Lesson learned, tough stuff

Reason #27 why Blistex is better than Chapstick:

In our family, we girls were expected to do our own laundry starting at the age of twelve. Throughout my high school and college years, I had the unfortunate habit of leaving a tube of Blistex in my pants' pockets while washing my clothes. This often brought me angst, as the Blistex wasn't salvageable after a run through the dryer, but at least the extent of my woes was a ruined tube of lip balm. The then-melted nectar of the gods managed to stay concealed inside the tube, and my clothes were no worse for the wear.

I must've run at least half a dozen or more tubes of Blistex through the wash, with the same result. Naturally, the one time a tube of Chapstick weaseled its way into the laundry, it exploded in a fury all over Jacob's and my shirts in the dryer. This was a tragedy, and I admit I was a bit of a Sir Grumpsalot when I found out. Jacob and I dutifully applied a stain remover treatment to each grease spot we found on our clothes and ran them through the wash again.

A small improvement, but the spots were still there. And then the clothes sat in the dryer for five days while I successfully avoided thinking about trying something else to remove the stains.

Today, I tried using dish soap to remove the rest of the stains. After a nice soak in the tub, back into the washing machine they went. Upon retrieving the laundry, I noticed that some grease spots remained, but I went ahead and hung the clothes up in the closet anyway. Maybe nobody else will notice?

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Reason #59 not to buy an 88 cent can opener:

A few months ago, the can opener I, ahem, accidentally stole from one of my former roommates kicked the bucket. I resorted to borrowing a can opener from one of our neighbors in desperation, but before long we determined we needed to purchase one of our own.

As Jacob and I perused the kitchen needs aisle at Walmart, we were overwhelmed by how many varieties of can openers there were. Well, really, there were only two or three different kinds, but the prices varied widely. What made a $12 or $15 can opener better than a $3 or $4 one? And why spend that much money when you could purchase a can opener for 88 cents?

As it turns out, the reason for spending that much money is so your can opener doesn't break on you mere months after purchase. A few nights ago I was attempting to open a Costco-sized can of peaches for my not-quite-midnight snack, and I was struggling. I called for Super Husband to come to the rescue and open the can to satisfy my peach craving.

He was unable to get the can opener to work, either, and after 15 minutes with no success, he decided to use scissors to cut the lid off. Um, yeah. Said can is now a death trap (or at least a mutilation hazard):

But I was able to eat my peaches, and that's what really matters. Though I guess now we need to buckle down and fork over some money for a higher quality can-opening device.

Flowers, chocolates, promises you don't intend to keep

This morning Jacob woke me up at 6 with a Valentine's Day breakfast in bed surprise (consisting of a bagel, yogurt, part of a muffin, peanut butter crackers* [ha!], and milk). He said he stayed up all night just so he could surprise me (he didn't have work yesterday, so he could've gone to bed at an "early time", which really means four in the morning).

I think he made me breakfast partially because he loves me and partially so it would mask my morning breath of death by the time he came to bed.

Happy Valentine's Day!

*So we bought a Costco pack of snack crackers MONTHS ago. We ate all of the cheese crackers and the cookie-style crackers ages ago, and we've been hanging on to about 30 packages of peanut butter crackers ever since. A few days ago I snuck one in the lunch bag he took to work. He retaliated by telling me I needed to eat ten packages a day. So far, neither of us have eaten any. So if you're in the area and you like peanut butter crackers, I'd be happy to gift you some!

Parking woes

I like to think I'm usually a pretty understanding person. But I admit it, I can be petty sometimes. Take our latest parking situation at our apartment complex.

The parking spots are assigned by apartment number, and when we moved into our apartment, we had the good fortune of being awarded THE ideal parking spot. It's the spot closest to our apartment building, and it's on the end so you can just pull forward out of the spot instead of backing up like everyone else. Which is good, because backing up is not one of my strong points in driving. Neither is parallel parking or making unprotected left hand turns, but that's besides the point.

The parking spot is so ideal that I even spent 15 minutes constructing a fairly accurate diagram of our parking lot and apartment building:

See what I mean? Perfect. (The rest of the parking spaces in that row are also numbered, but I didn't include them because, erm, I can't remember which numbers are next to ours. I assume they're in the 20s, but you never do know. At the back of the parking lot, we have a row of unnumbered spaces for visitors.)

Now lately, a Big Mean White SUV has been parking in our parking spot while Jacob has been at work. The owner of said Big Mean White car (or BMW car) is clearly a visitor of one of our neighbors, as our neighbors do an excellent job of parking in their own spaces. If they had an award for proper parking, my neighbors would all get gold stars. But when Jacob comes home and our parking spot is taken, he's forced to park in -- gasp!-- one of the unnumbered spaces a whole 30 feet away!

This means that when Jacob tumbles into bed and doesn't mention that he parked somewhere else, I get a mild panic attack when I look out the window some time later (and see the now-empty parking spot, as BMW car has left since then) and naturally assume our car has been stolen.

All in all, this isn't the worst situation to be in. But it's our parking spot! Have they no sense of common decency?

Tonight I was tempted to leave a note on their windshield, informing them that they were parked in a reserved parking spot -- and could they be so kind as to park in one of the unnumbered spots in the future, instead? But I didn't know how to phrase it without sounding either completely pretentious or like a jerk. Suggestions?

(And as it turned out, the car left 15 minutes after I first saw it, so maybe the owner could just sense the negative vibes coming from me and decided to hightail it outta there. Problem solved?)