The finger

I’m trying to use my middle finger more. No, not for THAT. It’s just that my index finger, aka pointer, the one we all use for everything all day, from mousing and clicking to opening things, dialing the phone, pushing buttons, keyboarding, everything, is showing some arthritis at the distal joint, 

commonly called the DIP. Sigh. That makes me feel old, but this is a common site for arthritis to occur, and most people will get some arthritis in that joint at some point in their lives if they live long enough. So, I’m trying to conserve it. Save Mrs. Pointer for the really important jobs that only pointer fingers can do, and make it last longer. But this is easier said than done. For now, I’m trying to use my middle finger for all these things instead. It  works okay part of the time but it’s slower and takes more concentration. I still haven’t figured out how to hold a pen without using Mrs. Pointer, at least holding it in a way in which I can write legibly and comfortably. If anyone has figured this one out, please let me know.  Anyway, chances are I’ll only keep up these changes until trusty pointer feels better, then I’ll quit. Old habits are hard to break.

Although switching fingers is difficult, it’s not nearly as hard  as trying to use one’s non-dominant hand for writing or other fine motor tasks. Very difficult, but most people can do it if they have to. Some studies suggest  that non-dominant hand use spurs brain development. Here’s the scoop, although I hope you won’t be plagued with pop-ups when you click on this, like I was the first time I tried it.

So develop your brain, and save your digits. Give it a try. Let me know how you do.

 © Huffygirl 2011

Weekly Photo Challenge: Opportunity

“Hmmm.”

Seize your opportunity.

 © Huffygirl 2011

WordPress taken over by aliens

Image via Wikipedia

For the past week or so, WordPress bloggers have been puzzled by the strange and unexplained absence of WP staff and support. WP bloggers first noticed the absence of WP staffers when the WP home page, Freshly Pressed, remained unchanged for over a week. Bloggers became  abuzz on WP forums until someone noticed an unobtrusive message on the support page:

“Support is closed while the company meets up and works together for the next week. We will be back on October 29th.”

Hmm. All right it’s already been more than a week, and October 29 will make it another week. What’s really happening at WordPress? The only logical explanation is:  aliens. Yup. WP has been taken over by aliens. It makes sense. If WP staffers were really at some kind of working retreat, they would have posted an announcement on the home page, something logical like:

 ”We are on a working retreat and will return on October 29. In the meantime, fend for yourselves, bloggers. If you need support, forget about it. Problems with your dashboard – deal with it. We’ll be back refreshed and ready to help you on October 29. In the meantime, grow up.”

You know, something like that. Instead – nothing. The aliens swooped in, took over, and are still figuring out the programs and how to assimilate themselves into the WP staffers bodies. So no fake announcements, no business as usual, no support. They’re feigning busyness until they get the hang of things, then will surreptitiously take over. No doubt WP bloggers will not even notice the transition. Even know, the aliens may be brainwashing us through our dashboards, trying to assimilate us too. But hey, that’s silly, that could never &&%%$# ***^%$#&&   ))(*&&%$### 

Huffygirl is meeting up with other WP bloggers for a working retreat and will be back soon.

© Huffygirl 2011

If it makes things white, why isn’t it called “whiting?”

At my last family gathering, I ended up engaging in a discussion about laundry with my two grown up sons. Now normally laundry would be the last thing we would ever talk about, but I think the presence of new grandson Zach, whose secondary job, when not engaged in keeping his parents awake at night, is producing dirty laundry, inspired the discussion. And so we reminisced about the good old days when the boys were in college and unabashedly threw light and dark clothes in the same washer load, because, hey they were young, and guys, and once in a while they just wanted something clean to wear that hadn’t been fished out from underneath a beer keg.   

Anyway, this led me to share about how I only put white clothes in with other white clothes, except if I had something light blue, I could throw that in with the white clothes too, because it would help the white clothes stay white. “Oh  mother, please tell us the story of how blue clothes can help white clothes stay white, oh please, please.” And so begins the tale of bluing.

Back in the olden days, days so bygone that it was even before I was born, people had very few options for getting clothes clean. There were no whiteners, brightners, or Tide Stain Sticks. They couldn’t just  ”Shout it out.” Instead, people had only three things: a vat of hot water, lye soap, and a stick. People, or I should say women, because that’s who traditionally was stuck with the job of doing laundry for the whole family, would boil water to get it hot, dump the clothes in with some lye soap, stir them with a stick, fish them out and dump them into another vat with rinse water, then fish them out again and hang them on a clothesline to dry. This took so much time that the women had very little time left to look at their iPhones or update their Facebook status. If they did have time to update their status, it would have been something like “OMG – still doing the #$&*ing laundry.” Without the wonderful laundry additives that we have today, it was very difficult to get white clothes white. So one day someone, probably Mrs. Blue, in the kitchen, with the laundry tub, accidentally spilled a few drops of blue dye into the laundry vat. Why she had a bottle of blue dye sitting about, we’ll never know. Anyway, when she fished the white clothes out of the tub, to her surprise, they were sparkling white, so white that if sunglasses had been invented, Mrs. Blue would have had to put them on. Mrs. Blue didn’t understand by what process the blue dye had made her clothes white, as logically, it should have made them, well, blue. All she knew is that it worked. Women everywhere began adding blue dye to their white laundry loads, and voila’ the custom became known as bluing, although it really should have been called “whiting.” Anyway, eventually Mrs. Blue’s neighbor, Mrs. Stewart, decided to steal the idea from Mrs. Blue and market it on Google sponsored ads, and thus we now can purchase Mrs. Stewart’s Bluing wherever fine laundry products are sold.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Blue and Mrs. Stewart could not access Wikipedia, so they never knew the scientific reasoning behind the bluing, er whiting  process, but if you want the true scientific gibberish, click here.

I’ll stand back out of the way now, because no doubt everyone reading this will rush past me to run out and buy a bottle of Mrs. Stewart’s Bluing. The best part is, besides being able to finally get your whites really white, you’ll also be able to engage in fun activities with your children such as growing your own salt crystal rock gardens. That is if you can get them away from their iPhones.

 © Huffygirl 2011

Weekly Photo Challenge: Possibility answer

What is this? I didn’t get too many guesses, possibly because it was too easy, or too hard. Possibly because not that many people cared. Possibly because the bad economy precludes our enjoying fluffy photo guessing games. So many possibilities…

Blogging buddy Martin from Thoughts from Finchley, came up with the correct answer.

Yes, it’s yeast, full of possibilities.  A little yeast turns flour and other ingredients into bread, rolls, pizza dough – the list of possibilities is endless. Those ingredients, without the yeast, have fewer possibilities of turning into something delicious and nutritious.

Later today, I’ll try out a little yeast on my new bread machine, pictured in the background. The possibilities again are endless. I could end up with a delicious loaf of bread, or a shapeless lump of dough, and a chance to write about the hilarity that ensues from same, or something in between.

© Huffygirl 2011

Weekly Photo Challenge: Possibilities

This is full of possibilities. What is it? Answer to follow later this week.

 © Huffygirl 2011

World Food Day

Today is World Food Day, a day set aside to bring awareness of hunger around the world. It’s a great time to think about what you can do locally, or globally to help. Give to your local food bank. Donate food from your garden to a shelter. Send a donation to a food charity. Support local farmers at your farmer’s market.

Time to cut back on junk food?

Think about your own food consumption too. I took a survey of my snack shelf and realized that I’m spending money on food that I really don’t need. Snack foods generally do not offer any nutrition and are high in salt and fat, which tends to make them addictive. It may be time for me to do a snack shelf make-over. Many restaurants offer huge portions and free drink refills. Think about skipping the soda and bringing half of your entrée home for later. Whatever you do to cut back on your own food consumption, send the money you save to support a food charity.

If we all do a little, it will help a lot. What other ways can we support the effort to stop world hunger?

 © Huffygirl 2011

Related articles

• Do you want a gallon of soda with that? (huffygirl.wordpress.com)
• World Food Day is October 16: How will you participate? (wagnerfpa.wordpress.com)

Scan me: Huffygirl’s guide to exciting airline travel

Image via Wikipedia

I’m standing barefoot, holding my shoes. This can only mean one thing. A long walk on the beach? No, I’m in an airport, silly. Did I mention that I’m also holding my belt, laptop, coat, purse, carry-on bag, ticket, and photo ID, while pushing my briefcase along with my feet and trying to grab three scanner trays? Time for another fun trip through airport security, otherwise known as the portal to Hell.

 With the beginning of the holiday travel season approaching, I thought I’d offer a few tips to make your next trip through this portal more enjoyable, at least as enjoyable as mine was. After all, I just did it, without being randomly selected, at least this time anyway, for personal screening, so I must be an expert.

1. Be sure to arrive at the airport two hours prior to your flight. This allows you extra time to jump out of the way of the other people who are pushing past you on the escalator and people mover, the majority of whom did not arrive two hours before their flight.

2. For a full experience, choose your security screening line wisely. I recommend getting in line behind the guy wearing lace-up hiking boots and cargo pants with a water bottle stuck in his back pocket. It would be even better if he had a laptop in a locked briefcase. Standing in line behind him ensures a maximum amount of time in the screening line, to get the ultimate experience.

3. Choose your seat assignment based on your travel preferences. Do you enjoy having strangers climb over your lap? Then go for the middle seat. Do you find that it just doesn’t seem like vacation unless your elbows are constantly bumped by perky strangers pushing carts? Then you’ll want the aisle seat. Or do you enjoy the intimacy of struggling over the laps of people you’ve never met? Then the window seat is for you. Whatever seat you choose, getting in and out will be a lot like a fun game of Twister.

4. Choose your seat mates wisely. Well, you can’t really choose an interesting seat mate, unless you’re bringing your mother-in-law along, but what if you could? Don’t go for the boring slender business person who sits quietly playing with their phone the entire trip. That wouldn’t be any fun. Look for someone with a little flair, a little different. For instance, on my recent trip, I had the good fortune of being seated next to the female Milton. For those who don’t know, Milton is the somewhat dim, obsessive character in the movie Office Space. I knew right away that I would have a fascinating seat mate experience, when I sat down, and Miltonette proffered a grubby-looking zip-lock bag of potato chips and asked me what nationality I was. The rest of the flight was truly entertaining. Every few minutes Miltonette would randomly blurt out whatever gem had popped into her head. “My sister has strawberry blond hair.” “I paint pictures but don’t sign them.” And my personal favorite: “My whole family uses bar soap.”

5. Hope to find a delightful surprise when you pick up your bag. Suppose your TSA lock is missing. This leads to a fantastic brain teaser that will engage your mind for days, maybe even weeks. Did the TSA search my bag, or did a rogue baggage handler cut off the lock?  Has anything been disturbed? Is anything missing? Did they look at my underwear? You’ll never know. Your own unsolved mystery.

Unfortunately, your exciting airplane trip is over, but why let the fun stop now. For a bonus experience:

6. Chose an off-brand rental car. Sure you could pick National or Avis, but where’s the adventure in that? Pick some place you’ve never heard of, say, Fox Rental. Just finding the place is an event.  After you’ve traveled blocks from the other, ordinary rental car places and landed in some back-alley warehouse, you get to stand in the “special” complaint line for what seems like hours, just because the fun rental agent finds some secret invisible “damage” on your car. But hey, you saved $30, and now  you get to practice your people skills too, so why not? This is a perfect end to your exciting trip.

Travel is fun. Anyone can see that by watching a few episodes of “Pan Am.” Why miss out? Book your trip today.

© Huffygirl

Chocolate Chip Cookies: The recipe is in my head!

The well-used recipe

I have a whole recipe box full of recipes for all kinds of cookies, but 99.9% of the time when I’m baking cookies, I choose my tried and true chocolate chip. I’ve made these cookies so much that I have the recipe memorized – no need to get out the battered and grubby-looking  recipe card, although I sometimes do just to make sure I haven’t missed anything. This recipe is adapted from the original Toll House Cookie recipe  (what do toll houses have to do with cookies anyway?) that appeared on the back of the Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chip package 37 years ago. One of my modifications was to add extra chocolate chips, because, let’s face it, that is the REAL reason why we eat chocolate chip cookies. This makes a large batch of cookies, unless you eat too many samples of the dough during baking. (Yes, I know the FDA, CDC, NAACP and FAA do not recommend eating raw cookie dough. But c’mon – is there anyone who doesn’t do this?)

1 1/3 cups Crisco or other vegetable shortening, softened

1 cup white sugar

2 cups light brown sugar, packed

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 teaspoons water

Cream together the above ingredients with a large mixing spoon. 

Then add:

4 large eggs

1 1/2 packages of semi-sweet chocolate chips (12 ounce packages)

Mix well. If you like to have nuts in your cookies,  add those now as well.

Add the chocolate chips before adding the dry ingredients - much easier to mix in!

Add the following dry ingredients,  adding about half of the ingredients, stir, then add the rest:

4 1/2 cups white flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons salt

After dough is thoroughly mixed, drop by tablespoon-full onto cookie sheets covered with parchment paper.

Use a tablespoon or a cookie dough scoop.

Bake 375 degrees Farenheit for 10 minutes and 10 seconds. Cookies will puff up and appear to be underdone when removed from the oven. Allow cookies to rest on the cookie sheet a few minutes to finish baking, and they will be soft, but completely done. Enjoy.

Yum!

 © Huffygirl 2011

Weekly Photo Challenge: Comfort

There’s nothing more comforting than this: a happy family together, the soothing touch of a parent’s hand, the gentle lapping of water; the warming rays of the sun.

© Huffygirl 2011