wlb gadget of the year award

okay, so i don't really have a gadget-of-the-year-award system here on this blog, or any award system at all, frankly, but i have been so impressed with this simple set of useful objects, that i had to make a blog entry about it. and besides, it's green, and using it will reduce your carbon footprint! honest! i swear! well, it will reduce the amount of plastic wrap you use, IF you use plastic wrap at all. it can also save on dish washing, which saves water, and energy used to heat water, not to mention human labor. and...it can keep your food stored in the ceramic, porcelain, glass, china, metal or wooden dishes that you serve food in, rather than in plastic tupperware, rubbermaid, recycled yogurt tubs etc. there is concern about toxic chemicals leaching into food that is stored in plastic. these handy bowl bonnets, as i like to call them, while made of plastic themselves, allow one to simply cover any dish, and stick it in the fridge (the food doesn't touch the plastic). they are so easy to use, and can be washed and used over and over and over again.

my grandmother used these when she was alive. i remember them from childhood. i kept seeing them hanging from those little racks they insert onto various shelves throughout the grocery store-- not really in the household object department, but just scattered around, so you see them, and buy them on an impulse. they are cheap, so i finally decided (on an impulse) to get some, about a year ago. they come with 5 or 6 bonnets in a packet, of various sizes, (one of them makes an excellent shower cap for cosmo's baby doll) and the range of sizes is perfect for keeping large or small amounts of leftovers in the fridge. they are flexible enough, with the elastic bands, that each size fits a number of different dishes, so there's less searching for that elusive lid to match the container. plus, they are quite adorable, in an old-fashioned sense.

i love them. if i had ads on this blog, i would want to have an ad for these.
i found some online here, here and here, but i bet you can find them in your grocer's aisle. not sure which aisle, just keep your eyes peeled.

what did you do with your extra day?

i was hoping to write something up about leap day. about how, for the last leap day, some friends and fellow activists and i attempted to organize a public-space reclamation project by making art, sharing music and food, engaging in guerrilla gardening, and gathering without a permit in a little sliver of a city park in the heart of houston's montrose district. about how it rained cats and dogs for the entire day, and still, a few dozen folks turned out and gave it their best, and how my life was forever transformed by the experience--and how i have reason to believe i wasn't the only one.

on this leap day, however, after spending a quite lovely and relaxing day with my little family, i find that i have definitely come down with the respiratory cold/flu bug that's been going around, and i'm pissed because i already had a cold this season, and now i have days of feeling run down and snotty ahead of me, and so, i just don't feel much like writing.

hope yours was good.

bling

after much research and deliberation, we took cosmo to a dentist in terre haute to have some dental work done. we traveled an hour and a half outside of bloomington because no pediatric dentists in town offer sedation for little ones. if a child this young is not sedated during dental work, then they are held down, strapped to something called a papoose board, or otherwise restrained by force. carl and i knew we couldn't handle that, and it seemed dangerous and impractical. i guess sedation can be risky too, but this dentist and his staff are trained for emergencies, and in 18 years of practice, he has yet to have one. it was not general anesthesia, but rather more like a drug- induced deep sleep.



it went really well, considering. we had to get up well before the rosey-fingered dawn and drive in the dark, and cosmo couldn't have anything to eat or drink (including water!) after midnight the night before. that was tough. i 'm not accustomed to denying cosmo water or food when he asks for it, and though we explained, he couldn't really understand. i brought my laptop, and we distracted him from his hunger pains with a little baby einstein. that worked pretty well (let's hear it for novelty!). the waiting room was all ours at such an early hour, and it has a lot of fun things to do. once he took the meds, it was a short time before he started acting woozy. we took him into a darkened conference room, and i held him and soothed him while he whined and squirmed and fought against the sudden onslaught of sleepiness. once he was out, the dentist took him back for the work. it was difficult to be separated from him, but carl pointed out that it was probably for the best.

he was still asleep when the procedure was finished, and slept for the whole ride home. he didn't wake up until the early afternoon, and was a bit unsteady on his feet. we had to keep a close eye on him throughout the evening, and he couldn't keep much down at first, though he was understandably ravenous. he did not seem to be in any pain, though he was not his usual cheerful self, and went to bed an hour early. by morning, he was fully recovered and all cosmo. he now has two silver caps on a couple of back molars, and some tooth-colored filling in the front. i showed him the silver in the mirror, and also pointed out my gold crown. i told him we call it "bling." he seemed pretty pleased with that.