In My Bag

I somehow got on the mailing list for Tiffany’s. Some of those bracelets and necklaces are OH SO TEMPTING, but I’m being a good girl and tossing out the catalogs before I can really start contemplating buying something.

I feel the same way about titanium-jewelry.com. They have a lot of really neat things, and I know I could definitely find a few rings and such that I’d enjoy! I’d also love to get a rather classy and shiny watch for my husband for his 26th birthday, which is coming up in a little over a month. titanium-jewelry.com also has a lot of mens wedding rings. We obviously have no need for mens wedding rings, since Dan has not only a wedding ring but an engagement ring/band, but it’s nice to check out some of the different styles.

I love to shop. Nothing is more fun for me than to grab my three and a half year old daughter, who is quickly becoming quite the little shopaholic herself, and head out to Target or to the mall. Usually we’re picking up things for the house, but I often find myself checking out baby clothes. I sadly admit that I look forward to the ending of one season so I can start buying baby clothes for the next!

Of course, when I shop for friends, I don’t always pick up the mainstream stuff found at Target and the like. For baby gifts, I look higher… one such place being sandboxcouture.com. I’ve been drooling over some of their baby clothes for the past week now, anxiously awaiting to hear the gender of one of my online friend’s baby (due in July), so I can buy some things for him or her!

After buying a DSLR camera, one of the best accessory purchases I made for it was not the memory card, or fancy camera bag, or even the external flash. No, it was the Quantaray UV Multi-Coated filter. This handy little filter screws right on to the end of whatever lens you happen to have on your DSLR.

The Quantaray UV Multi-Coated filter costs less than $20, but does two things. First, and very importantly, it protects your lens from damage. If you happen to drop your camera or lens, or something bumps into your lens, it’s much better to scratch the surface of a $15 filter, than to scratch the surface of a lens that could cost anywhere from $80 - $800, or more!

Second, the Quantaray UV Multi-Coated filter improves sharpness and contrast between colors. It’s a must-have!

I don’t use life lock, but I’ve certainly heard a lot about it. LifeLock, dubbed a fraud guardian, helps consumers protect themselves by setting various fraud alerts on their credit information, including their social security number. They also eliminate a lot of the pre-approved offers and spam that many of us are greeted with on a daily basis in our mailbox.

The president of LifeLock, Todd Davis is so sure of his company and their guarantee and promise of reimbursement up to $1,000,000 that he freely throws around his social security number, including on the side of a truck that is seen in a LifeLock commercial.

Obviously, companies like Experian aren’t happy with LifeLock, because while LifeLock only charges $10 per month to protect consumers, Experian and other credit reporting agencies happily charge two and three times that amount for some of the same services (opting out of offers, fraud alerts, credit lockdowns, etc.).

My credit is crap, otherwise I’d consider LifeLock. Trust me, NOBODY wants my credit. It won’t get them squat, except a bunch of high interest loans that require a LOT of money down!

Tapeworms are disgusting things that I first discovered in September of 2006, when Blueboy came down with them after a bout with fleas over the summer. I was disgusted, and then horrified at the high cost of treating him at the vet. When my Persian kitten, Simon, showed signs of tapeworms last December, I decided to skip the vet route and head straight for the local pet stores in search of a remedy. One pet store/grooming shop owner recommended HomeoPet Wrm Clear. Dosing a cat with it is ridiculously simple. Forget oral syringes and pill poppers. This stuff can go right into the cat’s water dish — five drops three times daily. Use for seven days as a preventative measure, or fourteen days for the treatment of a current infection of tapeworms.

The bottle is $14.50 - $20.00, but it is well worth it, especially since the 15ml. bottle can provide prevention and treatment multiple times! Simon’s tapeworm infection cleared up in two and a half weeks, and we haven’t seen a single symptom or sign since then!

So what is Apogee Search (click http://www.apogee-search.com/houston-seo.php, or simply go to apogee-search.com)? It’s a company that specializes in getting your site out there and in front of your target audience. With the use of various proven marketing techniques, including SEO, paid search advertising, ad management and more, Apogee Search can get the job done.

The Texas based search engine marketing firm works hard to ensure website placement on the three major search engines — Google, Yahoo! and MSN — as well as many others. Apogee Search has been around since 2001, and time and again has been successful in bringing websites to the top of their game.

I’d like you to meet the oldest of my three cats, Blueboy.

Blueboy is an eight year old Persian cat that has been with my family since my grandmother picked him out as a birthday gift for herself in August of 2000. Between then and now Blueboy has gone through a lot. He traveled back and forth between my grandparents’ home and my mother’s home (a seventy mile/two hour trip) at least once a month. He co-existed with two dogs, then just a small dog, then a small dog and another cat, and then just the small dog again.
In the summer of 2004 my grandparents left Blueboy at my mom’s house permanently, as he was not liking the car trips every few weeks. He didn’t take to the separation very well, and reacted by urinating on my mother in her bed. It was then that he came to live with us.
Since then he has moved with us three times, and co-existed with five different cats, and a dog (the small dog mentioned above) on the three different occasions we fostered him. And then there have been the introduction of new humans to the household — our daughter, who was born in October of 2004, and then our son, who was born in July of 2006.
Through it all, he remained forever calm, mellow and friendly, with his typical I’m-better-than-you Persian cat attitude.

Until this past fall. I don’t know if it was the situation itself, or the straw that broke the camel’s back, but having my brothers live with us for seven weeks stressed Blueboy out, and pushed him beyond his endurance. Gone was the sweet kitty I knew. In its place was a sulking, skulking cat that hid under furniture, shied away from everyone, attacked the second youngest cat in our household (Kirin, with whom he had previously been on very good terms with), and worse still, began to use our bed, our daughter’s bed and my husband’s desk chair as his personal litter box.

This all started in mid-October, and went on through January. I had tried everything I could think of at that point — treats, extra love and affection when Blueboy would come around, separating him from the others, adding a second litter box to the household, etc. I even took him to the vet twice to ensure that there were no health problems causing the abrupt change in attitude and refusal to use his litter box on a consistent basis.

I was nearing the end of my rope, and honestly had been considering surrendering Blueboy to a rescue group or even the local humane league. I started looking into medications, and found several recommendations. A few days later, I was in PetSmart and happened upon Calm Down! for cats. The instructions were to mix one teaspoon in the cat’s drinking water twice per day. So I came home with that, new toys, additional treats, and another litter box. I cleaned our second bathroom, then made a bed out of soft towels and a pillow in the corner of it, behind the sparkly clean toilet. I set up a litter box, food and water dishes, put out a few toys, and then added a teaspoon of Calm Down! to the water. Finally I added Blueboy, after dragging him out from beneath our bed.

For the next two weeks, Blueboy remained in isolation in the bathroom. We kept the light on for him in the late afternoon and evening, and my daughter and I visited with him several times each day. Every night I would come in to give him canned food, give him fresh, Calm Down! treated water, and take care of his litter box.

After two weeks, we slowly introduced Blueboy back to the household, letting him out for increasing amounts of time, and after a week of good behavior, turned him loose.

Since then, Blueboy has been back to his old self. For us, Calm Down! was a godsend. It performed miracles in terms of ridding Blueboy of whatever stress, anxiety and upset that had been eating away at him and causing him to attack our other cat and urinate and defecate all over the house. Our proud, regal and happy cat is back with us, and Calm Down! is in our bathroom cabinet, ready if it ever needs to be used again.