Wild, Feral Dust

This morning, Louise got up early for a Saturday and after a quick breakfast headed out in the rain for a fifty minute drive to Ghost Lake. Once there she met with others of a like mind and went paddling on a glacial lake for an hour and forty minutes. In the cold rain! I described her on facebook as “nuckin futs”, and I stand by that description. I know, she just loves paddling and with the reservoir closed due to whatever it is closed for, this is the only opportunity to paddle. Good for you and your dedication, you crazy lady.

It did get me to thinking about things that I have done that I knew from the outset were if not outright stupid then certainly questionable. When the kids were smaller and still listened to me (I thought) I would show them the best way to have fun. Over the years I have broken two ribs, cracked three and rode a banana board down a ramp. The resulting crash caused a concussion, pulled shoulder, sprained knee and of course wounded pride. To this day they still laugh at me and Arwen wants me to teach Ewan how to have fun. I have no idea how I raised such mean spirited children. I blame video games.

Have you ever had a T-shirt that developed little lint balls? I am sure that they have a name, but I don’t know it and if you do then you know what I am talking about. Don’t be so superior! They bother me. It is an indication that the t-shirt has moved from the “going out in public” drawer to the “only in the house and use with glue, oil and paint” drawer. I hate this! It always happens to my favourite shirts!

Well, today I drew a line in the sand against little lint balls on my t-shirts. After reading that last sentence I guess the name would have been handy to know. So I thought that if I can shave my face, then I should be able to shave my t-shirt and thus prolong the wearable life of said shirt. I will grant you that I don’t have a lot of lint balls on my face but the principal is the same. Guess what? It sort of worked. Yep, I prolonged the life of a three year old t-shirt which cost about five bucks new and ruined a razor worth maybe three dollars. This is one instance when I am glad I am bad with figures, because I have the feeling that it wasn’t worth it.

There was another time when Louise had gone for the weekend and left me with nothing constructive to do. Now, a good and loving husband would keep the house in nice clean condition. Well, I can turn my hand to almost anything if I put my mind to it. Okay, so I will spend a while cleaning the house. Hmmmm…what first? Dusting! I had just bought a compressor and all of the fittings so I was itching to use it. Dust is light and if it is anything like sawdust I should be able to blow it off of the furniture and right out of the house. I opened the doors (it’s too much to think I could blow the dust out of just one door) and hooked up the hose and the blow gun. This will be fun I thought.

It was fun in its way. The air took the dust off of the furniture all right, but it turns out that house dust and saw dust have different properties. Saw dust not only had mass, but weight as well, where house dust has mass but no weight. It is something to do with physics I think. Well, the dust rose up in the air and just sort of hung there. Not only didn’t the dust blow out the door, but a lot of the knick knacks on top of the furniture flew off and onto the floor. Sometimes with a crash.

I was sitting there afterwards with a cup of tea wondering what else I should do when I noticed a film floating in my cup. The dust was settling. Now I know what they mean by “when the dust settles”. When all was said and done there was a thick layer of dust all over the house. Far more than was there in the beginning, I can only assume that by leaving the doors open it allowed all of the wild, feral dust in the neighbourhood to enter.

One good thing came from this experiment; I now had something to do for the rest of the weekend.