Category Archives: A day in the life

Blatant Product Endorsement: RINCINOL

Posted on January 22, 2013 by funnygurl2

Now, most everyone is probably unfamiliar with this product.

But if you get canker sores inside your mouth, then you NEED TO BE FAMILIAR WITH RINCINOL!!! (The company also recommends it for pain from irritation from braces.)

Rincinol, packaging and product

Rincinol, packaging and product

It is a wonder product!

It turns a week of pain, causing difficulty eating and talking, into three days of mild discomfort.

My canker sores are usually triggered by anxiety, stomach upset, and/or biting the inside of my cheek.

When I first got canker sores, I would put some kind of ointment (It may have been Colgate Orabase) on them. It was meant to numb the area. And it worked. But once the numbness wore off, it just felt like the sore hurt 100 times worse.

So, then I used nothing at all. Which, was painful.

Then I discovered Rincinol! I think I may have gotten a sample from my dentist.

Rincinol is great!

It is a mouthwash that you slosh in your mouth for a minute. Then spit, do not rinse. Do not eat or drink for an hour. My commute to work used to be an hour, so this wasn’t a problem. And I would use it before bed. And sometimes an hour in the middle of the day as well.

It can be used as often as you like!

Safe for children!

It tastes slightly sweet, sort of like licorice. I don’t like licorice, but I don’t find offense to it. It lightly coats everything inside of your mouth (including your mouth boo-boo) and makes it all feel like Heaven. It doesn’t numb the sore, it just coats it so that saliva and whatever else is in your mouth doesn’t irritate it for the next hour or two.

When it wears off, it will feel slightly better than before. You won’t have a sudden throbbing pain return like I had experienced with the other product.

Don’t believe my rave reviews? Check out the 4 1/2 star rating out of a possible 5 starts at Walgreens.com.

This leads me to the two negatives with this product:

1. It can be a little pricey.
But if you are in mouth pain, you will probably be prepared to pay whatever it takes to make the pain go away. A 4.0 oz bottle usually lasts me through about 3 canker sores.

2. It is hard to find.
I could only ever find it at my local Walgreens. Last time, they did not have any, so I ordered 3 bottles off Walgreens.com. (Why 3? Because the third bottle got me into free shipping.) Now I need a new supply, and as I look today, I see that Walgreens.com is out of stock on this wonderful product:( They claim my local Walgreens will have it in stock. I will definitely be paying a visit there tomorrow to find out.

I wrote this post to pass along info about this great product. BUT ALSO because I am afraid that the company will quit making it (it has gone through several owners/manufacturers in the time I have known about it).

Try this product. If you love it, let the company know!

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Candy Bar Diet

Posted on January 1, 2013 by funnygurl2

NOTE: My original idea. All rights reserved.

If you steal my idea and make millions from it, I will sue your ass. And that will probably be easier than if I just tried to make millions off my idea myself.

A few years ago, I created a Candy Bar Diet. I think it is a brilliant idea. Most people don’t understand it.

The core of the diet is to track the calories you eat in a day using the magnetic, dry-erase Handy Dandy Candy Board, featured in the back of the book that explains the diet. The Handy Dandy Candy Board uses adorable candy bar magnets to track the calories you eat in a day. I created a mock up that I used myself. It was much more fun than keeping a food diary.

The following are the excerpts from the book and pictures of the mock-up.

Handy Dandy Candy Board – Daily calorie tracker and goal  © not-quite-a-diet 2010

Introduction:

Candy Bar Calorie Counter

It’s “not-quite-a-diet”

How It Works

Candy bars (the normal sized ones here, no cheating with King-sized) are generally average out to be 230 calories. No matter what you eat in a day, you know you are always thinking: Can I still squeak in a candy bar?  Of course you can!  Especially if you think of all your calorie counting in terms of candy bars!

Start off with the maximum number of calories you want to collect in your flabby body in a day.  Let’s say 1600 calories.  Divide that by the average calories in a candy bar: 230 calories.  That would mean you could eat calories equal to 7 candy bars in a day.  And now with the dry erase, magnetic Handy Dandy Candy Board, it is easy to track to your daily goal.

Examples

That 20oz of Coke you just drank with 240 calories?  That equals a candy bar.  The honey bun you ate for breakfast at 460 calories—sorry, that’s 2 candy bars.  Ate out for lunch & don’t know the calories?  Be honest with yourself & give it your best guess.  A cheddar bacon cheeseburger would probably be at least 3 candy bars.  No complicated math. No tracking every tiny Pez candy.  Feel free to round, but be honest with yourself.  If you cheat, it will only harm yourself.  I don’t care how much you eat in a day.  I just want you to appreciate my adorable candy bar magnets, which I was inspired to create while squandering my life & my creativity in a cubicle.

Your Tools

Decide on your calorie/candy bar daily goal.  Write it on the dry erase, magnetic Handy Dandy Candy Board .  Place a candy bar magnet on the board every time you consume 230 calories in your day.  The magnets are kept in a convenient storage pocket until you need them.  Where do those calories come from?  That is entirely up to you!

There is also a handy journal included to track your progress, if you are into that sort of thing.  There is a Calories-to-Candy Bar Conversion Chart.  Once the day is done, clear your candy slate & start over again!  Conveniently sized to travel with you throughout the day as you rack up the candy bars, er, the calories:)

Why Count in Candy Bars?

This just happens to be how my brain works!  And I AM guilty of eating multiple candy bars in a day.  Whenever I tried to keep a journal of what I ate, I never made it through one day.  I never made it through more than ONE MEAL!  It was boring & tedious.  But I realized that I was finding myself saying “well, these 2 toaster pastries equal 2 candy bars…maybe I should just eat the candy instead?!”

If you tried a strict dieting plan & became discouraged, this might be a good place to start over.  By making it easier to track what you are eating, you are more likely to actually keep it up!  Try the calorie counter with sweet indulgences figured right in!

Sometimes just keeping track of what you eat can encourage you to eat less.  If your board is filling up, and it’s a choice between cheesecake or dinner, you might just choose dinner.  If it’s a Friday night after a long week of work, you might choose cheesecake. But you will be educated & know that by eating both, you could be packing on the pounds.

The Facts

Typically a person needs 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day.  To maintain your weight, you would want to eat around 2,000 calories (9 magnetic candy bars worth a day), depending on how active you are.  If you want to lose weight, you would want to eat less.

Your best bet for an accurate calorie count is on the “Nutrition Facts” label on your food packaging, or in some cases on the company’s website.  MAKE SURE you read the Serving Size, and be sure to multiply your servings by the Calories per Serving.  Once you have that number, it is easy to use the Calories-to-Candy Bar Conversion Chart to add the appropriate candy bar magnets to your candy bar board.

And FYI…Eating 9 candy bars in a day is not recommended & will definitely result in a tremendous stomach ache.

Also, more than just calories go into making you fat, such as, well, FAT.  This is a highly simplified system, therefore we only track calories.  Consider yourself warned!

©  not-quite-a-diet 2010

Calories-to-Candy Bar Conversion Chart

© not-quite-a-diet 2010

Candy Bar Log

© not-quite-a-diet 2010

Storage pocket for Handy Dandy Candy Board candy bar magnets. © not-quite-a-diet 2010

That is the Candy Bar Diet. Do you think it would work for you?

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CAKE BOSS Cake!

Posted on December 31, 2012 by funnygurl2

I just found out they are selling Cake Boss cakes around the country and a store near me carries them! I got a Cake Boss cake for my birthday! (Note: It is Cake Boss brand, and not Carlo’s Bakery:( Website claims it is the same recipe…and hey, it has Buddy on the box!)

Can you say "obsessed"?

Can you say “obsessed”?

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Things Found In My House

Posted on December 18, 2012 by funnygurl2

My house is old.

My husband found a record that suggested it was built in the 1890’s. We bought our house in 2004. About a year before all the home prices got really cheap. We were told that Phil Donahue used to live in the beige house across the street. (There are two beige houses.) I LOVE PHIL DONAHUE. We were also told there is a jar of pennies in the wall between the dining room and the nursery. We haven’t knocked down the wall to get them yet.

When we moved in, my husband was hoping to find secret passageways and treasure. He stayed up late nights poking around the house trying to find something to discover.

I think maybe secretly he still does.

Objects found around our house.

Objects found around our house.


For someone expecting to find treasure, it is a big disappointment to only find a roof leak that a previous owner tried to disguise and some Scrabble tiles in the heat registers. I have a whole box of trinkets I keep of the things we have found in this house. They do tell its history, even if they are worthless to the average antique dealer.
Toys found in our yard and down our heat registers.

Toys found in our yard and down our heat registers.


Most of our discoveries came from vacuuming out the heat registers. Some kid(s) lived here that shoved everything that would fit down there. When we redid the dining room ceiling, we found ugly old wallpaper and nuts. Apparently at some point in the last hundred years our house served as a squirrel motel. (I HATE SQUIRRELS!)

Someone told me our house is Victorian. I have no idea. I do know that between the time that the house had its original wood exterior siding and the aluminum/vinyl siding it currently sports, someone had shingles all over it. Not like nice, New England wood shingles. Like the ugly asphalt kind you put on your roof. I cannot imagine. I guess I should be thankful they are still there, buried under other siding. I think it makes up for our lack of adequate insulation. (If I win the lottery, I am having the siding striped down to its original wood exterior again.) And someone who used to live here loved the color “brick red”. The kitchen cupboards, many rooms, (I also believe) the now white aluminum/vinyl siding all used to be that dark red.

Hobbit Door to our Attic. If only I had a Hobbit to put in front of it for perspective.

Hobbit Door to our Attic. If only I had a Hobbit to put in front of it for perspective.


Our attic has a hobbit door. That is what we call it. Somehow we crammed an air hockey table through it. (Air hockey and bowling and badminton are the only sports I can play at all. My play is definitely below average.

When we moved into our house, my Lab-Chow mix dug up a rawhide in the backyard that some other dog must have left behind. My Pointer recently would not stop digging holes in the backyard. And every time he digs, more of the dirt dissipates into the grass and cannot be recovered to refill the hole again. This makes for a dangerous backyard (not to mention the dog poop out there). Not to mention there used to be a swimming pool in our backyard and the ground is forever compacted and lower where it used to be. (As told to us by the neighbors who live behind us. The husband’s brother used to own our house.)

The perfume bottle, after I cleaned it up as best I could.

The perfume bottle, after I cleaned it up as best I could.


The Pointer ended up unearthing a glass perfume bottle. It doesn’t look very old, as I think the glass is molded rather than blown. That was a nice discovery. Usually, as it rains and we walk around in the backyard, all that gets unearthed are pieces of broken glass and marbles. (It makes you wonder what sort of people use their backyard as a trash dump. My husband insists that everyone used to.)

Because the Pointer kept digging, that got my husband curious and he took his metal detector (that he got at a garage sale and it didn’t come with instructions and he doesn’t know what the controls do) outside. What did he find? A piece of twisted red scrap metal and an old clothesline post base.

The poor treasure hunter can’t catch a break.

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I Can See The Future…

Posted on December 13, 2012 by funnygurl2

I can see the future.

The United States of America will have only 3 industries:

restaurants, healthcare, and insurance.

People will eat lots, need healthcare, and insurance will pay.

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