Thankful Sunday--January 6, 2013

I am thankful for the telephone.

Out of the many ways to communicate these days, the telephone is my favorite. It keeps me in close contact with my extended family when I can't be there in person.

Health Reminder

Until a few years ago, I didn't realize that one should have yearly skin checks with a doctor. Since then, I have been trying to remember to do these yearly and had one yesterday. The checks can be done by either a dermatologist or your primary care physician. These examinations look at the general health of your skin, but primarily focus on any precancerous or cancerous looking areas. The goal is to find problems early and treat them before they become serious. The check involves looking at the outside of all parts of your body from head to toe including your private parts (1% of melanomas start in the buttock area). The only hands-on part is when the examiner combs through your hair looking at your scalp. The whole process is quick and easy. Often if there is anything that needs attention, it can be taken care of during the same visit.

It is important to make this part of your regular heath care. If there is a reason that getting to a doctor is difficult, I am providing links for self examination. Remember to get a partner to help you, because you will need help in seeing some areas. And most importantly, if you see any changes in your skin, especially involving a mole, have a doctor check it out right away. Don't wait for your yearly check. Skin cancer can kill.

 Here are links for more information:

Melanoma Education Foundation

American Academy of Dermatology

Skin Cancer Specialists

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--Jan. 4, 2013

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions.

 This Week's Food Waste

 

Because of the holidays, it's been two weeks since I've updated you (and me) about our food waste around here. I'm a little fuzzy on the whole situation. However, I do know that we threw away a couple of bananas that were oozing off the counter and we lost a few crackers to an unfortunate dumping of the box on the floor. However, I did save some by adding them to a meat loaf I was making which leads me to true food confessions.

This Week's True Food Confessions

It's been a couple of weeks with holiday events, so really anything goes this time of year. And anything did.
We had a lovely family Christmas dinner and another dinner I think existed of sauerkraut and cookies. We had a family birthday dinner at a Mexican restaurant and had pizza from Pizza Hut, Dominoes, and Costco. (Costco has very good medium size cheese pizzas for $2.50/pizza.) Another day, we had salad, frozen bean burritos and more sauerkraut. For snacks, we had Christmas cookies and Sinful Potatoes. Amongst all of this, we did do a little cooking. Theodore made a very good cabbage soup and Wally made a very good potato vegetable soup. And finally getting around to the meatloaf mentioned above, we had meatloaf, rice, and salad for dinner last night. I don't know what else we've been eating, but we're all ready for some planned "regular" food. Until next week...

Worries and Reruns

Sometimes things go smoothly in life, and sometimes you hit bumps. Right now I'm in a bumpy patch with concerns about my elderly parents.  Consequently, when I sit down to write a post, I have a hard time concentrating. It seems as if the worries flood out my other thoughts. So then and again, when I'm having a hard time thinking, I will be rerunning some of my posts that make me smile. It will be good therapy for me while I learn productive ways to channel my worries. I hope you enjoy them too.

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 As you probably know, we have four cats that provide endless entertainment for us. I did a post a year and a half ago about our cat, Lucy, and her antics. Here's a link.

A Day in the Life of Lucy

One of Lucy's midday games. See what other fun things she did this day.

A Second Look--January 2, 2013

We've had a couple of small snowfalls recently but they haven't seemed to affect the wildlife any. I continue to see birds, squirrels and deer from the windows. (Have I mentioned that I don't like to go out in cold weather much?)

Here's what I saw this week during a Second Look.

Snow from three days ago.

Remnants of the snow.

Finch and titmouse

 

Grapevine

Bird skull (3-4" long). I think I found another piece of it a couple of weeks ago.

White tailed deer

White breasted nuthatch and red bellied woodpecker

Nest, catbird?