graf #20 Reaction to my own writing

I can't believe I actually have 45 things written on this blog! I have always been better at English and writing than math or science classes but I never enjoyed it. Writing was always something that I was made to do and I was never eager to get it started. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed taking this class, maybe it would have been different if it wasn't on-line but I'm not even going to look too much into that! I am proud of  all of the graf's and essay's I wrote, and even prouder that I felt that the writing came easy in most of the cases. I named my blog Jessica's writing journey before I even knew that all of this course consisted of writing. My name choice seemed prophetic and It certainly was a journey. 

Process Essay

A few years ago my husband and I decided that we wanted to have an emergency kit in our home. Leaders in my religion have been asking us to try and prepare 72 hour kits to have in case of disaster, and it can never hurt to be prepared.  I know a lot of people who do have them already but we had never taken the time to make our own. There is a basic order of what should go into a disaster kit and then people decide what will or will not work for them, we decided to just take a section at a time. First we had to decide on whether to make my own kit or if we should just buy a pre-made kit. Then we had to think about what exactly we felt necessary to have in our kit.  Lastly, we had to figure out how much money we were willing and able to spend to make our kit.

The first step of this process was choosing whether to make our own 72 hour kit or to buy a already made packaged kit. I did a little on-line research and quickly realized that if we bought a pre-constructed kit that we would probably want to make some adjustments anyway just to accommodate to our family needs. Considering the price of the pre-made kits are significantly higher than what we wanted to pay it seemed a no brainer for us to prepare our own. This first step of was a easy one for us, we didn't have to do much research to realize that making our own kit was the choice for us.

 The second step was the true decision making part. We had to decide what we wanted in our kit. We came across a statement made by FEMA which reads like this   "The first 72 hours after a disaster are critical. Electricity, gas, water and telephones may not be working. In addition, public safety services such as police and fire departments may not be able to reach you immediately during a serious crisis. Each person should be prepared to be self-sufficient – able to live without running water, electricity and/or gas, and telephones – for at least three days following a disaster." This statement really struck a chord with us and it was clear that we don't have any clue what we would need, use or want in a situation of disaster. We found a good web-site and decided on using these four categories: Food & Water, First Aid, Tools, Hygiene.

The third and final major step of planning how to make our 72 hour kit was figuring just how much money we were willing ( and able) to put into this. We had already decided that we weren't comfortable spending a ton of money when we chose to make our own kit. We decided to find a average price of the pre-made kits and make it our goal to come in under that amount by $100. We usually pride ourselves in being frugal but we felt like something as important as this needed a good chunk of money invested. Our final amount put in came in at $ 131 for a family of 5.

Choosing to make a 72 hour kit for our family was a easy one. We feel so much better knowing that we are as prepared as we can be in case of disaster. I know that this does not mean that we will be better off than any other person or persons if a disaster actually happens but it does give us peace of mind knowing that we did as much as we could ahead of time to prepare. Now a days there are so many zombie and apocalyptic movies, books and tv shows that you can kind of work yourself up into a nervous wreck. This was something that did take a chunk of our free time do initiate, research and actually conquer but in the end it was worth it because I feel a huge weight of my shoulders because of it. 

Timed division essay

Tweezers and I go a long way back. I have memories starting around age 5 of my mother standing at the bathroom mirror for what seemed like hours with a tweezer in her hand. I never really knew what she was doing for so long with them but at that young age it seemed important and hard work. Growing up without any major male influence meant that I pretty much never got that power tool, saw dusty building something from nothing  in the garage experiences that most kids get. I grew up watching my mother use tools that were a little more delicate, like sewing scissors, nail clippers and tweezers. 

I have had my own fair share of experiences with tweezers as well. One of my favorite uses for a tweezer is to remove splinters. I have a special pair of extra pointy tweezers that I reserve just for this purpose. Say what you want about tweezers being painful and damaging when it comes to removing a splinter, but I can guarantee you that when your way of "applying gentle pressure with two fingertips" hasn't worked for an hour you will be happy to let me try with my hand tool. I have fond memories of having my mother remove wood deck splinters from our summer beach house vacations and my children will never forget me digging in their heels to get that pesky one out. 

Tweezers are also extra special to me because I happened to inherit my mother's side of the families italian style eyebrows. I still cringe when I come across pictures of me as a little girl before I learned about tweezing your eyebrows. Not only are my eyebrows full and bushy but I also have what my kids call black hair ( it's really dark, dark brown). Now I know what my mom was doing most of the time in front of that bathroom mirror. Yes, I know I could wax them but who likes to take the easy road? Certainly not me.

I saved the best for last because my final and third favorite thing to use tweezers for are to remove foreign objects. I haven't had many cases of doing this but in the past few years I have had to remove a bee stinger from my sons foot, remove a small piece of glass from my own finger after picking up a broken glass, and try to take a sewing needle out of my husbands palm, this last one didn't work and we ended up bringing him to walk in care to have the professionals take care of it. I enjoy this the best because I can pretend I am doing some kind of important surgery, even for just a few minutes. 

As you can see, I have found plenty of useful ways to use my tweezers. I am lucky enough to have a very handy husband who has taken the time to show me my way around a tool box and that is much more than I had growing up but I'll always be there with my tweezers in hand when we need that special, delicate tool.