"Do you need something moistened?"

It's raining! My patience in not watering the garden paid off. :) Now lets hope that in addition to completing greenup, this will also make my garden grow. Not to mention stave off fires for the summer....
It's been an absolutely horrid week. My dog has gotten worse and worse about destroying things, both at night when I'm sleeping and after I leave for the day. In two days she did this: opened a cabinet to pull out my barley flour (you know, the stuff I was so proud of) and rip the bag open. Thankfully I saved most of it, and cleanup was fairly easy. The next night I put a chair in front of that cabinet thinking it might have enough weight that she couldn't open it up. Wrong. She got into the same cabinet (which, food-wise, only holds a few dry goods) and destroyed one of the bags of sugar my brother-in-law gave us. That was a giant mess. (Also, she woke me up at 5 am because of this.) So, thinking that there was too much space between the cabinet and the back of the chair, due to the lip of the counter, and it gave her the leverage to open the cabinet, I turned the chair around so the seat was pressed against the cabinet. And somehow, I didn't ever stop to think, "Gee, I gave my dog the perfect stool to get onto the counter." I came home to the remains of one of those cakes I made all over the counter and the floor. It was a chocolate cake, but one layer and there'd only been about 1/3 of it left. She didn't even eat all of it, but she did ingest a good amount of the tinfoil that was covering it.
In addition to all this, she'd also both pooped and peed on the floor. Because you have to add insult to injury, right? (No, neither of these was because of digestive problems from the cake, or because she couldn't hold it. Trust me, I know the difference.)
I called my parents, crying, and they managed to talk me out of either strangling her or offering her on Craigslist. I shoved the dog outside while I tried to clean up the worst of the mess and she stood out there barking like, "Mom, you forgot to let me in. Hey Mom, the door's closed. ...Mom? Mom? Mom! Mom! I'm not inside with you, Mom! Let me in! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Hey Mom!"
So I've been talking with everyone (especially Shane) about what to do about her separation anxiety. We've noticed for a while that she seems to be very anxious. There are times when Shane and I aren't doing anything when she's just sitting, staring at us, and there's a deep anxiousness in her eyes. So as weird as it is to say, I think my dog might just have a general anxiety disorder.
I kenneled her last night, but I really hate the idea of kenneling her both during the day and at night when Shane is gone. We need to limit her capacity to destroy things, yes, but keeping her in a box for over 16 hours isn't my first choice. When I let her out this morning she ran right to her water dish and drank about half of it, which is why I let her have free roam of the apartment today while I'm at work. (I can't fit the bowl and her bed in the kennel.) When Shane gets home we're going to get a baby gate so that we I can contain her when I need to. At night the gate will be across the bedroom door so that the cat can come and go as he pleases (he's been wonderful, I don't want to punish him!) and across the hallway during the day so that I can put a bowl of water in the bathroom for her. We're also going to get some baby locks for a couple of the cabinets in the kitchen so that she can't open them if she somehow does manage to get loose.
Ultimately, we might have to think about getting a companion dog for her. She was never like this at my parents' house, when she had a friend (my little brother's dog). The Boy is right, Pepper really needs Nutmeg (his dog). Being older, Nutmeg was around first so Pepper is used to her. But poor Meggy has so many health problems that I not only couldn't justify taking her away from the vet who knows her and her history, she can't fly. A rabies shot would kill her, and without it she's not allowed on a plane.
I'm thinking that adopting another small-medium sized dog, another older lady, who's both sweet and as stupid as possible (like Nutmeg--sweet and sooo stupid) might be ok. A puppy would just be "some upstart" in Pepper's mind, and it would make her more anxious. Shane hates the whole idea, he thinks that any new dog would simply make her more anxious, but I think it would be worth a try. I know the animal shelter here does fostering, so perhaps we could foster a dog for a couple of weeks and adopt it if things worked out.
Of course, all of this is something we can't even consider until we get a place of our own. Our apartment is pretty saturated with living things as is, and I doubt our landlord would love it if we brought yet another pet into the mix. So we'll see.
There are anti-anxiety pills for dogs. But I hate the idea of medicating her long-term as much as I hate the idea of kenneling her all day. On the other hand, being anxious all the time must be miserable. So we'll try everything else first and if it doesn't seem to get rid of her anxiety, or lessen it a great deal at least, then we'll talk about putting her on some medication.
As if the dog problems weren't enough, I also hurt my leg. I twisted it pretty badly on Monday night at softball, but I didn't realize just how badly until Wednesday. I started walking to work but got less than a block because my leg hurt so bad. I think I pulled a muscle. So I ended up taking a sick day. I made a ghetto compression bandage for myself out of the cut off tops of three tube socks that had giant holes in the heels (the foot part of the socks will be kept for cleaning) and a sticky wrap that I can't remember the origins of. (The idea behind the bandage being both support for whatever I pulled, and the fact that light compression brings more blood to that area of the body and, hopefully, will heal it faster.) It seems to have worked, because I managed to walk to work yesterday, and take the dog for a short walk in the evening, and I'm almost feeling totally better today. My foot is still a little swollen, but the muscle (or whatever I pulled) is hardly hurting when I move my foot and walk.
Only two more days before Shane gets home. Only two days....
There have, of course, been bright spots this week. Drinks and mini golf with friends (my drink was water--hey, it was a work night!), pizza at a friend's house, things like that. And I made some absolutely amazing slow-cooker BBQ chicken for myself. I can't remember what I did, exactly, because of course we were out of BBQ sauce so I had to make some, which I've never done before. I mixed together several online recipes, and tweaked them somewhat, so I'll never remember exactly what I did. About 1/2 a cup of apple cider vinegar (because that's all we had left), some Worcestershire sauce, a bunch of ketchup, some molasses and some brown sugar, some salt and pepper, a little bit of garlic powder, and a couple dashes of some Asian hot sauce Shane keeps in the fridge. At first it didn't seem right, but I didn't want to waste all that food, so I figured I'd eat it anyway. That ended up being the pizza night, so I put it all in the fridge and took some for lunch the next day. (Being pulled chicken, I made sandwiches.) Something about being in the fridge overnight took it from "edible" to "hey, that's not bad!" territory. I'll keep experimenting with sauces. I would really love to learn to make it without relying on bought ketchup. You know, real BBQ sauce from scratch. Yum!
I also re-tried the barley bread. Only with a lot less barley this time. I only used just over a cup, and the rest was white AP flour. I did toss in some wheat germ, which is apparently quite healthy, to up the nutrition a bit. It still has the barley flavor, however, and it's tasty! Thankfully, this time it actually rose properly.
Paired with the chicken the only thing that was wrong was the amount I made. Only enough for two meals!

Alaska Flour!

I did it. I managed to find some Alaskan grown flour at the AK Feed Co. by the Alaska Flour Co. (Alaska, Alaska, Alaska...sheesh!) 10 lbs and it came in a plastic bag, but I saw on their website that larger bags are in paper instead of plastic. So I asked the checkout guy if bigger bags were available and he said no, but he can make them available. I said, awesome! So sometime soon, I'll be able to have AK grown flour in a paper bag.
Is there a catch? Of course! I didn't realize until I got it home that it's barley flour, not wheat flour. So I shrugged and started making bread as usual (a little over half barley flour, a cup of oats, and the rest unbleached AP flour), thinking that one was just as good as the other. Wrong! It didn't rise very well at all on the first rise, but I figured I'd give it a little more time than normal with the second rise. I did, but it didn't work. I have two very small, rather dense loaves of barley bread which are, nevertheless, amazingly tasty. And I used a little bit of this barley flour in each of the cakes I made on Sunday with no texture difference and no noticeable change in flavor or the rising of the cakes. So I really would like to continue using the barley flour. It has a good amount of fiber and other nutrients, so it's pretty good for you. And like I said, it's quite tasty. But I'll need to work out a way to get the bread to rise properly, or just start using it in other things (like pancakes and waffles) instead of bread. Maybe I could write to the Flour Co. farmers and see if they have any suggestions?
When I went to roller derby on Saturday night, the friend I went with is also looking at a summer spent mostly without her husband. He being a theater geek, he got a job in New York state at a summer camp for rich kids (seriously--apparently it costs over $8000 to send one kid there!) teaching and/or managing the theater stuff. She'll be travelling (to see other friends, him, family in New England, him again, then family in Anchorage at the end of the trip for dipnetting and halibut fishing) but the most they've ever been apart is four days. So we were consoling each other, and trying to look at the upsides. Like me, she's going to do her best to ditch her car for the summer and bike pretty much everywhere so that she can both get in shape and save money by not paying for gas. In addition, we were talking about the food savings. I totally understood her when she said, "I just don't have the same metabolism he does!" And I laughed out loud when she mentioned how much cheese he eats because it's about the same amount of cheese that Shane eats. About a block to a block-and-a-half per week! With each block of cheese being around $8, that's an expensive habit. She and I both prefer more high-nutrient but cheaper foods, like lentils and beans and lots of veggies. In the last three weeks, I've only spent about $75 on food (including the flour). Granted, I've gone out to eat several times. But I still have plenty of things that I'm planning to make this week and I know our food bill is going to drop off a cliff without Shane. I know my friend is looking forward to losing some weight (she's gained about 15 pounds since they started dating, she said, but she's lost ten of it already) and that might end up being a side benefit for me, too. It was just nice to laugh about this, though, with someone who completely understands what I'm talking about.
And hey, I have to look on the bright side for some benefit of Shane being gone. :)
All this being said, it might still be a struggle to keep some of our spending as low (or almost as low) as it's been. I didn't have many options for lunch stuff for Monday when I was looking around on Sunday evening and the thought popped into my head that I could always just go to the cafe across the hall from my office. They have good food (I've been there as a "last resort" type of thing) but the food isn't cheap. Over $6 for a sandwich and a pickle! About $4 for a small bowl of soup. I realize that they need to make money (and they've had a lot of trouble with that the last few years, with more people brown bagging it) but I don't really want to get into the habit of buying expensive food. I really, really didn't want to eat it, but I pulled some leftover red beans and rice from last week out of the freezer. And I ate that, even though I just wasn't feeling it. It's such a first world problem to be concerned more for appetite fatigue than simply to be grateful that I have nutritious food to fill my belly with.
Knowing that I had leftover cake waiting for me at home helped a lot. :P
We do expect that some spending will increase--such as eating at SilverGulch more often as a way to see each other. When Shane is home, it would be nice to go see a movie once in a while. (We've seen, I think, about four movies in the last year, and one of them was paid for by Shane's parents at Christmas--as a family outing, they insisted on paying. Another was only "affordable" because we had gifted movie passes.) The real trick will be for me to stop myself from the mindset that says, "We can afford this now," or, "But it's cheap!" Now is the time when I'll learn if all of my frugal habits have really taken hold or if it was just a passing phase.
I guess I never thought about it before, but having money and not having money are equal tests of a person's character. One shows what a person is willing to do under duress, and the other shows where a person's values truly lie based on how they spend (or don't spend) their wealth. We are wealthy. Not by American standards, but by worldwide standards we are very rich indeed. I don't want to let it go to my head.

Weekend Win

Last week I really, really wanted to post some pictures of how well my plants are doing, particularly the ones at work. But my camera battery died and I haven't charged it up yet. I have several more peas growing, a few beans, and flowers on my regular sized tomatoes. I even have the first three cherry tomatoes starting! My plants at home, which I started much later, aren't nearly as far along of course. But they seem to be doing very well too. I fertilized them all (with organic fertilizer) for the first time and that seems to have helped.
This was such an epic weekend I didn't want it to end. The only reason Monday is bearable is because I have softball tonight. :)
Friday afternoon I got a call from Shane saying, "Beg, borrow, or steal a car, or find a ride out to SilverGulch. I'll be there." Being out in Fox, it's closer and easier for him to get there for an evening than to come all the way back to Fairbanks. The reason for the surprise was because one of his coworkers, the other new hire who mirrors Shane's position, was getting pretty camp crazy. Two days before getting to go home he started saying, "I can't do it. I'm done. I don't want to be here any more." So Shane suggested SilverGulch for dinner as a way to get out of the camp. As they were getting ready to leave one of the other guys saw them and said, "Take me with you!" So I frantically started calling friends, trying to see who would be able to give me a ride out there. Everyone was busy, but J was going to his parents' house, which is not too far away from SilverGulch, so he gave me a ride. I'm an idiot, because the one person I should have called I didn't even think to. Our friend Eric's dad works in Livengood, and he was the third person who came to dinner with Shane. We ended up calling him after we'd been seated and he drove out too (and ended up giving me a ride home later). It was a fantastic evening. Jason, the one who had been going camp crazy, apparently missed "seeing girls worth seeing" so we spent half the evening girl watching. He has a girlfriend in Anchorage, so he wasn't going to do anything but look, but it was funny. I don't think I need to describe how wonderful it was to see Shane again, to hold his hand, to make him throw his head back laughing. I'm sure we'll be doing this again often.
Saturday I got all of the seeds I want to set out right now (including the potatoes) planted and all of the cold hardy plants planted. In less than a week we went from chilly and windy to summer weather. I think it's still getting a little chilly at night for my warm weather plants, so I've still been bringing them inside. But I did leave a window in my bedroom open last night and didn't feel chilly, so perhaps I don't need to be as careful now.
Saturday night was Roller Derby night, and I went with a friend to cheer on some other friends for their last game of the season. It was a double-header, against teams from Yukon and Juneau. Of our two Fairbanks teams, one of them won their game and the other lost. But it was fun to watch. We saw a bunch of other friends in the crowd and said hi. I got home at around ten and, not ready to go to bed yet, I watched a couple episodes of "Mad Men" (just season one), which I got on DVD as a birthday present last year but didn't get around to watching until now. All in all, a great evening.
Sunday started off with biking (to the store) and running (with the dog) and the afternoon was spent at the Pump House with friends for a late lunch/early dinner to watch the eclipse. It's really handy to know a welder. He brought some super dark welding lenses to view the eclipse through. Up here, about 60% of the sun was covered, which you'd never know if you couldn't see it. This is the only time I've ever gotten to actually see an eclipse, and it was spectacular.
When I biked home from that, I immediately set about making cake. Two cakes, actually, since they were each only one layer and I wasn't sure how many people would show up. It was J's birthday on Saturday, and since L and Baby are both out of town I put myself in charge of making sure he had a cake to celebrate. There ended up being only four of us, but we watched "Rango" and ate cake and chatted and a good time was had by all. I once again made that coconut cake, and tried a chocolate orange cake as well. (Instead of frozen orange juice concentrate like it says to use, I just used freshly squeezed juice and zested some of the peel in. Oranges aren't on the 'always buy organic list' because the rind is so thick, but if you're zesting it I would suggest going organic.) The coconut was a bigger hit, I think because the chocolate orange cake is supposed to be vegan so it wasn't as rich. Don't worry, I put real butter in the frosting. :) I sent a little bit of cake home with everyone so I don't have to eat it all.
And now it's Monday. One day closer to Shane coming home, at the very worst.
I'm so ready for a vacation. :)

Unexpected Bounty

I almost title this "Unexpected Booty", as in pirate booty, but then all I could think of were sex jokes. Shane's gone and I'm not getting any for two weeks, so please forgive me if I take a turn to dirty-mindedness now and again. Or, you know, most of the time now. (Earlier my boss, referring to putting more paper in the printer, said she needed "to put in a bigger wad" and all I could think was, "That's what he said!" Cue 14-year-old boy laughter.)
So with the family gone, I took a look around my apartment last night to see what destruction they've rained upon us in the form of gifts and unwanted leftovers. My MIL can't ever see us without giving us gifts--which were fairly mild this time. A few things from their trip to Hawaii, and a giant bag of walnuts. I'm excited by the walnuts. I eat those things all. The. Time. Mostly paired with dried fruit after a run, but also thrown into brownies when I make them. (And BOY do I want to make some brownies right now!) It was a full gallon-sized bag of them, so I put them in the freezer to ensure they won't go rancid before I get around to eating them. (I already had a jar of walnuts and a jar of almonds I need to eat first.)
My brother-in-law's dorm was one favored by grad students and upperclassmen, because the rules are relaxed and you don't have to buy a meal plan. So he and his roommate cooked a lot, and bought most of their stuff in bulk from Sam's Club. I made the horrendous mistake of telling him that he could bring over whatever he didn't want to our place, to make his packing up and moving easier. So now I have tons of (mostly crappy) food that I don't know what to do with. I'd never even heard of Peter Pan brand peanut butter, but now I have a giant jar of it. I used it yesterday to fill the dog's Kong toy. And what on earth am I supposed to do with roughly 30 lbs of rice? That's more rice than we eat in a year! It won't go bad, so we'll keep it (obviously) and use it as we can.
We have two giant jugs of (non-organic) olive oil. A (newer) microwave, which we will probably trade out for ours, and take ours to VV. Roughly 12 unopened packets of saltines. Candy bars, which I took to softball to give away. I already gave away a giant box of Bisquick, and an unopened bag of (non-organic) sugar. (I kept the open one.) We have two large boxes of plastic storage tubs, bowls, a mixer, and assorted glassware and such which will probably just go to VV. Toilet paper and paper towels, which I'm keeping. Another CrockPot, which I'm not sure about yet.
And hand soap. Several years ago I bought a large jug of hand soap so that I could simply refill the small container and use a bit less plastic packaging. Well, I figured that an even better choice would be to ditch the plastic altogether and simply use bar soap, which comes in a paper box. (Much easier to recycle, and far less packaging.) Well, at the rate we go through hand soap, the large jug hasn't even been emptied yet. There's still at least one refill left, and the soap dispenser is mostly full. Roughly 3 years of hand soap from one big jug. And now I've been given two more, one unopened and the other mostly full. Do I really want to keep them? Or do I want to get rid of them? That much hand soap would take us into the next decade, probably. We do already have an opened (but unused) bar of soap kicking around our bathroom, which we got for free when someone left it at our place last summer. (Opened only because the dog, in a fit of mischief, tore the box to shreds.) So I will probably get rid of the hand soap.
Mind you, these are just the things I can think of off the top of my head, and the boxes I've already explored. I'm sure there's more hidden around my house. I haven't looked in the spare bedroom yet, so there might be horrors waiting for me there.
In addition to all this, there are the things Shane brought home. Trying to be sweet, he brought home some Vitamin Waters for me, because they give them out for free at the work site. I *used* to love these, which he remembered, but I guess he hasn't noticed that I haven't drunk one in years. Once I figured out that they're just glorified sugar water, I stopped drinking them. So now I have a bunch of Vitamin Water, and I don't know what to do with it.
It's amazing how tastes can change in a fairly short time. For the graduation, Shane and I packed a little bag with some snacks, a Vitamin Water, and our books. He opened the Water and since I was incredibly thirsty I took a sip. And nearly gagged. Granted, it had never been my favorite flavor anyway, but it was one that I would regularly drink. Now it feels like an assault on my tastebuds to drink such artificial flavors. It was disgusting! I realized that since I made the switch to more natural foods, I don't crave overly processed foods, or enjoy them when I do eat them. There are still some things which I would happily eat if they weren't so bad for me (boxed mac & cheese!) but for the most part, I just don't like them anymore.
Scents are the same way, now that I've stopped wearing them. I really can't stand most scented soaps and lotions, not to mention perfumes, and the smells that don't totally repulse me tend to be more natural. Coconut or vanilla. Light scents. There's a *fancy* soap someone brought into the bathroom at work, and I ended up using it yesterday (the other soap dispenser was blocked by someone else using it, so I figured it wouldn't kill me to use the *fancy* soap). It made my hands reek (like "Winter Wreath", according to the packaging) and I hated it. I eventually went back to the bathroom simply to wash my hands with something that wouldn't smell.
I really notice it when someone else is wearing a scent, too. Perfumes used to be highly prized because, in the days when most people didn't bathe regularly, people of course smelled bad. But in an age where most people bathe on a daily or almost-daily basis, there's really no need for perfumes. And yet they're so cheap and ubiquitous now that they're manufactured, so scents are put into everything. And people keep buying them.
I wish I could make them stop. My nose doesn't like it.

Santa's trying to ruin my reputation

It was a fun weekend. Very, very busy. But fun. Lots of family time, time enough with friends...it was one of those weekends that was so jam-packed that it seemed longer than it was, and at the same time it was far too short. We went out to eat every night, played lots of games (including frisbee golf), and spent hours laughing with each other. It was great.
But you know how I'm always saying there are weird and bizarre people in Alaska? I know that there are strange people everywhere (I grew up near Seattle after all--have you been to Broadway on any average Tuesday?) but there seems to be a special kind of weird in the people up here. Some move up here because of it, some lose inhibitions by living here. However they crop up, Alaska definitely has a higher-per-capita portion of weird. Well, when we were out at a well-known hotel's bar/lounge the other night, chatting away, the group sort of next to us got up to leave. It was another large group of people focused mostly around a couple. I figured it was either a graduation or a wedding and heard one of the older men say, "Enjoy it, young man. It only happens once." As they were passing by our table to get to the door one old man, who looked like Santa Claus, leaned down to Shane and said something in his ear. Shane looked at me with wide, laughing eyes, whispered something back to the guy, and then waited until the group had departed before dissolving into laughter. We were all asking him, "What did he say?" and Shane finally gasped out, "He told me, 'You see that girl across from you? [meaning me] I almost didn't recognize her with her clothes on.'" First of all, WTF? Secondly, WTF!! Santa's trying to destroy my reputation...to my husband and his family! Who goes around saying stuff like that to and about people they don't know?! Santa Claus is a dirty old bastard, apparently. I asked Shane why he didn't hit him and Shane said, "I can't hit Santa!" Apparently what he'd whispered back to Santa was, "Yeah, I have a hard time recognizing her with clothes on, too." Thanks, dear. He told me that and when he saw that I was about to hit him he reminded me, "Two weeks! You won't get to see me for two weeks, so you can't be mad at me!"
Over the weekend our friend J came over and asked me how I felt about Shane's being gone so much. I'm not really sure how to answer that question, since it's such a mixed bag of emotions, but I shrugged and said, "Well, it's just what we're going to do." Then he said, "Oh. Because I know quite a few marriages that have broken up because of schedules like this." Thanks for the comforting words of wisdom.
With all of this, is it any wonder that I had a dream in which I was trying desperately to reassure Shane that I would never, ever cheat on him?
He's up at work now, but the business continued for me last night with two softball games in the strong winds, rain, and at one point hail. We won our first game 22-2, but lost the second 12-5. Both games were good, and I think I played fairly well. I didn't catch because the team captain had forgotten the face mask. I did have a couple of nice hits, though. I forget at the beginning of every year that "I like the high ones". It forces me to swing up rather than my usual level swing. If the ball's on the ground I don't have the power behind a hit to make it go through the infielders, but if I swing up I can get it just beyond them most of the time.
I've been doing my best to kill my plants. I forgot that summer squashes aren't as cold-hardy as I like to think they are and killed two of them this weekend by leaving them out overnight. (The peas did just fine.) Oh well. I can always start more.
We got the garden tilled, though! It took Shane a lot less time than he thought it would, and after he was done with the tilling I went out and made the freshly turned, workable dirt into lovely rows. Tomorrow, I'm going to plant my carrots and parsnips, since the seeds will be fine. It's (frustratingly) still to early to put anything else out there, except perhaps my peas (which desperately need to be trellised) because we're still getting a bit of frost at night. This spring has been so odd, with the early snowmelt and then weeks of still-cold weather. Usually the snow melts just in time for summer to start. Not this year.
The reason the early snowmelt is so worrisome is really because the snow cover is so necessary for so many things. What about the arctic creatures which rely on thick ice and snow for a while yet? What about the fact that the snow actually helps to reflect some of the sun's warmth back out of our atmosphere? If the trees had greened right after the snowmelt I would have thought that it was pretty much a wash as far as global warming. But to have over a month without snow and without leaves and greenery to pull carbon out of the atmosphere? Not good. There are so many signs of warming happening up here, and it pisses me off that "there are doubts" among people in Washington D.C.

Paper Towels

I was so happy to read this article about how everyone can (and should) get rid of--or at the least, reduce the use of--paper towels. It's really not as hard to break the habit as most people think.
The biggest suggestion in the article, and one that I inadvertently follow, is to keep paper towels out of sight. We sometimes have them on the roll in the kitchen, but when we finally do run out of a roll we don't replace it until we find a "need" for another paper towel. (Yes, I know, they're not really "needs", but there are some uses for which paper towels are just easier. Like draining cooked bacon on.) This means that we'll often go weeks without a visible paper towel roll in the house (we keep the bag of them under the sink, and I haven't had to buy any for about a year now) and it encourages us to first reach for rags, which we keep in a fairly open spot. We keep kitchen rags (formerly "dish towels") all over the kitchen for cleanup. Next time I go to Value Village I'll probably try to find some newer, cleaner looking dish towels but it doesn't really matter if I don't find any. We use the dishwasher for most things, and when we do hand wash dishes I pull out a clean rag from the drawer to place the clean dishes on to air-dry. Once the rag has been used for that, it gets set on the towel rack by the sink to help clean up spills and from there goes into the "dirty rag" pile for washing.
We also have a pile of non-kitchen rags which we keep in an old milk crate (found somewhere for free) that we keep by the door. These are mostly used for pet messes and other household cleaning. What rags do I use here? Pretty much anything. We got our couch for free and when we looked under the cushions we found several old towels and a pillow case. The pillow case has been washed (several times) and gets used to hold bread in the freezer. (Even gallon-sized plastic bags can't hold an entire loaf of bread. The pillow case holds several and keeps them from getting freezer burned, and I cycle the bread through fairly often.) The towels went into the rag bin and are most often used to clean up pet messes.
Socks with holes in them are frequently used to dust--I dampen the sock, put it over my hand, and run my hand over whatever needs dusting. Super easy. One of my brothers mocked me for this thrift saying, "Oh, you Alaskans. You know you can buy things called sponges, right?" I shot back with, "Yes, but these are free Mr. I-Had-To-Take-A-Second-Job." At the time, both of our spouses were out of work. We have similar rents, and my high utilities pretty much make up for his more expensive commute. But he had to take a second job, whereas I didn't. Don't underestimate the power of thrift.
The socks are also useful when the dog's paws are hurting her. After I spread the Bag Balm on her pads I sometimes put an old sock on each foot so that she doesn't wipe or lick off the ointment and so that she doesn't get it on the carpet or the bed. About the time the socks start falling off they've done enough that the ointment has done its work.
Old clothes which have fallen apart, or which have been deliberately destroyed (some VV shirts got turned into a Halloween costume, and the leftover bits couldn't be worn anymore) are also tossed in there to be used as rags for assorted cleaning. I even clean the bathroom using just rags. If you're worried about contamination from these rags getting onto clothes in the wash, like I am, the solution is easy. I do a separate load of laundry that I think of as "gross" laundry. We have enough rags that I don't need to do this often. Maybe 4-5 times a year? But into this load go the pet towels, the kitchen and bathroom rugs, and any household cleaning rags. (The kitchen ones go into clothing loads, so that we're not accidentally spreading what got onto the rags used to clean up pet messes all over the kitchen. I might be paranoid about that, but better safe than sorry.)
Rags like these can also be used in the garage to clean up messes like oil, or to wipe hands on when you've been working on an engine. For those, though, it might be better to pick the oldest, nastiest rags you have so that you don't feel bad about simply throwing them away after using them, rather than trying to wash them.
It really is easy to reduce your dependence on paper towels and other paper products. And don't be afraid to get your kitchen towels dirty! That's what they're for! The last time we had J&L and their baby over, Baby spit up. I handed L one of the kitchen rags and she asked, "Oh, you don't have a paper towel or anything? I don't want to get this dirty." Ummm...that particular rag already had a big hole burned in it from our former roommate. I don't think a little baby spitup is going to hurt it, do you?
We're conditioned from a young age to think that cloth is "special" or "for nice occasions". But cloth is what people always used to use to clean up, and it was far more expensive in the past than it is now. As with so many other things, we've put it on a pedestal and used it as an excuse to justify disposables. People don't want to use cloth napkins, placemats, and tablecloths because they're "too fancy". Who says? And even if they are "fancy", don't you deserve that? Doesn't the dinner you lovingly made deserve to be elevated to a special occasion? Believe me, time with your family is so special, and it deserves to seem that way too. If we celebrate the small things in life, we're much less likely to be discontented with what we have, and less likely to "splurge" on things we don't need.

Keeping busy

With this, the first week of Shane's new job and all of the long, lonely evenings, I did my best to keep busy. My friends helped out a lot, knowing that I'd need something. Monday night we had our final vet visit for the eye problem (at least, for now), and since I didn't have a vehicle Fiona (the vet's daughter and my next-door neighbor) gave us a lift. After the appointment I visited with her family for a bit (her parents are going to Peru for several weeks) and we got to catch up. It was lovely.
I also had my first softball game of the summer that night. Yes, I have a face mask this year! I told the team captain that I wouldn't be playing catcher without a mask and he pulled one out of the bag. Apparently, he didn't want any more hospital trips this summer either. :) It's going to take a lot of getting used to, because as it is I can't see anything down low, like my glove or the ball when I'm trying to catch it. I joked that I'm having to try to catch by echolocation. Good thing there's no stealing in coed softball!
Tuesday the dog and I jogged over to J&L's house to go for a walk with L and the baby, who were leaving on Thursday for Seattle and Oregon. When I saw them, Baby had been super fussy that day and was driving her dad nuts when I showed up. He was trying to strap her into the jogger but she was leaning forward, grunting, refusing to let him actually snap the harness. He finally gave up in exasperation. (I've met stronger-willed babies before, but she's near the top of that list. That kid is stubborn!) Thankfully, when the walk started, she was so charmed by having the dog along that she forgot to be cranky for a while. She was watching the dog and just giggling for about five minutes. It was awesome. She got fussy again by the end of the walk, though. Poor baby. Sounds like she might be teething again or something. :(
Wednesday Fiona came over for dinner. I just made spaghetti, nothing fancy. But it was fun to share a meal with her, and to be able to say "thank you" for having such a great friend.
I thought that with Shane gone so much I'd have lots of free time to fill with reading, "Mad Men" (which Shane finds "boring"), sewing, knitting, crocheting, gardening, and exercise. But no. I'm sure I probably will as the summer goes on and I get into more of a routine, but it was nice to stay busy this week. Also, it's amazing how much of an evening an hour or so on Skype takes up. (Yes, it works!...sort of.) We've been on there pretty much every evening, saying hi. We have to type, but we do have video. I showed him the pets, so he was able to see how they're doing. He said, "What a lazy household!" as I swept the webcam around so he could see our lounging pets.
There are some really, really good parts to Shane's new job and some really, really bad parts. Oh, the bad parts are not about the job itself. That sounds pretty great. He likes the people he works with, and the job itself is pretty much what he'd been hoping for. They've even been talking about training him to advance within the company. Shane's excited about the prospect of having not just a job, but a career. It's hard for me because I don't want to get in the way of that, but I also don't want a two on/one off or even two on/two off schedule forever. What about when we have kids? I imagine that would be rough when they're little. So there are plenty of future unknowns that we'll have to work out at some point.
The good thing is that we're going to be saving a lot of money on household bills. Shane's fed at the work site, and I'll probably be eating cheaper foods (hello, lentils!) while he's gone, since they're easier to make for just one person. Also, electricity. I'll use far less of it than we do together, and I tend to use less than Shane does anyway.
The thing I don't really like is what they're feeding him up there. The water is fine for showering, according to the company, but has concentrations of lead and arsenic which make it undrinkable. So it's all bottled waters, Vitamin Water, and soda. (Alcohol at camp means immediate firing, so he can't even bring up a bottle or two of his beer.) Packaged foods, like granola and energy bars, candy bars, etc, are laid out all the time for people to take at will. (For a snacker like Shane, that can be a horrible thing.) And everything else has meat in it. He was actually happy last night to eat some of the leftover (vegetarian) marinara sauce, which normally he doesn't like, because he was feeling a little bit of meat overload. The coffee they're serving is not, of course, cold-pressed so it's been bothering his stomach a bit.
The amount of trash produced between the two of us is going to go way up, even with my trash amount going way down. *Sigh* Shane can't ride his motorcycle up there (the roads are too awful) so for now it'll be more gasoline. (He's going to find a carpool soon.) I did expect some big changes, and some things that I wouldn't like. But being confronted with the reality of them is totally different. Now I'm putting my mind toward thinking of how else I can change things to make up for these new not-so-good changes. Any ideas?
Shane will be gone too much this summer to be able to play softball, but after he got home last night we went to go watch the second game. I love watching them play, it's always fun and funny. Another of our friends had to quit the team because he got a job in New York state for the summer, so he'll be leaving just before Shane gets home next time. It was nice to chat with him and make plans to hang out this weekend. The guys lost their game (10-11), but it was a great game to watch.
This weekend is going to be such a whirlwind of activity that I might actually enjoy the peace and quiet after Shane leaves on Monday. :)