Dealing with Trolls at The Bird’s Brain

This comment left at Dr. Kiki Sanford's blog is right up there in the top ten most sexist blog comments I have ever read. Quite possibly #1 and not just sexist, but also racist.
Dealing with Trolls at The Bird’s Brain

Fall Closet Cleaning

Most of you (unless you live in Florida or somewhere really warm) know that this is the time of year that us girls clean out our closet and try to remove all the summer stuff and replace it with sweaters, jackets, jeans and so on. Winter is a bitch for my closet. Not only do winter clothes take up more space, but there is a lot of summer stuff (like tank tops, t-shirts, yoga capris, work-out type shorts) that I need all year. I literally have already removed 2 large yard type bags of clothes that went to charity (too small or just one of those things that you wonder whatever possessed you to buy it) and 1 bag of summer clothes to storage and I seem to have only a little more room than when I started and that has already been filled with sweaters that I brought in from storage. One of the things that bothers me is that I never know how winter will be here in New Mexico. Sometimes I need my cozy sweaters and some winters they get almost no wear. There are always at least a couple weeks that are miserable cold, but some winters that is it. Other winters it seems like several months of that. Don't get me wrong, there are few things that I love as much as a cozy cable knit sweater or some soft cashmere, but they do take up a lot of space. I guess I am saying all that to motivate myself to finish the 1/4 (or there about) of the closet that I haven't finished with yet. There is no sense in having great clothes that you love if you can't find them under everything else.

Swooning over my new Dyson Vac

OMG, I have a new Dyson vac!

It is the little 10 lb model. I was skeptical that it would work as well as the full sized, but it does! Oh, and it is soooooooooo much easier to carry up the stairs. As if that wasn't good enough -- all my attachments from my other Dyson fit it, including the coveted power brush! It is also one of the new "ball" models that actually can turn. It is the most fabulous cleaning machine ever invented!

Just when you thought I was done with posts about vacuums

A couple months ago, Britton decided to give my Dyson to the handy man we had working at the house to see if he could "fix" it because it seemed to have a clog. Now handing a Dyson (or probably any vacuum) over to this man (or maybe most men) is like handing a computer hard drive to a caveman. It is something foreign to them (unless it is a shop vac) and they don't understand it. Somehow this person managed to pry off the canister without actually using the release knob, he then took apart pieces that were not suppose to be taken apart and cleaned them. Probably needless to say, but that totally destroyed my already sickly Dyson. Since then I have been stuck having to use the horrible, very heavy, many filtered Bissell Pet Vac. When the filters aren't clogged the suction is pretty good, but the filters clog every few minutes when you live out in a desert dusty area and have several pets. That alone is frustrating beyond belief, but earlier today I apparently didn't snap in one of the filters right, which for some reason took nearly a minute for me to notice and I ended up with a room full of fine dust particles. This caused the worst asthma attack that I have had since I was a child. So I threw the Bissell out the backdoor, well, so much as I could throw that heavy piece of crap while having an asthma attack.

Not having had an asthma attack bad enough to require medication since I was a child, I had no inhalers or any type of med in the house. I made a hot pot of coffee and although I have heard you shouldn't take it for asthma (not sure why) -- I took allergy med. Luckily that seemed to work and I was back to breathing pretty normally within about 30 minutes.

It has been due to my cheapness that I didn't just buy a new Dyson. Well, also I thought that I wanted or needed the animal vac version, which is like $600. However, after checking some sites on the internet I found the only difference with that version is that it comes with 2 attachments that not all Dysons come with. I already have those attachments, assuming they will work with a new model, but even if they don't they really aren't that important. Anyhow, it means I can buy the much cheaper, smaller and lighter (easier to lug up the stairs) version of the Dyson! I will likely have to empty the canister a lot more often, but emptying a Dyson is a breeze.

So first order of business tomorrow will be shopping for my new Dyson. I doubt I will ever again be as happy to spend a few hundred dollars on a cleaning tool. :)