I Love the Fresh Scent of Gain

I am a terrible insomniac, the only person who never took naps even as a child (much to my mother’s chagrin) and to this day it takes me nearly an hour to fall asleep after I lay down, no matter how tired I may be.  And during that hour and sometimes for many more after when I can’t sleep my brain is running a million miles a minute. And it’s usually now about anything important. It goes something like this: “I wonder what shirt would look cute with those boots tomorrow?… Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there… I wonder if anyone I follow in Twitter is still awake too… you know what I miss, Skip it… yeeeeah those were awesome… I think I left something in the dryer, that’s gonna wrinkle…why is dryer lint always the same color?” And that’s where about I got stuck the other night. And I spent far too much time mulling over the topic in my head.

I mean if every time you wash the load is different why is the lint always nearly the same? If I wash a load of blacks and then a load of whites why instead of dark almost black line and crisp white lint do I end up with two slightly varied wads of the same old greyish, bluish, purplish lint? Dryer lint is composed of what I can only assume is fibers off of the clothing in question.  So I would understand a load of jeans producing this bluish glob… but why blacks and whites. For white first I pondered if perhaps it was bluish because of the fact that yet another mystery of the universe is the fact that every detergent I have ever used is blue. Why is that? I suppose for the same reason tampon and sanitary napkin commercials always use blue in their informative video demonstrations. Blue is the color of clean. But then wait of the blue is from the detergent why is the lint from my blacks not… black? The blue wouldn’t cover black.

And then I resolved the debate with myself swiftly and harshly. “Why is dryer lint always the same color? Who really freaking cares you weirdo! Shut the hell up and go to sleep. Oh and by the way… BY MENNEN!”

Public Service

Almost every time I go to a restaurant or a store I am reminded of how some people in this country flat out don’t know how to act in public.  They are the people we lift up and unfold 10 shirts off a clothing display to look at them and make no attempt to limit the destructiveness of their actions or to repair the damage they have done because they have the attitude that “they pat someone to do that.” They are the people who go to a restaurant and ignore the waitress and point to what they want on the menu because they’re too busy talking on the phone and then later want 4 things on the side and something extra hot, or god knows what. And then they round their $40.13 bill up to $42.00 because they don’t get that you make $2.13 an hour so after her $2.00 tip you probably just made about $4.00 an hour… not a wage to live on.

That is why I believe that at some point in every American’s young life, each person should have to work in retail for 6 months and wait tables for 6 months. You having been in that position will learn how to tip, how to behave, that they do not have to be demeaning forms of work if asshole customers would stop making them that way.  I am always reminded of the scene in the movie Waiting where the customer thinks her steak isn’t cooked correctly and says “How hard is it to do your job?” Well mam… thanks to people like you, pretty damn hard most days.  I myself have worked in both fields, they were my first jobs in high school, and the part-time jobs that got me through college, and they drove me nuts because some people genuinely just don’t get what goes into it.  When I shop I try to avoid messing up displays and refold the things I’ve touched, and when I try on clothes that I decided I don’t want I put them back, instead of dumping them on the girl in the dressing room. Every time I am at a restaurant my husband and I prebus our own table when we are done with our food, and unless you were a complete idiot you’re getting at least a 20% tip.  Why… because I’ve been there and done that an I know how to act in public. I sure wish the rest of the world did.