Winter & Health

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!!!

Spring? Day 2

In just a few hours Spring arrives here in the upper Midwest of the Northern hemisphere! It has been such a long winter!!!

THAT was how I was going to start this post. But I was also going to post this a lot sooner than now, however it was circumvented by Blogger’s / Google’s own little bots somehow concluding that it might be something automated doing this blog instead of it being someONE! Namely, ME! LOL So it was a bit disconcerting to get noticed like this BUT at the same time it is quite reassuring that the people behind this site (Blogger and/or Google) somewhere care enough to protect us bloggers and readers from such unwanted content. Having said this…

SPRING IS HERE!!! Yes indeedy! I am so glad too! (but as I write this – we are under yet another winter storm warning anticipating another 4-8 inches of the white stuff today!) Our first day of Spring was fabulous!!! It was sunny and beautiful and warm… and lots of snow melted!!! It’s all white again now – but soon, very soon it will be gone again!

In my locale we have had at least an inch of snow on the ground for 111 consecutive days! The all-time record is 122 days straight! We are now in fifth place with this winter AND there is still snow on the ground AND another round of snowfall due Friday! My neighbors, especially the older ones, tell me that THIS is what winters used to be like all the time. They tell tales of snow deeper than most adults are tall. They speak of digging tunnels to the driveways and roads. (so what about clearing out those driveways? Where did they put all that snow? And how’d they get all that snow off the roads?) Some of these old guys really make me laugh!

Still, if this winter is any indication of what winters here were like 15 or 20 years ago or longer, then I am very glad we moved here after that. Let me tell you, if my first winter here was like this one, I never would have spent the next 13 winters up here!!!

But on the other hand, it does make one appreciate the coming of Spring that much more! Never in my life have I looked so forward to a new season!

We have some great plans for this springtime as well. The whole family is taking on a backyard garden! Mostly it will be a vegetable garden, but there will be other plants too, like lots of herbs, some flowers, and perhaps some sort of low ground cover to replace the remaining grass so we don’t need to mow in back at all maybe. :) We are starting to see patches of grassy areas out there, so soon we can start digging up things and making plots ready for planting. We’re already starting some seeds, but plan on buying young plants soon too. Though I’m sure we still have a good month, maybe two, to go before that last danger of frost is gone.

We will also be working on a new organization plan to set in place. We’ve tried the Flylady program but haven’t done so well in sticking to it, though a few things have stuck and everyone loves to use my Flylady Feather Duster. I will still keep my Flylady cling where I can see her – there’s power in her purple image! :) This new program does have a few points in common with Flylady. This new plan of mine comes from my latest reading. The book is called Organic Housekeeping. It was printed in 2006 but I just heard about it a few days ago! What I’ve read so far fits right in line with my goals for the immediate future.

Those goals also include building up my [former business] to the point where it’s bringing in enough to care for all our expenses (and then some) BUT what’s even better is sharing all that I’m learning with others who will come to share with me in using their nontoxic products and working toward making a “carbon-neutral” footprint on this earth!

I can’t help but think that if I’d stayed with this company way back when perhaps my body would not now be so broken down, so chronically ill, so constantly in pain and without those challenges so many more positive things could have been accomplished by now! Starting now however, is still far better than never starting at all. It is so important, I think, for people to realize the danger the world is in now and take steps personally to change their futures!

This is now DAY TWO into my new plan... going pretty good so far. Next post will update you in more detail of what steps I've managed to take so far and how the family is accepting them. ;-)