The Wisdom of the Ancients

Just don't tell my grandma I referred to her as ancient...

In case you haven't noticed, it's hot. Well, here at least it's hot. I don't have AC in my home, and in my desperation I decided to try on old trick my grandma used in her home.

Wet bedsheets.

The trick is that by hanging wet bedsheets around the house in areas of air circulation (like a fan) you can cool the house. Last week I tried it, and it worked. The world outside rose to a hell-blasting 98 degrees, but inside it stayed perfectly even at 80. I was impressed. Grandma was right.

I was reminded of my roses. About a month or so ago, I bought some anti-fungus spray to treat them for powdery mildew. The spray cost a fortune and didn't even last long enough to treat all my plants. In frustration, I turned to a garden tips book that gave me an old, very simple concoction to use: 2 teaspoons baking soda, 2 quarts water, 1/2 teaspoon liquid dish soap. It worked just as well as the expensive stuff and cost a fraction less.

My philosophy professor used to rail against what he called the snobbery of modernism--that we "moderns" have a disdain for anything that's old. We are progressive, modern snobbery says, and the past is backwards. We know better, modern snobbery says, and the ancients were ignorant.

"Wrong, wrong, wrong!" my professor would have exclaimed, and he would have smacked the podium if the fire in his belly was burning particularly hot that day. His campaign against such snobbery was one of his touchstones in every philosophy course I took with him. I suppose he was trying to pound a little sense into as many freshman undergrads as he could.

Wet bedsheets. Baking soda, water, and liquid soap. Certainly worked better and cheaper than modern progressive techniques.

I think my philosophy professor would be proud of my very un-modern approach at tackling these problems. I wonder if he'd give me extra credit...

Happens in Three's

Today was a long, long day--the kind of day when I want nothing more than the comfort and solace of my home. But, as soon as I crossed my threshold...

I spilled beer on my best work pants (and it wasn't even my beer!)
My cat peed on my favorite floor rug
My toilet overflowed

This happened in the space of about an hour.

I'm going to bed now. I'm going to wrap myself up in my pinkie binkie, which is reserved especially for times such as these, and I'm going to pretend that the last hour or so of my life never happened.

Evil Omens

It's been a little while since my last post, I know. Mostly the time has been spent working, and the time before that was spent recovering. New Year's Eve saw me sick in bed, surrounded by boxes of Kleenex and empty packets of Theraflu. The noises and curses I groaned and moaned were so unusual and so complex that some linguists might have considered them to be a new language.

But I'm better now.

I did wonder, though, when the clock reached midnight and I listened to people banging on pots and yelling strange things and setting off car alarms (and the naughty people setting off firecrackers, though fireworks are banned here in the mountains) if starting 2009 sick in my bed was some sort of evil omen for the rest of the year.

We shall see.

I'm Dreaming Of A...

It's snowing again.

When I was a child, I prayed very very hard throughout the month of December. Mostly my requests were selfish at best--that on Christmas day I would receive the things I wanted, that my ensemble would sing better than any other during the school Christmas performance, etc. Always at the top of my prayer list was the request for a white Christmas. I can remember only once when we had an actual white Christmas. The next year, I prayed doubly hard for a repeat performance, but didn't get it. One year, we had snow the week before, and my father tried to comfort me.

"See, there's snow on the ground," he said, "so it's still a white Christmas."

To my young and dissatisfied mind? Hardly.

This year, it seems I will have my white Christmas, and even though a heavy snow storm will keep me from seeing at least half of my family members on the day, a part of me is thrilled at the chance of it. I can still feel the child-side of me hopping up and down a little at the beauty and mystery of falling snow.

I'm beginning to think that as we age, we stop lifting up our faces to feel those small, wet, white crystal feathers chilling our cheeks, and instead we only see the brown slush in the gutters and the chain checks and the ice patches. I can feel this transformation of childish awe to adult practicality taking place within me, I must admit. My car is an igloo-shaped lump bordered on three sides by a berm of snow four feet tall, and it will probably stay that way for another week at least because I'm disheartened at the very thought of the work it will take to rescue it.

More snow, says the weather forecast? Well, isn't that just great.

The snow falling tonight isn't like the snow storm we had last week. This snow pecks and scratches at the windows, like some bird trying to get in. Frankly, the sound is a little unnerving to me at the moment. I doubt it would unsettle me quite so much if it were day. Or if we hadn't already had three feet of snow the week before.

And yet, I still caught myself singing "Let It Snow" this evening.

"Too Much" Is Just Another Way Of Saying "Not Enough"

And I can prove it.

Too much snow.
Too much editing.
Too much cayenne pepper.
Too much chocolate.

Not enough sun.
Not enough hours.
Not enough beans.
Not enough toothpaste.

See?

That is today in forty words or less.