Curtin Call

I want to wish everyone a Happy Memorial Day weekend! It sounds like its going to be a gorgeous weekend, so enjoy!

Whether you’re planning a nice quiet weekend home with family, having a backyard bar-b-cue or traveling for the first “unofficial” weekend of summer, please be sure to take a moment to remember and pray for our military men and women, both past and present, that have done so much so that we can enjoy the life and liberties that we have today.

Have fun and stay safe!

I haven’t gone anywhere – just not much happenin’ ’round here these days!

Going on vacation next week – so I’m super-duper excited about that. Just went to MIT’s plant sale and picked up some annuals – I love, love, love this time of year!!!!!

Also just heard from our septic guy and everything’s been approved and they’ll start installing the new system next week! No.more.laundromat! (Okay, I’ll stop doing somersaults now!)

The bathroom is coming together and coming together really well. I’m more pleased with it than I had anticipated.

My Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls showed up, too (flashing back to my childhood). Loving this, too:

So that’s about it. Two more days and I’m outta here! See ya when I get back!

My initial instinct was to not actually put the word “aspartame” on my website without changing those a’s to @’s so the “aspartame trackers” wouldn’t find me, but you know what??? I DON’T CARE.

I had been suffering from severe foot pain since the time I woke up on Friday. Not wanting to pay the emergency room visit fee, I was trying to put off seeing anyone until Monday, when I could call my primary care physician. I surfed the web, trying to figure out what I might have done to cause such pain. By Sunday, I couldn’t wait any longer and found out that I could go to a local urgent care facility and only have to pay the fee for an office visit. I was there immediately.

They looked at my foot, did x-rays to rule out that I hadn’t done anything in my sleep (after all, I BROKE MY HIP sleepwalking and never woke up!) then did blood work to test my uric acid level, sending me on my way believing I had gout. I was horrified. Old men that drink whiskey get gout. How could I have gout????

Go home and read about the foods that cause it, I was told. So, I thought and thought and thought about what I had changed in my routine recently. The first thing listed on one of the sites was “artificial sweeteners”. Ah-hah! Crystal Light! Over the past 10 days to 2 weeks, I have been consuming Crystal Light lemonade and/or iced tea on a daily basis. So I googled “aspartame gout” and what I found positively horrified me (again).

Well, I called yesterday for the results of the blood work and, sure enough! They were negative for gout. I have been taking the anti-inflammatory medication and AVOIDING Aspartame and in just two days, I would say the joint pain has decreased by ~90%.

If you don’t believe me, google “aspartame”. I can’t say how disgusted I am that the FDA has approved a substance that shows as many as 92 side effects. I can say that I’ll take my chances of gaining weight and use sugar when needed. At least that’s a natural substance that my body will know what to do with.

To my “mom-readers” – just want to wish you a Happy Mother’s Day! Enjoy!

My town had our town-wide yard sale this past Saturday. There were 49 “registered” yard sales and who knows how many “unregistered”. Woohoo! I loooove town-wide yard sale day!

I didn’t make out as well as I had two years ago (they didn’t have it last year but I was told that they had so many phone calls that they will be having it every year going forward! Woot!)

Awhile back, I had seen an idea in a magazine where you take old glass bottles, a dowel and black and white photo copied pictures. Wrap the picture around the dowel and drop it into the bottle, then release and – voila! You have a “photo frame”!!!

Well, I had looked at several antique shops and they all want $12/$15/$18 for these bottles. Now, this was to be an experiment and I didn’t want just one bottle so I wasn’t really willing to pay that kind of money. Well, I approached one yard sale and what did I find but an entire box of different shaped bottles, so I went over and picked a couple up. The homeowner came over and must have seen the “I wonder how much they want for these?” look on my face because she volunteerd, “25 cents per bottle”. Yes, you read that right. TWENTY-FIVE-CENTS-PER-BOTTLE!!!!

I was explaining to her what I wanted to do with them and wondered aloud if they were going to be too “dark” to see the photos through. “No”, she thought, “if you’re using black and white, I’ll bet they’ll be just fine!” Then, I stopped and reminded myself what she had said – TWENTY-FIVE-CENTS-PER-BOTTLE!!!! How could I possible go wrong??? Look at these beauties again, will ya?!?!?!

All she had were blue bottles but I am in love with these. I haven’t had the chance to put the photos in yet (there’s got to be some sort of dowel-ish thing around my house somewhere) but even without them, these bottles look awesome!

Yeah, I’m a little excited, could ya tell???