How To Write a Proper Amazon Review

I'll admit it, I'm an Amazon junkie! DH and I order stuff from Amazon at least twice a week if not more! We use the heck out of our Prime membership-everything from toilet paper to light bulbs arrive on our porch. I enjoy the convenience of shopping from my couch and I love not having to drive the half an hour into town.

Another handy feature of Amazon is the ability to write and read reviews. I read the reviews for pretty much every purchase I make and I've learned tons of great information from my fellow consumers. I make sure I return the favor for reviewing most of the products I buy and I get tons of helpful votes! Sometimes the reviews have convinced me to buy the product and sometimes they make me steer clear. However, some of the reviews on Amazon are so laughably bad that they irritate me to no end-especially when they are one of the few review for a product. In the interest of my own sanity I've made a list of lessons that some reviewers need to learn.

Here are my guidelines for a great review:
1. Reviews are based on a 5 star scale: One star means you hate it and five stars means you love it. A one star review should state that the product is great and you love it.

2. Reviews are not the place for customer service: If you have a problem with your order you should contact customer service. The one this you shouldn't do is post a review demanding your money back. It cracks me up to no end to see someone threatening to sue if Amazon doesn't respond to their poorly written review. If you want laughs check out the one star reviews of the Amazon store card-tons of people complaining that they don't like the card and that they will be suing if Amazon doesn't fix their problem. A call to customer service or even a quick email will get your problem fixed faster.

3. Don't leave a review if you have nothing to say: A review that says good or not good tells me NOTHING. You would be better off not leaving a review. Tell me what makes it good or bad, a one word review is just a waste of space.

4. You don't always have to listen to your e-mail: Amazon will sometimes email you asking you to leave a review. People seem to think that this is a direct order. I've seen things like "I was asked to leave a review, but I bought it as a gift", "I don't know why I'm leaving a review", "They emailed me and told me to leave a review". If you don't want to write a review then DON'T-just delete the e-mail and go about your day.

5. Proofread, proofread, proofread: I spend my life reading 8th grade writing-I can get through some pretty messed up writing. So when I'm struggling to read what you've written due to your spelling and your lack of punctuation it's saying something. Remember the whole world will be reading this-plan accordingly.

Better Living Through Unnecessary Medical Care

I will freely admit that I am a tad bit of a hypochondriac (DH would say I'm just raging insane-but that's open for debate). When I was growing up my mother would never take me to the doctor-for anything. When I was in middle school I fell down the steps chasing our dog and tore a ligament in my knee. I spent the next week participating in gym class and walking all over school before my mother believed me enough to take me to the doctor. She was pretty embarrassed that she had waited so long (hi mom!-I told you I would get revenge-well here it is). To be fair when my mom fell down the stairs a couple of years ago she actually broke her foot (like swollen, bruised and could feel the bone moving) and she never went to the doctor.

My parents were responsible and loving parents (so no calling the cops or anything), but they understood that I was a tad dramatic so they took my I'm dying claims with a grain of salt. DH still hasn't figured out how panicky I am, so he totally feeds into my crazy. Last year I personally spent $4000 on medical bills and spent months in and out of various doctors. At one point I was driving to a podiatrist 3 hours away from my home because I didn't like the responses I got from any podiatrist in my hometown. I had been having a ton of foot pain in a foot I had previously had surgery on and not one doctor believed me that there was something wrong. They all thought that I was gunning for drugs rather than a solution. Until I finally had surgery in college my foot hurt every single day for as almost 10 years-which was dismissed by every single doctor except one. After an MRI and being told that I would just have to live with pain I hightailed it back to that doctor. After months of tests we discovered that I had an auto-immune disease that was probably causing a large part of my pain. Now that it is being treated my pain is getting better (without narcotics thank you very much!). I do know my own body and sometimes I'm really right-but other times the crazy just kind of takes over.

Case in point: Sophomore year of college I woke up with a large lump on my eyelid. There wasn't any pus or any thing so where did my mind immediately jump? I decided I had eye cancer and rushed off to student health accordingly. The doctor seemed to have trouble keeping a straight face as I explained that I had eye cancer and would probably need chemo. This was the same doctor that was tasked with dealing with me previously for swine flu (probably not), severe flu (also not severe, but was given IV fluids just to shut me up) and several other ailments that were deadly at the time.

He took one look at my eye and calmly stated that I had a stye on the underside of my eyelid. He told me to wear my glasses until it popped on its own and to stop sleeping in my contacts. I wasn't convinced and left the doctor in a huff-"How could he be so insensitive to my fears?" I raged at my mother on the phone as I begged her to book me an appointment with the nearest oncologist.  Luckily my mother has had tons of experience talking me down off ledges so she convinced me to wait a week until starting my cancer regime. She also talked me into applying a hot towel to my eye to speed up the process. A few days later the eye cancer was gone and once again my mother was right.

All of this leads back to my emergency room visit I alluded to a few days ago. I woke up on the Sunday before school started with a ton of back pain. For once my crazy didn't really kick in and I laid around in bed on a heating pad all day. Basically I used it as an excuse to get DH to rub my back and to not do any Sunday chores. I didn't call my mom all day (which is super unusual) because I felt so terrible. I knew I had to go to work the next day so I was really hoping I would feel better. DH spent most of the day shoveling snow without realizing how terrible I was feeling. When I finally decided that I should probably be seen by a doctor all the walk in care clinics were closed. Instead of rushing off to the ER I made the smart choice to call the on-call doctor to see if it could wait until the next day-he said we should come in.

When I can actually make smart health care decisions or when I wait to go to the doctor I usually wind up to be actually pretty sick. When I have the time and mental abilities to come up with my crazy scenarios it's usually something that's no big deal. I fully expected that this would actually be something serious-my back was really killing me at this point. I've had some pretty bad injuries and this was worse than anything I've ever experienced. It was right in the area of my kidneys so I totally expected a kidney stone or something like that.

The ER was slow, but I really didn't care until I got back to the room. We got triaged and taken back and then we waited FOREVER for a nurse to show up. Once she had taken vital and a urine sample she swept out and we were left alone for another hour. A PA shows up and explains that they had run some tests and I didn't have an infection-they wanted to order a CT scan to check out my kidneys. She also stated that she would get me some pain medication since at this point I was white as a sheet and writhing around trying to get comfortable (quietly so I didn't make a scene of course). We agreed and she left-it was another hour before the nurse came back to start my IV-and she didn't bring the promised pain medication. She did a great job getting the IV in quickly as I squeezed my eyes shut (I don't have a fear of needles, but I do pass out at the sight of blood-I can handle animal blood just not human blood-yes it's odd). DH asked very politely if she could get us a bandage or a wrap to cover the IV so I didn't have to look at the blood in it and she said she would. I was taken away for my CT scan shortly after that which went well and was over quickly. They used the strange dye that makes you feel like you're peeing yourself.

Just a warning for anyone who has to get the contrast dye-IT REALLY WILL FEEL LIKE YOU'RE PEEING YOURSELF! I was told this multiple times and I didn't really believe them. I was more focused on the fact that they told me it would make me feel warm-I was freezing to death so that sounded like a welcome side effect. The very nice radiologist came and got me from my room to take me for the CT scan. It was super embarrassing to be rolled through the waiting room in my hospital bed while wearing my super revealing hospital gown (that I hadn't let DH tie so he could rub my back). Of course one of my former students was in the waiting room with his family-he seemed to get a good laugh out of it. When we got the room I correctly assumed that I should lie on the table by the machine and went to get up-at the same time the radiologist reached out to help me up and he managed to totally grab my boob!

The poor guy turned bright red and I'm pretty sure he expected a screaming fit and a lawsuit. He seemed a bit taken aback when I made a VERY terrible joke (that I won't repeat) and started laughing. He apologized about a million times, but it wasn't that big of deal. When he injected the dye I was still giggling inwardly and then all of the sudden I was peeing myself. I shared this with the radiologist and he assured me that I wasn't. By this point crazy anxiety brain had taken over and I was convinced that I did pee myself.

Once we were done he rolled me back to my room and I still felt a little funny from the dye. The first words out of my mouth when I rejoined DH? "The radiologist grabbed my boob-can you check and see if I peed myself?" DH is actually a good sport (and a GREAT husband) because he checked and confirmed that I hadn't made a huge mess and he cracked up at the story. It took another few hours, but I finally got my pain medicine (3 hours after I was told I would get it and 30 minutes before we were allowed to leave).

So what was wrong? I was having an allergic reaction to a new medicine that I had started taking for my autoimmune disease. The shot of morphine they gave me before discharging me made me totally drunk, but didn't touch the back pain. It wasn't until I had skipped 2 doses of the medicine before the pain started to go away-no matter how many muscle relaxers and pain pills I took.

My lesson from all of this is a surprising one-my mother was RIGHT. It feels like every time I go to the doctor for one thing the medicine or the procedure causes another thing. Medical care is like the Domino theory except with ER visits instead of Communist Governments. My mom has a theory that if you never go to the doctor you never get sick. I think all my illnesses have come about from exposing myself to germs and medical care. My goal for 2015 is to avoid as much medical care as possible since if I get any sicker I'll probably die and that would be unfortunate. Is there a name for a hypochondriac that avoids medical care (besides lunatic)?

A Capital Idea

DH and I made a resolution to attempt to eat healthier in 2015. Neither of us are overweight, but our diet is more suitable for a broke, college student. Actually our diet is worse than when we were actually in college because at least in school we had meal plans. When we didn't feel like cooking it was pretty easy to walk to the nearest on campus restaurant for a quick meal-my college was really pushing healthy eating when we were there so our options were usually moderately healthy. Both DH and I are pretty decent cooks, but I hate doing it. After working 8-9 hours the LAST thing I feel like doing is standing in the kitchen. DH just doesn't have the skills to plan ahead so we actually have food in the house so he usually gets stuck trying to make dinner out of stale cereal and lunch meat.

When we lived in our old house (that was actually in a real town with restaurants and everything) we ate better (since there were restaurants). When we moved to the boonies we were comforted by the fact that our town had one restaurant. A week after we signed the contract on our house it burned down and we were out of dinner options. I discovered that I'm pretty awesome with a slow cooker and we did okay.

I've been having some stupid health issues lately and healthy eating is something that actually might help with that. I saw on Pinterest a recipe for making a whole roasted chicken and veggies in the slow cooker (Link: http://www.food.com/recipe/crock-pot-whole-chicken-33671) and I decided to give it a whirl. DH and I had great success making a turkey in November, so I figured chicken would be just as easy. I changed the recipe since I didn't have half the ingredients (a pretty typical thing in my house) and made a lemon pepper chicken type thing (with Kalamata olives since that seemed to go well).

All went well with the actual cooking of it until it was time to carve it. Carving things is DH's job since I tend to slice my finger along with the actual meat and he doesn't really like eating pieces of his wife's fingers mixed in with his dinner. I curled up on the couch while he happily wielded the big knife and ensured that his carving technique was perfect (and that when we finally ate dinner an hour later the chicken would be ice cold).  The dog begged for scraps (and was rewarded with a whole bowl of chicken juice that she would later puke up all over the living room) and DH and I continued our conversation.

We were thoughtfully discussing terrorism and the attacks on Paris and our thoughts on gun control. Our conversation was smart and thoughtful. We both have genius level IQ's (even though it may not seem like it sometimes) and we are both well-read so our conversations tend to lean toward the intellectual. We are on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but we can have polite debates (at least most of the time). Keep all this in mind while I tell you what happened next.

I was delivering one of my monologues (this happens pretty frequently) on some obscure piece of French history (I believe I was discussing the Revolution) when DH interrupted me. In my book interrupting me during anything is a cardinal sin and DH knows this very well. His incredibly important idea? "I wonder if any company sells wishbones?" When I shot him a look that meant shut up and let me talk he interpreted it as tell me more (he's not very adept at reading facial expressions). He continued with "Think about it-they could make so much money especially if they already sell chicken since it doesn't cost them anything. They could probably make $2.00 if they sold them on Amazon. It's pure profit". He has since decided that we are starting a chicken wishbone business, so if anyone is interested contact DH for all your needs (wishbone related)!

My takeaway from all this-while DH is a genius his mind works in an incredibly strange way. He also listened when I spent an hour discussing digitalis poisoning and stabbing people with icicles, so I have to tolerate his brand of crazy. True love=tolerating the other person's baseline level of crazy.

How to Impress your Boss

It's been freezing cold here for the past few days. I'm a Southern girl and Southern blood runs through my veins-any temperature under 60 is entirely too cold for me. I live in a permanent state of freezing and DH complains about my habit of cranking the thermostat up to 80 and sitting on the couch under an electric blanket on high. He's accused me of being a reptile more than once in our relationship, which should offend me, but I'm pretty sure it's true. Last summer during a 100 degree heatwave I spent a week with the air conditioning off-DH was quite pleased when he returned from a business trip to a house that felt like a wood-fired pizza oven (those are trendy now right?)

When the single digit weather hit this week all thoughts of dressing for cuteness went out the window-I was dressing purely for function. This meant jeans and thick sweaters-which worked great until I ran out of clean jeans on Wednesday. Unless sweatpants are suddenly considered appropriate work wear I was stuck wearing a dress to work. I attempted to make it warmer with tights and a layered sweater, but the minute I opened the back door I realized I would freeze on my way to the car.

The only practical solution was to layer fleece pajama pants over my dress, wrap a scarf around my head and brave the 20 foot walk to the detached garage (and of course the 10 minutes before my heated seats warmed up). I was quite proud of my innovative fashion sense as I strolled across the icy parking lot into school-my co-workers were shivering and I was toasty warm.

I stepped into the nicely heated building and ran directly into my principal-of course he was nattily attired in a sweater and dress pants. He gave my outfit a once over and I realized how ridiculous I looked. Imagine this: black J. Crew ski cap, black and red Target gloves with a tear in the finger and a strange red pattern along the hand, mint green Colombia jacket (that I've owned since I was in 8th grade) with a few chew marks at the bottom where the dog got her teeth in it and dirt marks from where I fell in the back yard playing with dog. Added to this stylish ensemble were my fuzzy blue pajama pants adorned with jumping and leaping sheep and black riding boots over them. The principal's expression conveyed that he was extremely impressed with my fashion choices (or thought I was slowly losing my mind). He was so impressed he didn't even say anything to me! I'm pretty sure this will reflect positively on me at my next performance review.

Of course when I got to my classroom I slipped off the outerwear that was concealing my work appropriate outfit-and I didn't see my boss the whole day. I'm pretty sure he thought I spent the whole day teaching in my pajamas (which sounds like a fine idea). Guess this is the price you pay for warmth.

The stuff that Amazon sends me

I'm a savvy Amazon shopper (well I just buy tons of things and sign over half my paycheck to them every month). I exercise the buy with one click option way way too much-somehow I have to get the value from my Prime membership. Anything that allows me to shop from my couch is a win in my book! Today I decided to order a new cd from Buckcherry and shortly after the confirmation email popped up in my inbox and it was too funny not to share!