It’s been an odd winter, uber-balmy in some areas and freaky cold in others (hello, Fairbanks!). But colds and other bugs are not choosy about where they set up shop.
With this week’s giveaway, you’ll be ready.
self-care
The crap that crowds us.
I’ve been on a major de-cluttering kick in preparation for “Superfluity,” my church’s annual rummage sale. The idea is to strip your life of superfluous stuff. You get cleaner digs and the church raises cash for its various social programs.
Although I knew my place was getting crowded, I had no idea just how much superfluity existed around me. As I fill bag after bag I can only say, “Holy crap.”
Want to survive “Blue Monday”? Maybe a Chicken Chucker would help.
Each year a mid-January day is designated “Blue Monday” — allegedly the most depressing day out of the 365 or 366, according to a formula concocted by a guy named Cliff Arnall.
A former tutor at the University of Cardiff, Arnall seems to have created Blue Monday as a publicity stunt for a travel agency. Still, the reasoning seems pretty sound to me: A combination of consumer debt from holiday spending, post-holiday letdown, crappy weather and failed New Year’s resolutions make us feel like hell.
Strategic pizza.
Last month I was fried extra-crispy: too many things to do in too little time before I left for a seven-week trip to Alaska. Will Chen over at Wise Bread did a telephone intervention, i.e., I sort of melted down while he was on the line.
Bless his heart – he didn’t start to make bad-cell-reception noises and say that he couldn’t hear me so we’d have to talk some other time. (Like, um, never.) Instead, he listened to me whirl and howl about so many things I wanted to do, so few days until my plane left, so many professional plans but no time in which to bring them to fruition.
Then he gently encouraged me to think about how I’m spending my time.
Giveaway: The cold and flu package.
Anybody else here old enough to remember hot-water vaporizers with Vicks Vapo-Rub dissolved in them? Big glass-bodied things that bubbled and murmured and released a menthol-scented steam that helped us croupy kids breathe.
I rediscovered that aroma at BlogHer 2011 — in a box of tissues.
Giveaway: A “pamper yourself” kit.
The first BlogHer 2011 giveaway is a whole bunch of items designed to make you feel good about yourself, both figuratively and literally.
How to kick your Diet Coke addiction.
I can remember my grandfather grousing about the price of cigarettes. He swore he would quit when it went up past 35 cents a pack.
It did, and he did.
Now I know how he felt, although my particular vice is brown and fizzy and gives me reward points. At an Anchorage supermarket I was shocked to find Diet Coke selling for $8.19 per 12-pack. Thank goodness there’s no sales tax here.
That works out to 68 cents a can. It won’t break the bank. But really? More than eight dollars for a 12-pack? For something that I can’t even get drunk off of?
8 ways to get rid of a headache. (Nine, if you count divorce.)
Right in the middle of a recent deadline I developed a real blinder of a headache. Rather than take an aspirin or ibuprofen I drank a glass of water – and felt better almost immediately.
I won’t say I was actually dehydrated, but I might have been on the way. Or maybe I wasn’t. All I know is that water made me feel better. It often does.
It was also, of course, free.
Whether your headache is caused by incipient dehydration, stress, lack of sleep, lousy working conditions or marriage, try one of these no-drug methods to relieve the pain.
Therapeutic massage: Rubbed the right way.
I had three massages in eight days. The circumstances were unusual and will likely never be repeated. But for a while I knew how the super-rich must feel: Really relaxed.
One of the three was my first-ever hot stone massage. I’d told my daughter that there should be Cold Stone massage, i.e., being rubbed with ice cream. She suggested that eating ice cream during a massage would combine the best of two very nice worlds.
The 60-minute sessions at Dynamic Chiropractic and The Vital Energy Center cost $35 apiece thanks to the magic of social buying. The other was slightly discounted ($97 for 90 minutes) because I bought a five-session package at New Seattle Massage.
Usually I try for an appointment every four weeks or so, but sometimes go for months without being rubbed the right way. However, the two social-buy deals were due to expire in early summer and I have to leave in a few weeks for a housesitting job in Alaska. And like my mom, I believe that waste is a sin.