Anyway, this is the first year Daisy Girl Scouts are allowed to sell Girl Scout Cookies and my daughter and I could not be more thrilled! I think seeing one of my daughter’s friends selling cookies with her troops mate in front of a Blockbuster last year is what got Gigi hooked on the idea of scouting.

When I was selling cookies, I think they were $1.25 a box. Now they are $3.50 a box, but we all have to remember this is a non-profit organization and the cookies raise funds for this very noble institution. I can hardly think of a single person who would pass up a box of Girl Scout Cookies.

Anyway, if any of my local friends who read this blog are up for some cookies, give us a call. We’ll hook you up

The focus of my fascination when it comes to gardens has always been when people come together in urban spaces to create a community garden. Not only is that garden going to brighten the neighborhood, but it also facilitates relationships between neighbors that may not otherwise spend time together.

I’ve been reading tonight about one of the coolest grant projects I’ve ever heard of. It’s called the Fiskars Project Orange Thumb grant. What this grant does is provide up to $1000 in green goods and up to $1,500 in Fiskars gardening tools for garden projects in the United States, Canada and Australia.

Gardens or gardening projects that focus on community involvement, neighborhood beautification, sustainable agriculture, or horticultural education qualify – and that includes schools! As soon as I read through the site I immediately thought of my daughter’s school and the HUGE courtyard area they have in the middle of the campus. Some of it is bricked, but there are these patches of grass that are perfect for a school wide gardening project.

Of course, not only future projects are eligible. You can apply for the grant if you have an existing garden or gardening project that qualifies. I just printed out the main page of the site to send to the school and I want to encourage all of you – my readers – to apply for projects in your community. The application deadline is February 17, 2009 so you have plenty of time. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that others at my daughter’s school will be as excited about this as me.

So, I “made” $2 on the deal. Actually, it was more like $2.50, because the register spit out an extra 50 cents in Extra Bucks based on my “fall spending”. Nice bonus.

Looking back at the ad just now, it looks like the limit was not on three toothpastes, but on three EB deals. So, If I go back and buy one more toothpaste and use another $1.50 off coupon, I should get another $2 in EB. I will give it a try tomorrow.

When it comes to a tangible scrapbook, I prefer the old fashioned way of doing things. Traditionally, scrapbooks would hold everything you could paste or tape into them to remind you of your life. You would put ticket stubs, newspaper articles, postcards, photos, letters, award ribbons, dried flowers, coins, pebbles or anything else you could affix to the pages. The scrapbook might not be a work of art, but it would be a solid memento of your days.

When my daughter was born, I started a scrapbook, but I only made it through about her 10th month. I did a sort of hybrid traditional-modern style, placing four photos to a page and then adding paper embellishments here and there. I did not make full layouts. And, that reminds me that I might need to put finishing her baby books on my list of projects for this summer.

Anyway, now that my daughter started Daisy Girl Scouts, I thought it would be nice to buy her a scrapbook to use for her scouting mementos. I plan on just teaching her the traditional style of scrapbooking, but as she gets older I will also make her aware of the more modern way of doing things. That way, she can decide on her own how she wants to proceed. For now I am just showing her how to paste in her crafts and photos and trinkets she gets at meetings.

Widows can be native to Florida. Of the four species of this type of spider, three are native. The fourth species has been introduced. It turns out that widow spiders are not native to Florida at all, but there are three species that are occasionally found here.

Since both of these kinds of spiders generally stay where they are no easily seen, the article recommends that you wear gloves when doing things like lifting firewood or reaching into a storage box or your BBQ grill.

A widow’s bite releases venom that acts systemically and moves through your lymphatic system. You might notice “intense pain, rigid abdominal muscles, muscle cramping, malaise, local sweating, nausea, vomiting, and hypertension.” The symptoms can last three to five days if not treated, but treatment is easier than you might think. Not only will an anti-venom work, but so will calcium gluconate – with can be obtained at the drug store inexpensively.

Recluse spiders are hunters and more aggressive than widows, but still only usually bite humans when trapped against the skin, like when you roll over onto one in bed or put on clothing where one is hiding. Their bites cause symptoms within two to four hours, generally making a swollen, painful blister at the bite site that is reddish in color and surrounded by blue. This is called a ‘bull’s-eye’ pattern. If it turns purple, the skin around the bite is becoming necrotic, which means it will eventually turn black and the cells will die, leaving a pitted, scarred area.

When I lived in Gainesville, we had a lot of brown recluse spiders in our wooded yard. We often found them on our screened porch. Alachua County is one of the places the brown recluse is often found. We resorted to putting out a brown recluse spider trap, because my daughter was a toddler at the time and liked to run about touching things and exploring the environment. Of course, I still felt safer being right with her so I could monitor her actions.

I still need to go through my daughter’s clothing and the things out in the garage. I bought all new Samsonite luggage last summer, so I want to go through all my travel bags and donate the ones that older or too heavy for current airline guidelines. Surely someone can use the bags for local travel. They are all still in such great shape.

The things in the storage unit will get the same treatment, but I will wait until we buy the house and move for the final time to do that.

I’ve really cut back on what I buy in the last couple of years. If I really think about it, I have everything I could ever need to run a house without purchasing much of anything else. Of course, I will need to buy new appliances and consumables every so often, but there is no reason to bring in any new decorative items or kitchen ware into my home. All that serves to do is make the house so crowded that I end up doing what am doing now – donating the old things.

My frugal outlook on life keeps me from buying something new simply to replace another item that is still in usable shape. For example, the only reason I bought new luggage last summer is that the airlines all put new luggage restrictions in place and I found that my older, heavier suitcases weighed so much that I would have had to severely limit what I packed inside of them. I bought new, lightweight luggage and we were able to pack everything we needed and still be under the weight limit.

I call this my Spring Cleaning in January. Sorting and donating is also inspiring me to do the deep cleaning and such around the house. We have such amazing weather this week, too. It just seems like the right time.

The woman who owns the house next door had a large party last night and people were out in the yard until about 3:30 a.m. hooting and shouting drunkenly. They were splashing in the pool and wandering the nearby yards. It kept me awake, wondering if anyone was going to drunkenly wander over here and pass out

So, when I woke up with a migraine and a very queasy stomach, the shakes and a feeling of dehydration I laughingly commented to a family member that maybe one of the drunken kids last night had cast their hangover onto me.

That same family member said it was more likely I went to sleep and had a dream about the situation next door, maybe even dreaming I was drunk. She told me it is not so difficult to trick the brain into believing you are sick, or if you are sick you can trick it into believing it is healing.

She has a point. So, I took a little Excedrin Migraine and went back to bed for another sleep cycle. I feel pretty OK now.

Happy New Year!

Kim paid way too much for her glasses, though. Way. Too. Much. I told her so, but in a much more tactful way. I’m nothing if not tactful.
I found this pair of very similar looking glasses at Zenni Optical for $23.95 complete. They manufacture their own frames and therefore they are able to offer all of their styles for much less than you are going to find at retail outlets that need to mark-up the merchandise to compensate for the multiple middle men who are involved. Everything on their website is reasonably priced, even the extras like anti reflective coating. Anti scratch coating and UV protection are free. And if that’s not cool enough, they even have an entire line of Holiday frames.

In fact, you can get a complete pair of single vision eyeglasses for $8. Yep, that’s eight dollars. It’s a frugal girl’s dream come true. I probably should mentioned the $8 thing at the beginning of my post.

You want to make sure you buy a very high quality white meat pork loin. It’s going to be leaner, have a milder flavor, and a great texture.

2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 Tablespoon caraway seeds
1 small onion, chopped fine
1 large garlic clove, minced
2 teaspoons course salt
4 & 1/2 pound boneless pork loin
1 Tablespoon bourbon, or to taste
1 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup water
1 Tablespoon unsalted butter
2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup chopped green onions

In small bowl, combine oil, thyme, oregano, caraway seeds, onion, garlic, and salt. Rub mixture onto pork loin. In roasting pan, chill the seasoned pork loin overnight.

Roast at 325 degrees for 50 minutes to 1 hour, or until meat thermometer reached 155 degrees. Remove and let stand 10 minutes.

Bourbon Gravy: Add bourbon, chicken broth, and water to pan juices. Boil one minute, scraping up brown bits. Strain mixture into a bowl. In saucepan, combine butter and flour, cook the roux over moderately low heat, whisking for three minutes. Add the broth mixture in a stream, whisking. Bring to boil, whisking. Add green onions and simmer one minute.

I think I made my first conscious statement when I was in about the 6th grade and was wearing braces. I got a shirt with a huge graphic of a smiling face with braces and the shirt said, “Braces Are Beautiful!” Nothing radical, I know. Once I hit high school I wore shirts for my favorite punk bands and tee’s with pithy statements. Sometimes, the name of the bands alone was shocking enough for most of the rest of the world – the Buzzcocks Orgasm Addict shirt and my Circle Jerks shirts got more than a few dirty looks. I suppose that is why I don’t bat an eyelash when I see kids today wearing shirts with semi-offensive slogans.

My kind of crazy t-shirts now days run more along the lines of the 80s t-shirts I found on the Crazy Dog t-shirts website. They’ve got vintage tees with Speed Racer, Voltron, Mr. Rogers, E.T., and others that will completely take you back to your childhood. Well, at least to MY childhood, if you happen to be too young to remember some of this stuff.

My favorite is the one that says “You Have Died of Dysentery.” My family was one of the first in my neighborhood to get a computer. We had a little Apple IIE and we would play the game The Oregon Trail endlessly. It took forever! The whole thing was text based and you guided your little wagon filled with a pioneer family out to the West where they could settle, IF they survived. Mine rarely did.

Shipping is only $4 right now over at Crazy Dog, so you should take this opportunity to check out some of their cool designs.