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No longer on the river and, again, an empty nester. Back to living on Fleming Island and making some more friends!

Monday, December 21, 2009

Ugh! Is this mess really worth the savings????

This morning, having no set plans, to look more presentable during the upcoming holidays, I decided to remove my silver. Well, if anyone saw me while I was doing this, I would have to yell, "Look away! I am hideous!!!", like Kramer did in "Seinfeld". Sorry, David, I had to throw in a reference to make my point....Such a mess! My first mistake was forgetting to put baby oil around my face edges, or ears and neck. Now I look tattooed, could join the circus if I wanted to! Even though I take nearly every precaution to prevent a mess, I still end up with one, including a few spots on the ceramic tile floor in my bathroom. And my sink! And the faucets and the light switches! A comfort is that my hair is short which limits the amount of the product needed, or it could be much, much worse! What costs about $40 at the beauty shop only cost me a tenth of this amount at home, minus the cost of ruined towels and cleaning products to remove the stains!
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A couple things passed through my brain today and of course, I developed a leak so some escaped. One thing which stayed was an advertisement on the radio about buying underprivileged children admission to a sporting event, using the prod of "giving back to the children" who may never experience a major sporting event. That burns my biscuits! If I want to treat someone to an event, that is entirely up to me, and my own motivation. NOT about 'giving back', I really dislike strongly this type of thinking. If the children are truly underprivileged, a bag of groceries provided by a generous person goes further than a sporting event. Anyone??
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The late night/early morning vote that took place gives me the creeps and I do hope when the elected officials are in their districts over the CHRISTmas break they hear from their constituents regarding this horrendous not-yet-completely-read health care plan. It will certainly compromise our futures, financial and liberties, privacy, all that. Even the CBO thinks it is a bad idea economically and determined folks will still fall through the cracks after this fiasco goes into effect. I am so sad about this, 'let me be clear'!
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Ready for more complaints? I am loaded for bear this afternoon! Because my fingers are stained from the hair silver remover, nail polish was required to disguise the ugliness. Since my favorite bottle leaked all over the inside of my travel bag, I had to use a different one from the drawer. As I attempted to stroke it on my nails, the polish was nothing but gummy strings, having outlived its usefullness. Somehow I even got some on my desk and I hope some remover will take care of this stain. But, I got enough on the nails to cover up the other mess and deposited the bottle in the trash, right alongside the remnants of the silver remover. Waste is going on over here, lots of it, seemingly!
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The temperatures outside are in the mid-40's with the lows overnight in the 30's, as predicted. My room is snug and warm with the heater on and the doors closed to bottle it up. A bit of sun shines in, not a whole lot, but at least it is not gloomy. It seems the water level is going down after our deluges last week, which wreaked havoc at Twila's house. When the water level is too high, she had troubles with her septic system and drainage so hopefully she is now able to shower and use her dishwasher and washing machine again. My feet are dressed in fuzzy slippers and I am sporting a sweater gotten at CJ Banks when at Lori's house. Counting the days until she comes here to spend the holidays!!!
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Saturday night I cleaned my oven, using, of course, the self-cleaning feature. One thing about that is not all the soil, burned-on foods turn to ash in the cleaning process. I ruined a red dishcloth by wiping the black stuff off the floor of the oven and the door, but it did not all come off. I was thinking of my friend, Tarren, when the oven was creaking and groaning during the cleaning process, as just prior to their last visit I had heard about an oven door exploding, one just like mine! This was my excuse for not cooking at that time, but I sort of got over it, until I remembered when the oven was making funny sounds when cleaning itself. I can just visualize shards of black glass stuck in the ceiling and cabinets from the explosion!!!
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Everyone I meet is now treated to my saga of shopping on Saturday morning/afternoon. That entire episode took nearly three hours, going first to Wal*Mart for the non-food items and then Publix for the rest. In total it was four trips from the car to bring it upstairs, plus the bag I found in the car yet, in the front seat, Sunday morning. I knew I had bought nacho chips and dip for David plus a half-loaf of bread. By the way, I think selling half loaves of bread are the best thing since sliced bread. Not being nuts about refrigerated bread, having only half on my counter at a time better sense to me, if I eat it before it turns green! My premise of making bras grey to start with, saving me the trouble, works for making bread green, saving me the trouble of looking for mold---right?
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Judy C. was asking me about the shopping last night at church, when I explained it is incredibly rare for me to buy in quantity like I did on the weekend. I even got to use a $5 off coupon for purchases over $50! I wish I'd had a purseful of those coupons! The plan was to make sure I had plenty of stuff on hand for my guests so no last minute store runs would be necessary. Once when Alayna stayed a few weeks in the summer, her mom called to ask if she was eating something other than French fries. Alayna told her mom that the only fruit Kim has in her house is either wax or wood. Okay, Alayna, get your shoes on, we are going to the store and you can pick out whatever you want to eat....That child used to eat peppers like apples! Ew! I have some fresh cut green peppers in case she wants a snack, from the pizza bar at Publix! Yes, I do have the Pampered Chef blitz hacker for chopping veggies but when they come already chopped........

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kim, you are too funny! I also take the home remedy for silver hair. I have an old t shirt just for the occasion so I don't wreck everything I wear!
Don't you love those coupons for the grocery store. I saved almost $95.00 with my coupons today, only paid $38.00 for all my stuff. Makes me happy to get a deal. My daughter Kelly was just in an AP article and picture about saving money w/coupons.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-ap-us-holiday-shoppers-smart-phones,0,6493222.story
That' the link if you want to check it out! Diane

Kim Lahaie Day said...

Hi Dee Dee!

How fun to save more money than you spent! That happened to me at Kohl's last week shopping for Justin (sshhh!).

Publix sends these $5 coupons every now again in the mail and as I do not take the paper, miss the other bargains. It is really a non-issue, though, because of hardly ever stocking Mrs. Hubbard's cupboards here!

A special shirt just for this mess? Hmmm....I used to have a whole area of my closet just for "painting clothes", back in the old days when we did our painting/staining. Must do that again, I guess, for silver removal!

Smiles,

Kim

Anonymous said...

I too have a special shirt and towel to use when dying my hair. I need to do it but I am afraid of the mess now because of the new place. I agree with you on the underprivileged
children. I would get calls about sending children to the circus. I asked who was going to take mine? Why not take them to a CHRISTmas program which is free? Winter hugs! Jilly

Kim Lahaie Day said...

Dear Jill!

What you said is profound!! Yes, treat them to a CHRISTmas service or any worship opportunity, let them hear the Good News which will last the rest of their days! Bravo!

Usually I do have a towel used for the hair ritual but it was my skin and other things which got messed up more than a towel would have helped!

Keeping warm, too!

Kim