Salty Zebra

  Hey there! I'm an Amazon Associate, which means I earn a commission when you click one of these links and buy something. This does not change your cost at all.  One concerns that keeps some people from enjoying all that a cruise vacation has to offer is the fear of sea sickness. Today I'd like to share a few of the preventatives and remedies that I've used over the years. I am really blessed that, during this season of my life, sea sickness is not a serious issue for me. I have experienced it in the past, and these days if there's even a hint that it might be coming, I start right in with these measures to be sure to enjoy my trips as much as possible.  I'm sure you've heard it said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," and when it comes to sea sickness, I'd double that! This phrase, coined by Benjamin Franklin, alludes to the fact that it's much easier to deal with an issue before it comes to pass. When it comes to sea sickness...

Hey there! I'm an Amazon Associate, which means I earn a commission when you click one of these links and buy something. This does not change your cost at all. I've officially been on 13 cruises now and over the years I've developed a few "hacks" that make cruising an even more comfortable and efficient way to travel. I've put them together here in this post for your convenience. The product links I've included are either to the exact item I use or when there's a better option, I link to that. Feel free to post any questions in the comments and I'll reply ASAP. Hopefully you'll find one or more things that will work for you. Happy Cruising!   Night Light You wouldn't believe how dark a cruise cabin can get! Especially if you're in an inside room. I run into the same issue in balcony rooms though. If, like me, you need to get up a time or two at night to use the restroom and you don't favor the idea of walking around with bruises, ...

  So said a plaque in my Mom's office at the Fire Department. She worked in IT there for more than 30 years before she retired last year. One of the main things she learned? At the Fire Department, everything is an emergency!   For many years (maybe decades?) I've been a big proponent of having a meal plan. This informs my grocery shopping and keeps me from overspending and wasting food. It also solves the age-old question of "What's for dinner?" One of my favorite tools? I use a meal planning service called Plan to Eat *. On it I store my recipes (I have nearly 2,000 saved at the moment). Then, using the planning tool, I schedule my meals by dragging and dropping them onto a calendar. Plan to Eat then generates a shopping list based on the ingredients from my recipes. It learns over time which stores I prefer to buy things at and what category (like produce or dairy) things will be found in. It takes just a few minutes for me to delete any items I already have on...

   If this is the first time you've encountered this scene, I highly recommend you add Kindergarten Cop  to your movie watching list. It's a classic. This scene is funny because, of course, he doesn't have a tumor. He has a headache because this man who has nothing to do with children in his normal life is attempting to wrangle a class full of Kindergarteners. But I feel more and more things when I watch this scene today.  Ten years ago, if I had wondered if I had a brain tumor when I was dealing with a particularly bad headache, most people would have called me a hypochondriac. Today, on the other hand, I actually do have a tumor. If you're just tuning in and this news has caught you by surprise, you can catch up here . Almost two years ago, my surgeon resected *about* 75% of it. I write that in such uncertain terms because we truly are uncertain. Turns out that MRI measurements are terribly fallible and can have a margin of error that is about the size they estimat...

   I wrote recently about Learning to Live Within My Limits . Lately I haven't been succeeding at that very well. Instead, I've been, "Living in the Pink." In my Visible app, my points show up as blue when I am at or under my limit. When I go past the tracker during the day, it shows up as yellow because I still have a chance to rest and get back under my goal. But once the day is done, if I have used more points than I should, it turns to pink. I guess they felt like it was a gentler color than red. For the last six days, I have not stayed under my goal. Yesterday I only surpassed it by 0.1 points, so I feel like the pink is not fully deserved, but other days I went over by as much as 10 points, more than 30% of my planned total.   So why do I care? It's in the past, right? I care because my points overage doesn't stay in the past. Each day I go over affects the next, and sometimes more. When I have a stretch like this of days in a row of going over, it can t...

Hey there! I'm an Amazon Associate, which means I earn a commission when you click one of these links and buy something. This does not change your cost at all.  I don't know about you, but I can totally identify with the family in this picture! Now, I would certainly never sit where they're sitting, but sometimes the world can feel like this in even common situations. I mentioned in a post a few days ago that I struggle with light sensitivity. I also have a hard time with noise. This can be an extreme thing, like a concert (or any given Sunday at our church), or something as simple as a fan or water running. It takes on two presentations: I can't hear or process things well if there is background noise and lots of noise tends to overwhelm me and make me shut down.   What do I mean by shut down? It was really extreme before my brain surgery last year. We were at Disney World celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary and the noise/stimulation got to be so much that my bra...

   I've always been a bit of a, "glass is half full" gal. My default is to find the positive in a situation, which sometimes annoys my family, but I hope overall has given them a better experience. One common phrase we use about this is, "Seeing the world through rose colored glasses." This phrase is not always intended positively as some people perceive this outlook as a negative. They would contend that I am not adequately preparing for the trouble that might come my way or that I'm getting my hopes up unjustifiably. My husband, for example, is more of a preparer.   One of the big shifts that came to our household from Covid was the backup pantry. Many, if not most, people have a pantry. In ours we mostly store backups for open items in our kitchen. For example, if there's an open bottle of ketchup in the fridge, there should be a sealed one waiting to replace it in the pantry. When scarcity came to town in March of 2020, the backup pantry was born. It...

  I wrote earlier about my Visible arm band and tracker. They have certainly changed my life, but it hasn't all been easy, and I'm not done yet. One of the hardest things about chronic illness is acceptance. For many people, this is why diagnosis is so important to them. Until they have that label to validate how they feel, they can't fully believe it. I know it was this way for me, but the road to diagnosis is long, and windy, and there seem to be bridges out periodically.  When you've spent so long, for some their entire adult lives, switching between trying to convince the doctors and your loved ones that there's something wrong with you and then convincing yourself that's you're probably ok because they can't find anything wrong it really messes with your mind. Sadly, for many people when they finally are  diagnosed, they are told that there is no cure, little or no treatment, and they just have to live with it. Oh, and it might kill them too. That...