Strugglebucket vs. Supervac

Now that the top floor of our house is all shiny and new, Dad has bought a similarly shiny-and-new vacuum, of which I have already made an enemy. It's too small and see-through and has too many moving and separable parts. For example, I needed to clean out some drawers (I'm finally turning my "bookshelf" into a dresser again) so I tentatively approached this new vacuum in the hopes of finding it even mildly Strugglebucket-compatible. It fell apart into three pieces the moment I picked it up, which clattered across Dad's new hardwood floor and brought him running.  I couldn't tell if he was more panicked about me scuffing the floor or destroying the vacuum.

As it turns out, the vacuum is supposed to fall apart--er, come apart--that easily, it's much easier to clean that way, you see.  Easier to clean the vacuum itself, I mean, not clean anything else.  It makes that part much more difficult.

The actual working/motored/whatever/clearly-I-don't-really-know-how-this-works section is designed to come free of the handle of the vacuum-proper so you can use it in a more dust-bustery fashion.  Well, a dust-buster with a hose, which has both advantages and disadvantages.

First of all, what we will now call the "engine" (previously "working/motored/etc.") comes easily away from the vacuum handle, as it is held there by only a few pegs and a single clasp.  Undo the clasp and you can lift it from the pegs as though it were flinging itself into your hands.  Which is exactly what happens if you try to use it whilst on the handle and have forgotten to redo the clasp again.

Anyway, next you must free the hose from the vacuum handle, which is the only part of this damned machine that is held together securely enough to keep from falling apart and is therefore impossible to pull loose when you want it to do so.  For me it takes at least three attempts to pull the hose free by way of two small, handy tabs that do nothing at all.

I'll try once, growling through my teeth, until my fingers hurt from trying to get my fingernails under the handy tabs that do nothing at all.  Then I take a break and watch a few minutes of, say, Wallace and Gromit (recently, anyway).

My second attempt will be just trying to wiggle the end of the hose furiously enough to free it without pulling the actual flexible part of the hose apart from the plastic bit at the end that attaches it to everything else.  This futile exercise will end in an actual scream, and Dad will shout from his office to ask what's wrong, and I will lie about everything being fine.  More Wallace and Gromit.

Finally, the third time, I will be sitting on the floor, bracing the mouth of the vacuum with my feet and yanking repeatedly on the plastic bit at the end of the hose, screaming all the while.  Dad will come out to investigate, sigh heavily, and reach down to the handy tabs that do nothing at all and, by way of some black magic for which he's traded his soul, the hose will come free.

So in this first instance, I grumbled my thanks and trudged down the hall to my room.  I plugged in the cord and then puzzled for a few minutes over which direction I am supposed to hold the engine; the hose comes out at a right-angle from one end and either way the handle's uncomfortable so it's really anyone's guess.  Eventually I decided on the direction that I thought would give me the most reach with the hose, though that did put the power button on the other end and out of thumb's reach, which is what you'd expect from a hand-held vacuum, don't you think?  Anyway, I used my other hand, still holding the hose (and its single, useless attachment--more on that later), and turned on the vacuum.

I'm going to assume here that you've all seen the Disney movie "Wall-e" because if not, you have not yet lived. Well, it's super-cute anyway, and at one point the puppy-sized main character finds a fire extinguisher and presses the button with the unexpected result of being propelled around all over the place from the force of the spray.

My experience here was exactly the opposite.  The vacuum immediately seized both my hair and a rather heavy leather belt hanging in my closet.  I shouted in alarm and dropped the hose so I could turn off the engine with the free hand, but the hose didn't drop.  It held itself aloft by way of inhalation of my hair, and my cry of alarm turned into a scream and Dad came running as I finally managed to kill the power. I pulled my hair free again and the engine fell apart in my hands.

Instead of sharing my horror and alarm at this unprovoked attack on my person, like any good father should, Dad said, excitedly, "Isn't that amazing suction?"  I glared at him until he left the room.  And then pulled my hair up into a bun.

I would like to take a moment now to discuss the aforementioned single useless attachment.  It was, no doubt, a clever idea that just utterly failed in execution.  Instead of having two standard attachments, where one is a flat nozzle and the other has a brush nozzle, this one is designed to be both at once.  With the unfortunate result of being neither.

The brush-bit of the attachment is on a piece of plastic sheathing around the regular flat nozzle, which can be retracted to leave just the flat nozzle.  Except the damn brush-bit never stays in place when retracted (due, no doubt, to more handy tabs that do nothing at all), so even when I got the damn thing working I had to turn off the engine every few minutes pull the brush-bit out of the way.  I turn it off, obviously, because I sure as hell am not putting my fingers anywhere near the nozzle while it's at full suction.

After one of these instances fiddling with the brush-bit, I was so annoyed with the attachment that I forgot that the power button was at the counterintuitive end of the handle.  Reflexively, I pressed my thumb where I expected the power to be.  As it turns out, there is a button there, and upon pushing it the entire engine exploded in filth as I inadvertently released the dirt trap.

It was at this point that I actually threw the component parts of the vacuum across the room in a dust-covered berserker rage, all of which survived both the impact with the wall and the subsequent fall to the floor, which I won't deny was a little disappointing.  I managed to put the engine back together, secure it on the handle, replace the end of the hose to the vacuum-proper, and coil up the power cord, before shoving the whole thing unceremoniously into the hall closet, where I intend to never touch it again.

I dug up the old (and what shall henceforth be known as the "nice") vacuum, cleaned up the new ("evil") vacuum's mess, and eventually succeeded in cleaning out the dresser in an ordeal that took easily four times as long any vacuuming chore ever should.

In one last attempt to reclaim a small amount of my dignity, by way of emphasizing other people's Struggles, I want to point out that the first thing Dad did with the new vacuum was to break the plastic bit that keeps the middle of the hose from falling off the vacuum handle while in regular, non-dustbustering mode.  Thanks to him, you have to sort of hold it together with one hand/foot/knee while vacuuming and then wrap it up in place with the cord when you put it away.

And now I can't think of a concise, clever way to end this post, so please forgive me for what follows.

This vacuum sucks.

No good deed goes unpunished

Lately I've been sick with the flu, or a cold, or whatever is going around these days.  I seem to have caught it from my mother, who brought it home from the elementary school where she teaches.  I find it both amusing and unfair that I spend all my working hours with kids and their compounding grossness on harnesses and the rock wall in general, but I get sick from my mother.

In any case, we've both been taking Nyquil (or cheap store-brand equivalent) and we ran out last night, though we didn't discover it until Mom tried to go to bed, around 10:00.  At the time, I was pretty sure there was still a box left in one of the medicine cabinets, because I remembered buying at least three the last time I went to the store.  But Mom swore up and down she had looked everywhere, so run down to Fred Meyer before they close and buy some more because you have the new car and as such you are obligated to run errands for the family and besides I'm already in my bathrobe... 

I guess this isn't really that big a deal, aside from the fact that I have a limp from a foot injury and my right arm is in a sling due to shoulder bursitis.

Anyway.

I bought another three boxes of Nyquil, plus some other groceries, which in total ended up being more than I could carry one-handedly, so I had to use a cart.  Being more or less the only person at the store this late at night, I had been able to park practically at the door (except for those troublesome handicapped spots).  I pushed the cart the whole five yards' distance to my car, got everything loaded into the trunk, and then had to take the cart back into the store because if you're that close there's no cart-return-collector-things nearby because that would be LUDICROUS.

But it turns out no one else seems to think this is the appropriate thing to do.  There were three other carts just sort of left strewn around the parking lot within spitting distance from the door, so I gathered all four in a remarkably short amount of time (given that I only had one useful hand).  The last of the carts was tucked in the corner of a parking spot bordered on two sides by curb and sidewalk, which meant I had to push the other three into that one in and then back up with all four of them before returning to the store.

Feeling ridiculously pleased with myself for managing to get all four together with little real difficulty, I started backing up--and rolled over my overly-long jeans pant-leg.  I had unfortunately thrown on the ill-fitting pair (the first I could find) for speed's sake, having been so suddenly forced/volunteered to run an errand in the middle of the night.

Now several inches of denim were trapped and four carts' momentum kept rolling, pushing me over unexpectedly until I crashed to the asphalt on my back.  I eventually caught my breath again and stood up, shoulder aching, nose bleeding (though that happens all the time these days, so it was probably unrelated to the actual fall),  and grumbled my way into the store because I'll be damned if I give up on it halfway. 

Avoiding catching anyone's eye, I managed to get in and out again without further incident, then returned to my car.  Glad the whole ordeal was over, I swung carefully into the driver's seat--without using my injured right arm--and slammed the side of my skull into the door frame.

When I got home I burst through the door shouting that Mom had better be grateful, only to be shushed by Dad, who told me Mom was asleep.  Apparently she found that other box of Nyquil after all and had already gone to bed.

I almost cried.  Which would have just made my congestion worse.

A vision of the future: Strugglebucket in 50 years

This morning I woke to the sound of an electric mixer.  When I wandered out to the kitchen in bare feet and bathrobe, I found the mixer running by itself in what appeared to be a baking war zone.  Chocolate chips were scattered across one counter, surrounding a bowl very nearly overflowing with pecans.  Greasy butter wrappers lay face-up under measuring cups and teaspoons, and eggshells were strewn across the sink.  A solid brick of brown sugar sat defiant on a cutting board, small crumbles carved away from the corners with the giant knife that lay next to it.  Powdered sugar stuck to my bare feet and, not finding her anywhere at first glance, I was afeared for my grandmother's life.

Thankfully she came in again moments later, though she was fuming and clutched a claw hammer in one fist.  (It was for the brown sugar, I later came to learn.)

This is the start of the countdown to Christmas for Grandma, because her best friend of many decades is coming to stay in three days (which means I am presently in the rather involved process of trying to move out).  I'm pretty sure this is what prompted the baking, anyway, because when I found the recipe it was one of her friend's.

In any case, she had started everything without checking the brown sugar supply, and then she couldn't leave to get more because the plumber was supposed to be coming, so the whole operation ground to a halt until she could leave the house to make a grocery run.  At this point I went to bed again.  (I'm sick, and desperately need the sleep.)

I woke up again around 11:00.   The plumber had still not come, but the kitchen was slightly less chaotic.  The floor was clean again. The counters were tidy.  The butter wrappers had been thrown away.  The eggshells were down the disposal.  The measuring-stuffs were in the dishwasher.  The brown sugar was now in finger-size chunks (the hammer was still on the cutting board).

Drank half a gallon of orange juice and blew my nose into an entire box of kleenex.  Back to bed.

Up again at about 2:00.  Plumber came and went and Grandma had gone for more brown sugar, but she'd put the dough-mixture-so-far into the fridge while she waited and now it was too stiff for her to even mix in the sugar.

Drank the other half-gallon.  Back to bed.

Up again around 8:00, and this time to a nice faint smell of something sweet baking.  Then I opened the door and stepped into the hall and got the full brunt of burning sugar smell.  In the kitchen, Grandma was cleaning the oven and muttering under her breath.  When asked, she explained that she had test-baked a few cookies because they are supposed to spread a lot, and she wanted to be sure she would be leaving enough room and they had SPREAD ACROSS THE ENTIRE COOKIE SHEET AND OVER THE EDGES AND DOWN ONTO THE HEATING ELEMENT DAMN IT.  (Such was her vehemence, these capital letters.)

As it turned out, in her relief at finally having brown sugar of a pliable nature, she had forgotten to add the flour.  So by the time I was awake, she had added the flour, though she realized as we spoke that she used the full amount of flour called for by the recipe, despite the fact she had already "made" five test cookies.  She has now given up for the evening, and plans to add another egg and some more butter in the morning to see if maybe that will compensate.  She's too annoyed to clean up the kitchen tonight (there is flour EVERYWHERE), and tomorrow can only be an adventure.

Maybe it's genetic?

Holiday Decorating Debacle

In my family, we put up Christmas lights.

But only barely.

I say this because it is a half-hearted attempt to begin with, and then we usually almost always fail in that attempt.  Though we do somehow manage to eke out that small win each year.  Here's how it goes:

Our house is a split-level, so it's half-a-story too tall for us to do the whole works.  We do actually have a way to get up to the roof, but it's pretty iffy, and with my family "iffy" is plenty enough a deterrent.  Mom's scared, Dad's old, and I'm Strugglebucket; any way you look at it, this would end in tears.  So instead we just put lights up above the garage and along the line of the house's level-split until it frames the front door.

This is a long, involved process which begins with trying to find the box of lights in the garage.  All of our Holiday Stuff is together in one convenient location, but somehow each year it seems to be a completely different location from the last, so it requires quite a bit of rummaging around.  As soon as Dad and I manage to wade through all the snorkels and inflatable pool toys and find the winter goods, Mom will come running out from the house demanding we find the box with her holiday clothes, because god forbid it snows before she's wearing the sweater with reindeer on the sleeves or (more importantly) the socks with snowflake-lace trim and jingle bells sewn onto the hem.

As soon as Mom's wandering off again with a box large enough to have once housed a refrigerator, Dad and I drag out strings and strings and strings of Christmas lights, which we swear we had put away all wrapped up neatly and untangled last year, damn it. 

The first order of business is to plug in all the lights and make sure they are all still working.  After a few minutes of manful boasting about being able to handle the cold, Dad agrees to bring the lights inside for this process.  I am volunteered to brave the cupboard under the stairs to find an unused powerstrip (this cupboard is a veritable graveyard of extension cords and cables of all kinds).  Said powerstrip is then plugged in to the already daisy-chained set of powerstrips that branches, hydra-like, from the only outlet in the work room.

Our two strings of lights, one for above the garage and then two together for along the front of the house, are wrapped around orange plastic extension-cord spools, which gives the illusion of order, despite the fact we will later spend twenty minutes untangling it all.  We plug them into the powerstrip without unwrapping them, one at a time.  Neither string lights up.

We spend fifteen minutes carefully unscrewing and re-screwing each bulb, one by one, just to be sure they are all in their sockets properly, before Dad plugs them in again.  Neither string lights up.  Dad curses mildly before starting to check the socket casings, but thankfully it is at this point that I notice our powerstrip is not actually turned on.

Both strings light up.

There are, of course, bulbs out.  Not to fret, however, because we also have three boxes of unused strings of lights, all of which are in better condition than the ones we use but that isn't the point damn it we already have these specially configured for our purposes so why bother trying to recreate it all with new strings when it would only be a headache and we can just keep fixing these up each year now shut up and hand me the other box...

We cannibalize these other strings for bulbs instead.  Dad reaches for the oldest-looking box, the images on the cardboard case faded and yellow and clearly from the early nineties, at best.  There are already a dozen bulbs rolling around loose in this box, and he insists on trying these first, because surely if they were broken, we would have thrown them out?  Surely, I agree, since we have two drawers upstairs full of dead batteries and jars upon jars of pens that have little or no ink in them.  But Dad will not be swayed.

We swap out a dead green for a rolling-around-loose-in-the-box green, and then plug in the string.  There is a pop, a flash, and the whole string goes dead.  I burst out laughing and Dad looks daggers at me.  Grudgingly, he agrees to throw away the other loose bulbs.

But now our string has shorted out, and needs a new fuse.  Dad braves the cupboard under the stairs and returns ten minutes later with several old film canisters full of varying sizes of fuses, none of which appear to fit the lights, which doesn't matter because when we opened up the plug to check the size we realize there are actually spare fuses inside the plug casing itself.  

Fuses replaced, we begin the slow process of changing each burnt-out bulb.  Pulling replacements bulbs from the newest box (late nineties, maybe?), we try to match color-for-color but end up very red-heavy.  I also forcibly take each old bulb from Dad and very purposefully throw it away.

By now it is dark outside, and feels twenty degrees colder than when we started.  I dig the ladder out from the back of the garage while Dad starts setting up extension cords, both of which turn out to be tasks surprisingly free of difficulties.  Next come the twenty minutes of untangling the strings from their spools, which takes place on top of the hedges along the house, because otherwise we would doubtlessly manage to step on the bulbs.

There are three separate occurrences of two red bulbs side-by-side.  Strugglebucket's OCD tendencies demand immediate rectification, and Dad agrees, if only to stop me whining.  We swap out bulbs to make things more adequately random, and when the string is plugged in it does not light up.  Ten more minutes of finagling and some more muttering from Dad and everything works again.

To put the lights up above the garage, I sit on the lowest rung of the wobbliest ladder on earth to make sure it doesn't pitch my father onto the concrete of our driveway.  I also have a pocketful of the plastic hooks we hang from the gutter to hold up the lights, and the first one I hand up to Dad snaps in half.  So does the second.  And the third.  Dad jerry-rigs the clips on the bulb casings themselves, and most of them work.

Then he uses eleventy-seven pieces of electrical tape to hold the extension cord against the underside of the roof.  It falls off before we put up the second string of lights.  Later when Dad notices a piece of tape had gotten stuck on one of the bulb casings, he pulls it off.  The lights go out.  We discover the tape was holding the casing together in the first place, and I casually suggest again that perhaps we should use one of the other, newer strings of lights.  Dad re-tapes the bulb casing without looking at me.  The lights come back on.

The second string of lights goes along the brick at the house's split level from the garage to the door, and then above around the door.  For this we just tuck the cord that separates the bulbs down between the plastic trim that separates the brick from the vinyl siding, though we do have to stand on the low hedge in front of the house to reach the siding.  Halfway through this process, the trim snaps off.  Through sheer force of will and stubborn anger and the need to get in from the cold, we force the trim back in place and finish tucking in the lights.

At this point we're too tired and frustrated to deal with really securing the string around the door, so we just leave it loose and go inside and have something hot to drink.  There is a small betting pool on whether or not it will take someone accidentally slamming a bulb in the screen door before Dad bothers to fix it.

Also when changing into pajamas later I found burrs from the hedge stuck up my pants.

But the point is, our house is pretty.

Also, apparently, we have enough net-lights to cover roughly a third of our hedge. Dad did this when I wasn't looking, because why the hell would you only cover a third of it so the house looks ridiculous now shut up and take them down right this instant. I put them back in the garage when he wasn't looking.

Strugglebucket's First Hangover

I am a lightweight.

By this I mean that a single bottle of Mike's hard lemonade will have me sufficiently giggly, and two bottles will have me sufficiently giggly from the floor.

I hate the taste of beer, to the degree that the last time I trusted one of my friends enough to try a sip of "No, this is much better, it's [positive beer-adjective of some kind]," I spit it out so vehemently I almost fell off the roof.  So I mostly drink traditionally girly drinks (e.g. sex on the beach) or dessert drinks (e.g. black Russian).

Also I am one-quarter Japanese, which, while not enough to give me the classically Asian almond eyes and epicanthic fold that would visually legitimize my last name, is apparently plenty enough to give me the "Asian Glow."  After just half a bottle of Mike's, my face, neck and chest go BRIGHT PINK.

I really do know my limits, so I've never been fall-down drunk (though I was close at my best friend's bachelorette party, and since I was the one who threw it, I think that's fair), so waking up feeling like my head is trying to explode was a new and unpleasant experience.

But this time I hadn't been feeling well and hadn't really eaten anything, so two black Russians made by a heavy-handed barman were enough to make it difficult for me to stand up without having to immediately cling to the nearest person or piece of furniture.  Of course, at the time it was delightful because I was with a friend and was in that wonderfully giggly state where very little can actually bother me.

He drove me home and I poured out of the car and into bed, but I woke up the next morning thinking I was dead. My more hangover-savvy friends never gave any helpful description ("a really bad headache" just doesn't quite say it), but it turns out I can't do much better. So, simply put, hangovers are icky. I intend to never experience one again. It's like an ambulance ride: you only need to do it once, and then the expense is enough to warrant a careful avoidance of any future repeat performance/opportunities.

Did I tell you how the city once charged me $800 for an ambulance ride?

Blearglarghlargh. Never again.

Totoro Troubles

Due to all the construction ruckus (still) going on over at my house, I have been living at my grandmother's place for the last two weeks.  While here, I have been going through my late grandfather's sizable VHS collection (because they always had all the Disney movies here as grandkid-bait when I was younger) and stumbled across our copy of "My Neighbor Totoro," one of Miyazaki's early-ish animated features.

This copy, despite being VHS and therefore full-screen-cropped and English-dubbed, is absolutely invaluable to me because it is something my cousin and I always watched together with our Japanese grandfather when we were younger.  Just looking at the cover art reminds me of him, and I find myself suddenly desperate to own the DVD.  Actually, not suddenly, I have always wanted it, I just want it more RIGHT NOW.  And of course, it is out of print.  I can't find it anywhere, physically, locally (i.e. any specialty stores in Washington state), and through Amazon Sellers the factory-sealed copies start at $98.35 (at the time of this entry).  And I am the type of film lunatic that is even now itching to press that damn button.  A hundred bucks for a DVD and I actually have to physically restrain myself from buying it.  What the hell is wrong with me?

Anyway, to go along with my sudden Totoro renaissance I carved a Totoro pumpkin for Halloween, which is ADORABLE (it also had little pumpkin ears sticking up, but they're impossible to see in the dark).  It was the shading method rather than the cut-through method, so it took ages to get it all close to a similar depth, and then I had to shave out the inside of the pumpkin anyway to make sure it was thin enough for light to shine through.  Because it ended up so thick (1/4 inch, maybe?) I needed a lot of light to make it visible...

Enter the first of my (many) pumpkin troubles: it was impossible for me to find tea-light candles, even in the Halloween specialty stores, in smallish quantities.  I ended up buying the smallest bag I could find, which cost $5.99 and had about four pounds of the tiny candles.

Good thing, too, as it turned out that my Totoro required seven candles.  This number was particularly exciting because it meant I had to light each one and then reach my hand down the 8 inches or so inside the pumpkin so as to place each one, without lighting myself (or, more importantly, my hair) on fire.  Despite the obvious Strugglebucket disadvantage, I did actually manage this without being horribly burned.

This was was pretty impressive in its own right, considering that the matches I was using were easily over twice as old as I am.  I had to go rummaging around in the spider-infested cupboard under the stairs to find a box of matches at all, and then each pack had the image of a 50s housewife on the cover, I kid you not.

Anyway, the tea-lights only lasted about twenty minutes before burning out.  Which meant I then had to reach back down in and retrieve the candles, which were now just small, flimsy metal dishes full of hot melted wax.  And then repeat the whole damn process with seven new candles.  And again, after another twenty minutes.

We lit the jack-o-lanterns around 6:30 when the little kiddos started showing up.  The older trick-or-treaters stopped coming after 9:30.

So my pumpkin was cool and adorable (and one of our neighbors taking her son trick-or-treating knew who it was--I was so excited I hugged her), but by the end of the night our porch was littered with several dozen empty metal tea-light-dishes and a thick coating of candle wax on the inside of my pumpkin and many many burns on my fingers and hands.  Sigh.  But he was so damn cute...

Pride Goeth Before a Fall

Or, to be more accurate, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before the fall" (proverbs 16:18).  I know this from the internet, not from any personal bible study, as by and large I am a good old-fashioned heathen, which is to say that I am successfully not forcibly converted by any major religion.

Anyway, the point is that we have a new library, and it is large and pretty and a nice place to sit and work, although all the chairs near electrical outlets are uncomfortable as hell.  And for the life of me, I can't figure out how this library is organized.  The Dewey decimal system is a wonderful thing, but when you can't find an entire genre of books (say, for example, the mysteries are suspiciously and delightfully ironically missing) the reference number isn't going to do you much good.

This library is a two-story building, so I spent a lot of time going up and down the stairs in search of the book I wanted, as it never seemed to be on the floor I was on at the time.  Unfortunately, the stairs are that type of almost purposefully unkind proportions, where they are a little bit too deep and the risers are a little bit too short and it makes climbing them a very awkward process that requires almost too much concentration.

Now all of this would be a moot point if I had just asked the nice women at the information desk for help, because they could have told me that the mysteries were upstairs behind the tall magazine racks that I thought went on forever.  But pride, or at least embarrassment at not being able to figure this out on my own, kept me from asking.  So my visit to the library was easily four times the length it should have been, and by the time I found the book in question I was both annoyed and relieved and the combination was enough to keep me from concentrating properly on the stairs.

So I fell.  After two steps, I misjudged the distance in the whole depth-to-height ratio and got that jarring feeling when you expect the ground to be a little bit farther away than it actually is, and my other foot failed to find the next step at all.  Down I slid, my years of experience in falling allowing me to avoid going ass-over-teakettle by just leaning back and riding the stairs like an incredibly painful and jagged slide.  Thankfully, at the half-way point there was a small landing and I managed to catch my feet under me and stand up again, taking the second half of the stairs nonchalantly, trying to play it cool and hoping no one had noticed.

Pretty much everyone had noticed.

I walked red-faced to the front desk and, to add insult to injury, discovered I had no cash to pay off a fine from many many years ago that prohibited me from actually checking out the book I had gone through so much trouble to find.  

I haven't been back yet.