Sleeping with my Cell Phone

About six months ago, me and my trusty flip-phone were pushed (kicking and screaming) into forced obsolescence. I had coddled it for about two years before; slowly accepting that I had to stab at the letter's "XYZ" at least three times to make the button work, and that messages could often take several hours to send and receive. My friends understood that texting was becoming challenging at best, and that a random emoji, no matter how cute, would never reach me through my aging gadget.

But, I persevered until November, pretending it didn't matter, until suddenly the only word I could type for an entire week was "Hector". I'll spare you the stories, but no matter what I started to press, it defaulted to the very unknown and annoying Hector.
I dug my heels in, and managed without one for a few weeks, but eventually common sense overruled my stubbornness, and I gave in and bought a smartphone (i.e. the dumbest, least expensive smartphone I could find). I said good-bye to my flip-phoning Hector, and put him carefully away - reluctantly, not wanting to let go of the beloved saved texts and button-pushing memories.

After all, I only needed it for texting and the occasional phone call, so I vowed from the beginning to never go on the Internet, or check my email while sitting in traffic - I was determined not to become one of those people.

Then my daughter went away for a week. We texted back and forth, and because I wanted to text her good-night, I would take it upstairs to bed with me (well aware that teenagers stay up much later than their tired parents). One night, when I went to bed far too early, I wondered if I had received a reply to an email from the day before; just the thought of getting out of bed, and turning on the computer seemed like too much work, so I looked at my phone, and found google...

That was it. For the next three nights I would lie in bed, hunched over my phone looking up information, scrolling through clothes on ebay, and texting my daughter. I was hooked. Some days, I went to bed just so that I could look at the little information-filled gadget in front of me. I would lie until my shoulder hurt, and my eyes stung - way past my usual bedtime.

Not a book or magazine was read, and there was no drifting off to sleep listening to the frogs or the falling rain outside, imagining all sorts of wonderful thoughts. I didn't care. All I wanted to do was see what I could find on the glowing rectangle in front of me.

After a few days, I noticed my neck hurt, and the pile of magazines had built up. I was beginning to get curious as to what had happened to the heroine in my book, the furrow between my eyes had deepened, and I missed the comfort of silently lying awake in the darkness before I went to sleep.

Those who write about this stuff, always go on and on about how if you sleep with your phone it will damage your brain, you will sleep poorly, or it will spontaneously combust on your pillowcase, but I think the problem is much simpler than that - it's just bad for us.
After a week of doing it, I began to miss what was actually happening around me, and even though I became hooked on the screen (and the feeling of having access to everything in the world) it wore me out, and I never went to sleep peacefully at all.

As a smartphone newbie, it scared the hell out of me. Now, I leave it in the kitchen, and am happy to be going back to bed with a snoring dog, an open window, and a worn, paperback novel.

Four Dollar Floor Fix

This week, I was going to try and refinish my hardwood floors myself. When we first moved in, over twenty years ago, there was carpet everywhere, but after three cats and numerous spills, the warm, loopy beige concoction turned into a smelly nightmare, and it was time to go. 

When I pulled the carpet up (which took weeks, and a couple of near safety misses with my toddler) I was delighted with the hardwood floors that we found underneath. Barely sealed, we loved them, and made do with an occasional polish until the last few years (we have a dog who has literally licked wide, white circles onto it, and a cat who behaves less than well when we are not paying him enough attention).

So, I decided to take the job on myself, and researched the best DIY product for unfinished, hardwood floors. The ideas run the gamut, from full on renting a sander and days of polyurethane, to products that will clean and seal at the same time. Determined to get it done (when you are almost embarrassed to have people over, it's a problem) I wandered one night into the complete DIY Internet community; finding out far more than I ever needed to know, as I realized my floors were made really well, but were literally dried out, and thirsty for some nourishment.

That something, according to the experts, could be as complicated as a three-step chemical sealer, or as simple as mixing up some olive oil, vinegar and lemon oil in your kitchen.
As it was around 8pm, and I don't like olive oil (and didn't have lemon oil) I decided to drizzle some safflower oil onto a corner in my Living Room. It started to soak in almost immediately, so I buffed it around with a soft cloth, then left it for a few minutes to see what would happen.

When I tell you, it looked amazing, I am not fibbing. Within an hour, I had drizzled and buffed safflower oil all over my Living Room floor. Five days later, it still looks good, I am thrilled with the results, and I am planning to do the rest of my house.

Here are the results, and a few extra notes:

* Just an additional note - my floors are well over fifty years old, are solid hardwood (red oak?) and had no polyurethane or finish on them at all. 

The Garage Door

Sometimes, a girl just needs more - more cake, more hugs, more sunshine, more opinions, more coffee, more sleep .... and a whole lot more words!

Just when my Mom didn't think I could do any more talking, I have decided to expand my blog, and empty out more of the words that dance around in my head when I least expect them. Not content to confine my thoughts to decorating, I want to write about everything else that goes on in my head as well. It will be the same as before, but different (and might even include an entire story on why I don't think the world needs any more broccoli) but mostly it will just be more. More of what we like to talk about, more odd bits and pieces, and more than you ever knew you needed to know.

Talking of which, I wish my neighbor's hadn't fixed their garage door. I miss seeing them come and go. I miss knowing when they were home for dinner, or seeing them leave early on a Summer's day - off to enjoy the sunshine, visiting friends and stopping at their favorite diner for lunch.  

It is all electronic now, and while in the Winter I wish like crazy for my own attached garage and automatic door opener, I realize that I have lost the comfort of feeling people around me. Now, cars slowly approach a house, buttons are pressed, and they all slip in and out of their car home with barely a sound. Unless your nose is permanently pressed to the window, you won't see this happen, so the outside of a house can remain unchanged for weeks at a time.

It is strange not knowing if people are home or not, and I wonder if they feel the same way?

Our previous neighbor, Mrs. Hansen, didn't have a garage at all, so there was a lot of waving through the row of trees, and my daughter and I could easily pop over to say hello when we knew she was home. As my daughter grew older, I could safely send her all by herself to visit, because we could see when Mrs. Hansen was and wasn't there. It was easy to see by her car.

We would wave and complain about the cold during the snow storms, as we both shoveled our driveways and scraped the ice off our cars. Being much older than I, she put me to shame with her energy, and if I saw her outside I knew enough to be embarrassed, and that I had better bundle up and get my backside out there as quickly as possible.

In the Springtime, we would find ourselves talking about the weeds, or how on earth she got her Iris's to grow so tall, and in the Autumn we would both rake leaves, side by side, in an almost magical companionable silence.

The car in her driveway was like a welcome sign, and my daughter would run over to tell her about school, or just to say hello and share some cookies; she liked the freedom of being able to go by herself, and I liked the security of knowing that I could see at a glance that Mrs. Hansen was there.

Now, the street is becoming a sea of automatic garage door openers. We have no idea who is home, and who is not. We will never know if they are housebound and something is wrong, or if they have a new girlfriend and got married. Which is such a shame, because neighbors create a sense of ordinary, everyday, necessary comfort....and I miss that.