I'll never be Heloise, but...

Everybody has to do housework, right? And most normal people hate it, right? I hate it. So, when I find things that make doing my chores slightly more tolerable, I like to share. (Please note that I am making these recommendations solely because I like the products, and that I did not receive any free merchandise or payment for my opinions. However, I certainly would accept free swag if it was offered.) 

Bounce Dryer Bar

One of the perpetually aggravating things about laundry is fabric softener. I want to use it, but I hate most of the softener-delivery mechanisms. If you use liquid, you have to remember to add it at the rinse cycle. If you remember to add it, you can never be too sure that it won't stain the clothes. And those stains don't come out, which could prompt your spouse to ask why it looks like someone peed on the leg of his work pants. I also hate dryer sheets, because I don't think they work very well on static cling, plus the whole embarrassment factor of leaving your house with a sheet poking out of the back of your pants. Enter the Bounce Dryer Bar. This is a solid cake of fabric softener that comes with a holder that attaches easily to the inside of the drum of your dryer. It smells great, my clothes come out soft, and I have yet to need to replace it, despite doing at least four or five loads a week. I highly recommend it.

Mr. Clean Magic Eraser

This is not a new product, but it definitely deserves a mention. I first discovered Magic Erasers when I was trying to find a way to clean, well, dog slobber off of the wall. (The dogs play fetch in the hallway. Fetch=slobbery ball that sometimes hits the wall. I know, it's gross.) I had tried everything, and was about to go out and buy paint, when I saw the Magic Erasers at the grocery store. Oh. My. Gosh. If you've never used these things, it really is like magic. One of these little treasures and some elbow grease had my hallway looking like it was freshly painted. They remove soap scum, too, and the black crud that accumulates around the edges of sink drains. I keep three or four in the house at all times.

Herbal Essences Tousle Me Softly 

I know, this post was supposed to be about things that make household chores easier. But, since I'm trying to grow out my super-short haircut right now, the daily struggle to make my hair look reasonably suitable definitely falls into the "chore" category. Have I written about my hair here before? It's like an alien creature has landed on my head, and I know there's no chance of conquering it and forcing it to obey my will. The best I can hope for is to try to keep it happy and maintain a good relationship with it so it won't turn on me. (It's thick, super-curly, and as coarse as a horse's tail. I've been fighting it since my first haircut, when I was six.) Since I'm letting it grow, there are all of these weird layers and humps that must be dealt with, in addition to the general unruliness. My sister (who has gorgeous, shiny dark hair that looks perfect curly or straight) recommended Tousle Me Softly, so I picked up a tub--with my usual dose of skepticism that anything could help this wig of mine. It not only helps, it actually makes my hair (the horse's tail, remember?) feel soft. And it smells good. And the tub is huge, and only cost about $5. Score! I think it's going to work even better once my hair is long enough to fall into its usual curl. I'm loving this stuff, and props to my wonderful sister for recommending it.

Have you found any miracle products lately? Anything that makes the thought of doing chores a little less soul-suckingly awful? I'd love to hear about it, because I'm lazy and willing to take any and all available short cuts.

Greetings from the stir-crazy

Three weeks post-surgery today, and I'm really ready to get out for a while...I haven't been any further than the mailbox since I got home from church on Sunday. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that, even though I feel well, I'm not physically ready for any big outings just yet. Since I was feeling so well last Saturday, I decided to try a shopping trip. It was a lot of fun (and I found good stuff), but it took me about three days to recover. On the upside, I've actually been able to wear shorts today! I'm sure Mr. Nerd will be delighted to see me in something other than a robe.

I've learned something else, too: even though I haven't blogged in over a month, it's really hard to come up with posts when all I do is sit around the house all day. So, here's a little glimpse at what I've been doing for the past three weeks.

hanging out with the world's laziest dogs

Seriously. They do this ALL day. Except when they're going nutball, barking at nothing.

online shopping

My custom Chuck Taylors! I learned about custom Chucks on Cardiogirl's site. Thanks, CG. (And yes, those are my legs. They really are that white.)

coloring

One of my "grownup" coloring books. I never outgrew coloring, and it really helps to pass the time. I can spend most of a day working on one of these pictures.

reading

My wonderful co-workers sent me a sweet gift basket with lots of stuff to read, and other goodies, and a bunch of folks have been saving magazines and catalogs for me. This Old House, Glamour, Biscuit Magic...clearly, I have a wide variety of interests.

eating rainbow sherbet

I don't really have much of an appetite since the surgery (yay!), but when I am hungry, all I want to eat is sweets. So, meals have basically become a dessert-delivery system. I'm currently finishing up my second half-gallon of rainbow sherbet.

My post-surgery followup is tomorrow, and I should find out then when I can go back to work. Since I have been staying up until midnight, not doing my hair or makeup, and taking a nap whenever I feel like it, being back at work is going to be a MAJOR adjustment. Hope there's room in the communal office freezer for my sherbet fix. Oh, and I guess I'm going to have to, you know, get dressed every day. Whew. I'm tired just thinking about it.

Four whole days!

I have a four-day weekend, and I am so excited about it! Here's what I'm going to do:

1. Sleep in
I saw another doctor this week (#3 in the Great Shoulder Adventure, in case you're interested). He noted my bag-eyed state, took pity on me...and prescribed something to help me sleep. I'm trying the new med for the first time tonight. All fingers are crossed.

 

2. Make a purse

Honestly, I have kind of a love/hate relationship with sewing. You've heard "measure twice, cut once"? I usually measure four or five times, cut wrong, try not to swear, cry for a while, then make sure I have enough fabric to start it all again. Sometimes I have to just scrap the whole thing. But I found some really cool UK fabric on sale, and I hope to make a quilted purse to sell online. I've made several of these purses already, but that's no guarantee I will be able to do do it again.

 

3. Read 

You probably can't tell from my crummy photo, but this is my favorite reading spot. With my softest, warmest fleece throw, and two excellent Inspector Morse books from the library. I can't wait to curl up here for a few hours.

 

4. Nap

My favorite reading spot is also a good place to nap--especially if there is a warm puppy to cuddle. Sometimes they get tired of waiting for me, and just take over my napping spot for themselves.

 

5. Just running a little errand, no big deal

Uh oh. Patches just found out he has to go to the V-E-T tomorrow for some blood work. Looks like he has taken refuge under the bed. Don't worry, little guy! It's just a tiny poke.

So, those are my big plans. There is a chance that numbers 2 and 3 may take a backseat to number 4. How about you? What are you doing this weekend?

 

In which I discuss the harshness of reality

Where I dream of being:

gorgeous, tropical white sand beach (courtesy planetware.com)


Where I actually am:

my patio - snow-covered, 30-mph-gusty-windblown, 16 degrees

Reality bites. (Sob.)

Going back to the way things used to be

Once again, it has been quite a while since I've blogged. I could make the usual excuses--I was too busy (it was Christmas), too sick (I did have a head cold), and too tired (we did a major clear-out of the house last week). But really, that would be dishonest. The truth is that I have fallen back in with an old love. I've been reading. Y'know...books.

When I was a kid, I read constantly, usually making it through three or four books a week. Lately, though, I had kind of lost interest in reading fiction (except for Harry Potter books), and non-fiction can be kind of dry after a while. For a year or so, all of my reading was strictly online. Until the British mysteries came along, that is.

I tried reading mysteries when I was in junior high school, and I didn't care for them...not enough romance to suit my silly, sappy teenage tastes. Now that I'm older (and more realistic), though, I have discovered that I love a good, twisty mystery. So far, Colin Dexter's books are my favorite--I finished the last one in a day and a half. A trip to the library today yielded four more Inspector Morse books, and, since it's cold enough to freeze a welldigger's hinder off outside, I am all set to snuggle up and read to my little heart's content.

But what about my online life? Blog posts uncommented-on, LOLcats not LOLed-at, inane Facebook quiz requests ignored (What Kind of Vegetable Are You?), and a dirty, lonely Pet Society critter sadly languishing in her little house. And my poor blog, nearly un-blogged for the last two months. Well, this won't do. So, I'm going to work on dividing up my free time a bit better, so that I can keep up with all of my online peeps, too. Now, which household chore can I ignore in order to gain that extra free time? I already don't cook, so that leaves laundry, loading the dishwasher, and cleaning. I guess if you see me at Aldi buying a huge pack of paper plates, you'll know which one I chose.

(The reading puppy came from: http://skyways.lib.ks.us/library/pottwablib/dog%20reading.jpg.)

Maybe this is not the kind of therapy I really need

Yup, I'm back in physical therapy for my bum shoulder. When I finished eight weeks of PT last April, the shoulder felt really good, and I assumed it would stay that way. Clearly, it didn't, so I headed back in for some more work. Except that it isn't--working, that is. So, my wonderful therapist is having me try some new techniques, which are making things a bit more...interesting than usual around here.


the TENS Unit
This odd little machine is supposed to relieve pain by doing, um, something to the receptors in my nerves, I think. I don't really know, and I also don't know if it works or not, since I just started using it yesterday. I do know, however, that the Wikipedia page contains a sarety tip that absolutely fascinates me: it says that one should not place the electrodes for the TENS unit transcerebrally, i.e., one on each temple. But it doesn't say why! WHY?!? What does it do??? I would love to ask my therapist, but I really like her and I respect her a lot, so I don't want her to think I'm an idiot. I'm not saying that I'm going to actually try placing the electrodes on my temples; but, you can't tell me something like that, and then think I'm not going to be way curious about what could happen.

the floor exercise
I've been doing home PT exercises for nine months now, but so far, they have all involved a ball or a stretchy band or pushing against a wall. My most recent exercise requires that I lie on the floor for 15 minutes at a time, with a rolled-up towel under my back, between the shoulder blades. This sounds easy enough, and it would be, except for one thing: in my house, human on the floor = playtime for dogs. The mutts think that having me lie down on the floor is their cue to sit on my head, stick chew bones in my ear, lick and paw at my face, and generally climb all over me like I'm a big ol' doggie jungle gym. Tonight, Sebastian must have decided that he needed to protect me from...something, because he spent the entire 15 minutes standing over my head. I took a photo:

In case you've ever wondered what the world looks like from the underside of a Cocker Spaniel's chin, there you go. I think the photo is kind of ominous-looking, but the only real danger was that Sebastian might drool on my forehead.

In two weeks, I should know if the new treatment plan is working, or if I'm headed back to the orthopedist for "the next step." Talk about ominous! I'm pretty sure I don't want to know what the next step is, unless it involves hot towels (there's another patient at the therapy office who is always lying down, covered in hot towels, when I go in for my session), or Lortab, my painkiller of choice. In the meantime, I guess I'll get used to having a dog sit on my head for a few minutes every night.

This is your eviction notice...

To all of the millipedes who have taken up residence in my kitchen, I have just one thing to say: GET OUT. There are five creatures who are authorized to live in this house, and you do not count among that number.

I know that it's getting cold at night now, it has rained so much lately that we need a freakin' ark, and it's much nicer in here than it is outside...but I don't care. That probably sounds hardhearted; but, you freak me out, and I'm not likely to get over that anytime soon. I'm tired of turning on the kitchen light each morning and finding five or six of you creeping around on your many horrible little legs. It's equally foul to have to scoop up and dispose of your shriveled remains (with a paper towel, of course), when you are inconsiderate enough to expire on my linoleum. The worst, though, was when I entered the kitchen the other morning without my glasses. I saw what I thought was a brown leaf on the floor, and brushed it to the side with my foot--only to have blood squirt out of it! I nearly fainted dead away. That was the last straw.

So, millipedes, I'm going to have to ask you to remove yourselves from my domicile immediately. I will permit you to remain on the patio, provided you make no attempt to cross the threshold. If you force me to make a second request, it will be accompanied by insecticide spray.

(image courtest of ohiolandlord.com)

It wasn't a "vacay"

It was just a week off work...and I hate the word "vacay," anyway. The husband and I were off last week, and I was officially the least productive person on the planet. I spent nearly the whole week just breathing, napping, eating, and wasting time on the Internet. As my vacation time approached, I was planning to blog more, rather than less, since I was going to have so much free time. Apparently, though, I just couldn't work up the energy.

When Monday came around, I found that I really didn't mind going back to work all that much, since my job is usually okay. I did, however, have a bit of difficulty adjusting to being around actual people again. Mr. Nerd and I have been married for quite a while, so we don't sit around under each other's feet; when we're at home, he does his thing and I do mine. So, I would go for long stretches without conversing with anyone other than three lively, but uncommunicative, Cocker Spaniels. And most of those conversations were of the "don't: sit on the other dogs / lick up things you found on the floor / barf in the corner where I can't clean it up / do unnatural things to your brother's head / bark like fiends at the poor bored neighbor dog / hit the 'delete' key on the laptop" variety. My co-workers might have thought that I was unusually quiet on Monday (unusual, since I'm hardly ever quiet), but I was really just trying to remember exactly what it is that human beings talk about all day.

At any rate, I'm back, and I have some great ideas for new posts. I'll have one later in the week; here's a little teaser:

Be sure to check in later this week!

I Have a Bad Feeling About This

Back in September, I wrote about my most recent injury. Short story: I felt something in my shoulder area pop when I pushed the sprinkler into the ground. The kind folks at the walk-in clinic said it was a strained pectoral muscle, and it should feel better in two to four weeks.

Six months later, the constant pain and lack of sleep finally sent me to the doctor. After two doctor's appointments, an MRI, and a rather painful physical therapy session, I finally have a diagnosis. Because I am not medically inclined, I will use diagrams to explain my condition.

A healthy shoulder:

My screwed-up shoulder:(Mad PhotoShop skillz, I haz dem.)

Apparently, there's a torn supra-something tendon, and a torn labrum (maybe?), and some bursitis. At least I think that's what it is, because my doctor has a pretty heavy accent and I can't always understand her very well. While she was telling me the diagnosis and recommending an orthopedic surgeon, I was surreptitiously reading the MRI results on the computer over her shoulder, so that I might have some comprehension of what she was saying.

It looks like the next step is the orthopedic surgeon...on March 19th. That was the earliest available appointment. Thanks, guys. I should be a raving Lortab addict by then. Until then, I will have two torture, um, physical therapy sessions each week. If you've never needed any kind of physical therapy, you should consider yourself lucky. They do all kinds of weird things to you there. But that will be the topic for my next post, I think.

A Paradigm Shift in Household Chores

A few days ago, JD at I Do Things So You Don't Have To wrote a post about a visit to her mechanic. (Hilarious, as always.) Many of the commenters, including me, were women who noted that they would prefer that their husbands take care of anything involving cars. That blog post got me started thinking about the division of labor at my house, and the major paradigm shift we went through a couple of years ago.

When the Husband and I first moved in together, we divided the chores pretty evenly, with a few exceptions: I did not want to have anything to do with cars or repair of broken items (because I don't know what I'm doing), and killing bugs (because I'm a wuss). He complained bitterly about the bug-killing thing, particularly when I would wake him up to get rid of a spider, but he dealt with it.

When we built our house five years ago, our street was still partly un-built, and we spent the first winter waging war against mice. The Husband and I seldom argue, but we had a full-blown dustup over a dead mouse; he expected me to remove a carcass from a trap, and I refused. My reason? "You're the man. You're SUPPOSED to do things like get rid of dead mice." He didn't appreciate that answer, but he could tell I wasn't budging on touching the dead mouse, so he did it. The next winter, we were delighted to find that the mice had relocated to someone else's house, and we thought our dead-critter removal days were over. Boy, were we wrong.

Shortly after we moved into our house, we adopted two male Cocker Spaniels. They are great dogs, but they proved utterly useless in the Great Mouse War of '05. They would just sit and watch the mice run across the floor, cocking their heads, while I was screaming and freaking out, knowing that the verminous little monsters were going to poop in my cabinets. When we adopted Abby from the shelter in the fall of 2006, we assumed she had the same disinterest in critters that the first two dogs displayed. Boy, were we REALLY wrong.

You see, Abby only looks like a cute, spotty, little nose-kissing sweetheart; she's actually a cold-blooded killer. She started out with birds, mice, and moles in the backyard. Each time she killed something, I would have a fit and call the Husband to dispose of the carcass. And each time, he would get angrier at me for refusing to dispose of the carcass. Then came the Day of the Rabbit.

It was a weekday. I had gone home on my lunch hour, as usual, to let the dogs out and give them fresh water. When I let them out, I noticed that they all ran to the same spot in the yard, barking furiously. Never a good sign. I stepped out onto the patio and saw that they were chasing a rabbit. I was well aware of Abby's prowess at killing (she can snatch birds on the wing, if they are flying low), but I never dreamed that she would be able to catch a rabbit..until I saw the way she was pursuing it. While the boys were simply running around and around after the bunny, Abby was crossing its path, making tighter circles with each pass. I started to have a really bad feeling about Mr. Bunny and his chances of getting out of my yard alive. I tried to call Abby off, but she was completely focused--and then--POUNCE! And SHAKE!! And bye-bye, bunny.

You need to understand at this point that I absolutely love animals. I cried like a baby once when I ran over a bird, even though I'm terrified of birds and don't want them anywhere near me. So, the thought of the dead little rabbit in my back yard broke my heart. And freaked me out, when I realized that someone was going to have to get rid of it. I called the husband at work (in another city, 40 minutes away), bawling. Here's a rough transcript of that conversation (keep in mind, I'm sobbing the whole time):

Husband: Okay, Abby killed a rabbit. I'm at work--what do you want me to do about it?
Me: I don't know.
Husband: I can't drive all the way home just to pick up a dead rabbit.
Me: Are you sure?
Husband: Are you crazy?
Me (sobbing even harder): I don't think I can do it.
Husband (annoyed): You have to. The dogs can't go out again until the rabbit is taken care of.
Me: (sob)
Husband: You're going to have to get a grip. Stop crying, get a couple of grocery bags, and go out there and pick up the rabbit. Tie the bags closed; throw them in the Herbie; go in and wash your hands; and call me when you get back to work. I love you. Bye.
Me: (sob)

It was awful, but I followed his instructions. And since then, I seem to have gotten...braver, somehow. Abby has continued to kill things, and I have cleaned up dozens of carcasses, without crying. (Except for the bird that she swallowed whole, which is a blog post in itself). At some point, I decided that, if I could clean up carcasses, I could kill bugs, too. Imagine the Husband's surprise when he asked me (following a series of thumps and bangs in the kitchen) what I was doing, and I answered, "Killing a spider." I've even killed a couple of really big ones! I'm kind of proud of myself, to be honest. But I still refuse to have anything to do with the car, except for driving it. A girl can only take so much.