I need a pep talk for purging furniture that I love.
I had a business plan where one half of a couple or member of a family would hire me to come in and "accidentally" destroy or damage shitty stuff that another family member wouldn't part with but would not be tempted to replace. The idea seemed relatively sound for upholstered furniture (ink would have been my friend) and fabrics (bedbugs), but I couldn't think of anything that would look accidental and damage wooden furniture sufficiently.
If you own the furniture, it cannot be everything it was meant to be, because it is already secondary or stored. If you release it to the universe, it can become somebody's best-loved piece.
The other difficulty was getting me into the house. I had a stack of Watchtower magazines, but it turns out that inviting Jehovah's Witnesses inside can actually start a bigger fight than if they'd just dumped ink on the couch themselves.
But...but what if it languishes at Goodwill and then is not loved? Or bought by someone who resents it?
What if I regret it, five years later, when the urge to redecorate a room strikes and my old loved furniture would scratch that itch?
What if?
Catchphrase: It's just stuff.
The boyfriend's family has pack rat tendencies which get short-circuited if they know their stuff is going somewhere it will be needed or appreciated. Find a nice, non-gay-hating charity that will pick it up and fawn over it?
Find a gay-hating charity that will give it to one their members who will become so afraid that somebody gay might get something that was once theirs that they will start to hoard everything until their house gets so packed with garbage that when they have a stroke it takes the emergency responders 2 hours to remove them so they need much more rehab than they would have needed if they got treated earlier so they will have more of an opportunity to bond with their physical therapist who will then have time to come out to them and blow their mind.
Do you really like the "new" furniture more than the stuff you're getting rid of? If you do, I'd focus on getting thrilled about your exciting new furniture, and see if that makes Craigslisting/Goodwilling the old stuff easier.
If you don't, really, then don't take the new stuff. You're not responsible for archiving every bulky thing anyone else in your family ever owned.
I actually love this guys voice. Weird voices are so much more interesting than normal ones.
I do love the new furniture. That is true.
HBGB: Just remember the words of the guy at the end of this commercial.
You're not responsible for archiving every bulky thing anyone else in your family ever owned.
I'm going to have that embroidered on a 3' by 5' piece of fabric and framed. Then I'm going to give it to my in-laws for Christmas.
11: Who will keep it and then pass it down to your wife, who will feel obligated to keep it because it was her parents' precious tchotchke.
I really hate clutter, but I'd be O.K. with this because I love irony more.
I would think of the discarded furniture has having richer inner lives and feelings that will be hurt when they are dumped on the curb. Make yourself crazy about this. Then realize, hey! I am crazy!
(For real. This is what I do.)
1: HEY, NICE FURNITURE YOU GOT THERE. SHAME IF IT WAS TO FALL OFF A ROOF. OR BE THROWN OFF. BY REVELERS.
14: You and Smearcase. He commented about finding the Ikea commercial with the sad, discarded lamp difficult to watch.
I couldn't think of anything that would look accidental and damage wooden furniture sufficiently
Why couldn't you just be a door-to-door chainsaw salesman, doing a sales demo? You put a piece of firewood on the table and cut through it, but you accidentally go right through the table.
You "accidentally" go right through the table, I mean.
If I were selling kitchen knives and cutting boards, that might be less insane but still work in the same way.
So during all those times a couch just thinks about its retirement days in China!
Woodworm, surely. Or dry rot.
There was a prisoner in Oflag IVC (Colditz) who spent his time peacefully nurturing dry rot cultures in jars under his bed, and then transferring them to corners of the attic. He reasoned that the war could easily last 20 years, and in 20 years dry rot would have the same effect re: the roof as a bomb in a single second, and he quite liked the idea of dropping a bomb on Colditz, even in slow motion.
If I were selling kitchen knives and cutting boards, that might be less insane but still work in the same way.
Oh, don't be silly. No one goes door to door selling kitchen knives. Urple's idea is far more believable.
19: but it would be weird to demo kitchen knives anywhere except the kitchen. What if the furniture in question is, e.g., an end table next to the couch?
Demoing a chainsaw indoors is weird enough that the precise location of the demo won't raise any additional eyebrows.
I suppose maybe if it were a bedroom nightstand, that would seem weird. (But not as weird as demoing kitchen knives on a bedroom nightstand.)
The nightstand in the bedroom would be easy to accidentally destroy if you were selling fuck swings.
Plus it's a lot easier to "accidentally" do major, irreparable damage with a chainsaw.
nurturing dry rot cultures
Wow, I've only heard the phrase "dry rot" applied to rubber.
Moby could cultivate a Chris Farley body type, then do a pratfall on top of the offending wooden furniture.
I've only heard the phrase "dry rot" applied to rubber.
You must live in an arid climate. It's a big thing over here.
I'm not going to lose weight just for a side business.
If it is mid-century stuff your pep talk is
Franklin P. Smearcase
P.O. Box 8675309
Oakland, CA
I always wondered who paid to rent the giant PO boxes.
16 is true. Oudemia=me on this subject. The move was hard, because stressed out --> regressed so it was particularly bad. If I was getting rid of something I had had a long time, I sometimes had to silently tell it it had been a good [lamp shade/George Forman Grill/whatever] and wish it happy adventures. I don't know why I'm admitting this semi-publicly.
Is this the chancel repair liability thread? It is now:
(MP 1 describes patently unjust and stupid situation; proposes entirely sensible solution; MP 2 agrees but suggests solution should be more radical; MP 3, the responsible minister, states very elegantly that she is going to do nothing.)
I develop mosquito bites quickly and they remain for a long time. I make it worse by sticking my fingernails into them, leaving two crossing marks, which is a good way to make them double in size. Some sort of clearish liquid comes out of them and then they scab (sometimes). And they remain for a long time. I am afraid this says something bad about me and my anger.
heebie, I wrote you a helpful cheer.
Got to go! It's got to go!
Don't ask why, it's just got to go!
Got to go! It's got to go!
Don't want to be on a hoarder show!
14, 16, 34: I show that commercial every semester in my ethics class in the section on empathy and moral emotions. I routinely hear students tell me it is not at all crazy for feel sorry for a lamp.
(The link is in 10 for anyone who hasn't seen the ad.)
Oh my god, that guy's voice is HORRIBLE. Who's Raul Malo? There's a tenor named Raul Melo who sometimes gets sent on as a last-minute emergency cover at the Met and is bad and I heard him get boo'ed and was sad because he has way more actual feelings than a lamp.
I routinely hear students tell me it is not at all crazy for feel sorry for a lamp.
I blame cartoons! Especially The Brave Little Toaster!
Raul Malo is a famous crooner http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_11258.html
I was reminded of that thread this weekend at ACL, where the Mavericks played and were awesome, because they are awesome, and I got mad at Ttam all over again. Sorry, Ttam.
I am utterly convinced that my ex chose the stuff she chose at yard sales because it was the most forlorn-looking, and she felt sorry for it. I need to find a non-judgmental way of communicating to my children that that is pathological behavior.
The Mavericks. If you listen to that, you will boggle that Ttam had the nerve to call them mainstream country.
43: Have they watched a Charlie Brown Christmas? That's the cartoon to blame for that pathology.
My sister picked a puppy that way. He pissed on the floor whenever he was frightened and he was very easily frightened.
46: I had a friend who picked a cat because, of all the ones at the shelter, it was the one that bit her.
My sister still hasn't gotten rid of that dog, though I suppose ashes in a tin can can't piss on anything.
I hope it's ashes. I haven't opened the can to check.
I think Britain only gets certain country music. There is no market for the 467,000 songs that released every week about trucks and beer and football and kids growing up and dogs and high school sweethearts and fish jumpin' in the lake. As such, The Mavericks are mainstream country music.
Just like we think of "French films" as being sophisticated rather than a bunch of infantile comedies like "Little Indian, Big City".
45: That and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Remember the Island of Misfit Toys? A perfect location for a nuclear weapon test.
After twelves years of cleaning up piss, I'm not sure if we can believe my dad's "natural causes" thing.
No, hold on. No. My mom always picked the ugliest dog because she was afraid it was the one who would otherwise never be adopted. I maintain this is both entirely legitimate and entirely different from feeling sorry for forlorn-looking furniture.
At least not until the taxidermist gets done.
But, urple's point is exactly right. Picking a puppy because it sucks might be counterproductive but it isn't actually insane in the way that worry about the feelings of furniture is.
50: Possibly so. But freals, they're borderline mariachi.
467,000 songs that released every week about trucks and beer and football and kids growing up and dogs and high school sweethearts and fish jumpin' in the lake.
Oof, I was doing a "maybe I will discover a songwriter I love through a good song" thing the other day, through Iris Dement's cover of Tom T. Hall's "I Miss a Lot of Trains." It turns out he wrote some fun things and some outright crap like "Old dogs, children, and watermelon wine." So very awful.
Also, I think that ascribing feelings to a George Foreman grill is on a different level of fucked-up than ascribing feelings to a mid-century buffet or something.
Picking a puppy because it sucks might be counterproductive but it isn't actually insane
I suppose it's an act of compassion, but I still wish my neighbors across the street had gotten crazy fish or something rather than a crazy dog that barks incessantly.
Oh come now. If they got a fish that barked incessantly, you'd be just as upset.
It would be a gentling burbling, and it would be inside. And the post office would still be delivering their mail.
Re: country music, I am irrationally in love with this Sturgill Simpson song. It's a near-perfect expression of an archetype.
I was making a ceteris paribus comparison where they were both outside and underwater.
50 needs to become lyrics to a real song right now:
Trucks and beer
Football and kids
Growing up and dogs
High school sweethearts and fish
Jumpin' in the lake.
65: That's not irrational. That's really fine music-making.
Can't you use Spotify to share music without the video? I think so. All you would need to do is get everybody to get a (free) Spotify account.
So anyway, no one cares about our mosquito bites? Huh.
51: So maybe someone back in the day bought one of those sunflower iMacs. And maybe the screen came attached just ever so slightly crooked, so it seemed as if the computer was giving me, I mean, someone a winsome look? And maybe someone couldn't bear to get it fixed. And named him Hermey the Dentist.
71: The part where they mirror your anger response is one of those things that, if it showed up in a novel, I would think was ridiculous.
53/58, It's totally reasonable to pick an ugly animal with a good personality, but picking a disagreeable, unpleasant animal seems a little silly given how many there are to chose from. (Says the girl with the snaggletoothed, slightly banged up but very charming black cat.)
Also, when I was a kid, I'd cry over getting rid of clothes I'd outgrown. I figured they'd be sad to be discarded after all the fun we'd had together. Good to know it's not as weird as my parents thought it was.
Yeah, well...your colleagues are insane. So there.
"Object empathy". The canonical example my wife uses to explain it is feeling bad for the television at the end of Poltergeist.
I remember hearing that originally in An Inconvenient Truth, the frog got boiled. All the people left the test screenings primarily upset about the frog. So they changed it to having him yanked out at the last minute.
picking a disagreeable, unpleasant animal seems a little silly given how many there are to chose from.
No. It makes sense precisely because there are so many to choose from. If there were few enough that you knew they'd all get adopted by someone, then it would make sense to pick the best you could find for yourself. But if they're not all going to be taken (which, they're not) and you've got a bad feeling that no one else would be willing to deal with that little disagreeable, unpleasant animal, who's, you know, probably only so disagreeable because no one's ever really treated it well...
The part where they mirror your anger response is one of those things that, if it showed up in a novel, I would think was ridiculous.
Also! My goal is just to write odds and ends that you all will riff off of, so I provided two loose ends instead of just one. People might have described their mosquito style or their anger style (and whether they matched.)
Or it could have been ignored altogether. Which is fine, because the furniture pep talk is actually really important.
I will not link the cartoon about Christopher Robin Milnes' last days because it might destroy Oudemia.
I think of it in terms of Winnicott and transitional objects, or I used to, and then when I started to elaborate I realized it's a decade since graduate school and I was going to make a hash of it.
I think Britain only gets certain country music.
This is very true. A Scottish friend once defended his love of country music to me on the grounds that the lyrics were so clever and sophisticated.
78: Like how The Jungle was supposed to make people think "poor workers" and instead all they thought was "ahhh, my food".
My mosquito style used to be to make sure I only visited mosquito infested places in the company of my mother, because if she was around they never bothered with anybody else. Since she died, my travel has been a bit curtailed.
79: Not really. There are 3.9 million animals euthanized each year in the US. I bet many of those were very nice animals with engaging personalities. If you absolutely want to be sure you've saved an animal from death, I guess you could pick out the least desirable one in looks, health, AND personality, but frankly, if I show up at a shelter with four animals on their last day, I'm picking the one with the best temperament and apparent health and not feeling guilty about it. I don't disagree that people chose animals differently, based on pity or optimism, just saying that given the odds that any shelter animal will be euthanized (56% of dogs, 71% of cats), you're pretty safe in thinking you've saved just about any animal you get. If the number of adopters was slightly less than adoptable animals rather than a huge gap, I'd see the logic.
Either you or Jammies's mosquito bite style would be preferable to mine, wherein the bites swell up like quarter-sized mesas immediately and then itch like hell for four days even when I'm so very good and don't touch them. Most of the time they turn into festering scabs. Mosquitoes love to bite me, too.
I take it that this by extension should mean that I'm extremely sensitive, passive aggressive, and resentful, but that doesn't seem to be quite right.
I'm thinking of getting a rescue dog now that my son keeps asking for one. If I get one from the pound, it might be four or five years old, which means it should die around the time my son would go to college and leave me with the dog.
Of course, the rescue dogs are probably all pugs.
84 -- My wife serves this purpose.
We used to tease my daughter about feeling sorry for the last cookie on the plate.
We went to the storytelling event last night, and one of the stories was on point. The woman is traveling into Taiwan, and the local TSA type guy is taking her folding sewing scissors -- they are TSA compliant, but not ok in Taiwan. She tells the young agent that the scissors were a gift of her mother, and that she'd had them half her life. Which was true. What she didn't say was that she hated those scissors and would be relieved if they were gone, and she could buy new ones that actually cut. Anyway, the agent slipped the scissors back into her passport, but she hadn't seen him do it, and so when he handed her the passport, she noticed that it didn't feel right. So she opened the passport, right there, in front of everyone. (She was a great storyteller, getting us to see the light gleaming off the scissors.) Took her a moment to understand. She looked at the agent -- a man young enough to be her child -- whose face showed fear. And went her way not knowing if he got in trouble.
Then we went to listen to Sherman Alexie read, and my jaw is still sore from laughing so much.
Trying to guess at an animal's personality when you're adopting it is also kind of uncertain. When our wonderful cat died, my senior year of high school, we waited a few months and went to the pound. I wanted to adopt the big, mean-looking, gray cat with the "Do not put your face near the front of the cage" sign on his cage, but was vetoed. We ended up with a delicate-looking tuxedo cat that had reached a paw through his bars to gently play with my hair as I looked at another cat.
Two weeks later, he'd put on about 25% of his body weight in muscle (he must have not been eating in the pound) and started getting violent. Over the next decade and a half, my parents probably never had a day when they weren't either actively bleeding or at least healing from an attack. He hospitalized a neighbor once. Beautiful animal -- ridiculously huge, seventeen pounds and lean as a snake, graceful, affectionate inbetween trying to see what color your insides were, but not remotely safe to have around.
So trying to pick the animal with the nice personality is trickier than it looks.
Cats are such seductive jerks.
86: Probably, but my cats like me anyway.
Honestly, because they're cats, they probably don't like you all that much.
95: They pretend well enough that I continue to feed them.
91 may be true, but deliberately picking the one with the worst apparent personality seems like an even worse method of selecting a congenial pet.
I spent about ten years out of twelve deciding whether my cat 1) differentiated me from other things capable of pouring food and 2) liked me, and eventually decided the answer was yes to both.
I imagine it's true you can't tell what their personalities are going to be like at the shelter. I got really lucky. She was sweet and friendly there and stayed that way, though only toward me and a select few other people. She was a dick to everyone else.
Deliberately starting a relationship with the person you get along with worst is the best way of selecting a partner, assuming the movies are right.
Most human relationships develop beyond the pet, pet, pet, BITCHSLAP stage that cats seem stuck in forever. Or at least my cats.
Is it the general experience that male cats are cuddlier than females? I recently heard this.
101: yes, as a general rule. Males tend to be more chill in general. Also, IME, cats adopted as kittens tend to be bigger jerks than ones adopted after they're a year old.
The female of the species is less cuddly than the male.
I've never heard 101. Of the four cats I've had, the two super-cuddlers were one male and one female. THUS I REFUTE YOU.
The female of the species is less cuddly than the male.
Now we're talking about me, though, right? This is true.
Go get 200 more cats and we'll do a test with some statistical validity.
re: 82
Glasgow has an odd affinity with country music. There's even an 'Opry' south of the river.
A friend/acquaintance played in:
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/radio-sweethearts-mn0000894931/biography
Who were surprisingly good if you like that sort of thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCiqcohtxQ8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2gyjRHLi5g
I like to think that Minivet and Cumberbatch are at war, and it's like when Patton said "Rommel, you magnificent bastard."
Patton said that while chasing Villa through Mexico. He was a man ahead of his time.
Oh, heavens. And you know the internet is nothing if not obedient.
Either you or Jammies's mosquito bite style would be preferable to mine, wherein the bites swell up like quarter-sized mesas immediately and then itch like hell for four days even when I'm so very good and don't touch them. Most of the time they turn into festering scabs. Mosquitoes love to bite me, too.
Yeah, this is me too. I'm glad I'm in largely mosquito-free country now. I still remember the day when I was 10 or so and had been crawling around in a huckleberry patch near a swampy area all day long in my bathing suit (why? why, little parenthetical? huckleberries aren't *that* good). At day's end, I had over 80 mosquito bites. It was misery.
I have ended up with the snuggliest of snuggly kittens, and he's a male, but my previous two females were cuddly as well (though, per Mister Smearcase's, only with me). I think it's hard to predict, really, and their personalities change so much over time and in different spaces.
Our cat has an unusual personality in my experience. She always wants to be with people, but with no physical contact.
115: Mine is a bit like that. Accepts scratching, does a lot of brushing-up, but no lap-sitting or holding allowed - indeed, she'll often leave if I move closer than arm's length.
Brushing up for what? The MCAT, obviously. Badump-bump!
I don't get it. Why would your cat be studying to enter med school?
Actually, forget why. How could that even be possible?
116: Fred, the good cat, was very standoffish about laps, to the point that having him in your lap on the rare occasions when it did happen was a full excuse for not doing anything useful: "Sorry, I can't do the dishes tonight; I'm catted."
I get along poorly with mosquitoes but I'm sure as hell not going to adopt one.
98% DEET solution provides some minor protection.
123: Didn't you spend some fair time of your childhood in the Yukon? Like, where men are men and mosquitoes are also men?
I got eaten alive. But on my most recent trip the mosquitoes were less awful then the ones at my old place in Brooklyn. Of course, the downstairs neighbors there had installed a fucking water feature in the backyard, which couldn't have helped.
112 is pretty great. He would make a good commenter here. Someone should do some recruiting.
76: I didn't mean 74 to be critical, really. Sometimes implausible things are true.
I learnt this summer that if you get a mosquito bite you should slap it to stop it itching. It works!
I learnt this summer that if you get a mosquito bite you should slap it to stop it itching. It works!
I just loaded a quarter of a cow into my freezer, and I'm listening to the Dodgers game on KLAC. Is this what it's like to be Halford?
130: Likewise on the radio and the meat, but the beer spoils the illusion.
I only scratch the mosquito bites that look the most pathetic.
heebie, on the sad furniture front, if you're really concerned that it will go unloved, you might try a consignment shop. You retain ownership of the stuff until it sells, and you get a cut; this is only suitable if the stuff is not actually just beat-up and cruddy (which is what most of my old but loved furniture is). You do have to actually bring the stuff to the shop yourself, as far as I know. A lot of consignment shops operate in conjunction with estate sale outfits, and know what they're doing.
This site is a shop finder - put in "furniture consignment" and whittle it down to your location.
There is an aria in La Bohème where the guy sings goodbye to his overcoat that he's getting rid of and nobody calls him crazy. I'm just pointing that out.
Reflecting on this thread over the day, I don't think it's object sympathy. It's closer to...greed. I just plain want to own these items. And use them.
Which has prompted me to consider getting rid of different items. So, forward motion.
I get mosquito bites the same way as heebie, fast and then gone. But my anger is a slow boil.
135: Hardly anybody understands Italian.
It's quite obvious that the problem is that chez heebie doesn't have a basement.
"chez heebie" is not a noun phrase!!!
142: Huh? I don't understand. Does this have something to do with the fact that I don't speak french?
Meanwhile, I am going to try this recipe for Roasted Butternut Squash and Apple Soup this weekend. It seems remarkably simple.
If no one has said it yet, nail polish remover is a great way to ruin wooden furniture. Oops. Spill. Oh no the finish is trashed!
I am so jealous of houses with basements. That is really the problem.
If it makes you feel better, my basement is filled with stuff I'd happily throw away if I were allowed. And millipedes.
143.2: Kind of looks like baby food. I like regular soup, with little meatballs and stuff.
I don't have a basement underneath my house, but I have access (for storage purposes/laundry) to the basement of the house in front of mine. I often feel strange being in someone else's basement, although my access is from the outside, and the access from the basement to the main part of the house has been walled off, so maybe that's less weird.
147: I'm not sure why she's made it so pudding-like. I'll be adding a great deal more liquid. Some crusty bread, a salad of some sort, and you're golden.
I don't have a basement underneath my house
Don't bother looking elsewhere for it.
OT: It* shouldn't be long now. We're at the "unskewing the polls" phase.
*For certain values of it.
Cousin..
Revolution For The Hell Of...
Shake...(like a Polaroid picture)
148: The thread circles 'round: Have I told you all about the house I lived in, three stories with an apartment on each floor, which had basement storage where each apartment's storage area was fenced off, with a gate and lock?
Mm, yeah. One morning my boyfriend and I woke up to find our newish very young cat, a kitten really, dead. Suddenly. We, uh, did not know what to do given that we both had to head off to work at 7 a.m. We put him in a shoebox and put that in our basement area, fenced off and locked. When we arrived home that evening, intending to bury him (having variously wept throughout the day), he was gone, the lock to the storage area broken.
Those were some strange damned neighbors, because we found him in his shoebox in the freaking dumpster near the house. I will never be able to understand what that was all about.
||
"Trapped In A Box"-era No Doubt sounds like a band I would actually go see and have fun seeing.
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143: "chez heebie" means something like "at heebie's". It's an adverbial phrase, and shouldn't be made the subject of a verb.
Personally, I blame Chez Panisse for this.
153: You played the greatest, unintentional practical joke ever.
Parsimon @ 141: My understanding is that chez is a preposition - or at least translates into English as a prepositional phrase. The meaning is "at the house of", so nosflow is protesting that chez heebie means "at Heebie's house".
I now badly want to misuse the word and say these men I'm watching are playing chez stadium.
Either you or Jammies's mosquito bite style would be preferable to mine, wherein the bites swell up like quarter-sized mesas immediately and then itch like hell for four days even when I'm so very good and don't touch them.
My style is similar, except that they swell up to the size of silver dollars (or bigger) and last for three weeks. This is every bit as unpleasant as it sounds.
Also merging subthreads, I met people last night who have a cat named Toaster, after the Brave Little one.
151: I thought Ted Cruz was supposed to be a really smart guy. Has something happened to him since then?
155.2: 'Splain?
I guess I should actually retract it.
158: You should get an Epipen for that, or something.
Most of the time, mosquitoes are indifferent to me, but during one hike this summer they - or a few persistent ones - gave me the hassle that others experience often. I am now a bit astonished that people who are always put-upon by mosquitoes tolerate it as well as they do.
Anyway, the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll says that 44% of Americans have never heard of Ted Cruz. Which is hilarious.
163: Eh, it's actually fine in practice. Annoying but not, like, debilitating. A bit of hydrocortisone from time to time helps.
A while back, a cashier at the grocery store told me putting dryer sheets in your pockets helps repel mosquitoes. So we could all try that and report back. On the other hand, she may have been in the pocket of Big Dryer Sheet.
164: I used to be plagued by the things. There was one time at Sak@tah Lake SP that I got swarmed by several hundred and had a panic attack. My arms were always covered with scabs as a kid, with my relatives bugging my mother to have them looked at for eczema, but it was only mosquito bites. I try to eat more garlic and onions nowadays though, that seems to help a bit with the not biting as much, and I can ignore the bites more too, so the histamine reactions seem to abate more quickly.
I'm thinking that had I written "There is no basement chez heebie," all would have been well. Got it!
168: somebody told Big Dryer Sheet that putting a cashier in your protect protects against mosquitoes.
The pocket of Big Dryer Sheet is a soft, static-free place to be.
All the rain in the upper midwest won't keep the zombies inside tomorrow night. Sigh.
And actually I think I knew that all along. Weird.
Dryer sheets just put wax on your clothes. I don't see the point.
175: Mosquito tries to bite you and BAM! snout full of wax.
A zombie mosquito movie would be really scary
my access is from the outside, and the access from the basement to the main part of the house has been walled off, so maybe that's less weird.
No, it's even weirder. But not as weird as 153.
Sorry about your kitty, Parsi. Also your neighbors are nuts.
I react badly to mosquito bites. When I was a small child my pediatrician thought someone might have been burning me with cigarettes, but no, it was the mosquitoes. A nurse friend recently told me that taking two Claritin or some other new-fangled allergy pill would help with the horrible horrible itching, and it turned out to be true.
179: It's possible they could smell it and felt the need to get it out of the house. It's more fun to imagine they were trying robbery and got served.
179: Thanks togolosh. This all happened over 20 years ago, though, so I remember the kitty fondly and sadly -- I think he must have had a bad heart, he was only about 2 months old, I think, and it looked like he just went in his sleep.
For cheer, check out these pictures of kitten progression as they age. So, so cute.
As for the neighbors? I have no frickin' idea. They saw us bring something down to the basement and thought they'd see what it was? ?? I doubt he smelled - in fact, no, no way, not after that short a time. Nothing else was stolen from our storage area. I just have no idea. But we were very pissed that Basil ('twas his name) was in the dumpster. Excuse me!
And I've just recalled that that was the place where the second-floor neighbors sometimes threw their bags of garbage out into the back yard from their second-floor window -- and would, some time later, perhaps the next day, come down to fetch it and bring it over to the dumpster. Sometimes the bags contained used diapers; sometimes they'd split open upon landing.
We moved outta that place a couple of months later: it goes down as the worst place I've lived.