death in pop cans and spaghetti sauce

Today I learned that there's mercury in some high fructose corn syrup, so, on average, all packaged food will kill you.

Also, Ross Dress For Less has queen-size cotton blankets for $15 to $20, and they seem to not stink as much as non-clearance store stuff.

food that'll kill you

Today I learned that some parents raise their kids in such a way that they are scared to eat an Oreo.

I am totally on board with being afraid to eat Oreos.

snack food

Dear hummingbird enthusiasts,

I am sorry to report that someone ate the little birds in the nest on our front walk, so we probably won't have much to report on that front in the future. I would like to add to the commenter who offered low-priced hummingbird articles that I can modify and put my name to that that is, indeed, a very charming offer, but we're in the habit of learning things the hard way around here, so we probably won't take you up on it.

Sincerely,
Miss Molly

P.S. I learned that 'paraphernalia' has an 'r' in it.

tiny black critters

Today I pulled on the twig on which the hummingbird nest sits so as to better see the eggs, and I saw a broken eggshell. Then I noticed a tiny little black bird attempting to regain its balance. (Its sibling looked too recently hatched to have balance.) So I learned that knocking over little birds makes you feel like a jerk. Also, we didn't notice a bird nest on our front walk for about ten days.

braids, birds, and blue ink

Today my husband learned to braid hair. If you have long, braidable hair that doesn't braid itself when you feel crummy, I can highly recommend a husband-made braid. His first effort was hilarious, and we've been lacking in hilarity recently.

In bird news, I still don't have a picture, but the hummingbird parked intermittently in a bush on our front walk is a Costa's hummingbird. Those and Anna's hummingbirds stay the winter around here, and no one on the web appears to like to take pictures of the girl birds, and this is clearly a girl bird. We're expecting baby birds in just under two weeks, assuming she didn't sit on the nest for a week before we saw her.

In dryer news, we took the dryer back apart this morning, and my husband boiled the drum seals four times for an hour each while I attempted to scrub the drum. I learned that if you accidentally sent a pen through the dryer about 10 years ago, and it left residual blue marks that never came off, you can get them off with Bon Ami if you scrub hard enough. The drum is in better shape, but it took a long time because I had to keep going to sit down. This better go away soon, but I think I said that last week, too.

tiny birds and doctors

Today I learned that if a hummingbird builds its nest in a bush on your front walk, you can see how much time it spends not sitting on its itty bitty jellybean eggs from your kitchen window. Keeping in mind that this information is filtered through a short attention span, it appears that the bird sits for 5 to 8 minutes, then goes out to find something to eat for 1 or 3 minutes. We hope to have a picture soon.

In other news, you should go to the doctor more often than once every four years. The guy I saw today tied together a whole bunch of symptoms I have that were improving, but very, very slowly. Things like serotonin, a neurotransmitter, affecting how your liver works, and something about hormones. It all made good sense when he said it, and I'll have some test results at some point to confirm his suspicions, and hopefully all this will stave off another exciting ovarian cyst rupture.

Also, it appears that if you are having a hard enough time, eight days can go by in an instant.

it's all temporary

Today I learned that you're supposed to blow your nose one nostril at time because that reduces the pressure in your sinuses during the process. If you blow less air through a smaller area, it seems to me that you would still be able to achieve the same pressure, so maybe there is some twist to nose dynamics of which I am unaware.

In baby-boomer news, the people who brought copious drug use into vogue in the '60s were told in their tweens that the world was going to be blown up, so they had better be prepared. I think I, too, might have turned to drugs.

In household news, the dryer is currently working on a dish towel, which will hopefully not come out smelling of felt drum-seal material. My in-laws asked if we were getting a new dryer since it's taken us weeks to get this one back in working order, but God only knows what the seals on a different dryer would smell like.

In recovery news, good days and bad days seem to alternate. I had gotten used to chemical exposures, which, when I shake them off, are gone, as opposed to physical injury, which takes for-freakin-ever to 'shake off.' I think the good days are when I have no expectation of feeling any better, and then, when I'm able to do something, like laundry, I develop excessive expectations for the next day. Also, overdoing it is the fastest route to total despair, so I wish I had a half-way setting on my full-on or totally-off switch.

And so I don't leave anyone with overly serious thoughts, here is a fantastic source of pictures and descriptions of foods I've never seen before.

looking less dead all the time

Today it was posited that the nest-building doves, who are still at it this morning, are either serious perfectionists or totally gay, which would explain the lack of eggs.

In other news, I feel well enough to write, despite having to sleep next to a space heater that gives me heart palpitations. (It was that or shiver.) EIs seem to love the SoftHeat portable baseboard heaters because they have water in them instead of oil and have very low electromagnetic fields, but I've been hanging around over mine too much, and now it just reeks of electronics, but I'm the only one who can smell it.

In medical news [warning: discussion of 'female troubles' follows], it has recently come to my attention that while a ruptured ovarian cyst is not exactly pleasant under the best of circumstances, you should really, really avoid having one if you're already swelling up for an impending hormone reaction because those things are really pressure sensitive. If you're planning on one, I can also recommend working on your back muscles because hunching over your new enormous pot-belly is not for the weak, and I'm counting not-entirely-out-of-shape mountain bikers as weak.

update consisting mostly of bad news

Recently I learned that a wind shift in the middle of the night can give you a terminal gut cramp. This is why we usually sleep in a pressurized house, so I'm back in the house, where there aren't any stars.

Whatever was in the wind on top of an impending hormone reaction may be causing the pain I'm in now, which started last night after the gut cramp went away, but I very much expect this is one of those things even normies get, and you have to tough it out if you're not willing to hit up urgent care for drugs you wouldn't tolerate.

So in actual things I learned, if you are inclined to walk all hunched over, you can use a plastic chair as a walker and carry things on its seat.

A hot water bottle seems to help some, I don't have a temperature, and there's a doctor in the family. I'll be pretty surprised if I die.

laundry czar, checking in

So I haven't really learned anything yet today, but it's been an eventful few days since I last reported in, so here's the latest round up:

• If anything bad gets into my house, it gets on my couch, so I should remember to wash the couch quilt.
• Sleeping outside in January is totally achievable if you tolerate your sleeping bag, which offgases less the colder it is. It's even better if you can wrap your sleeping bag in another sleeping bag. Sure, my face is a little wind burned, but I feel really good, so from now on, January and June will be designated sleep outside months.
• Between the peeping and the flapping, nest-building doves can keep you awake.
• The felt seals on the dryer drum have absorbed the paint contaminant, and they are going to be pretty hard to clean. They cost $30 each, which is a small price to pay to keep a dryer that is otherwise easy to clean.
• The reason people with electromagnetic field sensitivities do well with rear-projection tvs is that the magnetic field readings at the front of the tv are something like 3 mG, which I understand is something to aspire to at the pedals of a car, and you can get much farther from a tv than you can the pedals of your car. At the back, the reading was more like 15 mG, but no one really hangs out behind the tv, so that's probably ok. And for reference, the digital display on my stove is over 100 mG, and so are compact fluorescent bulbs, and the LCD monitor we use as a tv.
• I will grant that I was playing catch-up, but I was able to work ten paid hours yesterday