Necessity’s Child

Cursing has been shown to to release tension, and to heighten comeraderie in the workplace, but there is one drawback. It emphasizes and gives weight and authority to your negative emotions. It is my opinion that those negative emotions can be spread and made to last longer  when you make a lot of noise about them.

So how do you acknowledge your emotions, and gain that sense of comeraderie that can be engendered by swearing, without spreading a lot of negative emotions around?

Here’s the trick: Say something silly.

Instead of bull shit, say bullfeathers. Instead of damn it, try dag nabit.

The more obscure and ridiculous the words, the better. Will you sound like a fool? Maybe. But you will also accomplish a few  things:

• you will release your emotion
• you will distract your own attention from your pain/ anger/frustration
• you may get a chuckle from your co workers

Humor has been shown over and over again to be a powerful force against negative feelings. A good laugh will lower your blood pressure, raise your overall mood, and even derail a fight.

A really ridiculous euphemism can even start a silly swearword competition among members of a team - the best one I ever came up with was “Dozens of Daffodills!” Which was very effective at raising a laugh when said in my most Pollyanna voice while working on a construction site full of big strong men.

I say the world needs more fools - and I’m willing to lead the charge! Won’t you join me?

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get home so tired I can barely put one foot in front of the other. Thinking up a decent meal can be almost too much to face. I don’t want to rely on ready made food, though, which is often loaded with salt, fat, and bizarre ingredients of suspicious origin (what, exactly, is ‘modified food starch’ anyway?)

My husband and I came up with a simple solution that doesn’t involve a lot of elaborate meal planning, a major time investment, or ninja-level cooking skills.

Here’s the trick: We put our heads together and came up with a half-dozen easy meals that could be prepared from the basic ingredients we buy every week, and posted them on the fridge.

Our list this month reads:  salad every night

• pesto & noodles
• omelets and toast
• spaghetti & sauce
• rice pilaf
• baguette and assorted cheeses
• french toast

If by some freak of luck, one of us has a little extra energy, we make something more elaborate or demanding, but on those nights we come home exhausted, we just pick something off the list, make it and a salad, and know that we haven’t let ourselves or our bodies down.

I like to use my teakettle to make tea, and I like to pour the scalding water over the teabag, as I believe tea made this way tastes better than tea made by sticking a cup of cold water into the microwave, with a teabag in it, and heating it ’till the water boils. Many of my friends and relations, though, value speed over flavor, and do it the other way.

I never really thought about it, until one day when I made tea for myself and a friend, and she made a surprised comment about how quickly the water in the teakettle boiled. I suddenly realized what was going on.

What you should know: Water absorbs energy at a constant rate, whether you heat it in a microwave, on a conventional store, or over a campfire. More water will take more time to heat than less, every time. The key to heating water quickly is to only heat as much as you need. Many people think water heats faster in the microwave because they typically only heat a cupful, if they’re making tea or coffee, whereas if they’re using the teakettle, they’ll fill it right up to the top.

“But”, you say, “who wants to have to get out a measuring cup every time they want to make a cup of tea?”

The answer, of course, is no one. Luckily, I have figured out a simple way to bypass that step, and still get the right amount of water in the kettle, every time.

Here’s the trick: You can use time to measure the amount of water you pour into the teapot, which will allow you to heat only as much water as you will use.

Decide on a standard amount of water to use as your gauge. I use two cups, which gives me enough for a 12 oz. mug, plus a bit extra for a top off, and to allow for evaporation.

To start, take your kettle, and turn on the tap as if you were going to fill it in the normal way. Notice how far you turn the tap, and how fast the water is running. We are creatures of habit. You probably use this same gesture every time you turn on the water, if you’re not thinking about it.

Turn the water off and grab a graduated measure big enough to hold your chosen amount. I used a two-cup measure.

Turn the tap on in your usual way. Now put the measure under the stream and  count how many seconds it takes to fill up to your desired amount.

In my case, it takes 5 seconds to run two cups of water into my measure - or into my teakettle. If I have company, or want to make more tea, I just count the requisite number of extra seconds to allow for the right amount of water.

Two cups of cold water, heated in the enclosed space of a teakettle, heats to boiling in under three minutes, about the same time it takes to heat it up in a microwave.

No wasted water, no wasted energy, and I get to hear my teakettle singing in the morning, instead of the insistent beep of the microwave. It is an improvement on every front!

I owe this useful tidbit to the summer my younger sister Kari spent working as a cook’s assistant in a nice hotel in Maine. Thanks, Kari!

There’s nothing more disappointing* than cutting into your first melon of the season, only to find that it is hard and flavorless, or past its prime, the flesh flaccid, grainy and inedible, with a winy smell that tells you the sugars are beginning to turn to alcohol.

So here is a surefire method that will allow you to choose a truly wonderful cantaloupe with panache and elan:  as an added bonus, it makes use of  your  newly discovered and fine-tuned sniffing skills. **

Here’s the trick: Pick up a likely looking cantalope , and turn it over in your hands.

1.It should be heavy for its size, and firm, but not rock hard.

2.The “netting” over the outside of the skin should be a pleasing light golden color over a pale peach: if there’s green beneath, you’re holding an underripe melon, and it will be flavorless and hard to scoop.

3.Find the round indentation  where the stem attached the fruit to the plant, and inspect it for signs of mold or mildew. Either one is a sign that it has possibly been in storage for longer than is good for it, and it may be pretty funky.

4. If the stem end is green or a little brown, press your finger gently into the depression, it should be a little soft, but still firmish.

5.Sniff the stem end. It should smell sweet and yummy!

If the melon passes this 5 point inspection, you have a winner on your hands, and may  buy with confidence!

P.s. if the melon isn’t quite ripe enough, you can store it on the counter for a couple of days. It will ripen a bit. When it is truely ripe, though, it should be eaten immediately, or stored in the fridge.

It will have the best flavor if served at room temperature.

*Ok, there might be things more disappointing than that, after all this country was moronic enough to elect Bush, Jr. to the presidency twice, but still, it’s pretty darned disappointing!

**see How to smell a flower -or- Would a Rose by any other Nose smell as sweet?

I am a total learning junkie, and I find that I thoroughly enjoy any classroom experience. When I had to attend Traffic School a couple of years back,  I learned about this rule, and I’ve been using it ever since. It is an elegant and effective way to monitor your following distance behind another vehicle.

What I love about it is that it is easy to do, it adapts instantly to changes in speed, and it doesn’t involve a lot of math or estimating of distances.

-and there’s always this little detail: IT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE.

So, what the hell, kudos to the DMV!

What you already know: When you’re driving, the faster you’re moving, the more space you need to leave between your car and the  one in front of you.

What you may not realize: The distance you allow translates in a very real way into the amount of time you have to react to a sudden, catastrophic stop in traffic. The longer a space you leave, the more seconds you have to react to an accident.

Here’s the Trick: While you’re traveling behind another vehicle,

pick a landmark by or in the road. It can be a shadow that stretches across the road, or a sign, or even a crack or a spot in the road. The key thing is that it should be easy for you to tell when the car ahead of you has passed it.

As the target car passes your landmark, start counting seconds, “one, one thousand, two one thousand, three…”

When your car reaches the landmark, you have that # of seconds to react, should the vehicle ahead of you suddenly come to a halt.

Generally speaking, you want to allow at least two seconds between you and another car, three seconds after a truck, a motorcycle, or in more slippery conditions.

You might also want to allow for a longer reaction  time if you’re tired or otherwise incapacitated.

I stop to smell the flowers.

Almost always, and whenever the opportunity presents itself.

And I love to share the experience. So I can hardly express my disappointment when, having discovered some delicately fragrant flower in a garden somewhere, I point out the treasure to my companion, only to have him (or her) stick their nose into the center of the blossom, take a deep sniff, look at me like I’m crazy, and say, “I don’t smell anything.”

Well, there’s a reason for this, and  as the time is not always right for a mini-tutorial on the fine art of using one’s nose, I shall content myself with telling you, and maybe next time I accost a stranger in a botanical garden, it will be you, and I won’t be disappointed.

What you should know: Your nose is set up to do a few different things, and you can’t use it the same way for each purpose.

1) Breathe air in and out, while keeping it relatively clear of particles, slightly humidified, and at a moderate temperature.

When you take a big sniff, you are shooting oxygenated air straight into the lungs very quickly. This fits purpose #1 very well, but it is not the kind of inward breath that suits another of the nose’s functions…

2) detecting odors, good, bad, or indifferent. Your olfactory center is literally right between your eyes. When you inhale air from near a smelly object, like a rose, little packets of fragrance molecules have to get up into your sinuses where they can dissolve into the moist environment there. Only once the scent molecules are in liquid form, can the olfactory nerves do their job, and tell you how nice the flower smells.

Here’s the trick: First, take a look at  the flower before you smell it. Insects and water droplets are both frequent passengers on flower blossoms, and you don’t want to snort a bee up your nose.

Next, exhale away from you subject, so that there’s room in your lungs, and so that you don’t blow all the fragrance molecules away from the flower before  you smell if.

Now take a series of gentle huffing breaths - it’s a little like panting, but with you mouth shut. The idea is to allow the scent-filled air to pool in your sinuses, concentrating the fragrance in the right place to be picked up by your scent detector.  Think of the action you see when a dog or a cat is exploring something with their nose.

Now that you know how to use your nose, try it out! One thing to remember, flowers don’t put out scent all the time. They use scent to attract pollinators, so they put out scent when their pollinators are most likely to be around. Even just among roses, you will find a wide variation - so  if a flower you check doesn’t smell like anything, try again at a different time of day - and see if you can deduce anything about the pollinator!

Once you start to explore the world through your nose, it becomes a fascinating place, so enjoy!

There are about 9 million products out on the market for getting rid of lime and calcium build-up on shower door, pots and pans, teakettles, coffeemakers, and the like; some of them frighteningly toxic, or, worse yet, the packaging gives you no clue as to what they’re made of, so you don’t know how to neutralize them if they get on your skin (or anything else you care about).

What you should know: The calcium or lime build-up is deposited by tap water when it evaporates. These names are both shorthand for calcium carbonate, the same substance that makes up chalk for the schoolroom, or plaster for your wall. There are also likely to be some other substances, like flouride and salt that are left behind by the water.

They came in water, they can leave in water. they just need a little encouragement, in the form of a harmless acid, like vinegar.

Here’s the trick: Heat up a quart or two of water - you can use hot tap water, or heat it more.  Add about a half cup of distilled white vinegar. sponge the solution onto the surface to be cleaned, wait a few seconds, scrub it around a bit, to loosen any stubborn bits, rinse, and wipe dry.

If you have a perpetual shower door problem, like I do, you can put some cold vinegar and water solution into a spray bottle, and squirt the shower stall down after each use, to prevent build-up from occurring in the first place.

Ah, the miracle of chemistry!

Maybe it’s the goofy name, or maybe I watched too many Nature programs as a child, but I have never been able to shake the perception of a loofah as some kind of a sea creature, something like a sea sponge.

Be that as it may, the loofah is a wonderful skin scrubber, with a few drawbacks:

1) It is not oil-compatible. We tried to use ours with Oil of Olay bodywash, and it developed a nasty grey patch where the fibers had begun to break down and dis-intigrate.

2)The cylindrical shape. It’s hard to wash your face, or scrub behind your ears with something that is roughly the size and shape of a large ear of corn.

I switched to Dr.Bronner’s Peppermint soap to address the first problem, but it took me a while to decide what to do about the second.

I finally decided to go ahead and cut the surface away from the core.

Here’s the trick: If you look at the cut end, you will see holes, large and small, going around like and old-fashioned telephone dial.

Stick your scissors into one of these holes, and follow it up the length of the loofah.

Next, methodically cut away the “spokes” that hold the surface pad to the core. the spokes are pretty tough and harsh to the touch, so you want to cut most of that part away, without cutting in too deep and compromising the surface pad, which you will be wanting to use.

It takes about 2 minutes to do the whole thing, if you take your time. It’s a really quick project.

You can buy them pre-filleted, with trim on the edges, and a soft cotton backing, but the two layers make the surface hard to control. I found that I rather enjoy sticking my fingers into the nooks and crannies of the reverse side; and now it doesn’t look so much like a sea cucumber.

The other advantage was that I get to keep the core, which my two parakeets like to nibble on and scratch the itches away.

I often see people freeze a whole waterbottle full of water, so that they will have cold water to drink during the day. I’ve tried it myself, but I often find that I want to drink the water faster than it wants to melt.

I have seen special molds, that make long skinny “icicles” to drop through the  neck of a waterbottle, but why spend your hard earned cash, when you can use your intelligence, instead?

Here’s the trick: Only fill the bottle to be frozen 1/3 to 1/2 way full. Lay it on its side to freeze, making sure the water to be frozen doesn’t touch the cap. (You don’t want to freeze the lid in place!)

Before you leave, fill the bottle the rest of the way.

The ice is frozen lengthwise in the bottle, allowing maximum surface area to touch the fresh water, chilling it quickly, and melting the ice quickly enough to quench your thirst when you need it most!

This trick works especially well with those metal re-fillable waterbottles we’re all using to get away from waste-producing plastic.

So you’ve bought and planted a bunch of seedlings, and now you need to water them, but you discover that your watering can is missing its diffuser nozzle, or your sprayer head is broken, and the water is now pounding the baby plants into the dirt.

Here’s the trick: Just take one of the empty pots the seedlings came out of. Hold it up above the plant to be watered and pour the water through it. The vents around the bottom of the pot will re-direct and separate the stream, diffusing the force of the stream, and allowing you to safely water your new seedlings.