. Continue reading »
