WINTER IS HERE! As if you didn't know ~ LOL
They say somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the country is literally FREEZING!!! It's so hard to picture icicles on oranges in Florida! We too are in the deep freeze way up north in Wisconsin! I'm not even sure when it was that we last were above freezing but that really doesn't matter when you're down below zero all day long!
Suffice it to say we've had several spells of "cabin fever" around here. Some rounds were spent baking up all sorts of goodies from roasts and turkeys and ham to biscuits and cookies and pies and other treats. Some rounds were spent playing games: Clue (three different versions), Monopoly (five different versions), Life (two different versions, Bubble Brain, Chess, Cards (Spoons, Go Fish, Match, Hearts, Spades, and more), and a few totally made up games just to keep the imagination alive. Some rounds included a run of movies on a theme or catching up with DVR'd shows and movies.
This winter has hardly begun and yet we've already seen enough of it to feel we've been living in it for the last year! LOL We still have a good three months to go - at least, on average up here where Spring doesn't spring until May for the most part and sometimes not until June! UGH!!!
So ~ how goes it with all the healthy life changes and such?
Well, we're still doing ok with using cloth bags for shopping thus avoiding the need for endless mounds of plastic bags and stacks of folded paper sacks building up around the house. In fact, I think soon we'll be making some of our own. We've found so many great uses for them! The other bags don't even come close ~ plastic ones usually get filled with trash or returned to stores that recycle them; paper ones usually go for book covers and a few art projects.
We are STILL using our first bottle of Basic-H2 ~ AMAZING!!! We will be trying the oven cleaner very soon. We've been using their water pitcher filter system and it's awesome how much bottled water that is saving us! Someday this is going to grow into a great family business. A couple of my kids are interested in joining up with me already. :)
Organic eating is increasing as well and we are all seeing benefits from that. Or maybe it's more that we're seeing what happens when we don't eat mostly organic and mostly unprocessed foods. Eating less from restaurants has eased up our budget some too... enough to balance the higher cost of organic foods as we increase it more and more. We bought a really nice juicer recently and were really enjoying lots of fresh fruit and vegetable juices... and then a tiny little piece broke off, a piece that is essential to the safety mechanism, a piece that is essential for it to be operational. (deep sigh)
We bought it online, using a 3-month payment plan and at the time it broke off we hadn't even been billed for the 2nd payment! I tried super-glue to hold the tiny piece in place, and that worked for a week or so. Then it broke again. We tried another glue. When that broke we gave it up and got online to order the replacement part. A few days later I received an email explaining that the part was on backorder but should be shipped in two to three weeks. A month later I'm still waiting so I telephoned their customer service department. At first I was told it was on an indefinite backorder - some sort of problem with the supplier and there was no date on when the part would be available. This was quite frustrating so I asked about speaking to someone else - anyone above him, including the owner of the company! I explained to him how I hadn't had it even a month when it broke and the 2nd payment hadn't even been billed and now all the payments have been made and we haven't been able to use it for nearly two months after just using it for a few weeks! This was no way to run a business!!! And this certainly was not holding up to the standards I'm sure were expected by the owner! So he asked me to hold. After several minutes I was beginning to think he was just trying to wait me out, thinking I'd hang up before he got back on the line or something. Finally he returned and offered me a different type of replacement. He said they'd be sending me a return label and I could return the juicer and they would send me out another one - brand new! I like this idea. He said the return label should arrive in 5-7 business days. It's been four and so far no sign of it. Guess hoping it might come early was too much to hope for. We'll see what happens. I miss the juices though! Everyone here misses the fresh juices! Absolutely nothing beats the taste of fresh juice!!!
