Creativity

Hi all

Alright I will admit that I am not the most creative individual, sure I have an active imagination however that often does not translate well into reality, but sometimes circumstances call for a creative solution and when you are in these situations you have to come up with something.

So as I am sure that everyone can contest one of the challenges of living in a different city from where you grew up is that you are never really sure to get all the things that you need.  I know you are thinking "Wes you have been living in Amsterdam for over 6 months surely you must be use to the city by know and know where everything is!" and I would say yes for the most part I do but there are always things that you need but you are just not sure where to find.  Let me explain.

I have been suffering from allergies and my eczema has been getting particularly bad, especially after mom and dad left, and I have been trying to figure out what it could be.  I have started to change my diet, change my exercise routine, get more sleep, get less sleep, try cold showers, basically I have just been trying different things to relieve the symptoms and nothing really seemed to be working.  Then all of a sudden it hit me I was sleeping on a mattress which has been here since the dawn of time and I am sure that it is full of dust mites, after coming to this realization the solution became easy I just have to find a mattress cover.  Well you think that a mattress cover would be an easy thing to find, at least I did, I figured that I would pop down to IKEA or some other similar store and pick one up for 20 or so euros and I would be off to the races.  Well that certainly was not the case, I actually spent the better part of one day going from store to store and then phoning stores asking about mattress covers and I was only greeted with confused looks and annoying off topic advice "why don't you just buy a new mattress?".  I finally found a store which did have mattress covers but it turns out that they had to be custom made and were about 350 euros per cover (apparently they have microorganisms in them which kill all these things and make them very good to use).  Well needless to say the thought of coughing up 350 euros for a mattress cover is not very enticing and I just figured that I would just buy a lot of allergy medication for that money and be just as well off.

As I returned home grumpy both because of the lack of success and because I was hungry (I managed to gain about 6 pounds while mom and dad were here so now I have to get rid of it so it is diet and exercise for me but the bad thing is that I seem to be constantly slightly hungry as I wait for my stomach to shrink, Thanks mom and dad!) I was still trying to figure out what a possible solution may be.  Then when I was in the kitchen making some dinner (bean chili) it hit me, why not use plastic bags to cover my mattress! This way I solve the problem of the dust mites affecting me and I save 350 euros.  Well I have done just that and I am proud to say that my plastic bag mattress cover works like a champ but I probably will be buying a foam pad to put over my mattress as my mattress now crunches when I turn over.

HAAAZAAAA! Chalk one up for creativity!

Love

Wes

P.S I noticed that mom posted a blog post dad, where is your blog post?