Tag: trash

Plastic and Stainless Steel Hypoallergenic Stud Earrings

On By Michel McDonaldIn Etsy, Jewelry1 Comment

plastic and stainless steel

Before I only had plastic, but now I have both plastic and stainless steel which is hypoallergenic.  I can say with certainty that they are hypoallergenic because I have worn them for weeks with no problems.  I always test the earrings on my own ears for a day, a few days or until I can’t wear them anymore due to my allergies and I haven’t had any reaction or symptoms of allergies from these metal stems.

The only issue with the hypoallergenic stainless steel studs that I have is that the rubber backings don’t stay on as well as they stay on the rubber stems. They came with rubber, not metal backings, so I don’t have metal backings to go with them. I have been looking for metal backings, but I don’t have any guarantee they will be hypoallergenic. The best bet for a customer is if you have a pair of earrings that you know the backings are hypoallergenic, use those. I love the stainless steel studs, I just don’t want to use them out of fear of losing them if the rubber backings come out. I always suggest to people to buy the plastic ones because the rubber backings hug the plastic stem, so there isn’t a risk of them falling off on their own.

My main reason for wanting to make these earrings was so I could make earrings for myself because earrings are expensive and I can’t always afford them.  Plus I wanted to wear something that I made.  I now have a huge selection of earrings and that is awesome for me lol.  If I get bored with what color I am wearing, I can always make myself another color.  Of course they aren’t sparkly, but I don’t really need them to be.

So if you happen to be looking for a pair of earrings, come to my shop on Etsy called GayNerd and I will hook you up with some at great prices.  Only $5 a pair for the studs. I do have some listings that offer a discount if you buy more than 1 pair, and I also have coupons every month. I love them, so I know you will too.

Michael’s Earring Hooks

On By Michel McDonaldIn Jewelry1 Comment

all 3 rainbow earrings

I bought earring hooks from Michael’s to use in the earrings that I make to sell on Etsy.  I was worried that because the package didn’t say what type of metal they were and they didn’t say they were hypoallergenic, that perhaps maybe I shouldn’t use them at all because I would hate to go through all that trouble to make earrings that people will have to throw or give away because they irritate their skin.  I decided to still make these earrings because there are people out there who can tolerate any metal earring.

I did buy some hypoallergenic hooks on Amazon, but I didn’t read the reviews until after I paid for them, and I tried to cancel the order right away, but they wouldn’t let me choose a reason for canceling, so I’m stuck with them.   The reviews were basically saying they took too long to ship because they ship from Honk Kong, which I didn’t see when I bought them.  They also said that some of the hooks were bent and that they ended up throwing most of them in the trash and that despite saying they were hypoallergenic, they weren’t.  So when I get those in the mail in August, I will have to say they are not hypoallergenic, but I will test them on myself before I use them.

Of course I will be buying some known hypoallergenic hooks, but they are incredibly expensive.  So unless I actually sell earrings or keychains, I won’t be able to afford to buy the expensive hypoallergenic hooks.

So the earring hooks I bought from Michael’s aren’t doing so bad.  I decided to put in a pair at Midnight on the night of July the 5th 2013 and have had them in my ears for nearly 11 hours and this is how they look in my ears.  The package had 2 different types of hooks, half of each, these aren’t the same type of hooks in the earrings you see in the image at the top.  I have a really bad sensitivity to certain metals and believe me, I will get a reaction after just a few minutes, so if I’ve had these in my ears for 11 hours, then I’m sure they should be okay for anyone else.

earrings 10 hours

As you can see, the hooks haven’t made any impact on my ears.  They are the ones in the 2nd hole in both ears.  Keep in mind that those holes haven’t had an earring in them for years and I had to push them in a bit because they felt like they had closed up in the back.  So if there is some redness, that’s probably why.  They do look a little red in the picture, especially the left ear, but there isn’t any irritation and they aren’t red when I look at them in the mirror.  They seem fine to me.

Of course, 11 hours isn’t hardly enough time to judge whether these earrings from Michael’s are going to cause a bad reaction, so I will keep taking pictures every day for a week and keep updating this post.

Update:  After 16 hours of wearing these Michael’s earrings, I suddenly felt a pressure in my head accompanied by ringing in both ears and slight dizziness.  I Googled my symptoms and found out that a lot of people have asked about earrings causing that and the condition is called Tinnitus.  I took the earrings out and within half an hour my symptoms eased up, but they are still there after another half an hour.  I thought that perhaps it was not caused by the earrings because when I took them out I took a picture and they didn’t look that bad.  There wasn’t any redness, swelling or pain.  I would think that if my ears were having an allergic reaction to the metal they would at least be red.  I didn’t see any redness in the mirror, but I do see it in the pictures.

earrings 16 hours

After having them out for 45 minutes, I decided to put them in Claire’s Ear Wash Antiseptic and put them back in.  The dizziness, tightness and buzzing or ringing is still there, but it’s not as bad as it was, so I don’t know what caused it or why, but I’m going to leave the earrings in and see what happens next.  I really want these earrings to work for me, because if I can wear them, then I will sleep better knowing that I am not selling earrings that people are going to have issues with.  Of course, if you know you have an allergy to certain metals, you know not to buy unless it says it is hypoallergenic, so naturally buyer beware.  I will keep them in for as long as I can.  See how dedicated I am to my customers that I am willing to risk getting an infection lol.

24 hour update:  I have had these earrings in my ears for 24 hours.  Well, minus about 45 minutes from earlier today when I got dizzy and had a constant ringing in my ears.  The dizziness and ringing didn’t come back, so I’m wondering if that was something else.  I have been having dizzy spells, so perhaps that wasn’t related to the earrings.  At any rate, I seem to be doing fine.  Pictures to come tomorrow afternoon.

40 hour update:  I had to take the earrings out of my ears because my right ear was starting to get infected.  That sucks.  I knew these earrings wouldn’t be hypoallergenic, but I was kind of hoping they would still be okay.  Oh well.  Here is the final picture.

earrings 40 hours

I forgot to write right ear and left ear, but you can figure that out lol.  As you can see, the left ear is fine, it didn’t get affected at all, but the right ear is infected.  What’s funny is that neither one of them hurt, even the infected one, so I didn’t even know it was infected until I took the picture.

I will be buying some actual hypoallergenic earring hooks called Niobium as well as plastic earring studs for another type of earring for men.  I actually just bought the plastic earring studs so when they come I can figure out what I will make.  Whatever it is will be made with gimp like the keychains.

My Cloudy Lava Lamp (FIXED)

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily Blog3 Comments

httpvh://youtu.be/RPYaW_NTJZ4

I am a happy camper today.  I was at my wit’s end with this lava lamp because when I cleaned it, it didn’t work again.  It just sat there with the blob of wax sitting at the bottom and never doing anything.  This morning I just started adding more and more straw fulls of salt water and boy has it come back from the dead fast.  I mean, it’s night and day.

I posted this about my cloudy lava lamp and talked near the end about how done with it I was and that I was going to just get a new one, but I take it back now lol.  You can see pictures of my experience with the epsom salt.  It was a total nightmare!

So this is how I fixed my yellow cloudy lava lamp.  I dumped the water out, rinsed it out in the sink, added distilled water, then a drop of Avon body wash, made a mixture of 1TBSP of salt with a small glass of distilled water and stirred it.  I used a straw to add the salt water to the lava lamp, but I had to add a lot of straws full.  I think just keep adding it until you see it doing something.  Obviously if the lava is just sitting at the bottom it needs more salt water.  If it starts to kick up but doesn’t break away too easy, add more salt water.

YAY!  I finally got my lava lamp back to working!  My partner suggested to throw it in the trash and he’d buy me another one, but I don’t want another one, I want this one!  He bought it for me for Christmas 2011.  I also don’t like the idea of adding one more thing to the already overflowing land fills.  I know everything in it can be recycled, but I still wanted to try to get it working again.  I’m glad I succeeded!

Don’t Be Tardy For The Wedding

On By Michel McDonaldIn TVLeave a comment

I am not a huge reality TV fan, well unless it’s Kathy Griffin’s My Life on the D-List.  I didn’t like all of the Real Housewives shows because I just can’t take the drama.  I have a low threshold for people screaming at the top of their lungs at each other.

I did watch and love a few of the Real Housewives shows though.  I didn’t watch the first season of Atlanta, but I did see a few episodes here and there.  I do love Kim Zolciak though because, well, she looks like a real life Barbie doll.  She has beautiful hair, even though they are all wigs, but can I just say that I love her without her wigs too?  She has a rack that won’t quit, yeah I said it, I know I’m gay but I would motorboat that shiznit.

When I heard that she was going to have a reality show based on her preparations to marry hunk of the century Kroy Biermann, I had to watch.  I loved that it had a little bit of drama in it, but I hated that the drama came from her mother.  I know mothers are supposed to be a little crazy, but I mean come on this woman took the cake.  She stole Kim’s thunder as her last act of crazy.

If you didn’t see it, here is how it went down.  Kim’s mother and I guess her sister, Kim’s aunt, decided they had to go use the bathroom, but they refused to use the porta potty that Kim had paid $6000 for.  They figured they were too good to use a $6000 toilet so they had to break the rules just to take a piss.  They went to the door to the house and the security guard told them they had to use the porta potty and they got high and mighty with him and screamed “I’m Kim’s mother and this is her aunt” and “I will burn down this house if I have to!”

Seriously?  They couldn’t just use the porta potty?  I mean, I saw the porta potty that they rented when they looked at it.  It was bigger than our bathroom AND it had an attendant to boot!  She is too good for that?

So while they were in the bathroom upstairs, they were trash talking Kim and Kroy.  I mean what nerve!  They break the rules then go and trash talk the bride and the groom and act as if they are gods.  Then she finds out that the police have been called to escort them out so she goes back to the party and tells people that she is being kicked out and she doesn’t know why.  When someone asks her where Kim is, she says “She’s behind all of it, with Kroy.”

Really?  I mean this woman is a liar, manipulator and an instigator.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Kim never spoke to her mother again after that.  Watch the video.

http://www.bravotv.com/video/embed/?/_vid18615847

OMG I am just so thankful that I never have to go through that, not marriage but having a mother to act like that at my wedding.  Especially when it’s on TV!  UGH!

But Kim and Kroy were calm, they didn’t make a huge deal about it ruining the whole night.  They showed them cutting the cake while her mother was being escorted out, I’m sure it was edited to look that way, but who really knows for sure.  Their wedding was a success and the whole season was fun to watch and I’m glad I didn’t miss it.

Now, let’s get back to me boycotting weddings until gay people are allowed to get married shall we?  LOL

Style Exposed “Sperm Donor: 74 Kids and More”

On By Michel McDonaldIn TV10 Comments

I was fortunate yesterday that I found the most wonderful gift in the tv guide.  It was a show called “Sperm Donor: 74 kids and more” on the Style channel.

With a title like that, who couldn’t resist watching it?  It put’s the show “19 kids and counting” to shame.

We meet this man named Ben who was hurting for money when he was in college and when he heard he could make $900 a month donating his sperm, he took full advantage of the situation.

Hey, I don’t blame the guy.  I mean, your body is constantly generating something that usually just goes into a tissue, why not make some money right?  I mean, if I had a dollar for every tissue I threw away I’d be the richest man on the planet.

Unfortunately for him, his fiancé doesn’t like knowing that not only was her future husband a sperm donor, but now he is finding out that his donations have produced more than 74 children.

There is a scene where they are in a restaurant and she is telling him that he is selfish for letting this happen.

What?  He’s selfish?  Is she kidding me?  If anyone is selfish here it’s her because if it wasn’t for Ben donating his sperm, there wouldn’t be so many happy families out there with children that they couldn’t produce on their own.  His donations gave people the gift of life.

They showed a couple who used Bens sperm donation because the husband was shooting blanks.  They wanted children but he wasn’t able to give one to his wife.  They decided to use the donor sperm and they made daughter out of it.

That daughter found out that he wasn’t her real father so they sneaked a q-tip from her fathers trash can in his bathroom and sent it in for DNA testing.  She discovered that he wasn’t really her father.

She signed onto this website where people who were born from donated sperm could find not only their donated father but also perhaps other donated siblings by way of the donated sperm donor number.

It just so happened that Ben signed up for the same website so he was able to find more than 20 of his children.  He thought that perhaps he might have 100 or maybe even 120 children out there but he wasn’t sure.

Two of his daughters found each other through the website and they were able to meet and they hope that one day they might have a relationship with their sperm donor father.

There was another woman who had 2 children from Bens donated sperm and she told her oldest daughter who was in my opinion too young to know.  The reason I say that is because she wasn’t mature enough to understand the circumstances for why she was created.  She thought that her mother had a relationship with Ben and when Ben meets her mother he would fall in love with her and marry her.

This poor little girl thought that Ben was breaking up with her mother because he was getting married to someone else.  In that situation I think that she should have waited until her daughter was at least 15 or 16 years old before telling her.

The problem that most people will have with this is that he has 74 kids, more than most people should have.  First of all they aren’t his children.  I mean sure they are technically his because they have his DNA but he doesn’t have any responsibility towards them.  I’m sure he signed away his parental rights the minute he handed over the little cup.

His fiancé is worried that he will want to have a relationship with all of those children.  She’s afraid that there might be a reunion every year.  Well so what if there is!  If that’s what he and the children want then I don’t see why they shouldn’t get that.

If all of the siblings find each other and want to have their own reunion then I really don’t take issue with that because they are all half siblings.

It’s funny because the first thing that came to mind was that these kids need to know each other.  What if they meet, get in a relationship, get married and have their own children then find out that they are really brother and sister?

It is up to those kids parents to talk to their kids and say look, I used a sperm donor so that we could have you.  That sperm donor isn’t your father, he’s just a donor.  Your father is still your father.

And if that parent is a single parent or a lesbian couple then they need to have a different conversation.  “Ben isn’t your father, your other mother is your father.”

I don’t think that what Ben did was as wrong as his fiancé thinks he is.  She needs to stop being such a jealous and selfish person.  In my opinion, Ben doesn’t have any children because he didn’t make them with another person, other people made those children.  Ben masturbated in a cup, multiple cups and he shouldn’t be penalized for that.

His fiancé needs to realize that what he did was a good thing and move on with the rest of their relationship.  Stop thinking about how horrible he is for having 74 kids and more and start focusing on the love that they have for each other and possibly the baby they will make with each other.

On a side note, did anyone who watched that show see a resemblance to Seth Rogen?  He had the curly hair, he sort of had Seth Rogens face, he definitely had Seth Rogens voice and laugh.

I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and say that Ben might have fathered Seth Rogen.  Ok so maybe that’s not possible but maybe they might be related to each other some other way, maybe their real father was a sperm donor.  Hey, it could happen.

Cleaning the Back Yard

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily Blog1 Comment

We were supposed to have family visiting us in early March but they postponed until late March.  Then they made it early April, postponed 1 week then again.  Basically, I’ve been frantically cleaning until I hear of the postponement over and over lol.

The house isn’t that bad but you know, it’s the little things here and there.  Nooks and crannys that you don’t think about but it’s the first thing that draws their attention and they bring out the white gloves type of thing lol.

So I moved on to the side patio, back patio and back yard areas.  Got the side patio and back patio cleaned out but it’s the yard that really needs to be cleaned.  I had a lot of trash in all of those places because we never use them so all of the boxes that I don’t feel like breaking down when I get packages and when we got our tv’s ended up there.  Also, some stuff got ruined in the recent rains and well, needless to say I have a lot of trash.  Our trash only gets picked up once a week so I have to wait to clean some more.

Our back yard doesn’t have any grass and the orange tree is growing out of control but what I would like to do is clean it all up, prune the branches on the tree and put grass out there then I can clean up the lounge chairs (sand, prime and repaint them and buy some garden cushions for them) so that I can sit out there.

My Nook works in the sunlight and I think that will make reading it so much easier if I’m reading it outside instead of inside.  Also, it will give our dog Flower a chance to do what she loves to do in the summer time which is sun bathe.  She loves to lay out in the sun.  I can see her laying on a lounge chair in the back yard lol.

I think that if we had a nicer looking back yard we might have BBQ’s back there where we can invite friends and family over for lunch or dinner or something.  Then we can all sit in the chairs in the sun or in the patio under the awning.

Since I have a lot of work ahead of me this is just a dream for now.  But like I said, I can’t do anything until the trash gets picked up so I can add more to the cans.  Same with the green cans.  I can’t add any of the orange tree branches to a full can so this will be a dream that will take weeks, maybe even months to fulfill.  But I want it to happen so it will… hopefully.

You Don’t Get Paid To Recycle Bottles? Whaaat?

On By Michel McDonaldIn Green, RecycleLeave a comment

I am talking to a friend that I have known for many cycles.  We’ve been online buds since 1997 when I first got online and was using AOSmell going into the Astronet Chatrooms.

We are talking about recycling.  I was telling her about how much I get paid here in Bakersfield, CA for recycling cans as opposed to how much I get paid to recycle 2 liter bottles.  She lives in St. Louis, Missouri and she informs me that she gets money for recycling the cans but they don’t allow them to profit off of 2 liter bottles yet they charge her .05¢ on top of the regular cost to buy a 2 liter bottle.

This is just another example of how “the man” is trying to screw you out of your hard earned money.

This is what I asked her:

Mike:
ok just so I get my facts straight…

you can recycle 2 liter bottles but they don’t allow you to make any money? yet they allow you to make money from recycling cans correct?

and they make you pay for the blue recycling cans and make you recycle?

Susan:”
right you don’t get money from any plastics at all you can get money for cans it is like 30 cents a pound for cans but nothing for any plastics we have to have them recycled and picked up by the contracted trash company for the city. some cities don’t even get a choice

Are you listening America?  They don’t even give you a choice in some cities.  They charge you .05¢ for the bottles yet they don’t give it back to you.  That’s what the point of the California Redemption Value (CRV) is, that’s why they charge us the .05¢, so you will recycle it, so you may get your change back.

I was at the grocery store yesterday where I bought a 12 pack of diet Dr. Chill (a new albertson’s generic brand lol) and it was on sale for $2.67 which was the only reason I bought it in the first place then the total was over $3 and I was like what?  I thought it was $2.67 and she said CRV and she pointed on the screen that it shows .60¢ CRV charge.  That’s .05¢ per can.  Yeah, you are damned right I’m recycling that shit.

No More Corresponding

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Remember the day when you would sit at a desk and write a letter to someone with an actual pen and paper?  Sometimes you mess up so you have to crumble up the paper and throw it away and the trash can would be halfway full of crumbled up paper.  You wanted to get it right because there was no delete button and there was no spell check.  Then once you were finished you folded it up and stuffed it into an envelope and wrote your address and their address and put a 10¢ stamp on it then put it in your mailbox to go out the next day.  Remember that?

Well, then the internet came along and that made it so much easier to sit at your home computer (mac or pc) and you could email your letter instead.  You sat there thinking what you wanted to say so you didn’t sound too weird or something.  Now of course you could delete and spell check then the person gets it in the blink of an eye.

What happened to that?  It seems that I don’t get any emails from family or friends anymore except for the ones that are forwarded to me from other people who have either jokes, funny pictures of dogs or cats or some old lady comic strip.  Most of the emails people forward to me are all telling me about some kid who has cancer and you have to forward it to 10 people.  Or about being careful not to get out of the car with the keys in the ignition because you see a note in the back of the car.

For once I’d like to get an email from someone telling me how their day or week was.  An email saying hi how are you.  I email people constantly and sometimes they actually respond but then that’s it.  If I don’t start a conversation then the conversation never gets had.

What is the point of having email if nobody will actually email you something that they wrote instead of just using other crap people have sent them.

I think that’s one of the reasons why I blog so much because I’ve gotten to the point where nobody emails me so why should I email them.  So if I have something that I want to get out, I’m just gonna blog it and if someone cares enough to read it then they can respond either in email or they can leave a comment.

I know someone out there knows what I’m talking about.

Cost Of A Fruit Cake

On By Michel McDonaldIn Food, HolidaysLeave a comment

I just cannot believe how much it costs to make a fruit cake.  Now I know why those things are so expensive.  Dang $51 so far and I still need eggs and margarine.  By the time I have all the rest of the ingredients it will be $55.  I just hope that it makes a whole lot of fruit cake.  It better.

I wanted to make it so bad because I can never find it in the stores and when I find it online it’s so expensive.  A 1lb cake is $25.  I’m sure that I have about a 10lb cake so far lol.  I’m going to have to split it up into a few smaller ones because fruit cake doesn’t have a very good reputation.  I bought these small loaf pans that have lids (disposable pans) and there are 3 in the pack so I can make 3 small.  I also have a regular size loaf pan which I’m going to start with then put the rest in the smaller ones.  I want to bring the small ones because I know that people are going to waste big slices if they don’t like it and it’s too expensive to throw away.

All I know is if I see 1 piece of fruit cake in the trash I’m gonna lose it lol.  Just kidding.  Maybe lol.

Recycling Numbers

On By Michel McDonaldIn GreenLeave a comment

Today we went to turn in our plastic to recycle and found out that different plastic containers have different numbers and they cannot all be recycled together.  See I never knew that.  I found this website that shows you what the difference is.

What do those recycling numbers mean?

I had all these different types of plastics.  I had clear soda bottles, milk cartons, yogurt containers etc. and they had to separate the clear bottles with the rest.  The clear soda bottles had the 1 on the bottom inside that little recycle symbol.  Those get you more money than the other ones which were 2 and up.

We had basically half number 1 and the rest were 2-6.  When the guy gave us the receipt it showed us how much each plastic cost.  The plastic with the 1 was a lot more than the rest.  I think it was $7 something for all the number 1’s but all the rest we got like .45 cents and that’s it and it was half  number 1 and the other half was all the rest and that rest was less money.  So basically it’s not even worth recycling the rest.

They basically told us that it’s a waste of time to save anything but the number 1 plastic as well as even paper.  The reason I am recycling isn’t for the money although it helps in today’s economy but also because those Brita commercials where they say like 30 minutes on a treadmill, forever in a landfill.  Those make me feel guilty for buying anything that comes in plastic or anything lol.  But, you know if they are so concerned with it then they will have a machine that goes through the trash cherry picking all the certain types of plastics and paper etc.  Darrin told me that he read in the newspaper that there is like a mountain of recycled paper that they are having trouble getting rid of, that’s why paper is so cheap to recycle.  That’s probably also why the plastic that isn’t number 1 is cheap.

I’m not saying to not recycle because the CRV items like the soda bottles/water bottles and soda/beer cans give you a lot more money but I’m certainly not going to waste our patio space recycling milk cartons and yogurt containers and other plastics anymore.  I’m going to find out about steel cans too before I waste any more time with those.  I want to save the planet but at the same time if they don’t want to recycle certain things then it’s out of my hands.  I can only do so much by using the cloth grocery bags and recycling plastic and aluminum.