January 5th, 2009

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Agenda Today

Monday, January 5th, 2009

LAUNDRY!  My laundry situation has gotten outta control so today I’ve been steaming away on getting that stuff all caught up.  If I would get in the habit of putting a load into the washer every night before bed then first thing in the morning putting it in the dryer, my laundry dilemma would be no more.  But I am undisciplined.  There are about 47,000 different aspects of my life that would be a billion times better if I would just be disciplined.  I can come up with these rather brilliant planning ideas (like just putting a load of laundry in the washer every night before bed), but I follow through like 3 times, get sidetracked or offer myself an excuse why it is okay to skip that night and I’m totally off track.  It is so awful.  And it makes me feel like a failure every time it happens.  Drives me nuts.  But does it stop…NOPE!

The other item on the agenda today is a deep cleaning of the kitchen.  It’s surfaces get cleaned daily, but it needs the floor tended too, miscellaneous stuff put away, counter fronts wiped down etc.  So between running between floors doing laundry, I’m working on kitchen chores.

My parents, when they built the house they live in, were brilliant about one particular design element.  They put the laundry facilities on the same living level as the bedrooms…where the laundry goes when finished.  Whatever goober though putting a washer & dryer in the basement and the bedrooms on the second floor was not thinking.  If ever I have the opportunity, some washer & dryer in my future will be on the living floor where the hampers, closets and bedrooms live.  This business of lugging a heavy basket down two flights of stairs, washing them, then lugging them back up two flights of stairs to be put away is really annoying.  It isn’t efficient either.   See I know how to be efficient and I certainly know how to plan & organize…but follow through on a continual basis eludes me.

Our Saturdays These Days

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Most Saturdays from now through the start of the maple sugaring season (in about six weeks) are going to be filled with working in the woods getting ready.  This Saturday we hung three long sections of wire through the woods.  The tubing which will connect the tapped trees to our sap collection sights will hang from this wire so that it doesn’t sag.  The wire is pretty permanent so it was nice to get that almost completely finshed in one Saturday.

I did discover that I absolutely must acquire boots.  Wearing tennis shoes into the snowy woods for hours can cause feet to get wet and really cold.  Actually, we both need to acquire good functional boots for the sugaring season.  While at the JCPenny outlet the other day, I looked for functional boots, but all they had were those high heeled, non-sensical things some gals call boots.  Personally, I’d fall flat on my fanny if I ever tried wearing something like that in snow and/or ice.

Next Saturday we have to cut, load, unload and stack a bunch more firewood that is needed to heat the sap in the evaporator.  And we’ll probably hang some tubing from the wire lines we’ve hung.  I’m not a huge help during all this, but I can help some since I am still feeling pretty great.

Oh, No! No More US Hand-Made Toys??

Monday, January 5th, 2009

I was just reading about this online…never heard about it until today.

On February 10th, 2009 The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act will go into effect which will put strict safety measures on product made for children and requires that toys and product (even books!) made for children under 12 be tested for safety (specifically lead) content by independent labs and labeled with their material contents.

Okay, this sounds great on the surface.  It means those horrid toys made in China and other developing nations for our US headquartered, outsourcing, mega-toy companies will now finally be tested for stuff harmful to children.  That is great!  Awesome & wonderful! BUT what this law failed to do is protect all those US, Europe & Canada based toy makers that already were making a quality product.

Any product made for use for a child under the age of 12 will have to be tested.  That means the industrious homemaker in Iowa that makes cloth diapers for sale via the internet will now have to have each of her products tested at a cost of $4000/item.  And the garage carpenter that makes wooden trains in Maine also will have to have each of his products tested.

This law effectively will put out of business hundreds of cottage industry toy and clothing makers.  All because some corporate guys got greedy and had their silly toys made for dirt cheap in some country without a conscience.

Dave & I have just started creating our little stash of US, Europe & Canada made quality toys for our future tots and we’re no where ready for these companies to go out of business.  It looks like the fix to this dilemma is for the law to be amended to exclude US, Europe & Canadian companies which already adhere to pretty strict safety regulations.

So today I’m going to find some more facts about this issue and write emails to our local Congressman & Senators.  I’m so bummed.  We literally just found out about all these little toy makers located here in New England and elsewhere that we were hoping to one day soon buy from, but now who knows if they will still exist.

http://www.handmadetoyalliance.org/

http://nationalbankruptcyday.com/