Follow up to the Smells post

One of my dogs brought it to my attention that there had been a dead squirrel in the bird feed can. I feel terrible! The squirrels could get out of the can quite agilely before it filled with water; I watched to make sure of that (because both dogs truly hate squirrels and would eagerly do harm to one that was captive in a can). But I guess once the can had water in it, the poor thing either drowned right away (I'm hoping) or scrabbled around, unable to jump out, until it drowned. Poor thing.

I hope it's tiny little spirit is avenged by my repeatedly smelling the awful odor, then finally noticing its sad remains and having to dispose of them. Revolting. Completely revolting. Puke-inspiring. I'm going to smell that in my dreams for a while.

Poor thing! (The squirrel, not me.)

Smells

We have a small garbage can, like the galvanized kind you put out at the curb but half sized, that we store bird feed in. A while back I opened it and noticed that the contents had gotten kind of damp, so I stuck it out underneath the oak tree by the pool so it could dry out (or so the birds would eat the top layer, maybe). Time passes. The can becomes invisible, no longer registering when I look that way. We have rain, several times.

Flash forward to Friday (yesterday). A skunk wanders into the yard while the dogs are out there. They run to investigate. I'm guessing the skunk had sprayed a few times by then, because they got only a small dose, but they walk away with a definite aura.

I hustle the dogs inside, then go out looking to see if the skunk is still around. Wandering through the skunk miasma, I came across the birdseed can. I thought, "Why, I forgot this was here," and very foolishly tipped it over where it stood to empty it.

I've never experienced anything like that. Honestly, I think that's the worst thing I've ever smelled, in all my 57 years. The good news is that the skunk smell was pure perfume by comparison. The bad news is that there was suddenly both skunk AND rotten birdseed wafting about.

The dogs had brought the skunk smell in with them, so we opened the bathroom skylight and several windows, and turned on all the ceiling fans, to air out the place. Unfortunately, we couldn't open any windows on the side of the house facing the birdseed tragedy, for fear we'd end up…well, just having to move.

Oh! I guess I forgot to mention—we had overnight company Friday night.

More fun than detergent ought to be

I mixed up a new batch of laundry detergent today, since we were almost completely out and our post-Oktoberfest laundry is mountainous, as in there is a mountain of it.

BTW, I'll confess here that in the last (pre-Oktoberfest) month, I've discovered that going commando is actually surprisingly comfortable. Seriously, I might do it more often.

But I digress. Detergent. Right.

The recipe I have for dry laundry detergent (thank you to my good friend Barry!) calls for…well, here it is:

Small Batch Dry Laundry Detergent

• 1 lb Borax (19 oz)
• 1 lb baking soda
• 1/4 box (14 oz) washing soda
• 3/4 bar of Fels-Naptha or 1/4 bar Zote soap, grated or chopped fine
• 14 oz of OxyClean

Mix all together. Use 1-2 Tablespoons per load.

I happened to have both Zote and Fels-Naptha soaps, since the first time I made this I wasn't sure which one I wanted to use. So I grated up the Zote, which is pink, and the Fels-Naptha, which is gold, and put it all in the food processor with the OxyClean, which contains little blue granules. The result has a kind of Funfetti look to it.

Making laundry time more fun than it should be!

While I've got you, here's a liquid version that works nicely, too:

      1/4 of a bar of soap (Ivory, Dr. Bronner's, Fels-Naptha, Kirk's Castile, Zote

              or another other non-beauty, lotion-free brand)

      1/4 cup of washing soda

      1/8 cup of Borax

      1 cup, plus 1 gallon of warm water

      3–10 drops of essential oil, if desired

      Use all metal utensils for this!

      Grate soap into 1 cup of warm water. Heat until the soap is dissolved; set aside. Put the gallon of warm water in a bucket with a lid. Stir in borax and washing soda. When they're dissolved, add the melted soap. Mix (plunge the pan the soap was in up and down a few times). Add the essential oil, if you're using it. Cover and allow to sit overnight.

      The next day, the mixture should be thickened and gelatinous. Use a metal spoon to stir and break up and any big lumps.

      Use 1 cup (or up to maximum level in your dispenser) per load.

Thanks to the fabulous Foodie With Family blog for that one. You can read her eloquent explanation of why one would want to make their own laundry soap. My explanation is less eloquent: Rich and I both prefer unscented laundry products. (Well, actually, he does, and after a hundred years of marriage, I've come over to the dark side, too.) But I had more and more trouble finding a detergent that was unscented and also actually worked.

After using brand after unscented brand that only kind of got our clothes clean, I spent a little time (and more than a little money) buying detergent with scents I didn't mind. The last time, I was washing a load and realized that I noticed the perfume about ten feet from the laundry room door. Nuh-uh. That doesn't work for me. Back to the brands that have no scent but don't work very well.

And then I came across these recipes. I thought, "Well, if I'm going to use a detergent that only kind of works, I might as well pay 4¢ a load instead of 16¢.

The delightful news is that they work well. Really, quite well. I'm still experimenting with the different recipes, and I'm sure I'll eventually decide which one is my favorite. But for now, I'm making both liquid and dry versions, and testing them against each other. For what it's worth, I use a food processor for the dry version and clean up is remarkably easy!

Plus there's the festive, Funfetti look. I ask you, what commercial brand offers that?

I'm FREEEEE!

Well, almost. I'm still putting together numbers for the Oktoberfest budget spreadsheet (we did pretty well), approving invoices, and planning a volunteer thank-you event. Oh! And I spent most of yesterday cleaning up Oktoberfest remnants (actual physical things left lying around) from Town Square, because they're picky that way. (Okay, I'm loathe to mention that the time and effort it took to take note of the broom leaned up against the door outside our staff office and compose an email about it was much greater than what it would have taken to just unlock the door and stuck it inside. But I'm sure going to think it.)

I'm gradually getting back to the real work. Promise!

I know, I know…

Yes, I know how long it's been. Yes, I have things I'd like to write about. No, I won't be doing that any time soon. And here's why:

Do you see that countdown timer on the upper left? I'll be back in that long. Oh! And please come to Oktoberfest. (Bring money!)

Learned something

I learned two things this morning already. Well, three, really.

First, composing a blog post on my iPad gives it some funky kind of default font that doesn't seem to correlate to anything that happens on the desktop version of Blogger.

Second, all my years as a typesetter have left me unable to ignore funky font problems. Must. be. fixed….

And, finally, I've lost pretty much all the html skill I ever had. I just re-entered that last post, because looking at the html gave me not a single clue about how to fix it. Yeah, I'll have to do something about that sometime.

Saturday night, or what passes for it

I spent a rollicking Saturday evening doing an inventory of my knitting needles. (Because I find, over and over, that I need an actual, correct and complete tally of them, that's why. Sometimes I spend time searching for needles that meet particular criteria when I'm not absolutely positive that I even own them. Or I find myself thinking that I need to buy some needles that are [fill in the blank] size or whatever, when, for all I know, the very ones I want are stuck up in a closet somewhere in my house.)

Anyway, that's what I did tonight. Two questions:

     1. I'm a wild woman, just wild, aren't I?

and

     2. Does anyone have any idea why I thought I needed seven—count 'em, seven—Knitpicks 24" cables?*

I'll be over here, seeing the error of my ways.


*See the 'thought I needed to buy…' thing above. Point made.