Thursday, April 28, 2005

Miscellaneous Updates

1. Bookcases: Four of them are built and they all look beautiful. Two of them have shelves in them. The other two--well, hmmm. Unfortunately, there's been a slight problem. I started putting the shelves in a few nights ago, and they use these L-shaped metal brackets with pegs sticking out the back. The L-shape part is pretty thick, though. On 2 of the bookshelves, the center divider (they're "double bookshelves" so there is a center piece) is just slightly not straight, so the back corner of the shelves all the way down will not fit. Well, actually the shelf fits in just fine, but there isn't an extra 1/4 inch or so to make it fit over the fat part of the shelf holder. VERY frustrating, especially since there are all these screws holding this thing together. Bob is going to have to unscrew at least the ones for the backing, then see if he can shift the center piece over just a bit--and he has to do this with 2 bookshelves. : ( But I have put my homeschooling books on one of the bookcases in the study, and they look so wonderful. I love organizing books, especially when there is enough room to put them all on some kind of order!

2. Canker Sores: I did some more research on the web, and I found out a lot of new information. I guess someone HAS been doing canker sore reasearch! Thise one website had so much information--it has several pages. It confirmed lots of things that I already knew or experienced, mainly about how long they last, patterns of forming, etc., but it also gave some triggers that I had never heard of. One was sodium lauryl sulfate, a foaming agent found in most toothpastes and mouth products. Evidently, people who stopped using products with this in them experienced a significant reduction in canker sore occurance. Now I am very particular about my toothpast, but I think I will be trying this one, so that can tell you how desperate I am! Another trigger was food allergies. I have never really noticed any correlation between my canker sores and what I eat, but the article mentions common triggers include grains, dairy, chocolate (no!), and strawberries. I have certainly never cut out all of those things, and frankly, changing my toothpaste seem to be a much easier starting place! It also mentioned the additive "cinnamonaldehyde", which I have never specifically heard of, but my brother used to say he got canker sores when he chewed Cinnamon Carefree gum. I must confess, I used to scoff this, but now it seem he was most likely right. It made me wonder if that was the additive in there, but I don't think they even make Cinnamon Carefree gum anymore, so it's not worth checking into (it was terrible). The article aslo gave some OTC remedies to relieve the discomfort, ones other than the standard Oragel-type things, which, for me, cause even more canker sores. One was mixing a teaspoon each of Milk of Magnesia and Benadryl Allery liquid, then swishing that around in your mouth 4-6 times a day. I can try that too! They also suggested eating more yogurt with the live acidophilus culture. Very educational website, at least for those of us directly affected by these horrible things!

3. Cell Phones: It looks like Sprint is the big winner, in that it is the only one that gets reception here at our house. Unfortunately, I don't think we know of anyone else, besides our next-door neighbor, who has Sprint. We are still looking into the deals and all that--we got totally distracted by the bookcases (see #1).

4. Travel Plans: We are still on the fence as far as driving out to Colorado. Every time I think Bob has definitely decided against it all, he'll backtrack and say something like, "Well, it might be fun and relaxing" or something.

5. Family: Today is "Bring Your Daughter to Work" Day, but the NRO changed it to "Bring Your Child to Work" Day. It's a good thing--now we don't have bring the discrimination lawsuit forward. Just kidding! Only Nathan went though--Luke has a tummy ache today and was sleeping on the couch the whole morning. He's down watching a video right now, so I don't think it's anything too dire. Their friend Amanda was sick Tuesday, so that's probably what this is. I'm not sure if he'll go to track practice tonight though.

So now you are all completely caught up on all of our burning issues! Now you can sleep more peacefully!

2 comments:

witw said...

It wasn't just Cinammon Carefree, it was ALL cinammon gum that caused me to get those. They probably all have that same ingredient. In fact, I even found a none-cinammon flavor of Orbitz gum that causes the same thing. I e-mailed them to try to find out what the ingredients were, but they wouldn't cough them up.

Also, I was having a big outbreak of mouth sores about 6 months ago, and traced it down to the toothpaste we were using (I could tell that my mouth started getting sore right as I would brush my teeth). Switched away from that, cankersores gone! So, your research makes a lot of sense to me. I don't know about that dairy, chocolate stuff, though. I have those ALL the time no problem. I think it's this cinnamonaldehyde that is the major culprit. I'm starting to get them again, so maybe this Colgate I'm using now has that too. It's seems to take a while to build up to actual sores for me. I could probably use the "bad" toothpaste every other day and be fine.

Pilot Mom said...

Wow! You're a regular Chatty Claire! LOL! :) So good to hear about the website...I'll be eager to hear if changing the toothpaste helps you.

We are praying that if you do decide to do Colorado that the Lord will see fit to bring you all the way to UT!

Tell Luke I hope he is better soon. I bet Nathan had a blast at work!

You have to send pics once your bookcases are all done so we can see the finished product with the books on the shelves! I know they are so pretty!

So good to get such a gold mine of info!