It's Almost Valentine's Day

Well, okay, perhaps not "almost" but only a couple of weeks away. Do you celebrate? What will you do? Nothing special occurs in this household though now, with children involved, we might snip and snap little pieces of construction paper into confetti-sized supposedly-heart-shaped chunks and glue them hither and thither about the house....

But on this upcoming anniversary of "love" and cupids and all such fanaticism, allow me to share a previous blog of what we did LAST year on this ever-blissful day....

On Valentine’s Day night a state of panic ensued at our home. Nothing amiss in romanceland…no thorn-in-the-eye paramedic emergency or anything. No…this anxious chaos arose from a smell. From somewhere in the depths of our tiny bathroom, an odour…and not a dead-animal-in-the-wall or backing-up-sewer stink. Nope, this was the reek of toxic, burning plastic.

Let me first backtrack to a couple of days earlier when a toaster oven button had gone haywire, stayed on when no one was home, and melted our steak knives, handily childproofed in an old hand-me-down margarine tub above, right into the container itself. A unique piece of art, and, when combined with this new found stench, a possible sign that God was going to burn down our house and it was just a matter of time as to when?

Could it be the new-fangled LED lights that seemed to have black patched on their toxic curls? A quick internet search determined a great likelihood for explosive stinks (oh, wonderful…mercury spewing everywhere!). A late night call to my overly handy father, just home from dancing the night away with mom, went something like this: “Do the walls around the outlets feel warm? Can you isolate the smell? It’s near the light fixture? You took the light bulbs out? The switch is turned off?” Me on all fours, precariously perched on the vanity in pitch black, sniffing the empty light sockets and wondering when I was going to have to make the 9-1-1 call. Endless private detective work seemed to narrow the problem to the light fixture – or so my nose was determining. We cranked open the window, revved up a small fan, and set about ridding the room of the noxious aroma.

The stench was still present the next morning. As we busied ourselves getting shrieking half-naked children ready for church my husband saddled up behind me, said “close your eyes”, and shoved the most rotten of smells under my nose. “Is this the smell?” Stepping back, I opened my eyes, watering from the very nearness of toxic burning plastic odour, to find a tangerine-coloured bar of soap. Carbolic soap. Recently purchased at the amazing Chicory Common in Durham because I wanted something that wasn’t only biodegradable but was eco-friendly and without nasty sulphates (and hey, being sold without packaging, it saves some landfill space as well). Soap! SOAP!?! All that fuss over soap? And to think that some claim it sweetly reminds them of childhood, their grandmother’s antiseptic cleaning agent, of hospital cleanliness…How it evokes anything but the deepest of gag reflexes is beyond me, but after a few days of hiding the all natural glob in a many-times-used Ziploc bag the smell mostly diffused. So don’t be surprised, when you’re initiating (here’s my plug:) body- and earth-friendly products from The Soap Works (a local, Ontario company) into your bathroom, to be entertaining a few days of “memories of Grandma” (or, in my case, toxic burning plastic)…

Enough is Enough: Conquering the Snowblower

Enough is enough, I decided: continuously I seem lecture people on accepting change, learning and growing and it was time to "put my money where my mouth was" and get to work. Tired of constant slushy snowbanks intruding our driveway I knew it was time I learned how to use the snowblower. A gift last summer from my father-in-law to my husband I yanked the sucker out of the garage (sending a pile of odds and ends scattering, breaking a porcelain toilet back in about 5 pieces - I don't even recall where it could have come from?) and read the instructions. I can operate the riding lawnmower (albeit dangerously by some standards: the neighbours, for some reason, move their van from the block to the driveway each and every time I get the riding lawnmower out). So I knew I had to be able to operate the snowblower.

Quickly I discovered why my husband is "addicted" to this "sport" (although he still often doesn't take the time to get our driveway cleaner than "GUN IT AND GET IT IN!"). A sense of accomplishment followed each dizzying circle around the lane. How could I do it more efficiently? Like a Zamboni driver I attempted to perfect the switchbacks and zones where blowing snow landed. Look how clean it is, I admired as the machine almost slipped from my grasp...but not clean enough. I need to see pavement...(though I never did today).

Yes, I quickly began understanding the addiction. Will the driveway be much cleaner in days to come? Well, I highly doubt that fact but now I have no excuse....