Love a Cheap Hair Product

I'll bet I've spent more money on hair products than perhaps anything else. I've bought products to lighten or brighten or add shine to my locks. If there is a cream or lotion, shampoo or rinse, spray, mousse or gel on the market that I haven't wasted my money on, I don't know what it is. My bathroom cabinets are FULL of creams promising to do things I never dreamed hair was SUPPOSED to do.

One of my favorite claims is that a product "adds volume". WHAT??? Where did anyone come up with that one? And I know we've ALL seen those volume-adding products. One famous hair product company advertises, volumizing shampoo, volumizing conditioner, volumizing mousse, "weightless volumizing gel," and volumizing hair spray. Just think about how LOUD your hair would be if you used every one of their "volumizing" products!! Last time I checked, volume was something you wished there was less of in the souped up cars passing your house at midnight. But check "volumizing" in your dictionary or thesaurus - the hair care firm is probably off the hook because there is no such thing as "volumizing". Ha! They got us all.

Another one I like is "bounce". Now, think about it. What the hell has bounce got to do with HAIR? And, please, what does bouncing hair look like? I swear, P.T. Barnum had it right when he said, "There's a sucker born every minute."

Another one I really LOVE, is the claim of one product which adds extracts of Quillaja Saponaria (an evergreen tree grown in Chile and Peru) and Gingko to their "balanced system" which leaves ones hair "full of body and responsive." Oh, I've GOT to have some fun with THIS one. I invite you to do likewise. Look up "responsive" in your Google thesaurus. I'll save you some of the trouble - there are 32 synonyms for responsive, a few of which are: acknowledging, answering, compassionate, replying, sympathetic and sensible. Mind you - this is your HAIR they're talking about!!! Just think, your HAIR can be ALL of those things for you if ONLY you'll use their product. Gimme a break!

Have you ever noticed how few hair care products talk about old fashioned CLEAN? Shampoo seems to do everything BUT clean lately. Well, I've got at least one solution or suggestion: buy the least expensive shampoo you can find and after you've got a good foam worked up, add a bit of old fashioned Baking Soda and work that into your hair. It is guaranteed to remove the build-up of hair spray and all the other junk we put on our hair.

I'm only familiar with Arm & Hammer Baking Soda and along with "baking" the two other uses it mentions right on the label are "cleaning and deodorizing." I don't know if your hair sweats and needs deodorant but I'll settle for the cleaning properties and I know from years of use that it WILL do a terrific job of removing dirt and sticky hair-spray film. Without all that crap left in your hair, it's not only clean but it's bound to at LEAST shine a bit more. Thanks just the same, but I can do without volume, bounce or being responsive! Now THIS is something I love to sound off about.

Calling All Small-Dog Owners

No doubt our dogs are definitely lovable and I love sounding off about them. But, if you have little dogs ANYTHING like the ones I have, you at least occasionally have a yellow puddle on the floor which is not so lovable. Let me begin l-o-n-g ago.


The husband and I have been motor homing on and off since the early 1980's and picked up a few tricks of THAT trade along the way. It wasn't until around 1993, however, that we began motor homing with little dogs. Understand we had 4 Maltese - a major consideration. If we were away from the rig for a whole day of sightseeing, we knew the dogs couldn't last the entire day so we began buying Pee Pads. I learned pretty quickly that the doggie pee pads, at least the ones I bought, performed poorly at best. There was very little absorbant material above the blue plastic to absorb the PEE. I'd pick up the pad and a little river of yellow pee would stream off it onto the floor which I'd been trying so hard to protect. More accurately, the stream often wound up on my shoes. I was NOT a happy camper; and you could take that very literally.



That was a LOT of years ago and I have NO clue what I paid for those doggie pee pads but I just checked it out on line and see that similar brands sell for as much as $7.99 for only 6 pads. Or - HERE's a real bargain - you can buy 56 pads for the sale price of $69.99. Good GRIEF, I should just throw my money out the window. At least I wouldn't have streams of pee winding up on my shoes.



No, I quickly found a solution to that horrow show. My mother was in a nursing home at the time and I was required to supply her with disposable underpads (often called Chux) for the bed and chairs . I don't believe "Chux" has ever been a brand name but it's typically what medical facilities call those things. I used to buy them at Walmart for my mother and it occurred to me that they seemed very similar to the pee pads only a good deal thicker. Plus, Walmart sold a pack of 18 pads (in sizes larger than the puppy-brand type) for $5.27.



I tried them on our next trip and VOILA - no more streams of pee on my shoes and the wallet didn't suffer from HRS (in my language that's Highway Robbery Syndrome ). Seriously folks, try people pee pads for your dogs. You'll save money as well as those nasty pee-spills! Sound off about your favorite doggie products!

Internet "Cookbooks"

I bought my first computer in late 1990, only months before the World Wide Web was first established. Actually, it's rather interesting to Google "internet history" and read a bit about it. As much as I used my computer for all kinds of things such as genealogy and photography research, I didn't discover the usefulness of it for everyday things until rather recently.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I was still buying cookbooks and dragging out that old red and white checkered version until as recently as a year or two ago. THEN, I discovered the many websites that are tailor made for those of us who like to eat at home but aren't crazy about spending hours over the stove. Now, I don't want you to think I've thrown out the old stand-by: Better Homes and Gardens. Not by a long shot. In fact, about 5 years ago after purchasing a new one, I pulled out my favorite pages from the original (my 1964 version), added hole reinforcers and included these stained, dog-eared pages to my new 1998 version. I just HAVE to use my old pages on preparing a turkey for Thanksgiving and I'm convinced the bird would never be the same if I used any other recipe!

A couple years ago, I received the "Kraft food & family" magazine in the mail and my cooking hasn't been the same since. I totally agree with their own self-proclamation (and subtitle) of "Deliciously Simple. Everyday". By and large, the recipes ARE delicious, simple and fit for everyday living. Naturally, the ingredients are heavily peppered with Kraft products and oft-times the Kraft version is the only one available.

It wasn't long before I read the fine print and discovered that all these magazine recipes were on line and MANY MANY more as well. For starters in using an internet cookbook, try http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/Pages/home.aspx. The search box, when clicked, allows you to browse by recipe category, then recipe type. I prefer to simply type into the search box the main ingredient for my meal and up pops hundreds of choice recipes.

This morning I checked out my freezer and saw that I have several bags of home blanched and frozen broccoli that I need to use before it suffers freezer burn. After searching the Kraft website for my favorite vegetable, it came up with 1,135 recipes using broccoli. The recipes typically use between 3 and 9 ingredients and prep time is seldom more than 20 minutes.

There are hundreds of macaroni (or pasta in general) casseroles that my family has come to love -- and ohhhh how I wish I'd had all these about 30 years ago when my children were growing up. Instead of 5 or 6 ingredients, many of the recipes call for one or another brand of Kraft salad dressing. When I first read some of these I could NOT imagine how these unusual dressings were going to make a meal even palatable much less delicious. My frig is now filled with about 10 bottles of various salad dressings; none of which are used for salad.

Lest I allow you to believe that Kraft is the only one, I submit to you that La Choy, Betty Crocker, Campbells, Lea & Perrins, Pillsbury, Weight Watchers, Hellman's and many other names familiar to all have recipe websites. You will also find the Food Network, Cooks.com and Taste of Home.com among many others. For my cooking preferences, however, and the tastes of my family Kraft's recipes and their dynamite web site can't be beat! (No, I'm not related to them!) That's all I have to sound off about  today and, now that Oprah is nearly over, it's time for me to cook.

Hoooray for Java Logs

I really feel sorry for those rugged souls who continue to live in places like Chicago or Buffalo; Portland, ME or, for that matter, just about anywhere in New England. It's just foolishly cold! Those awful below-zero numbers and measuring snow with a yardstick? What is THAT about and WHO can STAND it? Then, there is Black Ice! I lived it! I drove in it! I was nearly killed in it more than once and I choose that life style NO longer!

Lemme tell ya - it dropped down to 39 degrees in Jupiter, Florida last night and that is way colder than I want it! I had to wear two hoodies over my PJs and a really thick fleece bathrobe just to run outside for the paper this morning. I don't think it ever got above 65 today and I FROZE half to death all day.

But -- ahhhhh. Tonight, out came the Java Logs. Now, New Englanders probably have NO clue what they are. I mean, when I lived "up north", SOMEONE in the family split logs (not me), somebody else lugged them in the house and we kept a wood stove going all the darn winter long. HERE, on the other hand, we have a small fireplace that we don't even THINK about using a good 10 months of the year. That is, until THIS year. It's been C-O-L-D in Florida this winter. And Java Logs are the answer.

Walmart and Publix sell the logs in boxes of eight I think. Each log is neatly wrapped in moderately heavy paper which instructions say not to remove since arrows indicate EXACTLY where to light it. (I guess we in Florida not only can't count ballots, but we can't light fireplace logs either!) But - that said, these logs are just dynamite. No dirt, no bark falling off messing up the floor and no bugs crawling out of them either. They burn for about two and 1/2 hours, they don't produce any smoke but put out a good bit of heat and a pretty flame. I LOVE 'em. They are definitely something else for me to sound off about.