Non-fiction is sometimes an unforgettable story

Like most of you, I prefer fiction books for my reading pleasure, but I’ve read some non-fiction books that have left a lasting impression on me.  Sometimes a true story can be unimaginable and chilling.  I want to tell you about three such books here.

Tales from a Mountain City by Quynh Dao

            The book is about growing up in Vietnam during the war when a change of government turns the life of one family upside down.  Soldiers move into their home burn their books and take over the neighborhood.  This story is about a young girl growing up under the communist regime.  The family tries to hang on to their traditions, their hometowns and provinces, but the pervasiveness of the communist value system eventually drives them to suicide or exile.

The Black Wall by Jiazhen Qi

            This story is a full account of a family in China during the rise of communism.  This powerful story is told by one of the daughters in the family who is imprisoned at the age of twenty under a charge of being a counterrevolutionary.  Her father is already serving a sentence for the same crime.  The remaining family must scrape by selling what they can to buy food to survive.  They under constant surveillance and not allowed to leave the house unless it is to go to the communist school or to buy food.  As you can imagine, prison life is no better.  Conditions are deplorable there.  At times, this book is graphic and the things these people endured are beyond imagination.  This story is one you won’t forget.

Far Outside the Ordinary by Prissy Elrod

            The book is about a family living in FL.  The father discovers he has a brain tumor at age 50.  Glioblastoma gives no warning until it’s too late.  The diagnosis leaves his wife and two daughters stunned, but they don’t let go of hope as they struggle for a cure and survival against all odds.  Southern black caregivers move into the home to aid the family around the clock.  After all avenues are exhausted, they must accept what’s coming.

            The second half of the book is about how the family copes with his loss and shows them that sometimes there are second chances at happiness.  Love can come disguised and when least expected.

Have you read any memorable books?

The Moose Experience

I’d never seen a moose in person before I lived in Alaska.  Nothing could probably have ever prepared me for the adventures that were to come associated with my living in the last frontier.

It would get so cold in the winter months that the moose would venture out of the mountains and come to town in search of food and places to stay until spring came.  One such moose took up residence in the backyard for a while one year.  I wish I had taken pictures of it, but I wasn’t as good about taking pics in those days as I am now.  This was a wonder to see and I kick myself today, but I can’t go back to those days, not that I would ever want to.  I don’t know how I withstood that brutal cold.

The moose would wander around Anchorage and the other smaller towns, much as they did on the TV show, Northern Exposure, a few decades ago, if any of you ever watched that.  There are quirky people living in Alaska too, just as on that TV show.  You can drive five minutes out of town and be in complete untouched wilderness.  I think the isolation does something to your head.

 Moose pictures by Ron Niebrugge

http://www.wildnatureimages.com/Biography.htm

 
I was friends with some people who lived in the country (outside Anchorage) and they invited me over to help with a project one weekend.  I didn’t know what I was in for until I arrived, or perhaps I wouldn’t have gone at all.  When I walked into their small house, the entire living area (kitchen and living room) had been transformed into a butcher shop.  I think my mouth probably fell open with shock.

The guys were all hunters and had lived in Alaska for a number of years.  Every year they’d go on a moose hunt, kill their quantity, and pack them out of the forest.  This particular guy and his girlfriend had a small building built for curing meat.  Once arriving home, they would cut the moose up in large pieces and leave to hang in the curing shed at just above 32°F for three weeks.  This all happened before the butchering party.  Sometimes other friends would use this curing shed for their kills also.

I never saw so much raw meat and blood in my life and I never expected to become a moose butcher, not in any wildest stretch of the imagination.  This wasn’t a scene for the squeamish.  I had no experience with that and didn’t care to have any.  Nevertheless, I spent all night in that house working with the other girls at a long piece of plywood held up by sawhorses that served as a table.  The owners had several makeshift tables like this scattered around the house.  The plywood lay covered in paper with huge hunks of meat lying at one end.

In another area there was a roll of white butcher paper and someone was there wrapping up the cut meat into individual portions.  They labeled the packages and put them into a cooler.  Everyone had on crude aprons and worked quickly with big knives.

I thought we’d never reach the end of the moose meat, but we did just before daybreak.  For helping with the task, I got a few packages of meat like everyone else there.  The rest went into the freezer of the owners, or hauled home by the friends whose meat we also cut up.

Now I’m not a huntress and would probably never shoot anything myself but would opt for veggies instead.  But let’s face it, this moose was already dead, so I’m glad it didn’t go to waste at least.  After a while, I tried the meat they gave me and it was very good, moist and more tender than beef.  I haven’t had moose since.

Lotion Factory

You don’t know how many times I’ve wished for one of these in my backyard.  I have plenty of room back there and heaven knows how much I’ve spent on lotion since moving to the desert ten-plus years ago.  This place isn’t for sissies.

Forget about ever having nice skin again when you live in a place this dry.  You’ll have cracks in places you didn’t know could crack and it doesn’t take long to get them.  I think this is doubly bad as you age because your skin loses moisture anyway.  It’s no wonder you can walk into Walmart and see a large portion of shelving lined with lotion.  There are brands there I’ve never hard of before moving here.

I’ve probably tried them all by now and I’m still searching for the best one out there.  So far, Gold Bond is high on my list.  Recently a girlfriend gave me another one she picked up to try at the dollar store.  Everyone is desperate for some skin hydration here, as the humidity dips as low as 6 % at times, although it’s usually hovering between 10 and 15 %.  This lotion is a creamy petroleum jelly that seems to be good.  It’s not greasy after it soaks in and is pleasant smelling, but may be too perfumy for a guy.  I’m still trying it out, but the cracks on my feet are getting better.

I recently ordered another from Amazon that has rave reviews.  I think it will be similar to the one from the dollar store.  The fact that the reviewers say it heals cracks is good enough for me to give it a whirl.  I haven’t received it yet but once I do and try it out, I’ll post a review here on my blog.

You can now see why I’m looking forward to moving to a place with a bit more humidity.  This extreme dryness is killing my skin.  Of course, that’s not my only requirement for a new place to live, but that’s for another post.

Do you suffer from dry skin?

Ketchup for cleaning

Yes, ketchup is a great cleaner for tarnished stainless or silver, copper pot bottoms, or brass.  Squirt on and use a damp cloth or plastic scrub sponge to move around in a circular motion and then wash with warm water.

We all know vinegar and lemons can be used around the house, but here a few items in your kitchen that can double as cleaners, as well as food.

Coffee grounds are 1.45% nitrogen and contain traces of calcium, potassium and magnesium.  They are great to sprinkle in the garden, or to steep in water like tea and use as a fertilizer on plants.  Coffee grounds may save your plants from slugs and other pests if you create a barrier around the prone plants.  Coffee grounds are also good for scrubbing pots because they’re abrasive and acidic.

No bottlebrush?  No problem, use white rice instead to get into bottles and containers that are hard to reach, such as thin necked vases and bottles like a salad cruet.  You’ll need warm water and uncooked rice.  Fill the container about half full of water and add about two tablespoons of uncooked rice.  Shake vigorously, stopping the end up with your fingers.  Dump out, rinse, and repeat if necessary.

Use tea to mop the floor.  If you have old hardwood floors that need sprucing up, try mopping them with black tea.  Boil water and let five-six teabags steep for ten minutes.  Pour this solution into your mop bucket, along with warm water, and mop the floors as you normally would.  Don’t use on wood laminate.  Use green tea to deodorize your fridge by placing some leaves in a bowl to absorb onion and garlic odors.

Olive oil can be used to make your own furniture polish.  Simply use a clean spray bottle and add one cup of olive oil and half a cup of lemon juice.  Shake well before each use.  This is a natural chemical-free cleaner, less expensive brands of olive oil will work, and it leaves no scent for people with allergies.  You can make a smaller batch by keeping the same ratio of ingredients.  Spray on furniture, rub it in with a clean cloth, and wipe it dry with another clean cloth.  You can also make furniture polish with white vinegar and lemon juice in equal parts.

If you’d like more tips, you can sign up for the FrugalLiving Newsletter.

Jump Rope and Hula-Hoops

I sat down to write this remembering how we played hours with these things as kids, especially on summer vacation from school.  I wonder if kids even know what these things are today.  I never see my neighbor kids doing any of this stuff.  It seems bicycles are the thing here and the boys carry around BB guns in the desert to shoot my wildlife, which makes me mad.  They always hear about it too, but that’s another story.

At recess in school, we gathered a group of girls and played with very long jump ropes.  We had a person at each end and we’d take turns jumping in and out and doing routines while singing verses, sometimes with two or three people jumping rope at the same time.  It was great fun.  We also carried this out at home, but didn’t have a rope near that long to play with.  However, with seven of us there were more than enough kids.

We’d do routines at home too or would jump rope by ourselves, but usually several of us participated in everything we did.  We had hula-hoops too which were very cheap in those days, or we wouldn’t have had them.  We would work our way up until we could hula with five or six of them on at one time.  I do see these hoops in the store occasionally and it makes me think of those wonderful childhood days filled with chatter and laughter.  I’ve even been tempted to buy one to see if I can still do it.  The mind never grows old as fast as the body.

How about you, did you jump rope or play with hula-hoops as a kid?

The Icebox

Growing up on the farm, this is what we called the refrigerator.  I’m not sure why.  Perhaps this comes from older times when people really did use iceboxes for keeping things cold before the invention of the refrigerator. 

 Root cellar

 

Before even the icebox, people stored food in underground cellars.  Iceboxes were invented just before the nineteenth century.  People would purchase huge blocks of ice and put them in wooden boxes equipped with drip pans for the melting ice.  Anything that needed to be kept cool was placed in the box and the ice replaced periodically.

There was an old, red brick icehouse in the small town near the farm when we were all growing up.  Daddy used to get ice from there occasionally.  They sold it in huge square blocks (similar to ice cubes but a hundred times bigger.)  Large silver colored picks were used to hoist the ice from the icehouse to the waiting transport.

German engineer Carl von Linde developed the first refrigerator in 1876.  By 1920, over 200 companies were producing refrigerators, but due to the cost, most people continued to use the icebox.  Freon was invented to cool and freeze foods.  This was effective but caused the release of chlorofluorocarbons into the environment.  In the 1980s, Freon was discontinued.

Did you have a refrigerator or an icebox growing up? 

When we moved into the sharecropper’s shacks when I was about six, we had a small rounded fridge, similar to a Philco, and it could have been that brand.  Kids don’t really pay attention to things like brand names.  We had too much playing to do.  The whole time I was growing up we all called the refrigerator the icebox.  I think people in the south still use this term today.

Handy Hair Products

Okay, I admit this post is probably geared towards women because what man is going to fiddle with his hair and have a cupboard full of hair products?  As women we’re always looking for excellent products in the hair and makeup department because you may as well look as good as you can for as long as you can.  At least that’s my philosophy.  I’m not too old yet not to care.

So, I’m always trying out new things too see if I can find something better than I’m already using.  If I find something amazing, I like to share it.  Today I’m talking about hair products that I think are worth the money.  I’ve tested the things you see below for almost two years.  Without a doubt, I think my hair is in the best condition it’s been in for a long time.

I can say these products do work, but like anything, you have to use them regularly.  It really doesn’t take very long to get showered and ready, so you don’t have to worry about spending that much extra time.  It’s also important to realize that you don’t need to wash your hair daily.  This is especially true, as you get older, because excessive washing will dry your hair out.  Don’t we all have a problem with dryness as we age, anyway?

My hair products 

 

Money is a consideration when it comes to purchasing anything these days.  I think eight dollars for a bottle of shampoo is at the top of my budget.  But for that price, this is the best one I’ve found.  The Age Defy products by Pantene are worth the price and leave you hair soft and shiny.  Even if you color your hair, it won’t be stiff and brittle feeling after you’ve used this for a while.  A bottle of shampoo and conditioner last me from two-three months.

I’ve always been impressed with Pantene and when I saw this new shampoo and conditioner, I had to try it.  I’m not getting any younger.

After shampooing my hair with the Age Defy shampoo, I use the Age Defy conditioner, leave on one minute, and rinse.  After that comes the Garnier Fructis conditioner.  This stuff is great!  After working into my hair, concentrating on the ends, I pile it on top of my head.  The product is thick enough to make it stay there.  This needs to stay on your hair for three minutes, so it’s a good time to soap up.  After you rinse this product out of your hair, if you like you can use the 7-Day Volume by John Frieda.  This is another eight-dollar product.  Sigh…

This product has to sit on your hair for five minutes, so I usually turn the shower off and meditate while I’m waiting.  No use in wasting water.  The good news is this product doesn’t have to be used every time you shampoo.  It’s good for up to three washes.  There is a residual effect, which is nice.

Rinse your hair thoroughly and towel dry.  Then after combing out, I use the Tresemme Split Remedy while my hair is still damp.  This product works best on wet hair.  Comb it through and then it’s time to blow-dry it, on low.  I want to note that the Split Remedy is a bit like honey, very sticky, but your hair won’t be sticky after it’s dry.

On the off times, I’m not using the 7-Day Volume, I’m trying the Fekkai Blowout, which is a hair thickener and root lifter in a gel form.  It’s new so I haven’t used it a lot yet, but it looks like it will work well.  It’s rather hard to apply this to the roots though, but it’s easy to comb out after it’s dry and doesn’t leave your hair stiff.  If you want to try it, apply to wet hair and then blow dry.

My husband always comes in the bathroom and tells me it looks like a salon.  I guess I do sound obsessed, don’t I?

Maybe this will help someone out there who’s searching for something that works.