Shari.com: Dirty White Girl

This is not the "really great post title" I mentioned. That post is half-done... and - as always - way too long for non-loved-one consumption. This is why blogging is good; it keeps me humble. It doesn't stop me, but it plucks any illusions away like so much wet, unwanted dental floss. Otherwise, I'd still be smugly resting on the laurels of "Ice Skating on the Rings of Saturn."

(That's the award-winning story I wrote in second grade. Highlight of my opus, really, although the binding on my Gloria Vanderbilt bio - sixth grade - was exquisite. Wallpaper samples, you know. Genius. Thank you, Mrs. Plumb.)

Poop on Peeps has a new post today - I guiltily admit that I'm still reading the site. I'd get into another big hoohah about how I agree with blahblah in some ways and disagree in other ways, but that was confusing last time, plus it caused a couple of power bloggers to drop by, and then I felt like I needed to run a floor vac over the HTML linoleum and find some ice cubes that don't taste like vodka.

(If I've never told my "How I Learned That Old Ice Cubes Taste Like Vodka" story, aka "The Time The Gardener Thought I Was Trying to Seduce Him," I apologize. Also, when I say "gardener," and you picture a groundskeeper trimming the ivy, I need to explain that he was actually just a guy who went door-to-door mowing lawns. And who looked just like Tom Petty, but without all that slick Welcome to Gainesville sophistication. And who later came back looking for a date, on account of me having tried to liquor him up on old ice cubes. Well, there's the story after all.)

But this isn't about the PoP site, but about a site it linked to, and on that site there was a semi-meme (that is SO much fun to say!), and I've decided to participate. Sure, it's from 2007, but it's like that scene in The Devil Wears Prada? Where Anne Hathaway thinks she likes the blue skirt (or whatever) just because it's a nice colour, but Meryl Streep reveals that it's all part of a global trickle-down fashion economy that starts with tete-a-tetes in Vogueland eighteen months earlier? I probably only even mentioned ice cubes just now because Dooce did back in 2004.

(Anyway, behold the Q&A.)

Do you clean your counters with a sponge or paper towel?

Paper towel. I hate sponges. We often have one out for the bathtub and if I even think about it, I have to replace it and throw it away with another one. How many times are you supposed to be able to use one, anyway?

I might feel differently if I kept hardcore cleaning products in the house: bleach, Old Dutch cleanser. I used to use sponges without flinching (although not on kitchen counters). Then I read a book where the author talked about being a Merry Maid (or in a similar housecleaning service), and the way they reused the sponges to pretty much just moisten and spread bacteria around on the counters completely icked me out.

I feel bad about the paper towels, though. I've tried to use dishclothes in the kitchen, then wash them, but that's only good if you have a wash ready to go.

Actually, I do like to use sponges on cars. The big, fluffy kind of spongw that could pass for a giant chunk of Swiss. Although, come to think of it, hand-washing the cars with sponges might just be a childhood memory. When did I last hand-wash a car? I don't think grabbing the communal windshield wiper while pumping gas and running it all over the car counts.

Do you re-use towels after you shower or get a clean one every time? How long do you re-use them before getting a clean one out?

Re-use. Towels are hung up and dry pretty quickly. I think we need to put more towels into the rotation, but I can't find those exact shades of "dusty lilac" and "ethereal green," and I'm very picky. (About how towels look, not about having a fresh, fluffy towel every time. I'd like to be that picky, but that would mean rearranging the closet inside the bathroom.)

I don't know how often the towels are re-used. I'm not sure I want to work it out in my head. The real question should be, "Do you re-use your spouse's towel on yourself?" Mike doesn't seem to care, but I keep trying to make new systems so that we each have our own towels. You would think that, with an equal number of two differently coloured towels plus two towel racks, this would be easy. It's not, and it's my fault. I'd rather re-use the now-dry towel hanging over the shower curtain than put it away and find my own.

Do you do all of your grocery shopping for the week at once or do you make several medium-sized trips?

Several several small, medium, and large trips? Seems like it, especially this time of the year. Every couple of weeks or so, staples are replenished. Cheese, onions - that's half the recipes right there.

How often do you clean your bathtub?

Mike is the bathtub guy, but if it gets too scummy (because someone uses bar soap instead of gel, and goes through multiple bars each week, what the heck?), I'll loosen the grot with the sponge and some Comet before asking Mike when he's planning on solving the nervous breakdown I'm having in the bathroom.

Let's just put it this way: I was a "bath or two" a day girl until I got married. Now, I shower. Not because I don't like baths - I LOVE BATHS SO MUCH - but because I hate settling into a bubbly tub, looking around, and noticing the ^%$# soap scum. Mood over, time to scrape, bath ruined. I'm not saying I kept an impeccable tub back in the day, but I wouldn't have hesitated to make gin in it.

It's a good thing Mike lost interest in blogging. Nobody needs to know what my hair does to the drain, or how often I forget to put the hair trap over the drain, or how often I forget to clean the hair trap when I do put it down. But at least you can blast out the hair with Drano! The soap scum... it is eternal.

How often do you clean your coffee-maker?

Ew. No coffee, thanks.

If you bake something like biscuits on a cookie-sheet, but put aluminum foil under it, do you then wash the cookie sheet?

I'm supposed to wash the cookie sheet if I don't put aluminum foil on it? I thought I was seasoning the bakeware.

Do you clean your blinds?

I have cleaned my blinds.

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