Friday Five

Five Ordinary Things I Like to Keep Handy:

1. Canned chicken broth -- makes food taste better, it's cheap, nutritious, and makes fixing "home made" chicken soup when *I'm* sick remarkably easy

2. Stridex Facewipes to go -- Geez, what a refresher in hot weather, particularly after yardwork. Not at all harsh, even on menopausal skin, just enough evaporative qualities to be cooling and soothing, contains aloe. You've gotta love stuff with aloe.

3. Hand and body lotion by the computer -- as I wait for all kinds of stuff to load, I can use it on myself (hey, in appropriate ways, of course). I can also clean my oven while I'm waiting, but that's a lot less likely.

4. A size E crochet hook -- you think I'm kidding, don't you? It can be used in all kinds of knitting applications, of course, for finishing or repairing dropped stitches, but it's also handy for pulling/pushing laces without grommets through the holes on shoes, pulling lost drawstrings back through their casings, levering something repulsive up to see if I dare touch it, fishing things out of the drain that out not to be there, etc. It's like having a really long, sterilizable kid finger around.

5. Safety pins -- of course. I'm a mother. I'm a woman. I wear bras and slips and carry purses and bags and totes, and things are more cheaply constructed than ever.