Thoughts, Tips and Tales

Do-it-Yourself Cooling Towels for Summer’s Hottest Days

Posted on July 3, 2014 by blogqueendiane

Need a way to cool down while exercising or doing yard work on 90-degree days?

My thoughtful Zumba instructor showed me how to make a do-it-yourself cooling towel that feels absolutely heavenly. (And better yet – she provides them during summer classes.)

Buy a pack of thin washcloths from a discount store. Wash and dry them, then soak them in cool water. Roll them up and store them in the refrigerator in a large ziplock bag. An hour or so before you’ll need one, put it in the freezer in a smaller ziplock bag.

Take it out, let it thaw a few minutes and it’s ready to use. Use it to wipe your face, or tuck it in your sleeve or down the front of your top. And feel free to sigh with relief…

—

To read posts about athletic activities, see:

—

This post linked to Frugal Friday linky party at The Shabby Nest

Posted in cooling towels, do it yourself items, fitness, health, problemsolvers, relief from the heat, summer, thoughts tips and tales | Tagged cooling towels, do it yourself, fitness, health, relief from the heat, thoughts tips and tales | 35 Comments

Online Dating Horror Story #2: Way Too Hairy

Posted on July 2, 2014 by blogqueendiane

One of my most memorable – and bizarre – online dating stories was also one of my first attempts to meet a nice man after my divorce.

I met J for lunch one day and we had a very nice conversation. He told me that he had been a local radio personality.

Because he was a well-known local person and I was new at dating-after-divorce, when he asked me to go to dinner and a movie in a few days, I accepted and let him pick me up in his car. (Note: I would NEVER do that now!)

As we drove up the interstate to the movies, he told me more about himself.

First, he said that he got divorced because his ex-wife used to beat him up. He demonstrated by punching the dashboard a few times.

Wow. What do you say to something like that? It’s awful – and we all know it happens – but it’s not something you’d blurt out to someone you hardly knew (and, presumably, wanted to impress). The mental picture I got was appalling. And I was speechless.

He was a fairly short, slender man – and next, he proudly related that he weighed 135 pounds — and he wore a “small” sized shirt.

Yikes! That was less than I weighed at the time. It gave me a funny feeling because I’d never dated such a tiny man. And I hadn’t really noticed it til he brought it up.

As he continued to talk, it was like he suddenly felt the urgent need to pour out all the worst traits about himself.

The last big thing he revealed that his body was so hairy that he shaved his back.

What would possess a man to admit that to a near-stranger?! Did he think we were going to get naked? Or that it would be a turn-on?

After the last revelation, I have to admit I was totally and completely grossed out. All I wanted to do was get out of that car — but the date had only begun, and I was stuck.

I did my best to keep a straight face during his confessions, but it was hard.

At dinner, one of us had spaghetti and all I could think of when looking at the plate of food was long strands of hair – like the ones growing on his back. I also noticed that he had quite a few hairs sticking out at the wrist of his long-sleeved shirt, too. And I didn’t want to look up at his “little boy” sized small shirt, either.

As he talked during the meal, I noticed that the very deep, manly voice he’d been using until then (the radio announcer voice) would occasionally revert into a higher pitch (which I assumed was his “real” voice). That was pretty disconcerting, too.

At the movie theater, I tucked my hands under my armpits and kept them there during the entire movie. The idea of J touching me – accidentally or on purpose – was just too repulsive.

The evening finally came to an end (no, there was no good night kiss!) and we never saw each other again.

However, I’ve told that dating story quite a few times (my girlfriends all love it) and thought about J occasionally over the years. He was a nice enough man – and his “issues” probably would’ve been tolerable if he’d just relaxed and been himself, and gotten to know me very well before revealing them. He mentioned at some point on our date that he’d had one date with a lot of women , and, looking back, I can only guess that he revealed way too much to all of them, too…

***

I Adore the Dollar Store

Posted on July 1, 2014 by blogqueendiane

If you like shopping, there’s almost nowhere you can have as much fun with a few dollars in your pocket as the dollar store. You’ve just got to love a place where every item is a dollar or less!

It’s a particularly good place to take young children for a treat. Imagine how you’d feel if you were a kid and your parent told you that you could buy “anything in the store”!

Dollar stores are also a great place to buy items for the house, the yard and the car.

In fact, I make it a rule when going out on Saturdays to run errands (which includes buying items on my “to do” list) to stop at the dollar store if there’s any chance at all that items on the list might be found there. If they’re not available there, then I go to a nearby discount store for them.

Dollar stores have brand-name medicines, foods and beauty products; household needs; office supplies; gardening tools and seeds; kitchen gadgets; greeting cards; cleaning supplies; drinks; health products; frames and much more.

Dollar stores also have party supplies — and they are, without a doubt, the absolute cheapest place to buy helium balloons. And the balloons often last for weeks! You can show up at a party or to celebrate someone’s birthday with a bundle of five big, colorful balloons, and look very generous for a mere $5.

I’m kind of particular about the safety of health and beauty products, and food (anything that goes in or on my body) and won’t normally buy anything at a dollar store that isn’t produced by a well-known manufacturer, to avoid any potential problems with items produced in foreign countries that don’t regulate or inspect things the way the United States does. But there are plenty of name-brand items available.

If you’re planning a low-cost or do-it-yourself wedding, dollar stores are a great place to buy items for the reception. I planned and coordinated my son and daughter-in-law’s wedding and wrote a Kindle ebook called “How to Have a $30,000 Wedding for Less Than $10,000” — and a number of tips involve dollar store purchases.

After buying items at the local dollar store, I almost always search for the same items at a discount store like Walmart as well as other stores, to make sure I truly saved money. And inevitably, the same items cost two or three times more elsewhere. Yesterday, I bought several pieces of foam-core posterboard at the dollar store for $1 each and saw it right next door at the Michael’s craft store for $2.97, and also saw it at another store a week earlier for $4.98. That’s a pretty good savings!

I regularly stock up on Wyler’s Lite drink mix packages, and they can sell for as much as $3.98 each at area grocery stores. The local dollar store sells brand-name bread, too, which is much less expensive that buying it at a grocery store.

Over the years, I only remember two or three times when items I bought at the dollar store could’ve been purchased at another store for less than $1. The enormous savings over time definitely outweigh a few

cents in losses!

The Ugly Side of Blogging

Posted on June 30, 2014 by blogqueendiane

Blogging is usually a lot of fun. You can write just about anything you want — from your heart, your head, or your funny bone. And the whole world is out there; you never know who will read your posts. Will the message cheer them up? Will it make them laugh? Will it inspire them or motivate them to do something?

I routinely submit my best blog posts to reddit (www.reddit.com), a collection of thousands of blog posts, for additional exposure. One of them recently sort of “went viral” and garnered more than 200 hits in two days. That was very cool!

But…prior to that, I’d submitted my very first personal blog post to reddit and happened to go on the site to see how it ranked. (Readers vote individual blog posts up or down and the best ones rise to the top of the lists in various categories and are, subsequently, read by more people.) The post was about the method I use to keep my clothes clean while I eat breakfast in the car on the way to work. Found it and saw that there was a comment from a reddit reader.

I opened the comment and my mouth fell open! It said something like, “You fat f****g pig, why don’t you just eat breakfast at work!”

Ouch.

In my rush to delete the comment before anyone else saw it, I clicked the only Delete button in sight, which removed the entire post.

At work, part of my job is to manage a corporate blog that about 6,000 people around the world can access — which includes the unenviable job of being the “blog police.” I’m all for free speech, and try to be open-minded, but it’s amazing the things that supposedly well-educated professional people will write when they’re signed in as Anonymous. I unpublish inappropriate comments occasionally and sometimes get more anonymous feedback asking who the jerk was who did that, and what was wrong with that “innocent” post…

Like many things in life, blogging has its good and bad sides. Thankfully, the good parts (the great blog posts written by talented people on every subject under the sun) outweigh the bad.

Posted in blogging, life, miscellaneous, thoughts tips and tales | Tagged blogging, reddit, thoughts tips and tales | 4 Comments

The High and Low List for June 2014

Posted on June 29, 2014 by blogqueendiane

Here’s a recap of the good, bad and ugly things that’ve happened in my life during June:

GOOD

1.Had the first blog post I ever submitted to BlogHer published, listing me as a Featured Writer. It’s gotten 550 hits there so far.

2. My best old friend came for a visit and we laughed til we got stomach aches.

3. Was talked into buying a jingly Zumba skirt and and it’s been fun to dance around in it.

4. I got an adjustable stand-up desk at work, so I can stand and sit whenever I want.

5. Had a very nice first meeting with a man I met at an online dating site. He lives in my town and seemed very upbeat and nice; I couldn’t find a thing wrong with him. (And that’s unusual!) He seemed to like me, too.

4. Took my second stand-up paddleboarding class and did way better than in the first class.

5. Only one more adult swimming lesson at the kiddie pool. Signed up for 6 lessons and realized I need 106!

6. Netted nearly $500 to donate to my favorite local charity at the Mega Yard Sale held June 7.

7. Read several good books.

8. The doctor who gave me the news in #1 below was super nice. What a great bedside manner!

NOT SO GOOD

1. Found out I need carpal tunnel surgery on my left hand and scheduled it for mid-July. (I’m looking forward to the 10-day vacation from work.)

2. Was carrying two big coolers (they were heavy and I was walking fast) and bumped into a short, stubby pillar with such force that I fell over sideways onto the pavement! Luckily, was able to use my hands to cushion the fall, but my legs flew out in the air to the side and it was quite embarrassing. (It was a really weird sensation to fall over sideways.) After looking around to see if anyone noticed (it was right in front of a big building), I heard a man came up behind me and ask if I needed help. I replied, “Did you see me fall?” and he said no, but he’d seen “some legs flying up in the air.” No broken bones.

3. Thought I only skinned my knee in the dramatic fall above, but woke up the next day with a big scab on the top of my foot. And the whole top of my foot turned red in the next few days, it got infected and hurt a lot. Went to the urgent care doctor and got antibiotics. It’s still better than a broken hip!

4. Was rushing to eat dinner and go to swimming lessons one night and spilled scalding hot water from the corn on the cob I was microwaving on my stomach, through the bathing suit. Still have a red mark from that! (That and the fall were really dumb!!)

In summary, there were more good things this month than bad, so I’m happy. Hope you had a good month, too!

Want to share some of your highs and lows?

Posted in gratitude, life, memories, swimming lessons, thoughts tips and tales | Tagged highs and lows, June, life, memories, thoughts tips and tales | 1 Comment

2014 World’s Ugliest Dog Winners

Posted on June 28, 2014 by blogqueendiane

You already know that I am hooked on news stories about the weird things people do. Along those same lines…

Each year about this time, I look forward with anticipation to seeing a photo of the winner of the year’s Ugliest Dog contest. The 2014 winners’ photos and life stories are available at http://www.ibtimes.com/2014s-worlds-ugliest-dog-winner-meet-peanut-runners-pictures-1608238. Check it out and you won’t be disappointed!

The dogs’ owners named them to describe the way they look, which adds an extra dose of humor.

If you’re having a bad day, this photos will cheer you up. You can also be grateful that you don’t have four legs and a face that only a mother could love…

Posted in bizarre news, dogs, fun, thoughts tips and tales | Tagged bizarre stories, dogs, fun, humor, thoughts tips and tales, weird news | 2 Comments

The Joys of Joining a Book Club

Posted on June 27, 2014 by blogqueendiane

Millions of people love to read – and, for the most part, it’s a solitary activity. Reading is relaxing, it’s educational and you can do it almost anywhere (even while exercising on a treadmill — see my previous blog post).

The plot and characters of a good book can stay in your head for days. How many times have you been sorry that a book ended?

Discussing a book with other people who’ve read it is usually a real treat. The others may have caught some points that you missed or come to different conclusions than you did. They may dislike a character you loved or adore a book that you could hardly finish. The discussion can go on and on.

If you like to read and you’ve never been part of a book club, I encourage you to look into joining one or starting your own.

I always said I’d join a book club once my son was grown. The year he started college, I attended a monthly book club at the local Barnes and Noble store. It was fine, but the people weren’t very friendly, the meeting was in cramped quarters and the books weren’t ones I would have chosen.

Shortly afterward, I got an article published in the area’s major newspaper soliciting members for my own book club — and a great group of intelligent, interesting women joined. Our club has about eight members — boy, do they love to read! — and it’s been going strong for more than eight years now. A few people joined and left over the years (mostly because they lived too far away), but the core group has stayed the same. The list of books we’ve read is as long as my arm!

At the outset, we set up some loose guidelines about the types of books we would read, and each member is free to suggest books for upcoming months, whether they’ve read them or not. We take an informal vote on them about every three months and if nobody violently objects, we read them. We try to stay away – for the most part – from the chick lit and mystery books that many of us would normally read – and read books that won literary awards or received rave reviews. (It’s good to stretch your horizons a little.)

I particularly like to walk through the bookstore and count the books on display that the book club has read! (“I read this book, and that book, and…”) Makes me feel smart!

At the meetings, which are all held at my house (and which motivate me to vacuum and dust the living room at least once a month), we use a list of book club questions about the book that we find on the Internet. Someone reads the questions and we all chime in with our opinions.

Once, we arranged in advance to call the author of a book we’d read and ask her questions about her books.

We discuss some books for an hour or more, and some for five minutes. A couple of times nobody liked the book and nobody could read it. (Luckily, those occasions are few and far between.)

We don’t serve food at the meetings because we tried that at first and nobody ate anything. (The meeting is right after dinner and all of us try to watch our weight.) I do provide cold bottles of water, and some people bring coffee.

Over the years, the club members have become friends and we go out to dinner once every month or so and have wreath-making parties every year. And after we discuss the book of the month, we always talk about local happenings, what’s new in our lives, and indulge in other lively discussions (which often are my favorite part of the meetings!).

Belonging to a book club is just as much fun as I always thought it would be!

Save

Posted in book club, books, friends, fun, life, memories, miscellaneous, reading | Tagged book club, book review, friends, novels, reading, thoughts tips and tales | 5 Comments

Breakup Advice to Make you Laugh

Posted on June 26, 2014 by blogqueendiane

Save

Posted in advice, breakups, fun, life, miscellaneous | Tagged advice, breakups, thoughts tips and tales | Leave a comment

How to Add a Low-Cost Reading Rack to a Treadmill to Make Walking More Fun

Posted on June 25, 2014 by blogqueendiane

I routinely walk on a treadmill at least twice a week – both at home and in the gym, and as an avid multi-tasker, I always read while walking.

It’s great, because if you’re reading a good book the time goes by very quickly! (I know some people can’t do this because it makes them “car sick” and I feel for you…)

When I bought a treadmill for my house, it came with a reading rack that seemed fine at the store. However, once it was delivered, I realized the treadmill’s rack was too far back (or I was too short) and it just wasn’t going to work.

I did some Internet research about various types of reading racks to attach to the treadmill, with the intention of buying one — but couldn’t find anything suitable.

Finally, I rigged up my own rack and it makes reading while walking a breeze. Continue reading →

Posted in bargains, bike rack, diy, do it yourself, fitness, health, life, reading rack, saving money, thoughts tips and tales, timesavers, treadmill | Tagged bike rack, crafts, DIY, do oit yourself, exercise, fitness, health, make it yourself, reading rack, thoughts tips and tales, treadmill | 27 Comments

Stand-Up Paddleboarding: Testing the Water

Posted on June 24, 2014 by blogqueendiane

In the coastal area where I live, stand-up paddleboarding (SUP) has become very popular. You can sit outdoors on a sunny afternoon at a number of restaurants in the tourist district and watch people standing on flat surfaces that resemble surfboards paddling on a scenic creek toward the harbor. Some of them even bring along their dog, who stands calmly on the board taking in the scenery. Nobody ever falls over and it looks peaceful and easy.

With that image in mind, I took my first SUP lesson last summer at the county park. How hard could it be?

A friend and I arrived at the park’s murky green lake, covered with algae (or something!!) and were set up with paddleboards, paddles and life vests. About eight other people of all ages joined us.

When the group left the shore, we got on the boards on our knees and paddled away – one stroke to the right, then one stroke to the left. That wasn’t too bad.

The hard part, however, was standing up — and remaining standing.

As soon as I stood up, I plunked into the water — the first in the class to get drenched. (You don’t want to hit your head on the wooden board and knock yourself out, so you need to remember to sort of hurl your body off to the side before hitting the water.)

I resembled a beached whale try to heave myself back up on the board to get on my knees and try to stand again. The teacher finally came over and sort of shoved me up, demonstrating to the class the proper way to remount the board.

We continued on our journey around this large, green lake and slowly rounded a corner. Immediately, a group of large, wildly barking dogs (from the dog park up the hill) came charging down a path heading for the water where we were. Now, I’m afraid of dogs – and the idea of getting eaten alive by a pack of dogs in the murky, green water was terrifying. However, it was a motivator to do whatever it took to keep standing on that board!

With that hurdle past, I continued to fall off the board at least 10 more times during the trip (the class record). Later, in an open part of the lake, the instructor actually had us lie on the boards (and I STILL can’t believe I did it) and do yoga poses on the SUPs. Really?!

This year, I decided to take another lesson – private! – and went to a nice little company located on the Intracoastal Waterway. A very cute instructor gave me a few tips while standing on land, got me on a stable board with a life vest and we took off once again on our knees.

This time, the water was clear and nice — but there were hundreds of very expensive yachts parked on both sides of the rather narrow waterway we were traveling. My mind wandered off into a scenario where I whacked into the side of a yacht and the angry millionaire…. (well, you get the picture).

Once again, I had a couple motivators: (1) The cute instructor: did not want to fall over constantly like last year and have him paddle over and heft me up on the board and (2) The fear of plowing into a yacht.

My knees were shaking like crazy and I had to get down on them for a while to rest (while the instructor paddled circles around me) and my nose was running profusely for some reason (had to carefully and slowly wipe my hands over my face and rub them on the shorts I’d worn over my bathing suit – very tricky when you’re standing with your feet virtually nailed to the surface). And my shorts kept falling down, too.

Down the waterway, the instructor told me we’d be paddling through one of the 7-feet wide arches beneath some sort of concrete overpass. Oh my gosh – this time, my mental images involved smacking the board into the wide beams between the narrow arches….

While my technique definitely wasn’t glamorous, what do ya know? We probably paddled about half a mile (over an hour) and I stayed on that paddleboard in a fairly upright position the whole time. Success at last!

—

To read posts about my other athletic activities, see:

Posted in fitness, fun, health, life, standup paddleboarding, thoughts tips and tales | Tagged boating, exercise, fitness, lessons, standup paddleboarding, thoughts tips and tales, water sports | 16 Comments

Do-it-Yourself Cooling Towels for Summer’s Hottest Days

Online Dating Horror Story #2: Way Too Hairy

I Adore the Dollar Store

Other money-saving posts:

The Ugly Side of Blogging

The High and Low List for June 2014

2014 World’s Ugliest Dog Winners

The Joys of Joining a Book Club

Breakup Advice to Make you Laugh

How to Add a Low-Cost Reading Rack to a Treadmill to Make Walking More Fun

Stand-Up Paddleboarding: Testing the Water

Thoughts, Tips and Tales

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Recent Posts

Most Popular Posts

Categories

Archives

Free 30-Day Amazon Prime Trial