My family members are just a herd of guinea pigs

For the last several months I have been plagued with a horrible pain in my neck.  The pain starts in the middle of the right side of my neck and shoots up behind my right ear and goes all the way down my neck and shoots down to my shoulder blade.  At times, the pain is quite excruciating. 

The other day I decided to make a liniment for my neck to relieve the pain.  I have arthritis in several of my fingers and believe it's quite possibly rheumatism, so I decided the pain in my neck could very well be caused by the same problem.  I used essential oils to make the liniment and since I convinced myself that I have rheumatism in my neck, the essential oils I chose to use were for rheumatism, arthritis, and inflammation.  When the liniment was ready, I began putting in on my neck several times a day for three days.  The liniment brought a little relief to my neck and it did relieve the stiffness, so I guess I could call the liniment a success. 

I was so focused on trying to decide if the liniment worked on my neck that I didn't give my hands a second thought.  Needless to say, I was quite stunned when I realized that the fingers on my left hand that are swollen and painful with rheumatism, felt better and not so stiff.  I realized that when I put the liniment on the right side of my neck, I always used my left hand and the liniment relieved the pain in the joints of my fingers.  I was quite excited by this discovery and have been using the liniment on ALL of my fingers on both hands for the last two days.  I'm amazed at how much better the middle finger on my right hand feels.  Two days ago, the joint by my fingernail on my middle finger hurt so bad that it was very painful to touch it, and I could barely bend it.  Now the pain's down to a slight throb.  FREAKIN' AMAZING!!

I love to experiment on family members, so I called my mother and told her about the affect my liniment experiment had on my fingers.  She was excited because she also has rheumatism in her fingers and has to deal with the daily pain.  I told her she was my first rheumatism guinea pig and I wanted her to try the liniment so I could make sure it really works, and it wasn't just a coincidence that it worked on me.  Of course, she's more than happy to help me with my little experiment.  I made her liniment last night and will take it to her in a day or two.  After she uses it for a couple of days, I'll let you know how her fingers feel.

Hamsters, Frogs, Hermit Crabs, Fish, and My Newest Pet

I used to have two hamsters, Kizmet and Mojo, I loved those hamsters. I had them for two years and they finally died within one month of each other. Within a couple of days, I missed my hamsters so much that I went right up and bought two more hamsters, Zeppelin and Mozart. I loved my new hamsters just as much as I did my other hamsters.  Two years later they both died within three months of each other. I was so sad, but after four years of hamsters, I decided I was done. I got rid of the cages and all of the tubes, toys, hamster balls, food, everything.  I felt free cuz I didn't have to feed them anymore, or put them in their hamster balls every day so they could get exercise, or clean out cages anymore (I hated that part).
Over the last couple of years, I've had frogs, hermit crabs, and fish but after several months of having each one of them, I would give them away because...well, I was tired of catching crickets for the frogs, the crabs were boring, and I got tired of adding water to the aquarium for the fish AND the tanks took up so much room.

Lately, I've been fighting the urge to get birds.  BIRDS!!!  Can you imagine? I had two parakeets 30 years ago and there were constantly feathers and seeds EVERYWHERE. I woke up vacuuming and went to bed vacuuming. It was horrible. A few months ago, I told Vannoy, my sister, that when I started looking at birds in pet stores or talking about wanting birds that it was her job to make me come to my senses. She talked me out of wanting birds a few times just by saying, "Remember how much you hate all of the feathers and seeds." That's all it took to keep birds out of my house. 

I want a lizard too but when I convince myself that I N-E-E-D one, I talk myself out of it. All I have to do is think of my grandson, Kyle. A couple of years ago he went outside at my house and found a blue-tailed lizard. He picked it up and screamed cuz the lizard bit him. It was hanging from the tip of his finger. I had no idea that they would bite you.

Venus Flytrap
Isn't it cute? It's so tiny. I know the
toothpicks look like some kind of flytrap
torture device, but they're not. I'm trying to
make the little flytraps evenly spaced out
so I won't be driven crazy by the
unevenness of it.

Yesterday I found the perfect house pet. I went to the store and as I was walking through lawn and garden, I saw a bunch of Venus Flytraps. I found the prettiest one and bought it.  When I got home I got on the Internet and researched flytraps to see how to raise them. I hope I don't kill it. I think this will be the perfect pet for me. I don't have to feed it, or put it in a ball so it can exercise, or give it a bath like the crabs, or clean out its cage, and I won't have to vacuum up and feathers and seeds. PERFECT PET! The grandkids will have fun feeding it bugs.  All I have to do is try to remember to give it bottled water a couple of times a week.
I completely forgot to mention Borealis. That's my Beta. In December I'll have him for three years. He's so pretty. I give him bottled water too. I'm not getting rid of him, he's been through a lot with me. He's a good fish.

Grasshoppers Galore

The only grasshoppers I could catch
with my camera.  They're fast.

OMG! at the grasshoppers. My yard has been taken over by herb gobbling grasshoppers. I can't even walk in the yard without being in what looks like an ocean of the horrible things. I'm sad to say that they've devoured a lot of my beautiful herbs. Last week when I realized what was happening, I ran in the house and grabbed several bowls and the scissors and took off outside to "rescue" my herbs. I cut and cut and cut until I saved all of my herbs that I could. Well, I didn't actually save my herbs, but I did rescue some of the leaves so I could use them in my herbal recipes. It's just devastating.  I hate grasshoppers so much, but where I live it's inevitable that there are millions of them every single summer. Ugh! I would give anything if I knew how to murder them. I would gladly do it with a smile on my face while laughing evilly at their unfortunate demise. At least the spiders are fed well.  Too bad I hate spiders way more than grasshoppers. Just the thought of a spider's freaky little legs touching me and their nasty awful fangs sinking into my skin is enough to send me over the edge into a major creep-out. EEE-GADS!!!

Homemede Spoon and Fork Wind Chimes

15 years ago, Vannoy, Tina, Teena and I went to Beaver's Bend to spend the weekend, as we did every year in October. While we were there, we went to the gift shop and I saw the cutest wind chimes. I looked at them and decided I could make some of those myself. I thought about those wind chimes the rest of the weekend, and by the time I got home, I knew what I wanted to do.


Bent prongs

I had several old spoons and forks that were my grandmothers and this is what I used because I knew I would have the wind chimes forever and I wanted them to be special. I found five spoons and one fork that I wanted to use and my husband drilled a hole in the end of each handle; I used wire pliers to very carefully bend each prong on the fork. The outside prongs were bent straight out (East and West), and the two inside prongs were bent, one in each direction, (North and South). This made the prongs look like a plus sign. Then I got a pair of pointy nose pliers and carefully curled the tip of each prong up to form a loop (I had to use three forks before I could curl all of the prongs tips without breaking one). I took one of the spoons and a hammer and went to the road and beat the bowl part of the spoon until it was flat; this spoon was for hanging from the middle of the fork.

Spoon and Fork Wind Chimes

I used 5 inch long pieces of chain to attach the spoons to the fork and used another 5 inch long piece of chain to attach to the fork handle for hanging (I attached a round key chain to the other end of the hanging chain). When I attached the spoons, I hung the flattened spoon in the middle of the fork and the other four spoons from the four corners.
My wind chime makes a beautiful "ting" noise when the wind blows and is also a very interesting conversation piece. These wind chimes are perfect to hang from a shephard's hook in your garden.
This wind chime looks just like the one at the gift shop in Beaver's Bend. Not only did I save $16. 97 by making my own, I had a fun craft day and now I'll always have a piece of my amazing grandmother with me in my garden.  I think of her every time I look at my wind chimes. I have two of these wind chimes, as I made one with big spoons and one with little spoons.

Sand, Rock, Seashell, and Debris IDEA

Several years ago, I saw a picture in a Martha Stewart magazine of a mantle with a bunch of little bottles on it and in the bottles were sandm seashells, rocks, coral fossils, tiny drift wood, and such. I thought they were so cute, as I'm absolutely obsessed with every single one of those things anyway.  The article said that when the family went on a vacation, they would always find something on the beach to bring home and add to a little bottle for their collection. I was so happy that there was something useful to do with MY collection of stuff I'd been obsessively collecting for years.  I showed the article to my sister, Vannoy, she was also excited about it. You see, Vannoy, mama, and I have been on a lot of cruises and road trips and have brought back little pieces of the differect countries, states, and parks that we've visited. Vannoy and I went to Hobby Lobby and found these little packs of plastic bottles. There are nine in a pack for $2.97; we bought several packs of these bottles apiece and brought them home and set about filling them up.

Bottles of sand, seashells, rocks, and
coral fossils from vacations

I didn't want labels on the front of my bottles because it would cover up part of the collection and, so I wrote the name on top of the lid. I put the bottles in front of my TV so I could look at them while I watched TV. I love those bottles and looking at them always makes me so happy. It's visually appealing, as all the little bottles match and they're lined up so perfect. It's amazing because the sand in each bottle is completely different. They range in texture from fine powder to course tiny pebbles, and the color ranges from almost white to light brown. How can there be such completely different sand on every beach.  Since they're all connected to the same body of water, it seems like they would at least match. Perhaps I sould whoop out my Geology books and read them again. It has been awhile since I took those courses.

Okay, I wasn't going to say this because I'm sure it's obsessive behavior, but it worked so well. I had to put labels on my bottles to remind me where I was when I got the contents of each bottle, but I didn't want to SEE the labels, so they had to be transparent. After way too much thinking, I developed a plan of action. I wanted to write on top of the bottles because I didn't actually want to see the labels when I looked at the bottles, and the sides of the bottles had to be visually appealing or it would have driven me smack-dab nuts. I knew that permanent marker would come off after it's been touched several times, and I couldn't take that chance, as I wouldn't have known where the contents came from if the words came off. So here's what I did, I put a piece of clear tape on top of the bottle, of course it was perfectly lined up where the little tab that stuck off the side of the lid was at the back becasue I didn't want to see that either. I wrote the country, beach, resort name, lodge, month and year (whichever one was appropriate for the trip) on top of the tape. Then I put a piece of clear tape on top of that. Now I don't ever have to worry about the label getting smudged, seeing the little tab on the lid, or SEEING a white label because they're clear, AND on top of the bottle. So pretty.