Cohappy Cohabitation

Today, in an uncharacteristic moment of seriousness (oh, wait, we probably were only there for the animated GIFs), my boyfriend and I were discussing this article on Buzzfeed about things you should consider before moving in together.

Now, you should probably know that my boyfriend and I never really, officially, moved in together. We've been a couple for 3 and a half years. Sometime near the beginning of that era, my boyfriend invited himself over to my house and never left. Slowly, his collection of clothing and sporting equipment migrated from his former homes (he is the legal owner of his parents' house and had a lot of stuff there, but was living at his sister's house next door when I met him) to mine. I cleared off a space on my bookshelf for his clothes...then I cleared off a shelf in the linen closet...then I bought a wicker hamper for the clothes that were ending up all over the floor...then I bought him a wardrobe from Ikea.... Now, in the third home we've lived in together, he has his very own man-cave (his clothes are still strewn all over the room that he tells me is mine). But after all this time, his official address is still his parents' house in another city.

The aforementioned little tidbit is only tangentially related to the real subject of this post, which is things that couples should do/expect before they officially move in. We went through the list and concluded we're actually pretty good at living together, despite never having actively made a decision to do it. We fell into most of the habits listed in the article naturally. There were only a few things that really stuck out as something we have done differently or could still do differently.

4. You may fight more at first and that is TOTALLY normal.

Though we are very, very different, Al I, oddly, hardly ever fight. Of course, I whine and complain and occasionally get quite snippy when I've asked him to do something 5 times and his answer is always "I was going to do it." (When? 30 years from now?) But getting to the point where either of us is raising our voice, crying, or so frustrated we feel the need to run away, hardly ever happens. I can think of maybe only 3 times we've ever had a real argument. Does this mean we are just burying our problems? Does it mean that we don't take our relationship seriously? Or does it mean we're just responsible adults who know how to deal with our conflicts in a mature way? I think it mostly comes down to Al's being exceptionally easy-going...but I'm happy to take at least some of the credit if I can.

7. Consider opening a joint bank account and splitting the bills evenly.

Three years into our coexistence, we are still 100% financially independent. We have settled (mostly tacitly) into a system of sharing the expenses that seems to work for us. Sometimes we pay more and sometimes we pay less, but we always pay for the things that matter to us the most. I pay for our housing; Al pays for the utilities. I used to pay all the utilities as well, but when he started turning our home into an electronic wonderland and constantly wanted to fiddle with the thermostat, I asked him to pick up the utility bills (now I just pay for water). When we travel, one of us gets the airfare; the other gets the lodging. Al pays for almost all our food (since he loves to splurge on gustatory experiences), and I pick up the tab when we shop at Rugged Wearhouse and the thrift store (since I'm the holder of the loyalty cards). 

Keeping our finances separate keeps us from arguing. If Al wants to blow his whole paycheck on a slightly larger (already too-large) television...well, it's his money. And if I want to blow my whole paycheck on — well, nothing, because I would never do that! — but if I did, Al wouldn't try to interfere.

14. Get all your pet peeves out on the table ahead of time.

I'll admit it, I'm a peever. Everything annoys me. Everything.* If I had bothered to list out all my pet peeves to my boyfriend before we started dating, we'd probably still be having that conversation today. But today, when I asked him, "Do you have any pet peeves?" he was like, "Yeah! ... I just can't think of any right now." I reiterate, one of Al's best qualities is that he's so easy-going, which makes him a perfect match for someone as high-strung as me. So when I find something is annoying the dickens out of me, I try to remain calm, ask Al to do things differently, and usually he does. Or at least he tries.

17. Talk about your standards for what “clean” is, and figure out a plan for how things around the house will get done.

Cleaning is probably the number-two cause of conflict in our relationship (number one is our differing definitions of punctuality). I like everything neat and tidy and orderly, and Al just doesn't care. He throws his dirty clothes everywhere. He never grooms his dogs or cleans up their fur. I usually pick up after him silently, until the point where I feel like I'm working all the time while he's sitting like a lump playing video games, and then I have a minor fit. This doesn't count as an argument, because he doesn't try to justify his slovenly behavior, and he always makes an effort to clean up after that...but it always happens again. 

I have come to a sort of understanding about this situation—he will mow the lawn** and I'd better just expect to do pretty much everything else (or prepare to do a lot of nagging***). This is not an equal division of labor by far, but he devotes lots of energy and money to finding us fun things to do in our free time, so I have gradually come to the conclusion that in our relationship, I'm the one who keeps the home fires burning, and he's the one who keeps the party going. In fact, that was Advice Point #18: "And while it may be frustrating, don’t expect things to always be 50-50."

35. Last but not least, make sure to hide the Oreos.

This is a funny, trivial little point that was thrown into the article mostly for humor's sake, but oddly enough, it touches on one of the things that has changed in my life significantly since living with my significant other. To understand it, you must understand that I'm a very introverted introvert who's been living in group houses for much of my life. This means that I was fully immersed in a situation that made me uncomfortable pretty much every day. My only retreat from the constant communing was whatever little room I had to call my own. But sometimes an introvert gets hungry. And doesn't want to brave the social gauntlet that can be the trek from the bedroom to the kitchen and back again for some much-needed solitary snacks. So I got in the habit of keeping a stash of food in my bedroom, so I could eat whenever I wanted to without having to worry about seeing other people. When my boyfriend started living with me, he took the place of my housemates, and I very slowly got used to the idea of living with someone I actually felt comfortable with. It felt like kind of a victory when I recently realized I was keeping almost all my food in the kitchen instead of squirreling it away in the "snack drawer" that I still keep next to my desk. I am pleased to have ended up in a relationship where I have no need to hide the Oreos. It helps that my boyfriend seems to have no interest in Oreos.

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* Originally this was going to be a post about my peeves, and somehow it has morphed into a dissertation about how my boyfriend and I live.

** On mowing the lawn: I've always held disdain for the way work around the house is divided into "men's" and "women's" jobs. E.g. women do the cleaning, men do the "handy" stuff like changing light bulbs and fixing dripping faucets...men do the mowing and women do the gardening. I always prided myself on being self-sufficient, and when I shared a home with a male housemate for 3 years, I did most of the mowing and almost all the repairs. Yet my boyfriend has taken quite an interest in the lawn (I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with the shiny green Ego mower that cost me an arm and a leg). So I let him have his macho chore, because if he's willing to take the initiative to do anything without prompting (I still have to remind him, because he's a procrastinator), I'm all for it! But I still end up doing most of the repairs.

*** On nagging: Once upon a time, in my young idealistic years, I thought I would be the perfect girlfriend/wife—understanding, not demanding, and never the kind of person who gets referred to as a "ball and chain." When I saw women in movies griping things like, "the furnace has been broken for three weeks; when are you going to do something about it?" I cringed inside. If I wanted my furnace fixed, I wouldn't pester my husband to fix it; I'd figure out how to do it myself! Well, as it turns out, even if you can figure out how to fix your furnace yourself, that just means one more task that's been laid on your shoulders. Some task that you're going to do while your lazy other half does absolutely nothing. Some people (cough! Al!), I have learned, are not self-motivated. Some people need a fire lit under them. Unless you want to be doing everything on your own, you might have to be that fire, and learn to practice the fine art of nagging. Believe me, it's not easy. It requires a thick skin and lots of patience, but with a little effort, you can succeed in getting your sometimes-too-easygoing partner to be helpful.

Lenny & Larry's Complete Cookie: Birthday Cake

 Another day, another underwhelming vegan cookie.

Unlike my last vegan cookie, this one blared its list of special qualities right on the wrapper: no eggs, no dairy, no soy, non GMO...with so many "no's" on the label, it's pretty much a given that there will be "no" enjoyment as well.

But I bought it anyway, because it also boasted 8 g of fiber and 16 g of protein, which brought it into the realm of semi-healthy breakfast food, and anyway, I love a good Giant Cookie challenge. I might have also been reeled in by the appetizing-looking picture on the wrapper.

Sadly, the actual cookie was but a disappointing simulacrum of the picture on the package, with none of the visible texture, and even the sprinkles being flattened to almost nonexistence.

It did not improve with the eating.

My first impression was of a sour taste, rapidly becoming my clearest clue that I'm eating a vegan cookie. Since it was essentially a sugar cookie, there wasn't really any other flavor than that...but there was texture—a strange texture that was both dry like the desert and soft like a pillow (I'm having flashbacks to the Acadia Park cookie!). Come to think of it, pillows are dry, too, so that may become my new standard for a vegan cookie.

Show me a vegan cookie that doesn't remind me of a pillow, and I'll show you an impressed Giant Cookie Reviewer.

The Bottom Line

Taste:
Texture:
Price:	I could easily check the price for this cookie, as I got it at Smoothie King just across the street from my workplace, but I'd rather post now and ask questions later, so you'll just have to wait til some other time to get my (doubtlessly unfavorable) assessment of the cost.

Glue Reviews / What Glues to Use

 
As a DIY-hard crafter, I have a pretty impressive collection of glues. My glue stash is so sizable that I have devoted an entire drawer in my plastic 3-drawer rolling cart to "Adhesives." This includes tape (of which I have the masking, the duct, the sport, and the packing varieties), and I've also thrown in a few other bottles of household fluids there because they don't fit into a better category—WD-40 (the exact opposite of an adhesive) and foam insulation. But the glues! I have become quite a connoisseur of glues over the years, and today, I thought I'd share what I've learned with those a little newer to the gluing game.

Hot glue

Probably the first glue I fell in love with (yes, we of the more geeky persuasion do fall in love with glues), hot glue first hit my radar at the young age of 7 or 8 thanks to my Girl Scout troop leaders. My fair share of finger burns later (I can't believe they trusted us with such a dangerous weapon in 3rd grade!), I was hooked. My mom purchased a hot glue gun for the family, and it has been in my arsenal ever since! Hot glue is useful when you want to glue two things together and have the glue set quickly. Because it is bulky and messy, however, it is not so great for gluing small pieces, or for use in places that will get a lot of scrutiny. It also fails to bond to the vast majority of materials, (including pretty much all non-porous ones), so any attachment you create with hot glue should be considered more or less temporary. I like to use hot glue for quick-and-dirty crafting—assembling Halloween costumes, for example. It's also great for when you need a big blobby lump of glue, to actually form an architectural element in your project.

Tacky Glue

Another crafter's standby, Aleene's Tacky Glue is tried and true for many applications. Like hot glue, it works well only on porous materials. Unlike hot glue, it takes a lot longer to set, but it can be applied with much greater precision. The "Tacky" in its name is its greatest strength—because it's a thicker glue, the items you are gluing are more likely to stay in position until the glue has set...and once it has, it forms a waterproof bond. I use Tacky glue mostly for projects involving fabric (it's not a fabric glue, but it works just as well).

Epoxy

Around the time I graduated from college, I learned, from a friend who built model airplanes, that epoxy was the glue of choice if you really wanted to glue two things together and have them stick. Especially if the two somethings were somethings like metal. At first, I was a little intimidated by epoxy, because you have to actually mix a hardener with the adhesive, but that actually makes epoxy an ideal glue to have around, because it will never dry up in the bottle! Epoxy's pros are that I've never found any two substances it couldn't bond, and it's tough and dries hard. Its cons are that it's a little inconvenient to use, in that you have to mix it in a separate container before you can use it, and if your mixture ratio is a little off, you will get glue that never hardens. I use epoxy for repairing metal jewelry, and as a replacement filler for molded plastic (it's currently holding the wheel of my office chair into its broken socket, and I've also used it as a replacement for the heel tip on oddly shaped shoe heels).

Gorilla Glue

When I worked at the grocery store, my colleagues swore by Gorilla Glue, which I had never heard of up until that point. When I finally did give it a try, I was underwhelmed, although it does have its uses. Gorilla glue's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness—as it cures, it foams up, expanding into any cracks it's been placed into. This is great when you need to fill gaps, but it's terrible for precision applications. My friend's mom once used it to repair a broken china figurine of mine—it came back with brownish foam protruding from all the cracks. I also find Gorilla glue to be less strong than some glues—do not use it in places that will be subject to a lot of torque. What is it good for? Large-area applications. I am currently using it around the house to hold pieces of wood to various other surfaces.

Spray Adhesive

You've seen spray adhesive come up numerous times in my other blog—I've used it to hold up my socks as well as to make various paper and fabric crafts. In all those projects, I was using an old can of spray adhesive that I'd had since graduate school, where we were advised to use the substance to affix our design samples to mat board for presentation. So I can thank my master's degree for my knowledge of the strengths of spray adhesive: it is excellent for attaching one large flat, flexible surface to another one. Spray adhesive forms a thin, even coat that is unlikely to bleed unless you really overdo it. Objects with spray adhesive on them can usually be repositioned a couple of times before the glue loses its tack. But a big downside of this glue is that it is messy! It's hard to keep the aerosolized glue from settling onto everything in the vicinity (my design school actually had a gluing room, which was sticky from floor to ceiling due to all the overspray!), so when my last can of spray adhesive ran out, I haven't been in a hurry to replace it. I think I'm going to settle for rubber cement in the future.

Rubber Cement

My first encounter with rubber cement was when my mom created her influential dining table Halloween costume. She used rubber cement to affix plastic utensils to her tablecloth, and I was amazed, because up until that time, my experience of glue was limited to Elmer's School Glue, which as we all know, does next to nothing. Rubber cement is pretty awesome because it retains a degree of stickiness even after it dries. It dries faster than white glue, and because it comes with a brush, it can be applied in a thinner layer. I prefer rubber cement for all my paper-attaching needs, and I'm experimenting with using it to hold my clothes up (temporary verdict: it doesn't work as well as spray adhesive, but it is easier to remove from your skin.)

E6000

I can thank Pinterest for introducing me to this second-newest addition to my Glue Gallery. All the crafters who post tutorials involving attaching rhinestones to anything always recommend using E6000 glue for the purpose. If you don't know much about rhinestones, generally they have a very smooth shiny back which can be quite hard to stick to anything. So, intrigued, I bought a tube of the stuff. It says right on the label that it's industrial-strength, which sounds pretty good to me. I haven't had a lot of opportunity to use E6000 for very many applications, but so far I've reattached a couple of shoe soles with it, and they haven't come apart yet.

5-Second-Fix

Normally, I'd be the last person to purchase something emblazoned with an "As Seen on TV" label, but recently I made an order that needed a few more items to qualify for free shipping, and the 5-Second-Fix was a pretty low price, so I threw a tube of the stuff into my virtual cart. So far, I can't say I regret my purchase. It seems to work the same way as dental fillers do (it might even be the same substance my orthodontist used to attach my braces!)—the glue remains liquid until you blast it with the attached UV light, and then it takes only 5 seconds to cure. For the limited amount of time I've had to try it, I have to say this glue is pretty awesome. Like hot glue, it dries fast, but unlike hot glue, it only dries when you're ready to dry it. Like epoxy, it bonds to a wide variety of materials and seems to form a strong, clear bond, but unlike epoxy, you don't have to pre-mix it and can use an infinitesimally small amount right out of the tube. My first and only use of this glue was to repair and reconstruct a couple of pairs of earrings, for which it worked like a charm—until the pair I repaired fell on the floor a week later and broke in the same spot... but I'll give the glue the benefit of a doubt—I might have just not applied it adequately. There are apparently lots of similar products on the market, so when it comes time to replace my 5SF, I might just look for a cheap generic.

Other options

I have other glues in my collection as well, but they are for really limited uses, but here's a quick rundown:

• Elmer's glue stick (good for almost nothing except temporary bonds of flat porous materials like paper and fabric)
• School glue (being water-soluble even when dry, it's only good for temporarily bonding things that you later want to wash out. I got it to use as a substitute for wax-resist in fabric dyeing, but haven't actually tried that yet)
• Temporary Fabric glue (When sewing, you can use it for basting instead of pins, which fall out, or a basting stitch, which my sewing machine doesn't have. Fabric glue is a little tackier than traditional white glue, so it attaches things more quickly and securely)

Acadia National Park chocolate chunk cookie

Most of my Giant Cookie reviews tend to be of cookies I acquired in far-off places. It is a truly special occurrence when someone else brings me a Giant Cookie they acquired in a far-off place! Such was the case when one of my friends went to Maine and returned with this Acadia National Park chocolate chunk cookie. I really hoped this would be the best Giant Cookie I ever tasted, since he went to such effort for me, but sadly, that was not to be.

In fact, it was one of the most disappointing Giant Cookies I'd ever eaten.

My first bite tasted weirdly sour, with a syrupy taste that seemed familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. It was still sweet, but not quite as sweet as you'd expect a cookie to be.

The texture was soft, which I usually like, but in this case, it was just too uniform. Even the chocolate chips felt doughy when I bit them. Usually a softer texture goes hand-in-hand with a little more durability (think the fable of the reeds and the oak), but this cookie began falling apart as soon as I took it out of the package!

The sour note to the taste, the soft yet crumbly texture...I began thinking that this cookie had all the hallmarks of a vegan cookie!

It is unusual for a cookie company to sell a vegan cookie without advertising it as such, but when I checked the ingredients list on the back, I found that it was, indeed, made with egg substitute (and actually manufactured by the Wildlife Cookie Company). That explains a lot.

You can't hold vegan cookies to the same standard as good-old egg-based ones, but to try to pass one off to an unwitting customer without making its "special" nature obvious, that's just asking for a disappointed customer!

In spite of being a gift, this cookie still had the price tag on the back, so I know that it cost 3.99$ for 114 grams. That makes it 3.5¢ a gram... or, a rip-off, even by vegan standards!

The Bottom Line

Taste:
Texture:
Price:

In spite of all my negative words about this cookie, I still appreciate the gift, and want to assure all my readers that if they were thinking of bringing me a new and exciting Giant Cookie, to not be discouraged by the possibility that I won't like it. Not liking things is what reviewers do best!

Equidigital

Today is the momentous occasion of my 33rd birthday. What makes it so momentous?* Well, all the digits in the number are identical! That only happens once every 11 years (or less, if you happen to live past 111), so it's definitely something to celebrate.

However, in searching for a word to describe such an occasion, I found that none exists! Really! None! In this world where we like to assign especial importance to some ages (e.g. 40) over others (e.g. 23), it seems astonishing that there's not a word to describe this special set of birthdays. Certainly, birthdays like 33, 55, and so on are palindromes (and many people make special recognition of palindrome birthdays), but so is 101, and that – though very impressive in many senses including its acknowledgment of sheer longevity – isn't a number where all the digits are the same. Although it has been suggested (probably by just one person trying to be funny) that we use the word "schnaplefest" for this type of birthday, that hardly seems to be common usage, and it still doesn't describe the number itself—just the celebration of the corresponding birthday.

So what is the word for a number in which all the digits are the same? As far as I can tell, in this vast and ever-growing language we call English, there is none! I am completely floored by this simple and fundamental gap in our collective vocabulary. But I have a solution. We'll make a new word!

And it's going to be "equidigital!"

In thinking about this neologism, I really got attached to the prefix "iso," which means "equal" and is Greek in origin. I originally decided on "isodigital," but "digit" is Latin-based, and my purism just wouldn't allow me to combine languages like that! Fortunately, "equ" is a Latin prefix, and means (unsurprisingly) "equal" as well! If you want to be really strict about it, most words with an "equ" prefix seem to refer to a sense of balance between two things rather than unlimited comparable identities, but in a strictly literal translation, "equidigital" means "having equal digits," and it has a better ring to it than other possibilities I considered. When you're making a new word, you have to make sure it's catchy and pronounceable, after all!

So, happy 3rd equidigital birthday to me! I can't think of any better present than a brand-new word!

*Another reason this year is momentous is that I'm exactly half the age of my dad! That only happens once in a lifetime!

How not to replace your dishwasher

Here is a fun and cautionary tale of my first experience in installing a home appliance! If you are looking for valuable tidbits of advice and not an epic narrative, scroll down to the bottom for my hard-won conclusions!

I knew from Day 1 that the dishwasher in my new house didn't work. Fortunately, my house came with a home warranty, and I had high hopes that I'd be able to use said warranty to get the dishwasher replaced. Supposedly, after you pay a 100$ deductible per service visit, this home warranty pays for the repair of mechanical failures of appliances and certain other things. However, it rarely pays for what you need it to pay for, and I caught on to that pretty quickly after reading just a few reviews of the warranty company online.

So, I got a little insurance for my warranty: I bought a used dishwasher on Craigslist for 40 dollars. My plan: I would call the warranty company and have someone come out to look at the dishwasher. If the warranty wouldn't cover its replacement (not just repair, because this dishwasher was so rickety and rusty and horrendous that I didn't want to use it even if it could be fixed), then I'd ask him to install the new dishwasher for me.

Sadly, that didn't work out. He ran the old dishwasher, explained that the machine was working but not draining, that fixing the drain hose would not be covered by the warranty, and that he couldn't install the other dishwasher OR disconnect the old one unless I wanted to pay a couple hundred dollars for the service. I didn't. I sent him on his way, and resigned myself to learning how to install a dishwasher.

One of my friends, who had never installed a dishwasher either, but was inexplicably interested in the "learning opportunity," offered to help. So together, armed with an arsenal of YouTube videos and step-by-step internet articles, we began. For those who are as clueless about dishwashers as I was before I began this, the installation of a dishwasher is a theoretically simple task. It involves connecting 3 wires, one hot water supply hose, and one wastewater drain hose. We already had the supply hose and the drain hose from the previous dishwasher, so all we really needed to do was disconnect them from the old dishwasher and reconnect them to the new one. My friend was confident that we were going to be able to do it. I was equally confident that everything was going to go wrong. I'll let you decide who was more right.

Installation attempt 1

We had all the tools needed for a proper installation, except for electrically. Since I didn't have a circuit tester, we just had to trust that I'd actually found the right breaker down at the circuit box. My friend had lots of fun pretending to be electrocuted when he went to disconnect the old wiring. Ha ha. 

When we got the old dishwasher disconnected and went to put the new one in its place, we ran into some problems, some of which just involved annoying amounts of extra labor. This is going to be a long story, so I'll spare you all the agonizing details, but the most serious problem was that the drain hose that we had was too big for the drain outlet stub on the new dishwasher. There was a second, capped stub that was a better size, but we didn't know what to do with the smaller one of we opened that one. We tried a series of solutions including cannibalizing a bit of hose from part of the old dishwasher, which we thought could be used as an adapter. Unfortunately, all it did was come apart the moment we put the new dishwasher back into its space. I can't even remember all the things we tried to make this too-small stub fit the too-big hose, but I do know that none of them worked, and after a couple of hours monkeying away, we gave up.

At this point, I turned the water to the sink back on and noticed the flow had decreased dramatically, as if my house were deliberately rubbing salt in my wounds. Fortunately the flow spontaneously returned to almost normal after a few hours.

Installation attempt 2

The next week, I went to a plumbing supply store and bought two parts, at a cost of 18 dollars, to try and solve the problem. They didn't. But they did cause me to close my water shutoff valves a second time, and this time, the water never started flowing again! I waited a day and then reluctantly called the warranty company to get me a plumber.

Installation attempt 3

Surprise! The warranty didn't cover the cost of fixing the sink, but the plumber was nice enough to take some time to do it as an independent contractor. He even tried to help me with the dishwasher. He didn't have any trouble connecting the too-large drain hose (he just kept clamping it until it was snug—Occam's Razor in action!) but when we ran the dishwasher, we found it was leaking from someplace other than either of the drain outlets. Fail! Again! He advised me to just get a new dishwasher, because even if we could find the source of the leak, this one was old as the hills and probably not long for this world. 

So let's take a step back and tally what this dishwasher issue had cost me so far: 40 for the dishwasher, 18 for the useless parts, and innumerable hours (OK, probably around 4) that we'll never get back! Also 220 dollars for the plumbing work that wouldn't have been necessary if I hadn't been constantly fiddling with the shutoff valves while failing to install the dishwasher. We're up to 278 dollars. 

Installation attempt 4

Having thrown away 278 dollars, I was especially resistant to buying a full-price dishwasher and bringing my grand total to around 700 dollars, so I started shopping around for used dishwashers again, this time at actual stores that have a return policy. I found Community Forklift, which is a local store selling reused construction materials and appliances. They were having a 30-percent-off sale, so I booked it over there and found a large selection of dishwashers of various ages! One of them looked newish, came with both a supply hose and a drain hose, and was only 25 dollars, so I bought it for 18 dollars (after discount) and prepared myself for another round. P.S. I'm totally sold on shopping at Community Forklift for all my future home-improvement needs.

This time, having a new drain hose that came with the second new dishwasher, I knew I had to disconnect the old drain entirely. I had learned in the research phase of this project that there's a plug inside the garbage disposal, where the dishwasher drain connects, and it has to be removed before hooking up a dishwasher. Part of me suspected that it hadn't been, but I'd ignored the disposal end of things during my previous attempts because I felt like the disposal was too far back in the sink and would be hard to access. But I knew I couldn't ignore it any more. And, surprise! It wasn't actually hard to access at all. And, surprise again! The disposal plug was indeed still intact, meaning that we could have installed brand new dishwashers until kingdom come and they never would have drained. Sigh.

I read a couple of tutorials on how to remove the dishwasher plug from a disposal that was already installed, and, feeling confident that I could do it, followed the instructions. But then, once the plug had been knocked into the body of the disposal, I couldn't find it! I reached around with my hand, digging into the slime of disposed items past, and there was no plug. No bits of plug. Nothing. But when I ran the disposal, I could hear it grinding raucously like it was about to explode! Thinking that maybe the plug had somehow gotten into the motor of the disposal, I removed the unit entirely with the help of still more tutorials. I shook it upside-down. Nothing. I looked inside. Nothing. I looked inside with a flashlight. Nothing. I turned the rubber drain cover completely inside out, looked inside with a flashlight again, and finally found the little plastic piece of drain plug trapped between a blade and the wall of the disposal. Once I knew where it was, it was simple to get out—I definitely hadn't needed to remove the entire mechanism.

By this time, my partner in appliance installation had arrived for our 3rd joint attempt, so he helped me put the disposal back, and we set out to install the dishwasher.

Annoyingly, the supply hose that had come with the dishwasher was the wrong size for our plumbing, so we had to painstakingly remove the 90-degree fitting (that's a thing in dishwashers) from the second dishwasher, where we'd haphazardly installed it after removing it from the first dishwasher, and jam it into place on the third dishwasher. Of course it took several attempts to get that right. Fortunately we were old pros at hooking up the drain line by this time, so that part was a piece of cake. Then it was finally time to run the dishwasher. And it worked! It didn't leak! It drained! It seemed perfect! Except for one little thing. 

It wasn't secured to the countertop, and consequently fell out of its cubby whenever the door was opened too vigorously. And of course, it was a tad too tall, so when it was jammed into place, the door wouldn't shut any more. To make it fit, I decided to shave away some of the wood under the countertop. Since the dishwasher was already taking up most of the work space in that area, and there was no way I was going to unhook it another time, I had to find a way to do some extreme carpentry in a very small space. I ended up drilling a couple dozen holes into the wood, creating a line of perforations which weakened it to the point where my boyfriend could splinter it off using brute force and a screwdriver. It was messy. It was smelly (the wood burned when I drilled it). It took about an hour.

A closeup of our artistry

 And after all that work, I found that even though the dishwasher had some clearance under the counter now, the door still wouldn't shut when the unit was actually screwed into place! Forced to explore alternative solutions, I then discovered that the latch could be bent into a position that allowed the door to pass smoothly. Meaning I had just wasted half the morning mutilating my counter for no reason. 

The fruit of 3 weeks of labor

But after that, we were finally, well and truly, finished with the dishwasher. It works!

And I've learned a valuable lesson: Never try to install a dishwasher without professional help.

Haha, just kidding. I'd do it again...if someone held a gun to my head...but I'm sure it would be a lot easier the 5th time around, since I actually did learn some valuable lessons. Here they are.

Conclusions

1. If you're going to install a dishwasher for the first time, try to make it a new one that comes with a connection kit. When you don't know what you're doing, minor incompatibilities in parts can turn into total stumpers. And plus, if you are installing a new dishwasher, you can get phone support from the manufacturer.

2. If you are going to buy a used dishwasher, at least take the time to ask the seller some questions. Where's the drain hose? What size nut is on the water supply hose? What's this thing do? Sure, it can feel awkward to look like an idiot, but the awkwardness will be over soon, and you'll be much better prepared for the actual installation, which is the real hard part.

3. Don't assume something won't work without actually trying it. We never bothered to try to connect the drain hose to the small stub because I just assumed it would leak. But if we'd only tried that, the most obvious solution, from the beginning, we could have potentially saved ourselves hours of work and damage caused by repeatedly removing and replacing parts.

4. Likewise, don't assume something does work without testing it. If I hadn't been so afraid to take the drain hose off the garbage disposal right from the outset, I might have actually gotten the very first dishwasher to drain without having to go through Four Impossible Installation Attempts.

5. And lastly, if you're doing this installation in an old house, don't overtighten your water shutoff valves! Dealing with a little trickle of water during installation is preferable to having to replace your shutoff valves and faucet because you broke them.

House-poor

When I originally purchased my house, I had every intention of reaching a point where I could say everything was paid for, and then I would triumphantly share the hilariously large bottom line here on my blog. I thought that point would be as soon as I had settled in, cleaned up the mold in the basement and attic, fixed the broken dishwasher, cut an egress window in the basement bedroom; and I was living happily and comfortably with renters paying most of my mortgage for me—surely within the first month of owning the place.

I have come to realize that ... ha ha ha ... excuse, me, I can't finish my sentence because I can't stop laughing. If I thought I was ever going to be done fixing up this house, I was oh, so very wrong! Before I moved in, I knew there were a couple of flaws that I'd need to repair, but after I moved in, everything that I thought had been working suddenly stopped! The washer, the dryer, the garbage disposal—all were nonfunctional! A technician from the gas company came in to turn on the gas, deemed the furnace and the water heater to be safety hazards, and turned them both off! My house was a beautiful skin with no muscles inside! I spent a couple days crying on the floor, then I slowly got around to getting things fixed.

I realize I'm never going to be able to say I'm done paying, but I did promise that I'd dedicate an entire post to the financial side of my home purchase, so here goes, at least a fairly accurate tally of what I've spent so far!

The housing search alone was a significant drain on my finances. I paid for 1.5 home inspections, one appraisal, and one pest inspection on houses that I didn't even buy, which amounted to 1,290$ just thrown to the wind!

But that's peanuts compared to what I paid to actually buy this house. A glance at the final page of my closing documents reveals that the total amount spent at settlement was 292,252.96$. Some of that includes pre-paid homeowner's insurance and taxes, but most of it's the cost of the house itself (278,000) and fees. Of course, 15,000 of that sum is covered by the CPCUP home-ownership loan, which I never need to pay back, as long as I live in the house for 10 years.

I have always kept my money distributed in accounts at several banks—different banks offer different benefits, and it's nice to be able to do my banking wherever I happen to be. This has never caused a problem for me before, but it really threw a kink into my home purchase. In order make my down payment, I had to use money from 3 banks, each of which charged a different wire transfer fee or withdrawal fee. Although I neglected to tally the exact amounts, these fees cost me around 100 dollars in total. If I'd pulled all of my money from one bank, I probably could have gotten that cost down to just 20.

When calculating how much money I'd need to buy a house, I knew I had the cash for a sizable down payment, and thanks to the CPCUP loan, I'd even have quite a bit left over after the closing. What I neglected to consider was that, when your money is spread among three banks, two of which have minimum balance requirements of 5,000$ each, the actual amount of money you're free to spend is a lot less. By the time I'd finished paying the mold remediators (3,501.40$), I was scraping the bottom of my financial barrel. I have become one of those people who has to check their bank account before they buy anything—and that's a strange thing to be when 8 months ago, I could foot the bill for a 6,000$ vacation without batting an eyelash.

I've thought about closing one of my accounts or finding a different one with a lower minimum balance, but I realize that having 10,000 dollars that you're unwilling to spend (lest you incur an account maintenance fee!) is probably a good idea, so I think this annoyance might have been a blessing in disguise.

Annoyances—that's how I classify most of the major financial blows in the multiple thousands of dollars. They were pretty much expected, so they don't bother me too much. But now that I'm a homeowner, it's the ongoing nickel-and-diming (or the 21st century equivalent, which is more like twenty-dollaring and fifty-dollaring) that's really getting to me.

Within the first couple of weeks of living in the house, I had shelled out 300 dollars to buy missing home essentials (like fire extinguishers) and pay for minor service visits. This probably doesn't seem like much to most readers, but to me, it felt like being stabbed to death with tiny needles when it was spread out over 8 annoyingly frequent transactions. I'm trying to recoup my savings, not burn the rest of them on stupid things like a disconnected dryer!

On the plus side, though, I feel like I was blessed with a fortuitous influx of free things! When I moved in, I hardly had any furniture, and I expected that it would be a major struggle to get some. I was also missing several little things, like shower racks for the bathroom, waste baskets, and the like. However, free furniture basically fell into our laps, and I'm pleased to announce that most of the things I thought I'd have to buy, we have acquired at no cost. I even found an antique ladder in the attic that I was able to sell for 40 dollars, plus a dozen DirecTV signal splitters in the shed, which are going for a pretty penny on eBay, so I'm working my way to a net positive. Sort of. If you don't believe me, see the tally sheet below. I estimate I'll get back in the black shortly before I die of old age.

Item	Cost	Notes
3 Inspections	1380.00	590 + 590 + 200
Two appraisals	1000.00	500 + 500
Wire Transfer fees	100.00
Cash to close	292,252.96
Mold remediation	3,501.40
Egress window	0	Not done yet
Lock for shed	8.00
Fire extinguisher	16.40	Two aerosol canisters
Dehumidifier	25.00	Used, from Craigslist
Miter saw	10.00	May not be usable
Remove 2 wasp nests	0	Ha! We got those wasps ourselves with a hose!
Extension Ladder	25.00	Used, from Craigslist
Fix disposal*	100.00
Dishwasher*	76.00	40 for a dishwasher, 18 for parts, 18 for another dishwasher
Fix sink*	220.00	* The disposal, dishwasher, and sink together make a story that is worthy of an entire blog post on its own. Stay tuned!
Fix furnace	0	Not done yet
Fix dryer	75.00	“Turn on gas supply to dryer” is more accurate
Sofa	0
4 lamps	0
shower caddy	0
Garbage can	0
Coffee table	0
Bookcase	0
Second wardrobe	0
Attic ladder	-40.00
DirecTV splitters	-26.33
	298,723.43

Valerie's Adventures in Cooking: Sweet Potato Kale Gratin

While visiting a farmer's market over 4th of July weekend, I ran across a vendor who was selling damaged produce at 50% off. Never one to resist a good bargain, I stocked up on all the vegetables that actually meet my dietary restrictions, one of which was a lone sweet potato.

Today, only 3½ weeks after purchasing the sweet potato, I got around to actually cooking it. Normally with a sweet potato, I'd slice it up, dip it in oil, and bake it, in the hopes that it would turn into sweet potato fries (usually it turns into sweet potato mush with crispy edges, but a girl can dream), but I have a bag of heat-and-serve sweet potato fries in the freezer, and I have confidence that those would taste better than any fries I could ever whip up myself, so it was time to try a new recipe: Sweet Potato & Kale Gratin.* Who's ready for an Adventure in Cooking!?

Sweet Potato & Kale Gratin (VAiC Style!)

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs. sweet potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced (Well, you already have a problem, because your lone sweet potato is only 6 ounces. Decide to just make a third of the recipe and round out that first pound with a regular potato.)
• 1 large bunch (about 1 lb.) kale, tough stems removed and leaves torn into bite-sized pieces (A third of a bunch = well, just about all the kale you have—how convenient!)
• 1 c. shredded Parmesan cheese (Lacking parmesan cheese, think back to another similar recipe you found that used white cheddar. You don't have that either, but you do have yellow cheddar, which is basically the same, right? Right! One third of that is...ah...we'll figure that out later!)
• 1 pint heavy whipping cream (Who keeps whipping cream in their house!? Plan on using a single-serving tub of yogurt instead, until you open it up and realize it's actually sweetened vanilla yogurt. Not going to fly. Instead, get out the last packet of dried milk in your pantry. It will have to do, even though the creator of the recipe is quite adamant that you only use real whipping cream).
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg (Nutmeg sounds gross in a gratin. Leave that out.)
• 2 tbsp. Organic Valley salted butter, cut into small pieces, plus more to grease baking dish

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Steam kale for about 3 minutes, or until wilted, in a large steamer basket set over boiling water. Nonsense! Dump that kale in a 2-qt casserole dish, pour some water on top, and microwave for 2 minutes! You just saved a minute! Pat yourself on the back. Squeeze out excess water.
3. Place half of the potatoes in a greased 9 x 13 baking dish. Since you have drastically reduced this recipe, 9x13 is going to be far too much. You can do it in that same casserole dish you heated the kale in. You just saved yourself from washing a dish! Pat yourself on the back.
4. Top potatoes with kale, then top kale with half of the cheese. Since you haven't actually measured out the cheese, just grab handfuls of it and sprinkle it on until it looks nice. Misread the previous instruction and top the potatoes with only half the kale. Place remaining potatoes in dish and sprinkle with the rest of the cheese (another generous handful). Top the whole pile with the other half of the kale.
5. To make the milk substitute for whipping cream, pour most of the packet of powdered milk in a bowl (no need to be precise here; you never are) and dump a little water on top. Whisk together until it looks approximately like the consistency of whipping cream. Taste-test. Wow! It's super-sweet! You didn't remember that milk was so sugary!
6. Whisk together the "whipping cream", extra salt to counteract the sweetness in the milk, extra pepper to do the same, and pour over casserole. 
7. Dot with butter. By dot, I mean haphazardly cut a few chunks out of a lump of margarine that's been sitting in your fridge and wipe them clumsily on the kale, wishing they would be a little less attached to the knife. While you're wishing, wish you could use all of the margarine because you hate having partially eaten sticks of shortening lying around, but refrain because your cheese choices have already raised the heart attack quotient of this dish by at least 4 points.
8. Cover baking dish with aluminum foil (haha! this is where using the casserole dish really pays off! You can just cover with the lid, and save a big old sheet of foil! Pat yourself on the back.)
9. Decide that since your casserole has turned out pretty deep, you might want to cook longer and at a lower temperature. Reduce oven to 350 degrees.
10. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove casserole lid and bake for 25 minutes more, or until potatoes are tender and cheese is golden brown. Allow to sit 15 minutes before serving, preferably while taking your obligatory photos.

 

The verdict:

Surprisingly good for an Adventure in Cooking! The potatoes turned out mostly tender, the watery milk mixture mostly evaporated away to an ideal thickness, the sweetness of the milk mostly wasn't noticeable, and the kale that I accidentally placed on top didn't burn but turned nice and crispy and delicious. In fact, my least favorite thing about the product of this Adventure was the one thing that was by design from the beginning: I wasn't really crazy about the sweetness of the sweet potato paired with the saltiness of everything else. It's a good thing I had to use a regular potato, because that enabled me to have at least a few bites that weren't sweet.

*The original recipe was found on the Oh My Veggies blog.

Racerback ≠ razorback

Usually I wait until I have several peeves all bottled up inside me before letting loose with a critical blog post on how not to use the English language.

But this time, the need is dire, and the critical post is coming right now, with only one case on the docket: razorback vs. racerback.

Racerback is a common term used to describe the backside of a certain style of tank top: to wit, one that is basically open around the shoulderblades, with just a thin strip of fabric running up the spine. I hear that this style of tank top (or swimsuit) got its name from competitive swimmers (i.e. "racers") who need to have a full range of motion for their scapulae.

The above pictures are racerback tops. Do you know what they are not? Razorback tops. 

I see the word razorback being thrown around all over the internet to describe this style of tank, from eBay to any number of fashion blogs. But they are all wrong. A razorback is a type of hog. It is not a type of shirt.

Please stop using it that way, and let the pigs keep their title!

Welcome to my house

Most of those who read this blog will be invited to see its interior at some point. But the best time to see a house is right after its occupants have moved in and everything is willy-nilly, right? I wouldn't want you to miss out on that experience, so let's waste no time in going on a virtual tour.

Starting with the light-filled, maple-floored living room. 

 

 

The living room is the heart of any home, so we put extra effort into making it a warm and welcoming space. To create a harmonious atmosphere, we outfitted the (free! Thanks, Craigslist!) couches with mismatched slipcovers. The brown one is an especially nice touch, contrasting beautifully with the plethora of white and tan dog fur that has already made its home there. In the background, you can observe a traditional Chinese watercolor, partially obscured by an upside-down wardrobe. This piece of modern art symbolizes the struggle that faces so many individuals today—having too many clothes and not enough closet space.

As you look closer, you'll see we have adorned our furniture with a variety of useful items, ranging from a blender (always a good thing to have in a living room) to a box of home fixtures and fixatives, which will surely be put to use sometime within this century. 

One of the most useful things a home can have is a handyman, and you can see ours really showing off his skills on the couch. Notice the positioning of his feet. He has carefully arranged himself so as to avoid the second-most useful things a home can have: a dog. This dog (look closely, he's camouflaged by partially burying himself in the cushions) might look peaceful and asleep, but under that calm exterior, he is hard at work, busy shedding as much fur as possible over the beautifully contrasting slipcover we already mentioned.

 

 

Now on to the bedroom. Unonpened boxes dominate the decor here, but a keen eye may be able to spot the bed, which still lacks a frame.

Next to the bedroom is the closet/dressing/activities room, which has been designated as the place where everything other than sleeping shall occur. Contrasted with the spartan bedroom, it may look cluttered and chaotic, but believe me, it has a place for everything, and everything's in its place. Except for that second wardrobe in the living room. Where ever are we going to cram that?

On to the bathroom. This one features the spray bottle of ammonia that I was using to clean the reusable furnace filter. Sadly, years of cooking grease seemed to have coated that as well, so eventually I gave it up for lost, its only legacy being the clods of gunk that ended up adhering to the walls of the bathtub.

 

 

Next we visit the guest room, which is the tidyest and most Zen-like room in the house. Naturally, it goes unused as we can't have guests while the rest of the house is in such chaos, but sometimes we like to come in here just to enjoy a space that isn't cluttered with detritus and dogs.

 

 

The kitchen is one of the features of the house that always impresses visitors, as it was recently remodeled with a real tile floor, warm honey cabinets, and a cute backsplash over the sink. You can see that it has black granite countertops, which are what house-flippers put into a house when they want it to look posh. When I was house-shopping, I learned to associate black countertops with a property that was all show and no substance. Consequently, every time I look at my countertops, I have flashbacks to all the times I wanted to buy a house but it had been superficially altered to fetch an excessive price...oh, wait, that was this house too. These countertops are a constant reminder of how I bought in to the cosmetic housing sham. How could I have sold out my principles for a tiled kitchen and a polished wood floor!? Why, oh, why, didn't I place more value on the age of the appliances? Whyyy —Oh, wait, we're on a tour. So, yes, looking at this cute-as-a-button kitchen, you might notice the dishwasher whose front panel is removed, because I can't for the life of me figure out how to hook it up. I went out and spent my hard-earned cash to replace the travesty that was the original dishwasher, and still can't get the new one to function! Why, oh, wh—oh, right. Tour.

Let's look at the basement, shall we? As I mentioned in my last post, it has the distinction of being finished. But not in the sense of actually being finished, since it has become the dumping ground for all the furniture we don't know what to do with. 

See that open door? That leads into the room we have designated the storage room, where still more chaos reigns. 

 

 

At least we got a bookshelf in there to help the room get organized—No thanks to the unusually low ceilings, which forced us to return the first free bookshelf we got back to the curb.

The basement also has this blurry room, which will eventually be less blurry and will replace the guest room we have upstairs.

 

 

An unremarkable second bathroom, except to the spiders and cave crickets, which seem to think it's the best room in the whole house! Thank goodness there aren't any of them in this picture, or I'd be squirming in disgust rather than writing this pleasant description.

The basement also lures you in with a second kitchen. Don't be fooled by the shiny black oven—this kitchen is actually unusable as a kitchen because the oven's console is burned out, and we will eventually be hauling it to the trash without replacing it. But in the meantime, it makes a handy shelf for storing laundry products...

 

 

Because the laundry room is configured so that you can't fit any shelving into it, and your only storage is a couple of milk crates hung from the walls. It also has no lighting, which is why there is a table lamp on top of the dryer.

I've heard from certain musicals that the very beginning is a very good place to start, but I have turned that rule on its head by making the first thing you see in real life into the last thing that you see on this tour. (It's cause I wanted to save the best for last...don't quit now!)  

 

 

On the home's exterior, you can observe such marvelous features as the white add-on mud room, the bay window, the porch swing that came free with the house, and, what's that shadowy shape off to the left in the foreground? Let's take a closer look!

 

 

It's... a peach tree! Or maybe an apricot tree...or, in any case, some kind of fruit tree. Settling into this house has been a series of unpleasant surprises, but this arboreal beauty is probably the nicest thing home ownership has thrown at me. A free supply of future fruit? Don't mind if I do!

Home Making

I purchased my house on June 10, and a month and some change later, I am still sleeping on the floor, and my basement looks like a war zone. I didn't really think it would take this long to get settled in, but I guess I've really only been actually living here for a total of 15 days. 

Instead of actually getting down to business and tackling one of the 22 items on my ever-growing House To-Do list, I thought I'd take this time to share some insights and stories!

Let's begin with the biggest irony of my whole house-buying saga. One of my dreams has always been to eventually live on my own (or with my significant other) without the need for roommates or renters. In all my 10 years of being an adult, this has never happened (except for very brief periods during which I was searching for roommates or renters), but I always imagined that buying a house would enable me to achieve that dream. Originally I picked this house (and overpaid on it) because it had a finished basement with a separate kitchen. I planned to rent out the basement until I had saved enough money to live completely alone. But with everything being broken and way more expensive than I ever imagined, now I'm forced to live in it alone until I have spent enough money to fix all the things that are preventing me from renting it out.

People ask me when I'm going to have a housewarming party, and my answer is: Haha, good one! Maybe when I stop feeling this crushing sense of futility whenever I walk through the door! That should be sometime within the next 10 years!

There is a lot to be done. A lot. It's overwhelming. It's disheartening. It provokes me to wonder if buying a house was the worst decision I ever made. But there are a few things about it that feel good—like unsubscribing from all my housing searches. I had housing searches saved just about everywhere you can imagine: 21 altogether, on 6 different websites. I have been getting a big kick out of deleting all of them, one by one. Take that, Zillow! I don't need you any more!

I also really enjoyed placing my first online order to be shipped to my new address! Haha! Using only one address line and no apartment number!? My life hasn't been this easy since September of 2015! 

Speaking of easy, let's talk about the things that make even the worst tasks a piece of cake!

Remember when I proclaimed my love for degreaser a few years ago? Well, when I moved into my new house, I found most of the kitchen surfaces absolutely caked with grease from what was apparently decades of constant frying (my theory is supported by the two – two! – discarded woks I found while cleaning various areas of the property). My beloved citrus degreaser didn't do anything to lift the mess. But then a coworker tipped me in to using ammonia. I already have ammonia (I use it for laundry odors when the fabric can't be bleached), so I gave it a shot. Wow, the grease just vanished without a trace! With ammonia by my side, I nearly suffocated learned that my bronze cabinet handles were actually pewter. Amazing! I don't think I'll ever need to purchase degreaser again!

While the best degreasing product was the least of many things I was wrong about regarding homes and homebuying (and I'm sure I'll be happy to tell you all about them in agonizing detail in future posts), one thing that I was right about, I predicted around this time last year: that I would either live on a street that I used to live on, or live in a house that looked just like a house I used to live in. As a matter of fact, I accomplished both. The house that I bought has the same floorplan as the house that I lived in on 53rd Ave (more or less—that was only for 6 months in 2007, so the details are a little hazy), and it's also on 53rd Ave! It's good to know that I can be right about the things that really matter.

Ode to a toaster oven

My pride and joy, respectively

If there was ever an underrated kitchen appliance, the toaster oven is it.

People have toasters, and people have ovens, but not many people (at least by my perception) have toaster ovens.

I calculate this by the health of the toaster oven resale market. My toaster ovens are always breaking, and I routinely get like-new replacements from Freecycle or the thrift store at prices ranging from zero to eight dollars. Apparently lots of people have toaster ovens they never use, and the secondhand ovens are not in very high demand.

I, however, adore a good toaster oven. So much more versatile than a regular toaster (try cooking your mozzarella sticks in one of those pop-up contraptions!) and so much easier to use than a regular oven (say goodbye to the 10-minute pre-heat!), the toaster oven is like a godsend for someone who consumes lots of leftovers and hates it when they're soggy. Since I've been head of my own household (about 2010), I've gone through around three of them. I even donated one to my office because the microwave just wasn't meeting my standards. Now that I've moved into a home with rentable space, I acquired another one to keep downstairs for guests (in some alternate future where the basement is clean and livable).

I might be the world's foremost toaster oven evangelist! If you are one of the unenlightened who have not yet experienced the joys of owning their own multi-purpose toasting device, come join me in my always-crispy bliss! I can probably even get you a free unit on Craigslist.

Less is More: On having short hair

In December, I lopped off my long, luscious locks in favor of a layered bob.

How I looked before my last major cut

How I looked shortly after it.

Now this is certainly not the first time I've gone for a dramatic chop—it's actually the fifth, which means I've been following an extended grow-cut cycle for pretty much my entire life, and I've got it down to a science. But strangers don't know that, which might explain why everyone in the salon watched in shock and awe as my lengthy tendrils hit the floor, and the stylist asked me if I was sure what I was doing. And this was actually the shortest my hair has ever been before a major cut! I remember the last time I did this, I also got major backlash from those who preferred my hair long.

People seem to take great stock in long hair, as though its loss is an affront not just to its owner but to the entire world. As though you're a traitor to womanhood if you don't have a waterfall of keratin cascading down your shoulders at all times.

There seems to be a downright stigma against short hair. Sure, there is something to be said about the labor of love that is long hair. A person who spends hours a week caring for her tresses is a person who cares about her appearance. A person whose hairstyle is by nature low-maintenance could be interpreted to be a person who's just lazy.

But the ironic thing is that I think I look prettier with short hair. It has natural body and bounce, which it lacks when I wear it long. With my short hair, I wash it (don't even bother to use conditioner), towel it dry, brush it, and then ignore it while it air dries. Periodically I might fluff it with my fingers if I think about it. I spend all of five minutes a day on my short hair, but it generates compliments like it was created by an entire team of stylists for a Vogue photo shoot! I never heard a peep about my hair back when I was blow-drying it for 30 minutes a day. No one ever had anything nice to say about the elaborate updos that are the one thing I miss about having long hair. There was a time in my life when ridiculously long hair was a source of immense personal pride. But those days are long past, and short hair apparently suits me.

How my hair basically looks now.

Once the dust settles from my big move and I'm ready to focus on my style again, I plan to try out an even shorter hairdo. And then after that ... ? Will I ever grow my hair out again? Do I have anything to gain by dangling a foot or more of easily-tangled tresses from my cranium? Would I be better off sticking with the style that not only requires almost no work to maintain, but also seems to meet with the most critical acclaim?

My last dramatic chop was my fifth, but could it be my last? [Insert stirring music here.] Only time will tell.