Designer Water: Similar to Designer Jeans?

In the 21st century, it’s become chic to drink designer water, have you noticed that?  We can now choose from a wide variety of different waters…..from the springs of the Rocky Mountains all the way to the glaciers of the North Pole.  We have to decide if we want our water sparkling or flat; flavored or straight; with Splenda or sugar but certainly no High Fructose Corn Syrup, since HFCS are no longer acceptable in our society.  Do we want naturally sparkling water from some spring-fed something-or-other in France, or the non-chic & quite ordinary carbonated type, also known as seltzer?

Designer drinking water is not the same thing as designer jeans, let’s face it.  We pay a lot of money for a pair of jeans to make our butts look cute…..and that, to me, constitutes justified spending. If we lay out a load of cash for a case of water, well, that’s just a load of horse-pucky, as I see it.

Water quenches my thirst & keeps me hydrated; jeans make me look good.  DUH! I think I’ll take my drink of water from the kitchen sink & save my hard earned moolah for the perfectly fitted jeans thank-you-very-much!

Suddenly, it seems, purchasing water has become quite confusing.  Whether it’s distilled water for our garment steamers, sleep apnea CPAP machines, or ordinary drinking water, the entire H2O market has gotten quite complicated & ridiculously expensive to boot.

If I want to purchase some Evian water from France, which, by the way, spelled backwards is Naïve……..I have to spend a fortune to do so.  I wonder why my drinking water has to come from France?  Fine champagne I can understand.  But water?

If I buy a case of water at the grocery store for $3.99, I expect it to have Nutritional Information on the label of each bottle.

Nutritional Information on water?  OK, I suppose I should  make absolutely certain each bottle contains zero calories, zero grams of fat, carbs & protein….just in case that water may blow my diet, but what do they mean by ‘solid parts’ ? Should water contain ‘solid parts’ of any kind? 

For the purposes of writing this article, I fished a bottle of Arrowhead Pure Quality Water out of the kitchen garbage can here at the office. The drinker paid $1 for 20 ounces of 100% Mountain Spring Water “Only from carefully selected mountain springs” all over California. One source of this water comes from Deer Canyon Springs and/or Coyote Springs.  How, I wonder, does one go about ‘carefully’ selecting springs to draw drinking water from?  And wouldn’t coyotes & deer leave deposits in those springs that we humans would not want to drink?

Perhaps that is where the “solid parts” info comes from on the Nutritional Information?

(((((Shudders)))))

I remember watching a television show a while back about a fancy restaurant in New York City that decided to conduct a little survey about drinking water. They offered up about 12 different designer waters on their menu, ranging in price from $3 to $12 a bottle.  The waiters went out back into the alley behind the restaurant, snickering all the way, and filled up the designer labeled bottles with water from the hose. They then offered the diners 3 different ‘brands’, to see which one was preferred.  The diners, unaware of the scam, most often selected the $12 water bottle as ‘tasting best’.  When they were informed of the fact that each bottle contained the exact same water coming from the exact same hose from the back alley, well, lots of embarrassed giggling followed suit.

Was it W.C. Fields who uttered the infamous quote, “There’s a sucker born every minute”?

When I was a kid, I drank water from the hose in the yard. I could care less if the spigot was rusted or what the water tasted like or didn’t taste like…….if I was thirsty, I drank it, and, believe it or not, I’m still alive today. GASP! And, for centuries now, dogs have been drinking water from toilet bowls and they haven’t died off as a species.  Just some food for thought there…..

I read an article the other day about the growing problem with waste management of all these empty water bottles. If all our empties were laid end to end, the bottles would circle the earth twice. Hmmm. I wonder if we’re overdoing it a bit with the designer water bottle craze?

When I dined out with my daughter last week, the waiter asked us what type of water we’d prefer with our lunch.  I told him, “The free kind.”  My daughter looked daggers at me, of course, but guess what?

I. Don’t. Care.

I refuse to go to a restaurant and pay for water. I prefer to save my money for things with just a tad more value……call me crazy, it wouldn’t be the first time.

I heard my daughter discussing ‘bathroom’ water versus ‘kitchen’ water with her friends not long ago.

“How disgustingly gross is it to get a drink of water from the bathroom sink? Ewwwwwwwwwwww! I would rather die of thirst!”

Um, raising my hand here with a question:  Is there a different set of plumbing pipes leading to the bathroom than there is to the kitchen? Because if there is, I have no knowledge of it nor did I pay extra when building the house for ‘clean’ pipes leading to the kitchen versus ‘dirty’ pipes leading to the bathrooms.

“Silly children,” I told these girls, “just make sure you don’t fill your Dixie cup up from the toilet and I’m sure you’ll be ok.”  As a matter of fact, the dogs seem to be just fine in spite of not being tall enough to reach the bathroom faucet.

If you find yourself leaning towards being a Purified Water Snob, or, if you’re starting to wonder whether you should become a Purified Water Snob based on what everyone else is doing, ask yourself a question:

How are ice cubes made? As far as I know, they’re made from regular old tap water. So, even if you do drink bottled water, your iced drink still contains a bunch of cootie-filled little cubes you never even thought about until now.

Raising my glass of good old American Sink Water to let you know it’s OK to Just Say No to Nonsense!

When I Got Back Home From Italy, I Kissed My Toilet Bowl

For two glorious weeks in June, 2009, my brand new husband & I took off for a romantic, fun filled adventure in Italy. It was a delayed honeymoon of sorts, and we had the time of our lives.

There was only one fly in the ointment.

For such a civilized country as Italy, the toilet situation is just as UNcivilized. We take our toilet bowls for granted here. They're clean, they're white, they flush, they have water in them, toilet paper nearby, and doors to close for privacy. The bathroom here in the U.S. is a retreat...a place to go  and sit back, relax & have a moment of peace & quiet.

In Italy, toilets are a horse of another color. While we did have a tiny water closet *WC* on our tour bus, it was for emergency use only. Our tour guide Liz gave us the run down on finding usable toilets in every city & town we visited. We are women...we need toilets....we line up like good little soldiers & do a little dance while we wait our turn to use the blessed WC.

Every single bathroom in every single hotel in Italy has a bidet. The room may be 5 square feet in total but a bidet IS squeezed into the tiny space no matter WHAT. The hotels provide little in the way of luxuries in the bathroom.....one roll of toilet paper, no tissues....maybe a tiny bottle of shampoo & a sliver of soap. But they DO provide shoe sponges. Out of all the toiletry items we COULD use, a shoe sponge isn't one of them. What on earth would I need a shoe sponge FOR? Cleaning my sandals? Shining up my sneakers? Folks, on several occasions, I thought about using that shoe sponge for toilet paper, let me tell you. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

In San Gimignano, dear Liz led me to a latrine. A hole in the floor that you squat over while praying feverishly not to wet the clothing lying down around your ankles. I told Liz I didn't have to go THAT badly....I'd wait for a more civilized toilet.  I'd have used the WC on the bus if I knew my other choice was to be a latrine. Sigh.

We'd stop frequently at gas stations to get coffee & to use the toilets. Most of them don't have toilet seats. Liz told us it was the Italian LAW. Imagine having a law about toilet seats?? If we were lucky enough to find toilet paper, it was a small piece & to be used sparingly yet lovingly. A piece of paper to truly appreciate. Many times I swiped the tiny napkin they gave me with my cappucinno & furrowed it away in my purse for later use.

I ran into a toilet bowl with a seat one day....it was on a spring action thingy & automatically popped up. I was thrilled. I carefully put the seat down & it shot back up violently.  4 or 5 times this happened but I valiantly kept at it...I HAD to make this work. I finally sat my butt down on the toilet seat & I felt a huge sense of accomplishment: I DID it! Next thing I knew, the toilet sprayed water all over my butt!  Who knew I’d be getting a shower along with a tinkle?

When the seat went down, the water automatically started spraying! How gross is THAT? Naturally, there was no toilet paper to mop my butt off with. I slunk out of that stall feeling small & ashamed....the toilet won, I was defeated.

Tourists are able to use the toilets in coffee shops if they make a purchase. Sitting in an outdoor cafe in Florence sipping my espresso, I decided to make use of the WC before taking off. Get while the getting is good. The waitress led me to the back of the shop. She opened a TRAP DOOR in the FLOOR. I started to sweat. Before me lied the steepest, darkest stone staircase I'd ever seen. She motioned me to go down. Gulp. What? Go down into the bowels of the cellar to do my business? Yessiree. I groped my way down to a dank, nasty, red-hot cellar filled with boxes. A tiny door read WC & I knew I'd found my way. But, where was the light? I took out my trusty Bic lighter & waved it around. I started laughing......I'd have to pee by the light of my Bic! And figure out how to do my business one-handed at the same time!  I was frazzled by the time I clawed my way back to Chuck who was calmly people-watching at the table outside. I told him he HAD to go use the WC.....JUST DO IT! I snickered as I watched him enter the shop. He came back awhile later....with a wet stain on his pants! He didn't have a lighter & had to pee in the dark! Ah....I never knew smoking cigarettes could be a GOOD thing after all.

The flushing mechanisms vary widely in Italy as well. Most of them are on a wall panel & just require pushing a button. Others have knobs that you either push or pull. After pulling a few knobs clear OFF the wall, I realized those were the ones that required pushing. One night we had a 9 course dinner in a parking lot outside of a run-down restaurant. They couldn't accommodate 39 people inside so they set up tables on the gravel in the parking lot. Fortunately, the food was unbelievably delicious so the view, or lack of view, wasn't a big deal. We were able to go inside to use the WCs though, fortunately. I found a large stall with a door, I was very excited indeed. I'd be able to do my business in privacy & luxury...yayyyyyyyy!!! When I was ready to flush, I didn't see a way to do it. All I saw was a huge steel lever on the wall. What to do what to do? I gingerly cranked the lever & it came crashing down to the floor with a huge CLANG. That brought the Italian speaking waiter rushing over to my inner sanctuary asking if I was ok. I hung my head in shame as I exited the stall. Why oh why do the Italians make it so darn hard to take a pee I wonder?

We had many more WC experiences in Italy & they were all different...all challenging....all crazy. As a group, we were laughing like hyenas one night as we discussed how we planned to kiss our toilet bowls when got back home.

When I walked through my front door & saw my powder room, I was thrilled & ready to get on my knees & kiss the porcelain. Right then, the doorbell rang & my next door neighbor informed  me that our sewers were sinking. The builder had screwed up the installation of the sewer lines & they needed to be repaired to the tune of $5,000.00 to $15,000.00 depending on the severity of the damage. The porcelain kissing would have to be delayed while I pursued class action suits, lawyers, sewer companies & all the joy that's likely to be involved in this little adventure. 

I can’t seem to escape the Toilet Bowl issues in this country or outside of this country.

Sigh.

Coming home to reality bites.

Cleaning the House For the Cleaning Lady

I treat myself to very few luxuries in life. For the most part, I dye my own hair with my daughter’s help because I don’t have eyes in the back of my head.  I do go to a salon once a month for a haircut & I maintain a set of acrylic, French-tipped nails.  Right before my wedding day on September 6, 2009, I decided to have a set put on so I’d look bee-u-tee ful for my big day & I’ve been hooked ever since.

Acrylic nails never break, they always look perfect & besides, they make great screwdrivers! I can slice open a UPS box with my thumb-nail instead of searching high & low for a real tool to do the job.  What a deal.

So, there you have it. I treat myself to two luxuries a month; acrylic nail re-basing & a haircut. Whoop-de-doo.

Working full time, raising a teenager, 2 bad dogs, a cockatiel & being a full time wife to my dear husband takes up most of my time so I’ve allowed myself to have a cleaning woman come in twice a month.  I’ve had a cleaning woman working for me for the past 15 years or so & let me tell you something; it is very easy to get used to someone else doing the heavy cleaning.

Of course, it’s necessary to straighten up the house prior to her arrival every other Tuesday morning.  If there’s a ton of junk cluttering up all the surfaces in the house, it can be pretty tough for her to move it all out of the way to do the scrubbing.

So, for the most part, I straighten up the house for her arrival. But I don’t leave it spotless because that’s her job.

After the cleaning lady left my house last week, she wrote me a note to call her, which I did when I got home from work that evening.  She wanted to tell me she couldn’t find cotton sheets for the bed so she made it up with the fleece set instead. It’s June & 90 degrees out, but that’s beside the point I guess.   If we suffer from night sweats due to the incredibly hot sheets, so be it, we will live.  If worse comes to worse, I will change the sheets myself (((((putting back of hand up to eyebrow & batting my eyes here, can you feel it?))))))

One must be very careful not to Tick Off The Cleaning Lady Or Else She May Quit, God Forbid.

She had something else to tell me in addition.  The next cleaning she’d do for me would be her last.  Although she ‘loves’ her job, she doesn’t ‘love’ her job at my house.

What?

After  years of loyal service, she was finished with me? Dumping me like an online dalliance who doesn’t have the chutzpah to call & break up with you, but sends you an email instead?

Well, at least she called me instead of texting or emailing….

So, “What’s the problem?” I ask her.

“Well,” she says, “I leave your house in a bad mood every time I clean it,” was her cryptic response.

I pay the woman $100 to clean 1 floor of living space; a kitchen, a family room, a dining room that is never used, a study, 2 bedrooms & 2 ½ bathrooms.  It normally takes her 2 ½ hours  to do the job, which translates to $40.00 per hour for her time.

Forty dollars an hour.  Gee, in my world, that is a lot of money for very little time. Not that she doesn’t work hard for that 2 ½ hours, she does, but $40 per hour is still a lot of money to pay for unskilled labor.

At first I felt panicked at the thought of not having a cleaning lady anymore.  Holy cow, might that mean that I would have to sweep & mop & vacuum & scrub & dust & scrape??

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I collected my wits about me & asked her if she’d like a raise?

“No,” she said, “that wouldn’t make a difference. “

What?

So, if I paid her fifty dollars an hour to clean my house, that still wasn’t enough?

I suppose what she wants is for me to thoroughly clean my house before she arrives!

Wouldn’t that be convenient?

Then she could sit on the couch & eat bon-bons & pop In a DVD to entertain herself instead of working to make $100.

If she’d like to discuss ‘bad moods’ on the job, boy can I tell her a thing or two about a job that puts me in a bad mood, which I do for way under $40 an hour, never mind $50!  My dear former cleaning lady ought to work at my desk, on a computer program that is so fouled up, it takes 4 different Help-Desks to maintain it! Working in the federal government is sort of like entering The Twilight Zone. What other organization on earth would insist on creating 768 pieces of paperwork to pay a $1.55 bill?  I may spend 2 hours on one invoice, or, $34.55 in expenses to pay $1.55.

Insanity? Uh huh.

So please, let us NOT talk about jobs that put a person in a ‘bad mood.’

Maybe I should quit my loathsome job & become a cleaning lady…..for $50 an hour, which would be a huge pay raise for me.   After all, the only crap I’d have to deal with would be located in the toilet bowls & that job would be finished within 20 minutes.  In my current job, I deal with crap all day, 8 hours a day.

But maybe I don’t understand the Rules of Being a Cleaning Lady….

I thought cleaning ladies cleaned. I thought it was expected they arrive at a less-than-perfect looking living space & actually made it look neater & tidier; I thought, silly me, that that was their job!

Maybe I’ll put an ad in the paper & offer my cleaning services, for $50 an hour, and the ad would read something like this:

For Hire: $50/hr: Cleaning lady.  Please be sure your house is perfectly neat, tidy & clean before I arrive at your doorstep.  I don’t do windows, toilets, counter-tops, floors, vacuuming, mopping, dusting, and I do not load dirty dishes into the dishwasher.  My favorite snacks are Doritos, low-salt peanuts, dark chocolate brownies & Fanta Orange soda.  I prefer romantic comedies on DVD; nothing too deep or serious, please, since I cannot risk being in a bad mood when I leave your home. Serious inquiries only, call 555-2345.

Hmmm. $50 an hour to deal with crap, or under $20 an hour to deal with crap.

I may just have to  trade in my computer for a Swiffer.

DatingDotCom

For the past 9 years, I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a book & calling it DatingDotCom.  It would be a collection of my online dating stories, of which there are many, covering an 18 month period of time.  Even though that book never did come to fruition, I’ve decided to share the very worst story with you right here & now.  It’s the mother of them all.

This is the story of my First Date in 23 years. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent, either. Snicker.

Some background first:  In 2002, I got divorced after being married for 22 years.  I decided to re-enter the dating world but boy, at 45 years old, I was pretty rusty at the whole game.

How does a newly available, middle-aged woman get back into a scene she’d given up at 22 years old, way-back-when in 1979? I was pretty good at it then, I must say, and playing  Disco Diva to the hilt. I was always on the dance floor, boogieing down until Donna Summer finished the final song of the evening, Last Dance.  But now in the twentieth century, I was quite sure things had changed.

And I was right.

I decided to join the DatingDotCom world, since I had no idea how on earth I’d meet an eligible man otherwise. At the grocery store? While walking the dog? Sheesh, not much opportunity to meet a man that way, in reality.

The first service I signed up with was Match.com.  Truthfully, that site should be renamed LosersOnly.com, that would be way more accurate.  The first guy I went out with after being out of the dating scene for 23+ years was named Tony.  He was so attractive in his online picture & wow, he certainly had the sexiest phone voice I’d ever heard. I was pretty nervous to meet him for drinks at Bennigan’s, 20-some miles away from my home.  I’d changed outfits about ½ a dozen times, fussed with my hair & make-up, and applied a bit more Secret to neutralize my sweaty armpits.  I was downright petrified for that first date.

When I pulled into the parking lot, I saw a very slob-like man getting out of an old jalopy & walking up to my car. “Lord, do not let that be Him,” I prayed.  But of course, it was Him.  But not the Him that he’d advertised himself to be on his profile, that’s for sure. He was at least 100 lbs heavier than he was in his online photo & dressed like a hobo; torn & dirty t-shirt, ragged jeans, and a balding head.

Funny how he’d had a FULL head of hair on his profile pic, huh? Hmmm. Perhaps he’d lost the vast majority of it overnight.

Or perhaps he was a big fat liar.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of Tony’s beer-belly, if that’s what it was. He looked 9 months pregnant & ready to burst, truthfully.

When he spoke, I heard that deep & velvety voice I recognized from our many phone conversations.  Now I’d have to close my eyes to conjure up the vision I’d had of him being all smooth & sexy because in real life, he was neither.

Here was lesson #1 in the DatingDotCom world: Hurry up & meet; do not have lengthy phone conversations for a month or two before laying eyes on the troll. Oops, I mean the First Date.

So anyway, I was there, we’d made this date, and so I’d keep it, period.  We found a little round table in the bar area & sat down to talk.  He immediately ordered a 24 ounce Bud on draught.  We started talking & a few minutes later, he summoned the waitress over for another 24 ounce Bud.  Ok. The guy must be pretty thirsty….

20 minutes into the conversation & 6 beers later, I thought to myself, Holy cow girlfriend, this man is a raging alcoholic! He’s starting to slur his words & flirt with the waitress, making little jokes & such. How rude to be doing that while on a date with a woman who’d primped & fussed & gussied herself up for nothing. Ugh, what a total-package-pig.

Actually, I had had no idea just how big a pig Tony really was.

As the keg of beer started ‘loosening’ him up a bit, he’d put his hand on my neck & fiddle around with my heavy gold rope choker.  Blech.  I did not like his hand on my skin at all, and I squirmed away from his touch.

After he’d finished sucking down 12, 24 ounce Buds on draught, the waitress came over, looking a bit nervous, and told him No More.  Patrons of the bar were cut off at a 12 beer limit, and he’d sloshed down his 288 ounces in 90 minutes.

He burped & wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Just lovely.

I excused myself to go to the ladies room at that point, thoroughly disgusted.

I fiddled around in there for a bit, gathering up my wits to tell him Thank You For A Lovely Evening (ha-ha) & Goodnight when I got back to the table.

But when I got to the table, Tony-the-Raging-Alcoholic was gone.

I thought maybe he’d gone to the Men’s Room to release a few gallons of beer.

Nope. He was still nowhere to be found 10 minutes later.

I saw the waitress lurking around the bar, looking all weird & playing with her hair.

I called her over. “Do you know what happened to my date?” I asked her.

“Well” she stammered, “he went rushing out the front door a minute after you’d gone into the bathroom. And boy, he sure seemed like a nice enough guy.”

What?

I went to the front door & looked around the parking lot. His old beater was gone!

He’d ditched me!

When I got back to the little round table in the bar, the only thing that remained of our date was the bar bill.

$68.94 to be exact.

The bum had stiffed me! Left ME with the check & not so much as a Goodbye!

I was truly stunned speechless. Which is a rare occurrence, let me tell you.

The poor waitress felt awful, I could tell by the pitiful expression on her face, and I was embarrassed beyond belief at that point. I wasn’t red in the face, I was purple.

The waitress & I shared a few ugly comments about  Some Men Being Losers & the horrors of the DatingDotCom world in general. There was plenty of tsk-tsk’ing & Oh-My-God-I-Can’t-Believe-It’s, while the bartender processed my credit card payment. I was thankful I’d brought the card with me, or else I’d have been washing dishes in the kitchen that night.

I was absolutely livid on the long drive home. I called that man every filthy four-letter word I could come up with & I even remember letting out a blood-curdling scream of utter frustration.

WHAT NERVE!

After I’d gotten home & changed into my comfy PJ’s, the phone rang.

It was Him.

The dirty-rotten-lousy-filthy-Loser-son-of-a-bee.  He was calling to tell me his son had been hurt in a skate-boarding mishap. His babysitter had called him & he had to ‘rush out’ of Bennigan’s to meet up with them at the Emergency Room.  His son was fine, just bruised up a bit.  He’d had ‘no time’ to knock on the ladies’ room door to tell me of this mishap, nor did he have time to pay the frickin bill before rushing off to do his ‘fatherly duty.’

Uh huh. What a crock. “Do you think I just fell off the turnip truck?” I asked him. I was born at night but not last night.

“By the way” he said with no hesitation or hint of apology in his deep, velvety voice, “can you loan me $100 to pay the doctor’s bill, I’m running a bit short this month?”

What?

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I wound up having to pull out the heavy-duty Hoover to clean up the bits of broken phone shards that were scattered all over my living room floor.  As I returned the vacuum to the utility closet, I saw my reflection in the mirrored door.  Sans heavy gold rope choker which I had not removed & returned to my jewelry box in my haste to get my jammies on earlier!

The dirty rotten scoundrel must have stolen it! Oh My God! He must’ve unhooked it when he was pretending to be all lovey-dovey (throwing up a little in my mouth as I type this) at the table!

Now, if this wasn’t the icing on the road-apple cake, I don’t know what was!

Cost of 12, 24 ounce glasses of draught beer & 2 Diet Cokes: $68.94

Cost of heavy gold rope choker: $1,500.00

Cost of Learning the New Dating Rules for the 20th Century: Priceless