Yummy low calorie snacks

December 17, 2009 at 2:27 am (Holidailies) (, , , , )

I have a sleepwalking disorder in which I get up and nibble on sweets during the night. I try not to buy things such as candy and cakes because I really don’t have much control over this “sleepwalk zombie.” Most of the time I have a half a fridge full of yogurt and since that’s about the sweetest thing I keep in the house, the freak in me goes for that and I get my calcium.

The one I like best is Yoplait Light, the Boston Cream Pie flavor.

It only has 110 calories per 6 ounce container, so I don’t have to worry too much about what sort of damage the freak has done to my figure during the night.

In the last few months I have found a couple of other low calorie snacks to trick any sleep walk freak’s sweet tooth. Jello brand’s sugar free pudding, Dulce de leche flavor has a creamy, caramel taste to die for. Even my kids, my fully awake kids love this stuff, so I buy several multi packs (in the refrigerated section near the other Jello puddings) every time I hit the store.

(Damn you, Jell-O for making me create my own graphic)

The very best low calorie snack I have ever found was something I spotted a few weeks ago. This stuff right here:

It is almost too good to be true. The chocolate flavored Jello Mousse Temptations (click that link for a coupon), tastes almost like real mousse. First time I tried it I thought this stuff has to be evil, there has to be something in it that will make my skin leather up, hair fall out, or grow warts between my eyes. There is no way it is only 60 calories. Impossible.

But that’s what it says.

Notice I haven’t claimed any of these goodies are healthy? That’s because they don’t claim it either. It’s probably better than eating the full sugar version if you are watching your sugar intake. As for the rest, I just don’t know.

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Cookies!

December 16, 2009 at 3:17 am (Holidailies) (, , , , )

On Sunday I went to a cookie exchange party and got to be one of the judges since I don’t compete in the cookie contest.

See all of these cookies?

I had to taste every single one of them. Okay, one of each recipe which means I got to sink my teeth into about sixteen different cookies. The categories I can recall were prettiest, best tasting, most professional looking, best non-cookie… All that sugar must have messed with my memory, I don’t remember the rest of the categories.

I loved this little scene, mice on a candy mountain:


(click on photos to enlarge, you must, especially this one)

Each candy is made with a cherry dipped in white chocolate and a Hershey’s kiss smacked on the front to make it look like a mouse. I think the mountains are made of white chocolate.

It seems as if half of the cookies had some sort of peppermint in them and while I don’t like peppermint (not even in my toothpaste), the one I chose for best tasting had peppermint in it. I find that hilarious, overriding my own big-shot judge self. It made me almost like peppermint and if a cook can do that to my taste buds, they have magical skills.

The cookie I liked the most, the one I thought the prettiest, was a simple old-fashioned gingerbread man.

They were so perfect. I would like to have rearranged them for a better photo, but I didn’t want to upset the baker or seem like a freak, moving cookies around on a plate.

I know how difficult these are to make and have never been able to pull off gingerbread anything. Mine come out dry, cracked and broken. Or too fat, or too skinny. Now I feel like decorating a gingerbread house just so I could get the smell in here. Maybe I’ll buy a kit with the pre-fab walls and get the girls to help me.

I feel a tingle in my cold, dark heart. I think I might be getting the Christmas spirit.

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Sad Santa

December 14, 2009 at 11:55 pm (Holidailies) ()

I’m trying to get the Christmas spirit, really, I’m taking photos of trees, cookies, cars with decorations, videos of the neighbors with fantastic lights sync’d to music…

(makes me feel like a total loser when it comes to decorating)

Got snow on the blog.

Some gifts on order.

But I can’t get in the mood for Christmas. Maybe I need to watch a Santa movie or something. Or hang out at Anita Marie’s blog, she knows how to whip up the spirit.

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Reindeer Car

December 14, 2009 at 3:38 am (Holidailies) (, , , )

I saw a VW Beetle today with cute antlers and a red nose driving behind me. It would have made a perfect picture, where is a red light when you need one? Had I been in a hurry… Actually I was late for a party because I couldn’t peel myself away from the Saints game to get ready.

A little later I saw the same decoration on another car parked at a shopping mall.

Awwww.

I bet they have their Christmas tree up. And most of their shopping done.

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A Free Trip, For Real!

December 12, 2009 at 7:56 pm (life, travel) (, )

My parents were good about taking us on yearly vacations to the beach or to camps out on the levees and we did lots of camping and fishing and all of the amazing adventure things one can do in the wonderful state of Louisiana. They also bought us a set of encyclopedias called “Lands and Peoples” which was my absolute favorite thing to read. I’d read all of them more than once by the time I finished high school. It fascinated me like nothing else.

That made me want to go places. Anywhere. Just go.

My first trip out of state besides going to Texas to visit my dad’s relatives was a trip I went on with my best friend’s family. This was also the first time I’d gone anywhere without my family.

Keep in mind this was before the internet, and at the birth of what would be the telemarketing explosion. It was also when people took to the road instead of hopping cheap flights as they did not exist. Also, the speed limit was 55mph.

We were in the summer between 10th and 11th grade, about sixteen years-old, and my friend picked up the phone to hear a woman go on about how she won a free trip to Florida for a family of four. Nobody believed her until the official Free Trip to Florida Certificate came in the mail. It was legit and she was the luckiest girl in town. All her parents had to do was go on an airboat tour in the Everglades to look at some land. No obligation.

This was great, my friend was interested in going to the University of Florida in Jacksonville and needed to check out the place.

So she convinced her parents to drive us there, a twenty-seven hour drive each way. We had ten days to do it all and no idea whatsoever what it was like to be in a tiny car for so long.

For me, it was liberating to be away from my parents and my boring life in a small town.

We found two little boys to take a photo of us, notice how they cut the heads off the parents

We didn’t drive straight thorough but spent the night in about three cities along the way. One of those places we stayed had a vibrating bed which I guess was an early form of the massage chair you see today in one of those mall stores. To operate the thing, we had to put a quarter in this little gadget on the bedside table and it would give you 10 minutes of buzz. We didn’t have any quarters, so I managed to hack it by disconnecting the meter and plugging this high tech mattress directly into the wall socket. The world of travel was already opening my eyes to new and exiting things.

So we were laying on this circus bed and my friend’s eyes rolled back into her head. I’d seen this before, my dad had epilepsy, and this girl was having a grand mal seizure. I rolled her on her side and woke her parents. They panicked when they saw my friend’s face was blue, called an ambulance, and we ended up spending a few hours in some Florida ER. It was quite an awakening as this was her first seizure.

The next day’s drive got us to Ft. Lauderdale. Gigantic hotel with about twenty floors and five swimming pools. Paradise.


Paradise

Nope. Not really. We had no idea one of the worst hurricanes to hit Florida was barreling down on the place starting the day we got there. We never stepped foot in any of those pools but got to watch a storm from the seventeenth floor. But hey, the hotel had this awesome arcade and that was all the rage back then.

When things quieted down a little with the storm, we drove down to Miami because her parents wanted to see the beach where all these famous movies had been filmed. It was a bit run down and underwhelming. Empty. This was before Miami got hip again and there was another storm going on, the Cuban refugee crisis.

That was the one where they let loose a bunch of convicts and mental patients from Cuba to the US.

We were scared when we watched the news with all these stories about how over a hundred thousand undesirables were set loose right there in South Florida. Maybe we should have watched the news before we left Louisiana. We just all looked at each other and said, “We’re not leaving this room.”

You know what was even stranger? Not a single one of us complained or even seemed to be bothered by it. We laughed the entire time, you see, this was a family of comical geniuses and I was one damn lucky kid to be a part of it.

I don’t think people are like this anymore. Whatever we desire, we can get to it in an instant. Food. A place. Information. There seems to be less interest in the journey itself, and all of this makes life pass by too quickly for me.

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I will get caught up

December 12, 2009 at 5:53 am (Holidailies) (, )

I know I’m behind with Holidailies, It’s just been a little rough here with the new baby, my mother-in-law in town (she’s nice, I love her), Christmas… And it’s been too cold to do anything, all we want to do is light a fire and sit by it or curl up under a blanket. That’s what we’ve been doing since mother in law broke her leg, she can’t really get around too well as she is in a bit of pain.

I have a ton of posts in draft form just waiting for the right title or some graphics or a better ending or some courage to post what I wrote.

I could write about the 1975 documentary I saw last night, “Grey Gardens” which is about a reclusive mother and daughter pair who lived in the Hamptons.

But that show made me sad and anytime I see something involving mental illness it scares the crap out of me because I know it could happen to anyone.

If you’ve seen it and have some thoughts you’d like to share, spill. (I think the mother made the daughter crazy)

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Pretty Ugly Beauty Salon

December 11, 2009 at 2:18 am (Holidailies, photos)

I usually go all photo crazy when I go to my hometown in South Louisiana, but luck was not with me, it rained and then by the time the sun came out, it was time to leave. I only got the chance to take this one photo in a run down part of town.

I’ve got a couple of images in my head of things I saw and wish I had taken.

The first is from the perspective of sitting on a porch looking out into the yard during a downpour. Above me is a low tin roof much like the one in the photo above. Rain from each little wave in the tin makes long lines of water that fall to the ground.

The second one is from the perspective of the driver’s seat at 70 mph. On the side of the road, a black man walks in our direction. He waves a fishing pole at us, and at the end of it, a huge fish. The man smiles from ear to ear as he shows off his catch to strangers he will never see again.

I wish I could draw.

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Move along, nothing to see here

December 10, 2009 at 3:23 am (family)

Woke up at my mom’s to a beautiful 65 degree sunshiny day. Finished the day in Dallas at about 23 degrees and had to hit the emergency room.

All was going well, really well. We made good time without speeding, only hit a little traffic at rush hour here. When we got home however, Blane’s mom fell before she even stepped foot in the house and broke her leg.

She was supposed to fly back home on Monday night but I’m thinking I might need to drive her home sooner so she can see her orthopedic surgeon.

I’m toast.

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One shot

December 8, 2009 at 6:25 pm (Uncategorized)



One shot

Originally uploaded by cinemagypsy

I am on a quick trip to South Louisiana to bring my mother home and
pick up blane’s mom.
I’m in my Rv and I’m blogging from my phone. I only have one day here.
Guess how I spent it?

I did what any self respecting Cajun would do, visited with my family
for a little while then hit the butcher shops for tasso, sausage, and
boudin. Another store for some spices and roux and I’m set with my
Cajun blood booster for a few months. Also bought myself a Saints shirt.
I can only upload one photo from my phone with a blog post and today
was a rainy grey day so it has to be this, tomorrow I’ll post
something pretty or interesting from around here or from the road.

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Walker

December 7, 2009 at 10:24 am (life) (, , )

Something new with Mom since our last visit is she is using a walker. I sort of act as if it isn’t there even though it disturbs me to see her use it.

Physically, she doesn’t seem to need it. She’s only in her 60’s and she walks well without it. Hell, she’s just dragging this thing around. Mentally, she is dependent on it. She’s got a weak knee that gives out on her at random and sends her tumbling to the ground. I do remember over the last five years seeing her fall too many times to count. Last year, she fell and hurt her shoulder. Now she is afraid to walk on her own lest she end up with a more serious and crippling injury.

I asked her if she could have her knee rebuilt. Surely someone can do something? Nope.

Then I wonder (to myself) if it would help if she lost some weight? Anything to get rid of this visual that my mom is getting old. But she’s very sensitive about that and it never does any good to go there with her. Anyway, I’ve never seen her overeat and she is brilliant when it comes to nutrition. I have no idea why she is not thin, this never made sense to me.

With this bad knee and walker thing, she can’t get around like I want her to. I want to take her to see a museum. Or shopping to buy her some new clothes for Christmas. Or to the movies, like we used to do.

I got her to go to a couple of stores today. Small ones that she can take a quick walk around and then get back in the car. That is how we shop these days when we are together. I’m in the store and she’s sitting in the car waiting for me.

The last store on our stop has these amazing shoes and purses, so I insisted she come in with me. She cried real tears not to go in there, said her knee was killing her. I told her the knee was going to hurt at home as well and she could at least see some pretty things in the store versus being bored at home.

She came in and I found a place for her to sit in the shoe department. My mom has always had a thing for shoes, so I knew she would be fine there.

There is this thing my daughters and I like to do in shoe departments. We find the sluttiest shoes, try them on, then sashay down the aisle like fools. The higher the heel, the better, because none of us are tall and it’s like walking on stilts. And we laugh like maniacs.

So, while my mom was sitting there, I did my shoe routine. Now these were couture shoes, so I’d tell her the price first. Some of them were $2500. On sale.

Maybe it was these.

And then there are those that look like crap in the box but wowowowow when I put them on.

And it was fun, really fun, because I got to see her smile and laugh.

I found a pretty one for her and got her try it on. She didn’t stand up, only stared at it on her foot for a while with a smile on her face and said, “I used to wear sexy shoes.” For years now she’s been wearing special walking shoes because of that bad knee.

I stood there wishing I could buy it for her and she could walk in it instead of dragging around that walker. For that though, I’d have to turn back the hands of time. She will never be able to wear a shoe like that again. Ever.

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Link Time!

December 4, 2009 at 3:08 am (Holidailies)

You have got to get yourself over to Sulya’s blog and see the Christmas tree she and her son made and read her post about how she feels about Christmas.

I admit, I am a closet Scrooge and a Christmas slacker. I might not even put up a tree at all this year. I have not bought a single gift and i don’t have a list made out yet. I quit sending out cards years ago.

But hey, guess what? I signed up for Holidailies! Yayayayay.

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See Ya in Your Nightmares

December 2, 2009 at 5:25 pm (family, life) (, , , , , , , , )

We lived within walking distance of the Health Unit when I was a kid. This was an institutional white-ceramic-tile-everywhere-but-the-ceiling sort of place that always smelled of rubbing alcohol. This was the place for baby shots. Didn’t matter if you were a seven year-old kid, that’s what they called them. Baby shots. Maybe that term was supposed to lessen the fear of them. As an adult, it sounds innocuous, but a shot was a shot back then and I had a raging phobia of needles.

Blane says his mom used to take him to one certain doctor with a child-sized metal airplane in the waiting room. He’d start crying the minute he saw the thing, but he’d tell them, “Okay, put me in there.” He’d be smiling and crying at the same time while he sat in the airplane. (I’m laughing myself to tears at that visual)

Fast forward to present day. I’m working the county H1N1 clinic giving assembly line shots with a few other nurses. We all play our parts differently. Some of us smile and try to be sweet to the kids with a basket of candy in one hand and a needle in the other.  That’s how I do it, although I know kids are just as smart as we are. I’ve been thinking about cutting the act and going with the “mean nurse” look. The happy face thing is a bit deceptive, and if I’m gonna be in some kid’s nightmares, I’d rather not be the smiling villain.

image from healthclub.info-ebazaar.com

It’s interesting being on the other side of this “baby shot” thing. Notably the different ways families handle the situation. Some parents haven’t told their kids what they are doing there. Those are the cheerful but skeptical ones. Like I said, kids aren’t stupid. We have our syringes concealed under a cloth and when the time is right, Ta-Da! So it is wise to choose the most needle-phobic kid to go first because once the cat is out of the bag, kids start scrambling, bargaining, or putting up a pretty damn good fight.

Most families do tell their kids what is about to happen. It’s fascinating, the children are consistent. Either the entire family is crying, or they are courageous and ready to get the thing over with.

Teenaged boys provide the comic relief. They laugh at and taunt each other, “You want me to hold your hand?” Oh, and giving a shot in a tattoo can be fun, like the wildcat I shot right between the eyes last night.

You know what shot behavior I like best of all? When it’s all over with, the part where I offer a kid some candy and they shove it back at me as if to say, “I don’t want your damn candy.”

If you live in Collin County, you can get your FREE H1N1 flu shot on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from 4PM to 8PM and Saturdays from 9AM to 5PM until December 23rd, while supplies last. This is at the free clinic which has been temporarily converted to a flu clinic and is open to everyone (rich, poor, pretty, ugly…) in the county, click here for the location. (also, the more shots we give, the more grant money we receive to treat the poor, so come to us if you’re getting the shot… It will cost you nothing and I’ll hold your hand.)

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A murder of cake

November 28, 2009 at 8:48 am (England, Thoughts, cooking, food, life) (, )

As I was walking out to the trash with the turkey carcass, I got to thinking about an English wedding I attended. How did I get from turkey to wedding?

Well, at the wedding I noticed there was a tiny wedding cake, not nearly large enough to feed even a tenth of the people there. It seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. I could see that cake running out by the time the bridesmaids got their cut. That’s how small it was.

Then something peculiar happened. The newlyweds cut the cake, each had their ceremonial bite and put the rest on the table. Then. No one ate any more cake.

So I had to ask someone. What is the deal with the cake? Is a fake or something?

I was told it was indeed a real cake and I was very welcome to have some but I would likely spit it out, that’s how bad this cake was.

I went over and took a closer look. It was a freaky color, burnt orange or something like that. A rich fruit cake. Rich! They told me it was a tradition to serve it at weddings in England and no one ever eats it, but they do it because that is how it has always been done.

What a murder of cake.

Tradition sometimes just doesn’t make sense. And that brings us back to the turkey.

I hate turkey. The taste, the smell, and then the leftover meat that is wasted. I have decided I will never cook another one again. If someone insists on having it, I’ll cook a turkey breast. But no more full birds.

As for the English, what I find really funny is how beautiful their cakes are. Look at these I photographed through a bake shop window in York in 2005. I apologize for the quality of the photos.

I love that castle cake.

And the cute bears in a tub.

Oh, what a murder of cake photos…

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Beginning of a Lifetime

November 26, 2009 at 5:29 am (family, life, photos)

The journey begins with a black ink footprint on a white sheet of paper.

This first signature declares “I am here.”

Teenaged aunts stare and touch those tiny toes in pure wonder. Hypnotized or mesmerized or both. They compare the tiny hand to theirs. How could it have ever been that small? Ever?

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Such a Coward…

November 11, 2009 at 7:01 pm (Uncategorized) (, , , )

I’m feeling crappy today because of a dream I had last night that I just can’t shake. It’s one of my best dreams, cinematically. Character is what I have a problem with.

It starts out with me climbing hundreds of steps up a mountain. It’s a setting that looks like a mashup of The Temple of Doom and the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse. Rope footbridges overlooking lush jungle growth around a marble cliffside. Beneath the foilage, five stories of heiroglyphs stamped into white marble.

There are other people like me with their cameras, but no one I know. It must be some sort of remote tourist attraction because there is a stand selling bottled water on the flat and dry mountaintop.

So I go up there for some water and while waiting in line, I spot this colossal vortex on the horizon. It appears as if half the world has folded into it already and it heads straight for us. Everyone scrams for cover except for me. I gotta get some video of this. The wind around me strengthens and I decide to go for cover. I run and run and look for a ditch but find an overpass looking thing. I hide until I hear the earth tremble and no longer feel safe.

More running.

I keep running until I get to a parked SUV. I open the door and get in with a car load of strangers. My heart is pounding, the tornado is almost upon us now, I feel safe, and the car starts when the driver turns the key.

I’ve saved myself AND I have some of the best storm footage ever recorded.

And then…

A little boy comes to the window and asks to come in. I’m about to let him in when, behind him, a crowd of people rush up, all wanting to get in. The others warn if I open the door they’ll mob handle the car and we will all die.

I can see it so clearly right now, my finger pushing down the lock of that door. Through the window I see the boy’s face pressed against the glass. I tell myself he is dead already.

Our car speeds off to safety.

Through the back window, I see the tornado suck up everything. First the boy and the people behind him, then the overpass, the wall of heiroglyphs, the water stand…

When the storm is gone and the sun is back out, we drive back to the scene which now looks like a landfill. News crews begin to pour in and one of the reporters asks if anyone has video of the tornado. I say I do, click some buttons on my camera, and guess what?

No tornado footage. Just video of people waiting in line for water.

Anticlimactic, yes?

I have dreams like this all the time where some big catastrophic event is coming. If there is an ending, I’m always the hero. But not this time. What a nightmare and I feel like such a coward even though it is just a dream.

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Lash Crack

November 10, 2009 at 4:05 am (humor) (, , , )

I’ve been seeing people with looooong loooooong eyelashes. Ridiculously long. So long I saw a lady getting hers cut at the salon next to me. I asked the hairdresser if something was wrong with her to have all this overgrowth.

Nothing wrong, she’s using one of those new lash products that grows them thicker and longer. I thought I might invest $150 bucks and do a special here, a product demonstration with some before and after pics.

Sound fun?

Okay, so I’m cheap. I couldn’t part with the hundred and fifty clams. I saw somewhere on facebook that a mom discovered how to mix two household ingredients to get longer lashes. Free. F-R-E-E free. So I clicked that link.

And I tried it.

Here’s the before shot:

Photo on 2009-11-09 at 03.55

After just one night, voila! Here is the after shot:

lash crack

The unibrow (or eyesbrow, as Spanky calls it) is an unintended side effect. Must have smeared this stuff all over while sleeping.

So I shaved it all off and started fresh.

Brown eyes

Wait, what the hell? My eyes turned brown? I’d better put some more of this stuff on and grow an eye fro before anyone notices…

Brown eyes 2

That’s better.

But seriously. Ladies. Those ridiculously long freak lashes are horrible. I can understand if someone has short and thin lashes and wants to improve a little on Mother Nature. A little. But not eyelashes that keep knocking you in the eyebrows. It’s just too much.

It certainly isn’t worth a change in eye color, which is a real side effect of the prescription formula Latisse.  Actually, it can cause patchy brown spots on light eyes, so not even a uniform color change.

What do you think?

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Movember

November 4, 2009 at 3:43 pm (family) ()

You know all that pink stuff they sell to raise money for breast cancer awareness and research? I buy that stuff. I have pink everywhere. A pink jacket. Pink socks. The t-shirt. Pink kitchen scissors, two of them. I even have pink baking cups for cupcakes.

photo

I’ve also eaten quite a few too many of the pink M&Ms.

So I wondered all this time what are the dudes going to come up with to raise money for their issues?

They chose the mustache. This month is Movemeber and the bros are going to grow them to raise money for prostate and testicular cancer research and awareness. Friends, family, coworkers, etc. sponsor them to grow it for the entire month and pay up if the participant went through Movember without shaving.

And just as dudes might not feel too welcome to support our cause by wearing pink ribbon things, dudettes might not feel too comfortable growing a ’stache. Nope, I’m not growing mine out, no way.

But my son Blane has joined, Yay! I’ve never seen him wear anything other than a fake mustache as a gag. I have no idea how bushy this thing could become, but I want to see it. I even bought him a present to encourage him. A fifteen inch long gummy snake. And a cat that craps jelly beans. He loves that sort of thing.

Now here’s the trouble. His baby is due November 30th. He says he is shaving it off when the baby is born, so if it’s born early, he’s going to have to pull out that stick-on mustache or do something to convince his sponsors that he really made it.

If you want to know more about this project go to  Movember’s website which is partnering with Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong campaign. There is a cool video on there that lists the statistics for both cancers and other valuable information about the diseases.

You can watch that here:

For all you bros out there growing a flavor savor, this sista supports this important cause. Govember!

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The Swine

October 21, 2009 at 4:14 pm (Uncategorized) (, , , , , )

Blane says I’m going to be murdering a whole bunch of innocent people because I’ll be giving out H1N1 flu shots the first week of November.

photo

I don’t know how he got into reading all these paranoia spreading conspiracy theory sites, he’s a liberal, sometimes a bit more than I am. Apparently the idea that this flu shot is unsafe is widespread. But hell, if the government is going to wholesale kill people, the first in line would not be children, pregnant women and health care workers.

I’ve spent enough time in after-school detention to know that those two groups are on the priority list to get into the life raft.

It’s your granny Obama wants dead, correct? There aren’t enough shots to go around and those over 65 aren’t on The List (they have been exposed to something similar in their childhood, so they are less likely to contract H1N1).

Maybe we’re being immunized with some top secret serum for the germ warfare they are going to release after all the desirables get their shots?

I hope you know I’m just kidding, I believe the H1N1 flu shot is safe and I’ll be getting mine as soon as we open the shipment. If I don’t return by Thanksgiving, run for the border, the goverment is going to kill every last one of us.

Test your H1N1 knowledge with these ten easy questions.

For more information on the safety of the H1N1 vaccine and other facts about the flu, the CDCs website is :::here:::

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No Hero

October 16, 2009 at 2:54 am (death, family) (, , , , , , )

I’ve been watching the fascinating clips by Dr. Sanjay Gupta this past week on his “Cheating Death” series that he’s using to promote his book, “Cheating Death: The Doctors and Medical Miracles that Are Saving Lives Against All Odds.”

The clip from last night showed how a woman trapped in cold water without air for over two hours was brought back to life (she is currently a radiologist in a hospital in Norway, so brain function must be pretty good). Her core body temp was 56 degree F when she was rescued, so that makes her the coldest person on record to survive. You can find that article :::here::: on CNN.

It made me think for just a moment, wow, people who’ve lost loved ones in cold drowning accidents must be having some serious “what if” moments right now.

Then it hit me. My niece, Candace was a cold water drowning (December ‘06). In fact, it was so cold, I wondered if that was why the policeman who came upon the accident just minutes after she crashed didn’t go in to save her.

Here’s what happened to her.

Candace was driving home on a mostly empty road. A policeman on patrol who knew her passed her going the opposite direction. He went a mile further and did a u-turn to go back in Candace’s direction. Routine patrol. When he got to a bridge, he noticed her car was upside-down and underwater. He had just seen her about 5 minutes previously.

The back window was blown out and the officer could see part of a baby seat in the back. He assumed Candace got out of the car and took her baby with her. He did not go into the water to check and make sure. He called for backup and then called her grandparents to ask if she had walked home. All this time Candace was drowning right there in the car, she tried desperately to kick in the front windshield, her legs were found up on the dashboard and there was a spot where she had managed to crack the window with her feet.

Let me back up to the part just before the cop got there. A farmer who lived near the bridge heard the accident and went to see what all the noise was. At this time, he saw the car upside-down, but on the side of the ditch. It had not gone in the water yet. He went back home to call the police and get his tractor to pull the car out.

While he was gone, the car slid into the water.

So by the time the backup came and the place was swarming with police, not a single person thought to check the car. They were stunned when they pulled the car out and found her seat-belted in it. That was about an hour after the accident and there were no efforts to resuscitate her.

I’m not angry about this anymore, she’s gone and isn’t coming back. I’ve accepted this. Two chances for rescue were missed, farmers and cops are human, not superheroes. They have moments of stupidity just like the rest of us. (I understand the cop suffered greatly over this matter)

For some good news, over the summer, Candace’s brother and his wife had a baby girl and named her Candace.

You can read about my niece, Candace :::here:::

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New CPR

October 15, 2009 at 1:17 am (how to, life) (, , , )

You may save a life.

Here’s a two minute CPR lesson I got from CNN. This is a new way of doing it, NO BREATHS are given: :::Click here:::

It was embedded in the CNN article “For young Mom, new CPR beat back death.

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