Bring your innovation!
This blog is my way of sharing the old and new methods I have found, salvaged and invented for dealing with the modern world.
Because life is more fun if you think!
When I went to visit a friend of mine not long ago, I found him suffering terribly from itchy skin. He had spent the day sanding and grinding fiberglass in a hot shop under cramped conditions, and the tiny pieces of loose fiberglass had worked their way through protective layers of clothing to embed themselves in his pores.
He knew enough to take a cool shower – this is much better than a warm one, which would have opened the pores even more, and allowed more fiberglass to lodge itself into his skin. Unfortunately, since he had been working in the heat, the damage was done, and under a microscope, his epidermis would most likely have resembled a porcupine.
Luckily, I was able to offer a suggestion that provided at least some relief.
Seek salvation in masking tape!
Here’s how it works: Tear off a convenient length strip of regular masking tape. 6″ long by 2″ wide is a good size. Lay it carefully over the afflicted area of skin, and gently smooth it down, then pull it back off.
The adhesive will grab the tiny splintery fibers and lift them out of your skin. You can re-use the same piece of tape two or three times, but then I recommend that you cut a new piece: you don’t want to end up mashing new splinters onto your skin with contaminated tape.
Likewise, don’t wad the tape up into a ball and use it to scrub your skin. This will have the same effect as scratching, rubbing the fibers deeper into your pores, and torturing your already irritated dermal layer.
My friend reported 90% effectiveness, reducing his discomfort dramatically.
This technique also works on very fine splinters of other sorts as well.
As a female scenic painter, I lead a tom-boy-ish existence at work. I climb up and down scaffolding, lug heavy ladders around, wrestle 60 pound buckets of paint, and so on. Some times I would come home covered in bruises, which I didn’t mind until I started dating a new man, and wanted to show off my legs to their best advantage.
I needed a way to stop getting so beat up at work.
In looking at where the bruises occurred, I was soon able to divine their cause – carelessness. My workplace is relatively high pressure, and I was more cognizant of my goal than of the path I took to get to it. I was bashing onto sawhorses and table corners, whacking my shins on ladders, and letting five gallon buckets of paint smash into the side of my thigh as I carried them across the stage.
In short, I was “Moving While Distracted.”
This is not good. It counts as multi-tasking, and can lead to more major injuries than bruises. I decided to apply a technique I have used with success in the past, to counter exhaustion.
Here’s the trick: Move like a ballerina.
I don’t mean that you should intersperse your workday with plies and pirouettes. I mean that you make an effort to do whatever you do smoothly, gracefully, and mindfully. I was able to do this without slowing my pace. I simply paid more attention to what I was doing as I did it. The subtext I used of a ballerina made it fun to find graceful and efficient ways to complete even arduous tasks, like hefting a 16 foot ladder across a stage.
I used this technique for several days, and found that it works beautifully. Fewer bruises, and fewer careless mistakes!
It’s happened to all of us: you wake to discover that your arm has been mysteriously converted to a flabby hunk of senseless meat. Then the pins and needles begin. Or you wake up with hands that function, but are completely numb.
Relief is on the way!
I recently discovered a pressure point in the forearm that clears up most numbness caused by overuse in moments.
Here’s how to find it: Hold the forearm of the numb hand up at a right angle to your upper arm, with your palm facing toward you. Crook the tip of the pinkie finger of your other hand around the tip of the affected elbow. With the palm of the hand extending out naturally, let the thumb rest on the belly of the forearm muscle, pointing up toward the center of your wrist.
Press and massage this area with your thumb. use a fair amount of force, but you don’t have to be brutal. If you’ve got the right spot, the massage should make the middle and ring fingers of the numb hand move a little, and I can always feel it in the tendons in the back of my hand.
The numbness is usually gone in seconds, and I’ve had good results finding the spot on others, so it’s not just me!
If you work with your hands a lot and your hands go numb often, massage, an anti-inflammatory, and ice can help, but you should also look into your work habits – you may be courting carpel tunnel, and nobody wants that!
If you have trouble getting to sleep at night, or staying asleep, once you get there, there are some things you can do that don’t involve expensive drugs with chancy side effects.
Get to bed on time. I know it sounds like something you tell the kids, but in fact, all humans, adults as well as children, have an internal clock that tells us when to sleep and when to wake. It works best if you can give it a clear set of cues, and then follow a regular schedule.
The clock can be reset by exposure to bright light, so if you want to get to sleep on time, don’t spend the hours just before bed staring into a brightly lit computer screen. A simple and effective way to prepare your body for sleep is to dim the lights and lower the noise levels for an hour or so before bedtime.
A word about Melatonin
The first thing most people will tell you to try, these days, if you complain about insomnia is melatonin supplements. Supplements are not the only, or indeed the best, way to get melatonin, which is produced naturally in your body – here is a little more information.
Tryptophan is present in high levels in turkey, chicken, and dairy foods.
In the body, it is converted into Serotonin
and then into Melatonin, both of which make you feel relaxed and sleepy.
Tryptophan is most effective in the presence of starches: When you eat starches, the body produces insulin, which pushes all the amino acids except for Tryptophan into the muscle cells. This leaves the Tryptophan first in line into the brain, where it can do its magic.
Melatonin is also found in:
Oats, Sweet corn, Rice, Ginger, Barley and Bananas.
A little of any of these foods will boost your melatonin levels and help to prepare your body for sleep.
An overall healthful diet will help you to get better sleep. In particular, deficiencies in copper, iron, and magnesium, can make it less likely that you will get a restful night’s sleep. B vitamins help the body to regulate amino acids, making sure it knows what to do with the tryptophan and melatonin you feed to yourself.
Good sources of minerals and B vitamins include:
Shellfish, Tuna, Lean meat, Nuts: almonds, walnuts, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, Whole grains, Dried beans: pinto, navy, soy beans, lentils, Green leafy vegetables: spinach, Swiss chard
Some other things that can keep you awake include:
A full bladder - so restrict your intake of fluids 2 to 3 hrs before bed.
Caffeine– it takes 6 to 8 hrs to eliminate caffeine’s effects from the body, so no chocolate, tea or coffee after noon, if you want to go to bed by 9pm.
Alcohol—it may help you to fall asleep initially, but it causes a rebound effect that will wake you up again.
Empty stomach = low blood glucose levels= wakefulness. Have a small serving of a sleep inducing food, a half-hour or so before bed – cheese on a cracker, a glass of warm milk, a banana, a half cup of warm oatmeal, or corn…you get the idea.
Acid reflux—this can occur without heartburn, so that you don’t know that you have the condition. If you think you might have it, treat it for a week, and see if you notice a change.
Here’s how: cut down on foods that create reflux—such as large fatty meals with rich sauces and lots of carbs, follow a strict rule of no food for 2hrs before bed, and take a 75 milligram dose of Zantac, an over-the-counter antacid.
Late Night Exercise: a strenuous work out just before bed might make you tired, but it will in fact get you all revved up and make it harder for you to get to sleep – not to mention the fact that lying very still while your muscles are full of toxins from the work out leaves you open to some very stiff muscles in the morning. Try to work out at least three hours before bedtime, to give your body plenty of time to wind down. A gentle routine of pottering aroundthe house tidying up and putting things to rights is just the kind of gentle activity that will get one off to a good night’s rest.
I do have better sleep when I follow these guidelines – I just have to remember what they are, and have the discipline to follow them!
Sources for the is information Include: Power Sleep, a book I read a while back and can’t remember the authors of (sorry) and
The Doctor’Book of Food Remedies by Selene Yeager and the Editors of Prevention
I have to confess: I’m a sucker for tins. If it comes in a pretty tin, I’ll at least consider buying it. I like to re-use them, too – that is the appeal, after all, a nice decorative, airtight container, one not made of plastic.
The only problem is that sometimes I can’t get the lids back off, after I’ve put them on. The combination of friction and suction defeats my every effort. Sometimes they even rust shut, and then it’s a pretty pickle indeed!
After a recent (eventually successful) struggle to open a small tin, I thought, “I should find some way to prevent this from happening.”
So I did. Here’s the trick: use a little wax to lower the friction, prevent the formation of rust, and increase the airtight qualities of your tin. You can rub the inside and outside matching edges with the stub of an old candle, or if you don’t happen to have a candle handy, use a waxy lip balm (Chapstick works well). Once you have waxed it up, put the lid on and swivel it back and forth a few times, to be sure the wax is evenly distributed.
This trick also works on sticky zippers, and other situations where friction is a problem, and oil is too messy, or could damage or contaminate parts or contents.
I was out at a street fair with my friend Kristen, and she gave me her business card, in case we got separated, with the comment that no one knows anyone else’s phone number any more. She made a good point.
These days, we all rely on our cellphones and computers to store important phone numbers, and with speed-dial and one touch cues, the more often we call someone, the less likely we are to know the number by heart. To exacerbate matters, almost nobody’s number is listed with information any more. It has reached the point where if you get separated from your cell phone, the only emergency number you’re likely to know is 911.
I was talking with my friend Anthony about this problem, and he resolved, there and then, to jot down his most important contact #’s on a piece of paper and keep it in his wallet. This seems like a good solution, but I thought it could stand to be improved upon.
Here’s my solution:
Use your favorite desktop publishing program to create a business-card sized list of important phone #’s that you can keep in your wallet.
I used a 7-point font, and was able to get 29 #’s legibly onto one card.
I printed it, cut it out and keep it in my wallet, which is with me at all times. I also keep a copy in the glove compartment of my car. Now even if I forget to charge my cell phone, I still have a way to make that important phone call.
With the number of people turning up lactose intolerant these days, one starts to wonder why anyone ever drank cow’s milk. The trouble is that you can turn out to be intolerant of the milk substitutes, as well.
While I don’t have any scientific proof for the supposition, I think that the answer to many of these negative reactions may be the processing and stabilizers that have to go into milk and milk-substitutes to give them a long enough shelf-life to be commercially viable.
One way to avoid these problems is to make your own, and while not everyone has room for a cow, most of us have space for a blender and a container full of raw almonds.
I learned to make almond milk from the pages of Fit For Life, by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond. I have added my own minor twist to the process.
Here’s how: use raw almonds, which are available in most whole food stores, and many regular grocery stores. 1/4 cup of whole almonds makes about one cup of almond milk, and the recipe scales up easily.
You need:
raw almonds
clean water
a blender or food processor
a coffee filter or cheesecloth or a fine sieve
a small saucepan
- Soak the almonds for two to three hours or overnight in enough water to cover in the fridge. (Optional, but this step makes it easier on the blender, and can make for a sweeter, more almond-flavored milk.) The almonds will absorb the water, becoming plumper and more tender. I like to eat them like this – they have a texture akin to that of water chestnuts.
- In a small saucepan, heat up just enough water to cover the almonds to a rapid boil, dump the almonds in, and blanch them for 45 seconds.
- Drain off the boiling water, cool the almonds, and pinch off the now loose almond skins.
- Pour about twice as much water into the blender as you have almonds, and grind the almonds and water together for 3 to 5 minutes.
- Add enough additional water to create a ratio of one part almonds to four parts water, and blend for another minute.
- At this stage, you will have a thick creamy mixture that makes a perfect base for a really wonderful smoothie – just add a banana, a cup of orange juice or water, and the flavorful fruit of your choice. Alternatively, you can use the strainer, cheesecloth or coffee filter to separate out the fibrous almond meat, and you will end up with something more like conventional almond milk.
Home-made almond milk keeps for 7 to 10 days in the fridge, although without commercial stabilizers, it tends to settle out a bit between uses, and needs to be shaken or stirred up. Can be used pretty much like regular milk, for cooking and drinking.
I bake: and I use toothpicks when I bake, to check for doneness, like it says in the recipes. I used to get my toothpicks in those flimsy cardboard boxes, which would inevitably disintegrate before I used up the toothpicks, scattering them uselessly all over the bottom of whatever drawer I was storing them in: messy, wasteful, unhygienic – Irksome!
One day, I discovered a simple solution.
Here’s the trick: Use the empty bottle from a spice jar to store the toothpicks. Best is the kind that has a “sprinkle top” such as “Spice Islands” brand Poppyseed or Cinnamon. The two-ounce jars are exactly the right length for standard wooden toothpicks, and the sprinkle top makes it easy to grab a single toothpick, even when you’re in a hurry. You just tip up the bottle, and the little spikes pop conveniently up!
When you’re living life in the fast lane, it can be hard to consume your produce fast enough. I suspect that many people have had the experience of pulling what used to be a head of lettuce out of the fridge, only to find that it has turned to a bagful of black slime when your back was turned.
While nothing can save your lettuce from eventual disintegration, there is a way to buy yourself a few extra days of viable greens to eat.
Here‘s the trick:
1. Give your greens a bath and a drink before storage.
Soak the head of lettuce in a basin of cold water for ten minutes or so, then upend it for a few more minutes in a colander or dish drainer to let the excess water drain off. This will plump the cells, and the leaves will be nice and crisp when you’re ready to use them. It will also help to rinse off any pesticides or germs that may have ridden home on your food. (Add a little lemon juice to the rinse water, if you like, to help with the cleaning process.)
2. Wrap the lettuce in a cloth or paper towel, before you put it into the plastic bag in the fridge.
The cloth absorbs any excess water, and allows a little air to come between the leaves and the plastic, preventing the anaerobic bacteria from getting to your produce before you do.
A head of Romaine lettuce, treated in this way, will last beautifully for up to two weeks in the fridge.
Keep in mind, though that all food is more nutritious when consumed fresh.
Buy it/prep it/eat it!
