dishwasher points

SUMMARY:  Rules for Dishwashers

Source: My comment on someone else's post about how super efficient they are at packing the dishwasher and how many points they gain or lose by certain rules of their own, such as what if something doesn't get clean. Their point system has established that they can fit 24 items in the top rack and 24 items in the lower rack and they lose points if they don't fit that many in… Well, it's complicated. Anyway, here's my response.

I agree to a certain degree. 

my current just-washed load; because the top rack was fully loaded and I needed forks or something, I sadly could not completely fill the lower level.

I consider the dishwasher a labor saving device. Therefore, I lose points for every item that could be washed in the dishwasher that isn't, because then I would have to wash it by hand, necessitating a dish pan with dish soap and a dish cloth and rinsing and a dish drying rack and all that. 

My strategy is to keep adding things to the dishwasher until everything that could go in at that moment is in AND the dishwasher is as full as I can get it given certain restrictions – – I do not stockpile dishes on my counter for that purpose. Nor do I hand wash things that the dishwasher could handle. (Exceptions: Sharp knives, pots and pans, and certain delicate items. But I avoid using all of those as much as possible!) also, running out of some particular important clean item (say, forks) takes precedence over trying to fill every square inch of the dishwasher. 

And I have rules: for example, lightweight plastics go only on the top rack, glass drinkware goes only on the top rack. even if I am out of something important, both top and bottom rack should be as full as makes sense to my own rules of logic. 

For one person, with occasional guests, I think I run the dishwasher about once every five days. Here is a full clean load. Too bad I had to leave a little unused space in the bottom rack. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

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The important things in life: Binkies

SUMMARY: Sometimes Zorro's bedding needs to be washed. It just does.

Posting link on FB now

So much has been happening in my life. Over the last year. Ear surgery, knee surgery, knock myself unconscious (Which came with a bonus first ever ambulance ride and a first ever helicopter ride), Covid almost inevitably in January 2024, long RV trip through the west, trip to Disneyland, stuff like that. So I choose to talk about: washing Zorro's bedding.

Trying to launder Zorro's Binkies is challenging. As soon as I pick them up from their usual environs and start walking away with them, his eyes open wide and he starts saying, no, these are mine, I had them where I wanted them, don't move them! And he grabs one or more and tugs until I determinedly make him let go. And then as soon as I set them down to get the washing machine prepped, they all start disappearing.

I had picked up three of them this time; and this is where they were when I was ready to put them into the washing machine…  one close (Darker blue with light blue circles) to the washing machine but not where I left it. (where He is standing trying to decide whether to steal back that one also), one (brown with aqua circles) halfway through the doorway into the hallway, and one (Aqua with brown circles) way down the hallway in the living room. 

Update 20 minutes later: I re-collected the three, washed them, and they are now in the dryer. Fortunately they dry quickly.

... they did! Dried quickly! So when I took them out, he selected one to go nurse on for a while in the living room. Happiness restored.

Next I think I will do the red one. And attempt to remove the covers from two of his three cushion beds.

Maybe from all three cushion beds… Except that he typically is lying in one or another of them, so I guess I need to leave one clad for a bit.

Then the big challenge will be figuring out how to stitch back together his favorite Binky bed without a sewing machine. And he will definitely obsess over that one when I pick it up to sew it, and again when I need to wash it afterwards.

BUT after just now trying to vacuum out just one comfy bed and its cushion, I realize that perhaps doing all of this in one day after 10 days of recovering from Covid is not the best choice. So: that's it for today.

Levy's Law of Level Surfaces

SUMMARY: Mystifies even the most advanced quantum physicists

My dad (maybe started with my grandparents?) defined the Levy Law of Level Surfaces.

My sister stated it in 2018 as: "Any level surface will immediately be covered past capacity."

I remember it as being multipart, something like:

1. Any clear level surface will attract items within 10 microseconds to the point where it is no longer clear.
2. If someone is attempting to clear a level surface and there is more than one person involved, the additional people will add things to the level surface in proportion to the clearing of the level surface so that the surface is never completely clear.
3. There are no clear level surfaces.

(Sad that Dad isn't around to remind me any more of his wordings. We'll need to refine this description.)

From a Dad email in Oct 2014 to an adult granddaughter:

"You haven't developed symptoms of 'Levy's Law of Level Surfaces'.  One symptom of it was when I was moving a piece of furniture from one place to another, I had put it down because something else had higher priority. When I returned there were two  small piles of papers on the top level surface. I had to the move them before completing the move. "

And it's a famous Law! (At least, in a certain circle of cognoscenti.) November, 2018, on Facebook in a chat mostly of family members, a friend of my sisters (Thomas DaEarl Taylor (Earl Thomas the Incomplete in the SCA)) said:

"I still quote the 'Levy Law of Level Surfaces' to my friends. Oh, and [I] give your dad citation credit."

In the meantime, I can guarantee that there are no level surfaces in my house that don't have things on them, no matter how often I clear them off.  My brother-in-law was just describing a couple of weeks ago that, after he completely clears the kitchen counters, things (e.g., salt & pepper shakers...) appear there as soon as he turns his back.

Recently I completely cleared off a small computer table and the shelves beneath it to get it out of the house. But my hips were too sore at the time to move it, and so it sat there. Now, instead of holding a neat assortment of things that belonged there (including a printer), it holds random piles of things (not including anything even vaguely computer related) that need to go somewhere else but somehow were attracted to the empty surfaces. Amazing how well the law works.

More research is needed.

Cleaning House

SUMMARY: I'm trying to be tough with myself.

I've been wading through my parents' (mostly my dads') collection of papers in file cabinets.  Inspires me to come home and try to get rid of Stuff.

Gritted my teeth and did it. Tossed 10 years of agility competition catalogs.

(What? You say but I competed for 19 years? Shhhhh.)

Luke is confounded at how someone could have that many catalogs. 

Chip is waiting a safe distance in case they decide to explode.

Of Dragons and Broomsticks and Grieving, Oh My

SUMMARY: Bittersweet dog hair.

Everything in my home and my life is anchored with nano-thin strands to my brain or my heart, or both. The threads hang loosely most of the time, and I never know when one will be yanked and the pain hits and the tears come.

Sometimes in the silliest and most bittersweet ways.

I hardly ever take Chip anywhere. We used to go everywhere. This morning when he went outside with me while I got the newspaper (tears still, every morning, because Boost isn't getting it), he saw a neighbor open their car door and raced over to try to get in. Darn it, we never go anywhere. I no longer have a dog with a reliable recall. Darn it darn it darn it.

After that, I swept the kitchen and the stairs, for the first time since just after Boost died. So--6 weeks. Used to be that granules of dirt and crud accrued rapidly under the two PVC beds in the kitchen, forming a textured carpet of filth on the floor in the exact rectangular shape of the bed. Sometimes every couple of days I'd be so horrified by the grunge that I'd grab the hand vac just to clean under the beds.

Dog hair used to rain down; it formed puddles of fur in the corners of every step on the two staircases, along underneath the fronts of all the cabinets, all across the floor and the corners of the rooms and under the chairs... Sweeping once a week wasn't really enough, but I'd be lucky to get it done half as often, and then sweeping created mountains of fur in multiple locations for scooping and hand-vac-ing, all filling half a wastebasket at least.

Tika drooled at the drop of a food, her whole life. So the areas on the floor of the kitchen where she'd sit and wait while I put the food bowls down, or where she'd hang out by the counter as someone prepared any kind of food. became spotted and smeared and filthy and gross and had to be mopped regularly.

The kitchen floor as a whole easily displayed dirty swaths that demonstrated easily the paths that the dogs took in and out and around.

Today, after 6 weeks:
A bare handful of hair after sweeping everything.
Hardly a speck of dust beneath the PVC beds.
A few random dirty spots here and there on the kitchen floor.

You'd think I'd be happy about the lack of mess, but no: I bawled. Chip moved in and let me lean my head on his shoulder.

And this, in my head:

Boost and Tika doggies lived by the sea
And frolicked in the big back yard in a land called Honalee.
Together they would travel in a van with billowed sail.
Tika kept a lookout next to Booster's white-tipped tail.
One gray night it happened: Boost and Tika came no more.
And MUTT MVR the minivan it closed its rear hatch door.

Monday Morning Blues

SUMMARY: Just one of those mornings.

Also sing today's song to the tune of Darling Clementine, because I created my own earworm yesterday and it won't go away.

Oh my darling
grown-up doggie
you're no longer just a pup
Yet you peed
upon my carpet.
In what barn did you grow up?

When I got up this morning and put my feet on the floor, yup, a wet spot. Don't know who did it or when or why, and no one's talkin'. I don't remember anyone being restless or trying to get my attention during the night, and I'm usually (sometimes too much) aware of their movements and when they thud-jump off the bed. No recollection at all.

Dang.

Soooo I cleaned as best I could with my Bissell Spot Lifter using just water, then applied generous doses of Nature's Miracle.  Spot Lifter and Nature's Miracle--two products that a dog owner with carpets really can't live without! Wish I'd known about them 30 years ago instead of only 10.

But the motor on the Spot Lifter is going south. I ran it down completely several times and then recharged, but it didn't help.  This is my second one; the first one  just wouldn't run one day. So looks to me like their lifespan is around 5 years. But it's so amazingly useful in my life that I'll keep shelling out the $50 every 5 years. Heck, that's not much more than entering Grand Prix and Steeplechase at any one USDAA trial.

And now, for a gratuitous photo because I can.