Beauty salons and spas are being asked to watch for evidence of spousal abuse on their clients. It makes sense that people in the personal care industry would be among the first to see signs of abuse.
My understanding is that unless a woman asks for assistance, you can’t do anything about spousal abuse. If a salon is willing to educate people about abuse, or will act as a clearinghouse for assistance information, then this might be a good idea. If the salon is merely reporting the abuse, but doing nothing to help the woman, then what’s the purpose?

Did anyone else hear Paul Harvey today announce that France has vetoed proposed billboards showing bare female butts???
I need to surf some more to find out what that was all about….

I have TMJ. If I remember correctly, thats Temporal Mandibular Joint disease. It means I grit my teeth unintentionally. Unfortunately, it also means that I am breaking some of my teeth, so I have been undergoing one tooth renovation a year.
My dentist has brought me to the final stages for a new crown. Next week it should be cemented in place, hopefully for years to come. In the process, we did a root canal, a crown lengthening, repair of a molar next to it, and then creation of a post to hold the new crown. To protect the post, and to keep the tooth from shifting, I’ve been wearing a temporary crown for the past few weeks.
The night of the wedding rehearsal, it popped off. The dentist and I couldn’t meet up, so I did without until Monday morning, when she glued it back in place. Last night…..

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I love words. I’m always up to learn new ones. I thought I might learn a new one today when I was listening to WGN Radio. Judy Markey was talking about hearing a word that she had never heard before. She’d read it in a newspaper earlier this week, and then one of the sports announcers covering the Cubs game, Tuesday night, used it. The word was “scrum.”
Dictionary.com defines scrum as:
A play in Rugby in which the two sets of forwards mass together around the ball and, with their heads down, struggle to gain possession of the ball.
Or: A disordered or confused situation involving a number of people.
I knew the sports definition for “scrum,” but I didn’t know it had a non-sports connotation. The announcer was describing the mob on Waveland Avenue outside Wrigley Field in Chicago. As a home run was hit over the walls of the field into their midst, he said a scrum of people reached for the ball.
DH says scrums are what you get when you eat crackers in bed. (rolling eyes) That might be the last time I read my blog to him.

The soybean fields around our home have been harvested this week. In place of the even rows of tobacco-colored plants we have biscuit-colored fields that have been buzz cut. The geese are busy gleaning beans that were dropped or left behind, readying themselves for the long commute to their winter homes.
We have seven fairly good sized ponds within half a mile of our house. As the subdivisions have been developed, the ponds have been increased in number and size to handle the run off during heavy storms. The ponds connect the bean fields and the forest preserve, so we tend to see a lot of wild life. The deer use our lot as a runway between Federal land and forest preserve.
We have a few geese around throughout the summer, but in October, it’s like a tail gate party. This morning at 10:00, if I could have stepped from goose to goose, I could have made it around the last pond without ever touching the ground. We enjoy hearing them chatter amongst themselves, and watching them practice their flying wedges.
All too soon they’ll be gone and the cold will settle. I love Indian Summer!

I have the Beatle’s song about birthdays running through my head. Today’s my birthday. We’re not planning a rousing celebration; rather, it will be a laid back day.
One of my nieces and her boys have been coming to dinner every other week. We’ve been trying to get together for the last two weeks, but she has had a virus, and didn’t want to share it with us as we prepared for the wedding last weekend. Soooooo….I think she is finally well enough to join us.
I plan to make lasagna, a big salad and garlic bread. And there’s this package of devil’s food cake mix, and some fudge frosting that’s been calling to me……
Usually we celebrate our birthdays by going out for dinner, but this week is pretty tightly booked. A few years ago I started telling my mother that we should all fly down to New Orleans to have dinner at the Courtyard of the Two Sisters. I tease her about it every year, but I haven’t gotten her to budge. Don’t you think it would be wonderful to hop a plane for a candlight celebration?
Where would you go to celebrate?

I was reading my mail before getting the day started today, and came across a message from a friend, telling me to go to this site. An artist in Iowa has created a memorial to our military that you might like to see.

I was trying to sleep this morning around 6:30 when I heard this insistent beeping. Four short beeps and a pause, four short beeps and a pause, four short beeps….. You get the picture.
My first thought was that the smoke alarm went off. But the smoke alarm has one long high pitched scream of a sound. Then, I thought that Mother was listening to the messages on her answering machine…..or perhaps the answering machine was signaling that there were messages to be read. Just about the time I thought I should check on DH, he opened the door and said that the noise was his cell phone.

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Did you know that in 2001, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission required a change in the manufacture of cords for window coverings in response to child-strangulation concerns?
This is another of those cases where my Mother asks, “How did we manage to raise you with all that danger around?” It seems to me that parents could have managed this all by themselves, rather than requiring the expense of an entire Federal Safety Commission.
If you have cords that were purchased prior to 2001, and feel that you need to protect your children from their threat, free retro-fit repair devices are available to you through the Window Covering Safetly Council. Go to www.windowcoverings.org for information.

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For years, we’ve been told that we needed Downy Fresh softness in our wash, or the convenience of Bounce dryer sheets. Fabric softeners take away the scratchiness of towel, and, well…..soften them.
Unfortunately they also take away some of the absorbancy. Have you ever had to use a hotel towel, or perhaps one from a gym? Those scratchy towels are much more absorbant because they don’t use any fabric softener in the wash.
There are two other reasons not to use fabric softener. As a quilter, I’ve found that cottons which will be used in quilts shouldn’t be softened. The chemicals stay in the fabric longer, because quilts are not frequently washed, and they can deteriorate the fibers.
And, for those of you who have asthma, the perfume added to fabric softeners can be a problem. Years ago, we lived in an apartment building that had laundry facilities. I had to go down a flight of stairs, out the door, over to the next entry and down another flight of stairs to get to the washers. I noticed as I was reversing the trip that I was wheezing by the time I got back to my front door, and even started an exercise program to get into shape.
When the wheezing didn’t go away, it finally dawned on me that I could add fabric softners to the list of materials that I was allergic to. Now, whites, are the only clothes that I use softener on. I wash and bleach them, rinse them, start the washer a second time with a quarter of a cap of softener, and then rinse them once more. The rest of our clothes go softener-less, and no one has complained!
Try giving it up. It will save you money, and might make your towels more functional!