I just received a phone call from my mother and Aunt #4 died this morning. Her health condition was critical and she did not resist.

I received the bad news quite well what puzzled my co-workers. I believe they expected me to receive the news in a more sadly way. This doesn’t mean I don’t care but she is an aunt I don’t see in many, many years, I was never closed to her, she’s my father’s aunt I mean not a direct aunt and she’s 90 something.

Do I mean she deserves to die? Of course not, but I’m glad it wasn’t someone younger.

My father has 4 brothers and sisters, my mother has 9 brothers and sisters, from all these aunts and uncles one is in danger right now. The one that died today is aunt of my father and his brothers and sisters, meaning it’s right that she goes first.

I have this point of view because 7 years ago someone I considered my younger sister died at the age of 18 and THAT…it’s not fair. So when someone old from the family dies I always have the thought that: I’m glad it’s an older member of the family and not a younger one.

Rest in Peace.

Well these last 10 days were full of health issues, my tooth problem and four Aunts that ended up in the hospital. Yes, I have many aunts.

• Aunt #1 - Got a back surgery (she’s in her 60’s)
• Aunt #2 - Bronco pneumonia (she’s in her 90’s)
• Aunt #3 - Bronco pneumonia and some neurological disturbs (in her 70’s)
• Aunt #4 - Gangrene in one leg, as soon as she arrived at the hospital, the leg was amputee. (She’s in her 90’s)

Aunt #1 is home already recovering from the surgery the other 3 Aunts are still in the Hospital.

Each time my mother calls me now I ask: who’s sick now?

Although I continue with some pain on my jaw and gum, things are much better now. Today I’m stopping taking the pain killer and see out it goes. Why, because although I still have pain, the medication is attacking my stomach and causing me stomach ache. This was something I was warned about by the doctor and I must confess sometimes I take the medication without eating first therefore the stomach is easily attached.

The hole in the gum is huge, in fact I have two holes, one from the tooth removal and the other a lateral gum hole caused by one stitch that was infected causing the hole not to close. Let’s see how it goes in the next couple of days.

It seems I only have bad things to write about on this blog, but life is what it is. Again I haven’t updated it for a few days due to health issues. Do you remember my tooth removal? Well the pain didn’t go away and it was unbearable. I held on with all my strength and tried to “swallow” the pain, it wasn’t easy. I decided to wait until Monday to see a dentist but now I know it was a mistake.

I had an appointment scheduled to remove the stitches tomorrow but yesterday I called the clinic and asked to be seen my the present dentist, just to check if everything was fine. I went there and as soon as the dentist saw my mouth she start talking to her assistant requesting anesthesia, needles, scissors, and other materials I don’t even know the name. I asked: is there something wrong? The dentist said: yes, you have a serious infection, you shouldn’t have waited so many days to come. I can’t imagine the pain you went through, I’m going to remove the stitches and clean all the area including the bone once the infection has spread out.

Well, the gum was so infected that she had to give me several anesthesias in several places to put my gum and mouth to sleep. After all the work she had to do on the gum and tooth hole she told me I was going to have a lot of pain the next couple of days because the antibiotic she prescribed me takes 2 days to start doing effect, however she put a smelly product inside the hole where the tooth was to help fight the infection while the antibiotic is still trying to work.

Today I feel much better although the jaw is hurting a lot and I have difficulty in opening my mouth. The wound looks much better now but I still have some pain. Tomorrow the antibiotic will be working “full time” so I hope this all go away soon. That’s enough…go away pain.

Fortunately no payment was necessary for this urgent appointment.

I’m in real pain again, pain killer effect if going away. I have to take another pill and I’m going to bed now. The tooth hole and stitches look really strange and ugly.

I’ve reading all my regular blogs but no time to comments, I feel so guilty for not leaving a comments, but I prmise I’ll take some time soon to leave comments. Believe me I continue to read all of you.

We have a big back yard, the same dimensions of my neighbors, the big difference is that they have a swimming pool and we don’t. We have been giving a lot of thought to the fact that a swimming pool in the house would be a great help with the kids during good weather.

Although we live 15 minutes from the beach, spending an afternoon there is a little tiring. We have to carry all the necessary items for a good afternoon like:

• big sun hat
• towels
• bottles of water
• snacks
• ice blocks to keep yogurts fresh
• juice

take everything from the car, carry it to the beach and at the end of the afternoon the other way around.

Having a pool at home would allow us to stay at home and at the same time we could use the pool for fun. I’m sure the kids would forget about the beach in no time.

We decided to take a look at the several type and shape of pools available as well as a pool with low maintenance, so that we don’t have to spend a lot of time of our days taking care of the water, pool filters and other necessary duties.

EcosmartePool is the best company I found while looking for pools systems. This company has four products available: Pool system, Spa System, Pond System and Filter Glass Pack. Right now I’m interested in the pool system once it is completely environment friendly.

I had already put away the idea to buy a pool where I had to use chemicals because they are chlorine generators, they are toxic and are a threat to the environment. My neighbor had one pool with chemical system and her son started having ear and skin problems. Salt pools are not a good choice either, salt generators just create chlorine therefore that’s not an option.

Ecosmartepool only uses no-toxic systems that are not harmful for us or for the environment, they are completely chlorine and salt free.

Having two small children, their health is my priority. Both had asthma until a couple of years ago and they are very susceptible to allergies so Ecosmartepool systems is the right one to use on my case. With their system I don’t have to be worried with burning eyes, dry skin, damaged hair and also I’ll be free from that annoying chlorine smell.

Ecosmartepool system also increases the durability of pool equipments once there are no harmful products present.

The treatment they use in the water pool is 100% safe and it’s based in Copper Ionization. What I’ve leaned while looking for what is Copper Ionization is that copper ions are safe and essencial for humans, plants and animals but really harmful to bacteria and virus. Of course this treatment is a good add on to our pool.

This company donates 5% of its profits to environmental charities so besides using friendly products they still help the environment through donations. Wonderful!

What about you, are you a lucky pool owner? What cleaning system do you use?

Tuesday it was our 19th dating anniversary and yesterday it was our 14th Wedding anniversary.

Usual there are no celebrations and yesterday it was not different. Due to the tooth removal I didn’t even have dinner and went to bed early.

19 years is a long time and although things aren’t working out the way I thought they would, we’re still going on well.

Some changes must me made to smooth things out but being full time workers, two kids, a house to take care of, blogging and a million other things, it’s really hard to be always ok. The future will tell.

Yesterday I wasn’t in conditions to update my blogs. The tooth issue was resolved. The tooth couldn’t be repaired and was removed. After several failed attempts, the tooth had to be broken in two and remove each part separately.

Once the hole was very big the dentist had to sew me, yeap, I have 4 stitches on my gum. After the effect of anesthetize went away the pain started really hard. I still went to the office after the tooth removal because I had a lot of work but I was feeling real bad.

At night I went to bed at 20.30 with ice on my face. Today the scenery is the same, while the pain killer effects is on I’m more or less, when it goes away I’m full of pain.

I’ll return next Wednesday to the dentist office to remove the stitches and fix another tooth. There goes all the money…

Every year, on the first Sunday of May, it’s Mother’s Day in Portugal. So last Sunday I received wonderful presents from my daughter and son as well as many kisses.

It all starter on Friday when my son, who had three presents to give me (one he bought, one he did at school and one he did in daycare), insisted in giving me one right on that day. He read a poem and I couldn’t hold the tears from rolling down my face. It was so beautiful.

On Sunday I received two presents from my son and two from my daughter. Now I have poems, a wallet, a purse, a Potpourri bag and two recipe books where I have to write my favorite recipes.

But like my daughter learned in pre-school: Mother’s Day it’s everyday and love should be shown daily.

Yesterday (Saturday) I had a rather calm day. In the morning I cleaned my kitchen while the kids where playing around, we got out to buy food for the turtles and some plastic curtains for the kitchen door. I want to keep flies away…

In the afternoon my kids and 4 more neighbours spend the afternoon playing in the garden, in the computer, PS2, etc. while I chatted with a neighbour about…blogging and other gossips :). I wasn’t able to blog in the afternoon so here I am at 02:00am writing a few posts.

I was tagged a few days ago and I have to take a little time to write 2 memes…sorry Tina and Crissy for the delay.

Sometimes there are good news, fortunately, and regarding my old car issue it seems that my mechanic who happens to be my FIL can fix it. We have 5 more months to decide what we are going to do regarding buying a new car. We hope to get it fixed next week and I hope it will last fixed for a few more months.

I’m happy and at the same time disappointed. Google just updated (I think it’s over) and:

Blogspot Blog: The one I lately have almost only been writing paid posts (from PU2B) in and the one I only don’t stop writing there because I have some sidebar links for one year, just got a PR2 (it was a PR3 before the first big spank).

Useful and Funny Stuff blog: still a PR0 but this was no big surprise.

Buy Better and Have a Better Life: Once it was a PR3 than during the big spank got a PR0 and now it got a PR2. This is great news since I love to write on that blog.

This blog, Laura’s Daily Life, that once was a PR3, then a PR0 now still a PR0. Big disappointment since I wanted to develop this blog with paid reviews and posts.

On the other hand, I fully understand the PR0. This blog has few content, I neglected it to write PU2B posts on my other three blogs since I don’t want to write here PU2B, so… due to lack of time this blog was the less updated and now here’s the payout = PR0. No problem, I’m moving forward, cancelled PU2B in one blog and I’m going to work hard on this blog to have better content.

A curious think that happened to me was my blog Buy Better and Have a Better Life not being approved by Social Spark. The reason: I only blog for money and I have too many affiliate links. Since when affiliate links count as a paid posts? I review some products and I provide a link in case people want to buy it, as some other bloggers do, I sometimes use an affiliate link. Is this not correct? I don’t mind not putting affiliate links, the truth is: I never made 1$ from affiliates so I can stop using them, or are they expecting me to buy WP Affiliate pro to hide my affiliate links?

I also started using links to other blogs when I have a word or subject that fits in something someone wrote. Is this wrong?

Through Entrecard, I found a lot of new blogs, some with very good content but some with lots and lots of paid posts and still with PR, how is this possible? I checked some profiles in SocialSpark and I can see there are verified blogs with lots and lots of paid posts and reviews from products received. My Useful Stuff blog also has a lot of PU2B posts and was verified… Why wasn’t my Buy Better and Have a Better Life???? I sent a ticket…

Right now in Social Spark I can’t take opps from the marketplace for my PR2 blog…one day I will.

Let’s improve real rank now, mine sucks and I lose many opps at PayPerPost because of that, so, lets write….