Calamity Kit – Part II

Aug 31st, 2004

I invited the members to comment on my recent post regarding Calamity Kits. I’m pleased to share the comments I received. I want cherylmillerville to be a very interactive ville, so I’m delighted that we’re beginning to interact like a ville. Let’s do more of that OK?

From Diane… Cheryl, Having just spent the evening in the basement 2 nights ago under a table covered by a mattress, I am inspired to give input to the calamity kit. I’ve been trained that candles and matches are a no-no since I have a gas heater. If any tornado ripped open the gas pipes, and I went to light a friendly candle, I might not live to tell the tale. Diane p.s. I love your newsletters.

From Edith… Dear Cheryl, Don’t forget Peggy Layton’s book, "Emergency Survival and Storage." It is well worth reading. I figured out how to solve the flashlight dilemma. I have ONE flashlight that always works! It plugs into an electrical outlet to recharge. When the electricity goes out, I have about 8 hours of battery-powered light. When I am done using it, it always goes back to the same outlet, right there in the kitchen, so I always know where it is. We can’t have candles because of my husband’s oxygen. One time I woke up in the night to find him sleepwalking and lighting matches, so no more flammable items such as lighters, matches, or candles. (Candlelight services at church are also "out.") We are on the "priority" list, so it is usually not very long before we are hooked up to the grid again. Edith Williams, Lawrence, KS, Community Mercantile employee

From Mary… Cheryl, because we live in Kansas we need to actually contemplate being hit by the tornado and/or at the very least, the possibility of being stuck in the basement for an hour while a storm rages and you truly need to plan for more things !!! If you have a basement, make a shelter corner (it’s a little like planning for a overnight campout, because storms like to pick the middle of the night to get really serious). Consider arranging protective half windshields using your washer and dryer to advantage. Do all this before the storm season hits.

To hold my emergency stash I use a old samonite type suitcase that closes well and that is strong enough to sit on. It will even double for a card table if you are seated on the floor. And inside I store the basics from your list plus storm blankets and small pillows. And keep a piece of rug on the floor if you have kids for them to nap on. You need a duffle with jackets, sweats, and old solid shoes, (think broken glass) plus you don’t always happen to be dressed for storm cleanup when a storm decides to hit. Pack your current clothing back into the suitcase if you do change because they are likely to be suitable for current heat conditions after the storm. Include a roll of toilet paper and baby wipes and a couple strong leak proof trash bags (to make a lined human litter box if you must) a canister of "power bars" or some kind of concentrated food (in a jar so they wont get dirty or spoil) also a pouch or packet with insurance papers, birth certificates, a household inventory list (use photostats if you don’t want to keep your originals here) and one current photo of each family member including pets.

If you have small children throw in a box of crayons and a coloring book apiece and a deck of cards. If you don’t have a basement, these emergency items need to go in a chest in or near your hallway. You might even pack in some canned goods and a can opener and a bar of soap and wash rag. We are elderly so we have our medications that need to be brought into the planning too. And last but not least, don’t forget to grab your pocketbook, bankbook, watch and wedding ring. Now this may sound like a lot of hoopla but don’t forget that it might not look like nearly enough if it is all you have left. I have been in Kansas storms that actually crackled the air inside my home and made my skin crawl with static electricity.

There are several other items that my "storm watcher" husband added. A basic first aid kit, work gloves, a small pry bar, and a proper tool for turning utilites off if you begin to believe you are actually going to be hit.
Mary Glenn, Paola, KS Mary is a 64 yr old ex-birthday party clown

Aren’t these great additions! Thanks one and all for sharing. If these comments sparked a comment in you, please click on the comment link and share your thoughts.

Got Stress? Smoking Reduces Stress

Aug 31st, 2004

Before we get too serious I thought you’d enjoy a little smoking humor. Watch this little video to find out the REAL reason dogs want to go outside: 19 sec video (you’ll need a video player and sound for this clip)

Do you ever wonder why so many people are scared to death to quit smoking and why they relapse? Stress. Read on to find out what the main stress management techniques are that will help you cope with stress as well as your cigarettes help you cope with stress.

Kinds of Stress We Need to Manage (a little reminder of the enormity of life)

• Death
• Divorce
• Job you don’t like
• Disability or injury
• Arguments with significant others, family, co-workers, and friends
• Overdue bills
• Maxed out credit cards
• Long work hours
• Having and raising children
• Planning a wedding
• Getting a promotion
• Having an addiction
• Being sleep deprived
• Moving
• Being lonely
• Feeling worthless
• Being sad
• Living in a noisy, crowded, expensive city
• Crime
• Poor health
• Illness in the family
• War
• Presidential elections

You get the picture. It’s amazing how many opportunities there are in life to manage stress . . . or to smoke. If you smoke, you know that smoking really helps reduce stress. Big time.

When my dog, Zeus, died in the early 80’s, I chain smoked the entire day. My only comfort was my cigarettes. I lost my beloved dog, but I still had my cigarettes. Back then cigarettes were my main stress management tool. When I thought about quitting smoking, I got uptight or cried. Since then I have learned many, many stress management techniques. I rarely think of smoking when I’m stressed now.

The real message here is this: if you want to quit smoking, you MUST have several strategies in place to help you reduce and manage stress. You MUST or you will likely fail. The first time something awful or stressful happens when you’re trying to quit smoking, do you know what you’ll do to manage stress? If not, changes are you’ll start smoking again. . . within minutes of the stressor.

Here are Some Good Stress Reduction Strategies

• Practice good self-care – get plenty of quality sleep, eat healthful foods, pamper yourself (massage, pedicure, sauna). Remember HALT? (hungry, angry, lonely, tired) Never let yourself get that way.
• Talk with a mental health professional if you have deep issues that you’re afraid might get in your way of success.
• Talk with a friend, co-worker, or spiritual advisor - never underestimate the value of talking with people. You’ll get a chance to let off steam, solutions may come to you as you tell your story, and your confidant may have some useful insights.
• Hire a life coach to help you design a smoking cessation program - coaches are trained to help you problem solve, remove obstacles, and design supportive personal environments. I am a trained smoking cessation professional and life coach and would be glad to discuss being your coach. Working with a coach to design your quitting plan would give you a sense of confidence and reduce stress.
• Exercise Regularly – Exercise provides very similar stress reduction (physiologically and psychologically) that smoking does. I wouldn’t even think of quitting smoking without doing at least a little exercise (but then I’m an exercise physiologist and I strongly believe in exercise). Walking is wonderful. So is yoga, tai chi, kick boxing, bicycling, dancing, Pilates, basketball, tennis, racketball, stability balls, aerobics dance, weight lifting, gardening, chopping wood, and hiking to name just a few. Rent exercise videos, join a gym, grab a friend or a family member, or take the dog for a walk. Did you know that if your dog is fat you’re not getting enough exercise? Find ways to move more. Moving reduces stress. Yes, it’s a miracle.
• Pray, meditate, sit still – get in touch with the inner you. If it looks scary in there, get somebody to look in there with you.
• Read self-help and personal development books – check them out from the library. Can you walk to the library and kill two birds with one stone? (Is there a better expression than this . . . I’m feeling kinda bad for the birdies. Write your replacement suggestions in the comments link below).
• Take a stress management class - be sure to practice the exercises you learn when you get home. Taking classes (and reading self-help books) can get you nowhere if you don’t follow up with action and put what you learn into practice in your real life.
• Talk with your doctor and pharmacist about nicotine replacement products and Zyban (Wellbutrin is the generic version). You may be one of those people who could benefit from either or both of these products.

There are many more stress management techniques and tools, but these are the biggies. When you use several of these strategies, you’ll find that you really can manage your stress without smoking or chewing tobacco. Why not start getting your stress management plan together now so you’ll be ready . . . when the spirit moves you to quit.

Are You Driven to Distraction?

Aug 31st, 2004

Are You Driven to Distraction? It’s easy in this fast-paced information age to get sidetracked . . . constantly. On my walk today I thought of a 5-part plan to help me keep on track. As I put it into use and see how well it works, I’ll share it with you. Here it is in the rough draft stage:

First – Decide what to do first (what’s most important or easiest to get you off the dime?)

Focus - Stick with that one task. Don’t allow distractions to enter in. Do one thing and one thing only. In our multi-tasking culture, focusing will take some retraining. If you have a planning system, schedule that task into your appointment schedule and give it a time slot.

Finish – Finish the project or the piece of the project that you selected, so you will have a feeling of completion. You’ll experience big, wonderful, positive energy when you finish something. If you have divided the big task into several pieces, you can consider your task finished when that one piece is completed. You don’t have to wait for this great feeling of completion until the entire project is completed. Acknowledge each piece as a task and enjoy finishing each task.

From the Beginning – If there are more projects you want to work on, start from the beginning with First, and work through the process again until each task is finished. (Help me out here. Can you think of a better "F" word here to indicate starting over? If so, email me or include it in the comments link below.)

Fun (or Free Time) – When you have finished the task (or tasks), take time to do something fun. Consider this time now Free to do whatever you want to do.

Comments Please Was this helpful? What’s missing? Do you have examples of how this has worked/would work for you? If something occurred to you as you read this post, please take a moment to click on the Comment link below. It just takes a second to share your wisdom with the rest of us. We would really appreciate it. Feel free to include your name and any other identifying information you would like to include. We want to get to know each other in this community.

What Can You Do About the Excess Stuff in Your House?

Aug 26th, 2004

Do you resist cleaning out your garage or your basement because you don’t know what you’ll do with the stuff you decide to get rid of? It’s sometimes hard to decide whether to have a garage sale, take it to a thrift store, or leave it right where it is undisturbed. Choice number 3 often wins. There’s another choice that’s pretty exciting. It’s called freecycling . . . it’s kinda like dumpster diving on the internet. I am a co-moderator of the Lawrence, KS, freecyclers.

Here’s how we describe freecycling:

What is freecycling? The idea is simple: FREE + RECYCLE = FREECYCLE. Use the internet to get rid of things around the house that you no longer need or are cluttering your life. Or, find things others want to get rid of that you can put to good use.

• Do you have a closet or garage full of things you no longer need?
• Do you want to declutter your life?
• Are garage sales too much hassle, or do you have items that are usable but can’t be sold in a thrift store?

Freecyclers post items such as appliances and electronics (both working and non-working but fixable), furniture, scrap wood, gardening supplies, moving boxes and packing supplies, used magazines, home decor items, clothes, crafting supplies, toys, books, etc. Join the freecycle movement to help keep our unused, unwanted things out of landfills and into the hands of people who want or need them.

"It’s not about exchanging junk. It’s about reducing waste and finding new uses for old items rather than disposing of our natural resources as if they were never-ending. It’s about teaching our children respect for Mother Earth and the value of sharing and lending a hand whenever possible. It’s about becoming more sensible consumers thereby contributing not only to the preservation of our planet for future generations but also to the effort to change a few values so that we may leave a better, more caring society for our children and their children to live in." – Columbia George Freecycle Group Moderator  

How does it work?

Freecycling is easy. To participate, simply subscribe to the freecycle group in your local area (http://www.freecycle.org Use the list to post a message about a usable item(s) that you’d like to give away, or an item you are seeking. Receive emails from others who have items to offer (or view postings on the Yahoo Groups website if you don’t want to receive lots of extra email).

Everything posted on the list must be FREE and legal. No politics, religion, advertising or spam, and no trading or bartering is allowed. The email discussion group acts as a venue for freecyclers to connect. Those interested in items reply directly to the poster and arrangements for picking up items occur off the list through email between the "offerree" and the "wantee."

Click here for some ideas of what can be freecycled. More about the Freecycle Movement

Begun in March 2003 in Tucson, AZ, Freecycle is rapidly expanding to cities across the globe. As of mid-August 2004, there are 1298 networks and 424,148 Freecyclers worldwide.

Freecycle in the News Freecycling explored as alternative to dumping From each according to his junk, to each according to her need Freecycling in Tucson

"Freecycling lies somewhere between the garage sale and the dump, and is much cooler than either. It’s an innovative concept that harnesses the power of the Internet to do what the Internet does best — eliminate the middleman and empower the individual. Unlike traditional charitable organizations that accept people’s castoffs and sell them for low prices in unappealing shops (or end up taking them to the dump anyway), freecycling allows for personal contact between donor and recipient — each gets exactly what they want, and nobody is considered a ‘charity case.’ (Indeed, many freecyclers both give and receive items on a regular basis.) It’s a perfect consumer-friendly circle: no overhead, no intermediaries, no money changing hands, no waste and no catch, and everyone’s happy.

Freecycling. . . one simple, brilliant idea that’s changing the world." – Wes, Moderator of Freecycle Austin, Texas

Join the Freecycle movement Please add your comment at the link below. We want to hear from you!

Got Depression?

Aug 26th, 2004

National Public Radio (NPR) has been offering a superb series of interviews on depression. I highly recommend you check them out: NPR – home page: http://www.npr.org/

NPR – depression series: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3866330 (I don’t know how long their links remain live)

Related NPR Stories Part 2: The Bind of Maternal Depression
Part 3: Calculating the Costs of Mental Health Care
Scientists Find Gene Linked to Depression
FDA Study Links Antidepressants, Teen Suicide
Study Recommends Drugs and Talk for Teens with Depression 
Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Thinking Positive
Treating Depression in Adolescents
Treating Mental Illness in Children

Web Resources
•National Institute of Mental Health
•The National Mental Health Association
•‘The Peace of Mind Prescription: An Authoritative Guide to Finding the Most Effective Treatment for Anxiety and Depression,’ by Dennis Charney, Charles Nemeroff
•National Alliance for the Mentally Ill

Comments Please – do you have anything to add? Anything come up for you while reading this post? Share it in the comments link below. We want to know what you think. Thanks, Cheryl

Clamity Kit for Stormy Weather

Aug 24th, 2004

A couple of months ago, we had an outrageous storm in Lawrence, Kansas, and there abouts. My lights went out just as I sat down to dinner. Since I had my doors and windows open, the wind blew everything into a chaotic blizzard of paper. As I ran from room to room getting things I needed to function in the dark, it occurred to me that I should create a calamity kit – after all I DO live in Kansas. And if a tornado were really headed my way, I wouldn’t have time to run into the kitchen to get the flash light, and run into the sun room to get batteries, and run into three rooms trying to remember where I put the weather radio….and run back into the kitchen to get the needle nosed pliers to pull the part of the battery that stuck to the battery connector because it had gotten corroded and fell off. And I ran to several other cabinets and places, but you get the idea.

Not only was there a calamity OUTSIDE, but there was one INSIDE too. I felt foolish since I pride myself on being efficient, having common sense, and setting up systems. In the midst of this storm, I clearly saw the opportunity to mend my foolish ways. The very next day I created a Calamity Kit. I thought you might want a calamity kit too, so I’ll tell you what I put in mine. Here’s the list:

• a plastic box with a handle on it (so you can use your other hand to carry other critical things like your cat, a cell phone, your dinner plate, etc.)
• several candles (the ones in glass jars are good because they are contained and won’t tip over)
• matches (I also included a long-nosed butane lighter)
• a bottle of water and a plastic cup (I might get thirsty)
• a small bowl (my dog Jasmine might get thirsty)
• a flashlight with brand new batteries (I didn’t put them in the flashlight so they won’t get corroded, but then I might have to fumble if the lights go out. Maybe I’ll rethink this issue)
• a weather radio with batteries (so I can hear the National Weather reports). You can get one at Radio Shack or maybe other stores. Search Google. I’ve had mine for 20 years, and I’ll bet there are better ones out there. The reception on mine is poor so the sound is fuzzy. It reminds me of someone trying to tune in a radio station when radios were first invented. Even a faint sound was amazing then, now it’s annoying.
• cell phone (I don’t store it in the box but remind myself to bring it down the basement with the kit). Remember that your portable phone will go dead if the electricity goes off. If you have a phone jack in the basement (or wherever your shelter is), you can plug in a corded phone that won’t go dead if the electricity goes off.
• battery operated radio (tuned to NPR or your favorite local station)

When we had major storms and tornado warnings again last night, I felt pretty smug as I grabbed my calamity kit and headed to the basement where I have a lawn chair at the ready.

Since I’m not normally in my yucky basement when it rains, I had the opportunity to track down the sources of the leaks. In fact, one leak was more like a spring. Since I didn’t have anything better to do, I mixed up a cement compound to patch the cracks in the cement block wall.

This makes me sound much more responsible than I actually am. Yes, I’m finally getting all of this together after decades of putting it off. So if you’re smart, you’ll not waste another day or year or lifetime without getting together your Calamity Kit. And like me you can feel virtuous and brag to all your friends that you’ve got one.

How Did the Kit Work?

The kit worked great. It was wonderful to have everything I needed in one place. I’ve thought of a couple of things to add to perfect the kit–a pair of glasses and a candy bar. I found that I couldn’t read the buttons on the weather radio, and I wanted a reward for being so smart.

What will you put in your Calamity Kit?  Write your comments in the comments link below.

Smoke – The Movie

Aug 23rd, 2004

Smoke – The Movie

I rented a very interesting movie this weekend – Smoke – with Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Stockard Channing and several other very talented actors. It’s all about nonstereotypical relationships. The men are fabulous. I loved this movie.

To read a detailed review and analysis, go here: http://tinyurl.com/6mgvp

Visit the free healthy, happy living clubs at: www.cherylmillerville.com

A Perfect Life for a Fish

Aug 7th, 2004