It’s easy to put off cleaning your refrigerator, but it becomes much easier if you follow our helpful tips. This is the one kitchen appliance you use more than any other, but probably clean the least.

Create a Cleanser

We recommend that you make a great homemade cleaner with a gallon of hot water, a cup of ammonia, half a cup of vinegar and a quarter of a cup of baking soda. You can pour this mixture into your spray bottle. Or, you can just put it in a bucker or bowl and use a sponge. This is a mixture that you do not need to rinse away and it also serves as an effective degreaser that will stop mold and mildew from developing. These two things can be real problems in refrigerators. We advise you to apply this cleaner to every part of the refrigerator. Don’t forget the shelves and drawers. Read the rest of this entry

As I sit behind this mindless monitor, plinking at the keys of a wireless keyboard, clicking the wireless mouse, I think to myself, “Where the hell is my office?”.

A poignant observation as the fall air chills and makes me long for the hayrides of my youth. The “cubicle” of corporate America is being corrupted by the fat-cats in power that take, and keep on taking. My office is erased by the notion of “Work at Home”, and as I get a call from my creditors in India telling me my account is past due, I think “ Geez, I’d love a job calling people telling them their bills are late”, especially the CEO’s of the banking institution because they were caught spending company funds on hookers in Costa Rica, and funneling the “business expense” through an off-shore bank account, while people trying to buy houses are unable to get quality loans because of the abuse of the past.

I think, that as the government bailed out these lenders, the lenders are holding on to the homes trying to persuade the consumer that they can’t quality, but in reality, they are holding on the homes so they (lenders) can turn the house around when the economy rebounds.(whatever that means)

The economy for me pretty much sucks, not because I lost thousands in stocks, or that even though gas prices have declined, I still can’t travel, no. The economy sucks for me because as unemployment increases, I can’t even get a job as a cashier because I’m “over-qualified”. I had to dumb-up my resume to reflect my lack of achievement, and not my achievements. I’ve had to omit degrees, experience, qualifications, and work experience to get even the most basic of employment. (As of this writing, still unsuccessful.)

The office I speak of at the beginning is the cubicle of the mind. The confines of the cubicle are a direct reflection of the aptitude and resolve of the common American. As an American, I feel (personally) that I am not too good for anything. I am willing to assume a position (sic.)that will allow me to live above the poverty level. (Apparently, 150% below the average income means)

I write, because it affords me to escape the cubicle, and allow the freedoms as Americans, have lived and died for. Basically, it’s the last place a boss can affect you work, because of it subjectivity. (Also, every once and a while, someone will pay you to do what you enjoy)

As the corporate cubicle compresses on the average soul, my office will continue to have a hand grenade on the desk, sitting on a sign that says please take a number, as a number one hangs every so gently from the pin.

Andrew Rutigliano

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So I had just gone to the doctor to get a frenectomy, which removes a tissue in the gum. It hurt like crazy, and I had stitches in my mouth, so it was pretty hard to talk or laugh. I felt pretty awful after the surgery, but I still decided to go to Tysons Corner with my best friend, Radhika, and her sister and mom.

While her mom was buying some silverware, Radhika’s sister, Pallavi, stole her flip flops and pretended to throw them down a few floors. Then she handed me one and we ran off with them. Considering I’ve never stolen my friend’s shoes before, I was a little clueless as to what I should do with it, so I just tossed it lightly into a nearby kids’ store called Kidz Zone.

However, I seriously misjudged the height of the toss, and the flip flop got stuck on the Kidz Zone sign and knocked down the z in Kidz. Radhika and Pallavi laughed and I was stuck trying to explain to the store clerk what happened, with my best explanation being “It fell……up.” I had a difficult time telling the story not only because I was laughing, but also because it hurt to laugh with my mouth full of stitches.

My friend’s mom had no idea what was going on and wanted to shop in other areas, so Radhika made me give her my shoes so she wouldn’t get in trouble while I tried to get hers back. The manager was yelling at me for being a careless teenager, threatening to charge me for the damage. He wasn’t aware that the z was missing; I hid it in a corner to avoid further trouble. He called the building service’s men and someone came, laughing the entire time while climbing up a ladder to get the shoe. I quickly thanked him and ran out of the area before I received any fines. I went back down to find Radhika, Pallavi, and her mom crying with laughter at the sight of me wearing flip flops too small that had been on a serious journey.

From that day, I learned that destroying a sign in a mall is the best way to recover from painful stiches in the mouth area.

Cvcarnie116

From my experience, Digg has chosen a very intrusive advertising method. Here is a screen shot of my Digg home page and the ad that popped up. Notice the very subtle close button, for all intents and purposes, hidden in the top right.

Living in hilly snow country 35 miles south of Buffalo, New York is a colorful experience all year long.  One of the best experiences was a particular winter morning. We had several feet of snow on the ground and an ice storm had covered everything.

As I waited for the bus to go to work, I admired the moon over the western hills as the sun crept over the eastern hills.  I was sorry when the bus came because the scene was enchanting, however, the bus
driver closed the door and sat there watching the sky begin to lighten with shades of yellow, red, violet and light blue.  Soon the ice on all the trees was sparkling as though they had been covered with diamond dust.  There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that God was at work as we silently communed with nature at her best.  We carried that scene in our hearts and minds for a long time; for me it has been more than 40 years.  No artist ever produced a more inspiring panorama.

I am sure we all went to work that day with a renewed outlook.

Marilyn Shie

This is the eighth month after the death of my mother-in-law.

She was a health freak and never used to eat out. I lived with her for seventeen years and never saw her missing her daily exercise routine. She was a role model for many people in the hospital where she was working as a matron. It was in 2006 that she started complaining for stomachache. I was upset with her bad health. She was diagnosed with the second degree cirrhosis of her liver. Poor lady! My husband and I took her to the best doctors in the town and started her on medication. Unfortunately, she did not respond to any of the medications as it was too late to get the damage repaired at that stage.

During this course, she became very hostile with us. She was irritated to the extent that she started calling me names. She was amused in bad mouthing me to every individual who used to come to see her. The doctor, however, explained it in another way. He was of the opinion that she is terminally ill and scared of death. Since her liver was damaged, she had all possible deficiencies in her body because of which she was not able to eat anything more than a couple of spoonful of soup and half a glass of juice for the whole day.

We were finding it difficult to adjust between our work and home life. It was very difficult for me to tolerate her bad words. In spite of supporting my husband in that critical time period, I used to criticize his mother’s behavior. He tried to make me understand several times, but my brain had a block set up there and was not ready to listen to him. This continued for all those months while her health was deteriorating. It was in the month of October that she breathed her last and finally the horrified episode of my life came to an end.

As a matter of fact, I should have had peace after this, but I am sad to loose her this way. Every now and then, I feel the loss which her death has created in my life. I go out for work and my children are alone at home. She used to be there with them when she was alive. I never realized it when she was alive. She used to take care of several things at home and I never knew many of them until the whole responsibility came on my shoulders. I regret my behavior with her. I could not understand the pain she was going through.

We tried all alternative medicines available but what can substitute love and care!
My only motive here to share my experience is that the parents can not be replaced once lost. There is no way that we can get them back. My mother used to say that parents can raise ten children but they together also can not look after their parents.

The Nature would never change its course for anyone, but we can change our nature to incorporate an element of love and care in our hearts to be given away

I know that most of these will have readers thinking a little about their behavior. These are based on my experiences growing up in the Heart of Dixie.
Lindsay Mulder

1. Fat kids are only cute if they belong to someone else.
2. Just because people don’t say that your children aren’t hideous doesn’t mean that they aren’t. Stop finding modeling agencies for your ugly kids.
3. A politician’s wife supports him. She knows she’ll live in infamy for being married to an alpha male.
4. You are only special to your family and friends.
5. A hundred years after your death, nobody will care that you existed.
6. Regardless of what they say, people don’t like hearing stories about your dog.
7. If you are a woman and you join a predominantly male company, don’t whine when they won’t include you in their conversations.
8. Women that file lawsuits because a man looked at them too long need to be fired for being too sensitive. Our husbands may work there. You make them uncomfortable.
9. If you go out in a short skirt, halter- top and high heels, you WILL be looked at. Stop whining.
10. If you don’t want to run the risk of being groped, think twice before heading out to a bar in the middle of the night and getting plastered Read the rest of this entry

“]

“I know what we can do over our two-week break,” I announced to my sisters one night, after we were debating how to spend our work-free, homework-free, 2-week break.

“Let’s watch 30 horror films!” I’m not even sure how I thought of the idea – or why I decided to pursue it – as my sisters and I don’t even particularly like horror films. But it sounded like a good idea at the time.

“Um, why would we do that?” My sister Danielle asked me.

“Why not?” I retorted.

My brilliant logic won them over, and our quest began.

We started asking for film suggestions from all of our friends (which we would later classify into two groups: Our respectable-taste-in-movies friends versus our smile-and-nod friends). At first it was fun. We would excitedly rush off to Blockbuster and grab some movies, confer with each other, and tell every confused soul we possibly could about our plans.

But after a few days, it became more like work:
“Listen,” I remember my sister Lauren telling me in a very serious tone, “You can’t go to Tom’s tonight. We have to watch three films tonight to meet our quota. We’ll never catch up in time if you go.”

Read the rest of this entry

From my experiences, starting a blog is exciting, fun and a lot of hard work. Well, actually, starting a blog isn’t hard work, maintaining a blog is extremely hard work. Let me define maitaining: writing blog posts on a regular basis. This blog, From My Experience, started with lofty goals of being a resource to help other people by user and bloggers sharing their personal experiences in daily life situations. It hasn’t gone as I would have hoped. I have written the majority of the posts even when I had hoped I would only be kick starting the blog Read the rest of this entry

Faux pas number one: trying to make my case with the boss. Past experience should have been jumping up and down on my shoulder and screaming into my ear, “Shut up, you big dummy!” But the light bulb didn’t turn on and my normally introverted self kept talking (and talking, and talking).

Faux pas number two: giving the boss’s wife the cold shoulder (who, I should mention, was the cause of my trying to make my case with the boss in the first place). Of course, when the boss’s wife turns out to have multiple personalities that would send Sybil voluntarily fleeing into the proverbial corn bin, simply ignoring her seemed the safest course of action.

Faux pas number three: not falling to my knees and begging for mercy when asked by said boss about criminal actions number one and two. Instead, I turned an interesting shade of purple while trying to suppress the mad hysterical laughter forcing its way up my throat and out of my big fat mouth.

Three strikes and you’re out. Or fired. Or let go. In other words, there goes my steady income which provided the finer things in life such as rent and food, not to mention regular manicures and eyebrow waxing.

So this is the point where most sane people would panic. Right? Well obviously I’m not sane. As I cleared my desk and gathered up my office essentials (green tea bags, flu swabs, contact lens cleaner), my thoughts were already racing ahead to my sunny future. I was on vacation! I would finally have the time to get my freelance business off the ground! My phone would be ringing off the hook with offers of employment! I could spend my days cleaning and cooking and doing laundry and being the perfect wife! See? Insanity. Instead of speeding directly to the unemployment office and securing my rightful benefits that would ensure continuing salon appointments, I instead headed directly to my local wine and spirits establishment, stocking up on my favorite Pinot Grigio. A girl’s got to celebrate, er, drown her sorrow in style, right?

Which brings us to day four of my, uh, hiatus. The Pinot Grigio bottles are empty. My house is still a mess. Clients haven’t been knocking down my door to procure my freelance services, nor have the full time employment offers been pouring in. Okay, I haven’t even been asked in for an interview. And my nails need a fill and my brows are looking a little bushy. Some vacation. I know what you’re thinking. This is the point where most insane people would panic. Well obviously I’m not your run-of-the-mill insane person.. In fact, maybe I could be a case study for a new strain of psychosis. I could get paid for being a lab specimen! Scientists will marvel over my ability to avoid the obvious – I’m unemployed, broke, and have no immediate prospects.

But while sane people might dwell on the obvious, creative lunatics such as myself concentrate on seeing the wine glass as half full – with the promise of new freelance opportunities, the promise of working for a kinder, gentler boss (minus the schizophrenic better half), and the promise that everything happens for a reason. Was I really that unhappy in my job? Probably more so than I was ready to admit. Was it really a good idea to tell my boss that maybe it was “time I moved on”? Obviously not. He took me at my word and sent me merrily on my way. Am I suffering from panic attacks at the thought that I may not have funds for the next clearance sale. Never!

My wine glass is never empty, nor is the promise of what tomorrow may bring. The world is my oyster and if there’s one thing this southern girl enjoys, it’s a nice fat steamed oyster on the half shell. Pass the hot sauce, please.

Karen Fulford