Susiej

I have those boxes. You have them too. We’re smart enough to put them in “acid-free” boxes, but the photos are certainly not in a photo album. They are not organized, nice and neat, so that anyone can enjoy them. Technology has rescued us. Here, I’ll list some of the new scanners that will digitize batches of your photos, (inexpensive) and where you can get access to them.

Since I bought my Digital Camera, I have used Adobe Photoshop Elements to digitally organize my photos by date, person and event. So now, when I’m planning a birthday party for my 11 year old, and I want to embarrass him, (I wouldn’t. He’s too kind.), I just click on his photoshop Tag, and every digital picture I have of him pops onto the screen. I store them on back-up CDs, but more importantly on my external hard drive. CDs will only last about 5 years before they start to deteriorate.

There he is, in all his digital vintage glory. (For more on posting photos of your children, read this. My solution? I try to post older pictures, so you don’t recognize who I’m actually showing. One nice thing about not having my Mom around is that I don’t have to answer her. I know she’d have something to say about it. Actually, I think she’d say go for it, because she’d be so proud.)

Now, where was I? Right, notice above, I that I said I had all the “digital” photos in the computer. I didn’t own a digital camera until he was 8. So, there’s a lot of his life that is virtual undigitally documented. But, my HP Printer has a scanner. I have been dutifully scanning them in for 4 years now. Once the photo is scanned, I import it into Photoshop and add the date and tags, and it’s part of my on-line digital collection. However, it takes forever to scan the photos. And, these photos have streaks on them from the scanning bar. I guess that’s this century’s version of “vintage” photos. But I have 4 boys now!! I can’t keep this up!! And then, I have the black and white pictures of my Mom’s, and her family and my Grandma. I have lots of scanning to do.

Help has arrived. The The Wall Street Journal reports that there is a slew of new companies offering cheap, quick digitized services. High-speed document scanners with automatic feeders can handle hundreds of photos, letting them charge less to convert the image into digital format. Xerox, Canon and HP all sell scanners in the $1000 range, that can scan 225 to 50 images a minute, the WSJ says. No. You don’t have to run out and buy one. ShoeboxReprints.com, in Irvine, California, can scan 1,000 images for $49.95 and send them back to you on a CD. Once the images are digitzed, you can make more copies, store them, or go to mypublisher, an online photo-book company to create a memory book. Remember though, it is still a scanned image, and it won’t make a great poster. There are bigger, flat-bed scanners for that. Ask a professional photographer about it.

Your local photo store may already own such a scanner. Many of these stores miss you — you haven’t been back since you bought your digital camera, because you’re no longer getting your film processed. So, now, your local photo store is buying these scanners to get you back in the store. If your store doesn’t have one, show them this article, and tell them you’d use it if they offered it. Tell them you would rather bring the photos to them, rather than send them off to California. They are priceless, you know.

Get your shoebox. Convert those photos, and make a very nice Mother’s Day or Father’s Day Gift.

So what do you think? Will google run shoe ads or photography ads on this story. Or will I still have those bat (oops, I probably shouldn’t have said that) ads. They always amaze me. And speaking of photographs, have you been here? Or here? Or to Paris Daily Photo?

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Filed under: Life, boy by SusieJ - 5 Comments →

“Desert Salt” is a common ingredient in many Spa Exfoliation Products. It softens skin, removes dead skin and eliminates toxins. You might already have it sitting in a green box in your laundry room. It’s simply 20 Mule Team Borax. If it’s not there, try looking in the laundry aisle at the grocery store – it’s the one with horses on it. (I think they’ve removed the horses now.) Salt, and Epsom Salts particularly, are very good for your skin.

Here, I will give you a recipe for a smooth, exfoliating rub that will leave your skin glowing and soft. It’s cheap and very easy to make. Expensive spa treaments are all the rage. You can take a public “mud bath” at the Standard Hotel Spa’s Mud Lounge in Miami, Florida with OTHER people. This recipe will help you avoid all of that public humiliation. (Wait! I do do that. I do that every time I go out to dinner with my kids. I usually wear enough food and spilled juice on me that it qualifies as a mud bath.)

(Before you start, sprinkle some baking soda in the bottom of the tub – it will absorb any of the oil you drop and keep you from slipping.)Recipe for Dry Skin

• 1 cup Epsom Salts
• 1/2 cup 20 Mule Team Borax
• ½ cup Olive Oil always in a glass bottle. This Book explains that the plastic reacts with the oil and creates some nasty toxins.
• 10 drops Essential Oils use the real thing, Not perfume.
• Rub it In, and let the grainy salt crystals polish off the dead skin, so the oil can penetrate through your skin. And yes, the essential oils are like medicine. Yes, you and your bathroom will smell like heaven.



For a list of great smelling essential oil combinations, click here and here (also a bathbomb recipe) , here, here, and here.

Keep the leftover oil and salt mixture in a jar in your refrigerator. Pull it out whenever your heels hurt, you need to feel pampered, or you want to get your skin ready for your swimsuit. And, here is an informative article about the properties of essential oils, and how to use them to clean your house — they’re great disenfectants. Do you want more recipes? Try looking here, The Complete Guide to the Use of Oils in Aromatherapy and here, The Enchanted Bath: Bath Rituals and Recipes.
Do-it-yourself-spa treatments, according to The Wall Street Journal is the $9.7 billion Spa industry’s latest move to attract new customers by lowering costs by putting more of the work in your hands. Mr. Andre Balazs, who Laura Landro of the WSJ interviewed, operates the Standard, and says, “The goal is to make the spa an integral part of life, like the baths were to the Romans or the sauna was to the Finns.”

So tell me, I ‘d love to know. Would you? Could you? In a bath? In a Patio? In Public? With Men?

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He came down with a fever. Lethargic, no other symptoms. The pediatrician ‘s nurse said to keep him hydrated; a virus is going around, and it usually lasts 5 days.

Four days later, I make the call to the pediatrician again — because I’m thinking that by now, I should see that shift. You know the one, where they start to get a little hungry, and start asking for food, and the color starts to fill their cheeks. I’m seeing a paler and paler face. And stranger yet, none of the other boys are showing any of the same symptoms — they’re all healthy as a bird.
The nurse, tells me, that it’s not day 5 yet. Yes I know. But he must be seen, today. She then asked, “What is he doing right now?” Well, he’s trying to play Bingo with me, but he can hardly sit up to do it because he doesn’t have the strength.

“OK, bring him in.”

My husband comes home from work to watch the other 3. I begin to get a little nervous. The memory of the bat keeps coming back. Six nights before this, I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and I heard, felt — something — the floor creak. That was odd. I know our house is old, (1922), but I don’t think I ever remember hearing the ceramic tile creak. But what’s this? Something else? Something fluttering. It is dark, and I feel something fluttering around my legs. I turn on the light — and YES, it’s a bat.

I do scream, pretty loudly, and yes that news report that your kids will never hear the smoke alarm if it goes off in the middle of the night, is true. All 4 slept quietly in their beds while Dad came running in. I have read that even though the door is closed, bats, being the “rodents” that they are, will squeeze their way underneath door jams. And, of course, they can carry rabies. Still, I could not bring myself to “hitting the bat” with a towel.  Bats are a “protected species.” You cannot kill a bat. (They do a lot of good things for us, apparently.) So the plan was to grab it in a towel and set it free outside.

I carefully opened the bathroom door, and came out, and shut the door quickly behind me, so that my husband can go in to take care of the bat.

The problem is, my husband’s contacts are in the bathroom, and his glasses have been missing since we got back from one of our whirlwind trips to the Lake, and he is “blind as a bat” without them.

So, I open the door, and give my husband the exact location of the bat. First, it was in the sink, fluttering around. I close the door, give Ironman the quadrants, and then, he carefully opens the door, throws on the towel — but there is no bat there. It’s flying overhead. We had to do this about 12 times before we got it right. I won’t make you sit through all the gory details, but the most memorable of his locations was when he was hanging off the drawer pull of the cupboard. My husband caught the bat, and it was happily set free — outside.

As my mind races back to the incident while I’m waiting in the pediatrican’s office , I make a cell call to my husband to ask him to google rabie symptoms. Sure enough, they were the same ones that my son was showing. Of course, “once these symptoms appear, it is already too late.” There are no  bite marks, but that doesn’t always mean anything, the web site explained.

The Dr. opens the door, and I begin to sob, and tell her he’s very sick, and yes, we had a bat in our house.

Thanksfully, her red medical reference book was a little more detailed than google, and no, he didn’t really have those symptoms. She checked for bat bites, and of course, there were none.  

But he had something else, and that remained a mystery. After lots of prodding, and measuring, we learned it was pneunomia, which came out of nowhere; he did not have a cold, or a runny nose, or even a cough. He couldn’t breathe, and it was taking all of his strength to do that. Antibiotics did the trick. And he was fine and dandy.

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Filed under: Laugh, Life, Make Something, boy, eat, health by SusieJ - 5 Comments →

Did I ever tell you about the time I almost invested $10,000 in my very own Chihuly Vase? After my fourth son was born, and he was still an infant, and my husband was out of town all weekend, and I was DETERMINED (I’m like that) not to let a sweet little baby stand in the way of the cultural activities I planned for my older children. So, I took them — all four boys, ages infant, 2, 5 and 8, to a Children’s Educational Program at the Art Museum. By myself. Our “assignment” was to copy a stained glass piece of art with tissue paper and glue. First, we had to go upstairs to the main museum exhibit area to view the Chihuly Glass sculptures. I carry one in a sling, and try my best to hold the hands of the 2 and 5, while reading the instructions of items that we’re supposed to “observe.” The 2 and 5 year olds start jumping around a little bit — maybe too much — and I realize, that there is an entire collection of Glass Chihuly Vases standing on glass podiums, uncased. Just sitting on top — nothing holding them. One bump, and nothing but shards of glass crystals. I realize, this could be my latest investment.
I then spot a security guard, looking over at us, talking on a radio, and his exact words were, “I’ve got em covered.” Then, I look around, and there are 4 more, hovering around us. One body guard for each one of us. I decide then, maybe it’s time to go back downstairs to the children’s area. We made our stained glass, covered with lots of glue, and went back home where we were safe again.

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Here are the answers to the little game from yesterday’s post, Little Known Code Words to Get Kids to Eat. Christopher, you did very well. Your right answers have this *. The “answers” come from Frank and Ernest.

Georgia pie: is really Peach Pie — and Christopher was right with the “horticulture of Georgia angle” when he guessed Peanut Butter.
Hen Fruit: Egg*
Burn a Snowball: Dip of chocolate ice cream. But Christopher, I like yours better; melt some ice. (Can you imagine working in a diner with someone who had their own version of that one? How do they keep it all straight?!)
Life Preservers: Donuts*
Lighthouse: F&E say a bottle of Ketchup. Christopher guessed a stack of pancakes with with butter on top.
Mike and Ike: OK, Christopher, you are right. It is Licorice flavored theater candies. But, maybe Frank and Ernest was published before that, because they call it salt and pepper shakers.
One from the Alps: A Swiss Cheese Sandwich, but how can you argue with Christopher’s St. Bernard on toast?
Hold the Hail: My favorite. No ice*
Atlanta Special: Coke*
Popeye: Spinach*
Put a Hat On It: Christopher says it’s What bald men do. But in the diner, it’s add ice cream.
Rabbit Food: Lettuce*
Shake One in the hay: Blushing here Christopher — Where babies come from? (No wonder it’s called DeathbyChildren!) No, a strawberry milkshake. How obvious?
Eve with a lid and moo juice: Christopher says, “A painting from the Rennasaince showing Eve blessing a cow. Very controversial.” I like your analysis. But F&E’s is even better: Apple pie and a glass of milk. Clever.
Sneeze: Pepper.
Yum Yum: sugar
Splash out of the garden: Vegetable soup (What happenend to you Christopher?)
Throw it in the mud: Add chocolate syrup.
Wart: Olive
Paint a bow-wow red: Hot Dog with ketchup.
Adam and Eve on a raft, wreck’em: Two scrambled eggs on toast.
Nervous Pudding: Jello, of course.
Raft: You know, Toast!
Burn One, take it through the garden and pin a rose on it. Hamburger with lettuce and tomato.
Balloon Juice: Seltzer

You think this list is good, you should see the pictures in Frank and Ernest. Imagine. All this focus on the words and food, and nobody once says, “Hasn’t ANYBODY noticed that this diner is being run by an Elephant and a Bear?” Don’t you think that’s kind of weird? Honestly, great illustrations.

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I had a real-life encounter with Mr. Rogers, and a post on Just Thinking reminded me of this.

He was the guest speaker at a public televison conference I attended. (Former life, former job.*) We thought he was going to teach us about children’s television programming, how to market the shows, and how to create more innovation in education and programming. We had our notebooks and pens ready. There were thousands of people there from all over the world waiting for a talk. He did something quite different instead.

He asked each one of us to close our eyes, and think of the one person who has helped us get to the place we are right now. Then, he set his watch for 2 minutes, and asked us to silently hold that person in our minds and to thank that person. He said, “Don’t worry about anything else — there’s nothing else you have to do, no place you have to be, for these next 2 minutes.”

What was most surprising was not “What is he doing?” It was, “who” came to my mind. Before my eyes shut, I knew exactly who that person would be. But as soon as my lashes hit my cheeks, someone entirely different popped into my head. I can’t even remember who it was now, and it doesn’t really matter.

When his talk was over, we all had empty notebooks, and tears in our eyes. Our hearts were full with a mission to create such a moment for someone else.

Do this sometime. It might suprprise you who pops into your head, and how it changes your day — for the better.

Watch Fred’s testimony before the Senate in 1969 — moving.

*Funny how, now, I strive NOT to make TV a part of my children’s life. And it has nothng to do with Fred.

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Filed under: Life, Tears, memories by SusieJ - 1 Comment →