Ooh, that reminds me. If you have a big Costco jug of something viscous, like cooking oil or liquid hand soap, use a little knife to cut a “V” shaped hole into one side of the foil seal, plus a little air hole on the other side. Then you can pour out the liquid in a thinner stream, which is easier when filling the cooking oil container next to the stove or the little pump hand soap dispenser next to the sink.
ever since I cut myself cutting eggplant while talking to someone, I don’t talk and cut at the same time. and I take extra care with eggplant now.
We’ve come full circle
Not quite full circle: Circle minus a couple of triangles.
I like this idea but, boy, I sure wouldn’t count on that seal holding until the worst possible time. It really seems like one of those things that is a pain to remove (I’m looking at you, windshild washer fluid jug!) until you want it to hold at which time it bursts open and glugs messy contents all over, say, the laptop keyboard.
And that’s why you never keep your windshield wiper fluid on the desk with your laptop. -J Walter Weatherman
This resides under my category of “things you learn the first time it happens.” For me, I step very carefully off every curb since I fell (off my platform shoes) and broke my ankle.
When I fell that time, my cell phone was in my car, so I had to lie on the ground for a while until someone came by. Now I don’t take any chances-- every time I step on a ladder or even a chair for any reason (to change a light bulb, put something away in a high cupboard) I always put my cell phone on the floor nearby
Ouch. I’ll try to learn from your mistake here!
I was given a very nice laptop by my brother-in-law after he’d spilled soup all over it. I replaced the keyboard, and had a nearly new computer. I encourage him to keep liquids around his computer all the time now.
Yeah, no kidding. We live remote, and I work from home. The stairs to my loft office are very, very step. I don’t go any where with out my cell phone. We do at least have coverage (antenna on the roof).
My mother lived alone by her choice. Nursing home, no way. OK. I got her one of those life alert buttons/fobs. Tiny thing. But it would get her help.
She would not keep it on her. She died last October from a fall because she did not have the alert button on her.
You use a laptop for more than 20 years?
Oh dear… 
I am so sorry. That is the adult child’s worst nightmare.
My mother had one of those call buttons when she lived in her apartment alone in California. She also would not wear it-- she’d hang it on the wall. 
I told her, “If you’re not going to wear it, at least leave it on the floor so you can get to it if you fall.” Sure enough, she fell one day and lay for seven hours in her own bodily waste until someone broke in and found her. That was the wake-up call for me to move her here to assisted living in Texas.
I got my Mom a call button after Dad died and she was alone in her apartment. She fell one evening while using the toilet. She was too proud and ashamed to use the call button until the next morning.
But she finally did use it, and I showed up the same time as the ambulance. No serious injuries, fortunately, but it would have been another couple of days before I was going to see her. So it was well worth the 30 bucks/month that we paid.
Lol, no. I was estimating how often i might need an extra laptop, due to water damage, though.
Thanks Thelma. And sorry you and your mother also went through that. I live 100 miles away, so when my mother could not be reached, I called my cousin that lives close. She found her. Alive, but barely. Turned out to be the end.
I’m working on her estate. Mostly memories. We’ve digitized over 600 35mm slides and hours of 8mm film (a three minute movie takes 30 minutes to digitize). I will be sending the digitizers and .mpg’s to other cousins to do the same for what they have of their history.
What is the saying? Bringing History to Life.
How much are additional fobs? I was thinking the same as you, if they’re not going to wear it, I think I’d get a bunch of them and say "Mom, if you’re not going to wear it, I’m going…mom, look at me, look what I’m doing…I’m going to put one here under your bed, one on the bathroom floor and one on the table next to your recliner (and wherever else would make sense). That way, at least if they can drag themselves around, they can hopefully get to one.
Come to think of it, I’m surprised these aren’t voice activated yet, for exactly this reason.
Has someone made an app for this yet? It seems like it would be trivial to make an app that listened for key words and then could fire off texts and/or calls to whomever needs to get them. But even an iPhone/siri could make the call, you just have to make sure they know how to use it.
I think mom had two or three. Ya could put it in your pocket, on a lanyard or a wrist band. Freaking water proof too. Don’t know the cost. Not an issue.
New systems have accelerometers that will activate on a fall, but may be a problem if you just drop it on a table.
Everyone, use this as a lesson for those that you care for. My 93 year old mother spent 20 hours cold and alone on the floor because she would not wear a trinket no bigger than a thumb drive.
Solutions don’t work, if you don’t use them.
The problem with most of the fobs is that they are darn uncomfortable to wear, which is why I’m looking into a Google or Apple watch. I don’t like to be monitored all the time, but the fall without the fob (it was on the nightstand) may have hastened my mother’s death, too.
We got my 90-year-old mother-in-law, Betty, an Echo dot for her living room so that if she fell, she could let us know. This was after she spent four hours on the floor one afternoon. One of her friends showed up to sit with her, but was unable to lift Betty back to the sofa. Her friend stayed until my husband’s brother got home to take care of Betty and get her back on her feet.