Film

My daughter and I are in film, and I’m not sure how we got wrapped up in it.

Though my daughter is a video producer and scriptwriter, that’s not the type of film I’m referring to. The film I’m talking about is sort of like the clingy plastic a guy wanted to wrap me with, but it’s not that tight. It’s grimy, attracts smells, and reduces transparency, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It’s the film that accumulates on our windows, walls, and doors. Even my backyard neighbor has offered his window-cleaning apparatus when he sees too much grime building up. Where does it come from?

Our carpet and furniture are at least 15 years old, so all their formaldehyde and chemical outgassing occurred years ago. We haven’t run the gas log fireplace insert all season, and our window coverings are ancient. We don’t even buy new clothes.

When I cook, I use the fan and Clarity, our air purifier, and give her a new charcoal filter when I think she needs changing. We have at least 38 potted plants in our home, many of which are on NASA’s clean air study list.* We don’t allow smoking on our property, and we don’t expel flatus. Well, Shiloh the Labradog does.

To deal with this pervasive problem, I have tried Windex-style cleaners, Murphy Oil Soap, and vinegar water. I’ve even sprayed my peppermint water on walls and wiped them clean.

But today I came up with a miraculous, new formula! On a cloth that did not contact a dryer sheet, I unscientifically poured the right amount of vinegar and a sufficient quantity of rubbing alcohol. I then rubbed it on my big living room window, and voilà!

Now my backyard neighbor can watch me dance much more clearly.

copyright © 2009 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

If you like it, link it!
http://auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2009/03/film.html

* http://www.zone10.com/technology/nasa-study-house-plants-clean-air.html

Conservation

I am extremely tight…
and very selective about what enters my personal space.

I like warmth with a soft breeze, simplicity and a life of ease. I prefer quietude with splashes of exuberance, a neutral tone accented by color and plant life.
Predictability helps to structure my life. Friends call at special times each year, or on a particular day and time, and some come over on a certain day of the week. My daughter usually begins and ends school at the same time, and she stays at her father’s two days a week, though she vacillates on which days.

Like a menstrual cycle, lovely bills come due on their reliable, selfish, monthly schedules, and every week my generous friend shares her garbage service with me. (Together, four of us fill one small can weekly. We are avid recyclers from the Midwest. I was conserving things in Minnesota at age seven, which my parents couldn’t comprehend. My environmental efforts irritated them. Dad was poor, but not that poor, he probably thought. Mom, on the other hand, was raised with money and permitted pieces of my precocity.)

When winter comes in Colorado, which doesn’t match the snow levels nor frequent blizzards of Minnesota or Wisconsin in July, I survey my home prior to cold’s unwelcome and much-too-long visit looking for ways to keep the warmth in, the chill out.

First I assess my home’s primary occupant. I wear more clothes, layering them, so I can peel as I thaw. Being a household naturist, wearing clothing is against my religion, but I refuse to turn the heat up past 66 during the day, except Fridays when I punch it up to 72 and chip the ice clinging to my windows with a corkscrew.

Some of my ideas may seem crazy, but I’m eccentric and the characteristic will not, by choice, change. Here are three thoughts.

I slide the range hood fan screen out, toss it in the dishwasher, and cover the fan hole with cardboard, which I secure with masking tape. Only once each year do I forget and turn on the fan for a sec, gasping. For freshening, circulating, and removing particulates from the air, I use Clarity, my Honeywell Enviracaire air purifier, and mist with peppermint water (see auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2008/11/sniff-sniff.html).

Cracks and holes are discreetly plugged with old clothes or remnants if caulking doesn’t apply, so the ol’ ranch wears a tighter sweater. Guys like that. And though I’m a friendly person who welcomes a smiling face and lots of light, I keep my drapes drawn and blinds blocking the drafts drifting through my windy windows.

There may not be any more ways I can reduce expenses, as I did when I decided to work part time and be a full-time den mother in 1996, but I can be tight by conserving.

copyright © 2009 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

If you like it, link it!
http://auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2009/01/conservation.html