Beauty rest... all weekend.

But 1st, my daily bath as of tonight.

• Cold & Flu bath bomb & A Day at the Spa body wash from Wick-edly Sent.
• Lavender & Oatmeal handmade soap by my friend Kym.
• Hair Biscuit solid shampoo from One Bath & Body.

BTW - If you have a cold or the flu, C.O. Bigelow makes this stuff called Cold and Flu Soak Herbal Formula (simple, right?) & it is truly the most AMAZING bath I have ever had when not feeling well.  It really helps with the aches, congestion, & when you get out you want to curl up & go to sleep.  It is not going to cure you but I have NEVER found anything remotely close that calls itself a cold/flu soak that will leave you feeling like this does.  Bath & Body Works used to carry it with their line (that's how I discovered it) but stopped carrying it last year, no clue why, so you have to buy it directly from them, unless you can find a deal through another site somewhere.

So, yesterday, after missing like 2 & 1/2 days of work fighting off an awful cold & congestion I started feeling a lot better.  I went in to work & had an appointment set up for later w/my neurologist, still had a nagging cough.  They called me wanted me to come in early or cancel my appointment that I made specifically for later so I would not miss work, so I ended up missing work by going in early.  Everyone else I know has had a CT or MRI done before their 1st neuro appointment & they have never done one on me.  I am not too keen on the doctor they gave me & how I am being shifted around on medications so we decided to set one up.  He acted like I could get one that day so I waited around for approval... & waited, waited & waited.  Around 3:30 PM (I had been waiting since 1:00 PM) they finally told me they were going to set it up for a weekend in November.  So I got pretty pissed because I wasted away a whole unpaid day of work.

I figured I would do some overtime at work on Saturday to make up.  I when to the pharm, picked up some cough suppressant, headed home, got pissed off at a teen driving mommy & daddy's expensive lexus, got inside, took some of the cough suppressant, then don't remember much else except for taking a bath & then waking up at close to 4:00 AM & having an awful coughing fit & just feeling like my lungs were overwhelmed with congestion.

I pretty much only went into work today because I had obtained free passes to a preview of Puss In Boots & wanted to drop them off for some of the girls I work with because I know they have kids who would enjoy going to see a movie & they would enjoy not paying for it!  No clue how I got on this list.  Probably when I was out in Los Angeles I got on one.  They were more fun out there because you used to get to see them in pre-production & then get picked to be in focus groups to help shape the movie before they were even in post-production.

Anyway, so my supervisor comes in, mentions something about having pneumonia & I immediately start freaking out a bit.  History of upper respiratory problems & being on/off steroids I need know & avoid these things.  So I know I have to go to the doctor regardless, was going to go anyway, but it only confirmed my fear of how I felt this morning.  I set up an appointment, go in, no pneumonia (YAY) but I'm banished from talking & going out all weekend, & I should be drinking lots of black tea w/honey.

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So after my bath I...

• lathered on some Vicks VapoRub
• had some cough medicine with codeine in it
• & took a Sudafed for the congestion.

I'll probably be out like a light soon.  Since my other cold symptoms are gone though & I am under house arrest, this is a bad time for me to do online shopping!  I online shop a lot when I am stuck inside.  OMG!  I just remembered some things I want to write about tomorrow... please remember CANDLES.

There may have been a problem with posting comments.  There may still be.  I'm not sure. I think I fixed it.  Or you can always e-mail me.  Time to pass out in front of the TV before I pass out in front of this.

Skin unbelieveable...

Last December I had surgery to have my gallbladder removed.  If you have had below the neck, or above the waist surgeries you must get used to the fact of having strangers poke, prod, and see your nakedness and bobbies (if you are a woman, or a rather large man).  You will be felt up as a necessity for the surgery.  So, when I was having my arms & torso (that is such an odd word, isn't it?) examined the nurses kept exclaiming how soft my skin was & asking if I had a secret.

No secret.  I WISH I had one. To be honest my skin is no where near perfect.  I'm no supermodel, never will be & they're airbrushed anyway.  Being an artist & crafty I will always have those "artist hands."  I have my rough spots that I exfoliate & take care of, got my other spots that are just kind of WTF, & w/me fighting off big pharma & genes... well, that's life.  That's life for millions of girls & women out there.  And I see SO many beautiful females depressed about the way they look & stupid little imperfections when I think they look amazing, or even wish I looked like them!  Yes, because I get that way too!

Overall your skin is easy to maintain if you keep it clean, exfoliate, & moisturize. 

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I have been fighting a nasty cold the last few days now since I came back from Rochester.  Most of my time has been spent on the couch, coughing, feeling icky & drinking juice.

I came up with a nice combination of bath scents & products I really enjoyed the other day & received an awesome package from one of my BFFs in the mail today that contained some handmade soaps of her own!  I also swear, there is a never ending array of bath goodness I have yet to discover in this world!  So I really need to get on the ball of updating this.

Feeling good enough for this post so maybe I can do something more exciting in my next post.  Wish there were a few more followers.  Send me an e-mail or give a shout out & say HELLO if I don't know you may be out there.  Tell me something you might be interested in seeing on here.

Take care everyone!

MIA. What's new?

Let's see if I can make this post short & simple.  I seem to not be able to do that whenever I want to.  I like to elaborate, or go into details on things.

Where have I been?  What have I been up to?  October is a busy month with the 1st 1/2 full of birthday get together & celebrations.  Also I am still battling complications with my health.  So, I know I am not dying (yet) and it's nothing serious enough that they can pick up on any of their normal tests but it's bad enough to keep me out of work at times, from seeing friends & doing daily activities at times.  They can treat it, but we don't know the cause.  So, I am sick of being over medicated & am now going to see a pulmonologist at the end of the month because my doctors feel this is the next step.

2 of my major problems are asthma and migraines.  The mystery of the asthma is why is my allergist is always telling me that my breathing tests are coming back above normal, yet I feel like I still cannot breathe & I ended up in the hospital in August with symptoms that could have been either (a) a heart attack, (b) collapsed lung, (c) or a blood clot & it was none of those.  Something came up on the blood test that concerned them which made them do a CT scan but that came back clear also. So I was put on prednisone & lortabs then released.

Last weekend I started getting the same feeling in the left side of my chest that put me in the hospital in August.  Every now & then I can still feel it lingering & it has not progressed to the severity in which it had previously but I am being very careful about it.  I have upped my asthma steroid medication & keeping my activities at a slow pace.  Tried heating pad & epsom salt baths but because it's more internal those didn't work all that well.  This caused a doctor appointment on Monday, decision on the new specialist, fasting blood labs today which resulted in an awful migraine for most of the day.  Now I have a sore throat that's bugging me.  Unrelated.

Overall, I am doing better.  After work though I pretty much come home, sleep, wake up, get online & e-mail, try to work on mail or chores, have my bath, then fall asleep again until Chris comes home & we have dinner.  Then I fall asleep again.  So I have been very fatigued.  I am working on tapering off another medication so it may be a result of that.

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Another thing about me is that I work for GEICO in the customer service department.  I really love my job.  I love it when I can find people savings, when I make people happy, when I connect with people.  I have licenses in, I think, 8 states now. (I have a folder full of them!)  I mostly handle the New England states.  PLEASE do not ask me about car insurance on here!  This is not what this blog is for.  Call your local company.  I am sure they are great.  Or if you are insured with us call any of our agents & they will be happy to help.

So we do a lot of charitable things within the company for local & world wide organizations.  I recently donated to a local animal shelter through our company & now we are making up baskets for a raffle that will have the money donated to the United Way.  You can only imagine why I would be posting about it here!  Because it is going to be filled with bathing goodness!

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See?  I am already writing too much & I am very sleep, not feeling all too well, & must make a Betty trip to Rochester tomorrow to see Brown & Deenok for a meeting of the minds & to also celebrate the Libra's of our group.

So tonight's bath consisted of milk & honey bubble bath & Philosophy's Pink Cotton Confection, which reminds me exactly of Aquolina's Pink Sugar.  Philosophy is coming out with their winter items now.  I am getting excited looking at their site!

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Want to try Bath & Body Works new 2 oz. Be Enchanted lotion for FREE?  Print this coupon or show it on your phone in stores, or use code FBF114231 online.  Good only October 14-16, 2011.

New infestation. Columbus day big co. deals. Try something new.

So the victory roses I received had fungus flies in them.  Now the tea roses I have received have what are called spider mites!  I just cannot win with indoor roses!  I thought I just may have a little spider in the tea rose but I noticed tiny, VERY tiny white-ish insects milling around in the webbing, & so after some research, found out what I had.  So the roses have been secluded to the back porch for now.  I don't want to throw another plant away though so I did some reading & it seems that horticultural oils are the most effective at ridding them.  I have no clue where they came from as my father had this plant for a while w/no infestation & my other plants are fine.  We are starting to get frosts though also so I'm afraid that one nay get to the plant before the other.  There was a bud really to bloom also & then these darn mites came!  I have a feeling this one may not survive also with all that I need to put into it this time of year.

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Well, it being Columbus Day weekend I have received a few e-mails of some deals going on.  1st off with Bath & Body Works.  I'm not a huge fan of theirs.  They aren't very interactive w/their customers, they are just a big mish-mosh of companies & products.  But they do carry a few things I really do like.  Online they have 50% off their sweet shop candles which are pretty awesome for the most part, only a few of them I wasn't too hot with how the smelled when in the store.  B3G3 on their signature collections, & a bunch of summer, Halloween products, & lip glosses at 75% off.  AND using code EVENT25 will get you $1 shipping on orders $25 or more.  Of course there's other things, but these were the note worthy items for me.  I'm not sure if there are in store or not but I may drop by one today because I have a coupon for a free item & 20% off my entire purchase.  Been pretty good w/not buying much from them anyway.
*EDIT - same sales in store.  Already pretty picked over.

Now The Body Shop is having a B3G2, B2G1 or Buy 1 Get 1 1/2 off.  But, if your like me, & have almost the entire store because they don't change their line up 1/2 as much as B&BW does, then it's meaningless.

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This time of year brings pumpkin to death for soap scents.  Really.  A lot of times I go out on limbs to try new things & I think others should also.  So, this is actually uncommon but it is MY new autumn scent thanks to Two Oakes Soapworks.  It is carrot cake soap & she has 2 bars left for sale on eBay.  If I didn't have so many other soaps to try right now I would snatch these up because they are scented so perfectly.  The carrot cake has been spiced right & just came out of the oven.  It should come with a disclaimer not to attempt to eat it!

I hope to have more on this company soon!

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Got my flu shot yesterday.  Hope to run a few errands today w/a bit of retail therapy today.

Daily bath October 6, 2011, Sweeps, & why I LOVE The Body Shop.

Yankee Candle actually posted about this or I never would have noticed it.  There's a lot of really neat & different things that are being given away & it's not junk like some other sites.  The YC Perfect Pillar giveaway is what caught my eye & this ends October 12th.  So, if you blog & are reading this, there's a lot of ways to get entries for a lot of different things.  I think I even saw something for some soaps that ends later I will need to check out.  I will most likely be using my twitter account to update more on available sweepstakes because I don't want this blog overloaded w/them.  I'm not all that hot on using twitter yet anyway.  I've been blogging for years but it has been more of a personal blog.

• Red Velvet Cupcake as bubble bath & shampoo from Philosophy.
• Strawberry dream bar soap from Brandon Essentials.
• Coco Latte body wash by Savour.
• Brazil Nut body butter by The Body Shop.

I smell like a cafe. 

Now.  I said how I am bored w/The Body Shop.  How I went in on my birthday, I'm just not excited with their products.  I want to see more bathing items like salts, oils, bubble baths.  How I am bored to death w/pumpkin scents this time of season & that's what they picked to win.  Well, I write.  And I wrote about how I do love their company but I am getting bored with them on their Facebook page.

I've only ever really had a problem with the company once when I had bad customer service over the phone.  It really turned out to be my error but I wasn't made aware of that because the woman on the phone never even brought it to my attention.  It had to do with my Love Your Body points on their website, what I was seeing, wasn't matching what she was seeing.  She was focusing on that & not the actual problem I was having.  So I complained on Facebook about it.

They are always on the ball on their Facebook page.  Always replying to people.  Asking questions, seeing how they can make things better.  Now in the situation I previously had, they sent me an e-mail right away, I sent them my contact info, they called me, explained what the other agent didn't & as soon as I realized I was in the wrong & all apologetic, they were still trying to do whatever they could to make me happy.  In this post I made to them about being bored with their products they asked if I had submitted something for the contest (which I think I didn't) but was curious what I would have submitted & advised of a new scent for the holiday that will be coming out, besides the normal vanilla & cranberry.  They are very interactive & I praised them for that but told them to still work on more bathing type products.  They need to stop focusing on the body butters, lotions & shower gels.

Daily bath October 5, 2011 & disappointment in The Body Shop.

• Cinnamon Buns as a bubble bath from Philosophy.
• Hot Spiced Chocolate (hot chocolate & brandy soaked pudding) shower gel by Korres.
• Honey shampoo from The Body Shop.

Just a F.Y.I. the pictures I use on my sites are either picture of the products I own, taken by myself, or pictures directly from the URL sites of the manufactures.  So that's why I link directly to the product.  All the other photos are mine, like the plants, insects, etc.  So if I find they are being used by anyone else w/out permission, for sale, or w/out credit...  expect trouble because I have an awesome attorney.

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Anyhoo.  Today I received an e-mail from TBS & they were having a contest to have a consumer come up with a new scent for a body wash of theirs & it was about their winner.  Awesome.  Now, leave it up to the general public to decide & be brainwashed into what it's going to be, or what their marketing department think what will sell the most this time of year.  Let us see as it was down to 3 scents, espresso, rhubarb, & pumpkin.  I'll give you ONE guess which one won.  The pumpkin.  Ugh.  Yes, I KNOW it's October but you are a huge company & everyone in the world is doing this scent right now & I'll be honest I think the only reason they did it was for marketing because of the time of year.  I have enough pumpkin stuff going back last year, maybe even the year before so I'm not even going to go back to even see what I think of it.  If it was one of the other 2, I probably would have, especially the rhubarb.

Like I posted the other day, I'm getting bored with them.  I go into their store, it's all body butters, lotions, soaps, body washes, same products but different scents but not by much.  I'd really like to see more bath products, salts, bubble baths, bath oils, oil beads.  I'm really hoping they expand their holiday line this year also & not keep it all the same cranberry, vanilla, orange & plum crap they seem to recycle through year after year.  Ok, I did really love the orange line they released last year but some of the products in it were limited or hard to get.

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So the last few days I have been using the Cinnamon Buns in the bath more for the scent, like I had noted before, Philosophy products really don't bubble well.  They might do better if you have a jet tub.  I have been mixing it up w/these Korres shower gels that I got last year for the Betties.  They came in a pack of 3 & I have a bit left of each.  The 1 I listed above & then also Honey Spice (honey cookies & roasted pecans), & Sugar Glazed Clementine (candied clementine & star aniseed).  I think my favorite is the clementine but they are all amazing, & natural but they do contain sodium laureth sulfate.

Products w/SLS or SLES tend to dry out my skin a little more so I usually use lotions after.  Autumn is kind of hit & miss if I want to or not, winter I usually do all the time because of where I live.  Cold, dry, snow!!

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To end, here is a moth I saw the other day.

Daily bath October 3, 2011 & ramblings

• 2 bath oil beads of unknown scent from The Body Shop.
• Heavenly type soap from Two Oakes Soapworks. (eBay)
• Ibiza Party shampoo from Lush.

The awesome thing about bath oil beads is the have an insanely long shelf life (if they are made by a good company).  I'll be honest that TBS has been kind of boring me with their products lately.  I went in ON my birthday so I could get my free $10 on my Love Your Body card plus some other things.  Chris really likes their exfoliating skin towel (& they are much better than the drug store ones.  There really IS a difference.) so I got him one of those.  I got the berry Natural Lip Roll-On.  Still don't know how I feel about it yet.

The bath oil beads were something TBS came out with years ago & they came in a small plastic box of about 20 with 4 different scents.  These weren't normal scents either like something you would find by the checkout at Ulta.  I can't remember any of them except the grape seed one but they all smell fantastic!  I had purchased about 2 boxes & have them all in a small container now so I can't really decipher which is which so I just pulled out 2 today & threw them in the bath & it was wonderful.

Before that I had a few consistent baths of:

• Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream bubble bath also used as shampoo from Philosophy.
• Lay It On Thick shea foaming bath from Bath & Body Works.
• Mint Cookie Milkshake (in set only) body wash from Philosophy.

I guess there is some underground water leak somewhere in the area & they had to shut the water off this morning very early.  So when I came home I didn't really think about it, used the rest room & when I went to flush I was like, "Oh poo."  Ha!  Not much later the water was working again as I could hear the pipes clanking so I ran the water a bit from the faucets & flushed the toilet..

Unfortunately, the toilet started backing up & it seemed more dark, almost black.  Oh how sometimes I wish I was still renting for free inside maintenance!  Thank goodness my father is such a handyman.  Of course when he came around, whatever was backing up was done & over with & a flush cleared it all up.

This underground leak is not fixed though.  Tomorrow will be more of the same.  Ugh.