Tips

Recently Abby and I have had occasion to share a laundry tip with dad.

Our dad is quite particular about his clothes. He likes certain brands and certain looks and will not be bothered with anything that isn’t what he deems “cool.”

He really does have good taste in clothing, and hardly ever embarrasses us by what he wears. There are a couple of pictures that remind us of times when he wasn’t looking his “coolest”, but since I don’t have a scanner or the time to hunt for the picture you won’t ever have to know how bad it really was.

Abby told him how I bleach a small spot on a large item. I get a q-tip dip it in bleach and just spot-bleach the stain. Most of our clothes can’t be bleached because of the other colors on them, and I always have chlorine bleach on hand, so that is how I get the coke, mustard, and other odd stains out of clothes.

Well, daddy apparently scrubbed his shirt with the q-tip and made a hole in it. Only daddy. I have never had that happen before.

( I will digress to tell you of a time when I was in 9th grade and wanted a pair of white Levi 501 button-up jeans. They were way beyond my budget and beyond what my parents would pay for jeans. So mom and I decided we would make our own. We got my most faded 501’s and bleached them. And bleached them. And bleached them again. Well, we bleached those things one to many times and they fell apart. But, mom must have felt sorry for me, because I got a new pair of white Levi 501 button-up jeans that weekend. Thanks Mom!)

Daddy was sure to call me and let me know of his spot-bleach disaster. But today he called to tell me that one of my other tips has really worked over the years.

This one is health related.

When Stephen and I first got married I struggled terribly with fever blisters. Not only at that time, but really all of my teenage years too. One day I was in the local restaurant, sporting a nice big fever blister, and the owner told me what to do to keep that from happening.

Are you ready?

Alcohol on a cotton ball.

When you start to feel a fever blister come up (and it must be at that time, once it is already up it won’t work) put alcohol on a cotton ball hold on your lip where you feel it coming up and it won’t come up. Miracle! No more L-syne tablets everyday. No more Xanax before big events. No more zinc-oxide at the pool. And I don’t get as many as I did before I started using this. It could be that ages 12 to 25 were anxious times in my life and now that I’m reaching 40 I’m more calm, I don’t know. But I hardly ever get a fever blister!

For those of you that don’t have fever blisters I know you don’t understand the miracle just written about above. But for those of you that do get them. Your thanks will be enough, no need to send money!

Do you have any great tips?