Don't hit the dog!

I didn't! I didn't hit the dog! 

Okay, I swatted his behind, but does that count? 

Like most dogs, my fuzzy friend Izzy loves to be outside. He'd be outside all day if he could -- if he didn't get too cold, hot, or wet, which conditions generally lead to his desire to call it quits and seek shelter eventually. 

Yesterday was almost just right. Warm but not too hot or humid, sunny, generally T-shirt weather for us human types. As I was settling in to get to work, he made the noise indicating that he wanted to go out. The I-gotta-wee noise is indistinguishable from his I-wanna-loaf-on-the-grass noise, but generally as a work from home freelancer I can accommodate him, just in case. But this turned out to be a loaf situation, not a wee situation, and I could not hang around with him all morning. (Note that we have no fence of any kind, so he can't just be left out there.) 

I tried ordering, cajoling, wheedling, and barking, not in that order, all to no effect. He remained a lump on the lawn. I tossed dandelions at him. I gave him gentle shoves with my foot.

Finally, I went for my secret weapon. 

Yes, the broom I keep on the porch to sweep off leaves and such. Pushing the bristles under his side I applied gentle pressure until it annoyed him enough to make him get up. And as he stalked off to find someplace to P, I gave him a little swat with the broom in the A. 

How can you hit a harmless dog?

With all the fuzz on his behindular area, I doubt he even felt it. And even you Zaprudered a film of the incident, you'd see such a slow-mo swing that not only could not hurt a fly, it would barely brush it away. 

Anyway, that was my Animal Abuse action for the day. Mind you, if Izzy ever finds out I swatted his behind, he'll complain quite a bit. So don't say anything, okay?

Scrape the scum!

We had company coming to stay for a couple of days. While we have had many dinner guests, it has been some time since we had a sleepover party. Whee! And that meant it was time for Molecular Level Cleaning. 

We love the family, and this also provided a motivation to get that pesky, er, spring cleaning done. Okay, so we were a little late. 

It was a bit of an adventure. The kind of thing where the curtains are getting washed, the beds are lifted to vacuum the carpet below, and at some point you just look around and say HOW DO WE LIVE LIKE THIS? 

By the time the discouragement sets in, though, you're in too deep. The only way out is through. And I like to think that we presented a very pleasant and low-dust (and even low-dog-hair) environment. 

It's getting to the point where it's time to scale down. Time to get a smaller place. Time to stop having to make a monthly mortgage payment, that's for doggone sure, and a smaller place ought to let us pay cash with the proceeds from our larger home.

What kind of smaller house? Well, I don't know. I have always felt that my grandmother had it good in her old age. She literally lived in a cottage, a winterized beach cottage of which there were many in the outer boroughs at the time. (Real estate speculators and Hurricane Sandy have put paid to a lot of those since.) It was a little place, three rooms, but manageable for her and all she needed; she would get up in the morning, have a bit of breakfast, do her chores, perhaps toddle to the market, and watch TV or enjoy the sunshine. She didn't have to put up with annoying people on the other side of the wall, or a stupid roommate, or anything like that. I thought she had it made. 

I have always sort of thought that she had a great retirement plan. And then I realized that this retirement plan was to be a woodland creature in a British children's book.

Mrs. Squirrel realized she was out of tea. "Oh, dear, best go round the shops." So she put on her scarf and a lovely hat and left her cottage in the woods. 

"Hello, Mrs. Squirrel!" said Mr. Trash Panda, popping up from his smelly dumpster. "Lovely day, is it not?"

"Quite so, Mr. Panda!" said Mrs. Squirrel, who did not feel close enough as a friend to call him Trash. "I'm just going to the shops. Do you need anything?"

"No, thank you kindly, as someone has thrown away half a pizza."

And so on and so forth. 

It's a pleasant thought, but I must bear in mind that my grandmother had my dad a few miles away to help her out as needed (she did not drive). Also, she herself was tough as nails. Whereas I and my wife will likely flee New York and not be near family, and I personally am about as tough as Bubble Yum. 

Plus, if the housing market craters, I may have to move in with Mr. T. Panda or perhaps in a hollow tree. Getting older is hard, even when you're not scrubbing the hallway. 

Halloween in mid-September.

boo

I know, the candy has been out for more than a month already. It was displacing back to school stuff in New York before the kids even went, you know, back to school. But that's no reason for the rest of us to get hysterical over Halloween, when it's not even autumn yet. 

That is, unless you're the people who live down the street from me, who already started decorating. 

They put out a tremendous lawn display, but that's just for starters. After I took this picture, the inflatables started to appear, plus a giant skeleton in a stand-up coffin of some kind. Last year they were so laden with lights and other electrical effects that their power bill for October was probably larger than the other eleven months of the year combined. It becomes the kind of house where parents of small children wonder if letting the little one go to the door is worth the candy, lest Li'l Iron Man soil his armor. 

Technically lawnmowing season isn't over for the rest of us, but they've called it. However, I was amused to see that they've put a skeleton and a suitable toy to use for lawn work. 

Lawn work in hell -- even worse than in Florida.

Many memes are getting involved in this year's display. 

I hope to get some good shots when the whole thing is up and running. I can tell you that walking the dog in the dark morning and coming across their display is really a little unnerving. 

Hell, if I were a creepy monster and I wanted to hide somewhere, I'd hang in their yard until November. No one would know. 

P.S.: It's not just candy anymore! Scrub Daddy, the finest dish cleaning sponge available, has come out with a Halloween line this year. And remember, cleanliness is next to -- spookiness? 

Talkin' 'bout the car wash.

Summer is here! School is out! The kids are already bored! Time to take them to everyone's favorite ride: The drive-through car wash! 

Maybe I was kind of a softheaded kid and easily amused, but I always enjoyed a trip through the car wash. It was cooler in there, and smelled nice, and it was like a short li'l fun house ride, albeit a wet one. Yes, we kids kept the windows closed as directed. The three-minute extravaganza was always a good time, and left the wee ones and the car refreshed.

It was not a common occurrence, actually. My dad liked to wash the cars himself when he had time, then get that Turtle Wax on there all buffed and shiny. That was kind of fun to do with him as well, spraying each other with the hose, watching the dry paste become shiny metal with a little of the ol' Miyagi treatment. But the automated car wash was sheer entertainment.

The car wash seen above is not the optimal type. This is a small booth of the sort where you pay with a credit card and the machines go back and forth while the car remains stationary. Although the building it is part of contains a regular car wash and bays for oil changes, this one (as you can see) is open any time of day. Feel like washing the car at three in the morning? In you go! 

One thing I have not done is take any of our dogs through a car wash. I fear it might terrify them, and that can lead to any of a number of regrettable behaviors. Tucker Budsyn, America's most famous golden retriever, came to viral prominence in just that way. 

But he's a celebrity now, and that kind of stunt is the price of celebrity. 

Besides, part of the reason I was in the car wash was that there was an off-putting odor in my wife's car. I cleaned the interior but that didn't seem to solve the problem, so it was time to get all the dirt and pollen off the thing and see if maybe there was the carcass of a chipmunk stuck underneath. The point being, I wanted to deodorize the vehicle, and did not want a dog in the backseat making more odors. 

Anyway, the way things have been going this June, I probably would have forgotten to lock the windows, and Izzy would have freaked out and pressed the window button, and then there would be more trouble. 

So to sum up: Car wash good; Car wash with kids great; Car wash with dogs dicey. That is all. 

Bath or shower?

Commercials sure like to show gals soaking in the bathtub. I wonder. My mom always considered it akin to stewing in your own filth; she was a shower-taker exclusively and encouraged same among the rest of the family. My wife has no interest in baths -- she just wants to get clean, not make a big production out of it. (She saves the big production afterward, for her hair.) 

Me? I used to like a good bath sometimes. Like, when I'd worked out too hard and everything hurt. Or when I drank too much and had one of those killer hangovers, the kind where you have stopped feeling nauseated but want to sweat the remaining booze out of your pores. A bath could be very therapeutic at times like that. These days I don't drink and barely exercise, so I pretty much stick to the shower.

I do remember a bed & breakfast we stayed in years ago in which the bathroom had no shower. It had a huge clawfoot tub with shower attachment on a hose, so you could wash your hair and I guess spray off any filth you'd been stewing in. I loved it -- as a moderately big guy it was great to be in a tub that fit me so well. (Shower/tub combos always skimp on the latter.) My wife wasn't so keen for reasons cited above, but she did admire the decor. 

The last one to use an actual tub in our house was the dog. Izzy had gone beyond the friendly confines of the backyard, into an area where runoff goes from the pond, and became blackened from the chest down. Of course it was very cold outside, so there was no bathing him out there; I had to de-mud him just enough with old towels to get him inside to the bathtub where I could do the rest of the job. Normally he gets a good scrub-down once a month at the groomer, but here his perfidy resulted in an unscheduled and more thorough bathing. Puppy, thy name is mud!

I guess I would tell the would-be homeowner or apartment hunter that it's always good to have a tub in case of such emergencies. You never know. One time when I was a kid, Mom and I picked up a big feast from a restaurant and drove it home -- or rather, not all of it, because a loose lid led me to a bath of chowder in the passenger seat of the car. Fortunately it was not hot enough to cause serious burns, but getting into the tub back home and letting the cold water do its thing may have saved me from worse injury. 

Well, one way or another, you gotta get clean sometimes, a sometimes a bath is the way to go. Just don't forget the ducky, and the soap. 

Dishwasher safe!

Years ago when I wore baseball caps more to cover bed head than to cover lack of hair, my mom gave me a Ball Cap Buddy Hat Cleaner. These handy frames enable one to put a prized ballcap in the dishwasher on the top rack and let it be cleaned with the dishes. Amazing!

The big downside: My wife and I were newlyweds and our apartment had no dishwasher, not counting me. We had no washer or dryer either. By the time we moved into a house seven or so years later, I'd thrown the frame out or given it away. I just put my caps through the washing machine now. They're fine. 

It's surprising how many things can be cleaned in the dishwasher. I'm very happy that the new drainboard I bought a couple of months back is dishwasher safe. Drainboards tend to get grody over time, and the dishwasher does a better job of cleaning them than I do by hand. Of course they come out of the dishwasher wet, which leads to the conundrum of where to leave a dishrack when it's drying. 

Another thing that can go through the dishwasher is the lint filter on the dryer. This is something my wife told me yesterday, and it is the proximate cause of my posting on this topic today. We haven't tried it yet, but it seems like a good idea. The lint filter just never seems clean, even if you vacuum it, and when you have pets you figure it's just a lost cause. And that's bad, because lint buildup in the exhaust can cause a fire. Well, stick that sucker in the dishwasher and clean it on a microparticle scale! (If it mangles the filter I'll let you know.)

Some things are not dishwasher safe that I wish were. An example is the LickiMat, a fun-filled dog treat toy. You smear the mat with something soft like yogurt or peanut butter, freeze it for extra fun, and let the dog go on it. 

All our dogs have loved going after frozen liquid cheese (a.k.a. yogurt) on these. And I wish the mats could be cleaned in the dishwasher -- on the sanitize cycle -- but the plastic is floppy and too delicate. I tried one and it bent. So I scrub them with a brush and put the brush through the dishwasher. 

Other things that can't go through the dishwasher that you wish could include fine china, of course, but also a lot of novelty mugs. Those mugs that change design when a hot liquid is poured inside? If you want the secret image permanently imprinted, put it through the dishwasher. I have another mug that was a gift that says it's not dishwasher safe, but I ran it through once and it survived. Maybe it takes a couple of washes to rip off the glaze and ruin the design. 

Many other things cannot be run through the dishwasher. There's a strong caution on using the dishwasher to clean the following: 

🍽 Photographs

🍽 Chocolate

🍽 Electronics

🍽 Books

🍽 Pets, children, small adults

🍽 Ice

🍽 Furniture

🍽 Engine parts

Maybe the strangest thing you can do with your dishwasher is use it to cook. According to Ranker, potatoes, salmon, chicken, even turkey can be cooked up in your dishwasher. I don't why you would do it, but I suppose it cuts down on the dishes. And if there is cookware involved, you just leave it in the appliance and run it with soap. But I'm not going to try it.

Dancin' in the dust.

I'm here with another stupid product review! This time it's a musical stupid product review! Although you'll have to provide your own music. 

I bought these dust mop slippers for my wife for a gag gift at Christmas. Well, the gag was on me, since she wouldn't even wear them for a lark. Not even two larks and a pheasant. But she didn't throw them away, which means I got to wear them! And I gotta DANCE! 

The other day I was vacuuming downstairs and thought I'd done a pretty good job, although with baby dog Izzy following me around it was hard to tell. The vacuum doesn't bother him, but he likes to keep a close eye on it to see what it's doing. Consequently, I missed a few spots. Plus, Izzy sheds like a shedding machine on Extra Shed mode with the optional SHEDDD+ attachment, so even if I had done a flawless job there'd be new hair already.

But that's okay, because I've got HAPPY FEET!

I slipped the slippers on and went skating around the downstairs, dipping my feets here and there for bits of dust and dog hair that I'd missed. And I did have to skate fast, because Izzy REALLY thought these mops were toys and was after me from the moment I put them on. You have to be light on your feet to keep the dog away from your moppin' shoes -- man, if I had a nickel for every time my mom told me that, I'd have no cents at all. And indeed, I do not. 

I did keep away from Izzy, and I certainly did a good job with the slippers. 

Fortunately they are machine washable. Unfortunately that means everything in the washing machine with them will get a good coating of the hair I was unable to shake off. But hey -- I'm a dancer, I suffer for my art. 

Can the slippers take the place of a vacuum or a dust mop? No. You'd have to mince around in a back-and-forth pattern like a guy cutting the grass to do the floor. BOR-RING! But for supplementary dust mopping, they're great.

So that's my lesson for today. Put on your dust mop shoes, start humming a tune, and off you go. Remember, for every job that must be done there is an element of fun. Find the fun and snap! the job's a game. Would Mary Poppins lie to you?

A little something for Mom.

Yes, my friends, it is Birthing Persons Day once again, also known to our betters in society as Persons with a Cervix Who Have Employed It in Perpetuating the Species Day. Because the whole world is run by stupid people who are also crazy. 

Nevertheless, you may be at a loss as to what to get that special Birthing Person in your life, be it a female-identifying parent or guardian or a female-identifying spouse. Well, worry no more, because our friends at Lalafanc know just what she wants. 

Actually it's Lalafancy; the dropout white Y is invisible.

The Cleaning Brush Kit for bathrooms is the miracle of Communist Chinese manufacture you might hope -- a scrub brush on a pole. What says "I love you" more than a gift that also says, "Birthing person, I do not want you to have to scrub the tile on your hands and knees ever again! Here, use this!" 

And look at the helpful instructions:

That's literally the extent of it, but it's OK. There's a three-piece pole to put together, and if you can't do that you probably shouldn't be loose around cleaning supplies anyway. 

I HAVE THE POWERRRRR

All right, the truth is, my wife got this for me. One of her favorite influencers online recommended the thing, so here it is. As longtime readers know, the one condition my wife had in our marriage was that I would never ask her to clean the bathroom. She just can't bear the job. I think she had the priest slip something into the vows about it. 

My review of the tool? It's a lot easier on your back than scrubbing the tub by hand. It is not as effective as my favorite method, which is Formula 409 coupled with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, but it does the job well enough. Certainly good for a quick weekly clean. If you have houseguests coming, though, you'll probably want to use some old-fashioned elbow grease, the kind you just can't get when the scrubbing surface is at the end of a lightweight three-foot pole. 

I hope the Lalalfancy people don't get upset that I didn't go bananas over this thing. After all, as they like to say:

Eternal pursuit! Aw, don't be so hard on yourselves, Lalafancy. You're sure to catch up to my satisfaction eventually.

And yet, for that special cervical someone on your list, the Cleaning Brush Kit probably would not in reality be a great gift idea. So let me recommend instead: Slice! 

Another item bought by my wife, Slice is really a clever little tool. It's got a tiny ceramic blade on the pointy end that is perfect for cutting open those frustrating plastic packages or shearing impenetrable packing tape, but is incapable of cutting human flesh. It's also magnetic, so you can stick it on the fridge until you need it. 

I love this thing. Totally works as advertised. Lousy steak knife, sure, but not meant to be. It's Slice! 

That's all for today -- go be nice to the mothers out there! And no, Samuel L. Jackson does not count. 

Cull the herd.

I know the time has come to get rid of some books. 

I've talked about this before, maybe on this blog, but I've done nothing about it. In my heart of hearts, I do not want to. As a boy and as an apartment-dwelling young man, I dreamed of one day having a home with a dedicated library. You know -- all wood and leather and comfortable chairs and reading lamps and peace and quiet and books as far as the eye could see. I didn't care what the rest of the house looked like. I never got that far.

None of that worked out -- we have two rooms with large bookcases and a desk with bookshelves and a small shelf downstairs with cookbooks and home books and stacks of books around and a box of books in the cellar that I had stored in my in-laws' cellar and had to retrieve when they passed on. 

And random piles.

Thank God I don't live in an earthquake zone, because I am sure I'd be buried in them one day. People would say "He died doing what he loved" and my wife would say "What, gasping for air under half a ton of old paperbacks?"

If I'm to avoid that fate, I figure I should sort the books first into sets:

1) Books I need to have about me and would take into the grave with me for the afterlife like a Pharaoh

2) Books I treasure 

3) Books I like and would like to read again

4) Books I think I liked and pretend that one day I will give them another shot

5) Books I read but didn't like and won't read again

6) Books I bought new but will never read

7) Books I bought used but will never read

Seems like a pretty easy go from there, right? Just eliminate piles four through seven and I'm done! 

But of course it's never that easy. Deep inside I hate to get rid of books. Worse, no one wants them. I have perhaps three or four valuable enough to sell online, but people don't collect books anymore -- not like they collect really valuable things, like Star Wars figurines. The library doesn't want them -- they certainly don't want paperbacks, although I might convince them to take a stack of new hardcovers that I bought in a moment of madness and now regret. Stores that sell used books, once thick on the ground in any city, are now barely extant. Recycling is the fate of these books, and it'd be sad even if I had not spent actual money on them. 

Well, if I don't do it, one day my wife will be stuck with the job, and that's a sad thought. (Women tend to outlive men by about seven years.) Looks like my dream library remains as far-off as thoughts of being interred in a book-lined pyramid. But I can dream, can't I? Call me Nectanebook, last of the book-obsessed mummies.

More old drunks than old doctors?

In 1953, American businessmen and civic leaders began an anti-littering organization called Keep America Beautiful, which persists to this day. It got a large boost in the sixties, when First Lady Lady Bird Johnson began a campaign called the Beautification Project. The whole ball o' wax probably hit its zenith when a public service ad -- probably the most famous ever -- featuring fake Indian Iron Eyes Cody made everyone feel guilty. 

And yet the litter keeps showing up all the same. 

Usually the stuff I see by the side of the road includes fast-food wrappers and cigarette butts. Sometimes there are soda cans, but more often beer cans, little airplane liquor bottles, and other open containers that would get you in trouble with the cops if they pulled you over. 

So this surprised me. 

I was walking Izzy early in the morning, and he was poking at something on the ground. I wasn't surprised to see it was a bottle, but was surprised to find it was a bottle of Ensure, the nutrition shake generally used by the elderly and other populations who have trouble getting adequate calories. We were on a stretch between houses, so it wasn't likely to have rolled out from someone's garbage. But who would pitch this out of the car?

Ultimately I decided it was an old drunk, a guy whose doctor told him he needed more nutrition and also needed to stop drinking vodka. Well, our drunken driving friend decided he would meet the doctor halfway, and mix vodka into the Ensure while tootling about, making a Poor Old Man's Black Russian. (I guess if he wanted a White Russian he'd use the vanilla.) Having consumed the cocktail, he pitched the vodka-scented bottle out the window and hid the remaining vodka for his next drink. 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. But if you're abiding out there, Dude, please remember, you're too old and weak to go to prison for killing someone driving drunk. You wouldn't like it a bit. Save your POM Black Russians for home. And please: Keep America Beautiful. 

(NB: The bottle was not actually tested for vodka scent; I pitched it in the trash when I got back home, just in time for the garbage collection.)

Board of it all.

Today's trash day, and guess what is going out into the garbage and why! 

It's hard to tell, perhaps, from that picture, so I'll explain: It's our ironing board. And the weird angle is because it won't stand up. And it won't stand up because one of the legs snapped off by the hinge bit. And that's why it's going into the garbage. 

And why did it break?

Never iron angry.

Not me, not your level-headed model of coolness in the face of frustration Fred. Who's also a big fat liar. Actually the anger came from my wife, who was trying to iron the big curtains in the family room that had come out of the dryer, and they always seem to fight ironing like it's Ali and the iron is Joe Frazier. 

And she was allllllmost done when the board snapped and hit the floor. Which, as you can guess, just elevated her mood precipitously. 

But it should be noted that this is a pretty old board, as modern stuff goes. How old? Let me pull off the cover and show you the original surface....

That's right -- it was a Crayola-themed ironing board. Why? I am not sure. I just remember when we got married, and our previous roommates had owned the ironing boards in our lives prior to that, and no one puts ironing board on the bridal registry. So one Sunday night -- for some reason I'm certain it was a Sunday night -- we were shopping around and saw this one cheap. At the time, that being the nineties, Binney and Smith was licensing the Crayola name and logo on a lot of things, like stuffed toys and T-shirts. But why an ironing board? 

Well, apparently there are several craft projects that you can do with an ironing board and Crayola products. I suppose this ironing board was a way to promote that. I had plenty of Crayola crayons in my youth, but I promise you, my mom would never have allowed any of them near her iron.

Over the years we got some good use from the board, cheap as it was. In my office days I liked to have a nice pressed shirt -- that, children, was before recent times, when you can show up to work in your nothing but your nacho-stained underpants and no one cares. Often on Sundays I would iron shirts and some pants for the week, and maybe shine up the shoes. It wasn't all that long ago, but I feel like it was an entirely different galaxy from the one in which we live now. 

Well, I'm sorry to see the old board go. It was fun, even if we had to cover up the thin Crayola cover with a more sturdy padded cover with boring ol' flowers on it. I always knew there was a green crayon underneath anyway.

Santa's cleaning up!

This here Santa soap has been hanging around in the downstairs can for a couple of weeks. He certainly is cute. His label requires a choking hazard warning because of the cotton ball glued to his side. His soap is supposed to smell like candy canes, and it's close enough, I guess. It's not unpleasant.

But he's still overstayed his welcome. 

Santa here is a product of Scent Theory, a New York-based outfit that makes some aromatic stuff. It's right there in the name. But before you think they're all boutiquey, let me mention that I've only ever seen their products in Walmart. Santa here was an impulse buy at the checkout line -- as I love to Christmas up the joint, in the cart he went. Scent Theory makes a number of holiday-themed products, including a Gingerbread soap, but I didn't see that one at Walmart. 

Many of their scents seem to try to evoke a theme rather than an actual smell. For example, Cozy Comfort, which is intended to be a woody, musky scent, possibly to get you thinking of the first fireplace log of the year (or the second, if you forgot to open the flue on the first one). Santa here specifically says Candy Cane, and over time the Mrs. got a little tired of it. 

So off he went to the can upstairs. 

Since I work downstairs and engage in most cooking and dog-related activities downstairs, though, hand soap tends to last a lot longer upstairs. I may be looking at Santa until Valentine's Day.  

Maybe I can recolor some of his garment, remove the cotton ball, and make him look more like St. Valentine. It's not that much of a stretch. 

Still festive!

A merry Christmas to all, and don't forget to wash your hands! Ho ho hygiene is important! 

No men.

I heard about a young lady, a daughter of a friend of a friend, who graduated high school this year with a plan to practice living away at college. She and her pals got jobs in a beachfront town and rented a house; they would work and pay their own way and be responsible like grown-ups should be. 

But they made one fatal and entirely, completely, 100% avoidable mistake. They allowed some guys to rent with them. 

I'm kidding about the picture--this is from a show about hoarding--but not about the boys. One of the things that made this young lady quit her job and come home in July was that the boys were absolute pigs and refused to do a thing around the house. They just left their crap everywhere and never scrubbed a dish. If I know my gender, they probably left a lot of beer cans everywhere as well. And this was all foreseeable for anyone who has ever been 18 years old. 

I don't mean to blame the victim. Of course these slobs should have pulled their weight in the beach house. But it is to be expected that boys won't, certainly not in their first away-from-home digs. I have to guess that these boys and girls were not romantically entangled, or the girls could have used their wiles to get the boys to behave like they should. Not that the women should have to, of course; I'm just saying it would have worked. 

Unsupervised men are pigs. Not all, no. Just by and large. Especially when they first get out from under Mom's thumb. Hell, if these boys were actually paying their share of rent on time I'd be surprised. 

I remember visiting a friend at college in my own university days; he lived in a house with other undergrads, each worse than the next, subsisting on cheap beer and frozen potpies. While I was there two housemates got in a play-fight in the kitchen and body-slammed the table, which did it no good at all. These things don't generally happen in women's houses. 

Another friend I visited lived in a similar arrangement; a few doors down his girlfriend lived in a house with some women. It was like staying with Oscar and visiting Felix.

My point is, people will say that in these enlightened times we need not worry about mixing young men and women in co-ed housing, but I say: Be wise, women. For your own sanity, if nothing else, don't share a roof with these uncivilized heathens until they get some civilizing. The summer you save may be your own.

Washday!

Mondays were traditionally known as washday in the Western world. Sundays were the dress-up church days, the days to feast, and for those in domestic work (wives, daughters, servants), everything from table linens to undies got the treatment in the kitchen on Mondays. With everything being done by hand, and water heated on the woodstove, it was a much different process than it is now. 

Thank God, ingenuity, and capitalism that we don't have to do it that way anymore. 

Some people still hate dealing with laundry, and I can understand that. If you have to fetch the teens' perilously odiferous clothes from all over the room -- God forbid they should use the hamper -- you might resent the work, and you might almost wish for the old laundry pot on the woodstove, because at least you could boil the stink out of Junior's socks. 

If you have to use a Laundromat, or a communal laundry in your building or complex, you might also find it a heinous chore, stuck outside the home with anyone wandering by to watch you fold your unmentionables. My first apartment was a mother-in-law type arrangement that actually had a washer and dryer, but when the landlord threw me out to get his actual mother-in-law in the place, my next bachelor pad had no such amenity. I had to take my clothes down to one of the local laundries and sit there while they went round and round.

Except for the schlepping, it wasn't so bad, though. I'd go on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, when nothing much was going on. It was quiet enough so I could read there. During baseball season I could run across the street to a bar and watch the ball game for a while. But I had to make sure I got back before my quarters ran out. Once in a while someone comes up with the bright idea to open a combination laundry/bar, but we never had one where I lived in the city. 

I like doing laundry now. I have a washer and dryer off the kitchen, not downstairs in the unfinished crypt, and let's face it -- this is one chore now where the machine does most of the work. If I had a machine that could clean my refrigerator, I would be using it every week.  

The power of clean.

 Ranked from weakest to strongest, the fundamental forces of the universe are: 

• Gravity
• The Weak Nuclear Force
• Electromagnetism
• The Strong Nuclear Force
• The Power that Attaches a Hair to the Side of a Toilet

Got the spider!

Baby dog Izzy was off to the groomer yesterday morning, so I put aside my paying labors to clean the bathrooms. It's very difficult to do any chores around the ten-month-old scamp, because when chores are attempted he goes through a few stages, all of which are useless:

1) Curiosity -- What is going on?

2) Participation -- I'm going to help!

3) Frustration -- This is boring and smells bad.

4) Interference -- This is stupid! Let's go play!

It's much better to take any opportunity when he is not around to get things done. 

So I'm glad that's done, but today is Ash Wednesday, which means it's time for me to consider cleaning something much more gross than any ol' bathroom -- my miserable soul. I'm not going into hiding this year like one of the Desert Fathers, nor have I planned to give up anything like chocolate, like one of the Dessert Fathers. (rimshot) I'm up in the air at this late date about what to do for Lent, but I'll do something. 

Meanwhile, remember how glad I was yesterday that I survived February without a big fall? Guess who stepped on black ice this morning and introduced his hip to the tarmac? Yes, your old pal Fred. Izzy sort of freaked out, while Tralfaz just laid on the snow looking at me. Man's best friend. 

Shaggy dogs story.

Do I own the hairiest dogs in town?

Yes.

Here's one of those lint-removing roller brushes, shown before and after running it over my sweatshirt. 

Before

After

We're on our third major vacuum now since we started with the hairy beasts, and that doesn't count the Dyson for hard floors and the ol' Oreck. The Oreck, which predated the Hoover acquisition, was a fine machine for normal carpet use, but couldn't keep up with two hairy dogs. It sits upstairs, where the dogs seldom go. 

The thing that I would like to see is a laundry additive that helps get pet hair off clothing. You'd think that would be a layup for the boffins who make this stuff, but apparently not. Bounce makes a dryer sheet that supposedly helps get the pet hair out, but that's no-fly territory around here. Not because it's manufactured by the evil Procter & Gamble, but that my wife is concerned about dryer sheets being a fire hazard. I do clean out the vent, but is it this fire thing a myth or not? Who knows? Anyway, The Boss Has Spoken.

One thing we have tried is this:

The FurZapper goes into the washing machine and the dryer and magically removes pet hair from clothing. How? The rubbery things do the dance with your clothing and rub the hair off it. In the washer the hair goes down the drain; in the dryer, into your lint filter. So, we tried them. 

The problem is, it's hard to say that they work. There's still hair on the clothes. But would there be more if we didn't use them? I can't really tell the difference between loads done with or without the FurZapper. There's always more puppy glitter than I would want to see.

Everything in life is a trade-off, I know, and you can't have big ol' cute fuzzy dogs without a lot of dog hair around. We do our best to keep on top of it, but it's a Sisyphean task. I keep threatening to weave a toupee out of it, but so far my wife has managed to stop me. I just think it's unfair that I have more hair on my shirt than on my head. 

Goo housekeeping.

It's happy homemaker time again, boys and girls! Today we're not going to wash our fine washables; we're going to dust our fine dustables. That is to say, we're going to try a product I got in my Christmas stocking, one designed to pick up dust from all sorts of surfaces... or maybe it's intended to turn into a giant town-eating blob. Could go either way.

ColorCoral, made in China (just like COVID-19!), is billed as a cleaning gel on Amazon, a gel that can be smushed on any surface and removed along with the dust, and used again and again. That's it. The jar comes with no instructions but a drawing of a hand pressing the gel onto a keyboard. Amazon's page has some details, however: 

【Universal Fit】ColorCoral cleaning gel, simple and convenient cleaning kits for PC/laptop keyboard 💻 and other rugged surface, such as the car vent 🚖, camera 📷, printer 📹, telephone 📠, calculator, Instrument 🎺, speaker 🔈, air conditioner, TV 📺 and other appliances.

【Safe Cleaning Gel】This universal dust cleaner is made of biodegradable gel, no sticky to hands, smells sweet with lemon🍋 fragrance, no stimulation to skin👌.

【Easy Dust Cleaning】Make sure your hands are dry and clean, 👉 take a piece of the cleaning gel, 👉knead it into a ball, press the cleaning gel slowly into the keyboard, car vent and rugged surface and then pull out, the dust would be carried away with the cleaning gel.

【Reusable】The keyboard cleaning gel could be used repeatedly till the color turn to dark 🌚 or it become sticky, then you have to replace the gel with a new one 🌝. After cleaning, please stock the cleaning gel in cool place. (📌Don’t wash the gel in water.)

【In the package】1* universal cleaning gel, we provide the cleaning gel with 💯100% money back guarantee, if you find the package broken, the cleaning gel dirty, or any other quality issues, please contact us through message 📩, we promise you a free replacement and a full refund.

Soooo... All right! Let's try it!

Right off, we can see that it is a gel, all right. And it does have a slight lemon scent. But don't eat it! (The jar does warn against that.)

I broke some off and pressed it on and about my dusty keys.

I have to admit it worked -- somewhat. It got the obvious dust, but not the more stuck-on bits of debris. (No, it's not salsa stains or anything like that. Well, maybe coffee.) I think the ColorCoral is okay, but for dusting, I think a can of air will do the trick faster, easier, and more thoroughly. Also more expensively; not sure why cans with nothing but air cost more than $5 and don't last long, when spray cans full of actual stuff cost a lot less. I suppose there's a reason. The ColorCoral gel is $7 but can be reused quite a lot. However, I did not find it to be the miracle cleaner I'd hoped. 

It's back in the jar for you now, ColorCoral! Maybe I'll dust some of my bookshelves with it. Meanwhile, it stays tightly closed. Steve McQueen is not around to defeat it this time. 

10 Things About Masks.

Here are 10 Things I have learned about wearing the stupid masks for a year, thank to Chinese Death Virus That Came From Communist China. I'm sure you have more that you have learned. Feel free to add them in comments. 

1) If using a washable and reusable mask, make sure you like the smell of the detergent/bleach/fabric softener/scent booster, because you're going to have it right in your face like crazy. I suppose face masks that can be washed with chlorine bleach would be the safest, but might also kill you. Ditto ammonia. 

2) Some people are better looking with the masks. Just saying. On the other hand, you can make funny faces at people while wearing your mask as long as you keep it out of your eyes, so I guess that's getting even. Or something.

3) I was at a lunch with some guys, and one was using a neck gaiter as a mask. When he laughed his spit came right through it. What the hell is that? Something supposed to stop aerosolized spit can't even stop a gob? No wonder people are rebelling against the masks. 

4) "If masks don't work, why do surgeons wear them?" Yeah, well, surgeons don't wear gaiters, or bandanas, or those cheap paper masks from China that specifically say they can't stop germs. When this whole mess broke out I had a supply of N95 masks in the cellar that I bought to use with the paint sprayer. I can barely breathe in those things, and I supposedly have good lung function. That's why I gave up the paint sprayer. That, and it got clogged with a bolus of paint that dried like iron. Even after I cleaned it out, it always spat globs of paint like an old man at the home having oatmeal. I'll put up with that from an old man, but not a paint sprayer.

5) Men: If you're wondering if you have a huge nose hair protruding from a nostril, the mask will let you know. Probably while you're making a speech.

6) On that token, don't wash your mask in the same load with towels, especially towels used to dry the dogs. Your mask will get lots of tiny little doggie hairs that will go straight up your nose and itch like mad.

7) I want to see the heads of the people used to set the size standard for masks, especially the reusable ones. Many of them seem to be too small for a man's head, or perhaps their heads are some weird shape. The cheapo paper ones with elastic bands fit better for me, but I know some women find them too large and have to tie the bands in the back. I guess there's no one-size-fits-all with head things.

8) The most comfortable washable masks I've found cost $10 for two; they're multilayered fabric with good ear bands. But because they are thick, they are stuffy to wear in a warm room. And you can't inhale with any oomph, so if I'm reading something aloud, I find myself running out of gas quickly. Maybe worst of all, all my words come out buzzing through the layers of fabric, like I'm talking through a kazoo. Nothing sounds meaningful through a kazoo. The Gettysburg Address turns into "Yakety Sax" through a kazoo. 

9) Wearing the mask makes me very intent on not coughing or sneezing. One, because I don't want to get any residue stuck on my face, but two, because if I'm going through the courtesy of wearing this stupid thing, I don't want anyone to think I'm sick. We all know the masks suck at stopping germs. They'll throw me out or move away from me. Unclean! Unclean!

10) If you're afraid you will get a coughing fit, maybe because your mask is full of fine little dog hairs, you may wish to have a lozenge. Do NOT use a menthol lozenge like Halls. That menthol goes straight up the inside of the mask and into your eyes, burning them and making it look like you're very sad all of a sudden. Maybe if you need to fake sadness it would be a good idea, but that's up to you. 

So there are ten things I've discovered about masks. What about you?

Monday Odds & Ends.

Feeling a little scattered, so I loaded it all into the blog shotgun and am firing it on this page. Yes, it's the old Random Thoughts fallback today....

🐕🏃

Since we lost Junior Varsity Dog Nipper, my Fitbit thinks I died. Or maybe went into a coma. I have not hit 10,000 steps in almost two weeks. Senior Varsity Dog Tralfaz simply doesn't need or care about the kind of exercise that Nipper demanded. Fazzy is content to plow through the snow in the yard, and boy do we still have a lot of snow. More coming today. My main exercise is plowing through the snow to pick up after him or make sure he doesn't get to the street without a leash. Two feet of snow makes for a tough slog. And Fitbit gives me no credit for extra effort.

🐳📚

I've got a great idea for a novel -- it'll be the biggest thing since Scarlett, the 1991 Alexandra Ripley sequel to Gone with the Wind.  

Think of it! The injured Ishmael, the lone survivor, is reunited with Queequeg, who turns out to have survived the destruction of the Pequod as well, by floating to Nantucket in a barrel. The two band together, determined to avenge their sunken pals and bring Moby-Dick to justice. The only person who believes in them is Phyllis McSnord, the Boston socialite who found Ishmael and nursed him back to health. Her heart yearns for him -- but is his too full of vengeance to love? It's a revenge novel, a buddy novel, a romance novel, and a sailing novel all in one! 

Of course, there are some issues. I've never sailed on anything but a cruise ship, a ferry, and a catamaran. I've never even been in a rowboat. So the research might be a little daunting. Plus, I'd probably have to read the original Melville novel, and if I could get through college with an English degree and avoid that chore, I'm certainly not inclined to take it on now. All right, never mind.

🧰🍽

So I fixed the dishwasher. (He said casually, as if a minor accomplishment, hardly worth mention.) This actually occurred a week ago, although the problem went back to my last column of miscellanea in September. To fix the broken flap on the part of the dispenser that stores the Jet Dry, I had to buy a new dispenser, take out a dozen screws to access the interior of the door, gennnnntly unplug the wires leading to the old dispenser, force the part out without breaking anything, put in the new one, plug those wires (seriously, they are so fragile) into the new unit, reassemble the door, and pray that the new dispenser would work and that the hollow door wouldn't fill with water when I ran the thing. So I have avoided mentioning this until the dishwasher had been run enough times to confirm that it is working and I did not break it. Ha! 

📕😨

Been working on very PC novel, targeted at the youth. When I say it's very politically correct, I mean it. The author has used mathematical precision to bring in all preferred groups (ethnic, sexual, people who use weird pronouns), and the characters smack down each other for the slightest hint of un-PC or white supremacist behavior. Anything that happened before their tender little lives is racist garbage. 

Do kids really live this way? Life as a perpetual chase to be PCier than thou? What a drag, man. And this is supposed to be light reading, not a serious drama. If you hear about college-age folks feeling stressed these days, look at the sheer panic they live in, terrified of getting caught out by someone being bitchy, tagging them with labels of uncleanliness, online where all the world can see. Forget the pandemic; this is what's scaring the youth to death. 

For the record, my preferred pronouns are Youse, Dem, Dese, and Doze. 

🍠🌮

The problem with chips is that once you start eating chips you can't stop eating chips. Corn, potato, vegetable, tortilla, silicon, poker, doesn't matter. It's the first chip that gets you. The only way to win is to not play the game.

All the holidays.

We had guests over for dinner for the first time since the outbreak of the Chinese Death Virus (a.k.a. Wu Han Flooey, #1 Super Die). We decided to throw caution to the wind and dine together without masks in our home. I hope Governor Sonny doesn't hear about this.

A good time was had, although prior to the good time my wife and I expended a tremendous effort getting the dog hair wrangled and out of here. As another friend said a few months into the quarantine, "We haven't panic-cleaned for a while, and it shows."

Prior to the panic-cleaning, I ran out to the supermarket for some last-minute needs. And there I encountered the topic of today's post.

If I asked you to eat a third of a pizza, you'd probably think it would make a solid meal. And yet the last third of the year has to be shoved forward in the interest of commerce. It's August, but Halloween is everywhere:

One of several spoooky displays

Oh, but that's not enough. A little farther down that same aisle, Thanksgiving was already in play.

Turkey + Pilgrim hat = Thanksgiving joy

But then, in the cleaning aisle:

The politically correct pests at Procter & Gamble have already released their Febreze "Holiday Collection." At first you might think this is just Halloweenish, because of the presence of Harvest Pumpkin in the Peter Brady position, and possibly the Apple in the Carol Brady and Alice spots. I say nay nay! The Cranberry in the Jan and Cindy positions (and as a car freshener in Greg and Marcia) declare it's Thanksgiving, and the Vanilla in Mike Brady's spot and the Pine in the Bobby corner shout Christmas. They've bunched all the holidays together so they can use the same display for the next four months.

Worst of all, it's working. In the Mike slot we see a Linen-flavored Febreze; some shopper clearly saw the display and made an impromptu switch to a Vanilla.

It's still summer for more than three weeks. I know we'd all like 2020 to be over, as if it would somehow put all the Chinese illnesses and rioting and looting and squabbling and idiocy behind us and usher in the Age of Aquarius or something, but let's enjoy the moments we have. We'll be freezing our collective tushie off up here soon enough.