All posts by Dona

The Battle of the Hand Soap

Musings, People, Rant

Update: The hand soap is back on the counter, next to the sink. All we had to do was discuss it. Yes, you may say, “duh”.

13051As mentioned before, my husband likes tidiness. He becomes ornery if things are not in their places. He dislikes clutter and is not a fan of things that have one use (like a juice maker — it is big and bulky and can only be used to make juice).

He’d prefer the counters to be free of everything, but understands that we need a few things left out — coffee maker, toaster, kitchen-aid mixer (although he’d much prefer that be in a cupboard). He is especially picky about what is left out next to the sink. He’d like the dish detergent under the sink and does not tolerate SOS pads on the counter, even in a container made for the purpose.

He sees absolutely no reason for hand soap on the kitchen counter because, he reasons, a person can wash one’s hand with dish detergent.

I, on the other hand, don’t mind things on the counter. In fact, I like things on the counter — handy and ready for use. Being short, I have to climb on a stool to reach the blender which is kept in a cupboard above the refrigerator. In order to use the food processor, I need to battle the dustpan, broom and mop which hang on the inside of the cupboard door that houses the Cuisinart, often losing when the dustpan falls on my shoulder.  Other appliances are kept in the laundry room or in the pantry where I need to precariously perch on the edge of the doorway in order to reach the higher shelves.

But this post is not about the appliances. It is about a small bottle of lemon-scented hand soap that I bought at Target a month or so ago. The kids and I love the smell — pure lemon — and I feel good about washing my hands with it instead of dish washing detergent for no other reason than just because. I figured that my husband would object to having the hand soap on the counter, but I also thought he’d get used to it like he got used to the small dish detergent bottle that we keep on the counter.

A few days after I bought the hand soap it disappeared from the kitchen counter. I found it on the shelf in the basement. I brought it back up the kitchen. It stayed there a few days, but not long after I brought it up, it disappeared again. This happened a few more times, then it stayed on the counter for quite a while.

This morning as I washed clothes, I saw that the hand soap was back in the basement. I decided not to bother moving it. Apparently my husband didn’t get the same sense of well-being seeing that old fashioned label on the sink as I did. Apparently something about that bottle annoyed him so much that it had to be removed to the basement.

Ah well; I tried.

False Alarm

Events, Writing

Ok, I could have sworn I wrote about the lunar landing and walk, but it seems like I didn’t find it worthy of documenting.

Diary entry from July 16, 1969

I suppose what I remembered writing about was four days earlier when Apollo 11 took off from Earth:

Diary entry from July 16, 1969

Wed July 16 1967

Dear Diary,
What next! The moon now, mars next? Saw the flight of Appolo [sic] 11.

Penny and I had a Seance to day & we brought back Hitler & Lenin we think. We didn’t see D.S [Dark Shadows] today. Saw Michel J. Burke! Didn’t read Dracula to-day.

Penny and I were honestly not budding skin-heads. We’d just learned about Lenin and Communism in school and confused him with Hitler who we’d heard might not be dead. We wanted to try to bring him back to see if he really was dead. I guess he was. I think the explanation needs its own post. (oh, and the v with two dots over it was my secret vampire symbol.) Ok — I was a little weird at 13.

Man walks on the Moon! Dona documents it!

Events, Writing

I remember 40 years ago today. Not necessarily because I cared that the USA had put men on the moon, but because I documented it in my diary. I’d been given a leather diary with a lock and key for Christmas the year before and sporadically wrote bits and pieces of my life in it.  I know that diary is somewhere in this house, but it is not with my journals, so I cannot write exactly what I wrote 40 years ago, but I remember writing it and thinking that someday I’d look back on what I wrote and be interested.

The mere fact that I wrote it for the future kind of ruined it. Man walking on the Moon was either too much for my small brain to handle, or too little for my nearly 13 year old brain to bother with.

Damn. Having my actual words would make this a far better post.

Never mind. Maybe I’ll find the diary in time for the 50th anniversary.

Update: Found the diary.