Well It's Not Flesh Eating Bacteria After All

Keith went back to urgent care for a follow up on his eyeball yesterday, and it's not staph, which is good, but the doctor thinks it may be shingles, which isn't so good. I don't know a whole lot about shingles other than if you had chicken pox as a kid, which most of us did, you can develop shingles later in life, especially if you are under a lot of stress.

Stress? Keith being stressed out? Only every day that he goes to work!

So, he was given a prescription for more antibiotics and told to take them five, yes five times a day, on top of the antibiotics that he is already taking four times a day. But, instead of just one pill five times a day, he has to take four pills five times a day because they didn't have any pills available with 800 mg in one pill, so has to take four 200 mg pills in each dose. Each pill is huge and the bottle of pills is even huger. Giant mega bottle of pills. That he needs to carry around with him so he can take them five times a day.

Hopefully all these meds will clear everything up, since it's by his eye, it can cause some major eyesight problems, like not being able to SEE!

And, on a lighter note, here is Mimi hiding. You're doing it wrong!


And, I woke up to five emails in my inbox this morning and got all excited thinking that at least one of them had to be an etsy sale, right? But, no, just a bunch of junk, things like the bank letting me know that the bills I paid yesterday online were sent, and an email from Michaels with a coupon in it.

I spent most of the last few days retaking product photos and renewing everything in my shop and was hoping that would generate some sales, but I guess everyone else is as broke as we are at the end of the month, what with having to make the house payment and all. Oh, well...

Flesh Eating Bacteria

Keith's got it.

Well, maybe not the flesh eating kind, but it looks like he's got a staph infection around his eye.

Over the weekend he noticed a red bump on his eyebrow that hurt, so of course he pokes around thinking that it's a pimple or an ingrown hair, doing his own brand of surgery that he does on anything unusual on his body. He's not one to leave things alone, he'll take tweezers or razor blades to things. I always yell at him for poking and prodding things that should be just left alone.

So, by Sunday afternoon his eyebrow is kind of puffy and hurts, and by Monday morning his eyelid is swollen and hurts, then by the time he gets home from work the whole area around his eye is really really swollen and really really hurts. We're thinking it's a bug bite or something and I suggest that he call the doctor but of course he doesn't.

Then he goes to work on Tuesday barely able to see out of that eye, calls the doctor from work and of course they have absolutely no openings at all and tell him to quit messing around and get himself to urgent care. He plans on leaving work at noon but of course can't get out of there until a few hours after noon, comes home and we go over to urgent care. After a very long wait, the doctor takes one look at his eye, which now has weird purple streaks on his eyebrow, and says 'mmm, looks like staph infection'. The doctor takes some samples from up inside his nose, because apparently staph can lurk in your nasal cavity (along with some other body cavities as we found out when we googled staph), gives him a big old shot of penicillin or something, and a prescription for antibiotics or something, then tells him staph can be very serious ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S AROUND YOUR EYEBALL!!

Then, he is told to come back in two days to make sure that the medicines are working, because staph is so very resistant and if one medicine isn't working, they have to try another.

But, his eye did look a lot less swollen yesterday, so we are hoping the medicine is working and we'll find out today if it was indeed staph, and hopefully it's not the flesh eating kind of staph.

And where did he pick up a staph infection anyway? Who knows, from what the doctor said and we googled, it's becoming more and more common and and you don't even have to go to the hospital to get it these days, any little scratch on your skin can get infected with staph, so wash well, folks!

Pink Ribbons Everywhere

October is breast cancer awareness month, just in case you haven't noticed it yet. I think it's great that a whole month is dedicated to breast cancer awareness and finding a cure, but I think the whole awareness thing has gone the way that everything else goes in America, just another way to make a quick buck.

Pink ribbons on your product means that you are giving money to breast cancer research, right? Um, not necessarily, it just means that you've jumped on the bandwagon to the bank and are cashing in on a disease, similar to cashing in on Halloween or Mother's Day by making a product to fit the cause.

How about a little wind up toy to raise your awareness?


Or, you can file your nails with a pink ribbon emery board.



Use your hope on a rope soap while showering.

Then, after your shower, you can slip on your fluffy pink awareness slippers.


How about we just say F*ck awareness, find a cure?

Sparking the Creativity?

I got some new supplies this weekend, not that I really could afford to spend money on new supplies, but I'm trying to come up with some new ideas for my Etsy shop. I got a couple of beading magazines for inspiration, but finding the supplies for some of the ideas is a little challenging. Michael's just doesn't carry quite what I'm looking for and trying to find them on the internet is hard, too. I kind of like to be able to physically see and touch supplies and chain and such, it's so hard to tell if something on the internet is the something that will work for your project.

But, I did make three new necklaces and have supplies to make a few more, so we'll see how it goes.




I don't like the background in the pictures, though, so I'm going to be experimenting today with backgrounds and also taking new pictures of what's in my Etsy shop and getting rid of some of the 'shopworn'. I can't stand having things in my shop that have been sitting there for months, I know there's a chance that it still might sell, but I'm sick of looking at it.

I'm going to close down my Artfire shop, they changed how the search works so now if you have the free account your listings will only show up under random search, not in the newly listed. So, what's the point. Nobody seems to be selling all that much over there and I've never been a big fan of the site anyway. The $12.00 a month account is very reasonable compared to my Etsy fees, but reasonable doesn't pay the bills if nothing sells. At least you have a better chance on Etsy even if sales seem to be few and far between these days. This whole year, actually.

So, that's what I've got up my sleeve for today, taking new pictures and listing on Etsy. Maybe I'll do a little house cleaning, too, ha ha.

Stray Cats the Next Generation

Or, Who's Your Daddy?

I've talked about the stray cats in our neighborhood, the batch of kittens from our neighbor's back yard who are now grown and prowling around. You know, these two here:


Well, the other night I saw these two across the street:



Can you guess who mom and dad are?

Why Do You Text

Instead of just calling?

Every time a commercial comes on for some cell phone company with unlimited texting or whatever Keith gets all worked up about people texting instead of just calling. What is the appeal of texting and why can't you just talk on the phone and why do people need phones that can order your dinner for you or you can read a book on anyway? Can you tell that he is getting to be one of those cranky old men? These damn kids and their cell phones and driving while texting and what is so important that they need to be glued to thier phones anyway? Ruffians, all of them!! And whippersnappers, too!!

Since I don't have a cell phone and wouldn't know how to use one or text on it anyway, I cannot answer these burning questions for him. I don't know why people text, is it easier or cheaper than just calling? Is it so the people around you won't be disturbed by your loud phone conversation about your yeast infection? (True story, Keith was entertained by a woman discussing this exact thing while in line at the grocery store. Appetizing while shopping for your dinner, yes?) My only answer for texting is that maybe it's less time consuming than just talking on the phone about whatever? Why do YOU text instead of just calling? Seriously, inquiring old minds want to know!

What else is going on around here other than Keith ranting about cell phones?

Oh, he found a roll of film in his sock drawer so we took it to walmart to get developed, having no idea how old the roll was or what was on it, and then remembered last night that we hadn't picked it up yet, so we walked over to walmart to get it. We were also hungry and lazy so we ate a not so healthy but actually pretty tasty dinner at the McDonalds in the walmart. Fine dining, that was. Plus you get to watch all the people coming into the store.

The pictures were of his cousins wedding in 2006 and also a few from Jeremy's birthday party that same year. And some pictures that were just black, nightime I guess. I don't think we even have the camera that took the pictures anymore. Or maybe it's in the sock drawer.

And now I need to go clean the cat boxes, just another day in paradise.

What's For Lunch?

Rawwrrrr!! Actually she was yawning. Even our cats are bored.

Please excuse the dirtyness of the lunchbox, Keith is a hard working in the dirt and grease kind of guy.

We had another rather dull weekend here. Grocery shopping, cat food shopping, paying the bills, putting gas in the car kind of weekend. Of course after all that excitement we are once again broke until payday.

We did rent Monsters vs Aliens and watched that Saturday night. Very cute and fun to watch.

It's still kind of hot here. I'm assuming it's that pesky global warming thing, it is the middle of October and it seems to me we should be putting sweaters on, not sweating because it's HOT! We had to turn the air conditioner back on, it just got too hot inside the house and I was getting way too cranky.

And that is about it.

The Country Bumpkins Go To Target

We were supposed to have our first big storm of the season yesterday and today, but we didn't get any rain here yesterday, just lots of wind which stirred up all the dirt in all the empty fields and caused big dust storms here. Yeah, kind of like the dust bowl days. You could see the dirt in the air and taste it in your mouth. Everything outside was covered with a fine layer of dirt. No rain except for about five seconds of sprinkling in the morning.


The clouds in this picture were actually brown.

Last night Keith needed to go put some gas in the car so I suggested we go to the new Target that opened up last weekend and check out all the excitement. The new big super duper Target with a Starbucks inside in the new fancy schmancy Riverwalk Park section of town. The Riverwalk Park with the lake where people drown all the time.

So, our highlight of the evening was walking around the big new Target store. Whoo hoo! We didn't even buy anything because we didn't have any money. Not even enough for a Starbucks.

Other than an expanded grocery section it really wasn't much different than the Target by us so I don't think we'll ever go there again. It wouldn't make much sense to drive five miles to go to Target when there is one less than 1/2 mile away, now would it?

So, life is a little dull around here when all we have to talk about is the weather and the new Target.

Random Thoughts

Columbus Day? Does anyone other than federal or state employees even get this day off any more? I noticed our bank has a sign saying that they will be open today, so maybe even banks are giving up on this holiday.

Keith didn't shut his alarm off all the way this morning so at 4:30 am I woke up to his alarm beeping away. I don't know how to shut his off, so I had to get up and go find him to turn it off. He was in the garage. I don't know why he was in the garage at 4:30 am. Looking for something he needed to take to work today? I don't know and didn't ask. I just wanted the alarm shut off so I could go back to bed.

We went to the annual Peddler's Fair at the Kern County Museum on Saturday. We really couldn't afford to go but we haven't done anything fun in so long that we scrounged up the admission price and wandered around for a few hours. I saw a few things that I might have bought back in our more prosperous days but most of what was there didn't appeal to me much. It seemed that there were a lot fewer vendors there, maybe they couldn't afford the $125.00 booth fees this year. The food vendors were fewer, too, and I was really disappointed that they didn't have the coffee people this time, I was looking forward to a frothy coffee drink but nobody was selling anything hot, just water and lemonade and soda.

Other than that, it was another rather dull weekend.

I was listening to Bob and Tom this morning and they were talking about school lunches back in the day, how you got hot lunch and what they were serving that day was what you got. No choices, just what the lunch lady gave you. We always got hot lunch and it was like a mini dinner, meat, potatoes, vegetables. Peas, usually canned peas. You would try to get away with stuffing your vegetables into your empty milk carton but the lunch ladies would come around and check to make sure you ate your vegetables and would rattle your milk carton to make sure you drank your milk.

I'm trying to decide what to do today. I don't have any supplies to make anything but soldered glass pendants and don't really feel like making any since they are not exactly flying off the shelves these days. I do have some housework I could do even though I just vacuumed yesterday. I was using the wand thing on the vacuum yesterday to clean the edges around the kitchen and sucked up a toy mouse with it. Oops. It went all the way into the vacuum, so now there is a toy mouse in with all the dirt and cat hair. We have one of those bagless vacuums so you can see what all the vacuum is sucking up and it's amazing how much cat hair gets on the floor even with vacuuming every few days. Big wads of cat hair.

And that is all I can think of to talk about.

Nothing to Talk About

So, I'm going to feature a Zibbet seller today. If anyone is wondering why the name zibbet, it comes from the word exhibit, the creators of Zibbet were looking for a site where people could exhibit their artwork and they have since expanded to include all sorts of crafts, supplies, and vintage.

This seller caught my eye because of the delicate look to her jewelry. Very feminine, very pretty.

Her shop is called Pastel Petals and she is from Singapore.

This bracelet is called Par Amour, she really puts the elements together in such a unique way.


I love this necklace, it's called Willowy Amber, and is nicely priced at $20.00. All of her prices are very affordable.


These Lavender Romance earrings are indeed romantic.


Most of her jewelry is priced under $20.00 and if you'd like to see more, go here:

http://zibbet.com/PastelPetals

Pea Soup

In an effort to make some halfway healthy budget friendly meals I went through a bunch of my cookbooks last weekend and picked out some not too hard to make not too many ingredients dinners. I have a lot of cookbooks that I've collected over the years because while I really don't like to cook I do like to read cookbooks. Especially if they have pictures. And especially if they have a theme. Like this diner foods cookbook. Who doesn't love diner food and who doesn't have fond memories of eating at a lunch counter or coffee shop? The jellos and pies in the display case, the generic salad or soup as your first course, a BLT with fries or a chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy and canned vegetables on the side? The starched waitress uniforms with the little hanky thing pinned on the chest and a nametag that says Betty or Flo? Mmm...diner food. Cheap, filling, and comforting.


So, while flipping through this book I came across a recipe for split pea soup. Yummy, right? Not too many ingredients, just cheap dried split peas, onion, a carrot, celery stalk, bacon and water. Sounds easy enough.


Looks tasty, too.


Yesterday afternoon I made the pea soup and some bran muffins to go with it. Comforting homemade food ladled into bowls, hot steaming fibery muffins on the side. Mmm...

NOT! This was the worst soup I've ever tasted! Yuk! Blecchhh! Nasty!

We poured it out and opened up some cans of Anderson's Pea Soup. Which is what I should have done in the first place.

I had also marked a recipe for chicken noodle soup from this book to make. But now I am afraid. Very afraid.

On a totally different subject, I was looking through the Michaels ad that came yesterday and saw that you can now crochet your own snuggie. Looks like it would take a long time, though. Handmade dorkiness!

Oh. My.

I was just over on Artfire and clicked on the Christmas section thingy, thinking it would be like the gift guides on Etsy, with curated items that might actually fit the Christmas theme. Wrong. Anything and everything that has Christmas anywhere in the title, descriptions, or tags show up in this ridiculous Christmas special showcase or whatever it's supposed to be. Craft supplies? Tons of them, my favorite being a bunch of jumprings that are tagged with the color 'Christmas green' and an old craft book that happens to have some Christmas wreaths in it. Another is a glass halloween pendant that is in this section because it 'could be used as a Christmas ornament'. Come on, Artfire, if you want to be taken seriously you need to curate special sections like this.

Most of what I saw looked more like the Christmas Bazaar at your neighborhood church, too, and after about 4 pages I just couldn't take it anymore. Here are some gems from the special Christmas section on Artfire. Really makes you want to go do your Christmas shopping there.

I think these ornaments are supposed to be Adam and Eve, judging from the apple and the nakedness and the fig leaves. They are in the Christmas section because they are tree ornaments? I especially like Adam's sole tooth.


And this is supposed to be the dove of peace, but to me it looks more like a baby seal. I guess that works, you know, Christmas Seals?


This is a half eaten gingerbread man. Looks more like bloody stump gingerbread man to me. Oh nooooo.....Mr Bill!


I told myself I wasn't going to make fun of weird crafty things, but there is just too much weird crafty stuff out there these days to resist.

Fresh Air

The weather is weird here. It's like someone up there decides that hey, summer is over and let's get some fall weather going. Overnight. One day it's over 100 and the next day it's downright chilly in the 70's. One day you've got the air conditioner going full blast and the next day you're hunting for your blankets and sweaters. The cats love it because we can finally open the windows and doors. I love it because it means our next electric bills won't give me a heart attack when I open them.

Cheap Books

We have a Goodwill store just down the road from us that only sells books, or at least mostly books. I found this store a few years ago and went there from time to time looking for something to read or something to cut up for crafty stuff. They also had shelves of knick knacky stuff and other odds and ends of people's junk, but most of the store was taken up by books. Junky books but also some gems mixed in here and there.

Yesterday I went to the Goodwill book store looking for something to read and was pleasantly surprised by a few changes they have made. Gone were the shelves of knick knacks and in place of them were two round tables and chairs so you could sit and look through the books you found. Hey, now this I like! Plus, I also liked that I got two bags of books for $8.75, but that's beside the point.

I got to thinking that maybe they are trying to get the sit around the bookstore type crowd in the Goodwill, so here's my idea. Get a little coffee cart or bar going and then people will come to the new downscale bookstore complete with coffee shop!

This morning we did our Winco grocery shopping with a detailed list and a menu plan and we were able to get out of there for under $100.00. I added things up on a piece of paper as we shopped to keep it under our budget and that really helped, too, no big heart attacking surprise at the checkout because we stuck a bunch of extras in the cart.

I've also been nagging Keith about the unfinished kitchen this weekend and he's making an effort to get something (anything!) done. He has such grand ideas but gets bored with the process so things just kind of sit there half done. I would really like to have a finished kitchen before the end of the year. Here's hoping. And nagging.

Vet Visit

Pepper was not a very happy kitty yesterday afternoon. Once we got her into the cat carrier she was calm and quiet, sitting in the waiting room at the vet while Keith petted some very big dogs that were also waiting. When we got into the exam room he put her into the bucket that they weight the cats in and she hid in there until the doctor came in. She has actually lost a pound, which she needed to do. One of the brochures in the office says that one pound on a cat is like 15 on a human, so she's getting positively svelte. We brought a big towel with us so Keith put on his leather gloves, wrapped her up in the towel, but still got scratched when the vet was checking Pepper's anal glands. Yes, the old finger up the butt, and then expressing the glands. Pepper snarled and howled and fought. Blood was flowing down Keith's arm.

We got some cream for her bottom and an e-collar which we put on after we got back home and she'd calmed down some. She managed to escape from it about three minutes later. So, we'll put cream on her bottom twice a day and watch her to make sure she doesn't lick it right back off and hopefully her poor raw bottom will heal up.

And now for some less cranky cats. I had left a cleaning rag on the counter intending to do some cleaning I guess but Lucy thought it would be much better if she used it as a pillow. There is also a magazine under her.



Mimi looks so content on the back of the couch.

It's Always Something

Pepper has to go to the vet after Keith gets home with the car today. We really can't afford a vet visit right now but she really needs to go. She got over her diarrhea last week but ever since she has been licking the heck out of her behind. Last night I noticed that her entire behind area is devoid of fur and is totally raw from all the licking. So, we need to take her in and make sure it's not infected and probably get her one of those radar dish collars so she'll quit licking long enough for it to heal up. This is the same cat that wouldn't or couldn't (because she was too fat to reach it) clean herself. This is the same cat that I had to take a warm washcloth and clean her bottom for her every few days.

I know it's probably painful for her because she has been extra extra cranky this week.

Keith's doctor called this week with the results of his x-ray, which shows that he fractured his elbow sometime back and now he has a bone spur or whatever it is because it didn't heal right. He thinks he knows when he did it, he banged his elbow so hard at work that he almost passed out and it's been bothering him ever since. I told him he should have filed a report when he did it so it would be covered by work comp, but of course he didn't because if you file a report at work then their safety record goes down and everyone gets all ticked off because the quarterly safety bonus goes down. So, accidents go unreported at work. I told him that if he even stubs his toe at work he needs to start filling out a report JUST IN CASE! Then he can hate his job even more because everyone at work will be mad at him.

Anyway, the doctor wants him to go see another doctor about surgery on it, but we don't have the money for him to take off work and get it surgeried up right now, so this like so many other things these days will get put on hold for a while. He's managing the pain with motrin and an elbow brace, but without surgery it won't ever get better. Disability won't pay the mortgage and we don't have the 20% copay for surgery until this economy gets better and I can find a job or my business picks back up again.

Speaking of my business, I had just enough money in paypal to pay my etsy bill for September, but after doing my books, the etsy bill just wasn't and hasn't been worth it this year. It's still the best place to be seen and possibly get some sales, but I'm going to have to really watch how much I'm listing there. 20c to list doesn't sound like much, but it certainly adds up over the month. I'll stick to one listing a day if that for a while. It's free for me to list on Artfire and Zibbet for now, but listing stuff doesn't do you any good if there is no one buying it. And when nobody is buying, you don't much feel like making any new stuff nor do you have the money to buy the supplies to make the new stuff.

So, I'll try to keep busy with other things. I'm going to do some house cleaning today and then maybe I'll just sit outside with a book later since we have some nice weather now.

I just re-read this post and it's kind of a bummer, so let me lighten things up a bit here.

I forget where I found this picture, but it's an ad for Dollywood.


Yikes!

October Already?

We were discussing what we are going to do about Halloween this year. Sit inside the dark house and pretend we are not home? Go to the Dollar Tree and buy dollar bags of stale candy? Go to the Dollar Tree and buy Halloween pencils so all the kids see how cheap we are? I'm thinking the stay inside with the lights out myself. Sorry, we just can't afford Halloween this year, you little ragamuffin beggars, you!

This morning I was awakened at 5:30am by Keith running around the house in a panic searching for his wallet. We retraced his steps of last night looking in all the places he sat or stood or put his clothes, searched the laundry basket, the front porch, and the car. Did you take your wallet out anywhere yesterday? Only at Foods Co after work to buy some soda. Well, call work and tell them you'll be late and we'll go to Foods Co when they open at 6 and see if you left it there.

More searching and as I'm out front looking around the porch again, he comes out and says I found it on the workbench in the garage. Under my hardhat. How it got there we don't know, but by this time he was going to be 15 minutes late for work and had been having a panic attack and was feeling all shaky and sick thinking about having to remember what all was in his wallet and try and find all the phone numbers to call and cancel cards and he can't drive 30 miles to work with no driver's license. Not a fun way to start his day. I went back to bed.

We got our cheap Target clearance plants planted in the front flower bed finally, after taking out the plants that had just gotten too wild. We had gotten one jasmine plant for 3.00 and then went back and got another one to put against our two metal trellises. I need to keep track of how they are growing, because it seems like each day they've put out another couple of inches of runner.


Sorry for the mooning gnome in the picture, I didn't realize he was there until now.

This is the 6.00 morning glory we got, we had to go buy a trellis for it but I think it will be worth it.


And this is our little feral friend. He was one of the kittens born in our neighbors yard last year and since our neighbor moved he wasn't getting fed much. He started coming to our yard and meowing at us and we being the suckers for kitties that we are have been giving him our cats leftover food. He comes in the morning and waits for me and again at night. He will hiss at me and then meow, hiss and then meow, like I'm scared of you and stay away from me but please bring me out some food first. Hiss, meow, hiss, meow. He's one of those cats that will talk to you if you meow back at him. Scintillating conversation.


He's a really pretty cat, his eyes don't show well here but they are blue, and he looks healthy with a nice coat despite having been a stray all his short life. He will get within a few feet of me, especially if I'm holding a food dish, but won't let us get any closer or touch him. The only bad thing about having him around the neighborhood is that he has big cojones and if there are any female cats around, we'll have more litters of feral kittens before long. It's a good thing that Mimi is spayed because she is fascinated by this guy when she sees him out the window. I think she has a crush on him.