Clean what? Seriously?

Friday, March 13, 2009 at 6:13 pm (Cottage Industry, Writing by Ear)
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I’ve been a loyal reader of Prevention magazine for years — starting way back when I was a kid and my parents subscribed. It was kind of a freaky, crunchy, vitamin-obsessed thing then, but has morphed into more of a healthy-lifestyle, woman-oriented magazine today. It has pretty much perfected the “bite-size chunks” approach, offering lots of little health tidbits in addition to short articles, beauty tips, recipes, and exercise regimens.

I look forward to getting it every month, but had to laugh at an article in this month’s issue about how to foil the “10 Worst Germ Hot Spots.” A few pearls (you do these already, right?)…

  • Take the aerator out of your faucet (the little metal screen when you unscrew the tip) and soak it in a diluted bleach solution (here’s the kicker) once a week.
  • While you’re at it, keep the bleach solution out and clean the rubber flange thingy covering your garbage disposal (yes, every week).
  • Squirt hand sanitizer on the outside of the ketchup bottle in a restaurant or swipe with a disinfecting wipe (no doubt the salt and pepper shakers too). (Sorry, grabbing it with a napkin isn’t good enough — the little germies squeeze right through.)
  • Don’t trust that public soap dispenser either — germ magnet (actually the article said “fecal matter” UGH.) Wash your hands with soap and hot water and use hand sanitizer to be safer.
  • And of course you’re wiping down your refrigerator seals at least once a week with that bleach or a disinfectant?

Really, I’m used to living on the edge. I still ask for lemon in my water and iced tea at restaurants. But I had no idea I had one foot over the precipice even at home. The heck with having guests remove their shoes — it better be cleanroom suits all around (for your safety, not ours). 250px-cleanroom_suit

In another story this month, a vet offered suggestions for how to break your cat of  bad habits. I skimmed eagerly over how to stop kitty from jumping up on the counters (clearly not a problem at my house, too clean), attacking your ankles (they do this?), or scratching the furniture (only recently a problem, and only with one chair we are planning to get recovered anyway).

But, alas, no advice for how to stop the early-morning wake-up calls (4:00 a.m. this morning, thank you).

If it had told me how to solve that little puzzle (in a way that didn’t involve violence), I’d have renewed my subscription for the next 20 years…and maybe even wiped out my bagless vacuum with diluted bleach and sprayed the doormat with Lysol to boot.

Vacuums don’t clean houses. People clean houses.
~ Marie Barone, Everybody Loves Raymond

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A hoper dreams of doing

Monday, March 9, 2009 at 11:20 pm (Writing by Ear)
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We have a real historical treasure on our street — an authentic log cabin from pre-Revolutionary days, built as a stopping post for soldiers traveling between posts (like Fort Necessity to Fort Pitt). It’s situated on a gorgeous 3-acre lot, lovingly cared for by its longtime owners, Thelma and Bob, now in their late eighties or early nineties. They actually live in the house behind ours; their lot was once part of ours until the owner subdivided it so his son, Bob, could build on it. (So yes, that means Bob, now 90 or so, grew up in the house we live in, and now lives just one house behind it.)

We see them frequently working at the cabin, caring for the house and grounds, and every morning their headlights shine in our bedroom window as they set out on some daily ritual — coffee perhaps? They are lovely, vibrant people, and we always welcome the chance to talk with them. Sometimes, though, it seems we only get together when the fence between our yards catches fire…

It’s kind of a hoot. Bob’s burn pile is in the very back corner of their lot, right next to the back corner of our lot and the dividing fence. Unfortunately, he likes to burn on windy days, the fence is old and decrepit (another “someday” project far down on the to-do list), and twice now, he’s caught it on fire.

Last Saturday, Chris next door called down that we were needed for fire-fighting detail (Bob had flagged her first, calling out “Little help! Little help!” as he smacked the ground with a rake and sent Thelma for a bucket of water.) A few minutes later, as we were busily tossing charred fence rails into our own burn pit and watching their fire for flare-ups, Thelma once again shared some stories of the cabin. She and her first husband bought the place when she was only in her early twenties and she has fascinating stories of its history and her life there over the years. They’re stories any writer (even a hack for hire like me) would drool over, and all I could think was, “This needs to be down on paper before it’s lost.”

Mike said as much, and she only laughed and said others had told her the same thing, but she was just so busy, she hadn’t found the time. I suggested all she had to do was talk into a tape recorder. Mike, the bold one, offered that I was a writer, and I immediately said I’d love to work with her on it.

We chatted for a half hour or so, then went back to our chores, with promises to stop by for a visit to see the cabin this summer and hear more stories.

If I was an assertive person, I’d knock on Thelma’s door tomorrow, tell her how much I’d love to help her capture the cabin’s history, and would work with her whenever she wanted, however she wanted.

But I am not that person.

Instead, I’ll hope for that visit this summer, hope to hear more stories, hope to say again how much I’d like to write them down for her, hope that somehow, magically, it will happen in spite of my shyness.

I’ve always been a hoper. Maybe someday I’ll be a doer. That’s what I’d really like to be when I grow up.

The vision must be followed by the venture.
It is not enough to stare up the steps — we must step up the stairs.
~Vance Havner

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I’m hep, really I am

Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 3:34 pm (Writing by Ear)
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Who said I’m old and technology-impaired? (Just because I don’t know how to text…)

This is actually kinda like texting, only you can do it on your computer (like any sane person would — phones are for talking, duh!)

My nieces aren’t even hip to it. (Should I worry that no one else I know is either?)

Anyway, I joined Twitter.

It was actually easy enough for me to figure out. And it’s a lot like IM’ing.
(If you don’t know what IM’ing is, who am I to scoff? It means Instant Messaging — a way to type short messages to people so you can talk back and forth. I remember when we got the capability to IM each other over our internal network at work, like 14 years ago — oh the messages that were flying (Cindy). Even though we only sat 2 desks away from each other.)

Anyway, to me, IM, Twitter, texting — it’s just the fancy, tech-y equivalent of passing notes in class — and God knows I did plenty of that!

Twitter prompts you to answer the question, “What are you doing?” and gives you 140 characters to do it in. Some people get “Tweets” to their cell phones, but that would be like texting and involve paying for it and such. Not me, I just Tweet up there in cyberspace. You can set up your Twitter page to follow whomever you like, and their Tweets and yours appear on the page. You can respond to particular Tweets if you like, or just sit back and see what your friends or fellow bloggers or even colleagues — some people use Twitter for business — are up to. Oh, and you can keep your Tweets private if you want, so people can only view them if you give permission.

My tweets are now in the sidebar on the left. As you can see, it’s not earth-shattering stuff. But for someone like me, working solo, chained to a computer,  stir-crazy from the lack of human contact, it’s just another little way to feel connected.

And maybe even a little hip.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on
science and technology, in which hardly anyone
knows anything about science and technology.
~ Carl Sagan

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