Castoreum

Just the word, castoreum sounds gross, don't you think?

Do you know what vanilla, raspberry, and strawberry artificial flavoring is made of??? It's called castoreum, it is beaver anus. It is found in food and beverages.

What a raspberry iced tea now?

House over Health???

I found this article online. My boss has told me how she read an article about wallflowers being toxic.
I had to look into it and this is what I found:




Everything these days seems to be bad for your health! One of my favorite things can now be added to the list. Those fun little decorative air fresheners from Bath and Body Works is toxic. That’s right toxic. You would be better off breathing in traffic smog.

Everything from air fresheners, plug-in room deodorizers, odor sanitizers, room sprays, and aromatherapy candles. We love a scented home right? Well beware air fresheners do not “purify” the surrounding air, nor do they add natural fragrances. In fact, they coat the nasal passages with an oil film (such as methoxychlor – a pesticide that accumulates in fat cells) or by releasing a nerve deadening agent, to drown out whatever smells may be deemed offensive. These scented air fresheners are very toxic and dangerous when used in confined areas such as at work or in the home! They can cause numerous respiratory problems including cancer.

We need to realize that “clean” does not have a “scent.” The best way to avoid the problem is to simply open a window instead of reaching for a scented product. You can also try:

• burning 100% pure beeswax candles with 100% cotton wicks
• using a drop or two of pure essential oils and distilled water, make a spritzer and mist the air.
• using an “ash tray”– Zeolite, a mineral formed from volcanic ash, works the same way as baking soda.
• adding drops of orange, lemon or lavender essential oils to organic cotton balls and put them around the house
• simmering spices like cinnamon and cloves, organic lemons, fresh ginger or herbs such as rosemary or basil in a little water on the stovetop
• adding a drop or two of pure essential oils to some hot water
• use organic herbal sachets and potpourris
• using freshly cut fragrant organic flowers or potted plants as air freshening factories. They clear carbon dioxide from the air and can even remove toxins.

As Bath and Body Works employees this is very hard to deal with, do we try to sell wallflowers well, know we're harming people who buy them?OR sell them as if we've never seen these articles before??? I decided I will only try to sell wallflowers if that's what the customer knows they're looking for and trying to decide on which scent they want. But I won't mention that are Wallflowers are AWESOME! They're for your house, but not health and which is more important?

This is how I'm going to deal with this saddening article: decide which is more valuable, your health or a a good smelling house???? Also, you can have a good smelling house, just use natural smelling ingredients as it gives in the list above. Hope this gets your thinking if you use Bath and Body Works Wallflowers. Use NATURAL ingredients, not only for good smelling houses but in your food too!!


http://usgossip.com/bath-and-body-home-air-freshners-bad-for-your-health/

Number One Broken Bone In The Body

Did you know that about all the bones in the body, the clavicle[collar bone] is the number one bone that breaks? Many people that break their clavicle in the middle or towards a middle. In February 2011 my shoulder had been hurting when I did giants on bars. I stopped doing giants and only training other skills on bars. After a few months the pain had vanished and so I returned to training giants. After a month or so it starte hurting again. Yet, once again, I stopped training giants and other skills on bars. Eventually, every skill on bars was hurting my shoulder and so I stopped training bars altogether. After X-Rays, a Catscan, and three months of resting of it trying to heal: I'm not taking any classes at MCCC, not tutoring math this fall but will be in the Winter Semester, not working hardly any hours, laying around trying to heal being lazy, writing on my blog, which needed work on it; I have to do physical therapy [PT] for a month to see it will help at all. If it is working but not completly I will go another month. However, if it doesn't help, the Dr. may have to surgically scrap part of bone that has been chipped  off he end out. It will be about a 3 week recovery and a few months till it's back to normal. It's a good surgery in that it's not repairing anything to have to heal; it's just taking out bone that is causing pain.

[Updated] Surgery

Surgery went well. It has been 10 weeks since the surgery; I was in a cast for 5 weeks, the first three I was using crutches and the other 2 weeks I was walking with a  cast on. Then I walked with a walking boot for 2 weeks, now I'm walking with tennis shoes on. Not too much pain; I'll get a little here and there, but not too much where I can't stand it or tolerate the pain at all.

However, the pain that I was having before the surgery, the entire reason I had it is still hurting. The ball of your foot that hurts with bunions. Although, the bone in my foot is straight, my toe isn't. I'm not a podiatrist, so I don't know if the bunion can still grow and hurt. I will go back Oct. 9th to make sure all is well and that it is good and well.

Will update you on my foot as soon as I have more info to update you with.

Acrobatic Gymnastics in Rio 2016 Olympics

<a href="http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/get-acrobatic-gymnastics-into-the-olympics-games-2016.html">Get Acrobatic gymnastics into the Olympics Games 2016 Petition | GoPetition</a>

Get Acrobatic gymnastics into the Rio Games for the next summer Olympics!
Sign the Petition- I did!
Kellijean

My Sweet Audrey!

I miss my sweet Audrey so much! I've talked to Audrey just about everytime she's wiling to talk with me. On my weekend trip with Nancy I got to talk to Audrey one night. I broke my heart how she talked. She told me so what so bored in Washington and all I wanted to was fix-it, but i couldn't and it just broke my heart and shredded it to pieces! She said she was so bored, she wanted to stay home next time they all went back to Wasthington in August. I told her I couldn't have her stay with me because I would start back up in school at the end of August. She tried everything in her power to convice me to let her stay with me. She told me while I was in class, "she would wait for me in the car." It would be boring like it she's now she replied "I would bring a coloring book." I argued if you were in the car, someone might see how sweet you are and what to take you, she kept coming back with an arguement "I would just lay down in the back so nobody could see me." I was struggling not to cry, because it showed me how much she really wanted to stay with me and was wiling to stay in my car, laying down, coloring in my car while I was in class just so she didn't have to go to Washington!! I was fighting back tears the whole time I talked with her. I miss her so much! He face is just so fragile and sweet, and I just can't wait to see her sweet little excited face!!

Audrey's fourth birthday!

Audrey cooking my birthday dinner! :)

Being silly with my best friend

Toledo Zoo

My little sister!

My birthday!

Audrey's First day of school.

At the Toledo Zoo 2012

A Weekend with Nancy Lee in.......

This past weekend has been like my last hu-raah for this summer. I spent the weekend with one of my friends, Nancy Lee. (refer to Similar Faces to learn a little about her).  On Thursday, June 21, 2012 Nancy and I had been talking about our day and different odds and ends. After a while she asked if I would hang out with her this upcoming weekend, knowing my foot surgery was in a week which would put me out of commission for the remainder of the summer; my life would then become the most dreaded summer I was awaiting for. She wanted me to come over on Friday night around 4:30 and stay until Sunday. The only problem was I had to work both Friday and Saturday! I told her I could come only and only if I could get someone to cover my shifts.

 As a person who extremely rarely calls off work, this was really hard for me to deal with having someone take my shifts. Especially when Shelly, my boss gave me some hours right before my surgery, and I was giving them away after her hard work; I felt really bad, but I knew I would rather have a fun time before my surgery than work. I gave-in and told her I would try to get someone to cover for me.  I called to work right away and asked our co-manager, Carmen if it was possible to get my shifts covered. I never got a complete answer.

When I got to work later that day, it was a mess. We had all these updates to complete and we had to get them done quickly, another girl called off for Friday, and it was hard trying to find someone for not only one, but both of our shifts! After trying to figure all this out, I was feeling stressed out and like I just didn’t want the hassle with this drama and would just work, and not take off. 

However, I finally got someone to cover my shifts, but still felt bad.  I finally told me self, if I want to have fun during this weekend I can’t let myself feel bad about having someone using my hours because I never do, but not to think about work, and enjoy this last weekend before my dreaded summer begins. After work I headed straight for home, and went straight to sleep; I had been so emotionally drained from the hard work earlier that day at work, I just didn't want anything on my mind to think about.

I woke up Friday and started packing my bags for exciting weekend ahead of me! Nancy told me we would be celebrating her paternal grandfather’s 75^th birthday Saturday night and to make sure I packed for that night.  I was running around the house, looking for the certain clothes I wanted, asking Nancy question via. text, trying to contain my excitement. After an exciting six hours I was finally finished packing! I had a half-an-hour till I was supposed to be at Nancy’s; to use that time I ran to the Post Office to pick up the mail and library to return a few movies as well as check-out two more movies.  I returned the mail to the house along with the newspaper and then finally left to Nancy’s house. 

When I got there I had a delicious piece of pizza which had mushrooms, banana peppers, and pepperoni on it. We drove to her grandpa’s house, which seemed like it took forever! I slept and listened to my laptop, while she finished reading the book “Fifty Shades of Grey.” We finally got to his place around 10:30 p.m. I met her grandpa and then we set up our stuff,.Nancy and I slept in his basement, while her Grandpa and parents were in the upstairs bedrooms. We fell asleep while watching the movie “21,” a movie about a college student striving to get a full-ride schoolarship to Harvard Med School and counting cards to win big money in Las Vegas (which is illegal).

The next morning we woke up around 11 a.m. We ate breakfast; I had Honey Smacks cereal while she ate an ice cream Klondike bar. After breakfast we walked up and down some hills and around the a few corners and finally came to meet her parents and grandpa who were mowing the lawn; part of her grandpas 160 acre land; one-hundred acres full of hills, trees, barns, a pond (or as they say lake, since it’s deeper than 12 feet), and a cute little house on a hill.

After we all got back from our walk, we got ready to celebrate his birthday. We left early in order for her grandpa to see a car show they were having in his town. We saw many old and new cars, three cars that I will remember is seeing this grey vapor car, an old truck that could twist difference ways, and then an out of place red 2000 Ford Focus and thought “why in the world is THAT car here” I think all us girls had that same thought! After spending an hour looking at cars in the hot weather, we picked up Nancy’s Grandpa’s girlfriend, also named Nancy and went to an Italian restaurant of girlfriend Nancy’s choice. We had a delicious meal, and then went back to her place for a DELICIOUS desert.

A chocolate cake!!  While I’m not a big fan of chocolate cake, this cake was THEE BOMB! It was sooooo nice and moist, the frosting was great, and to top it off, it had Hersey chocolate on top!!! Unfortunately, we had to leave shortly after due to someone forgetting their medication. We got back to his house. Nancy went downstairs to text, while I stayed upstairs to socialize with her dad and grandpa while we watched “Pawn Stars.” After a few hours, I finally found my way downstairs and to my bed.

The following morning, I woke up around 11:00 a.m. and shortly after we left to have lunch at their favorite restaurant called Luigi’s, another Italian restaurant.  Afterwards, we returned to his house, packed up the van, and headed towards home again. As on the way there, they ride seemed long and I slept most of it, while listening to music or a movie playing on my laptop.

A few things I’ve learned about on this trip: Nancy’s dad will talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk until you get saved by someone, I’ve learned all about Jimmy Stewart from Nancy’s dad at the car show, that there is a statue of him at the court house, where he lived, what movie roles he played in, where he was raised, I’ve learned that if you have a trailer full of cows near Luigi’s they may all tumble out and walk around the street like nothing in the world matters, and I think I know now all the bones of the body and how they all function.  It was a great and relaxing weekend to have right before my surgery, I’ve very glad I went with Nancy, her parents, and her doggies all the way to Pennsylvania without anybody knowing where I really was!!

A few pictures:

You will generally find Mylo(the littler dog) fighting with Casey, a Golden Lab.

Mylo in touch with his femine side.

The car ride there

Nancy and I before celebrating a 75th birthday!