Health and Beauty

Go to the Light Little Grease Spots!

Linda Vernon Health and Beauty , , , , , ,

Me and My Grease Spots

I can put on a clean pair of white pants in the bedroom and by the time I get out into the living room, they’ve got a grease spot on them.

It’s the same story with practically every piece of clothing I own and I don’t get it? Where is all this grease coming from and why is it making a beeline for my clothes?

I mean, sure if I were nibbling fries from the fryer baskets at McDonald’s or using my blouse to cradle a pile of Pringles, I could understand it, but I never do stuff like that . . . well, hardly ever.

Grease Just Finds Me Wherever I Am, Especially If I’m Eating Out

Once a grease spot has mysteriously appeared on my clothing, no matter who I happen to be dining with, the conversation always goes something like this:

“Oh Darn”

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh I spilled grease on my shirt.”

“But you’re eating a banana.”

“I know.”

“Well, why don’t you apply some cold water to it. It will come out if you get it right away.”

Notice that the advice giver always uses the same phrases:

“apply cold water” and “if you get it right away”.

What I want to know is who thought up this method for getting out grease stains and then plastered it all over the internet thereby making it a darn-near scientific fact– when it has NEVER worked for me — not even once!

Once a Sucker Always a Sucker

And even though I know it doesn’t work, I’ll still dutifully apply cold water to the spot. This only makes the area all around the grease spot wet, thus highlighting it for all to see as I am leaving the restaurant.

Eventually the water dries and guess what? My new best friend, Mr. Grease Spot, is still there– uglying up my blouse and patting itself on its oily little back for uncommon tenacity and stick-to-itiveness.

Go To the Light, Little Grease Spot!

I remember my mother telling me that when she was a little girl, and some distant relative died, her family would say “he(or she) is just a grease spot now.”

If that’s true I’ve got a lot of distant relatives living in my closet.

All I can say is “Go to the Light” distant relatives! And if that doesn’t work, apply cold water and THEN go to the light!

Until Next time . . . I love you

Hyper Fitness

Linda Vernon Health and Beauty , , , , ,

I was standing behind a lady in line yesterday who was wearing a jacket with the word “Hyperfit” written on the back.

Correct me if I’m wrong (not really), but isn’t something that is a “hyperfit” seem like it’s going to fit 1) so snugly it will hike up in all the wrong places or 2) keep wandering around in places it was never meant to go?

Either way it sounds like it’s going to be annoying, doesn’t it?

Hey, I  just looked up Hyperfit on The Goog and guess what?  It’s a fitness center! A fitness center that has an adorable skull and crossbones for a logo. Go look! (But come right back I’m not finished with you yet.)  www.hyperfitusa.com.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t want to pay big bucks (plus soul) to work out until I drop dead as much as the next person. But apparently you have to “try out” for the privilege of doing this at Hyperfit USA. They make it abundantly clear that this is not a gym for the faint of heart (muscle).  No siree Bob.  These people mean business people!

Ok, so let’s just think about this for a minute. (This would be an ideal time to throw that load of laundry into the dryer, get more coffee and come back while I think something up).

Ok, you ready now?  I didn’t think of anything while you were gone, but I did look at the Hyperfit USA website a little more and here’s some actual comments from their “What People Are Saying”  link:

“If you want to have someone dedicated to seeing you reach your goal, Doug is the man you want to talk to.”

That’s probably because Doug likes to sit at the juice bar and watch people exercising.  This guy has seen so many people reach their goals, he’s completely lost count.

“This place will get you into the best shape of your life, unless you were a professional athlete.”

In which case this place will get you into the worst shape of your life.

“. . .  It would be impossible to not enjoy working out here, aside from the brutality of the workouts, but that is what really brings everyone together anyway . . .”

That’s because the emergency room is a great place to bond with people and make new friends!

  “. . . Great training, great people, great facility, great results.”

Membership also includes unlimited use of the word “great” which is great!

”  . . . HyperfitUSA is a collection of some of the best people you will find anywhere . . . “
If you don’t count the Smithsonian Institute, that is.
“Hands down, the best gym around for miles . . . “
You could go five miles in any direction and NEVER find a gym as good! So just forget about it already.
“Head and tails over any “regular” gym.”
Uh . . . that’s probably because people at “regular” gyms don’t have tails . . Hello!
“No spandex and hair fluffing here…HYPERFIT is the best.”
Oh sure there are people who wear spandex, and there are people who fluff their hair, but absolutely no people who wear spandex AND fluff their hair at Hyperfit USA. Thank goodness!
I’m going to go fluff my hair now.
Until next time . . . I love you

Getting Some Extracise

Linda Vernon Health and Beauty , , , , ,

I was doing great, weight-wise, until I discovered the individual slices of cake that they sell in the bakery at the grocery store. I got hooked on the white cake with the white frosting. It’s delicious owing to the fact that it has 100 grams of sugar and 1000 calories in each and every piece. I keep hoping the food police will make a law against it, and it just won’t be there tempting me when I go grocery shopping, but so far no such luck.

I try to avoid stores where they sell it, but that’s only part of the problem. I now have my daughter and her husband, Matt, hooked on white cake. The other night we were playing Scrabble when the subject arose.

Matt:  “Who could go for some white cake?”

Nikki:  “I could go for some white cake!”

Me:  “I could go for some white cake!”

37:   “I could go for some chocolate cake.”

(37 is my husband who is thin and who, even if he wasn’t thin, doesn’t even like white cake, but who can eat all the chocolate cake he wants and it doesn’t matter one little bit because he’s thin and always will be which I don’t have any problem with except for the fact that he makes me sick.)

So Matt goes for some white cake and actually squealed his tires as he was pulling out to get it.

I went to an afternoon tea the other day. What did I bring? White cake.

My daughter is getting married in September, and what am I already looking forward to eating?  White cake.

At this point there doesn’t seem to be any easy solution to my White Cake Conundrum. So I’m doing what I always do when I am eating too much . . . give up the white cake completely.  Oh yeah right . . . who am I kidding?   No, I’ll simply do a little extra exercise or extracise, if you will, to burn off those extra 5000 calories and 500 hundred grams of sugar I’m now consuming on a weekly basis.

Now let’s see . . . Since I’m a 59-year-old grandmother whose metabolism is officially equal to that of an air fern, I’m gong to have to figure this thing out mathematically.

I am now calculating how many miles I will have to walk each week to keep white cake in my life without gaining any weight.

So let’s see here:  1000 calories multiplied by 100 grams of sugar equals 100,000 divided by 1951 (the year I was born) equals 512.55 which would be rounded up to 513 miles divided by 52 weeks a year which means I’d only have to walk 9.8 miles a week divided by 7 equals 1.4 miles each day.

Which is basically what I’m already walking each day anyway (give or take a mile).

Well that was easy.

You’ll have to excuse me now, the white cake store just called and there’s some white cake with my name on it and it’s calling my name.

Until next time . . . I love you

Ten Bad Answers for “Do These Pants Make Me Look Fat?

Linda Vernon Health and Beauty, Lists , , ,

“Honey, do these pants make me look fat?” I asked my poor, minding-his-own business, unsuspecting husband.

“Say . . . gulp . . . what?”

“Well, do they or don’t they? Just answer the question.  Do these pants make me look fat?”

“Just answer yes or no . . . and nevermind about the beard.”

Now if there is one thing my husband has learned after 37 years of marriage, it’s that a question such as this can zap the bliss right out of the martial in nothing flat.  This is because when a wife asks her husband, “Do these pants make me look fat?” what she is really saying is “I feel fat! Convince me I’m wrong, dead wrong.”

Frankly, I think the divorce rate would decrease dramatically if husbands would take a few minutes to figure out a proper answer to this simple question.  The following are the lousy answers my husband has managed to come up with over the years, coupled with what I think he was REALLY thinking when he gave them:

Answer # 1:

“What? Do you look fat?  Are you asking me?”  (I’ve got to stall for time so I can think, think!)

 Answer #2:

“Fat? Honey! You don’t look fat in those pants. (You don’t look as fat in those pants as you do in all your other pants.)

Answer #3:

“I don’t want to answer that because no matter what I say, it will be the wrong thing.  (I don’t want you to know I think you’re fat.)

Answer #4:

“What?  Honey! There’s no way you look fat!” (I wonder if that Seahawks game will be televised.)

Answer #5:

“Honey, of course you don’t look fat in those pants; you look good in those pants.”(Considering . . .)

Answer #6:

“You’re perfect, I love you just the way you are.” (It doesn’t matter to me that you’re fat, really!)

Answer #7:

“If you’re worried about looking fat, why don’t you go on a diet – although I don’t think you need to.” (You’re fat, but so what?)

Answer #8:

“You’ve never been fat in your life!” (I wonder what I did with that red pen.)

Answer #9:

“You sure look a lot better than you did last year.” (You’re not as fat as you were last year, whoa!)

Answer #10:

“No Comment.” (Don’t make me hurt your feelings.)

Of course, come to think of it, I don’t think there is any way a husband can answer this question and still come out okay.  Maybe his best course of action upon hearing his wife utter any sentence containing the word “fat” would be to freeze, then slowly, very slowly back out of the room and just keep running.

Until next time. . . I love you

Rejected Febreze Scents

Linda Vernon Health and Beauty, The Daily Routine , , , ,

Febreze scents that looked promising but in the end were rejected.

The Scent:   Egg Salad Serenity

The Febreze Scent Story:

A burst of aroma that harkens back to a time of serenity when you were a child in front of the television set watching Leave It to Beaver while Mom mixed up a delicious batch of egg salad.  Just one whiff and you’ll be asking:

Hey Ma! Is that egg salad I smell?

The Scent:    Afternoon at the DMV

The Febreze Scent Story:

Bring the exhilaration of spending an afternoon at the DMV with 475 fellow line-standers into your very own home with Afternoon at the DMV Scented Febreze.  We’ve ingeniously included every single smell of the huddled masses from around the corner to around the world in order to offer you a truly diversified smelling experience.  So the next time you’re in the mood for a multi-cultural experience of a different kind, pick up a bottle of Afternoon at the DMV Scent Febreze.

People of Common and Uncommon Scents!

 

The Scent: Little Boy’s Bedroom Bouquet

The Febreze Scent Story:

Every time you breathe in this heart-warming scent, you’ll be whisked away to the fascinating world of a little boy’s room.  From the bologna sandwich he’s been carrying around in his backpack all year, to the aroma that can only be produced by wearing the same soccer uniform both night and day for a full week (including knee-socks and shin-guards!) this scent delivers it all.  We can’t predict whether you’ll be laughing or crying-; but we can guarantee it will make your eyes water.

He never takes it off!

 Until next time . . . I love you

Hey Lookee Me, I’m Gluten Free!

Linda Vernon Health and Beauty , , ,

I went to Fryes this weekend to buy a breadmaker.  I don’t really like Fryes much because I think they are over-priced and while they look like they have a lot of choices, it seems like they always only have one left of the thing I came to buy – which makes me suspicious that somebody bought it, took it home, found out there were missing parts, returned it, and the clerk taped it back up and put it back on the shelf. 

But I bought it anyway because I’m too lazy to go to any other stores because I don’t know where they are located complicated by the fact that I don’t know what store it is that I need to go to. 

So you see, it’s much simpler to just get whatever is on the shelf at Fryes.

Another thing I don’t like about Fryes is that the clerks, while they are polite and seem helpful, never really are helpful.  It usually goes something like this:

Clerk:  “Maybe I help you?”

Me:  “Yes, I want to buy a breadmaker and there’s only one on the shelf. Are there anymore in the back?” 

Clerk:  “I don’t know, I don’t think so.”

Me:  “Can you check?”

Clerk: “No, I’m sure there’s no more in the back.”

Me:  “Well, do you know if this last breadmaker on the shelf here is in a box that has been opened previously?”

Clerk:  “I don’t know.  Let me see.” The clerk looks at the box, “I don’t think so.  But you can always bring it back if it has.”

Then when you get in the checkout line, Fryes has this elaborate maze set up lined with snacks, books, electronics and As Seen on TV items to ponder.

It makes you feel a little like a rat with a debit card.

When you get to the front of the line there is a clerk whose sole job it is to tell you which register has a green light. And . . . and! . . . when I went this weekend the guy told me the wrong number! I think he was just standing there blurting out numbers at random intervals.  52 . . . 17 . . . 43 . . . . (probably punctuated by thoughts such as I can’t believe I immigrated for this).

But you can’t really blame him for not putting his “all” into it since there is not much opportunity for promotion.  Unless, of course, he could somehow get on as the guy who reads off the lottery numbers As Seen on TV.

I stopped at the health food store on my way back from Fryes to get some gluten-free bread mix.  I’ve decided to go gluten-free which is why I bought the breadmaker.  I’m also trying to keep my diet dairy-free and sugar-free.  If I keep this up eventually I’ll be eating a totally food-free diet.

Anyway, this little visit to the health food store cost almost as much as the breadmaker did.  I guess health food stores operate under the assumption that, if you shop at their store and eat their healthy products, you will be less likely to have a heart attack when you see how much your health food purchase came to.

So I got home and poured in the gluten-free bread ingredients into the breadmaker (no parts missing btw . . . YAY!); plugged it in and it started making bread. 

Making bread is scarier than making other baked goods because it has yeast in it which can make it do things on its own accord. Plus it’s in a machine that has been designed especially to help bread do what it does on its own accord; so you have to trust that it is going to do what it is supposed to do and not suddenly take on a life of its own and expand to fit the size of the kitchen or some other sci-fi thing like that.

But I am happy to report that I made the gluten-free bread without having to call my homeowner’s insurance agent, and it turned out exactly as it was supposed to turn out.

Which is apparently to taste just like cardboard only with crumbs.

If you squint and turn your head to the side, it looks like the big toe of Jesus

But once I slathered it with butter and honey, it tasted fine.  So much for the dairy-free and sugar-free diet. But who cares because now I can say:

Hey lookee me!  I’m Gluten-Free!

Until next time . . . I love you