About three years ago my cat gave me fleas. I thought I would be environmentally friendly and I decided to use diatomaceous earth. If you are unfamiliar, it is is a natural product that looks like baby powder but is actually a rock with jagged edges that will supposedly kill the flea by drying out its exoskeleton. However, it is not toxic to animals with endoskeletons. So...I did what it said and I spread it all around the corners of the hardwood, on the furniture and all over the house and then I vacuumed it up. Or should I say that I attempted to vacuum it up. It did not want to be vacuumed up.
What a mess!
This may have been one of the stupider things I have ever done. First of all, it did not kill the fleas. Secondly, despite multiple sweepings and moppings over the years, I still find remnants of powder in the corners of the room, or when I bang into the couch some sprinkles out. I guess the moral of this story is that I should have either gone with the bug bomb despite the poison (which is what I ended up doing in the end) or gotten rid of the cat. (P.S. I did later use the same product to successfully kill a bunch of hornets in my garden, so it is not entirely useless).
Gato supervises but never works.
I eat the same thing for breakfast every day. At the original time of this writing in 2016, breakfast consisted of oatmeal with peanut butter (95% of the time) or Cheerios. Currently the breakfast du jour is eggs. We have hard boiled ones at work and I usually have a couple of those, or if I am home I will fry up a couple. The only real deviation would be on a weekend when I eat out, and then its usually omelet time, but that is still eggs! I also generally eat the same thing for lunch on the weekdays and maybe two or three dishes for dinners. You call it boring; I call it efficient.
I believe that everything has its place. For instance, the milk in the fridge belongs on the right hand side of the top shelf. It doesn't belong on the left side, nor the middle shelf, nor the door. It belongs where it belongs and it always goes back there. In the risk of sounding a bit neurotic, I can usually tell if someone has moved something, eaten something or used something of mine, as they don't put it back exactly so (for instance, at work, I KNOW when you have used my stapler). I also like things put away in their place before I leave. The bed has to be made. The cupboards, shower curtain and closet doors have to all be closed etc.
I am trying to save the environment. As I am running the water to heat it up for a shower, I put a bucket under the tap and I use that water to water the plants in the yard. In winter, when they don't need water, I use it to flush the toilet. I know that in backpacking and running, we definitely use too many single serving packets; I try to use reusable ziplocks and buy things in bulk when I can. For my last race, I carried peanuts with me in this reusable snack bag. The other thing that I really try to do is to not use plastic water or other small sized bottles. I am not perfect, but I am moving in the right direction.
I am long winded....as you can probably tell from this post. I don't know if this is a quirk or an annoyance at times. I blame my father, who can make a 3 minute story last for 15 minutes. I notice my brother does the same thing as well, so watch out if you are in a room with all three of us (my poor mother!). Don't get stuck in a corner! However, I think that this makes me an excellent running partner. Just ask me to tell you a story about X and I will take until the end of the run to finish!
Stay tuned for more random finished draft posts; you never know what may be coming soon!
What stupid thing have you done lately? What quirk do you have?
