A friend emailed me this today; pass it on!

You fit this description so this is for you!

Today is International Very Good Looking, Damn Smart Woman's Day, so please send this message to someone you think fits this description. Please do not send it back to me as I have already received it from a Very Good Looking, Damn Smart Woman! And remember this motto to live by: Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, totally worn out and screaming 'WOOO HOOOOO what a ride!'

To the Women !!

Inside every older person is a younger person -- wondering what the hell happened.

~ Cora Harvey Armstrong
HA! You'll get your turn, oh yes you will!

Inside me lives a skinny woman crying to get out. But I can usually shut her up with cookies.

~ Unknown
Yes, she can be a noisy little thing, can't she?!

The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.

~ Helen Hayes (at 73)~

I refuse to think of them as chin hair. I think of them as stray eyebrows.

~ Janette Barber~

Old age ain't no place for sissies.

~Bette Davis~

Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.

~ Caryn Leschen

If you can't be a good example ~ then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.

~Catherine
Good way to turn things around, lol.

I'm not going to vacuum until Sears makes one you can ride on.

~Roseanne Barr
Hell, I just got rid of all my carpeting! But the riding vaccumm does sound like fun.

Behind every successful man is a surprised woman

~Maryon Pearson~

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.

~Eleanor Roosevelt~

Send this to five bright women you know and make their day. (Five!!! You've got to be kidding.... Every woman on my email list just got this one...)

When life hands you lemons, ask for tequila and salt and call me over!!!

Old Guy 1, Lesley 0

So there I was at the gym for my nightly work out. I go to the upstairs room I like to exercise in and as normal almost nobody is there -- just an old man. I think to myself how cute it is for someone his age (at least 70) to be there at the gym. He is a tall man, but he doesn't look to be in great shape, not really fat, but a beer belly for sure. I like to work out on the precor machines like the one above because they don't cause me as much back pain as treadmills or running on pavement. I am feeling kind of tired and think to myself that I will just do a mile rather than the 2 miles I have been doing lately. So get to a mile and I realize the old guy is still at it and he is going way faster than I have been going and I don't know how long he had been there before I arrived. So I am thinking to myself that I can't quit before this old guy -- I should be able to hang in there longer than he can, right? I keep going and even speed up to try to be as fast as he is. At about 1.5 miles my legs start feeling sore and I get this little pinch like pain in my tummy area, so I slow way down and eventually the pains go away. Later I make it to my normal 2 miles and he is still going at it, really fast too. Finally, when I am at about 2.10 miles he leaves!

Yes, I am now paying for that. Obviously I strained some muscles or something (I don't claim to know about sports injuries) in my right thigh all the way down to my knee and although my knee is better today, Tuesday night it was rather painful.

I am not normally competitive, but I guess I was hoping that there was someone that I was more athletic than and I thought the old guy would be the one -- I guess not. :)

Dealing with Trolls at The Bird’s Brain

This comment left at Dr. Kiki Sanford's blog is right up there in the top ten most sexist blog comments I have ever read. Quite possibly #1 and not just sexist, but also racist.
Dealing with Trolls at The Bird’s Brain

Fall Closet Cleaning

Most of you (unless you live in Florida or somewhere really warm) know that this is the time of year that us girls clean out our closet and try to remove all the summer stuff and replace it with sweaters, jackets, jeans and so on. Winter is a bitch for my closet. Not only do winter clothes take up more space, but there is a lot of summer stuff (like tank tops, t-shirts, yoga capris, work-out type shorts) that I need all year. I literally have already removed 2 large yard type bags of clothes that went to charity (too small or just one of those things that you wonder whatever possessed you to buy it) and 1 bag of summer clothes to storage and I seem to have only a little more room than when I started and that has already been filled with sweaters that I brought in from storage. One of the things that bothers me is that I never know how winter will be here in New Mexico. Sometimes I need my cozy sweaters and some winters they get almost no wear. There are always at least a couple weeks that are miserable cold, but some winters that is it. Other winters it seems like several months of that. Don't get me wrong, there are few things that I love as much as a cozy cable knit sweater or some soft cashmere, but they do take up a lot of space. I guess I am saying all that to motivate myself to finish the 1/4 (or there about) of the closet that I haven't finished with yet. There is no sense in having great clothes that you love if you can't find them under everything else.

Swooning over my new Dyson Vac

OMG, I have a new Dyson vac!

It is the little 10 lb model. I was skeptical that it would work as well as the full sized, but it does! Oh, and it is soooooooooo much easier to carry up the stairs. As if that wasn't good enough -- all my attachments from my other Dyson fit it, including the coveted power brush! It is also one of the new "ball" models that actually can turn. It is the most fabulous cleaning machine ever invented!

Just when you thought I was done with posts about vacuums

A couple months ago, Britton decided to give my Dyson to the handy man we had working at the house to see if he could "fix" it because it seemed to have a clog. Now handing a Dyson (or probably any vacuum) over to this man (or maybe most men) is like handing a computer hard drive to a caveman. It is something foreign to them (unless it is a shop vac) and they don't understand it. Somehow this person managed to pry off the canister without actually using the release knob, he then took apart pieces that were not suppose to be taken apart and cleaned them. Probably needless to say, but that totally destroyed my already sickly Dyson. Since then I have been stuck having to use the horrible, very heavy, many filtered Bissell Pet Vac. When the filters aren't clogged the suction is pretty good, but the filters clog every few minutes when you live out in a desert dusty area and have several pets. That alone is frustrating beyond belief, but earlier today I apparently didn't snap in one of the filters right, which for some reason took nearly a minute for me to notice and I ended up with a room full of fine dust particles. This caused the worst asthma attack that I have had since I was a child. So I threw the Bissell out the backdoor, well, so much as I could throw that heavy piece of crap while having an asthma attack.

Not having had an asthma attack bad enough to require medication since I was a child, I had no inhalers or any type of med in the house. I made a hot pot of coffee and although I have heard you shouldn't take it for asthma (not sure why) -- I took allergy med. Luckily that seemed to work and I was back to breathing pretty normally within about 30 minutes.

It has been due to my cheapness that I didn't just buy a new Dyson. Well, also I thought that I wanted or needed the animal vac version, which is like $600. However, after checking some sites on the internet I found the only difference with that version is that it comes with 2 attachments that not all Dysons come with. I already have those attachments, assuming they will work with a new model, but even if they don't they really aren't that important. Anyhow, it means I can buy the much cheaper, smaller and lighter (easier to lug up the stairs) version of the Dyson! I will likely have to empty the canister a lot more often, but emptying a Dyson is a breeze.

So first order of business tomorrow will be shopping for my new Dyson. I doubt I will ever again be as happy to spend a few hundred dollars on a cleaning tool. :)

Just some girlie links

I came across these on Networked blogs today:

Herbs n' Oils

The Holistic Diva

Cathy's Natural Remedies

Vintage + Goodness = Happiness

Now back to networked blogs to add this blog.

Green Living and Clothes Disposal

I do give my unwanted clothes to places like Goodwill, but have to admit I'd never thought beyond the impact of clothing and recylcing, etc. Here's some good info
NRDC: Natural Resources Defense Council site about this topic.

The Hair Styler

I tried out The Hair Styler and I was pretty disappointed. The site lets you upload a photo and then try on different hair styles and colors. The first problem was that it was hard to get my head to fit right into the template (maybe I have a weird head?). Second and worse is that none of the hair looks like it does in the photo you click. Often times the color is different and it looks more like a drawing than actual hair.

Anyhow, I won't be choosing a new hair style or color using that. I looked horrible in every single one!

My latest thrift store bargain

How could I resist that adorable ceramic cup set for $3? I couldn't.