The "What's on your mind?" Thread -2017

[margecat]

I woke up with a huge sinus headache, and was sick to my stomach all day. Part of the neck pain is due to a certain fat, black cat who wedged me in bed so I couldn't move. It took over 2 hours to get to sleep. DH is very happy today (he started his new "real" job last week ; tomorrow is the start of his first full week), which, after exactly 2 months of under-employment, and a 50% salary decrease (that's been going on for 4-5 months total), is WONDERFUL. However, he's upstairs, in his den, laughing at Youtube videos. Nothing wrong with that, but he laughs so loudly, I literally jump each time, even though I'm downstairs, in my den. He has a very loud, braying, screeching laugh that saws through one's headache like a chainsaw. He's been at it most of today. Thank God for MOTRIN.

I just bought a necklace on Etsy. Silly seller says that she can't find the type of chain that I chose, and wants to sub other kinds, which are either way too long or scratch my neck. I told her to cancel my order. In my experience, at least on eBay when a seller does something similar, the whole transaction is a nightmare in other ways, so I usually cancel.

 

[Willowy]

Sugar, like any simple carb, can cause a quick burst of energy. That's the basis for those 5 hour energy drinks.

Energy shots are usually sugar-free. They're mostly caffeine.

Red food dye just made her go bonkers, like a sugar high times 100. Since you mostly find red food dye in candy, the sugar in the candy was blamed for a long time.

My nephew had the weirdest reaction to candy when he was little. Not just colored candy; chocolate made him nuts too. Maybe the caffeine? He still doesn't like candy. When my niece was 1, she got into her mom's purse and ate an entire candy bar she found in there. My SIL was so worried because of the reaction my nephew has. But nothing to worry about, my niece is apparently just fine with candy! But it was sort of funny---I don't think most families have to worry about that kind of stuff, lol. We're weird. My brothers used to get bad nosebleeds from chocolate, especially chocolate pudding .

 

[arouetta]

In theory I have one direct boss. In practice I have two direct bosses. Luckily they communicate really, really well, there's only been a couple of times I've been told to do two different things at the same time and when I say to one what the other wanted the task list is immediately adjusted for how to do both. And tonight I nearly made one cry.

She's the visual merchandiser, so she's responsible for displaying product in our area of the store. So whenever I have to alter how product is displayed, she's the one that has to fix what I changed. Usually that means a customer wants a piece of clothing that is on a mannequin, the one on the mannequin is the right size and it's the only one left, and I have to remove and replace the piece of clothing. Last one of that size usually means the next size up is also gone, and the mannequins are not sized right for different sizes to look good, so something brand new has to go on.

We had a bit of communication problems with that at first, all on me. When I would say "I threw the first thing on I saw", to me it meant it was the right brand, it was from the immediate area, it was the first item I saw that matched other mannequins in the area, and it was the right size. To her it meant something was grabbed randomly, and she would just about have kittens until she saw it. She'll always change it, but she's not running for it any more since I usually pick a good match.

(Side note, there's other communication problems too with that. The closing manager, no matter who it is, says the VM will be emailed about the change and the VM never knows something was changed. Every time I see her I tell her of all changes that I made or know that someone else did since the last time I saw her, because she doesn't seem to find out any other way.)

So last night I was putting out two shopping carts of folded shirts, I was super-short on time, and I found a lot of brand new product, not just replenishment. We just redid the area so there were no tables sufficiently low on product that I could just squeeze the new things in. I radioed the manager on duty and she told me to empty the one clearance table in the area and put them there.

Well, that ended up being the completely wrong thing to do, when I told the visual merchandiser about it today. When the tables were redone, everything was planned out (planogram, for those that know the term) including the location of the clearance table and what clearance items were to be on that table. And clearance was to stay there until the 27th, and the new stuff was not to be on the floor until the 27th. And what I did means that setting it right just can't be done, finding that clearance is not time effective. Since I actually left nine minutes late, I had handed the clearance stacks to a coworker staying later, and yesterday was her last day, so no way to ask her where it ended up.

It wasn't really on me. First it should never have left the back room. Since it was mixed in with replenishment, the VM said no one had checked it, they literally had taken it off the truck right into the shopping carts and straight onto the floor. Second the manager on duty should have walked me through the new-to-me process of checking the items' current and future planograms and told me to put it back into the back room. She showed me what to do if I ever end up with new product again, and she said that Target's old philosophy was "make it fit" but now it's adhere to placement dates. The reason why is because the placement date could have a sale attached to it and putting it out early means we might not have enough product left for the sale. There are some placement dates that can be safely ignored, mostly in the intimates area because they never run out of product.

So live and learn. Whoops! And as much as the VM was bent over a table, lightly pounding it with a fist, saying "It shouldn't have been done that way." in a Why god why voice, she didn't actually cry, so that's good I guess.

 

[arouetta]

I woke up with a huge sinus headache, and was sick to my stomach all day. Part of the neck pain is due to a certain fat, black cat who wedged me in bed so I couldn't move. It took over 2 hours to get to sleep. DH is very happy today (he started his new "real" job last week ; tomorrow is the start of his first full week), which, after exactly 2 months of under-employment, and a 50% salary decrease (that's been going on for 4-5 months total), is WONDERFUL. However, he's upstairs, in his den, laughing at Youtube videos. Nothing wrong with that, but he laughs so loudly, I literally jump each time, even though I'm downstairs, in my den. He has a very loud, braying, screeching laugh that saws through one's headache like a chainsaw. He's been at it most of today. Thank God for MOTRIN.

I just bought a necklace on Etsy. Silly seller says that she can't find the type of chain that I chose, and wants to sub other kinds, which are either way too long or scratch my neck. I told her to cancel my order. In my experience, at least on eBay when a seller does something similar, the whole transaction is a nightmare in other ways, so I usually cancel.

I have found that the absolute fastest cure for a sinus headache isn't painkillers. A single dose of Sudafed makes the pain vanish in maybe 20 minutes max. Even if your nose isn't stuffy in the slightest it works, since the source of the pain is the upper sinuses when your nose is clear (stuffy nose could be lower sinuses or, even worse, all four of them). I sometimes get them so bad my upper teeth hurt, ibuprofen barely touches it, but a single dose of Sudafed makes the pain go away and not come back, since it unclogs the clogged sinuses.

 

[kashmir64]

O.K. so on a FB page that I frequent for lost pets in my area, someone put up the 'Don't let your pets out during the eclipse' flyer.
I have had enough of that, so I wrote a response. MAN did I get it for being snippy and rude.
This was my response:
I'm certain my animals are not thinking "Oh, today is the eclipse. Since it doesn't happen often, I better look at it". Animals are not that stupid...only humans are.

I guess some people can't handle being told that the human race is essentially, stupid.
I don't recall any reports of any animal, either wild or domestic, going blind during all the other eclipses we've had during history. Why is this such a big deal this year?

Edit: so I wrote back to her, because I'm not rude, I'm realistic. All I said was that the sun is no different during eclipse day, then any other day and what animal would look directly into the sun if it hurts them. Simple
But then she starts quoting the Bible to me. OMG - really.
I'm letting this go. I can't fix stupid.

 

[muffy]

There is no such thing as a a"sugar high", that has been proven to be incorrect but the story keeps hanging on.

Sugar has been getting a bad rapt for years. My brother, s/l and sister act like it is poison. They are all health nuts. I bet I will out live all of them.

 

[Willowy]

Yikes, a bad storm is blowing through. I went outside before it started raining and it sounded like a freight train coming. And the sky is green. Scary! I hate it when a storm comes through while I'm at work---I'm afraid a window will blow out at home and the cats will escape. I'm in a cinder block building so I feel safe enough, although there are no windowless rooms :/. I could hide in the bottom of the closet if they pull the tornado alarm, I guess.

 

[Mamanyt1953]

As I sit here reading the forums, the sky is gradually getting darker and darker. No, I'm not going out there to look at it, although a company that I do business with did send me a pair of glasses. I'm just enjoying the light show. I'll see photographs of it later.

 

[segelkatt]

Sugar has been getting a bad rapt for years. My brother, s/l and sister act like it is poison. They are all health nuts. I bet I will out live all of them.

If you google "sugar high" or a similar phrase you will find several studies showing that sugar is not the culprit but possibly other ingredients such as caffeine. Too many sodas have caffeine, it used to be said that only brown sodas had caffeine but that is no longer true. Chocolate items can have as much caffeine as coffee.
When kids go nuts at parties they are already wound up by the time cake and ice cream are served and anxious mothers (and some fathers) expect their kids to go crazy after indulging in that and so they seem to do so. You usually get what you expect to get in such a situation.
When my children were little the story of sugar high had just started to make the rounds among ordinary folks but I never saw any sign of that, I saw children who misbehaved practically from the time they came through the door. Those same children acted up any time, not just when there was a party or other occasion and they were not welcome in my home, they could play outside.
Regarding being a health nut: many people who claim they are really concerned about what they consume or use also do not have a wholesome diet. They cater to their children's likes and dislikes in food and then feed them vitamins to make up for what they lack in their diet. My children ate what was served or they could do without, no special meals for him who professed that fish tasted "fishy" but would eat fish sticks (yuck!), or the girl who would not eat any meat unless it was ground beef. So they would have to make a meal from whatever else was on the table, rice, potatoes, pasta, veggies. They later decided that the various disliked foods were not so bad after all, the fish hater now goes out fishing and eats what he caught, and the ground beef eater will try anything and I don't know of anything that she does not like. My children all eat veggies to this day, two can't eat shellfish (neither can I) and both of them have an allergy to bee stings. We had no sodas, chips or other junk food in the house, but we had juice and iced tea, and homemade cake and cookies for special occasions, and pudding or jello for dessert on the weekend. I also made jam and jellies and canned a lot of fruit for a treat when somebody just could not wait for dinner, like at the time when they all grew like weeds.
My children and you and me will outlive your family members.

 

[Mamanyt1953]

Just an odd comment on caffeine...it is actually sometimes given to hyperactive kids to calm them. If I remember correctly, it evens out the rate at which their brains and bodies communicate with each other.

 

[arouetta]

As far as caffeine, it might have a minimal effect on hyperactive kids, but hardly nothing. When my daughter was little everyone told me how bad caffeine was for kids so I asked her doctor. Her psychiatrist, to be specific. He said that if caffeine was strong enough to harm, it would also be strong enough to help and it would be prescription only and prescribed in place of Ritalin. So caffeine is not a biggie and would do an absolute tiny amount.

As an aside, a very recent study on caffeine found that not every person reacts the same, there's something like 6 different levels of effects solely based on genetics. That study calls into doubt nearly every previous study on caffeine as all those assumed everyone reacts the same so a mild gain or mild decline on something could actually be major for a good chunk of the population and no effect on the rest. For example, the one on the ties to miscarriages, it might not be a mild effect across the board, some women's genetic makeup would make it super dangerous, some women would have absolutely no issues. The study didn't account for that and therefore didn't have results based on level of reactivity to caffeine so the average risk is a nonsensical number.

As far as taste, that's also something I wouldn't have pushed on. Some people have considerably less tastebuds than normal, some people have considerably more, and those change the sense of taste. I heard of a girl punished horribly for not eating a variety of foods, and when made to eat them she threw up and her father accused her of deliberately causing herself to be sick. Her mother finally took her to the doctor, turned out she had too many tastebuds and tastes were so different that's what was triggering her being sick and she physically needed to avoid bad tasting foods. (And thankfully her mother divorced her father since he refused to believe the doctor.) When you have a genetic anomaly like that, which is something like 1 in 5 people, it's no different than if I heavily spiced every dish with cilantro because it tastes really awesome to me and told other people to suck it up when they complain all the food tastes like soap. So yeah, forcing foods is not cool because you can't possibly know what it tastes like to the other person.

 

[kashmir64]

Yikes, a bad storm is blowing through. I went outside before it started raining and it sounded like a freight train coming. And the sky is green. Scary! I hate it when a storm comes through while I'm at work---I'm afraid a window will blow out at home and the cats will escape. I'm in a cinder block building so I feel safe enough, although there are no windowless rooms :/. I could hide in the bottom of the closet if they pull the tornado alarm, I guess.

That's not good.

Stay safe

 

[kashmir64]

Just an odd comment on caffeine...it is actually sometimes given to hyperactive kids to calm them. If I remember correctly, it evens out the rate at which their brains and bodies communicate with each other.

The doctor had me drinking coffee when I was 5. Said it would help with the migraines. It actually does.
(only now, I drink way too much of it).

 

[Willowy]

It blew through, I'm at home now and no windows blew out, not sure what the storm is doing in Minnesota and Iowa now---sometimes they get stronger, hope it's OK for them.

My dad is THE pickiest eater alive. There are literally fewer than 10 things he'll eat (well, 10 meals. I'm sure it comes to more than 10 individual ingredients). He tells stories of the horrible punishments his parents used to inflict on him for not eating what was put in front of him. One time he sat at the table for 3 entire days because they said he couldn't leave the table until he ate it. They gave up after it rotted and smelled so bad they had to get it out of the house. So I don't believe for a second that forcing kids to eat things they don't like actually makes them less picky. It's just pointless torture. My mom never forced us to eat, and now 2 of us will eat anything and 1 brother is just as picky as my dad. I think it's genetic.

My mom falls asleep when she has caffeine. We joke that it's because she has ADD. But I guess it's just her body chemistry. Who knows.

 

[segelkatt]

Whoa! wait a minute before you jump on me about having my kids eat whatever came on the table. I never MADE them eat anything they did not like, I just did not cook anything special for them. If they did not like something they could make a meal from whatever else was there on the table, having a meal that had no meat once in a while would not hurt them. They all liked spinach as long as it was creamed but had not much use for beets or zucchini. Same thing goes for a meal without veggies. Everybody served themselves but had to eat what they took, it taught them not to waste food and not to take more than they could eat. It worked out alright for everybody.

 

[muffy]

My children and you and me will outlive your family members.

My brother really is a health nut. He watches every ounce he puts in his body. He never eats sugar. He was bragging last year about how he was turning 70 and what great shape he was in because he took such good care of himself. I spoke up and said I was 67, smoked for 40 years and was overweight for most of my life. He never mentioned it again.

Your family sounds like they are healthy. When I was a kid my father had a large garden in the back yard and raised chickens, We did have sodas and chips and desert but we turned out OK.

Muffy

 

[Margret]

Hello, all. I'm safely home from Wyoming, though for a while yesterday it looked like a near thing (I'm joking). I went to the small town (~250 residents) of Glendo, which is right in the center of the eclipse path. After totality was over it took 2 hours just to get out of the parking lot (more like a large vacant lot -- not paved, and I saw a lot of smushed cactus underfoot so it wasn't a cultivated field, either), and then it took another 5 and 1/2 hours to get to I-25. To put this in perspective, the Glendo Highway (2 lanes, 70 MPH speed limit) closely resembles a frontage road for I-25. There was a rumor going around that the South Glendo Hwy. had been blocked off, no idea why, but I can't swear to that. Certainly when I left the parking lot they were directing some people to the left (for the S. Glendo Hwy.) some straight (for the freeway entrance at Glendo) and some to the right (for the N. Glendo Hwy.). I ended up on the N. Glendo Hwy., and my Garmin began telling me to turn onto roads that weren't there; other people said their Garmins were doing the same thing. I burned over a quarter of a tank of gas on stop-and-go traffic, despite turning the engine off whenever it appeared that the stop would last a while. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that there were people still trying to get out today.

Glendo ordered a whole bunch of eclipse glasses, which they were selling for $3 each yesterday; I doubt that they made enough to cover their purchase price because most people brought their own.

I'll tell you more about it later; for now I'm just glad to be home. I still need to unload the car, clean Jasmine's litter boxes, and get myself some supper. The eclipse was spectacular, by the way.

Margret

 

[Mamanyt1953]

Whoa! wait a minute before you jump on me about having my kids eat whatever came on the table. I never MADE them eat anything they did not like, I just did not cook anything special for them. If they did not like something they could make a meal from whatever else was there on the table, having a meal that had no meat once in a while would not hurt them. They all liked spinach as long as it was creamed but had not much use for beets or zucchini. Same thing goes for a meal without veggies. Everybody served themselves but had to eat what they took, it taught them not to waste food and not to take more than they could eat. It worked out alright for everybody.

My dad went a step further. I was NOT allowed to say I didn't like something until I had eaten a decent portion of it at least three times. But he grew up during the Great Depression, and wasting food was a huge sin in his eyes. There were a couple of exceptions to the rule, those things being the foods that made me gag at the first bite. My kids came up the same way, and can pretty much eat whatever is put in front of them now. It isn't a bad thing.

Y'all have NO IDEA how much fun it is to get on the computer and just...browse and post for a WHOLE HOUR without having to reboot 3 times! This is GREAT! And I'm running faster than I was before. The old cable was installed about 40 years ago, and the new stuff is much better. The management should rewire the entire complex, but they won't do that. It will be on a case-by-case basis.

 

[Willowy]

Whoa! wait a minute before you jump on me about having my kids eat whatever came on the table. I never MADE them eat anything they did not like, I just did not cook anything special for them.

Oh, yeah, sorry, I knew what you meant, didn't mean to make you feel jumped on. I was just speaking generally. My mom didn't make 5 different meals either; if we didn't like what she made we could have cold cereal or a peanut butter sandwich or something else we made ourselves.

But in general I do think tastes in food are largely genetic. An overly controlling parent can create a power dynamic that causes eating disorders, and a supportive parent who is also willing to try new foods may help their kid to be more adventurous too. . .but mostly one's tatse buds are what they are. And there's a lot of child abuse involving power plays over food so I always feel the need to say something.

 

[kashmir64]

I always made my son at least try it. If he didn't like it, that was fine. But I wasn't making him something else. He could make it himself. (but I also wouldn't make it again)
My step-father always made us eat a salad with dinner. Salads are fine, I like salads. But, he would only let my mom use Iceberg lettuce, turnips, radish and carrots with only vinegar & oil dressing. I hate all 5 of those things. It's amazing I don't hate salads. However, when I moved out I made a salad my way and...yummy.