A Bright Eye-dea

With the help (and I use that term loosely) of the kids, I got my Christmas decorations put away yesterday. Well, except for the tree, which is just standing in the corner of the living room, looking all naked and patchy and pitiful and shedding faux needles all over the damn place. I'm waiting for Curtis to do his itty-bitty job of stashing it somewhere until next season. But, much like the rest of the (10,226) itty-bitty jobs I've been waiting for Curtis to do around this piece, it remains on the honey-do list. Anyway, it'll be gone before New Year's Eve, because I have this weird thing about going into a new year with last year's decorations still up. I wouldn't exactly call it a superstition; it just gives me an icky feeling. Like turning to a fresh sheet of paper in a notebook, only to find someone has already written stuff all over it. I like FRESH beginnings, y'all. Not having to deal with last year's crap. Ideally, not only would I have my Christmas decor gone by New Year's, but also my house scrubbed (like spring-cleaning spotless) and immaculate.

Maybe if I were single and childless, which I am like so not.

... Which is probably also why I have zero plans for New Year's Eve. *sigh*

Does it seem like no one is reading blogs this time of year? I guess we're all too busy counting down the days until school starts again enjoying the holidays. I kinda feel like I'm talking to myself. Or addressing an empty room. I would be off the Internet enjoying the holidays, too, except for reasons I won't go into it's been a little bit (okay, a lot) of a craptastic week. Suffice it to say, when Colin woke up this morning with pinkeye in not one but both eyes (yay!), it didn't help matters.

However ...

Have you ever talked to, like, your grandma or something and just marveled at the stuff she knows? All the folk remedies, the tips and tricks, the handy knowledge that old ladies seem to amass throughout a lifetime of raising babies and taking care of households - if you've ever had the privilege of talking to a granny-type about that sort of thing, it's actually kind of mind-boggling. (My grandma grew up in the backwoods of Arkansas and I swear she'd probably be able to clean a floor with a chicken carcass and cure measles with a pair of pantyhose and a lemon slice and fix a broken window using only sawdust, lard, and a sprinkling of celery salt.)*

*I'm going somewhere with this, I promise.


Anyway, I always wanted to feel like a knowledgeable old granny, full of awesome tips that make people raise their eyebrows in surprise like, "Does that really work?!" Old ladies were at a disadvantage because they had to rely on years of life experience and word-of-mouth to learn these things. We, however, can get our "old lady" on much earlier in life thanks to the wealth of knowledge that is the Internet.

Which is how I learned one of my most favorite granny-esque tips EVER: breast milk cures pinkeye.

Oh yes it does. Really and truly.

Weird, right?

For the most part, I'm really (really, reeeeally) over nursing. I mean, Coby just turned two a couple of months ago. Considering all the struggles I've gone through (not least of all the fact that my boobs sadly resemble Stretch Armstrong), I didn't think I'd still be doing it at this point. Problem is, he still wants to nurse at rest time, a habit he flatly refuses to give up no matter what I try. (If anybody has any granny-tips on weaning, fire away!) Anyway, most of the time this kind of irritates me - but when someone wakes up with pinkeye, I'm all, "YESSSS! I have breast milk!"

I stumbled upon this cure by accident while looking up info about pinkeye, and was seriously skeptical at first. I mean, I'm by no means one of those all-natural holistic moms - I'm all about some antibiotics. But when one of my kids gets pinkeye, the others inevitably follow suit, and sometimes even Curtis and I fall prey to it, and then we have a gooey, crusty, oozy, itchy epidemic. That's a lotta prescription eye drops and doctor visits, y'all. So I figured - I've got a pretty much endless supply of milk, and it's all-natural, right? What's the harm? And I tried it.

I was totally amazed when their pinkeye started to clear up within just a couple of doses - even faster than the prescription antibiotic drops! All I do is squeeze some into a clean cup (I use the little plastic measuring cups that come on top of kids' medicine bottles), saturate the end of a cotton swab, then drip one or two drops right into each eye, using a clean swab for each kid. Do this three times a day, and voila! No more pinkeye! It's easy, free, and it works. As a bonus, they don't scream and flail around like an electrocuted octopus, because it doesn't burn. Aw, yeah. I even drop some in the eyes of whoever doesn't have pinkeye as a preventive measure - and oddly enough, it seems to keep it from spreading.

So that's what you'll find me doing today: sitting huched over a little tiny medicine cup, then chasing my kids around with milk-soaked Q-Tips. Fun times. But the best part? Someday they'll be thoroughly grossed out by the fact that I ever did this ... which just makes it even better.