A toilet tale.

Few things in the ordinary course of home life will catch your attention as sharply as an overflowing toilet. 

It happens a lot, and more so now that our toilets flush with low amounts of water. The newer low-flow cans are better than the first generation, but there's still not a lot of oomph there. On the other hand, if the clog is a real banger, there's that much less water to go spilling out all over the floor. 

I had a pretty good clog the other day. I won't bother you with details except to say that neither of my first two tricks worked. Those are:

#1: Leave the toilet and hope it resolves itself. Sometimes it does. If you have a second toilet you can use, sometimes it pays to let the water do its magic. When you return, the bowl is almost empty, and most likely the clog has moved along.

#2: Try to use the plunger for one good shot. Nine times out of ten, one nudge with a good plunger is all it takes. 

No, my can chose option #3: Start spilling water all over the place. 

I did get it cleared up, fortunately, although it required a load of towels to be washed with Lysol Laundry Sanitizer and the floor to be sanitized as well, just in case. No damage was done to the ceiling below, so I have to consider it a success. 

But that's a small problem. There are larger problems afoot. 

A couple of months ago, the town sent out an alert about our collective garbage use. When the town makes a contract with a private collection firm, it estimates regular household use to come to a certain quantity per household--no more than four big cans' worth a week. That's a huge amount for the average home. However, I can't help but notice that some houses nearby, including one right across the street, put an awful lot more than that out quite often. Which is why we got the alert: Our overall garbage disposing has gone over the upper limit of our contract. 

If you live in America and you are not blinkered, you know why: Houses in residential areas, even here in the exurbs, are being rented out and stuffed with grown-ups who come from distant lands without following expected protocols. 

When the houses were built in our development, we had to sign a covenant that said we would not rent it out. Well, that was nice while it lasted. The former neighbor who sold his house told me he had no idea it was going to be used this way. An old expression about one being born every minute comes to mind. Well, he doesn't have to live near it.  

But it all brings us back to plumbing. A friend of mine who would know says that while the town (supposedly) figures our the growing population for water and sewer needs, it still only calculates based on two or three adults and maybe as many as four children per household. When you have eight or more adults under a roof, repeated in house after house, there's going to be a shock to the system. We're not there yet, but if current trends continue, we may be in for a surprise one day. We may flush that toilet and the sewer may say, "Your flush is important to us. We are experiencing higher than normal flush volume right now. Please enjoy this backed up sewage while you wait." 

This is what we can expect in a country where our "leaders" think it's a great idea to let millions upon millions of unknowns enter and spread out to every city, hamlet, village, and town. Johann Friedrich von Schiller famously wrote, “Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.” So what chance do civil engineers have?

Jiggle the handle!

The flush toilet may be the most confounding appliance in the home, at least for non-plumbers. You think, How hard can it be? It's got no electronics, no gears. It's a fixture, not an appliance. And then you have to put in a new gasket or lever or chain, and you try to calibrate the proper length of the chain and height of the float and give in the handle, and pretty soon you're ready to throw the toilet out the window and start doing your #1s out the window as well.  

My dad was not a plumber, but he was extremely handy. And yet even he was reduced to advising us to jiggle the handle to stop the water running when the damn flapper would not close for whatever reason. He got sick of trying to get it to behave.

Toilets are touchy things. A lot of us are confused by fluids anyway. They seem to defy expectations. There's no reason why a siphon ought to work -- but once you start it going, though, the water draws the water behind it in what seems like perpetual motion. Of course, there is a reason why it works, but that involves like knowledge of gravity and air pressure and hydrostatic pressure and capillary action and surface tension, and now your head hurts. All you wanted to do was steal some gas from your neighbor's car and you gotta think about science and math? 

Yes, you do! What, for example, is a ripple? You've seen them in ponds, lakes, potholes -- maybe even a drop in the toilet bowl has created a lovely ripple. But can you describe it mathematically? Well, some very serious thinkers have been working on the ripple situation for some time. It's harder than you'd think. 

Let's face it -- water is weird. Most things shrink when they freeze -- water expands. You can't compress water; there's just no room between the molecules. If water was not so strange, life as we know it would be impossible. Without capillary action, there'd be no plants, no trees, no us. And until we meet the Rock Men of Planet Srumptk, we're looking at our basis of life as the only thing possible in the universe. So thanks, water! 

And don't forget to jiggle that handle. You wouldn't want to waste water!

Porch song.

John Madden famously said, "If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch."

Well, Izzy's on the larger side as breeds go, but he'd usually still rather stay on the porch. This summer has been relatively mild, and he's decided the porch is the primo spot. 

He isn't there to spy on the neighbors or bark at people going past on the sidewalk. He just likes hanging out outside. Humans need shelter, but not animals. If they're in their natural temperature zone, they can just hang out. They may not be comfortable all the time, but they're in far less danger of dying from exposure than we are.

What's annoying is that Izzy will pretend he has to go out to pee, sound real panicky, and collapse on the boards the moment he goes outside. Sometimes even if he has to do his duty (har!), he will stay on the porch first to make sure he gets his porchwork in.

Never neglect porch day.

Often he'll fall asleep out there. 

I don't mind too much. The porch furniture is not very comfortable, but it's okay. The bugs usually don't attack. It's mainly a problem if I'm on deadline. Almost all my work is done on the laptop, and I don't want that outside if the weather is bad -- or if he really does want to go walkies and I'd be obliged to leave it out there. Even if it's just sunny, it's hard to see the screen. 

He doesn't want to be alone outside, so he'll start making noises if tethered on the porch by himself. If I'm working against the clock, I have to play the bad guy and drag his furry behind back in. 

Occasionally the weather will be too hot or cold, and Izzy will want to go in before too long. This never happens in spring or fall -- rain, sun, fog, thunderstorm, snow, he doesn't care. 

But I think I benefit from the fresh air as well, even during allergy season. Also, because we were out there so much, I caught a bunch of wasps building a nest. The little bastards were building it at the very apex of the gable in the center of the roofline, a place inaccessible with wasp spray from the second-story windows or from the ladder I have. I could go out the window onto the porch roof, but considering that I have injured myself going downstairs recently and crossing the driveway before that, I am not going out on any roofs if I can avoid it. 

So, from the top of my ladder leaning up against the porch, I sprayed the nest with the hose. 

That has a couple of advantages. One, it ruins the nest. Two, they don't seem to consider water damage as an attack, just weather; they go into flee mode, not fight mode, so I got away without being stung. Unfortunately, the nest is still attached up there, hanging like a withered old testicle. If it doesn't detach on its own soon, I'm going to have to dig out the power washer and hope that has better range. 

To sum up: Dog, cute, loves porch; wasps, evil, build branch offices of hell in inaccessible places. And I'm just glad I can sit outside and not freeze to death because it's summer.  

Game of throne.

New toilet for the master bathroom arrived yesterday. If you heard something, that was the parade I threw in its honor. We're flushed with joy.

As is typical for the homeowner, what started as a small issue turned into a pricey fix that took weeks to resolve. There were a lot of ifs along the way that would have prevented this from getting out of hand and thus out of pocket:

🚽 If I had installed this toilet properly two decades ago, it might not have started to leak.

🚽 If I had bothered to change the gasket when I was changing out the screws that held the tank to the bowl, that might have stopped the leak for real. 

🚽 If I had just bought a cheap can at Home Depot instead of asking my wife which throne she desired, I might have been able to bring it home myself and not have to pay delivery. 

🚽 If she had picked something that wasn't big and heavy and had super-flush technology (we'll get to that), we would have saved a hundred bucks. 

🚽 If I had not exposed myself as an incompetent plumber, I could have installed it myself. 

🚽 If she had not noticed the damp spot on the ceiling below the toilet, all this could have been ignored until we moved or died. 

But, if ifs were horses, beggars would ride. 

It's all resolved now, however. The new throne has arrived and was installed by two very polite young chaps. The new one is elongated and chair-height, which is nice, and has Kohler's Revolution 360 super-flushing technology. The queen of England in her Windsor-era WC could only wish for a throne this delightful. 

I'd like to go up and play with the new installation some more, but I've already flushed it a few times. I would hate to be called a four-flusher. 

Gone fishin'.

 

A flake's tale.

Once upon a time there was a tiny drop of water that wanted to become a snowflake. 

"Oh, what a joy to be a snowflake!" it said. "I will drift gently from the sky and join with my brethren to become a snowstorm. And we will become one with the happiness of winter. Perhaps I will become part of a jolly snowman, or a sturdy snow fort, or even a dashing snowball! I can't wait!"

The winter came; the air grew cold, and the bit of water went up into a cloud and froze into a snowflake, as it had hoped. 

"Looking good!" it said, admiring its sharp, hexagonal pattern and gleaming white appearance. "Now to make for land!"

"Hold on," said the cloud, "don't be in such a rush. There are people down there who are trying to get to work, old folks with no one to shovel for them, kids on the way to school, ambulances and delivery men and all kinds of people who will be in grave trouble from a sudden storm. You should all disperse gently, in teams, over a period of time."

"Nuts to that!" said the snowflake. "C'mon, guys! Let's PAR-TAY!"

So the little snowflake led an enormous charge of snowflakes that swamped the town, causing a picturesque layer of slippery stuff that caused people to fall, breaking various coccyxes, and crash their cars and trucks, and have heart attacks shoveling, and see their gazebos collapse. 

Did the snowflake get to earth? Yes, but it got stuck on a roof, where it could not be made part of anything cool. It just had to hang around on the shingles until it melted. 

"Aw, this blows," the snowflake said bitterly. "Any chance of leaking into the house?"

"Bob said they're doing it on the north side, but not over here," said another flake. 

"Crap. Well, here comes the sun. I'm gonna skedaddle."

"What will you do?"

"I'm going to melt off that gutter and become an icicle. Maybe I can fall off and hit something."

So the flake did that, and froze into a mean, hard icicle. But the icicle did not fall off all at once. Instead, the sun melted it bit by bit, and the snowflake (now water again) plunged into a drift of snow and froze into ice once more. It got piled on by many of its brethren, and this was the best they could do. It was no fun at all, and the drop of water regretted being such a jackass when it was still up in the cloud. 

Moral: Keep being a selfish jerk and you'll turn into a complete ice hole. 

The galosh situation.

When I was a kid, galoshes were a thing. Now they are not a thing. What happened? 

Actually, they do make a lot of galoshes still. One can be as galoshed up as one wants. But does one?

So, back in the paleolithic era of my childhood, when I attended P.S. Ogg, it was hardly unusual for kids to wear actual shoes instead of sneakers to school. But all kids were expected to have some kind of galoshes or rainboots for hard weather. They would typically be stowed someplace near the entrance so that we wouldn't get the halls slippery with snow, ice, or just lots of water. 

Every office worker had some kind of galoshes, because they didn't want to schlep around the joint in wet shoes. Even my blue-collar dad eschewed boots, preferring to wear big rubber galoshes over his usual work shoes. Those things were almost waders. 

For such big ol' galoshes (mine were halfway up my shin, just like the ones shown above) you wanted some genuine Baggies, the plastic bags made in those days by the plastics division of Mobil. Unlike Ziploc bags they had no seam, so they were perfect for putting over your shoes so they would slide right into those gum boots. And they offered an extra layer of waterproofing.

By the time I was in high school, of course, you'd rather die than not walk to school in your sneakers, at least if you were a guy. 

For a few years in the early part of my fabled career, when men still wore suits to work, I would use galoshes to protect my dress shoes. Later on I just kept a pair of decent black shoes in the desk and wore boots. Still later I got boots that were nice enough to wear with the casual dress required, but could still change to those desk shoes if it was a particularly messy trip in. 

Since then, galoshes have played no part in my life. People wear jeans to the office, and I work from home now anyway. I don't think I'm alone in saying my galosh days are likely over. 

But you never know. Weird things pop up all the time to help us deal with winter weather, and galoshes may make a comeback. Look at this thing from Cotosen:

As a ski hat it is kind of brilliant, combining head warmth and ski goggles into a single package. On the other hand, I think it would make you look like Dumb Donald. 

Styles change, but I don't know that they'll ever change that much. 

🥾👢🥾👢🥾👢

P.S.: You will never believe it, but the strange and wonderful word galosh may actually share a root with the word artery. Here's Merriam-Webster on the etymology: 

Middle English galoche "kind of sandal or clog with a wooden sole held to the foot with leather thongs," borrowed from Anglo-French & Middle French, borrowed from Old Occitan galocha, perhaps going back to Gallo-Romance *caloctium, borrowed from Greek of Massalia (Marseille) *kalóchtion, altered from *kalórtion, from Greek kâlon "wood, timber" (of uncertain origin) + -ortion, compound form (as in Middle Greek cheirórtion "glove," podórtion "gaiter") of Greek artḗr "kind of shoe," probably derivative of aeírein "to bind" with -tēr, instrument suffix — more at ARTERY

There's one for the philologists! 

The pipes are piping.

Good day, YouTube world, and welcome to Uncle Fred's Home Repair show. Today we take you deep into the bathroom of Uncle Fred's house to show you yesterday's project -- a project you can complete in your very own home with your very own hands. Or, if necessary, someone else's hands. Watch these clips.

So here I am examining the sink in my wife's bathroom. (You viewers may remember my #1 tip for domestic harmony when possible: separate bathrooms.) Seems that her sink has been running slow. Now, the cap on this kind of drain plug can be unscrewed. Many people don't know that, because it unscrews to the right -- righty loosey, in this case. Maybe it's Australian? Anyway, here it is off, and look at that hair! Somehow, some hair from her head has gone into the drain. We'll have to pull that out. I'm using a needle-nose pliers and a long, thin screwdriver to get the tangle. And it's just a little clump. Why is human hair so nice on the head and so awful everywhere else? Just a rhetorical question from Ol' Uncle Fred.

Now here I am in the hallway after that job, deep in thought. You can tell because my lips are moving. The drain in my shower has been awfully sluggish. Can it be a hair issue? Ah, you say, Uncle Fred has precious few hairs on his head. That's true. Maybe an armadillo died in there. Let's open 'er up and have a look.

For this job I'm using a long piece of metal in lieu of a screwdriver. Why? Because the piece of metal was in the junk drawer in the kitchen, so it saved me a trip to the cellar. We just put it in the screw on the drain cap and -- There we go! The screw is loose and -- huh? It's not pulling out? Let's pry up the drain cover and --

HOLY CRAP! It looks like someone's been scalped, and the scalp stuffed in the drain! 

Here we see Uncle Fred retching as he pulls his own gooey, sticky hair clumps out of the drain. The upside is that there's no clog in the pipe. The downside is, it's disgusting. This is why Uncle Fred admires professional plumbers so much. This is gross enough when it's just my own hair. If it was some stranger's hair it would be worse. 

With the old hair pried out, we just return the drain cover with a few twists of the metal stand-in for the screwdriver and the job is done. Easy, right? The only question that remains is: Why is there more Fred hair in the drain than on Fred's head? Maybe some mysteries are not meant to be solved. 

That's all for today. Join us next time when Uncle Fred deconstructs a leaky toilet and calls 9-1-1!

Ta ra ra boom.

This has been a challenging week. And I say challenging because we've all known really bad weeks, and people who fought for America in hellholes all over the world know what really really bad weeks are like. I'll run it down quickly so as to not belabor the point. We start last

MONDAY: Guys come to install the "fenceless fence" system to keep dogs on our property. Installation is no big deal; training section gets off on the wrong foot and remains there. Our big hairy dogs have to have patches on their neck shaved off so that the connections (prongs) on the collar (at choking tightness) would make contact (poke) the skin to issue corrections (zaps) when the dogs ignore the warning (beeps) and go into the danger zone (near the wire). They do not like that correction. Tralfaz shakes his fuzzy head like he just can't believe what his life has come to. Nipper rears up like Silver with the Lone Ranger really digging in the spurs. Training at this stage largely consists of tapping little perimeter flags and yelling NO. This is embarrassing. Plus, a big job I was told to expect from a big publisher fails to arrive.

TUESDAY: My old supervisor at my oldest freelance client packs in the job at the end of June, so I meet with him and the staff at his place by phone to try to figure out what will be going on as we move forward. I make jokes to fill the silence like a soft-headed idiot. No one laughs. Is this a business meeting or an oil painting? I think these new people figure I am a mercy hire, despite working for them for eight years. Dog training held up by my wife's insane schedule as her job blows up. I do training in a sheer downpour, standing by the sidewalk, tapping flags, yelling NO, feeling like I really am a soft-headed idiot. That night we find red skin and scabbing on Tralfaz's neck where the patch was shaved.

WEDNESDAY: Tralfaz's grooming appointment, made last April. We can bathe him but we can't clip him, and he only gets groomed every three months. He is a tangled mess. I would have taken him in today if I were coughing my spleen out from Chinese Death Virus. Also had other business that took me across the border to Pennsylvania, where every New Yorker was loading up on fireworks but me. By the time we get home, Fazzy is so tired that he is essentially a great-smelling hairy 130-pound paperweight. Nipper is losing the desire to do anything outside, because he keeps getting shocked.

Places Nipper may go
Places Nipper wants to go

THURSDAY: Wife's job continues to blow up. Training still going poorly, although it's hard to tell. Did not use the correction collar on Tralfaz because he is still all scabbed up. Still expecting big freelance job but it does not arrive. Nipper seems to be reconsidering the long-held theory that peeing on the carpet is bad.

FRIDAY: Start the day by emptying the dishwasher. Put Corningware bowl and lid in closet on other Corningware bowl, which in a jealous rage throws the other bowl to the closet floor. Shattered Corningware bursts into approximately one bazillion tiny sharp bits. Having cleaned that up, I continue my winning streak by going out to run some errands, spurred on by the need for a new relief valve for the water heater. EVERYBODY IN TOWN IS OUT THERE. Absolutely crazy everywhere I go. I actually abandon a shopping cart in one store, something I never do. (There were no cold or frozen foods in it, though, if that makes me look better.) I will remember this for next July 3: Do not shop on July 3. Nipper seems to have lost the will to live.

SATURDAY: Saturday is okay, except for the blood. Tralfaz scratches himself real good with hind paw, as dogs do, and tears the scabbing on his neck. Now his nice clean fuzz has bloodstains; it hurts him to lie down, and he has completely broken training, roaming around with no collar at all. Nipper is retaining pee like it's his life's ambition to have a UTI. Aaaaand here come the fireworks. There are usually about a dozen fireworks shows in the county on or around the Fourth, and especially if it falls on a Saturday. This year there is one. But that's okay; our neighbors have all bought illegal fireworks and deploy them in stages between five p.m. and two the next morning. Ta ra ra boom de ay, and I do mean boom. If the Spanish had this kind of ordnance in Cuba ca.1898, they'd have won the Battle of San Juan Hill, and American history and the presidency would be very different. Nipper has discovered that he does not want to die, because he thinks he is going to lose his life any second. I try to remind him how the dogs of Gettysburg suffered for three days with cannons going off all the time, but he is not comforted. Fazzy may have lost too much blood to care, although we're keeping his injury clean and sterile as best we can. Everyone goes to bed really late.

ooh. aah.

SUNDAY: I finally get to put in a new valve on the water heater, which promptly begins leaking much worse than the old valve. Well, that's a revoltin' development. Being unable to control the situation, I turn off the water and call a plumber. The wife, stressed out by a terrible week at work, wakes up to no hot water and considers joining the French Foreign Legion because everything sucks anyway. Plumber comes, thank God. I pretend I did not just change the valve; he changes the valve again, but also gets a gallon of black sediment out of the heater by applying pressure in some secret plumber means. Hot water restored; he will be back to install an expansion tank later in the week. Money I did not expect to spend, but cheaper than a new water heater. With all this, we miss Mass on TV. Soup blows up in the microwave. We bandage Tralfaz's neck, which is not his new favorite thing. I fall in a heap on a chair and write this, as I look forward to seeing my ear doctor at eight a.m. tomorrow. By Sunday night, the big job I was expecting the previous Monday has still not arrived.

Two notes:

1) There is a very funny bit in Woody Allen's play (later movie) Don't Drink the Water. Walter, a caterer stuck in a foreign country, hears from his partner by phone that a catering event went poorly because some guests got food poisoning. Walter's wife says, "Be thankful nobody died." Walter responds, "Yes, Marion -- we're thinking of making that our slogan." On weeks like this I want to make that our family slogan.

2) If, like me, you feel like the song "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay" just came out of the ether, has always been around, and evolved organically without creators. Wikipedia tells us that "The song's first known public performance was in Henry J. Sayers' 1891 revue Tuxedo, which was performed in Boston, Massachusetts. The song became widely known in the version sung by Lottie Collins in London music halls in 1892. The melody was later used in various contexts, including as the theme song to the television show Howdy Doody." You can find out more here, but not who wrote it. Maybe it did spring out of the ether after all.

That sink feeling.

No spring training. No Mass in the Archdiocese of New York, at least this weekend. No St. Patrick's celebrations. Too early to worry about the lawn. Too crippled with spinal issues to walk the dogs. Too scared to go out to eat or go shopping.

Might as well fix the sink!

I've been threatening to fix the kitchen sink for some time. Even before my hospital visit last month, I had finally ordered the part I needed. These modern Delta faucets are very nice, but you can't stop the drip by changing a five-cent washer. Oh, no, like every other freaking thing these days, it's much more complicated. And expensive.

$30

And this fixture is only about three years old.

The problem was somewhere inside this sealed valve cartridge case. You must replace it in its entirety. Probably if I took it apart and tried to fix the thing, I would void the warranty on the faucet and my house would burn down. Anyway, the instruction road map that came with the faucet said that if your faucet is dripping, you need a new RP50587, and nothing less will do. Naturally, neither Lowe's nor Home Depot had it in stock, so I had to order it. Then, with one problem after another, including the hospital thing, I wound up having to wait a few weeks. Meanwhile, I slapped that damn dripping faucet a few times to show it I wasn't fooling around. You can't lose the respect of your plumbing, or you're sunk.

Maybe I slapped it around too much over the last three years.

So, yesterday I got to the job, and I have to say it went well. No floods, no puddles, no problems at all. Well, it was tricky to get the hot water turned off to the sink. I was noodling around with a wrench for a while until I got it totally sealed. The cold water was much more cooperative. Then I was able to pop off the faucet handle after I found the tiny hex screw, wrench off the big ol' ball nut (har!), and remove the offending party.

Here's your problem.

I soaked all the old bits in CLR and got them cleaned up, then installed the new valve, and no leaking! Better yet, no more dripping! Got it right the first time.

My dad could do any household job, but his son did not inherit that talent. So every successful repair is a victory. However, I've often thought that if I'd been wise enough to enter one of the trades, it would have been plumbing. Less chance of having to work on a roof or girder, and I hate heights. Less chance of electrocuting myself or others. And I think plumbing is exceptionally valuable. Ask anyone if he'd rather have electricity or running water in the home. Some may say electricity at first, but ask again a week into the experiment. Human beings survived about 200,000 years without electricity, but not one single year without water.

I know plumbing is not a pretty job, but that's why it pays well. And sure, I know the first rule of plumbing -- crap runs downhill. But I've found that to be true in all the other jobs I've worked, too.

Washing the dog.

Little dog Nipper, who is only just over a hundred pounds, is pretty well behaved at the groomer and can get a bath and haircut, no problem. Big dog Tralfaz, who is larger, has gotten panicky there, and the last time we tried to bring him in he displayed such powerful anxiety that they could not do anything with him.

Most groomers really don't want to work on dogs as big as Fazzy. Hell, I don't either. He'd never bite, but he will try to run, which can still hurt you, and could hurt himself.

But regardless, I have been in charge of bathing him until such time as we can find a groomer willing to work with him. My wife is in charge of giving him trims. She keeps his fuzzy feet from looking like old-man slippers, gets the knots and tangles off him.

Here are the steps I follow for giving Tralfaz a bath. Maybe you'll find it useful if you have to bathe a 130-pound dog.

1) Change into old clothes. Yes, an 1906 cutaway suit and spats would be nice. Failing that, old T-shirt and sweats and socks that look suspiciously like a hole is fixing to bust out. And boots.

2) Set up porch. Towels, bottle of water, showerhead attached to the hose (make sure the water in the hose is not hot after being in the sun). Move flower pot -- we don't want him to come back dirtier. Shampoo. Scissors for any surprise tangles. Grooming leash (a.k.a. choke collar). By now the dog knows something is up, but fortunately he is too big to hide.

3) Bring out Scrubby mitts too, and the new dryer, and treats, and mesh sponge, and brushes, and comb. (This dog needs more product in the shower than my wife does.) Then try to brush out as much loose hair as possible. My dog manufactures hair like General Mills manufactures Cheerios. This part could take a while.

4) Take dog down to yard to pee and maybe -- yes, score! Get that poop out now so that he will be able to keep that behind clean as long as possible.

5) Remove collar, flea collar; put on grooming collar. Wet down the dog. Dog does not appreciate getting wet. I thought dogs liked getting wet?! Not this dog. Starts trying to pull away from grooming leash, which is tied to porch and may bring down the whole porch roof. Tries to shake off water. This is why I wear old clothes.

6) Shampoo dog thoroughly, from neck to tail, as directed. This is like bathing a 130-pound toddler who hates baths. Keep at it. Remember: He stinks. We're doing this for the health of his skin and coat and the fact that he has to be around others tomorrow and we don't want them to faint when they smell him. Once he's somehow all soaped up, get at the tender bits with the Scrubby mitts.

Now we pause for this commercial and distasteful message. Friends, I receive no sponsorship from the makers of Scrubby, but I endorse them strongly. These disposable mitts contain their own gentle soap, so when you get them wet you can clean your canine chum with them safely. You don't even have to rinse them off, just wash and dry. They could replace bathing entirely for small dogs, but I think my guys still need a bath. However, they are excellent for getting up around Tralfaz's face, down around his Mr. Winkie, and especially around his butt, where the hair sometimes collects (distasteful part) dried poop. The Scrubby allows me to dampen that hair and (usually) remove it with no pain to him, then dispose of the cleaning mitt in the trash. Sadly, this time I pulled at the hair too hard and he freaked out. That's on me, not Scrubby.

Where were we? Oh yes:

7) Calm down freaked-out dog with a treat.

8) Rinse, which is more water and he still doesn't like it, ensuring him in happy voice that it's almost over (which comes across as the "blah blah blah Ginger" of Far Side fame, no doubt). When it looks like the soap is gone, turn off the water and let him shake to his heart's content.

9) Dry off with approximately 87 towels.

10) Brush the damp hair; remove more loose hair. Try new dog hair dryer with attached brush. Find it getting stuck in his hair. Call wife urgently.

11) Try to make self useful as wife demonstrates that the hair has to be combed first. Bring in damp towels; start load in laundry with bleach or Lysol Laundry Santizer. (They're too wet to burn.) Throw away old Scrubby. Bring in showerhead, shampoo, etc.

12) Marvel at how dry the Mrs. got the dog, who is looking happy and clean and very, very tired now.

13) Walk baby dog Nipper, who is extremely jealous at this point.

14) Go hide somewhere until the pain wears off enough to take your own damn shower.

Super water!

Okay, so this was stupid, but I got it anyway. There's a reason.

Yes, kids, you too can enjoy a refreshing bottle of water with your favorite DC heroes! Sort of. Don't worry about Superman being neglected; he's on the other side of this package. You fans of Deadman or Brother Power the Geek are out of luck, though.

When you take out a bottle of water, it at first looks like a pretty common plastic bottle, designed at appeal to the little ones.

Or perhaps it's designed to appeal to supervillains, who can act demonstrate what they will do to the heroes when their master plans get into action:

"I WILL CRUSH YOU, CAPED
CRUSADER!"

A couple of things to note -- this package featured four different heroes on the packaging, but only three different heroes in the six pack. The total count was one Superman, two Batmans, and three REAL Captain Marvels. (Don't you dare call him "Shazam!".) I guess they are assigned randomly to the packages, but it's like a male chauvinist six pack. Woe betide the Wonder Woman fan who bought one like it, such as the many Lynda Carter devotees on the Great Lileks's comments page! Moreover, shouldn't water bottles have an Aquaman selection? The guy did have a big hit movie.

Missing a Wonder Woman meant I couldn't test her light-up logo feature. Oh, yes, this is a bottle gimmick. You can shine a flashlight through one side of the bottle, and the logo shines out the other side.

Two caveats: You have to drink the water first, or the logo is a shimmery blob; and you have to use a very small light to get any kind of definition from the logo. Coincidentally, your smartphone has a flashlight that works perfectly!

Superman is a little blurry, but it's clear.

The Bat-Signal!

Captain Marvel? Flash? Gatorade? Reddy Kilowatt?
He never did have the most distinctive symbol.

The bottles are overpriced, of course, but may get your kid -- or your middle-aged man -- to drink enough water to stay hydrated in these hot weeks. After all, how are we supposed to fight crime thirsty?

The Corpse Pose was a little too on-the-money.

Lisa's first attempt at starting a Water Yoga Class was also her last.

Live a little.

I recently read that human beings cry up to 30 gallons of tears annually. That's each of us, not all together. And it's a good thing that we don't do it all at once, or we'd be dead. In fact, we'd be worse than dehydrated, like we got zapped by the Kelvans; 30 gallons of water weighs more than 250 pounds, so a lot of us would disappear up the spout, as it were.

The fact is, we live out our entire existence on earth incrementally, one meal, one breath, one tear at a time. Years ago I heard about the "bologna loaf" method of tackling large and daunting projects -- no one can just sit down and eat an entire 10-pound loaf of bologna, but anyone (except perhaps the most bologna-adverse) can eat one slice. Do that every day and eventually: no more bologna.

Now, I don't know why someone would need to consume that whole loaf, nor how it could stay fresh long enough for such a period, but the point is illustrated well. You can't do it all at once, so do a bit now.

People sometimes like to advise us to live one day at a time, and there was even a hit country song along those lines in 1974. And while this doesn't mean to go hog-wild and throw away all your money today like Don Ameche leaving for space in Cocoon, it does mean that there's no day in which to do anything but the day we are in. So focus on that.

The mathematics of increments are always mind-boggling, though. Based on an average lifespan, the American male will brush his teeth more than 57,000 times, eat more than 86,000 meals, take something like 576,700,000 breaths. Hell, I'll probably spend 100 hours playing a game on my phone that I don't even like that much. And yet we think life is too short.

The Huffington Post's more useful Australian site addressed this topic two years ago, and their calculations provided some weird figures: You'll spend:

• just over 13 years of your life at work 
• with an extra year on top in unpaid overtime
• more than 11 years looking at screens
• 16 months exercising
• 4 and a half years eating
• 26 years sleeping

Man, just looking at all this makes me tired. I think I'm about six months behind in my sleeping, so I'm gonna lie down and catch up, k? See you at Christmas.

Explosive beverage!

I'm gonna come right out and admit that this scared me a little.

So what we have here is a bottle of water -- not too scary on its surface, unless you're an anti-plastics environmentalist -- called Hello Water, from an outfit called Hello Beverages. This makes a lot more sense than them calling themselves Hello Sand Mix. 

This particular bottle (Dance) was infused with mango and orange flavors; other flavors available are Cucumber Lime (Love), Mixed Berry (Smile), Pineapple Coconut (Live), and Lemon Lime (Laugh). No sugar. Just lots of verbs. So far, so good. 

It's the "fiber infused" label that startled me.

Yes, that's right; each bottle of Hello Water has 5 grams of dietary fiber. That's 20 percent of your recommended fiber intake for the day.

You'd expect it to have particulate matter, like bits of shredded wheat or kale, floating around, but I see nothing.

Where did they hide it? And what will it do to me?

Why "DANCE"? Why do companies want me to keep dancing around the frigging house? Just like the damn yogurt people. Stop it! I WILL NOT DANCE! And if I would, I would not dance because you added fiber! Oh, wait, unless the fiber causes some kind of weird St. Vitus' Dance symptoms! Maybe I'll wind up doing a buck-and-wing all the way to the bathroom. I MAY NOT HAVE ANY CHOICE IN THE DANCING 😱

Let's calm down and start at the top: Why fiber in water, of all places?

The FDA always says we Americans don't get enough fiber in our diets, and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics notes that it's especially important as we get older. And we're getting older. In less than two decades, older adults will outnumber children for the first time in American history. And what will all these oldsters need?

Fiber.

No surprise that General Mills introduced the Fiber One line of cereal products in 1985, when the first Baby Boomers turned 40.

But: Fiber water? Just how clogged up are we, America?

I tried it -- NOT BEFORE CHURCH. We only have two bathrooms at the main church, the one that the kids and ol' folks occupy constantly and the secret one in the sacristy that I'd only use in an emergency.

I wasn't taking chances. I drank it when I knew I'd be at home the rest of the day.

"Dance" tasted good enough. Mangoey, orangey, fine, like those no-calorie flavored seltzers but without the fizz. But where is the fiber? How does Hello Water have fiber with no actual fibers? You don't have to shake the bottle, so I guess it doesn't settle. It didn't feel chunky on the palette. 

Well, they say its fiber is derived from chicory root, but that doesn't answer my question. Is it microscopic microfiber fiber? Perhaps so; apparently the inulin from chicory root is a type of sugar and also a type of fiber. Mind = blown. So that's why it's a 10-calorie drink as well as one with fiber.

It did not cause explosive gas or the need to charge to the head. I was a little disappointed; not that I was clogged up, or wanted to do a practice run for colonoscopy prep, but I wanted some kind of reaction in the name of Science! And I thought something should have gotten going. The bottle has just half as much fiber as a 3/4 cup serving of Uncle Sam cereal, and almost as much as a half-cup serving of Grape-Nuts. So what happened to the earth-shattering kaboom?

Maybe it's because I'm just a regular guy.

Would it be useful in times of constipational distress? I would imagine so, even if its fiber is not the kind that really gets the motor running. Chugging a bottle of water always helps when things are not motile. And the flavor makes it less boring than regular water.

So is Hello Water a good product for you?

Could be. Depends on your situation. Are you good to go, or are you solid as a rock? My fellow citizens, you have to ask yourself -- are you going to the American, or are you going to the American't?

Aw, that's just a fish story.

Don't let the neighbors see.

One of the most annoying ads on TV right now really shouldn't bother me as much as it does. Culligan, the water cleaning outfit, shows all the members of the household doing things with water. With the images are tags in a passive aggressive font, pointing out that the things are using water: "___ Drinks". "Pets Drink" "Clothes Drink" "Skin Drinks" "Saltwater Taffy Drinks".

Grandpa Drinks.

All of this in a not-exactly-subtle way to indicate that water is vital to your household and by the way your local water supply is probably coming straight from the waste pipe of the Cow Manure Processing and Toxic Chemical Plant. Which is bull, and I don't mean the manure.

Here are the things that bother me so much about the ad:

1) America's water supply is excellent. The ad is clearly using what they think is a friendly means of saying "Water is important" and "You're going to get sick and die if you don't use Culligan." Well, maybe if you live in Flint, Michigan, but that's an out-and-out crisis. Our laws on water safety are pretty strict, and one area where we all agree the government has a legitimate purpose. The indication that we're all in peril because of our water is akin to vaccine panic. If you're really concerned about the safety of your water, you should be talking to the local government and the EPA, not Culligan.

2) "Drinks" is one of those words that really scrapes the nerves after a few repetitions. It's unpleasant in the way "moist" is unpleasant, but it gets a pass most of the time because, hey, it's five o'clock somewhere! Remove the convivial association and it becomes a clunker of a word.

3) Everyone in the fictional household looks like someone you'd cross the street to avoid.

I can't remember another ostensibly cheerful spot that got under my skin this way. The Lowe's "Never Stop Improving" ad of a few years back worried me a bit, because it made life look like a brief flash of light filled with nothing but home improvement work.

I suppose this will be a successful ad for Culligan. It inspires fear without looking like it intends to -- most people wouldn't say "They're trying to scare me!" which would be a turn-off, but it is intended to make you think "Gee, is my water safe?" Fear is a great motivator. We like to think we make decisions based on intellect, but usually it's emotion, with intellect supplying the data (or rationalizations) to support it after the fact.

Anyway, I'd be more worried about drunk ol' Grandpa (above) with a pot of boiling water, but that's me.

UPDATE: Mr. Philbin asks in a PM, What about people with well water? It's not an insignificant population, I agree, but from my experience people who use well water hardly need to be told to have a water softener like the Culligan equipment. One family I knew had a shower that smelled like rotten eggs because of the high sulfur content, at least until they installed a system. The Annoying Family in the commercial (I think of them as the Annoignos, an Italian name because Drunk Grandpa is cooking spaghetti) clearly live on a suburban block in a new house almost certainly serviced with municipal water.

Eau du chien mouillé.

It's been rainy this week.

View from under the umbrella.

I'm not complaining, I'm really not. They have scorching temperatures out west and lots of places here in the northeast are getting flooded. Out in Laos they have "hundreds missing" following flash floods and a dam collapse. All I have are luxury problems. 

In fact, Sophomore Dog Nipper really seems to like the rain. On Tuesday and Wednesday mornings we got drenched during our routine morning exercise (either a walk or playing in the yard, depending on presence of garbage cans) and he had a blast. He could not have been wetter if he had been snorkeling in the Caribbean. He smiled at me like the world's happiest dog. Maybe he was at that moment. 

In the yard, though, he picked up a little passenger:

Yep, stuck his wet self into the tall grass on the verge and came out with a wet bee that did not look like the world's happiest bee.

I wanted to gently de-bee him with the umbrella, but that scared Nipper and he dodged and weaved. He would like very much to play with (i.e., destroy) the umbrella, but doesn't like it waved at him. After some minutes I managed to brush the bee off with a ring toy, and he and the bee parted ways with no further acrimony.

After that, my only problem is the wet dog. He would love very much to eat a towel, and goes into a kind of frenzy at drying-off time. Despite my best efforts, you can only get a dog so dry with a towel anyway. He was still soggy for hours. And you know, there's a reason Glade doesn't make a scent called Wet Dog.

Well, at least he had fun.

If it's too dry where you are, I hope you may get some of this life-giving rain. And if you're being flooded, may you get a chance to dry out. We all must live in the middle of extremes, even the dogs.

Skeletonize!

Apparently President Theodore Roosevelt was somewhat misled when he informed the reading public that piranhas will strip a mammal to the bone in minutes. To be fair, his book about his Amazon River expedition never uses the graphic term "skeletonize," but he did say the following:

If cattle are driven into, or of their own accord enter, the water, they are commonly not molested; but if by chance some unusually big or ferocious specimen of these fearsome fishes does bite an animal—taking off part of an ear, or perhaps of a teat from the udder of a cow—the blood brings up every member of the ravenous throng which is anywhere near, and unless the attacked animal can immediately make its escape from the water it is devoured alive.

Which is pretty close. But this Mental Floss article says that when they knew the former president was on the way, the natives purposely starved a bunch of the river fish to make them seem more ferocious. Put on a show for the great man. It doesn't explain why Roosevelt noted that "in every river town in Paraguay there are men who have been thus mutilated" by the piranha, though.

It's been more than a hundred years since Roosevelt's book was published, and we're still thinking of those mean river fish as Gary Larson put it:

I've never seen a fish skeletonize anything, but I've seen worms skeletonize a leaf:

So gross.

Look at the bones!

Yes, it's our old friend the leafroller, those little green worms that chew up a bunch of leaves and then make their escape by hanging down on little web lines. They are almost cute individually, but they become disgusting in the large numbers in which they appear. A lot of things are like that; they aren't so bad in little doses but destroy things in mobs. (Idea for new animated movie: an evil arborist tries to kill a cute little leafroller for 90 minutes of film time. Important that we never see more than one worm and his immediate family.)

Fortunately the leafroller doesn't usually damage a whole tree, and they're not nearly as disgusting as tent caterpillars, which are a great argument for nuking things from orbit.

The house I grew up in was surrounded by huge oak trees, and I clearly remember at least one year that featured the Summer of Pinworms. (Not actually pinworms, but we didn't know what they were called, and someone said they were pinworms.) The pathway leading from our house, always shaded by the oaks, would have these little green drops suspended in air. You'd open the front door and it would look like a drizzle had frozen in time. Until you got to the car and realized you had fifteen worms on you.

If you did a horizontal karate chop on the web line, you might wind up with the web dangling from your hand, the worm none the wiser. Which was kind of a neat trick, but then you had to get rid of the worm.

So I've always found these worms interesting, but not when they're on me. Ewww! It got in my shirt! Yuck! But clearly I have not been skeletonized yet.

I could stand to lose a few pounds, though. Got any piranhas?

Water.

Here's a bit of the ol' forest primeval, where I took little dog. Afternoon sun filtering through the pines...

Bit of a pathway by an old duck pond...

And just inside a chain-link fence...

Everything about this scene is man-made, or at least man-moved. Nature or Nature's God made the pines, but they were planted there by men. The duck pond probably was not there until it was put on the hill as a means of dealing with runoff, and under our feet is the giant concrete system to keep every house on this large hill nice and dry.

I've talked about this kind of thing in the past, mostly about water towers, but I'll say it again -- we don't appreciate how terrific we have it in America thanks to quality engineering. When bridges fail or a natural disaster wipes out a town it's awful, but we also know that poor municipal budgeting and sometimes stupid ideas make things worse. Systems require upkeep, and bridges need to be built with long-established math stuff. States racked by drought shouldn't have to rely on century-old systems designed for much smaller populations because the politicians spent all the money elsewhere. What I'm saying is, we have excellent and often unseen engineering going on all around us, and we ought to demand it all the time and appreciate it too.

And I really mean that. If we did appreciate it for the modern miracle it is, promoting health and prosperity, people would really celebrate the opening of a new wastewater management plant rather than find it an occasion for mockery because it's BORRRR-ring. If we were grateful for things like well-constructed overpasses and upgrades to roads, our political class -- which never misses a chance to run between a project and the cameras -- would fund them adequately, and spend less money on vote-buying and monorail-type schemes.

As it is, it's a miracle we have such fine work being done. Software engineering is probably the only kind that can make the engineer rich overnight, and even famous, but we really need engineers of water systems, roads, bridges, and electricity more. Things would be a lot messier around here without them.