As your kids head back to school, you probably have a to-do list a mile long. There are clothes and uniforms to find, school supplies to buy, transportation arrangements to make, dorm rooms to set up, and schedules to coordinate. In the midst of all the chaos, don’t forget that a meningitis vaccination could save the lives of your children, and may be the most important to-do of all.
I didn’t know much about the risk of meningitis until the son of a family friend passed away from it during his first semester at college. Here’s what I know now and want to pass on to you:
Meningitis is an inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord.
There are two kinds of meningitis: viral and bacterial. Bacterial is the more severe kind, and can lead to brain damage and death. There are several causes of each kind.
The Meningococcal vaccination does not prevent all cases of the disease, but it does protect against most types.
The most common symptoms of meningitis are headache, fever and a stiff neck.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends vaccinations for these individuals:
Children: MCV4 is recommended for certain high-risk children from ages 2 through 10.
Pre-teens/Adolescents: MCV4 is routinely recommended for all 11 through 18 year olds. If your child did not get this vaccine at the 11- or 12-year-old check-up, make an appointment for him or her to get it now.
Adults: Either MPSV4 vaccine or MCV4 vaccine is recommended for adults if you:
Are a college freshman living in a dormitory
Are a military recruit
Have a damaged spleen or your spleen has been removed
Have terminal complement deficiency
Are a microbiologist who is routinely exposed to Neisseria meningitis (the causal pathogen)
Are traveling to or residing in countries in which the disease is common
There are also some individuals who should NOT get the vaccine. Please check out the meningitis reference information on the CDC’s web site and make an informed decision for your family.
It’s here already…back to school! Where did the summer go? Regardless of where it went or how fast it flew by, the time is here to get our act together for the fall. For lots of folks, that means getting your dorm room set up and organized or perhaps you’ve already moved into your own student house after visiting a website like http://www.aplusstudenthousing.com. Either way, your gonna have a lot of decorating to do! Thankfully, there are lots of resources available to help! Since time for online ordering may be running short for some of you, we’re focusing on retailers with “real” stores as well as web sites.
Bed Bath & Beyond has a “Shop for College” section online. It includes a super-helpful checklist for equipping the space, and a College Practical Solutions section with solutions to common problems, like too little clothing storage or too little light. There is even a Decorating Ideas feature.
How about this Grover Beach theme for a young guy?
Grover Beach
Ok, well, maybe it is a little over the top and packed with stuff, but you don’t have to buy all of it. All of the items pictured in the example are listed below the photos of it, with prices and the option to add them to your shopping cart as you see fit. You can always add more from other places as well, and adjust it to your style. I’ve seen some people add things like these lights from Neon Mama to make the room even brighter. Pretty cool!
For a young woman, I think their Juliet room is a little wild and fun!
Juliet
Target Paisley Comforter
Not to be outdone, Target has a whole line of stylish dorm room decor items, including bedding, bath items, furniture and accessories. I’m crazy about this brown and blue paisley comforter ($14.99) and can see a whole room built around it very easily.
Target also has some pages put together to help you. You can click on the Contemporary Total Dorm, for example, and see photos and prices of everything they think you will need. I’m not sure if the 32″ Vizeo HDTV they show is essential or not, but maybe it is for some students! You can also view their suggested items for the Classic Total Dorm, The Trendy Total Dorm, the Dorm Lounge and different girls’ and guys’ dorms styles. Lots of fun stuff.
JC Penney also has their own Dorm Life section with useful resources: a checklist, tips on finding your own style, living in a small space, and doing what you need to do on a small budget. They have lots of affordable options for furnishing and decor. Although, before you buy anything it might be worth checking of there are any rules about what you can and can’t have in your dorm. For example, I’ve seen some really cool wall decals being advertised but I’m sure many colleges are not keen on students decorating their walls. However, there are still loads of other options at JC Penney. I love that their seating section is comprised of one faux fur butterfly chair and ten bean bag chairs! It doesn’t get any more dorm-ish than that!
We hope we’ve given you have a few ideas for decor to get you started. We’ll be back all this week with more back-to-school info, including some organizing tips!
Where in the fudge have I been? I hadn’t heard a peep about this award-winning documentary called “The Cove” until last week, even though it won the Sundance Film Festival and a bunch of other awards, nor did I know anything about the atrocities revealed in the movie. Since it’s not my style to stick my head in the sand, I went to see the “The Cove” last night, although I knew it would be emotional.
Now I know a bunch of things that are horrifying and haunting me…things that I wish were not true. To say that I am outraged and disgusted is an understatement.
Here is what I learned:
There is a tiny fishing village in Japan called Taiji. Every year from September to March, dolphins migrate through this area, and the “fishermen” of Taiji herd them into a cove, using the dolphins’ sensitivity to sound against them.
In this cove, the prime dolphins – usually young females – are selected to be sold for up to $150,000 each. Taiji is the world’s largest supplier of dolphins to water parks like Sea World. A live dolphin show can bring $1 million per year to the attraction, so there is continuous demand from these parks for dolphins.
The dolphins who are not chosen for sale are slaughtered by these “fishermen” who stab at them repeatedly from boats with long harpoon-like poles, until the cove is literally filled with blood. Then the dead dolphins are fished out of the water with hooks and hauled off to be cut up.
Taiji is alone responsible for the annual slaughter of 23,000 dolphins.
The *meat* from these dolphins is then sold, often being passed off as whale meat. The acceptable level of mercury for human consumption is .4 ppm (parts per million), however, because dolphins are so high up the food chain, their tissues can contain 2000 ppm. The risk of mercury poisoning is therefore very high for any one who eats dolphin.
Until “The Cove” team broke this story, the dolphin meat masquerading as whale meat was being given to schools for free, so the contamination was being delivered directly to Japan’s school children. It is still sold as whale meat to unsuspecting consumers.
One dead dolphin may bring $600, but the “fishermen” say they are slaughtering the dolphins for pest control, more than for the money, because dolphins eat so much fish that the supply of fish is diminishing at alarming rates. They apply this same ridiculous rationale to whales. Never mind the fact that humans deplete the seas of fish to the extent that some people think the oceans will be void of any fish within 40 years at the current fishing rate.
Half of the dolphins in captivity only live 2 years. They suffer from depression, which is understandable since in the ocean they swim 40 miles a day. They also suffer from ulcers, to the extent that the water parks stock Tagamet and Maalox to treat them.
Dolphins can commit suicide. They choose to deliberately breathe when they are out of the water, unlike humans who breathe automatically without ever giving it a thought. So they can choose NOT to breathe.
Now that I know about all this, I can’t forget that I know it and I want you to know it too. Here’s the trailer for “The Cove“.
What you first need to know is that Ric O’Barry trained the dolphins for “Flipper” in the 60s. He had an epiphany after one of the dolphin stars of the show – Cathy – died in his arms. He says that she was so depressed that she chose to stop breathing and die, rather than continue her so-called life in captivity.
Since then, Ric has spent 35 years trying to end dolphin abuses and captivity. In the documentary, at great risk to his personal safety, he sets out to reveal the atrocities that are being committed in Taiji. He and an incredible team plan to film what happens in the cove, since it is highly protected, for reasons you will see. They succeed, and we see the actual footage of the slaughter.
So now that we have seen this footage with our own eyes, and it has been brought out of the dark veil of secrecy into the light, what are we going to do about it? It has to stop. WE have to stop it. Here’s what you can do:
Go see “The Cove” and encourage others to see it. Check thecovemovie.com for viewing locations in your area.
Stop patronizing parks that feature live dolphin shows. They aren’t having fun, and they aren’t smiling!
Support the filmmaker – Ocean Conservation Society – with your financial donations.
If you must eat fish, find out which fish has the safest levels of mercury.
Contact our leaders and help get the word out in Japan. This link will allow you to sign a petition letter online and share the opportunity with other people who care. It couldn’t be easier.
Tell everyone you know about the cove and what happens there. There are people just like me who had no clue about this, and who need to know.
I’ll leave you with one personal experience. When LilSis and her family and I went to Maui in 2000, the highlight of the trip for me was the snorkeling day trip we took to Kauai. As our boat cut through the water, we had several different varieties of dolphins swimming along the front of our boat, escorting us. We had pods of bottlenose dolphins, spotted dolphins and spinner dolphins, and maybe others. It was thrilling to watch them, and the emotion they exuded was just joy joy joy. They seemed to be having the time of their lives, swimming and spinning, swimming and spinning.
To think that anyone could slaughter these incredible creatures for any reason is incomprehensible to me. I’m not going to stop talking about it until the hell in Taji is stopped.
I think that if you looked at my genetic makeup under a microscope or DNA viewer or whatever the heck you would use for such a purpose, you would see that I’m 1/8 Choctaw and 7/8 Chickpea! I eat SO many chickpeas, I’m sure I’m close to turning into one! I honestly eat a chickpea in some form or another at least 4 times a week. If it’s not hummus, then it’s one of these other two go-to lazy vegetarian girl dishes:
Marinated Chickpeas – Ok, pay close attention because this is super-duper complicated. Take a can or two of chickpeas. I actually wouldn’t even bother with just one can because I’m such a chickpea piggie. Dump the chickpeas into a colander. Rinse them with cool water to get rid of all the slimy gross liquid they’ve been swimming around in since they were canned. Drain them well and pour into a bowl. Add fresh lemon or lime juice, extra virgin olive oil or your favorite delicious healthy oil (could be macadamia or walnut or whatever), sea salt, fresh pepper, and voila! You’re done! If you want to get fancy, add other seasonings, like Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, lemon pepper (Penzey’s is my choice), fresh herbs, or even parmigiano reggiano shreds. Eat it up asap or let it sit for a while. I’m addicted to this as much as I am to hummus. You can crush the peas a little bit if you want, or leave them whole. I like this at room temperature.
Not-Tuna Chickpea Salad – Here’s another high-difficulty gourmet recipe. Rinse and drain the chickpeas, and then whir them around in a little food processor or chopper til they’re crushed up some but still have some texture. I don’t like them completely pureed. You may need a little olive oil or lemon juice if the mixture is too dry, but usually they mush up fine. Then, basically make your usual tuna salad recipe with whatever you like, substituting the chickpeas for the tuna, of course. I like a dab of mustard, some mayo (dairy-free would be fine), dill pickle relish, a little lemon juice, Frank’s Red Hot, lemon pepper, and sea salt. Pile it onto whole grain bread or crackers, fill a pita, or just gobble it up with a spoon. It would also be good wrapped up in some lettuce leaves or piled into a hollowed out tomato for lunch. You may say “weird” right now, but try it and you’ll say “hmmm, BigSis was right. This is yummy!”
That’s it guys and girls…two of my easy, healthy, vegetarian staple chickpea dishes. Certainly not on the menu at LilSis’ house, but at Casa BigSis, it’s a scrumptious meal! You know, I like to eat healthy but I don’t usually have much time for cooking in the evening so I need fast food that isn’t junk food. I’ll have more easy meatless recipes for you later. Have a tasty day!
I just channeled Elly May Clampett for a minute there, didn’t I? I can’t help it; sometimes my inner hillbilly comes out! After all, I am from Texas. Hey, fellow Texans; please don’t be offended. You know the rest of the world tends to view us as hicks or rednecks or bumpkins. If we can’t have a sense of humor about it, we’re in deep horse doodie!
Back to the critters. It’s been 15 years since I had one on my plate; other than my cats trying to steal my dinner, that is. And trust me, I have not withered away since I stopped eating meat. People who know me know that I always say I don’t eat anything with a face or with parents. No chicken, no fish, no flesh. But I’m strong and have good energy 15 years later. I am certainly not a pale sickly twig!
Why’d I stop eating meat? I read a book by John Robbins called Diet for a New America and decided to skip meat-eating for a week, just to see if I could do it. I never went back. Once I knew about factory-farming, I couldn’t forget that I knew it. So there you have it. I won’t get preachy about it. People know where I stand, and as much as I’d like for everyone to be vegetarian, it has to be your choice. You don’t make a major lifestyle change like that because someone else is beating you up about it. You do it because you want to.
I’m not vegan yet, but I’m always moving closer to it, and I’m intrigued by the raw diet. I do eat an occasional egg, although if I think about it, it grosses me out to think of eating a liquid chicken. And I do eat a little cheese. Why can’t someone invent a tasty, melty non-dairy cheese, for cryin out loud??
So what do I eat on a daily basis? By now, you know I eat hummus…I talk about it all the time. Green hummus. Healthy hummus. Hummus with sundried tomato pesto added. Now I’m on a mission for the perfect artichoke hummus recipe.
But I do eat other things – not just roots and leaves – and I’m going to talk more about that soon so stay tuned! Meanwhile, happy anniversary to me and to all of the critters I didn’t eat! In honor of this anniversary, check out this funny little Farting Cow video from Animal Planet. Trust me, you’ll laugh! Just don’t laugh so hard that you…well, you know!
Do you have boxes and boxes of Beanies? I hate to even bring up this topic, because it makes me cringe. I think that LilSis and SisMama feel the same way. We fell victim to the hysteria that surrounded Beanie Babies, and we absolutely wish we never had. Now, what the heckie darn do we do with all of them? I have boxes and boxes taking up room that I don’t have, and I’d love to find a solution to the overpopulation problem.
I have three ideas so far, and obviously I’m not sold on any of them since I haven’t done a ding dang thing yet:
Send the Beanies to the Beanies for Baghdad project. You send the Beanies to this organization, and they ship them to our military personnel overseas to give away to little kids who have so very little. I wonder if this is still a viable option, since the president is talking about withdrawal timelines. Once they arrive, could we be sure there would still be a purpose, a distribution channel and a home for them?
Take them to children’s hospitals. I’ve heard that hospitals aren’t always thrilled about taking in Beanies because they can’t be sure they haven’t been played with, and they can’t risk introducing any additional germs into the hospital environment. Are there any nurses out there who might know about this?
Try to sell them. In this economic market, however, it’s the worst possible time to try to sell a collectible item. It’s totally a buyer’s market, and prices are way down. I also think demand is too low and the supply is too high. This idea seems useless to me. I’d much rather donate them than fiddle around with selling them for a song.
So, if you have tried any of these ideas or if you have any other solutions, I (we) would LOVE to hear them!! I don’t want to just impulsively trash all these Beanies to get them out of my way … heaven knows how much money I invested. But if they could be put to good use somehow, I think it would be selfish of me to hang onto them. Help!
We have exciting news today! We just added Comment Luv to our site, and Grace from “A Southern Grace” got served up with the first dish of Luv yesterday!
If you’re not familiar with CommentLuv, here’s how it works. When you leave us a comment, you’ll see a logo for CommentLuv with a checked box next to it. If you have a blog, CommentLuv will run out and grab the title of the last post you published, and will link to it below your comment. Cool, eh? Using Grace’s comment on our Food Face Plate post, here’s what her Luv looked like immediately following her comment:
Why would we do this, you ask? Because we SO appreciate your comments, and want to show our appreciation in a tangible way that will mean something…links back to your posts!
So, let us know if you like the new feature. We hope it’ll show our commenters how much you mean to us!
We had a great weekend celebrating SisMama’s birthday, and will talk about it later this week. Meanwhile, I just stumbled upon this cool item and wanted to share it.
Do you remember being a kid and needing encouragement to eat? I don’t. I think I’ve always liked to eat, and sometimes wish I didn’t enjoy it so much! But I’ve known kids who weren’t interested in food at all, and had to be bribed or threatened to eat. Maybe this cool product would make mealtime fun for them, or maybe it would be even more fun for us big kids!
Food Face Plate
It’s Wooly Willy; that dude from the magnetic game you took in the car with you on road trips! But now, he’s on a plate and instead of decorating him with magnetic metal shavings, you’re decorating him with your food. I love the green bean eyebrows!
I heard about the Food Face Plate from FreshTrend, and found the plates available for sale on Perpetual Kid for $9.95. If you buy one of these and play with your food, send us a photo!
How about something a little uplifting today as we wrap up the week and fly into the weekend? I first saw this video on Angie’s blog Bring the Rain. If you don’t follow it, please check it out. I think you’ll be encouraged every time you read it, as I am. What a sweet, kind spirit this woman has.
Back to the video. I fell in love with this adorable little girl and her enthusiasm as soon as the video started. See if you do too. Why do we lose that unrestrained joyful expression of our feelings, and replace it with inhibitions and worries about what people will think? I want to be more like Zoe!
The song that Zoe is “enhancing” is The Blood Song by Selah; one of my very favorite Christian groups. If you’d like to hear the song without Zoe’s harmonies, here’s a video of it:
We hope you’ve had a good week, and you’re looking forward to a great weekend!
Someone allegedly stole Michael Jackson’s nose from the morgue. He supposedly had a jar with 6 noses to choose from in his closet.
Rumors are flying that Rihanna is hooking up with Chris Brown again, fueled by their stays at Trump Tower in NYC last weekend.
The Bachelorette chose the guy she’ll dump soon get married to (I didn’t watch).
“More to Love” premiered last night (nope, not watching).
President Obama wants the parties involved in the Harvard professor arrest debacle to sit down in the White House with him and have a beer, but it can only be a domestic beer.
South Texas is experiencing a serious drought and off-duty cops are on patrol for water wasters, while neighbors are tattling on each other for using their sprinklers.
I don’t really want to talk about that stuff though, because today is Big T’s birthday! Twenty-five years ago today, I became an aunt for the first time. I’ve been blessed with another nephew and a niece since then, and all three are equally special, but there’s something unforgettable about that first experience when you realize you’re an aunt. I can’t quite describe it, except to say that being an aunt has been one of the greatest joys of my life.
I can remember when Big T was born, and I have lots of snapshots in my mind of him as Lil T and Medium T over the years.
I’ll NEVER forget how we had to pull over for an emergency diaper change in my ’84 Chrysler Laser on the way back from visiting our grandmother in West Texas. When I say emergency, I mean EMERGENCY DIAPER CHANGE! Don’t breathe; just get that diaper off the kid and then let’s see how fast we can drive with the windows down to air out the funk in the car!
I remember LilSis and I taking Lil T to the first Main Street Arts Festival, struggling with the stroller over the power cables. I still go to that every year, all these years later, but it’s never as much fun as that first year.
I can hear him repeating “I weddy go now!” at increasing decibel levels until we finally left the State Fair of Texas. When he was done, he was done!
I can see Lil T sitting in his car seat – face red as a beet and sweating like a pig who knows he’s dinner (as Dr Phil would say) – waiting on the a/c to fire up in the middle of a sweltering Texas summer. All he could say was “Haaaa”, which was toddler-speak for hot. We still say that in our family when we’re really hot.
We still laugh about his acting debut as a little hobo, when he ad libbed and scooped up a fellow actress in his wheelbarrow and scooted her all around the stage, to our amusement but to the horror of his teacher!
Even though it’s NOT funny and I’m NOT advocating violence, I can’t help but laugh at the story of him stabbing a bully kid in the leg with a pencil, after warning him that one more insult of “fancy pants” would end with graphite in his leg. 😀
I still think about the July 4th parades we used to go to, with 100 degree heat at 9 am, and wonder why we did it!
And I have tons of memories of his hockey goals and his smooth signature wrap-around-the-goal move.
So how did the years fly by so fast? Now Big T is a grown-up man with a responsible job, an incredible sense of humor, a big personality, and some really cool tattoos! How did this happen? WHEN did this happen? Somehow 25 years passed…
Happy birthday, Big T! You’re an awesome nephew; thanks for making me an aunt! And thanks for all of the memories. I can’t wait for 25 more years as your aunt.
Note to our readers: Thanks for indulging me today while I went off on a personal walk down memory lane. I couldn’t let this day pass without a shout-out to Big T!
~BigSis
and decided to skip meat-eating for a week, just to see if I could do it. I never went back. Once I knew about factory-farming, I couldn’t forget that I knew it. So there you have it. I won’t get preachy about it. People know where I stand, and as much as I’d like for everyone to be vegetarian, it has to be your choice. You don’t make a major lifestyle change like that because someone else is beating you up about it. You do it because you want to.
