I recently signed up with a site called House Party & have been chosen to host a couple of parties in October so far and I’m pretty excited about both of them, honestly. I mean, when a company wants to give me goodie bags & such for my guests & in some cases, a gift card to pay for food or whatever, I’m all for that!

The first one is a party for Hass Avocados, where they’re sending me some cool things to give out to my guests, a cutting board for myself & a gift card to buy avocados. We’re going to have everyone make their favorite recipe with avocados (which I’ll provide) & bring it to the party & we’ll have drinks & learn how to pick the perfect avocados and all of that, I think it’ll be a lot of fun.

I’m a little more excited about the other party, though. It’s a Windows® 7 Launch party! I get a copy of Windows® 7 for myself and a bunch of really nice things to give out at the party. I’m try to decide whether I’ll just use my laptop as is or hook it up to my lcd monitor to make it easier for my guests to see, but we’re going to take pictures & teach them how to edit them, how to make a panorama & a bunch of other fun things. I think my computer geek friends will really enjoy it, and I can hardly wait.

I’ve signed up for several more, so I’m really hoping to get chosen to do a few more.

I have noticed that I get a little upset when I see the commercials with the Mesothelioma lawyers on TV. My grandpa died from Mesothelioma back in the early 1970s, when I was five years old. Back then, nothing was even done in the way of lawsuits & wrongful death for the men that used asbestos to make a living for their families. My grandpa helped build battleships at Mare Island, in California from the late 40s through to 1970 or so, when he retired & they moved to Utah to be closer us. He got sick pretty shortly after that & when he died, it robbed all of us of many years with him.

He was smart enough to make sure he had a great life insurance policy & that took care of grandma for the rest of her life, but I can’t but think if there had been class-action suits back then for it that she could have been a whole lot more comfortable for those years. There might have even been something left for my mom after grandma passed, too. We’re not greedy people, I just feel like more studies needed to be done to test the safety of a lot of things people had to work with back in the day & since no one seemed to care, they do owe a lot of people a lot of money.

So, when you go shopping, do you get all of the food you’re buying and also all of your household stuff, too? Like dog or cat food, cat litter, toilet paper, detergent and all of that with your food or on a separate trip? Okay, if you buy everything at once, when you get ready to check out, I’m going to assume you go to a place where you empty the cart yourself & place everything up on the little grocery conveyor belt. Do you put all of the big, heavy items up there with your food or do you leave it in the cart & let the checker scan it with the “gun?” (I mean the handheld Honeywell Barcode Scanner type things)

We get everything we need for two weeks at a time in one trip. Sometimes that includes dog food, cat food, cat litter & a case of Diet Pepsi for Troy, and most of the time, we just leave it on the cart, but don’t make the checker come around to the cart. Troy picks everything up, holds it over to where the scanner can zap it & then puts it back. I was just curious about what other people do, since I don’t pay that much attention while we’re standing in line, so tell me, what do you do?

I was trying to get a hold of my mom & dad this morning, because I wanted to show them my new hair cut (it’s super short & punky now), so I tried mom’s phone first (knowing she wasn’t going to answer it, but sometimes she surprises me) and then dad’s, but I didn’t get an answer on either one, which is okay, I’ll wait until I get my new glasses next week & then go out there. It did get me to thinking though, I really don’t remember when we didn’t all have cell phones & had to rely on our landlines. Now, no one in my family has a house phone, we all have at least one cell phone in the house, most of us have our own.

It’s like being confronted with the fact that not everyone has a computer or the internet. My niece, Jaycie has a laptop, but they have no internet, but I keep forgetting that, because to me it just seems weird to have one without internet service, you know? What would I even use my computer for with it? Most of the games I own require net access. I keep in touch with my friends & some of my kids more often online than anywhere else, I’d be lost. Microwaves are another thing, we got our first one in 1982, I haven’t really ever been without one since then, and don’t know what I’d do. It’s funny how reliant we become on technology, isn’t it?

I did finally get my kitchen floor swept & mopped & looking passable again, thankfully. I say thankfully because my mop head is now ruined. Rhi wanted to mop the bathroom floor yesterday & for some reason, she just can’t get it through her head that you don’t leave a mop in the “wringer” position after you wring it out. I released it this morning & not only had she really not rinsed it out, it was separated from the the plastic, so the sponge just flaps back & forth now. The scrub brush that’s a part of my mop is full of nastiness, too. It’s not like I asked her to find me a Orange New Jersey cosmetic dentist, or anything, I just wanted my nice new mop to be taken care of. There were a lot of uses left in that mop head & I’m pretty aggravated over the whole thing, honestly. I’m just happy that payday is next Friday, so I can get a new one before I need to mop again.

Scratch that. I got the floor swept, rugs in the washer & the entry to my living room mopped. I went back to the sink to rinse & reload, was standing there rinsing & saw my wash water going down the drain quicker than Maury Povich does DNA testing! That wouldn’t have normally been a problem, but that was the last of my ammonia & I won’t use anything else to mop the floors. Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but it’s always been what works the best to clean up tough messes & grease & I have both in my kitchen, most of the time. We used it to do floors & bathrooms when I cleaned house s& businesses, and I still use it today. I’ll just wait until Troy gets up & we’ll run to Big Lots & grab some more. I can’t get it anywhere else in town, most of the time, I guess people are using the newer stuff nowadays, but I don’t like it as much. I’ve tried it, and it does a passable job, yes & it smells better while you’re cleaning (the stink from ammonia goes away after it dries, by the way) but if I’m going to go to the trouble, I want better than passable.

I’m not going to take that nap, though, I don’t want to be groggy later & not want to take care of the chores I’ve decided have to get done today.

That’s not news to any of you anymore, is it? I think I have the busiest life of anyone I know that doesn’t hold a job outside the home. I feel like I’m either constantly running around, cleaning, getting something ready or finishing up a project. There are days when I feel like I never had a moment to sit back & relax. I always thought that once I was finished raising  my kids that I’d finally have time to sit back & do nothing, you know? I didn’t realize that I’d find other things to fill up that time & space in my life. I’m not complaining, but I really wish I could find a happy medium, really.

I’ve been very clumsy lately, too. I slipped in the hall the other day & just about fell down, then I dropped everything I picked up in the shower then later when I was doing dishes, I was thankful I didn’t have a stone sink, as many times as dishes slipped out of my hands & fell back into the sink. I’m sure the two aren’t even remotely related, but they are equally aggravating.

I’m sleepy today, but I really need to get my kitchen floor mopped & all of my rugs washed, so I think that instead of sitting here, wishing I could go back to bed, I’ll get those things done & then if I’m still wanting a nap, I’ll take one, since Troy’s still sleeping (he’s on graveyard the rest of the month, not lazy!).

In this time of economic hardship, who out there would turn down free groceries? A pasta company is giving away a grand prize of free groceries for a year or several other prizes of $200 mini grocery sprees. Run, don’t walk & sign up to win, I did!

A pretty cool thing happened to me this weekend, or at least it made me feel good. A friend I haven’t seen for a few months ran into me while I was out & about & we started talking. I noticed that while we were visiting, she couldn’t stop looking at my body, which, at first, made me very self-conscious. She finally said, “I’m sorry that I’ve been staring, I just realized that you’ve lost a ton of weight since I saw you last & I was wondering how you did it! Are you taking a weight loss supplement or something?” I was kind of embarrassed but at the same time thrilled to know someone outside of my normal circle of friends had actually noticed, you know?

I told her what had been up in the past few months & the changes that I’ve made in my diet & lifestyle, then we caught up on everything else that’s been going on with us & our families. I don’t hang around with her often, or even see her very much these days, since we all went our separate ways many years ago, but it’s always nice to see her & catch up when we get a chance to.

I know I complain about this fairly often, but I just don’t think it’s fair that  I never “grew out of” my acne. It’s not as bad as it was when I was a teen, but still, it’s there & it annoys me. Thankfully, I don’t suffer with it constantly, just really when the old hormones are doing their thing, but since I was never really big into the whole face washing & obsessing over my skin thing when I was younger, I still haven’t been ale to figure out the best acne treatment for me & my skin type.

I’ve tried scrubs (I use one every morning), astringents, masks & washes & nothing really seems to make much of a difference. Does anything really work better than anything else? Is it all just hype to get us to keep trying & buying new things that might work? Do any of you still have acne & if so, what do you use? It isn’t so bad for me that I’m likely to spend the big bucks on it, so suggesting any of those monthly subscription-type brands to me will be a waste, but if you use something I can go to the store and buy, tell me what it is.