Musings of a Dog Mom

I've come a long way since I reluctantly made room in my life and home for someone else's cute but annoying canine companion.

Since then, I've cared for one dog through his final days, raised another dog from puppyhood, and dog-sat so many friends' furry friends that I've lost count. I've written about them so much that I gave them a dedicated tag in my blog, held a dog-themed housewarming party, and finally admitted that I like my dogs more than I dislike them. Although the only pet I ever really wanted was a cat, it has become clear over the years that I'm proud of my role as accidental "dog mom."

Dog-mom-hood is not for the faint of heart. Dog-mom-hood means getting way too comfortable with every bodily function you could ever imagine, and accustoming yourself to the unflinching cleanup of the results of every one of those bodily functions, when they inevitably get performed in an inappropriate place such as your lap or pillow.

Dog-mom-hood means adopting a vocabulary that sometimes consists of nothing more than "Sit," "Stay calm," "Good boy," "Look at me," "Stay calm," "No jumping," "Good boy," over and over again until your world has narrowed to just you and the dog-child you are desperately trying to coax some manners into. When you leave home with your dog-child, you can expect your only conversation with other humans to consist of apologetic one-liners such as "I'm trying to teach him to meet other dogs without freaking out!"

Dog-mom-hood is waking up at the crack of dawn to the sound of your dog chewing on a piece of furniture, and dragging yourself out of bed so you can take him to the park to play fetch before work starts, and falling asleep before 10 every night because you're so exhausted from your weirdly early morning (dog-mom-hood is very hard on those of us who need 9 uninterrupted hours of sleep every night!).

Being a dog mom is a lot of work, and sometimes the only reward is a faceful of stanky dog tongue that you'd probably be happier without! But sometimes, your consolation prize is a holiday dedicated just to you.

Today, apparently, is both Day of the Dog at Congressional Cemetery, and National Dog Mom's Day, and I'm celebrating by taking my dog on a long walk through the city and having a picnic with other dog-loving women, because there's no better way to shun traditional motherhood than by making a huge deal out of your lesser – but much cuter and furrier – responsibilities. Dog moms unite!

Being a dog mom is quite a task and quite an achievement, but you haven't truly become a dog mom until you've become a single dog mom—when all the work is doubled. Such an honor was bestowed upon me back in early March, when my boyfriend of nearly six years ended our relationship, but told me magnanimously, "You can keep a dog."

I had two dogs to choose from, one of which was the aforementioned puppy we raised together, and one of which was Bilbo Baggins, who has never before been mentioned in this blog! We acquired Bilbo thirdhand back in August when he was around 5 months old, (and one of these days, I'll tell you more about that story and the dog himself, because he's the one I kept!).

Since my breakup, with no one else to lavish my love upon (cue the sad music!), I've devoted myself whole-heartedly to the care and maintenance of my sole companion. I have clocked countless hours training him, exercising him, policing his behavior, letting him interrupt my yoga sessions, walking him aimlessly around the neighborhood just to feel less like a homebound loser, and of course grooming him. Oh, the grooming! I could groom him all day and all night, and he'd still look scruffy. It's totally pointless, but I do it anyway, because he is my sole companion! I perform all these many duties without complaint (in fact, with some degree of enjoyment), and feel guilty when I can't be performing them—for example, when I need to be out doing normal single-woman activities, such as finding Bilbo a new suitable dog dad.

Being a dog mom makes dating so much harder! But it looks like there is hope for me. As I was researching National Dog Mom's Day, I found out that our glorious festival of self-congratulation was actually invented by Dig, "the dog person's dating app." I'd never heard of it before, but it sounds just about right for a newly single dog mom. Whenever I'm ready to dip my claws into the heretofore uncharted waters of dating by app, guess which one I'll download first!

Adventures in Cooking: Oyster mushroom tacos

You know what they say: Behind every great taco is a great story, and behind every great story is a great mycelium. Here is the story of my mycelium.

One day recently, a friend called me from a farmer's market, and asked me if I wanted to grow my own mushrooms. Sure, I said. I couldn't see why not.

An hour or so later, said friend showed up at my house with a large plastic bag filled with an unsightly gray-and-white mass. It did not look appetizing, but it was, apparently, the substrate upon which I was destined to grow my own oyster mushrooms. It did not come with instructions. I asked my friend how it was supposed to work, and he said something about putting the bag in a humid spot like the bathroom. That was all he had.

I looked online for further information, and eventually discovered a couple of tutorials that featured mushroom bags similar to my own. The mass inside, supposedly a mixture of sawdust and mushroom spores, was supposed to be a mycelium (immature fungal colony) which would sprout when exposed to the the right conditions—namely a lot of humidity and just a little bit of indirect sunlight. I was supposed to cut a few slits in the bag, place it somewhere shady, and mist with water twice a day.

The home I chose for my mycelium was on top of a wardrobe. About a week of spritzing later, the first fruiting bodies sprouted from one of the slits. I was excited. Over the next few days, my oyster mushrooms grew in size until they could be ignored no longer, until I harvested them with great pride.

Then my excitement promptly turned to anxiety. How on earth was someone who never cooks supposed to eat these mushrooms?

As usual, the Internet was my saving grace. I found a couple of oyster mushroom recipes, and among them, one for oyster mushroom tacos. Tacos would be the perfect food, since I have lots of taco ingredients stockpiled over the course of several visits to Mexican restaurants!

Once I had skimmed over the recipe and gotten the gist of what comprises a mushroom taco, I decided to wing it—that's how Adventures in Cooking are born! So without further ado, let's see the recipe:

Mushroom Tacos Taco, Rube Goldberg style!

Prep time: a few months + 1 week + 15 minutes + 1 night + 5 minutes

Servings: four one

Ingredients:

• Oyster mushroom mycelium
• Taco seasoning...or any old bunch of miscellaneous spices
• Olive oil
• Flour tortillas
• Maybe some nutritional yeast, why not?
• Cheese? Sure.
• Something green and leafy to put on top of the tacos
• Sour cream would be nice, but if you don't have it, NBD.
• Guacamole

Steps:

1. Visit some Mexican restaurants and acquire the following: a huge collection of tortillas because your boyfriend always orders fajitas but doesn't eat carbs; guacamole; some of those black beans that always come as a side dish but that no one ever eats except the vegetarian (you). It would be nice to get some sour cream during this process, but if you don't, NBD. I hope you're not hungry yet, because this step will take a few months.
2. Grow oyster mushrooms from mycelium. Ripen for 1 week.
3. Cut mushrooms from mycelium.
4. Pour some olive oil into a heated skillet—no need to measure, just put in as much as you think you'll need to properly sauté whatever quantity of mushrooms you have.
5. Dump mushrooms into skillet.
6. While the mushrooms are cooking, sprinkle with taco seasoning. If you have taco seasoning, but are worried it will be too spicy for you, you can use some taco seasoning recipes from the internet as inspiration. These recipes seem to all include the following: ground chile, onion, garlic, oregano, cumin, paprika, salt, and pepper. Sprinkle the mushrooms with a small amount of each of these spices according to your taste. If you don't like spicy food or alliums, put hardly any chile powder or garlic or onion, but go heavy on the oregano.
7. By the time you're done sprinkling spices, the mushrooms should be basically cooked. Taste one, and immediately realize two things: 1) Despite barely using any chile powder, the mushrooms are too spicy, and 2) they are almost uniformly as tough as leather!
8. To solve #1 above, rinse all the mushrooms under running water to wash off as much of the spiciness as possible.
9. To solve #2 in Step 7 above, cut off and discard the stems of each mushroom. By this point, you will have barely enough mushrooms to fill one half a taco. That's OK, it just means you'll need less spice for step 10!
10. Re-apply all of the spices as in Step 5 above, but in smaller quantities...and leave out the ground chile.
11. You had originally planned to mix this taco filling with corn and cilantro to make it a proper Mexican dish, but you have since realized you do not have any corn. To help fill out the really pitiful amount of mushrooms, sprinkle them with nutritional yeast, which you just happened to find in the spice cabinet. It's a vegan cheese substitute, so it should add a little oomph to the recipe!
12. As a base for your tacos half-taco, you will need one tortilla. Unfortunately, all of your tortillas have been in the freezer for a few months, and they have become desiccated and inseparable from each other. Find a different frozen tortilla that was stored singly and still has a little give to it, and hope for the best.
13. Pack up all your ingredients and store for later consumption. The next day, bring the ingredients to work, because the best lunch is one that needs to be assembled on top of the office mini-fridge.
14. Upon arriving at work, realize that you have some black beans in the fridge from Friday's visit to the taqueria that you had totally forgotten about! Heave a sigh of relief. Between the mushrooms and the beans, there should be enough food to make your half a taco into a whole taco!
15. Spread the beans and mushrooms on top of the tortilla. Add a dollop of guacamole (also left over from Friday's taco run) and some shredded cheddar. It would be nice if you had some sour cream, but you don't, so NBD! Garnish with arugula.
16. Attempt to eat your taco, but find that even this slightly-less-desiccated tortilla is too crunchy for human consumption, so instead eat the filling with a fork.

You survived your first foray into making oyster mushroom tacos! Now you just have to wait for your mycelium to produce more shrooms (it's supposed to fruit about 3 times before it's depleted), and then you can try it all over again!

Sunday Chef

You might be surprised to learn, since one of the recurring topics on my blog is Adventures in Cooking, that I'm really not a fan of cooking. It's time-consuming, and the results are never as good as what I'd get from even a box of something frozen, so why bother?

Theoretically, there are financial benefits to cooking for yourself, but only if you diligently and consistently use up all your ingredients and cooked meals before they spoil, which is apparently really hard for people to do. Some folks find a creative outlet in cooking, but while I consider myself creative in many ways, gastronomically is not one of them. I do not enjoy the process of cooking—food is for eating, not for laboring over. And lastly, there's the simple problem of time management. By the time I'm ready to think about a meal, I'm already too hungry to endure the long effort of converting raw ingredients into something fit to eat. I want to eat now, and cooking first is not a viable option.

So for many years I've been content to live off restaurant food, leftovers, packaged dinners, and zero-prep foods like nuts, cheese, and fresh vegetables...but a lot of things have changed over the past few months. 1) I decided to reduce the amount of cheese in my life and replace it with low-fat protein. 2) I decided to stop eating protein bars for breakfast every day, and mix it up sometimes with vegan whole foods. 3) I haven't been eating in restaurants as much.

These things have necessitated a change in the way I provide for my nutritional needs: I have been cooking a lot more.

Well, "cooking" is not entirely accurate—most of what I've been doing is not so much cooking (which has to involve the application of heat), as just mixing a couple of ingredients together and calling it a day. But I am making my own food, and it hasn't been that terrible. Still, terrible or no, food prep is something that I'd rather not spend my time on, and as such, I have found ways to make it as quick and efficient as possible.

Like many other people on the internet, I have come to embrace Sunday as the optimal day for food prep for the week. In this way, I can assemble all the foods I will need for the foreseeable future in one fell swoop, and I can do it first thing in the morning, before I'm too ravenous to think straight.

The fruits of my labor

This past Sunday was a real marathon of food prep.

I whipped together a batch of chia pudding (mix chia seeds with coconut milk, shake and put in fridge!) — a batch of quinoa (dump quinoa in water, boil for ten minutes, put in fridge!) — a batch of no-bake cheesecake (blend cream cheese and condensed milk in mixer, put in fridge!) — and even a very ambitious (though small) serving of mushroom taco filling (which I put in the fridge).

Of course I have bloggable thoughts about all of the foods I made on Sunday (if there's one thing that makes cooking for yourself worthwhile, it's being able to brag about it in a blog!):

• I am becoming a real chia pudding connoisseur. Since sharing my recipe for pista-chia pudding, I've made the dish with all sorts of different liquid bases and mix-ins, but my favorite variation yet is a coconut milk base. It gives the pudding a thicker consistency that makes it more fun to eat, and look less slimy too!
• My mission to find appetizing ways to prepare quinoa continues apace. Since my first adventures with the ingredient, I tried mixing it with fruits and beet powder as a breakfast food, but that was also a no-go. Finally I threw in the towel. The one and only way to make quinoa enjoyable is ... to mix it with cheese powder. Yes, this totally defeats the purpose of quinoa as a low-fat, non-cheese protein source, but at least it will help me get through my remaining supply of uncooked quinoa (how does one quart of quinoa last so long!?) without cursing its very existence.
  

  

  This is as good as I've ever seen quinoa look.

• No-bake cheesecake is hardly the kind of healthy food that one should be meal-prepping on Sunday, but I still have a sweet tooth that will not be denied. Since I learned how to make this very simple mixture, I have been unable to eat real cheesecake (unless it's from the Cheesecake Factory and has a ton of mix-ins), because this version is so much better! So creamy, and not dry at all, and versatile! You can toss any kind of candy or fruit into it to enhance its flavor and texture profile! It is one of my favorite treats to have waiting for me at the end of a long day!
• Ah, now we get to the mushroom taco filling! Can I condense this all into one bullet point? No! Should I make it into an Adventure in Cooking all its own? Sure! Stay tuned, readers! My next post should be lots of fun(gus)!

Adventures in Cooking: Quinoa

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, but this year was, kind of coincidentally, an exception. A few days before 2019 began, I took stock of my eating habits and concluded that the largest portion of my protein intake came from cheese. Now, far be it from me to knock this most wonderful of foods, but I did decide it wouldn't hurt to cut down on the cheese and focus more on lean – ideally vegan – protein sources.

And thus began my relationship with quinoa. While I was cleaning out the kitchen cabinets in a post-Christmas organizing frenzy, I found a 2-quart carton of uncooked quinoa, a holdover from one of my boyfriend's many brief flings with ambitious cooking. I don't recall what recipe he tried to make with quinoa, but he never made it again, and the quinoa has been sitting in the cabinet for at least a year since then. Quite convenient for me, since quinoa is practically a vegan superfood. It has one of the highest protein contents of any grain, and it's a rare vegetarian source of all 9 essential amino acids. Unfortunately for me, it is also unappetizing to the extreme.

When prepared, quinoa resembles nothing so much as a bowl of coarse sand. It has no flavor to speak of, so consuming it is only slightly more appealing than eating said sand. It's slightly more chewable than sand, but being likewise comprised of tiny particles, it doesn't provide anything satisfying to bite into.

There are many recipes on the internet for quinoa, but like any good Adventurer, I decided to go my own way. The first time I prepared the stuff, I followed the simplest cooking instructions (1 part quinoa, 2 parts water, boil until the seeds have absorbed all the water). I figured I'd flavor it with cumin and fresh cilantro and have a quick 15-minute sort-of-Mexican meal. And I did! But it was so boring, I could barely choke it down. In spite of all the spices and all the salt (and more salt! And more!), my healthy dish was as bland as health food is reputed to ever be.

The next time I made the quinoa, I followed an actual recipe. It called for sauteed greens and curry powder. The greens added texture (a slimy, stringy one, of course), but I still felt like the soul was being sucked out of me with every bite.

The third time I made quinoa, I decided to really rock the boat and mix it with cashews! While not as low-fat as pure quinoa, at least a few cashews scattered throughout the bowl would give me something solid to bite into from time to time. The spice rack did not offer any inspiration as to how to season my delicious dish, so I consulted Google and came up with a mix of garlic and turmeric. I threw in some more dried cilantro leaves for the heck of it. And salt. More salt! 

 

 

The turmeric gave the quinoa a bright yellow color, so at least it looked fun, even if it wasn't going to be any fun to eat. And it wasn't. But it was better than my first batch. Either the turmeric or the cashews or perhaps both imparted a slightly sweet flavor, that made the eating interesting, if not exactly delicious.

The going has been ploddingly slow, but I'm learning something about cooking quinoa. The best way to enjoy quinoa is to just make sure you eat it with a lot more stuff that's not quinoa! My next Adventure in Cooking is totally going to be quinoa-sprinkled ice cream!

Ms. Fix-It

In the nearly 3 years that I have owned my house, I'm pretty sure I've become a contractor's nightmare.

While I originally approached even the most basic of repairs with extreme trepidation, I have evolved to take a very cavalier attitude towards the maintenance of my home.

You might recall the series of jury-rigs that were necessary to make the place fit to live in. After the first seven months, I'd basically gotten the essentials under control, so all that was left to work on were the "nice-to-haves"—things like a bathtub faucet that doesn't spew water while the shower's running, a kitchen sink that isn't warped away from the countertop...maybe, you know, a picture rail...and perhaps, an interior door that opens against the wall rather than right into the middle of the kitchen.

For these things that are hard to do right, but not exactly necessary for survival, I felt like I should Don't It Myself and enlist the aid of a professional...but then I thought about how many other things would have to be fixed concurrently to really be done right...and how much that would cost...and how many people I would need to interact with in order to make it happen...and I decided that maybe I'd just take another stab at self-sufficiency.

So over the past few months, I've tackled a number of things on my House Things To Do list. Usually with very little forethought other than a sudden impatience to get things done right now.

First there was the bathtub faucet. It didn't leak...much...but the water did run out the spigot when it should have been all diverted to the showerhead, and all I could think about was how much money was literally running down the drain with every shower. So, with the help of a couple of online resources and a superhero of a friend, I took apart the faucet and reassembled it with new washers. Naturally, that sounds a lot easier than it was. It required two trips to Home Depot, the purchase of a special tool I'll probably never use again, and most of a day of my time. After my friend left, I learned that while the diverter and handles were no longer leaking, the fixtures were actually leaking from the back, behind the wall, and I had to take it all apart and do it again on my own. Eventually I got the faucet working, and the shower diverter is completely leak-free. Of course, now you have to crank the handle with the force of a titan to get the hot water to shut off completely, so I'm just waiting for the day when the whole process needs to be repeated. Next time I'm just buying a complete new faucet assembly! Trying to find the right replacements for an ancient plumbing fixture is just more trouble than the money you save.

Then, there was the kitchen sink. Whoever designed this kitchen apparently did it (much like I do all my housing projects!) with a bunch of scraps that were definitely not meant to go together. You are fortunate that I'm going to spare you the details of exactly how messed-up this kitchen setup was, but I will tell you that the sink was warped in several places, which made the handle wobbly and allowed water to leak into the cabinet. To fix it properly, I determined that we'd need to completely replace the sink...and the countertop...and the cabinet underneath. Way too expensive! So I did the next best thing. I got a 3-inch metal plate with holes in it—it happened to be a scrap door hinge, but that's irrelevant—and slid one of the holes over one of the bolts on the underside of the sink faucet. I was able to brace the plate against the underside of the counter and, with the magic of physics and a couple of nuts, muscled the most warped part of the sink down into a semblance of flatness. Again, it works, but I cringe at the thought of having to explain that setup to a plumber!

And that very setup is one of the major reasons that when the kitchen faucet started dripping, I decided to fix it myself, even though my last experience with faucets (see above) had been a trial I didn't wish to repeat. Sigh. I repeated it. I disassembled the sink faucet, drove around to three separate plumbing and hardware stores to find replacement parts that looked about right, and reassembled it. Several times. Today it works and doesn't leak...as long as you remember to turn the handle slightly up and left of center when you close it. Next time I'm just replacing the whole faucet with a new one (this time, I mean it!), and keeping the model number in a sacred file!

Moving aside from the struggles of plumbing, there was the relatively straightforward issue of the attic ladder. Or, to be more precise, the lack of one. I store a lot of stuff in the attic, and I was constantly risking my neck on a rickety old 5-foot stepladder to get up there every month or so. It was clear I was going to have to put in a permanent ladder. For months, I debated if I should get a professional builder to re-cut the opening and install a proper folding ladder (and maybe some lighting, while they were at it!). But I'm saving my money for a basement remodel that keeps getting delayed, so ultimately I decided I'd make do with a cheap ($110 from almost all sellers), do-it-yourself ladder that's especially designed for small openings. After the requisite delays (such as the kit I first ordered from Home Depot being a damaged customer return), the requisite amount of unplanned purchases (a box of screws, to secure the floorboards before I could start), and the requisite amount of cursing and crying (let's not even get into the details of that part), I got the ladder set up.

The second part of the project was to install a trap door so that the ladder can be easily accessed. But the instructions required re-framing the attic opening, and I was pretty certain I wasn't going to be able to do that without ruining something. So instead, I set up this ridiculous pulley system with a couple of metal rings and a length of Paracord. It is absolutely unintuitive, and if anyone were to buy this house from me, they would think me a crackpot...but it works, and I can get into my attic without needing to drag a stepladder anywhere. The downside, which I never considered until it was too late, is that the ladder takes up so much space, it's almost impossible to fit anything else through the hole. I might have been better off falling to my doom from the stepladder.

But I never did get around to falling to my doom, so I was obliged to continue looking around for things to fix. This time, it was the kitchen door. As with many of the other features of the kitchen, this one was poorly thought out and sloppily done. The doorway was in a corner of the kitchen, but the hinges were on the opposite side. So every time you opened the door, it swung out directly into the room, rather than into the wall where it would be out of the way. I tolerated this for years, but imagine trying to release two extremely antsy dogs through this door multiple times every day. It was like being in the middle of an evacuation gone very wrong. I thought that whenever I contracted someone to remodel the basement, I'd ask them  to reverse the swing of this door. But, as you recall, the basement remodel is interminably delayed, so, over the past weekend, in a fit of frustration, I took matters into my own hands.

It isn't actually that hard to reverse the swing of a door...as long as you're willing to reinstall the door upside-down. Apparently, doing so means that you're the devil incarnate, but your soul is a small price to pay for convenience! I took my time with this project (meaning I did it in a rush while the dogs were safely sequestered in my boyfriend's room) and tried to do everything right (as right as can be when you're doing something so inherently wrong!) and managed to get the door back on its hinges, facing the other direction. It still works, but I'm sure it would make anyone with a lick of carpentry experience roll over in their grave.

Notice anything odd about this door? Of course you don't!

And such is the way of my home stewardship. I get things done, but I get them done in a way that will never stand the test of time. Should I be proud of myself, or should I slap myself on the wrist and tell myself to stop being so cheap and antisocial and call a pro next time? I don't know what you think, but I bet you can guess from the fact that I wrote a whole blog post about my handiwork, that I've decided to go with the former. From now on, you can just call me "Ms. Fix-It!"

Confessions of a Smell Collector

I have a confession to make. I am a hoarder of good smells.

You know those jarred candles that people buy for other people as gifts? I have one of those. I received it around 7 years ago. I burn it, once in a blue moon, when I happen to notice it sitting on my shelf, but in all those seven years, I've been careful not to burn it too far too fast. I have collected scented candles from every imaginable source. All of them reside in a drawer in my living room, which I occasionally open up to gaze at them before closing it securely once again.

 

My boyfriend's mother seems to be fond of good smells. She used to regale us with scented lotions and shower gels, before graduating to Glade Plug-ins, and finally these little bags of air freshener that she gets in Indonesia. I still have a tube of body lotion that she must have given us the first year we were together. I love it, and I use it, but clearly I use it sparingly! The other tube she gave us that same year still hasn't even been opened!

The Glade Plug-ins were a lifesaver when I moved into a stinky apartment in 2015. But when I moved out again, all but one plug, and all of the scent vials, disappeared. I bought some half-off no-name replacements at a dollar store a year ago, but they now feel like such a precious commodity that I have never plugged one in!

The Indonesian air freshener? It has sat, helpfully, unopened on top of my dresser for the past 5 or 6 months! I'd like to use it, but it's the only one I have, and once it's opened and its scent depleted, it can never be restored!

 

When I was about 12 years old, my mother gifted me an aromatherapy kit called "Making Scents," which started me on a path of lifetime love for essential oils. I still have the notebook, hand-decorated by Yours Truly, containing all the instruction cards that came with the kit. I also have a few of the original, miniscule (5/8 a fluid dram, if that means anything to you!) vials of essential oil. Yes, in 23 years I still have not used 5/8 of a fluid dram, but I have to conserve them, because once they're gone, well, I can't even bear to think about it!

Several years ago, my then-boyfriend gave me a hand-me-down. It was an Americana-themed Scentsy wax burner and 3 or 4 packets of Scentsy wax. I don't know if you know (I didn't at the time), but a Scentsy is a totally cool little gadget that uses a light bulb to melt a puddle of scented wax in a dish above it. Because the wax doesn't actually burn off, it can be used over and over again and never run out! It sounds like a smell-hoarder's dream, right!? Unfortunately, my Scentsy fell on the floor and perished before I'd been able to use it even a handful of times, so for months I had all this Scentsy wax I was loath to part with. Fortunately, I saved the light bulb and cord, and before long, I had acquired a smaller potpourri burner from Freecycle that just managed to contain the light bulb and enable my wax-melting once again. Confident that I'd be able to use my new pseudo-Scentsy on the regular, I then proceeded to invest in a sizable collection of scented wax, in fits and starts over the past two years. But did I ever melt the wax? Not much. I put the burner in the basement as a deodorizing tool for my Airbnb guests last summer, and I haven't seen it since.

As you have probably ascertained, my smell-hoarding tendencies are a force to be reckoned with. Once I acquire something with a pleasant scent, I won't let it go without a fight! I could be proud of my unwavering tenacity, but let's be real—it's a little excessive. A whole drawer full of barely touched essential oils and unopened Scentsy packets, six scented candles in various degrees of un-use, some plumeria incense I bought in September but want to save for summer, an adorable garden-eel car freshener I bought in Japan and have now refused to open for the past year and a few months? What's the point of having all these scents around if I never actually smell them? This has to stop!

So I did something about it. I had eight unused Scentsy packets and nothing to melt them in. A lesser hoarder would throw those all away, but I am both hoardy and crafty! I went to the thrift store and found a bag of electric candles for $2. I disassembled one candle, replaced the bulb with a 40-watt globe, stuffed the whole shebang into a drinking glass, and then topped the contraption with a plate full of lavender wax. Soon I had a brand new, uber-ugly Scentsy burner ready for business! 

 

 

Since the scented wax lasts well nigh forever, I'll likely never actually deplete my supply, but at least it won't be gathering dust any more! And I can rest assured that if my new ghetto-Scentsy bites the dust, I have four more electric candles I can use to rebuild it.

Because I feel so confident that I'm in very little immediate danger of running out of good smells, I have made a promise to myself. When my banana-nut-bread candle starts to run low, I'll suppress my instincts to lid it and shelve it and pretend that it's a completely scentless piece of decor. Instead, I'll bravely soldier on, and keep the candle burning it until it burns out!

How to DIY a Picture Rail

 
If you're like me, you can't stand having the same pictures on your wall for very long before wanting to change them up for something completely new. You can't just keep hammering new nails into your wall to accommodate all the different sizes of art, because pretty soon your wall would be all holes and no art. That's where a picture rail comes in!

We've all seen it, mostly in restaurants: an unobtrusive rail on the wall, from which any number of pictures of all different sizes can be hung and switched out with ease. The picture rail allows you to slide the art along its length so you can position it anywhere on the wall, and you can use any length of wire to adjust the height. A picture rail sounds like your dream, right? But how do you get one?

Well, the cheapest and longest pre-made picture rail I could find was nothing more than a 95-inch strip of moulding, and cost 22.40 plus shipping. That doesn't cover the cost of hooks and wires and installation supplies. If you're still like me, you're thinking you could do better than that, and you're right!

Here's how I made a picture rail that extends the length of an entire wall of my living room, and cost me almost nothing!

Supplies

• Measuring and marking tools -- a tape measure and a pencil
• 1 piece of wood moulding cut to length
• A Dremel and cutting wheel (I'm open to suggestions on better tools for this process—basically you need something that can cut a groove down the length of your moulding. One alternative is to find a piece of moulding that already has a groove or lip you could hang a hook from!)
• A stud finder
• A drill (strongly recommended, but optional)
• Finishing nails
• A nail sink (optional)
• Paint to match your wall (optional)
• Several picture-hanging hooks (you'll need at least one hook for every picture, but two makes it easier)
• Wire to hang the pictures

If you have to buy all of these things, this won't be a cheap project, but if you have (or borrow) most of the tools and can repurpose materials you already have, you can do it all yourself, as I did, for under 10 dollars.

Directions

Step 1: Get thee some moulding

Because the shape and size of the wooden rail will advise the measurements of every other part of this project, you really need to choose it first. Determine the approximate size of piece you're looking for, based on the length of the wall or space you want to fill. If you don't yet know, overestimate, because you can always cut it down later.

I get all my materials for minor construction projects like this at Community Forklift, my local home improvement thrift store. If you don't have any place like that nearby, you can always go to a regular construction store, where simple moulding can be bought for a dollar or less per foot. If you're looking to do less work, you should look for a piece which already has a lip about 3/8-in. wide, or a groove about 3/8 inch from the outer edge. This lip or groove is what you'll eventually hook the hanging wires onto. I couldn't find anything like that at the Forklift, so I settled for a piece of  3/4-inch shoe moulding (I had to look up its name just for this post), which is one of the cheapest and most plentiful types out there. I can't remember how much it cost, but I'm pretty sure it was less than a dollar.

Step 2: Ready the rail

If you were not lucky enough to find a piece of moulding with a conveniently sized lip already, you will next have to cut a groove into which your picture hooks will later fit. On my shoe moulding, the best place for it was on the narrower flat side, slightly closer to the rounded side than the other flat side. 

Positioning of the groove.

 

As you can guess, I wasn't a real stickler about the measurement. I just wanted the space between the groove and the edge to be wide enough that the weight of a painting wouldn't cause the wood to break.

Mark the location of the groove the full length of the moulding.

Then dig in! Like I said above, I used a Dremel and a cutting wheel for this part of the project, but I'm not sure that was the most effective option out there. It didn't cut nearly as fast as I'd expected, it produced a ton of smoke, and if I accidentally dug too deep into the wood, it shattered the cutting wheel. I lost a couple of wheels before I learned to make delicate touch-and-go strokes that enabled me to cut the groove without getting the tool jammed. It was surprisingly difficult to carve the groove an even depth and width, but that fortunately wasn't too big of a concern because it would be hidden above eye level at the top of the picture rail. 

Another view of the groove

If you know of a better way to cut a groove into a length of wood, by all means go for it! But if you don't, then the Dremel and cutting wheel are good enough.

Last substep in this part of the project—painting the rail! This is optional. A bare wood picture rail can be elegant in some rooms, but in my case, I thought it would look out-of-place with my all white-painted everything, so I chose to paint it white as well. The only matching paint I had was a gallon of white primer, so that's what I used! I've had the rail up for a couple of months, and so far it looks fine even though I never painted over the primer.

Step 3: Measure twice (or thrice, or four times, or as many as it takes to get accurate results from your stud finder!)

Once the picture rail is ready, it's time to make a commitment: where do you actually want it to be?

The wall where I planned to place my picture rail had some thick ornamental crown moulding at the ceiling (a little too baroque for my taste, but it came with the house!). I could have installed the picture rail directly below the moulding (like, stuck to its bottom), but something told me that wouldn't look right. So I gave it a little breathing room and decided to install it a few inches below the moulding. The moulding inexplicably comes to an end a few inches before the wall does. Having the picture rail stick out past the bottom of the moulding would look silly, so I decided to line up the end of my picture rail with the vertical portion of the crown moulding.

Final endpoint of my picture rail

I marked, in pencil, a few spots to align to the top of the rail.

Because the picture rail could potentially support any amount of weight, you need to be assured that it is firmly attached to the wall. And this means you need to nail it to studs, not just the drywall. Ugh, stud-finding is the bane of my existence! We have an electronic stud finder that's supposed to make this work easy, but it never really is. Prepare to spend several frustrating sessions running the stud finder along your wall until you're reasonably confident you've found the position of the studs, then mark the position of a future nail so that it will be as close to the center of each stud as possible.  

HELPFUL TIP: Mark this nail hole exactly above where you want the top of your picture rail to be, because once the rail is on the wall, you still need to be able to see the markings.

If you want to be a renegade, I suppose you could do this part without the stud finder and just attach the rail to your drywall, but you might want to use more nails, and hammer them in at different angles so they're less likely to pull out by accident.

Step 4: Hammer Time

This was a frustrating part of the project for me. I don't know if the nails were too weak, or my form was too poor, or my studs were too tough, but I bent more nails than I ever imagined possible. Because I had so much trouble getting the nails into my wall, I recommend that you pre-drill the nail holes before even touching a hammer.

This means holding the rail to the wall wherever you want it to be (you might need a partner!), then drilling through both the rail and the wall to the depth of the nail (I used 2-inch finishing nails). Even drilling a hole was difficult and sometimes impossible, so good luck! Once you have a hole, it should theoretically be simple to hammer a nail into the same spot. But I still ruined plenty of nails that way.

While I'm usually a cheapskate, I invested in a nail sink just for this project, which is a metal tool that you use when the nail has already been hammered most of the way in,. The get the nail to sink all the way into the wood, you place the pointy end of the nail sink on the head of the nail, then hit the nail sink with the hammer instead of hammering the nailhead directly. The nail sink, with its tiny tip, will push the nail deeper into the wood, without running the risk of you smashing the hammer into the wood and leaving a dent.

If you succeed in attaching the rail at both of its ends, then you can release your partner from servitude, which is helpful because then he will be fresh when you inevitably call him back to help with the hammering after you have bent too many nails and need to take a mental health break. At some point, you will both be finished, both with the work, and probably in a figurative sense as well. Take that mental health break! I'll be here when you get back!

Step 5: Cleanup

There's no time like the present, so even though you're tempted to skip on to hanging your pictures, take a few moments to make this picture rail look its best. Erase any visible pencil marks, wipe the greasy-fingerprints from every surface you touched, and dab a dot of matching paint onto each nailhead.

Step 6: Get hooked

This part was my favorite part, because it involved converting some useless hanging hooks into the most versatile hanging hooks I've ever owned. 

The hanging hooks were these, which, ridiculously, had holes that were too small for the nails that came with them. Whenever you tried to hammer one into the wall, you'd end up bending the nail on the first stroke. Totally useless. Since I didn't have anything to lose, I decided to make them into hooks for my picture rail.

With a bolt cutter, I snipped the "collar" around each nail hole on the hanging hook. This broke it into two parts, and it then fell off, which is what I wanted. 

The hook on top is one that has had the collar removed.
The one at right still needs surgery.

 Using a pair of needle-nosed pliers, I bent the top end of each hook into another hook with a reversed direction and flat top. 

The top portion was meant to slot into the groove on the picture rail, while the intact original hook would hold the picture wire.

A hook in the groove of the picture rail

You can do the same, but if you're going to have to buy hooks anyway, you might as well save yourself the effort and just get some hooks that are designed for use on a picture rail. In fact, you might want to buy the hooks first, so you can customize the position of the groove to best fit them.

Next, you'll need to shape some wire to hang your pictures from. Picture hanging wire is expensive AF! But there's no reason you need to use that! Get creative—strip some old electrical cord (or don't, and just use it with the insulation still on!). Use ribbons or shoelaces or any other kind of long skinny stuff you might have lying around.

I myself still had quite a bit of that wire I found on the street and used for my rabbit-in-a-hat costume, and so far that has proved sufficient for hanging 4 pictures, with plenty more wire to go! I'd like to come up with a way to reuse one wire for multiple lengths, but so far I've been content to cut a new piece of wire every time I want to hang a new picture.

The way I use the wire is to form a smallish loop with needle-nosed pliers. I hang this loop from one of the hooks on the rail. 

At the other end of the wire, I thread a few inches through the hole in another hanging hook, then stop it from slipping out with a series of twists to form a plug. 

One coil keeps the wire from slipping back through the hole.
The second coil was a previous attempt that ended up being too low on the wall.

This hook attaches to the hanging hardware on the back of the painting.

Step 6: Arrange and rearrange

Congratulations! You are now an art curator! The only thing left to do is to acquire a sizable collection of pictures, so you can swap them out at your whim!

Since I have had my picture rail, I've used it to hold up four different art  arrangements. 

The first was a summery set of painted-metal art pieces, which I kept next to a couple of family photos of me and my boyfriend. Next, I replaced the summery art with a Chinese brush painting of goats on a hill. This painting is the first – and for over a decade, only – piece of real art I've owned (I got it free from a neighbor who was moving out), and I am still proud of it today. When Christmas rolled around, I swapped that out for a huge snowman painting, in a style I might describe as American folk. 

Now that it's January, I've returned to the goats, supplemented with a pair of Japanese minimalist watercolors, which were Freecycle acquisitions from last month. They were originally advertised as just frames (I guess the offerer didn't think the paintings themselves would get any takers), so I'm doubly glad that they just happened to have a similar starkness to my beloved goat painting.

Quite a few different looks for one living room! What's next? Well, I've been collecting art from Freecycle every chance I get, so ultimately my goal is to be able to decorate the living room with a different theme every season! Thanks to my picture rail, now my wall can change outfits almost as often as I do!

A list of pure goodness

Since my last list of pure grumpiness went public, I've planned to share its upbeat counterpart almost immediately. But somehow months have passed with no progress! We get it—I'm lazy—but that all ends now! And do you want to know why? It's all because I saw a picture of someone standing in front of a stream.

Once I saw that picture, I was instantly transported to a mental place that is some impossible combination of Iceland and New Zealand, where I had the fortune to get more or less up close and personal with the two glaciers I have encountered in my life. In this mental, impossible place, I realized in a flash of insight something I never knew before: I love glaciers! And now nothing can keep me from sharing that love with the world posthaste!

Glaciers

So, the secret is out—I love glaciers. This may sound strange coming from someone who has packed most of her dislikes lists with vitriol towards anything related to cold weather, but after having visited two glaciers, I am convinced that they are one of the planet's best features! 

Here I am about to meet Skaftafell glacier in Iceland

 Something about that vast outpouring of ice just warms my heart! Is it the way its edge is so strictly defined, like a massive, slow-motion amoeba of snow? Is it the fact that the landscape in front of a glacier is always uniformly barren and paved with a bed of millions of smoothly worn rocks, like a scene from a sci-fi movie? Is it the way the water that escapes from a glacier always has an opaque icy blue color, the way water looks in cartoons but never in real life? Are there more reasons? Probably. But my point is, if you have not had the chance to visit a glacier, I highly recommend you do so soon, because it is a magical experience that will probably never be had by future generations. And now back to our regularly scheduled climatic gloom and doom.

Or not! This is a happy list, so forget I said that!

Caffeine

I was a late convert to the fandom of America's most legal drug, but I have certainly come to appreciate caffeine in my middle years. It is true that I can still wake up in the morning just fine* without a cup of joe, and in fact, I still do not drink coffee. I no longer even struggle with staying awake in the afternoons. But I've learned that an occasional hit of caffeine is a delightful way to put a little more pep in my step and a positive outlook in my mind. One of my favorite weekend treats is a midday can of caffeinated soda, and if I have one at work, I am amazed at how productive and outgoing I can be! Of course, if I dare to consume this wonder drink past about 2 pm, I'm usually in for an entire night of restless sleep, so caffeine is probably always going to be a special treat for me and not a regular part of my diet.

Getting rid of old clothes

I don't know what happened between December and January, but all of a sudden the entire world seems to be obsessed with she-who-must-not-be-named (because I feel she's gotten more than enough publicity already, and I frankly can't take it any more!) and her method for tidying up. This whole frenzy for decluttering is kind of mystifying to me, because I declutter so continuously that I never feel like I have to read books and watch shows about it and pat myself on the back over my latest giant purge. But I can kind of understand the hype, because I know firsthand the rewarding feeling of getting rid of the stuff you don't really need. I love acquiring new things just as much as the next person, but what's more exciting than getting a new pair of shoes? Finding an old pair of shoes you won't feel sad to jettison, and subsequently ridding yourself of that dead weight! It helps that I sell most of my old stuff, so in addition to clearing up space in my living area and my life, I'm also earning a ... should I say it? tidy income!

Containers with perfectly parallel sides

While we're on the topic of home organization, I find there is much gratification in storing your stuff in containers of just the right shape. The right shape being, of course, one that has perfectly parallel vertical sides. You know, there are a lot of kinds of plastic storage tubs out there. Many of them have rounded edges and most of them have a narrower base than top. But the best kind of container is one that stays the same width all the way up. The kind of container you could load a collection of uniform cubes into and have them fit neatly end to end, top to bottom. The kind of container in which, if you had just the right size of cookies, you could assemble a perfect stack of them without a centimeter of wiggle room. 

Look at this beautiful empty gelato jar, which just happens to have perfectly parallel sides in a cylinder just the right diameter to hold a stack of my still-beloved Safeway candy cookies! Wow, I love this jar! If you happen to find a tub of the Talenti gelato at Costco (the normal-size Talenti jar is too small, and our Costco doesn't seem to sell it, and even if they did, sea salt caramel isn't really my flavor), save me the container!

Talking to myself

I will never forget** the day in first grade when I was holding my own personal Bob Ross show in art class, narrating every step out loud as I worked on my construction-paper masterpiece. A classmate turned to me and critically asked, "Why are you always talking to yourself?" Well, up until that point, I hadn't realized it was a problem, but I was duly humiliated into much more cautious self-regulation of my self-conversation. But I never stopped doing it completely! When I'm alone in the house, I take great joy in talking to myself. As a matter of fact, talking out loud helps me stay on-task, keeps my meandering mind from forgetting what I was about to do, and generally protects me from sometimes oppressive silence. Some people say talking to yourself means you're crazy... but quite to the contrary, I think it keeps me sane—even when I do, on occasion, start answering.

Footnotes

*OK, "just fine" is a bit of an overstatement. Most mornings when I wake up for work, it takes a superhuman effort to drag myself out of bed, and I usually feel sluggish and sometimes even dizzy for up to an hour after I am up and about. But I still don't depend on coffee!

**"Never forget" is probably a bit of an overstatement, too. Was I actually working with construction paper that day? Were those really my classmate's exact words? Probably not. I don't remember the details very well...but the embarrassment stays fresh in my mind forever!

The Hairy Eyeball

Lately, I've been having this problem with scratchiness in my eye. It's not dryness. It's not itchiness. It feels like something is stuck in it, but no matter what I do, I can't get it out! Rubbing it accomplishes nothing (I know I'm not supposed to do that anyway). Blinking just makes it worse. Dousing it with eyedrops doesn't help. I'm simply forced to deal with it, blinking uncomfortably and tossing my head around like I can maybe shake the irritant loose, for hours or days until it finally, miraculously, goes away.

I thought this was just another one of those weird malfunctions of my body, like eczema, an extreme reaction to an imagined slight (or maybe my mascara, though it never seemed to coincide with the relatively infrequent times I wore makeup). I put up with the phenomenon for months, getting annoyed every time it recurred, but figuring it was just the latest in a lifelong string of weird but minor health problems that can't be treated.

Then one day, during a particularly irritating bout of scratchy eye, I went in the bathroom and got up close and personal with my eyeball, pulling back the lids and scrutinizing the sclera for any signs of injury. I didn't see anything...until...there! The tiniest...something...that didn't look like it was part of my eye. It vanished when I blinked, and then it appeared again. I poked it with my finger, brushed sideways, pulled outward, and I had it!

It unraveled from my eye like a skein of thread. It was kinky and fine as silk, almost invisible but most definitely not imagined.

It was a dog hair. One of those tiny, twisty undercoat hairs that adhere to every soft surface in our house and refuse to come off again. This time, the surface it adhered to was my eyeball.

So you know what I'm talking about, here's an example hair,
which, fortunately, has never been stuck in my eye.

One more medical mystery, solved!

Since that moment, I've had two more cases of scratchy eye that have been successfully cured by close examination and subsequent removal of a dog hair.

If I had one of those automatic fur removers that hasn't been invented yet, it would sure save me a lot of literal tears. But at least I'm glad to know that there's a cause and a solution to one of the most infuriating maladies to affect me in recent history. And fellow dog owners, if you ever experience a scratchy eye for no apparent reason, perhaps you should look not to yourself for the cause, but to your pet!

The Notorious Biker

There's one thing about biking to work every day in rainbow hair, huge blue earmuffs, and bright green leggings—people notice you.

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me, "Was that you I saw biking down Rhode Island Avenue this morning?" I would not be rich, but I could at least buy myself a new inner tube or two.

I've had people I know (and people I don't) honk at me at just about every point on my route. I've had absolute strangers flag me down mid-ride to let me know they see me every day and to ask for a date.

My biking habits become conversation fodder for anyone from perfect strangers to casually acquainted coworkers...which is actually a boon for an introvert who struggles with small talk. It's so much easier when we can just talk about me! We talk about how long the ride takes, where I live, how great a workout it is, what weather I won't bike in, and where all the good trails can be found.

It's always pretty weird when I meet someone new and they immediately recognize me from riding around the neighborhood all the time. I feel at a slight disadvantage when people know me before I know them, but on the other hand, it's also a little like being a minor celebrity!

I never wanted a life in the spotlight, but if I have to be notorious for something, I couldn't ask for it to be a better thing than my eco-friendly, uber-healthy commuting method.

The Face Game

Among my many social ineptitudes, one of them is my terrible memory for faces.

It's a nightmare when I go to my boyfriend's family functions. I'm surrounded by his cousins, most of whom I've met multiple times, and yet I could still swear they're all perfect strangers to me. I survive these kinds of events by putting on my friendliest smile, greeting everyone with enthusiastic hellos and hugs, and basically treating each person like I know exactly who they are and am extremely happy to see them. Mostly I get away with this artifice by dodging meaningful conversation and never calling anyone by their name.

When not at social gatherings, I try to make up for my awkwardness by getting better at facial recognition. I didn't start it on purpose, but somehow I've fallen into the habit of practicing my skills through the diligent study of gossip rags.

The lifestyles of the rich and famous aren't really my thing, but somehow I have gotten on the email lists of many, many women's publications, which seem to love nothing more than that very subject. So I read them. Even a media-clueless nerd like myself can't always resist a headline like "Wow, Meghan Markle Has Gorgeous Handwriting," or "Miley Cyrus Wore a Super Revealing Outfit on 'SNL' Last Night and Twitter Is Losing It," or "Kate Middleton's lessons on being photogenic!" At worst, I can always use the intel for my highly lucrative fashion blog!

So nowadays, when I'm reading a roundup of the best awards-night dresses, I'm not just taking in all the glitter and lace and fashionable eye candy, I'm also scrutinizing every celebrity's face to see if I can match it with a name. I've made it into a game, and I'm not very good at it.

The hardest faces to recognize are the ones that belong to famous families. Try telling apart all the many Kardashians, or remembering which Hadid is Gigi and which one is Bella. The trickiest challenge yet? Figuring out which of the Olsen twins you're looking at! I've been doing this for years, and I still can't remember (though I think it's Ashley who has the rounder eyes).

But still, I persist! I like to think all this intense staring at faces (in the relative safety of the Internet, where there's no risk of accidentally making eye contact!) will make me better at identifying people in real life. But until then, I still have my default awkward greeting to fall back on: "Hi! I have a terrible memory for faces. Have we met before? I'm Valerie."

An Ode to Sleep

Since my last list of "Things I like/dislike" focused exclusively on the "dislike" end of the spectrum, I was anxious to come out with a second list, of a more optimistic bent.

But when I added the fifth item to my slowly growing tally, I realized it was such a like-worthy topic, it really warranted a whole post of its own. What's that topic? Well, if you read the title, you already know, but it's sleep.

Sleep is an underrated thing. While I have met a few high-schoolers (during my student-teaching days) who proudly listed sleep as one, if not their single most, favorite thing to do, I think that was more reflective of teenage angst (and disrupted circadian rhythms) than the values of the general public. Most adults who issue an opinion on the subject seem to think that sleep is nothing more than a nuisance.

I used to be one of them. As little as 5 years ago, I was bemoaning the 8.5 hours per night I had to spend sleeping, wondering what great things I could accomplish if I weren't wasting 1/3 of my day, every day, for the rest of my life.

Except that sleep is not, in fact, a waste. It is, by all scientific accounts, vital to health and happiness. Among the good things I've heard about a solid night of shuteye: It helps you form memories, it helps you repair your cells, it helps you maintain a healthy weight.

Over the years, I have come to accept my excessive sleep requirements—which is good, because in those 5 years, they've risen to around 10 hours a night. (Or maybe that's my body just trying desperately to catch up, because since we acquired two puppies in the course of 5 months, I haven't been able to get in a single night of uninterrupted rest!)

Who can sleep while this is constantly going on in their bed!?

I have finally changed into the angsty teenager I never was in my past (back then, one of my favorite things to do on the weekends was wake up at sunrise before everyone else, and tackle my day!)—now, sleep is definitely one, if not my single most, favorite thing for me to do. But the other thing that's changed, is I no longer feel bad about it!

I used to moon over the thought of what I could accomplish with one extra hour a day, but now I know the truth: the world is an overwhelming place, and I couldn't handle another hour of it anyway. What would I do with my extra hour? Probably spend it shopping online, brainlessly watching Netflix, or wandering aimlessly to the fridge again, hoping that this time there might be something tempting inside. Ha! Better to spend that hour in my bed, refreshing my mind and body for another run down the gauntlet tomorrow.

Sleep, I now know, is not the enemy, but a rare gift of from nature, a precious ambrosia, a medicine, and a refuge, and I mean to appreciate it rather than curse it! There is nothing quite like that slow divestment from daily concerns as you drift off into dreamland. There is no more peaceful feeling than that moment when you awake, conscious of nothing more than soft pillows and blankets around you, before the demands of reality set in. When else in life can something feel this good and still be good for you? Never!

So enjoy your sleep! Embrace it, love it, and never let anyone make you feel bad for demanding 9+ hours of it per night! Sleep may be a burden forced on us by our biology, but it's one burden we can truly be thankful to have!

Things I Dislike: The Sensory Processing Issue

As I was compiling my current list of things I like and dislike, I noticed they were pretty heavy on the things that involve the five senses—mostly things that irritate my five senses. I guess that makes sense (lol) — your senses are your primary way of interacting with the world, so if there are things in the world that are bothersome, you're going to experience them through your senses! So today, I bring you a special edition of Things that Annoy Me: the Sensory Processing Issue!

• Touch - Paper Straws

  You've probably noticed that there's recently been a lot of backlash against plastic drinking straws. People are pulling them out of turtles' noses, coffee shops are ceasing their use, and cities are banning them en masse. Even where plastic straws are still legal (like where I live), I've noticed that restaurants are becoming more conscientious about their straw consumption—now servers are asking if I want a straw when they take my drink order. I'm pretty excited about this development, because obviously it's a step forward for the health of our planet! What I'm not excited about are the paper straws that some places are using as an alternative. There is something about putting a tube of paper in my mouth that just makes me cringe! It's like the oral version of fingernails on a chalkboard. I can't deal with the texture—the way the paper becomes soggy and clings to my lips, the way it collapses just slightly too much when I touch it, the way it rasps if it encounters my teeth. Ugh! Do I want a straw with my drink? Not really. But especially not if it's paper!

• Smell - Smell of fabric softener

  Fabric softener is one of the many things that Millennials are supposedly responsible for killing off, and I count myself proudly among their ranks. I'm not exactly anxious to add more products (and thus more cost and more effort) to my laundry routine, but I also simply can't abide the smell! I can't count the number of times I've acquired some used clothing and had to immediately bury it in my laundry pile because of its weird aroma—not the disgusting stench of B.O. or mildew or whatever you'd expect from secondhand clothes, but rather the overpowering smell of flowers and synthetic chemicals! Blugh! Sometimes I have to wash my thrift store finds twice before their scent is reduced to the point I can wear them.

• Sight - Fluorescent colors

  One of the things that makes me me is my penchant for everything colorful. In almost all situations, I eschew neutral hues in favor of the bright and brilliant. Sometimes this makes color coordinating my various possessions a challenge, but for the most part, the more colors I see, the happier I'll be. The exception is highly saturated fluorescent colors. There's something not just off-putting about neons, but downright distressing! I have bought clothes online that looked pastel on screen, only to find them veritably DayGlo in real life...and I hated them so much that I actually found myself getting angry every time I tried to put them on. Needless to say, I purged those items from my wardrobe pretty quickly. Fluorescent colors have their place—mainly under a blacklight—but for everyday purposes, I prefer that my eyes not be assaulted by such intense hues.

• Taste - Uhhh...

  Taste is probably the most difficult of the five senses to use as a basis for hating something, because it is in fact too simple. There are only four tastes: salty, sweet, sour, and bitter (OK, and umami—you explain that one; I still can't figure it out!), yet when we say we describe the taste of something, we're really describing a complicated melding of taste, smell, and touch. If I wanted to take the easy way out, I could probably just say, "I hate the taste of bitter things," but since everybody basically does, there's not much story value in that. Let's talk instead about how a good taste can go bad—namely, when sweetness is used unsuccessfully to make something repulsive more palatable. Cough syrup is the classic example.  All the sugar in the world can't hide that fact that what you're consuming is a nasty non-food that basically tricks your body into doing things it wouldn't otherwise do. Cough syrup is gross. So I can't understand why drug companies take perfectly good tastes (sweet) and flavors (fruit) and ruin them both by combining them with medicine. It will never work. There's no getting around it! Stop the madness!

• Sound - basically all movie sound effects

  I do not watch a lot of movies or TV, but thanks to living with someone who does, I certainly hear a lot of them. Sometimes, my boyfriend will be watching something in his room, and the sounds of violence will start drifting out into mine. At first, I don't even notice, but then it just keeps going on and on—one minute, two, five. So many explosions! So much screaming! I don't know how he can tolerate watching it, because just hearing the noise is enough to make my cortisol levels rise! Actually, I have this theory that watching movie violence is less stressful than just hearing it, because when you can see the action, you can also see the good things that might be happening to mitigate the violence (e.g. superheroes arriving to save the day), but when you're listening, all you hear are the sounds of horror. So if you're watching a violent or otherwise disturbing movie and you have other humans in the house, help them keep their sanity by putting on some headphones!