Monica Kochelee

In an earlier post, you might have seen two pictures of my little white doggie, PITA.  He came to live with us a year ago.  He was a stray, wandered into our yard on the coldest day of the year.  He was so small; I thought he was a puppy.  I took pity on the little guy and decided to let him in the house so I could call his owners to come get him.  Long story short, he had no identification on him.  I called all the neighbors, the local animal shelters, the area vets, the police, all the local breeders, and the newspapers.  No one ever claimed him, and so he became a member of our family.

When he came to us, he was not housebroken or obedience trained in any way.  That’s one reason I thought he was a puppy.  Turns out that he was NOT a puppy, he had all his adult teeth!  But, apparently he was kenneled outdoors with other dogs, and never trained.  We found out that he was deaf and partially blind!

That made training the little guy very challenging, since he can’t hear, and can barely see!

So far, we have made great progress in the housebreaking department, and have trained him with hand signals (and treats!) to walk with a leash, come, sit, shake hands (paws) and lie down.  We are working on the fetch, but he only will do it as long as he is interested in playing tug of war with us when he brings the toy back to us.  I’d like to train him to do more tricks, but he is resisting the roll over training.

I’m not the kind of person that buys clothes frequently.  Don’t get me wrong, I would LOVE to be able to buy lots of clothes frequently, I just don’t have that kind of money!   And, I have a hard-to-fit body pear-shaped body.  I should wear a size smaller top than bottom, and I am thick waisted, which makes it hard to buy dresses or skirts/pants suits that fit.  In fact, recently I found a size chart that says I should buy & wear a size 12W.  Well, I have never seen a size 12W in any store.  Most stores that I’ve seen that sell “W” sizes start at 16W!  And the few catalogs/Internet sites that I’ve seen that cater to the “W” sizes start at 14W.  So, I’m a mess.

So, I try to buy classic clothes that will stay in style for a long time, and I try to keep them in good shape. 

I recently purchased an expensive (to me) turtleneck sweater through a high-end catalog.  When it arrived in the mail I was surprised that included in the box were instructions on how to properly put in on!   I had always just stuck my arms in the sleeves and then pulled it over my head, which is the way my mother had taught me to do it.

The instructions explained that doing it that way increases stress on the shoulder seams, and will eventually cause those shoulder seams to rip open.  They said that in order to prolong the life of a turtleneck sweater, you should pull it over your head first, and then put your arms (one by one) into the sleeves.

I never knew that!  No wonder most of my turtleneck sweaters had ripped shoulder seams!  So now I know better, I will always put all of my sweaters on that way.

Several years ago my sister was working for a small company in the Washington DC area that does database marketing. I never really knew what that meant until she worked there and I had a reason to find out. The company gathered information on people from a variety of sources and built consumer profiles on each American household.

Her company knew how many vehicles you have, whether you voted Democrat or Republican, what brand of cigarettes you smoke, if any, and all kinds of personal information. They then sold that information to companies to be used in telemarketing and direct mail advertising campaigns.

Telemarketing has become much more sophisticated now. The information used by the telemarketers is more accurate so calls aren’t wasted on people that don’t qualify, and the calls are better targeted to the demographics and lifestyles of people who might be interested.

Small companies can now use telemarketing in select markets to their advantage. It doesn’t have to be a bad word - you should check out some of the good things that telemarketing can do. And with the price of postage going up again, it may make more sense to use the telephone instead of the mailman to deliver your company’s message.

I just discovered Freecycle!  An Internet Yahoo group that you can post messages to that you are giving away or looking for an item.

I just joined my local Freecycle group and spent some time looking at the offers of things that people want to give away.  I just got a perfectly good used crock-pot and some crock-pot cookbooks!  Now I’m going to have to pick out some recipes and start using it!