Scars

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Carol Early Cooney
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It is hard to put up a picture of a scar that isn’t gross. Here is the very slight scar on my hand.I got my first scar when I was probably about 8 years old.

I got my first scar when I was probably about 8 years old. I fell over a dog’s chain and fell on to rocks and cut my knee open. I had to get stitches. I never thought much about it. Then there was the time a few years later that my friend’s dog bit my hand. I didn’t need stitches then but there is a very slight scar on my hand.

So, when many many years later, I had gall bladder surgery and then hernia surgery (Man, I sound like a mess!) I didn’t really care about the scars. It wasn’t like I was showing off my stomach to anyone at that point.  It just didn’t matter much.

About six months ago, I noticed that one of my finger nails was growing in strangely.  My Mom had fingernails that had ridges. This was not a ridge. This was more of a crevice. I thought that I must have damaged the base of the nail somehow and it would heal and then grow out just fine. That didn’t happen. The crevice grew so that it was as long as the whole finger nail. 

Along about this time, I wrote a post as the “foot blogger chick” about feet and skin cancer. Did you know that foot melanoma is the most deadly form of melanoma? Not because it can’t be cured if caught early enough but because it generally is not caught early enough. We tend not to look too closely at our feet. The other thing that I learned was that you can get skin cancer under your nails.  So they recommend that you go without nail polish (especially on your toes) occasionally so that you can tell if there is a spot under your nail that doesn’t move when your nails grow.  

This made me start wondering about my fingernail. It certainly wasn’t getting better and it was not right. I broke down and made an appointment with the dermatologist to have him look at my finger. Don’t ask (as many did) how I determined that the dermatologist was the doctor I should go see. It just felt right to me. I even had a backup plan in case he told me I was an idiot and that it would heal itself. (I was going to have him check me for skin cancer.) 

Lo and behold, I was not an idiot. It seems that I had a tumor growing under my nail bed (no, it was not visible). The doctor suggested that he should take a biopsy to make sure that it was not cancerous. The chance that it was cancerous was very slim but he advised that he thought it should be checked. So I told him to go for it. He did tell me that there was one thing that I needed to know before he did the biopsy. He told me that my fingernail would probably never grow right again. I would always have the crevice. 

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The assistant in the doctor’s office put the face on the bandage. I did not do it. Really, I didn’t.

In the context of making sure that my finger doesn’t have cancer, the way the finger nail looks is inconsequential. 

So, he did the biopsy. After TWO weeks, (they got to be kinda long) the results came back. It was benign. At that point I could proudly hold up my finger and say benign.  Yea!

I know this is going to sound shallow BUT my fingernail is a mess. First of all, when he took the biopsy, my finger bled. The blood got embedded in the crevice. At this point, as my sweet, loving husband pointed out, it looks like I have a galloping case of fungus in my nail. I don’t but it looks bad.    

I have found a product that claims to fill in ridges.  It is like nail polish. The idea is to fill in the ridges (really put a lot in the crevice to try and fill it) and then put on nail polish. Seems like a lot of work just to hide the crevice but at this point, I need to do it.

No one likes a fungus looking fingernail. 

Are you wondering why I am telling you about this? There are actually two reasons. The first is that I was a bit freaked about the skin cancer on the foot and I wanted to share it with you. The second is that I am feeling like a pretty shallow person about my fingernail. Who cares, right? I don’t care about the other scars but the fingernail bothers me.  I am glad that I had the biopsy done and that all is fine. I guess the lesson is that even if you feel shallow you should get it checked out. 

I think I will go do my nails now. 

Thanks for reading!

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HOT DAMN!!

Posted on August 31, 2013 by Carol Early Cooney

 

 

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…as opposed to cold damn, which isn’t quite as expressive. “Hot damn” is usually used when one is very much pleased/excited.

“Hot damn! I thought those laxatives would never work!”

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hot%20damn

 

I did it!  Yes, today is August 31 and I have completed the August BlogHer challenge. Yea, me! Yea, challenge! 

Truth be told, I enjoyed it.  It was a great exercise – not only to post each day for 31 days but to come up with a variation on the theme of “hot”.  I have to thank Terri Hilt and my sisters for sending me suggestions. Terri Hilt sent a long a long wonderful list that was inspirational. 

What is next?  Not the September challenge, I promise.  Do you have any suggestions? Is there anything that you have seen in the last 31 days that you wish would be expanded? More fiction? More poetry? More on hot cross buns, hot tamales, or hot wheels? 

I am open to suggestions.  You can comment below or tweet (@carolearlycoone) or email me (cecsweeps55@gmail.com) Let me know.  I would love to hear from you!

 

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                                                         Cheers!

Thanks for reading!

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Hot Cross Buns

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Carol Early Cooney

( This post is part of a series based on the prompt “hot”  The prompt was from the August BlogHer challenge.  For those of you who have kept up with these posts, I say thank you and the end is near!)

Would you have thought that hot cross buns have a long historical background? It seems that they do. 

There is some thought that they go back to Anglo Saxon pagan times when Eostre was the goddess of spring and dawn. In the spring, dried fruits would be put into the bread dough and be baked into small loaves to honor the goddess. As time passed and Christianity expanded, the loaves would be baked by monks and have the sign of the cross marked on the top of the loaf. 

There was a city by the name of Herculaneum in southwestern Italy that was buried under volcanic ash in 79 A.D. When archaeologists excavated the city, they found two small loaves in the rubble. The loaves had a cross on them. (Sounds like some of my early baking attempts. Rock solid they were!) 

How the buns became the breakfast of choice on Good Friday is not entirely clear. There are some references that the buns were baked on Good Friday morning because Lent was over and eggs could be eaten (or used in baking) again. In other references, it was because during the Tudor reign in England they tried to ban the buns all together because of their association with the Catholic Church. It was found that the buns were too popular to ban completely. The ban was lifted for Easter, Christmas, and funerals. 

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Image thanks to John De Boer, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

Over time, the cross on the top of the bun was changed from being and indentation in the bun to being a pastry cross on the top of the bun. Also, they were just called “cross buns” until there were vendors selling the buns on the street that were still warm or “hot”. They were then called hot cross buns. 

I think I need to go to the bakery now.

Thanks for reading!

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Hot Air – A Dryer Story

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Carol Early Cooney

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One of the things I liked about my house when we bought it was that there were poles in the yard so that you could hang clothes out to dry. I grew up loving the smell of sheets that had been dried in the summer sun. They smell better than any scented product could possibly smell. 

The realities hit after the first year. My husband and children have allergies and drying sheets outside only compounded their problems. Also, I don’t ever remember my Mother having problems with birds and mulberry trees. It was hard to get those terrible purple splotches out of the sheets.  The  switch was made  to indoor drying. 

My old dryer stopped working recently. I had a very slight sentimental attachment to it. It was the first appliance that we bought after we bought our house. The dryer that came with our house was ancient and we knew was inefficient but we weren’t ready to start buying appliances right away. 

When we had our first child, it was time for a newer dryer. That dryer kept going through two kids and lots of laundry. The only repair was my fault – I dropped a clothes pin down the lint trap and we had the repair man come out and retrieve it. 

Dryers should last a long time. They have few moving parts and should be the work horses in your appliance stable. Since my dryer had lasted over 20 years, I was surprised when I looked into replacing it. The prices were higher than I would have thought. 

I knew that the lifespan of appliances is not what it had been in prior times. The repair men blame it on cheap plastic parts that are now used and also the electronics that control them. 

So, before I bought my dryer, I asked the repairman what dryer he would recommend. His immediate response was to buy the simplest dryer that I could find. “Get a dryer  without an electronic touch pad.” He told me that most people do not use all the features that can be on a dryer. They just want their clothes dried. 

I went looking. I looked at ads and I looked on line. I could not find a dryer as simple as he suggested. I finally called my appliance guy. (Yes, I have an appliance guy. It is part of my management business.) He told me they did have a dryer that was as simple as I wanted and the price was much less than all the other dryers that I had found. 

I ordered the dryer. It works great. It is very simple. Apparently the old acronym “KISS” applies to dryers.

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Keep it simple, stupid (KISS) was a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960

Thanks for reading. 

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Hot Goods – Black Market

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Carol Early Cooney

(This post is part of the BlogHer August challenge to post for a month with the prompt of “hot”.)  

I think that we all think of “hot goods” being stolen items and for the most part, that is true. It is a slang term and there are several other slang terms for stolen goods. There are also the following terms:

Nicked

Pinched

Knocked off

Fell off the back of a truck (or lorry)

Five finger discount

 

Hot goods are often times sold on the Black Market. Why is it called the black market?  The saying goes back to the Greeks and Romans and it refers originally to sales that take place when the markets are closed and taxes are not collected on the goods sold. The markets operated at night or “in the black”. 

Transactions that take place on the black market are illegal transactions. Interestingly there is also a grey market which is where goods are sold through legal channels but not channels intended by the original manufacturer. The white market is where the goods are sold as intended. 

In these days, our first thought of the black market may be for cell phones or Apple products. The black market has been around a long time (thus the term coming from the Greeks and Romans) and encompasses illegal drugs, prostitution, weapons sales, illegal alcohol, illegal tobacco, organs, counterfeit drugs and parts, illegal taxicabs, sales of animals and animal products, timber, and other areas.  It is estimated that the market value of the largest black markets is 1,829 BILLION DOLLARS.  ($1,829, 000,000,000). Three of the highest grossing items on the black market are counterfeit drugs ($200 Billion), prostitution ($187.7 Billion) and counterfeit electronics ($169 Billion).  (Source: http://www.havocscope.com/crime-index/)

There is the annual list of most stolen cars is called NICB’s Hot Wheels. NICB stands for the National Insurance Crime Bureau. This year’s list just came out and the winners (or losers depending on your viewpoint) are

  1. Honda Accord
  2. Honda Civic
  3. Ford Pickup (full size)
  4. Chevrolet Pickup (full size)
  5. Toyota Camry
  6. Dodge Caravan
  7. Dodge Pickup (full size)
  8. Acura Integra
  9. Nissan Altima
  10. Nissan Maxima

CNN recently reported a list of 7 bizarre items that thieves love to steal. The first item on the list is interesting. The number 1 book stolen is The Bible. Other items on the list were pregnancy tests, nutella, hair extensions, high end vacuums, energy drinks and Tide detergent. I will admit to being a bit surprised when I saw Tide on the list. It seems that thieves steal Tide and then resell it to other merchants for less than the merchants would pay for it but the merchants still charge the usual price thereby making more money on the product. 

So, hot goods encompass a wide variety of items and lead to an entire underground economy. 

Thanks for reading!

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