I think just about every woman has an embarrassing story to tell regarding that oh so special time of the month that we all love so much. It can be trial and error finding the right products to use in order to feel secure, comfortable and have some peace of mind.

P&G has been running some commercials for their new Always Pads and they poke fun at some very real problems that women have had with other pad products. Have a look at the information below and see if you’ve ever experienced any of the complaints they’ve listed such as having to wear granny pants or the robot walk because you’re afraid to walk normally.

Can you relate to some of these experiences? I’ll bet you can even add some of your own! Feel free to contribute your stories in the comment section.

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The weather is getting nicer. Finally! April was cool here in Toronto. That probably wouldn’t have been that bad, but when April turns out to be cooler than March and has snow when March didn’t .. well .. I’m happy that May has arrived. So are my plants! My garden is looking lovely.

The other day is was nice enough out that I spent some time working in my front yard. I was weeding the garden beds and fixing up the look of the front boulevard. I have a planted boulevard, but crab grass was starting to grow in the flower beds there so I spent a lot of time pulling it out. Hopefully it doesn’t grow back.

Everyone was enjoying the nice day when I was working in the garden. Lots of neighbors were outside either working on their own yards – cutting the grass etc, or out walking around. I said hello to a lot of people as I worked on my garden. One of the people that passed me was wearing one of those funny t shirts that made me laugh out loud .. but I can’t repeat what it said on here .. it was bad! I just about fell over into a bush when I saw it!

My front yard looks great. Now all I have to do is work on the back yard! The back yard isn’t that big, but compared to my front yard it’s a lot bigger – it will take longer to tidy up. Perhaps this weekend if the weather is nice. How is your yard and garden?

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I can’t believe how fast my hair grows. I generally keep my hair fairly short because short hair seems to suit me best but I wish my hair didn’t grow as fast as it does. I seem to have to get my hair cut every four weeks or so …

My hair has grown so much since my last cut that I feel like I’ll be able to put my hair in a ponytail in another month or so if I don’t go and get it cut. Really … it grows that fast.

One good thing is that my hair is very healthy. I’ve always had compliments on how healthy my hair looks. I recently tried a sample of one of the products from Cleopatras Choice hair care and I really like it. I might continue using it on my hair … provided that it doesn’t make my hair grow any faster than it already does!

Do you find that your hair grows very fast too?

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I’m having an interesting day … one that I think I’m more than ready to be done with.

My husband finally had a couple of days off in a row so we’re busy doing some much needed renovations on the house. Yes we’re actually doing the renovations – not just talking about getting it done sometime, someday. It’s started. The living room dining room reno will finally be finished – soon. LOL

My poor dog is totally baffled by what’s going on. She’s wondering what all this banging is and why everything smells like spruce wood and saw dust all of a sudden. Not that she minds the smell.

One thing threw me for a bit of a loop today. I finally got the call I’ve been waiting for from the Human Resources department at my workplace. I’ve been waiting to hear from them ever since I had my first appointment with them two weeks ago regarding going back to work. You know, that appointment that ended up with me being interviewed by five people for over an hour! Yikes!

Well, now they want to see me for at least half an hour. I’m not sure what it’s about this time. It could be yet another interview type meeting or maybe they’ve found a place in the hospital for me. I don’t know. All I do know is that it’s nerve wracking each time. I just want to get back to work – get my life back on track again. I’m starting to feel like a yoyo – back and forth, back and forth I go … Hmm but I bet I don’t compare to the best yo yo at yoyoplay. Uh huh.

A while back I thought it would only be a couple of weeks and I’d have my old job back. That was in January or February … here I am after convincing my doctors that I’m healthy enough to go back to work, and convincing the occupational health department at my workplace that I’m healthy enough to return and getting cleared to return to work and I’m still waiting. Hopefully it won’t be much longer.

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I got some unexpected exercise this afternoon. Just when my husband was about to go to work he opened the door and we both saw a scruffy little dog running loose on the other side of the street. I just hate seeing a stray dog in my neighborhood. I always worry that the dog is going to end up getting hit by a car since the street I live on is fairly busy.

I decided to try to catch the dog if I could. Usually when I’ve seen a dog on the loose in the past the owner isn’t too far behind. So I put on my coat and grabbed one of my dogs leashes and off I went in the direction that I’d last seen the dog run in. As I walked down the street I caught sight of the dog running across the street in front of a car. I cringed – but luckily it made it safely across.

It took me a few blocks, but I managed to start to catch up to the little dog. Naturally just as I did it turned down a side street and went off towards some Housing for seniors. That was actually better because it was a quieter street so it was safer for the dog if it started to run across the road again.

I did manage to get close to the dog. Not close enough to pet it or to put a leash on it. I think I would have gained it’s trust but it’s owners finally appeared and the dog ran to them. They were nice and they thanked me for trying to help their dog. They said their dog slipped out when they opened the door to get the paper. Hopefully that doesn’t happen too often!

Do you ever worry when you see loose dogs running around your neighborhood? Do you try to go out and help them like I did?

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I can’t believe how well my garden is doing so far this year. If I didn’t know that it was the 22nd of April I’d swear that, just looking at my garden, that it was nearing the end of May. My garden is just that far ahead of itself.

Of course it’s all because we had one of the warmest winters we’ve ever had this past winter. Barely any snow, much warmer than average temperatures. Hey I was was wearing shorts some days in March. I even watered the garden a few times in March. I’ve never ever done that before. I mean, I live in Toronto – part of the Great White North!

In the past I could rely on my raised garden beds to put my garden ahead of others by a week or two because my garden beds, being raised, would warm up a little earlier than ground level gardens, but I didn’t need that advantage this year.

Oddly enough March was warmer than April has been so far. In fact I hear that we might even get some snow tomorrow. Imagine that. It was so warm for a couple of weeks in March that I could wear shorts and people were wondering if we skipped to summer and now here we are expecting snow. Well I did say I live in the Great White North. A place where you learn to expect the unexpected. I should not be surprised!

O’ Canada Indeed!

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Well I’m still waiting to find when I might be going back to my job at the hospital. Last Monday I had a nerve-racking meeting with the hospitals Human Resources department and now I’m trying my best to be patient as I wait to hear from them regarding where they might place me in the hospital and when I might be going back to work.

Two of the nurses at the meeting were from the hospitals Oncology Nephrology department. I don’t know if they were just part of the assessment team or if they were there because there’s an opening in that department and they are thinking of placing me there. I should have asked but as I said it was a nerve-racking meeting/ interview. It was about an hour and a half long! I’m assuming that I’ll hear something this coming week, but who knows.

At this point I’m getting antsy to get back to work. If something messes up and I end up not going back to my former full time nursing job perhaps I’ll continue to work on the internet. Well I never planned to give it up. However I’ll need to make more money than I make now if that’s the case.

If I were to truly work on the internet full time I’ve even thought of moving. Perhaps somewhere warm or even to the Outer Banks. I recently saw an ad for Outer Banks foreclosures and if I had the money to do it some of those properties sure sound good!

I do think I’ll be going back to nursing but I have toyed with the idea of working on my own and moving to different country. If not now, perhaps later in life. Have you ever thought of working from home in your dream country/city?

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I don’t know if I’m fighting something or if I’m just over tired or if perhaps my migraines are coming back, but I’ve noticed over the last two or three weeks that I’ve had a headache or migraine almost every day.

It’s disappointing that I’m going through this because 1. I’ve suffered from Chronic migraine since I was about 12 years old – not constantly, but on and off since that time and after a very bad period of severe migraines in 2010 I finally started on some medications that seemed to get my migraines under control for the most part.

I’ve been pretty much migraine free for a year and a half so it’s disappointing that I’m having bad migraines all of a sudden. Who knows, like I said maybe I’m fighting something or maybe it’s the weather – we’ve had a very mild winter here in Toronto and our Spring is about a month and a half ahead of itself so I suppose it’s possible that the weather or something could affect me too. I don’t know .. I just want to go back to being pretty much migraine and headache free again! Especially since I might be going back to work in a couple of weeks!

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I was watching the news the other day and they did a story about one of the latest fashion trends – high heels for …. MEN. Uh huh ..

Now I think I’ve heard of men occasionally wearing high heels in the past and I don’t mean shoes that are known as Lifts aka shoes that make short men taller – I mean boots with heels and so on … but this news story was showing men wearing mens’ dress shoes or loafers but they had 3 or 4 inch spike heels on them. It was very strange!

I really don’t think I could get used to it if this trend became common place. Even I don’t wear high heels very often. They’re uncomfortable … I can’t see men enjoying wearing them. LOL … No I think they’d prefer to stick to things like their comfortable running shoes, dress shoes, loafers, sandals, or even ariat boots.

What do you think? Do you think this trend will catch on? Have you heard of this?

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It was absolutely gorgeous today. Here it is only March 22nd and it reached 26 Celcius today and with humidity felt like 30 Celcius (86 F). Considering that I’m in Toronto, Canada and it’s usually only about 4 Celsius at this time that’s pretty remarkable.

What’s even more remarkable is that it’s been pretty warm for over a week and well, all of this month has been well over normal temperatures, in fact the whole winter has been a warm winter. I think they said on the news that it’s the second warmest winter on record for this area.

My garden has all kinds of plants coming up and even blooming. My crocuses came up last week. I think it was the 14th when they first appeared and now they’re pretty much done. The heat did them in. My hellebores are blooming as are my Glories of the snow and Snow Drops. It won’t be long before my tulips and Daffodils and Hyacinths are blooming too, most of their leaves are already almost a foot high and I’m sure I’ll see flower buds soon. Half my roses have tiny leaves and my two honeysuckles vines are already leafed out as well. Several of my Clematis vines have leaves already too.

I swear my garden doesn’t normally have this much grown until the end of April most years!

I actually went out and watered my lawn and garden this afternoon!

Now if only I had a wooden swing to sit on and enjoy the lovely day it would have been perfect.

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My husband has been playing his guitars a little bit more often in the last few months. He’s quite a talented musician and he’s played guitar since he was 9 years old, but over the last few years he really hasn’t played all that much.

I’ve always tried to encourage my husband to play his guitars. I think he feels like he’s bothering me when he plays his guitar, but we have a house with many rooms so there’s no reason why he couldn’t play almost every day if he played on one of the spare rooms or in the basement or even outside in the backyard in the summer.

Every once in a while he pulls out one of his guitars – he has five – and he talks about going to one of the bars near us that has an open mike night. An open Mike night is a night when amateur musicians take turns going up on stage and playing a song or two to entertain the audience. So far he hasn’t gone to an open Mike night. I don’t know why since he’s practiced for one several times – maybe he’s more nervous than he says?

Chris' Fender Duosonic

I’m trying to remember exactly what kind of guitars he has. I can’t remember what kind of guitar his first acoustic guitar is, but he used to play it when he lived in student housing and he had everyone he knew sign it. It no longer holds a tune longer than a minute or so! His other acoustic is a very nice Larrivee that I bought for him five years ago.

His other three guitars are electric guitars and they are older, vintage models. One of his electric guitars is a Gibson from the early 70′s and the other two are Fender guitars. I’m not sure how old his Fenders are, but I know he loves them. Of course what he’d really like would be a 1959 Fender, but I believe those are very hard to come by and very expensive so it isn’t likely that he’ll be getting one of those anytime soon!

Lately he’s been playing his guitar to practice for a little musical concert that will take place for a doctors retirement this coming June. It’s a doctor that he works with in the hospital and he’s been asked to play at her retirement party so he’s been busy working on some songs. Everything sounds good from what I’ve heard so far. I’m sure as we get closer to the date I’ll be hearing a lot more guitar practice!

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Since I’m pretty sure that I’ll be returning to work in the next few weeks I’ve been rummaging through the house for all of my old nursing uniforms and making sure that they are clean and ready to go when I finally get put back on the work schedule. (see my last post for more info on my return to work)

I have quite the collection of scrubs! I was surprised to find that I still had some uniforms that I used to wear when I worked in a pain clinic in the 90′s -and believe it or not they’re still in great condition.

Considering how old some of my uniforms are, even though they’re in pretty good shape, I thought it might be a good idea to treat myself to a a couple of new pairs of scrubs. Scrub styles don’t change all that much, but looking at some of the uniform websites I can see that there are some changes that seem to go with outside style trends.

I’m trying to decide whether to order online or got to a local uniform store. I’ve found that scrub sizes vary so I might be better off trying some on in person and once I find a style I like I can order more of the same online. Speaking of online stores .. when I was searching for uniform stores I kept getting ones that sold all kinds of uniforms – not just nursing ones even though I specifically put that in my search terms .. surprisingly I came across several sites that sold everything from restaurant wear to welding jackets to medical uniforms. I’m most interested in the sites that sell only nursing scrubs because they seem to have the best variety and often the best prices.

So … anyone in the Toronto area know of any great local nursing uniform stores that I can check out? Any Canadian Online stores would be good too!

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