It seems that when the heat is high outside, my kitchen becomes the hottest room in the house. I will do anything to avoid having to spend an hour in the kitchen cooking with the hot stove and oven making the room heat up. So I’ve become a great fan of cold summer salads.

Do you have a favorite salad?

I was reading an article in the LA Times about how recent research has determined that some new shower curtains give off toxic chemicals for up to an entire month after they have been opened. Not all, but many shower curtains are made with PVC, a type of vinyl that has been linked to many health hazards. Some shower curtains are made from a safer ethylene vinyl acetate, and some are made from fabric.

I think that in the future, when I buy a new shower curtain (or curtain liner!) I will look carefully at the label and see what it is made from before I buy it! If it’s made from PVC, I will be putting it back on the shelf!

There has been so much rain around here lately that it has been hard to do any outside work. My mother had hired some people to do some remodeling of her house and they got their trucks stuck up to the axles in her back yard! They tore her back yard up very badly trying to get unstuck! They also ruined her drain field for her septic system! What a mess! We told them that they were going to have to pay to have the lawn fixed, and the drain field, and they weren’t happy to hear that at all! But they should have known better than to have driven over the lawn and drain field! Big dummies!

My youngest son has shamed me into replacing the standard incandescent light bulbs throughout the house with CFL bulbs. The CFL bulbs use less electricity, so that makes them environmentally friendly, and it will save money on the electric bill. It took a while for me to find 3-Way CFL bulbs, finally found them at the local ACE Hardware store.

There are a few older light fixtures in the ceiling that are too small for the CFL bulbs that I bought to fit into. So, I will have to keep my eyes open for different sizes and shapes of CFL bulbs to fit into those.

Well, I heard that the groundhog saw his shadow this morning!  Six more weeks of winter!  I’m unhappy about that, I’m tired of the cold this year.  I don’t know why it has bothered me more this year than usual.  Though come to think of it, it is probably because I’ve got the thermostat set lower to save energy and money.  That is probably the real reason!  Thank goodness for long johns and warm sweaters!