the suspense is killing me

Recently I learned that if you sand any existing paint in your twelve-year-old house, you could anger the paint-fume gods, who will go contaminate your dryer, not to mention the heating system or your husband. The heating system seems almost decent again, and the husband seems better, but blogging will be sparse until the dryer (hopefully) offgases because Miss Molly will be out hanging laundry in the back yard.

Also, the two part-time jobs I signed up for weren't both going at the same time before, and it turns out that I can pull off the combined 33-hour work week, but only if I spread it out over seven days and periodically drop the ball.

Today I disassembled the air intake side of the dryer and scrubbed all the insides with alcohol. I'd be freakin' rich if anybody paid for that kind of thing.

climbing ladders and stupid stuff

Yesterday I learned that you can remove a wallpaper border on a painted wall with just a sponge and a squirt bottle full of vinegar. It helps if you can get a whole stretch of the border wet at one time, but as long as you get it wet enough, it comes off ok, and contrary to what it says in the article I learned this trick from, the room doesn't either smell like vinegar. And a wallpaper steamer would have been faster, but those are hard to get on Sunday night.

In today's news, Fox News picked up an 'obesity virus' article from the Sun, the most reliable newspaper ever, and if you are San Francisco, and you're expecting a pro-life march, your newspaper might actually have an article advising people to just ignore them, and they'll go away.

posted for fifteen hours and counting

This is what happens when you rush articles to press and then forget to check with the copy editors:

WLS said Friday that it is prepared to offer Blagojevich his own show if he was willing to resign from office rather than standing for him impeachment trail.

Also, not that this will kill anybody, but this Blagojevich guy sounds like the kind of insane I've only read about. Chemicals-in-your-brain crazy I've seen, but this is something else.

Holy cow, I learned something political.

allegedly reporting the news

Today I learned that if the EPA fines you (ok, Shell) for dumping waste into a river and an ocean, and you pay the fine and agree to repair your equipment and monitor your waste, according to this headline, you can still have allegedly polluted the water. I don't know if that's a typo or what, but since you can allege almost anything, and I have a habit of making certain pronouncements, I feel compelled to report Shell will kill you, particularly if you are a fish.

In other news, now that I seem to be ok again, it has become obvious that if I go into the ditch, the really, really sick lady's household ends up there, too. I have the power!

up and running, but busy

Today I learned that by banishing all my old blankets that got smoke contaminated last May and using a space heater to supplement minimal bedding, I sleep fine on the new mattress springs we washed. Now I'm a week behind, but I feel much better.

update

A couple of days ago I forgot to report that the mold we went all attack dog on in the garage turned out to be a little bit of dry rot. This is much better than the time we took a kitchen down to the studs over a square inch of actual mold.

Have I mentioned that we're mold sensitive?

not dead yet

Today I learned that you can make a wading pool for your mattress springs using a 10x25 ft tarp, some polyethylene sheeting, and $8 worth of lumber. The expensive part is when you put in $40 worth of trisodium phosphate (TSP), which makes these weird-looking whitish globs come off of the mattress springs. I suppose this process is really only interesting if you wanted to soak some mattress springs in TSP, but in case you ever need to make a similar tub, tucking the long ends of the tarp back under itself makes a good friction hold.

In more exciting news, I tolerate my old sleeping bag again. I tried it out at 4:30 this morning when I realized that by trying to sleep on the mattress springs that had smoke contamination, I redeveloped that sensitivity, so now I don't tolerate blankets I tolerated a couple of days ago. A sleeping bag makes all the difference when you have to give up and sleep on the floor. Outside on the hammock didn't work, and the bed slats were bumpy, but the floor was just right.

In a more regular sort of weird news, rumor has it that people used to use borax, which is poisonous, on their teeth, and some people think a good way to lose weight is to eat only red fruits and vegetables plus a little bit of peanut butter. I think that anyone who can survive on that kind of diet without passing out from hunger couldn't possibly be getting any exercise, despite the admonition to remember to go for walks.

the ongoing crisis

Today I learned that the inside corners of the side rails on our metal bed frame aren't quite painted, and I'm sensitive to the underlying undercoat or oil or whatever. Now all the empty screw holes plus the insides of the side rails are covered.

When I wasn't cutting or taping something, I spent a large part of the day lying on the floor of the bedroom while my husband put various bed parts near my head because EIs tend to react harder to things when they're lying down. For comparison, to make sure the bedroom itself was ok, I spent some time lying on the ground outside and on the living room floor, where I learned that the inside of my laptop screen is pretty toxic, and that's why I didn't do well on the couch last night.

But despite this whole recent cataclysmic cascade of sensitivities, we still successfully pulled off a seven-ingredient dinner (that qualifies as complicated around here), so as catastrophes go, either this one isn't so bad, or we're handling them better.

So I think I tolerate:

• the taped up bed frame
• the mattress springs encased in canvas
• light switches and outlets covered with aluminum foil
• the quilt I'm using as a sleeping bag
• the air cleaner

I'm pretty sure I don't yet tolerate my husband, but that will work itself out.

And people wonder what we do all day.

aimless scary roundup

Today I learned that the hollow metal slats in our nifty metal bed frame ooze some kind of nasty evilness unless you put tape over the extra screw holes in them. Even though I knew insides of metal pipes could be bad, I still couldn't actually believe these were as bad as they were, and I'm pretty sure I checked them when we bought the bed. They were so awful my husband had to remind me that I said they were awful to keep me from checking them a second time, since nothing could be that awful.

In other news, the holes in the garage wall dried out very nicely, but as the sun shone in one of them this afternoon, I could see pre-existing mold on the paper part of the insulation. That may be the only bit in there, but we're going to replace a foot-high strip along the whole wall and then practice our wall-texturing skills. There are some water marks places on that wall where we've never spilled water, and it never hurts to learn how to texture walls. Flat walls are too easy.

In yet more news, if the backlight on your laptop starts to croak, it turns itself off sometimes and flickers annoyingly when it's not off, but you can get a new one for around $10 if you order one. If you live in Tucson and want one, you have to order it. The good news here is that I can borrow the monitor that usually acts like the tv, but then my husband ends up watching me surf the lolcat site when I feel crummy, and it's embarrassing.

a chemical wasteland (she reported gleefully)

Today I learned that if you unseal the door between your garage and your kitchen while you dry out your walls you can get increasingly bad heart palpitations before you figure out how bad it is, complete with a total lack of coordination, resulting in multiple bruises and a jumpy husband. And as long as you're busy reacting to things, you can learn that old light switches at my house are made out of some kind of bad plastic, and the newer flat switches my husband has been installing are much better.

In other news, the list of things that'll kill you is growing so quickly that articles can be out of date the day they appear, as happened with this list of things in your bathroom cabinet that'll kill you that said mouthwash with alcohol in it is ok. It turns out that alcoholic mouthwash will give you disfiguring oral cancer.

disasters of varying strength

Today I learned that if one of your washing machine hoses develops a surprise leak, it is important to have piled things like blankets and quilts in front of the machine. The water that escaped the pile of bedding ran out the door we don't use between the kitchen and the garage, thus dampening the garage wall, which now has tidy 2" holes in it, one per affected wall cavity. The cavities are drying nicely, but the garage still smells like damp wallboard. We are no longer concerned about potential mold growth, however, so we are just tired instead of freaked out.

Also, if you are a science fiction/fantasy nerd, and you watched the season premiere of 24, you were probably distracted by the appearance of both Methos and Dr. Phlox in the same universe. Also Janeane Garofalo.

plankton rules

Today I learned that the temperature of the Earth is entirely controlled by plankton. Ok, I guess I'm lying, but a researcher was quoted as saying, "It's tempting to speculate that these tiny plankton, by taking carbon dioxide out of the air, might have helped trigger the most severe global cooling event in the past 100 million years."

Plus I didn't find anything new that'll kill you.

what is it now?

Today I learned that along with reacting to something I knocked loose by riding too hard yesterday, the moldy outdoors, some food I shouldn't have eaten, an impending hormone reaction, and a roofing crew next door, I've been reacting to my husband's pillow again. I think I would welcome a swift kick into next week.

all wrong, good, bad, and impressive

Today I learned that news media everywhere incorrectly reported that virginity pledgers have sex at the same rate as other teenagers, when in fact, they were compared only to equally religious teenagers who were unpledged.

In personal good news/bad news:
Bad news: if we get close to 2 inches of rain in two weeks around here, I develop a mild case of tendonitis in all the places I had it really badly during grad school, when I worked in a moldy basement.
Good news: That liver cleanse I did about six weeks ago seems to have changed the way my side hurts, which is to say that the pain moved up, but its intensity lessened.
Bad news: I should do another liver cleanse, but I hate doing liver cleanses.

And a properly trained 9-year-old can take down a pit bull with a jiu-jitsu choke hold.

scary bumpy things, death in the air, and detox

Today I learned to get over a couple of intimidating curbs and through a scary gully on my bike. The trick is to go pretty slowly, which doesn't really work on the trail obstacles I generally encounter. Those you need some momentum for, or then you get stuck in the sand or at a standstill on a 50% grade.

In other news, since I already reported that I get sick if a smoker gets behind me in a grocery line, I can't really say I learned today that third-hand smoke will kill you, but some researchers from MassGeneral and Harvard did. By third-hand, they mean the residue that is left over when the smoke clears. You know, the heavy metals and other fun invisible PM2.5 particles you get from combustion that fix it so, for example, people die during the holidays from fireplace smoke.

In shocking news, according to what's available on Wikipedia, Scientologists are actually sort of right about detox protocols. What appears on that page is an extremely aggressive version of what works for detoxing EIs. I would go so far as to say it would kill you, but if you're healthy to start with, I guess you could get away with it, but then it's not clear why you'd need to.

marketers, taste, and the lowest common denominator

Today I learned by accidentally watching a commercial that Charmin thinks people use toilet paper that balls up or shreds on their, um, tailfeathers, thereby implying that they think Americans are incapable of selecting amongst the myriad of non-defective paper products offered in our ridiculously diversified marketplace.

In other news, I found a handy list of Chinese restaurants in Tucson, which, according to the list, has a #1 Chinese restaurant, a best Chinese restaurant, and one of the top 10 in the US Chinese restaurants. That's a pretty impressive bunch of restaurants, assuming you agree with any of the people who voted for the first one or reviewed the second or third ones.

And 'ridiculous' looks a little funny spelled correctly if you spend any time on the internet. I understand it only takes 10 or 20 years for common misuses/misspellings to become accepted.

Also, and probably most important, if someone suggests you look up dingleberries on the internet, do not click on the link for poopreport.com. You have been warned.

things that aren't good

Today I learned that if the ground isn't dry a week after the last rain, it can get moldy enough outside that we moldies start calling each other to see if anybody else is feeling crummy. The consensus is that yes, there's mold out there, so hopefully the ground will dry up again pretty soon.

In other news, oral osteoporosis medication gives roughly 4% of users osteonecrosis of the jaw, but all those ladies had dental work recently, and if you still have a ThighMaster, it still won't do you any good.

fireworks and average velocities

Today I learned that somewhere nearby they have fireworks at midnight to ring in the new year. Our only evidence is that the really, really sick lady could hear them last night, which was apparently entertainment enough.

In other news, if you go mountain biking in the national park and pass some hikers on the one trail where bikes are allowed, you can beat the hikers (in their car) to the local Starbucks. Not to belabor the obvious, but walking is slow. I was really surprised to be recognized, though.