October 2009

  • Organize Your Medical Information Month

    By sarajean on 10/14/09 10:02pm
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    Between shot records to x-ray copies, prescription information to hospital stays and surgery records, the average person is sure to have a file of medical information an inch thick—if not more. When you have additional family members to keep track of, the job becomes that much more complicated.

    Keeping medical records straight may not seem like such a big deal; after all, what’s done is done. But when you’re keeping track of your own medical history, linking events and risks with possible current health issues, and checking insurance payouts and medical bills for accuracy, they can come in pretty handy. You can also use them during tax season. And what about medical emergencies? Doctors always want a medical history when you bring someone in, but in times of emergency, it’s not like he or she (or you!) will remember everything.

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  • All is (Un)Fair in Love and Cleaning

    By sarajean on 10/14/09 9:46pm
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    Recently an Alternet article about the inequalities of housework between family members—mainly, between wives and their husbands—sparked a lot of controversy on the web. None of the data there surprised me; I had read an article a while back about how, after she gets married, the average woman acquires an entire extra two weeks of work every year—unpaid work, that is, and an entire two weeks, not two “work weeks”—just from cleaning up after her husband. This doesn’t include any children that they may have.

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  • The Magical Household

    By sarajean on 10/14/09 10:06am
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    The Magical Household: Empower Your Home with Love, Protection, Health and Happiness is possibly my favorite pagan book in my entire collection. In it, Scott Cunningham and David Harrington share a plethora of folklore, recipes, spells, and simple actions to make your home more magical and meaningful. There is really something that anyone on any budget can do in this book.

    The Magical Household explains that you don’t need money to live in a magical home. You don’t even need to live in a cottage in the woods with herbs, pentagrams and witchy-looking stuff everywhere (though you have to admit that would be fun). Simply using your fingertip to draw sacred symbols for protection on your windows and doors, for example, can help safeguard your home and give it a more magical vibe without spending anything.

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  • Keep Your Home From Smelling Like a CSI Decomp

    By sarajean on 10/13/09 8:29pm
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    Admit it: your home has smelled like a soiled diaper (or two), the wrong end of a dog, or the poop deck of the Black Pearl at some point or another in your life. When this happens—especially if company is coming—we all want to immediately reach for a can of Febreeze and douse the house in a cloud of smelly-good residue.

    But the fact remains that, like most aerosol sprays, that really isn’t that good for us to be inhaling. It’s not like it really gets rid of the smell’s source or anything; it just covers it up. It’s like throwing your toddler’s blankie over dog poop instead of cleaning it up—or doing what Adam Sandler did in Big Daddy: using newspaper to lay over vomit and pee, and simply let it sit there.

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