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| London: RED |
The definition of the phrase 'mortal enemy' is: NOUN, an enemy who wants to kill you.
Now, I am not really sure that hard water actually wants to kill me as it is not living and therefore unable to feel the passion that would be necessary to want to commit a murderous act. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that hard water has a new mortal enemy-me. If I could kill hard water, I would and I am doing my damnedest to figure out how to keep it from ruining my day. EVERY.SINGLE.DAY.
It is very important for those reading to understand one thing. I may have... just a touch... of OCD. Just a bit. It is not the type of thing that effects every single thing that I do and if I were to actually seek out some kind of intervention I would probably be told that I do not actually have OCD, so let's just call them peculiarities. I like things to be lined up and linear. My books need to be in some kind of height order. They are alphabetized by author. My closet is a rainbow. Literally. Because I hang everything according to color, collar, and sleeve length. I get fixated on cleaning a specific thing or spot. I believe Oprah was correct in stating that one should never see all of your bath things strewn about a bathroom and ideally everything is nicely hidden away. I make lists. I already know what I am packing for a trip that is 10 days away. Like I said, I have peculiarities.
The above list of things that make me "special" also make me really, REALLY difficult to live with. J and I dated for 3 years without having one fight. We moved in together and we had a knock down, drag out fight within 48 hours of occupying our new home. The good thing about living with someone is that it does make you a bit more aware of these things. Things that you had always done alone and therefore hadn't realized how truly repetitive, nonsensical, or just plain annoying they really were. So in living with J, I have calmed down about some things. But the one thing that I cannot get over is spots on the counter. Basically, kitchen cleanliness. You may walk into our flat these days and notice a bit of dust. Things are certainly still in a bit of disarray. But the kitchen is clean. It used to be that if I had spilled something on the counter, I could simply wet a paper towel with water and wipe it up. What do all of the home magazines say? Water is nature's best cleaner! Yeah, it's nature's best cleaner if it isn't the one thing that is actually making your counter, floor, tile, mirrors, glass, you name it; a complete and total mess. I get stressed just writing this.
Deep breaths.
So London has really hard water. It's so hard, in fact, that you need to put special dishwasher salts in the dishwasher so that it runs efficiently and doesn't get clogged up. You need to put special laundry tablets in the washer for the same purpose. They have all kinds of de-scaling cleaning products. They have special iron water. Iron water is a thing that I think I may look into and here's why. The other night I went to steam out a shirt. It was a very light material, so I thought a quick steam would do the job better than ironing it. I turned the iron on, moved the dial to steam and pressed the button. What happened next was disgusting. Hard little brown chunks of 'I do not know what' came flying out of the iron! What the???? I pressed the button again. More tiny brown chunks and then some bubbling brown water. So the shirt didn't get steamed and I went to dinner looking like a disheveled hobo. Later I Googled what was happening to the iron and I found out that it is the hard water. It builds up in the iron and the minerals form hard deposits (little brown chunks) that then make the iron less efficient. Apparently one can avoid having to go through a lengthy cleaning process by using distilled water. That's a suggestion that's going to go over well. "J? We need to buy special water to iron." Cue J laughing his face off.
Mostly, though, my everyday battles with hard water are in the kitchen and bathroom. We have black counter tops and it acts like a chalk board to the water's minerals. I could probably write a message on the counters in water. I may try that tonight. 'NEED MILK' Even if a little droplet flies while I am washing dishes (and water always flies when I am washing dishes) and lands on the counter, it leaves a mark and I want to scream. Don't even start me on the marks it leaves on our glasses and Pyrex. Every time we take a shower, I glare at the water as it forms little rivulets on the tile and glass partition. We have a squeegee, but really... it is no match for this liquid enemy.
I see no end in sight for this war. While I certainly win battles, I think hard water may be winning the war. I think it's probably the reason why my face still resembles that of a 13 year old and my hair refuses to do anything close to what I would like it to. Who knows. What I do know is that it is slowly, drip by drip driving me insane.
My next post is likely to be much calmer and full of good stories. Why? Because I will have just come back from a lovely vacation to Mexico. I will see sun! I will feel warmth! I will drink margaritas and have chilequiles every morning for breakfast! Well maybe not margaritas for breakfast, but then again...
I may even forget about hard water.
