This morning I made a cup of tea and sat down to finish the FAFSA before doing anything else. It is now out of the way for the kids. This morning's work was all more of my Conquer Procrastination program. :)

It doesn't look like the Stupor Bowl is going to get snow or rain as they originally predicted. Looks like the town cleared up nicely just in time for the big event. I swept up some sunflower dried seed heads I'd tossed in the driveway snow to see if the birds were interested, but they only seem to like them when they're on the plant in the fall. As long as there is commercial seed around, the local stuff is of no interest. I swept it up and won't put any more out, I'll toss them by the creek and let native sunflowers stabilize the bank.

Another batch of laundry was washed last night and the drain is still backing up a bit, but not as much. I think there must have been a frozen plug at the intersection from the kitchen branch to the main line; I have another load to run today and will continue to monitor it. Meanwhile, in the declutter department, here is the Nate Berkus segment I was watching when the local station interrupted it during the week. It's a segment with Peter Walsh, an "organizing guru." The link should bring up the page where the segment will play, and if you scroll down the page itself you'll see a couple of the earlier segments with Walsh. It doesn't all apply to all of us, but there might be useful tidbits there. This is what I think is most useful for me:

"Cluttered people spend between 15 and 20% of their budgets on things they don't need, lose, or misplace. If you want to give yourself a 20% pay rise, declutter and you'll suddenly start finding stuff at home that you didn't know you had and you're buying duplicates of to replace.

Re: skin stuff, my organic gardening radio program the host was talking about the ways people have used a soak in water with corn meal to be beneficial to skin problems. It's also good for toenail fungus, etc. I'd suggest do like the do with oatmeal for chickenpox and put some coarsely ground cornmeal into a mesh bag and let it soak in the tub for a little while then get in an soak or rinse off liberally with it. Quantities are speculative (for me) but if I were doing it, I'd use a mesh or even muslin bag and put a 1/2 cup to a cup in it, then once it has soaked a little, gently squeeze it to get the corn juice into the water and rinse or soak from there. Scroll down the C page for various corn entries. (File this under "it can't hurt, it might help" if you're not well acquainted with a lot of these organic gardening tips. Howard Garrett is a landscape architect who has been into organic gardening and healthy living ideas for about 25 years now.)

SRS