Healing Hands for Haiti

This is a plea I received from my friend, Erin (you can read about her here). I am posting it in case anyone is interested in helping out with this medical relief mission to Haiti.

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Dear Friends,

Forgive me the mass email. I can't recall a time where I've sent out such a mass request to so many friends. I am leaving to go to Haiti as a rescue volunteer with the Utah Hospital Task Force on Thursday. And I only found out today (Monday) at 2 pm. Things are moving fast and crazy around here. I will be serving as the press secretary, assistant to the director, and as medical support for 21 days in Haiti. Conditions are going to be awful there. This is no vacation!

I am writing you all today to ask for your support. I am looking for all kinds of support. From links from your personal blogs to our website, to donations of medical or hygiene supplies to help us in Haiti. If you are a blogger, or have a personal website, would you mind giving us a link? (http://utahhospitaltaskforce.blogspot.com with the anchor text "Send Help to Haiti")

I am also hoping to collect medical and hygiene supplies to take down with me. We need items such as baby wipes, rubbing alcohol, gauze, bandages, clean new socks, iodine tablets, ziploc bags (of all sizes), etc. These will be used both by the volunteers and given to the victims of the earthquake. If you don't live nearby but would like to make a contribution, you can send me money via Paypal (erinannie@yahoo.com) and I can buy the supplies myself.

Personally, I only have a few days to prepare for a 21 day trip to Haiti, as well as work in the offices fundraising, getting publicity, and helping with logistics. I know I am asking a lot of my friends. But this isn't for me. This is all for Haiti. This earthquake has already claimed over 110,000 lives. No matter how much we do, it won't be enough to undo the devastation that has already taken place. But we can all make a difference, even if it is just a small cash donation, or a box of baby wipes.

I understand if you are not in a position to help right now. If you can't help with donations, I'll always be grateful for your prayers for our safety while we are down there.



Thanks,
Erin Ann McBride

So.....

My week long hiatus turned into a few month hiatus due to an abnormally busy Fall and Holiday season. That being said, I am staging a comeback and will work on writing a bit more regularly from here on out.

Brief Hiatus

I am taking a week long hiatus due to my 20th High School Reunion. Check back next week for lots of fun stuff!

Beat the High Cost of Living: Spores, Molds, Fungus and Mouse Carcasses

What the?

What's up with that title?

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too. A few weeks ago I called a company to come clean out my air vents. I knew that it would be a "We'll clean out your vents, but show you all of the other things that need doing as well!" situation, but since we have been in our house for five years I was ready for it. Plus, winter is coming and I am doing whatever I can to keep my family healthy this year so that we don't have a zillion dollars in premiums at the doctor's office. This is step one.

Dave showed up and got to work. He checked out the furnace and went through and looked at every vent and return. We have 19 vents and three returns in our house. That's a lot of looking. Then he showed me the toxic mold growing in the air coils. Apparently condensation from the air conditioning unit gathers and creates mold and then we get to breathe it. Lovely. Then he showed me the cobwebs and dust gathering on the furnace motor. Then he showed me the several inches of construction debris that had accumulated in my returns. Then I told him about how when my son was potty training he liked to pee in the vents. It was a really fun conversation.

So after going through everything, we ended up spending a lot of money to have every vent and return vacuumed and sterlized, the air coils cleaned and sterilized, the motor cleaned out, and he even sterilized the openings to the various vents so that it would inhibit mold growth.

Oh yes, and he found two mouse skeletons in the furnace.

He did tell me that our house was very well constructed so that's a good thing.

From now on I have a nice warranty that every three years they will come back and do it all again for 1/3rd the cost. It was expensive, but a new furnace is WAY more expensive, and hopefully this will help substantially with the allergies running rampant in my home, as well as allow my furnace to run more efficiently so that I can reduce my heating and cooling bills. Next up - cleaning the carpets.

Tv Review: The Cheese Ambassador

All I have to say is that my dear friend Sara is even more beautiful now than she was at 16. That's not easy to do. Must be the delectable cheese!

The Foodie: FACFeRaH

Around Thursday I got a call from my dear cousin, Rachel, who asked me if I would be up for canning our great-grandmother's chili sauce recipe and a batch of salsa on Saturday. I had big plans for Saturday that involved painting and organizing and all sorts of fun stuff like that, so I said, "Of course!" Then I went to work acquiring tomatoes.

Fortunately I live in a state where Farmer's Markets are on every corner, fruit stands run amok, and tomatoes are 20 lbs for $12. Big fat juicy tomatoes - not your little romas. Not that I have anything against romas. I like them. But, big, fat, juicy tomatoes are just....well...see for yourself.

20 lbs of big, fat, juicy tomatoes

After purchasing two cases of pint jars and two cases of half-pint jars I was ready to head to Utah County for the First Annual Canning Festival of Rachel and Heidi. I know it is a long title, but don't you think it is catchy? We'll call it FACFeRaH for short.

We started off by blanching and cutting up a bazillion of the tomatoes. The salsa was first on the agenda. We followed that by onions, bell peppers, jalapenos, and a myriad of spices such as oregano and cumin. You can't make salsa without cumin. It simply is.not.allowed.ever.

jalapenos from my friend's backyard garden
bell peppers from the Herriman Farmer's Market
onions from...well, Walmart

Put it all together in the biggest pot you have ever seen and this is what it looks like. Can't you just smell that? Doesn't it make you hungry for salsa? Seriously - it was heavenly. The smells were overpowering and definitely a diet-killer.

Once we got the salsa simmerin' we started on the chili sauce. Now, granny's recipe isn't a spicy mix, but rather, a sweet mix. It has apples and sugar and vinegar and all sorts of Christmas spices like cloves, all spice, and cinnamon.

granny apples for granny's recipe (ha)

mutant tomato - is it a siamese twin?

And again, we started with the tomatoes, but this time we had Handsome Dave in charge of chopping onions while I buzzed around adding the vinegar, sugars, and spices. Around noon we were ready to bottle the salsa (sorry, no pictures - it would be impossible to take pictures while going through the bottling process.) We were able to bottle 23 pints of salsa, which is quite a bit! Of course, we multiplied the batch times six so that was to be expected. As we set the salsa jars aside to cool, we transferred the even bigger pot of the chili sauce to the burner.

Look at that heavenly goodness

There wasn't a nose that escaped wandering over and inhaling the sauce as it boiled and simmered for five hours. Five hours of constant stirring to make sure it didn't scaled on the bottom. Can you say pioneer heritage? I'm tough - I can take challenges such as this. I bet Pioneer children sang as they stirred...and stirred...and stirred. But really, there is something so quaint and classic about sitting around your aunt's kitchen with cousins and family members talking about everything and nothing while all of the kids ran around. Those are the best types of days. Much better than painting and organizing.

Getting closer to the finish line!
Really huge pot - not kidding.

Finally we were ready to start bottling the chili sauce so we got back into formation and the process began again. When all was said and done we had 21 pints and 17 half-pints of the stuff and we were exhausted. However, I now have about 32 meals worth of chili sauce and that doesn't include the salsa. Chili sauce can be used on roast, meatloaf, chicken, rice, you name it. We collapsed on the living room floor, ate Kneaders salads, and discussed politics. But that's another story.

FACFeRaH President and CEO*

*Next year it will be called SACFeRaH, then TACFeRaH and so on. Won't this be fun?

Parenthood: Opinion - Why Be Paranoid?

I am not suggesting in this post, that one should hover over their children in every aspect of their life in order to attempt to keep them safe. On the contrary, sometimes you just have to send your kids out into the big bad world with a fervent prayer that they will be ok. However, there are definitely ways that you can protect your children.

I grew up in inner-city Phoenix, the only child of a single mother. I lived in a world of locked doors and safety measures. This was back in the 70's and 80's when it was a little bit safer. A little bit. I spent my summers in Provo, Utah. In Utah my sisters and I were free to roam at will. From sun up to sundown. We waded in ditches, walked to Minute Man, played on the school playgrounds, and even had lemonade stands. It never occurred to us or anyone else that we weren't safe. But looking back, there were definitely experiences that I wouldn't want my children to have.

Case in point - sleepovers. Sleepovers are a bad idea. Nothing good happens after midnight. Nothing. I remember a friend's sleepover in 6th grade that involved hypnotizing her and a seance of sorts. A seance! In 6th grade! I still remember the look on her face when we "woke her up", and that was 25 years ago. Not a good memory. I also remember another friend bringing her dad's "Playboy" to the party. Not sure why that would have been remotely interesting to a slumber party with girls, but back then we were curious about everything. Like I said - slumber parties are a breeding ground for things like this. Better to let your kid have a late-over and pick them up before the parents go to bed.

Restrooms. It is never a good idea to let your kid go to a public restroom by him/herself. Ever. Not in a restaurant, not at a rest stop, not at church, not at a pool, or park. There are predators everywhere who are just looking for that kid whose parents let them go alone. Just a couple of weeks ago a 7 year old boy was molested in a bathroom at burger king. It can happen anywhere.

Neighborhoods. I live in a relatively safe neighborhood, but there have been instances of vandalism. Often during the summer our kids are out riding bikes in the front yard. I never let my kids ride bikes without me outside to supervise. I don't care if there are other kids out there. My cousin was almost kidnapped right out of his front yard when he was little. It would be so easy for anyone to just drive by and grab a kid without the parent ever knowing it. Look at the case of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was kidnapped from a bus stop with her parent watching. Call me paranoid, but, that isn't something I could live with.

So maybe I am being a little overly cautious with my kids, but I have seen both sides of the spectrum. In a world such as ours it is better to err on the side of caution than to worry about a kid's independence (or a parent being inconvenienced). I'm sure the parents of the kids who have been taken would agree.