All posts by Guest User

Flotsam / Jetsam

How to deal with a bathtub full of butterflies

2 Comments

My sister-in-law Carrie called me all aflutter recently about a product she’d tried. She wanted me to share it with you. But I wanted her to share it with you instead. And she did! She says this will be her “first and last” blog post. -N

When my husband and I bought our first house, we decided on a fixer-upper that was built in the 1920s. One of the first renovations we did to the house — before we even moved in — was to gut the bubblegum-pink bathroom. The only thing that survived was the cast-iron tub — complete with pink butterfly no-slip stickies. Once the butterfly stickies were peeled up it was obvious how disgusting this tub was. We had nice bright white outlines of the butterflies against a goldish-brown nastiness that was the bottom of the tub. Even after two full years of regular cleanings and a lot of Comet and bleach, we still had a nasty-stained tub with butterfly outlines.

Then, as I was strolling through Target last weekend I happened to glance down and see Mr. Clean Magic Eraser Bath Scrubbers. I splurged the $4.53 in hope that it would cure my tub issue. I rushed home (because everyone rushes when they know they have cleaning to do, right?), tore the package open, dampened the sponge and starting wiping down the tub. The first swipe I took? I got pure clean white! I was so amazed I called my wonderful sister-in-law to tell her she needed to do a blog post. To which she replied that I had to write it. I do not blog. I hate writing. But I loved this product so much, I’m willing to deal with it for all of you.

Our tub looks amazing. It’s clean and bright white, and even if I look really hard I can just barely make out those pesky butterflies. I am so very happy with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser Bath Scrubbers. If you have a really bad soap scum problem, try them out! They’re worth the $4.53.

Music

The perilous nature of cassettes

2 Comments

One of the most difficult things to deal with when pondering mix tapes is the transient nature of the medium. Tapes get old. They run down and get warbly from repeated (and frequent) use. They get stuck in that nether region between the bottom of the seat and the car door and get smashed into bits. They get stressed and Mixtape Remixpulled by constant rewinding or an over-zealous fast-forwarding mechanism. They get warped by the heat of the sun and the plastic dash board.

And sometimes, they just die.

I was at my parents house when I went searching for a tape to write about this week. The place of my upbringing, the place I went from records to tapes to CDs to digital media. This is where I perfected my craft, spending hours every week listening to music in my room and making tapes. If any place was going to have a real treasure, it would be here.

And what a treasure I found!

In the previous post, I mentioned that many times I made tapes to mark a vacation — a new compilation to start a journey. What I found was an old friend amongst the stacks of Eagles greatest hits and Paul Simon cassettes yellowed by age and almost illegible from the years of fingers that smudged the ink, sliding them into or removing them from the car stereo. What I found was the mix I prepared in 1996 before leaving for our yearly fishing migration to Minnesota.
Continue reading The perilous nature of cassettes →

Family matters

“My kindergarten” (A guest post by Poppy)

2 Comments

Poppy was watching me do a little blog maintenance this morning, and she wanted to write her own post. Here it is! –N

Here are some things that I liked about kindergarten:

  • Math, because you get to learn new stuff like adding big numbers.
  • Art, because you get to add whatever you want, like when you’re making a painting yourself.
  • Geography, because you get to learn about states. I learned about Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and some others. Maine was my favorite because that was the first time I started geography.

    And soon I’m going to have fun in first grade. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.

    The end.