Simplifying Life

mary43

shaz - 16yr old ? washing ? Dont think they're a matching pair somehow are they..........well not in our household but they soon winge if they have nothing to wear and expect to wash it (one item on its own normally) and want it dry............oh the disapppointed face when they realise I don't have a tumble drier...................lol So now its a weekly 'nag'..........and if they bring it down a bit too late I'm normally doing mine and OH's washing so they have to wait longer. Keep thinking it'll sink in eventually but it doesn't.

ceridwen - wish I knew the answer to that one about other folk preventing something that should be easy to sort out, somehow getting in the way of it all. I never did get around to doing my paperwork in total yesterday so started again today only to find I had to make several phone calls to rectify things that should have been sorted anyway (stuff to do with kids)..........and now, just when I thought I'd done, I find out that there's been yet another 'hiccup' that needs a phone call and the person concerned isn't there................do they know I'm about to ring them I wonder ? Always seems to happen especially if its something I need a decision on.
Not being a drinker I never head for the 'wet stuff' though............its a big mug of double chocha mocha then I try and find something to read or look at that'll give me a more positive feeling...........or write a list of what actually has gone well instead of dwelling on these irritations.

Well, today our oldest lad has gone off to a nearby town with hopes (he says) of applying for an electricians job that has a cheap flat going with the job. More than that he won't say, I know he won't cope on his own either with money or emotionally but he's gone into the 'silent -need to know' mode so its pointless trying to talk to him :wall:
OH will have a fit when he comes back later as the room is still a 'tip'............
if anyone looked through the window with burglary in mind they'd soon hop it thinking someone had beaten them to it !!!
So, until I can get through to the necessary people in order for me to tick all my boxes I'll do something nice like write to my Mums friend just to keep her up to date with how Mum is. She can't get to see my Mum and loves to get letters from me so that'll be my 'random act of kindness' of sorts, for today
giving me a bit of ''feel good factor':o

shaz_mum_of__2

Mary

Has been doing washing and ironing for over a year now and buys his own clothes too

I got fed up doing it then him chucking in a heap on floor so bought him a basket for his room showed him how the machine worked and left him to it it usually gets done but at the last minute

My parents and sis thought me cruel,his army recruiter thought it was fab !! he can cook too ..................well enough to survive

You sound like me worrying about them i am dreading him going away in september(army college) but know it will be the making of hom daft innit

He's 6 feet tall and got a sensible head on his shoulders i am sure he'll be fine (if he would just drop the attitude aaarrgh)

Shaz

2cats1kid

Right, I *think* I have found my biggest plus to this OS stuff yet.

I have suffered from mild asthma for the last 15 years or so - nothing life threatening, ranges from a little wheeze to struggling a bit for breath, but annoying all the same. Sometimes I don't wheeze at all. I've noticed recently that it is worse in the holidays, and I'd blamed less exercise in the holidays (I work term-times only in a quite physical job). Anyway, I realised a couple of days ago that I haven't so much as wheezed a tiny bit for a good week or so, and the only time for the couple of weeks before that that I've had any symptoms was when we were visiting MIL.

Suddenly struck me last night that this ties in with not buying store bread but making my own. The MIL thing fits too, as when we went to visit first she had store bread in, so I ate that, and then I made a couple of loaves of the artisan bread and we ate that instead.

Went looking for possible asthma triggers in bread and found sodium propionate (E281) which is a known trigger. I checked the ingredients of the varieties of bread that are on my Tesco favourites list and some have E281 in and some don't (hence wheezing some days and not others - I would buy whatever was on offer or I fancied at the time). It also ties in with the holiday thing, as I'd tend to eat cereal or porridge when I'm going out to work, but have more toast at home for breakfast or snacks.

So I am going to have to check any bakery type products for this preservative, and be super careful when I am away from home.

Further investigation reveals it is linked to migraines, which I also suffer from.

I don't expect this will be a miracle cure, but I am hopeful that I can feel at least a bit better now. Who'd have thought bread could be causing me so much grief?

mary43

2cats.............what a discovery ! Just goes to show, you cant beat what OH calls good 'honest' bread. I get migraines but not very often and haven't had breadmaker that long to know whether it will make a difference. I do hope so as when/if I get one it knocks me for six and I have to go back to bed.

shaz - always taught my kids to iron, wash, mend and cook from an early age and it paid off when they left home -more so for the youngest who's vegetarian. The older one for a while lived on junk food..........laziness on his part but he got out of it after a while thank goodness.
The kids we look after are all able to do these things, if not when they arrive, pretty soon after. I did buy a wash basket for oldest lad we've got but haven't seen it for a while........think its sort of 'buried'..................lol
I do have concerns about him though trying to cope on his own. My own two managed but then they'd had a more stable background and were far more mature...............this lad isn't (though he thinks he is -don't they all). I've seen so many who leave 'the system' at 18 and end up in a mess, coming back for help. Still, I could be wrong..........if push came to shove, maybe he would manage ?................we'll have to see.

2cats1kid

Agree with you there, Mary. My 10yo is doing odd bits of cooking with me this holiday. She has helped with the bread, jams and jellies that I've been making. Last night she helped with the mince and rice for tacos. Nothing earth shattering, but simple stuff like bringing the rice to a good boil and then turning the ring off to save energy, and skimming any excess fat off mince. She is starting to slice bread and chop stuff with supervision, and I've told her that since she is going into senior school next term she is to cook for the family one night a week. It will start off with me cooking and her helping, and then her cooking and me helping/supervising and hopefully soon she'll be doing simple stuff for herself.

I never did anything like that at home and was consequently clueless in cookery lessons at school. That meant that I spent all my time trying to cover up that I knew nothing, rather than actually learning something! I was a bit like that in needlework lessons too, come to think of it. So most domestic/home skills type stuff I'm pretty well self-taught at, but want DD to learn more than I did.

Last summer we made her a dress on the sewing machine (almost as much of a voyage of discovery for her as for me LOL), so this summer is cooking. Any ideas for next year?

mary43

2cats - how about a gardening project for next year............start her off with a few herbs maybe and then later in the year she can dry them and store them in a jar.

Thankfully my afternoon has turned out well.......OH been offered a days work from someone in town then his old boss phoned to say there's work for him to do now his workshops rebuilt !! Well, its got a roof on it at least.
Even my phone calls got returned (makes a change) and one of them was to confirm that our oldest lad can stay with us, no stipulations about having to be in education/training or employment though expected to look for it.
He's been back from seeing chap about electricians job......got to join the queue for other applicants so that all sounds a bit uncertain to say the least. He''s gone off out now so doesn't know he can stay here...........wonder if he'll sort his room out once he knows.........................lol (doubt it)

ceridwen

Mary

Definitely wondering a bit re a job that comes with accommodation thrown in - hmmm....an electrician's job? Havent heard of that before myself:rolleyes: I hae me doubts!:D But then maybe I'm just being a tad cynical - thinking of the last time I was offered a live-in job - running a travel agency as I recall (with flat in building thrown in) - seem to recall one reason I turned it down was that I twigged that the guy offering it might just have kept a key to the flat IYKWIM;) (Well - the business "didnt last two seconds" as I recall anyways).

Charis

2cats1kid wrote: »

Right, I *think* I have found my biggest plus to this OS stuff yet.

I don't expect this will be a miracle cure, but I am hopeful that I can feel at least a bit better now. Who'd have thought bread could be causing me so much grief?

Since 2005 I have had severe problems with tachycardia and arrhythmia. I had batteries of tests including an MRI scan of the heart, echocardiogram, stress tests, countless ECG's. I was told I would just have to live with it, spending the rest of my days on beta blockers. All due to extra electrical pathways in the heart, they said.

However it occurred to me that the symptoms always started after lunch. I also used to feel really drowsy after eating bread. Like you I have porridge for breakfast and rarely eat bread at dinner time. I too suspected calcium propionate, after reading about others with similar symptoms. I also learned that there is a baking process used with supermarket loaves called the Chorleywood bread process which uses 'chemical improvers' to improve productivity. It's believed that they use enzymes in quantities far in excess of what would be in normal food, yet because they are 'natural' they don't have to be listed in the ingredients.

I've stopped eating supermarket bread. I also avoid doughnuts, pizza, anything bread based, athough I can eat bread made in my breadmaker. I've gone from feeling so poorly I couldn't even sit at the computer after lunch, to having no symptoms for weeks at a time. :j My GP still refuses to believe that one food substance could cause those symptoms.

ceridwen

Hi Charis

Glad you have got a handle on those health problems. One does have to ignore what G.P.s say sometimes and listen to one's own instincts and commonsense.

I have had to ignore what a g.p. said to me before now about a health problem I had - I wont go into details with this being an open forum - but suffice it to say that if I had listened to him (rather than myself) that I would have been pretty severely ill for some years by now!!

Re anyone wanting a bread recipe to make their own - I have put the bread recipe I use regularly on my blog:

http://chezceridwen.blogspot.com/

Look at the "labels" heading on the right hand side and click on "food". My recipe is there in one of my food posts - it must be okay: my mother keeps "cadging" loaves of it from me.;)

2cats1kid

Wow, Charis, that's really interesting. In a way it's good to hear from someone else with similar experiences, as DH just assumes I'm jumping on the latest bandwagon (he swans through life without so much as a cold, whereas when I have an asthma/IBS attack I can feel about 90 years old within hours). I've also picked up a nut sensitivity in the last couple of years, so a bit of a double whammy. Trouble is, since starting to make bread I have put on a load of weight as home made bread with home made jam is just too yummy!