Things To Do Around The House

Two nights ago I was, like the subject of a first year art student's attempt at surrealism or a housewife finally succumbing to the DTs, standing on a chair and vacuuming the ceiling and walls. I was doing this because I was coming down with a cold, obviously. My apartment is in an old building, dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. The ceilings have cracked with some of the plaster has begun snowing down.

This doesn't bother me. It's one of those things that needs to be repaired every two or three years but I'm not in the mood to have repairmen schlepping through my apartment and the damage isn't bad enough yet to force the issue. The building settles, cracks appear in the brick facade, water gets in and saturates my ceiling, voila. It is, however, happening in my bedroom and once I felt a cold coming on I thought it best to remove as much potential irritant as possible. So that's why I was standing on a chair, vacuuming plaster from the room's open sores.

Last night I wanted to use a neti pot to clean out my sinuses. A neti pot is basically a small teapot. Short and stout. Handle. Spout. Unlike a teapot, you put the spout in one nostril, then tilt your head so that the water runs through both sinuses and out your other nostril. It is gross, but it does help when you have a cold. I didn't have a neti pot, but rather than brave the chilly temps and go out and buy one, I decided to make my own. I boiled water in my electric kettle, poured it into a bowl to cool, then transferred it to a measuring cup that has a spout, and was proud of my ingenuity.

Unfortunately, the spout on the measure cup was not designed to be inserted into a nostril (perhaps this is a safety feature). I stopped trying when I realized all I was going to do was end up looking like Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. So I poured the water sort of at my nostril, getting a surprising amount in my nose with much of that making the journey out the other side.

All this and I still found time tonight to break a favorite mug. It's amazing I get anything done.