She Thinks

No.  Expiration dates are a giant conspiracy from manufacturers to get us to throw out everything in our pantry and buy new soup or olives or ketchup in order to keep them in business.

(OK, maybe a little paranoid…but maybe not.)

I mean…what’s so bad about soup that’s been in a can in your pantry for lets say…6 years?  It’s in a can for God’s sake!  The cans’ purpose is to keep that food contained until you are ready to eat it. No air can get in, and they’re so loaded up with preservatives that no bacteria, bugs or other bad things could live in there anyway.  So what’s the big deal!?!

Note:  I think preservatives are one of the greatest things ever created.  They’re designed to preserve things…forever…and at my age, I eat as many things loaded with preservatives as I possibly can.

I will go so far as to say that preservatives have made expiration dates…obsolete.

Except for milk.  Which I don’t need an expiration date to tell me has gone bad.

Or cottage cheese.  Or anything dairy or meat/fish/poulty, or fruits and vegetables or leftovers left in the refrigerator for more than 5 days for that matter.  They all need to be tossed on a regular basis.  They don’t come with expiration dates…but I’m not stupid…I KNOW THEY EXPIRE!

But ketchup?  Come on!  That stuff has got to have a shelf life of 6.2 million years!!!

So what about medicines?  I confess, I don’t check the expiration date on pill bottles (I know, you’re shocked!).   I know I probably should, because that stuff might really do some harm if it’s past its prime – or worse, not provide the intended relief it was designed to provide.

But it takes so much time to go to the other room…find a pair of reading glasses…turn on enough light to read in the bathroom…find the expiration date on the pill bottle…and then make a decision if I’ve had it “too long” (since I don’t automatically believe the expiration date in the first place).

From years of experience however, I can tell you that Tums don’t loose their fast acting antacid relief even after they’ve been sitting in a drawer for about 5 years (although they no longer resemble the original shape or color of a Tum) .  Advil still works even if it hasn’t seen the light of day since the First Bush was President.  And, Vicodin NEVER stops working.

But antibiotics are a different story.  I was married to a doctor after all so I KNOW that if you find a rogue antibiotic laying in the bottom of a pill bottle you probably shouldn’t take it…even if you’re dying.  In fact, you should be wondering if the illness you were suffering from way back when was actually cured, since you obviously didn’t finish taking all of your antibiotics at that time!!!

In all fairness though, expiration dates can tell us how long the manufacturer thinks their product will be most effective…but it’s up to each of us to determine if using their product whenever, is still good enough.  Obviously, if they really thought it would be dangerous for us to use their product after a certain amount of time, they would build in a self-destruct mechanism to destroy it on the expiration date.  And since that isn’t the case…I don’t think expiration dates matter at all.

I’m all for them…within some seriously defined boundaries of moderation.

I have my ears pierced, in two places (close together in the “normal” part of the pierce-able bottom ear lobe…none of that top ear lobe cartilage stuff). Honestly, I’m not sure why I ever got the second holes put in.  Most days, I only think to put one set of earrings in my lobes, but I think I like the option of putting two sets in at one time…especially when I have the time and/or energy to search through my mini earring supply and find a set that would look smashing with another fabulous pair on hand.

I also had a belly button ring for a while.  I did it with Ally when she turned 16.  She asked if I would go with her, and as any mother of a teenager will tell you…if your 16-year-old kid actually WANTS to do something with you, even if it means poking a long sharp needle into your inny or outty…you DO IT!

I remember the two of us leaving the piercing “salon” and walking down the street feeling all cool…while holding the top of our pants down below our hips so that the waistbands wouldn’t rub against the newly stabbed portions of our belly buttons.  Unfortunately, after the initial “I’m such a cool mom” phase wore off, and the healing process ended (which took an abnormally long time for me – being that it was an older belly button), I realized that the whole belly button ring thing was an absolute bitch to maintain.

I would spend an inordinate amount of time during my daily grooming focused on my naval.  Honestly, it had never really been that big a part of my cleaning routine before, but it definitely took a whole lot of time to clean it and would take even longer for me to change the jewelry in it!  I swear it took HOURS to wrangle that ring, or little jeweled barbell in and out through the two little holes in the upper lid of my naval.  And, after all that work, nobody could see how cool it made me, or how well it went with my outfit, because it was…HIDDEN!

Seriously…what was the point!?!

So I took it out and never looked back, or at my belly button for that matter!

Even though I would consider myself pretty open minded to most things centered around personal adornment, I have to admit that I’m not crazy about piercings on lips, eye brows, noses, nipples or pretty much any other body part that sport a ring or dangling piece of jewelry.  Those cute little dots of jewels that women wear in the soft fold of their noses?  I think those are OK.  But when they hang a  ring through their nostrils, or through their eyebrows, or God forbid in their lips or tongues…I want to pull on them.  I want to flick them.  I want to yank them out.

When it really comes down to it, though, I think it’s less about the piercings per se and ALL about the Jewelry.  Simply put, piercings provide an opportunity to wear body jewelry.  And I take the coordination of jewelry, any kind of jewelry…really seriously.