Shitty Thursday


So I'm feeling kind of crappy - tired eyes, sore throat, headache, fingers hurt, right lung aches - the one with the pneumonia scars, neck's stiff & right ear's kind of throbbing - could be allergy, could be flu, could be the beginning of a cold - who knows. Staying home just in case. I have 7 years of new spousal tax returns to add to the ones I'm working on so I have plenty to do. And I'm waiting for the GUY to fix my kitchen plumbing problems. Gad, it will be nice to actually wash ALL the dishes again. It'll be nice to have a tidy kitchen again!!! I may be a housework slob but I really really hate getting up to dirty dishes in the morning!

So while I wait, I'm working & surfing the net. I found a site for Cheapskates. One male Cheapskate has figured out how to remove the business end of the bottle of 'Special Cleaner' that you have to buy for the Swiffer Wet Jet. I have one of those & tried several times with assorted tools to remove that cap so I could fill the bottle with my own cleaner. No Dice. I wrecked the end trying to remove it. Had to buy another expensive bottle of cleaner because I just didn't want to drill a hole in the other end & close it with duct tape. Well, this Cheapskate figured it all out. You immerse said bottle end in a pot of boiling water for a couple of minutes & then it will twist off without a problem. The inside of the cap has "prongs" which must be removed with pliers or heavy duty kitchen shears. The cap can now be put back on & taken off at will. You can fill it with your own mixture. Wow.

The same Cheapskate site has alternatives to the expensive Swiffer cloths as well. A couple of weeks ago, I found several knitted & crocheted versions which can be laundered after using. I believe Ravelry even has a couple of the patterns on site!! But the Cheapskate site shows how one woman knit one that looked just like the dusting cloth, complete with "bumps" to push into those holes on the back of the Swiffer duster! I'm seriously going to try a couple of these out.

My hands have really been sore the past couple of days - makes me wonder what WINTER will be like! So I decided I had to have another pair of SPIROGYRA fingerless gloves to wear. Now I knit myself a pair last year & wore them when my hands were sore even in warm weather & they helped a lot. People gave me strange looks but they don't have my hands!!! My Ex came along complaining about cold hands when he rode his bike - gloves get caught in the doodads he's got attached so I lent him the fingerless gloves to try. He loved them. I let him keep them since they were the prototype & had mistakes. So, I'm knitting another pair. I found the same really stretchy grey hand spun yarn - it's like I spun elastic into it - not that SPIROGYRA doesn't really stretch but the yarn makes it even stretchier - which is why my Ex was able to wear my former ones.

Wooohooo . . . the GUY came & found my problem in the sink. My hair clog was waaaay out in the main line where it joins the house line before meeting up with the City line. He says this clog is MY fault because MY sink is backing up but there's probably been a problem for a very long time. No wonder I couldn't plunge it away! We had to use the BIG water snake to blow that sucker thru the line but not before flooding my floor when we had to disconnect the small water snake!! Well, the kitchen floor needed a good cleaning any way & nothing cleans better than a little lye!!! I'll be soooooo happy to wash all the dishes, the sinks & the counter tops! I think I'll even wash out the coffee pot that I make tea in. And I'm even getting a nice new trap with a twist off clean-out! Ain't life grand????