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#27 – You’re Going Down, Dust Bunny!!!

30 Jan

I have won the battle over the dust bunnies in my home!!!  Oh yes, this Butch Wife has once again demonstrated her superiority over all things chores she surveys and God said, “It is good!” My friends, family, and devoted strangers…………..the answer to eliminating dust bunnies from your rooms, halls and noses lies with a little robot we call “Rosie.”  Ah yes, she is compact, clever, somewhat shy when pit against large objects and she is ours!!!  Lest you feel in want Rosie is an iRobot Roomba 595 Pet Series robotic vacuum cleaner and she loves us.

We picked her up at Costco this past weekend and spent the first day waiting with anxiety while she charged, not knowing if the $300 investment would really live up to its hype.  On day two, I looked at her docking station, noted the green light around the “Clean” button and decided it was now or never and so hit the button.  With a little musical awake song, slowly she began to roll away from the docking station, spun in a few circles to get her bearings and then off she headed moving at a steady pace across the floors and carpets spinning her little brushes as she went.  Dust bunnies melted away under her belly never to be seen again, and items she was unable to roll over she moved around.  Testing each wall gently to ensure there were no bump marks left, she crossed the floors upstairs in a steady, albeit somewhat strange pattern and within an hour all visages of bunnies, dust or otherwise, had disappeared.  OMG!!!

Now you may wonder how she does with steps.  Well, our little Rosie has ‘eyes’ for those and avoids them like the plague.  She also doesn’t eat up rug fringe as she just spins away from it so as not to tangle the brushes and wheels underneath.  If she does get tangled in some stringy thing left on the floor she starts sending a knocking noise to let you know to come untangle her.  Not extremely loud but just enough to ensure you hear her, after all, our Rosie is too polite to interrupt abruptly!

At the end of her task for the day, and when her battery runs down, she begins to look for the docking station again.  There’s a little beacon at the top of it that sends out “I am here” light beams to Rosie’s little beacon on top and off she goes to reconnect with the station.  She heads for it, turns herself around to the right position and then gently crawls back up to her place and quietly goes to sleep while the docking station feeds her the power she needs to start again when we wake her up.  It’s a wonder and I love her, and we have decided to adopt her forever.

Butch Wife Tip #27

I have battled these dust bunnies for months and had given up hope of ever conquering them.  My old asthmatic lungs were resigned to coughing and sneezing for the rest of my life.  But then along came Rosie.  Who knew a little round disk with wheels, brushes and a suction tube could make so much difference in one’s life.  It doesn’t hug you but I bet if it could it would.

So I say, iRobot rocks!  When there’s a house chore needing attention and you just can’t seem to ever get it done, let a robot do it.  They will do it until they drop and never complain.  They will stay loyal as long as you give them power, and they will never ask for time off.  And if you are really, really nice to them, and start talking to them like real people, call a therapist as you might have gone too far!

Butch-Wife-Extraordinaire-In-Training

#24 – All that smells sweet are not always roses!!

5 Nov

Did you ever wonder how that mouse in the kitchen actually got there?  We did and once we found out it haunted our dreams for many nights!!  I am convinced the mice from the hills by our house maintain a steady, vigilant lookout from their perch waiting to invade like a tsunami at the slightest opportunity.  When they see a possibility of entry to our home I am sure they probably send out some major signal to their mice buddies, “Hey, we got a live one here…….this way!!!”  And when we started looking for access points to our house, OMG!!!  Did you know mice can get into your house through a hole no bigger than a quarter?

So we had to figure out what to do to protect against infestation since these long tailed little critters can become ubiquitous overnight.  First stop then for me was to look on the internet and see what others did who have had the same experience.  I had no idea there were so many different companies dealing with mice, nor was I aware of how many different ways people have to suggest getting rid of them.    Some say just get another cat.  That’s fine if they come out of the walls one at a time, but even our current little ‘Cujo’ cat can’t get them all.  She’s really good at capturing them, which we really do admire.  But she also has a propensity to capture mice on the hill and then bring them into the house for viewing before she eviscerates them on our stairwell landing.  Now I love the thought of sharing but adding to our infestation problem was not what I had in mind while praising her tenacity.

Then there’s the ‘set traps all over your house’ idea.   That’s fine too if you want to go around picking up dead or dying mice every few days.  Gotta admit this was not my best solution.  We tried some of those chemical traps since I kept snapping my fingers with those other kind of traps trying to set them. When I saw one of those little mice still grasping for air while stuck in the trap it broke my heart and made me feel like a murderer!  All I could think of when looking at the trapped mouse was that song from a kids movie, “Somewhere out there, above the pale blue sky…..”  You know the movie, about the little mouse far from home lamenting his family?  I just couldn’t continue using those traps with that vision in my mind, and I know I should probably consider relinquishing my Butch Wife card because of it.

Another suggestion from my internet research was to spray your house with all sorts of poisons to just kill the mice outright.  Okay, but doesn’t that somehow rearrange your chromosomes or something once the stuff permeates your walls?  The thought of spraying my house with such stuff made e worry about waking up one morning with the possibility of a new third eye growing on my forehead.  It just didn’t seem a good look so we didn’t pursue this option.

Finally we decided the only way to really clean out the muck and get rid of the awful smell was to actually take the ceiling down.   I don’t have any issues with knocking stuff down, but when it comes to demolishing the walls of our home it did seem to be more of a job than I actually wanted to tackle on my own.  Not that I couldn’t of course knock holes in our ceiling all over the place but it just seemed wiser to ask for help on this effort.  So we found a guy that does that kind of thing and proceeded to deal with the mess for about two weeks until the ceilings were all cleaned out, re-insulated, sanitized, and sealed back up.  Now that the dust has settled and our floors and ceilings are back together, I can sit in my house with absolute assurance there is nothing rotting away under my floors … at least for now, or until my obliging pet cat brings in yet another major midnight capture for us to view and praise, and loses sight of it under the stairs!

Butch Wife Tip #24

If you begin to smell a sweet rotten smell in your walls something has died there.  In our efforts we found a rather large sized roof rat had expired in the wall above the doorway to our bathroom.  From the looks of him, he just died and collapse around the studs in our ceiling.   My suggestion to you guys is don’t put it off.  This stuff can affect your health.  Get in there and deal with it sooner rather than later with some professional help.  There are guys out there that actually do this for a living!  Who knew?

#21 ‘Good’ Butch Wife – Step One

15 Aug

We went to a movie the other night to see the latest Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones movie about mature relationships.  It was fun as these two actors blend well and added a sense of depth to a rather old story of unattended love.  I have to admit, though, the movie did bring up a feeling of unease in me.  As the characters interacted with one another I began to wonder if I was taking my relationship for granted.  It’s hard to know right off the bat I think.  How does a good Butch Wife tell if she is really being ‘a good’ Butch Wife?

So on the way home from the movie I started thinking about my marriage.  We’ve been together almost 30 years.  We share just about everything except meditation and golf.  When I try to meditate with a bunch of people sitting on their heels for some reason I get the giggles. I don’t know why, I just do.   Also paying attention to what my mind is doing at any particular moment can be an exercise in futility for me.  And she thinks golf is the stupidest sport in the world, with a bunch of people dressed in silly clothes chasing a little white ball around 3 miles of grasslands. I see her point, but nonetheless love to play as often as possible.

I make a point to tell her I love her every day.  For me, being a ‘good’ Butch Wife also means taking care of stuff in the house without being asked to do it.  I’m still working on that one as its becoming increasingly clear to me the amount of stuff to be done everyday just to have a comfortable life never seems to end!  I am still battling an ongoing war with our ever present dust bunnies.  I’m convinced there is something that will destroy these suckers forever out there but I just haven’t found it yet.

We try to never go to bed angry, and if there IS an issue to deal with, we try to remember how to fight fairly.  I quite honestly can’t imagine a life without her and I’m pretty sure she feels the same, so we must be good, right?  Sounds that way but how do you know for sure?

Maybe ensuring a good relationship should entail a daily reminder for us.  When I was in business I had my daily reminder calendar to keep up on the things I had to do for the day.  It was handy, took only a few moments to review and kept me from forgetting important due dates that could eventually lead to a raise.  I still use reminder alerts on my smart phone.  Just can’t seem to let go of some corporate habits I guess.

So I started putting together a preliminary Daily Butch Wife Relationship Checklist.  Let me know what you think.

  • Wake up and hug your wife.
  • Brush your teeth pretty early on after waking to get rid of any birdcage breath that lingers from the night before, and certainly before you kiss her.
  • Kiss your wife.
  • Tell your wife she looks terrific.  If you forget this one, go to step one, part B and start again.
  • A daily shower may not seem necessary to point out but when you’re semi-retired like me that may not happen every day without a reminder.
  • Comb your hair.  Some days it just doesn’t seem worth it but you know she probably wants to look at something better than pointy gray hairs sticking up every which way out of your head.
  • Smell your pits just in case you forgot something in the shower.
  • As much as you want to wear that comfortable, soft, yet stained sweatshirt every day until it turns to threads, change it periodically for a clean shirt.
  • Laugh with her every day.
  • Dance with her with abandon when your favorite song comes on the radio.

This is just a start to a “Daily Good Butch Wife Relationship Checklist” so add your own stuff as you see fit.

Butch Wife Tip #21

After much contemplation and some side tracks into other topics, I have found the need to tend to one’s love relationship consistently as a ‘must do.’  Using checklists or just your good sense of considering others feelings as much as your consider your own can be helpful in ensuring you don’t fall into the abyss of taking her for granted.  And if you do find yourself in that abyss, get out – get out quickly! Being there for any length of time will overcome you and swallow your love whole before you know it.

Julie, Butch Wife Extraordinaire-in-Training

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#18 Journey Proud

25 Jun

This Butch wife and her Femme wife are headed out into the world over the next month, so the blog will be on vacation for a while.  I did want to talk a bit about preparing for such a trip.  Packing can be tense.  What to take?  How much to take?  Predicting the weather at the places we plan to visit well beyond what any official forecasters are willing to do can be exhausting.  Do you need two tubes of toothpaste or will you be sharing with others?  Do you lay your clothes flat in a suitcase, neatly folded or rolled?  I’m a roller, myself, as it seems to keep the wrinkles down better.

I read a Ricky Steves travel guide-book once that recommended the ideal amount of ‘stuff’ to take on a trip.  It broke down something like this:  2 pair of pants, five shirts, five pair of underwear and socks, a sweater and jacket, a swimsuit just in case, maybe a hat if you’re a hat person, and your toiletries.  Seemed sensible.  After all, you can always go to a laundromat and wash things each week.  And since you really don’t tend to see the same people all the time, repeating your daily garb won’t be apparent to anyone you run into the next day except you and your wife.  However with my wife, color coordination and a theme are essential to appropriate packing.  I won’t go into the details about this, but suffice to say, if everything you take doesn’t mix and match, you are forever banned from stepping onto foreign soil. (I keep it simple with blacks and whites as these go with anything.)

Do you notice a general tension before you take off on a trip? I do.  My housekeeper from growing up used to call this being ”journey proud.”  Great term isn’t it? Journey Proud.  Being excited about going to a place – even in our case where we don’t speak the language well, are not sure how to order our food easily, can’t read the road signs, and have absolutely no idea where ANYTHING really is.  Now that’s journey proud.

Being journey proud doesn’t stay with you.  We’ve always found once we are out in the world and away from our home country, the journey pride tension disappears almost immediately.  Our desire to experience different cultures takes over, and getting lost is a general state of being for us while on the road.  Eventually we do find ourselves with enough maps, but the stories we get into while lost have always been fun.

So to my loyal followers out there, thank you so much for encouraging me to keep writing.  Please ask your friends if they would like to follow the blog as well.  We will, however, be offline for a month.   We do a travelogue while on the road for friends and family and will continue that during this trip.  For all others, please be patient and I will get back into the blog in August.   Until then, bon voyage, y’all!  (Do you think the French will mind the colloquialism?  Probably.)

Butch Wife Tip #18

When getting ready for a trip, be easy on one another.   And if you are journeying to another country, check out the gay laws before you go because some places will shoot you for being gay.  Those places I would recommend you avoid.

Julie  Butch Wife Extraordinaire-in-Training

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#17 You’re Okay Just the Way You Are

16 Jun

I think there’s a moment in some butch wives lives (boy, try saying that 5 times real fast – wives lives, wives lives, wives….oh, never mind) when one’s attempts at appropriate social decorum may come into question.  I had one such moment the other night while investigating a loud noise in our yard.  Our dog started barking in the middle of the night which woke me up.  Not an unusual occurrence in our household, but a consistently loud one nonetheless.  I got out of bed, opened the back door, and wandered onto the porch for a look around, closing the door behind me.  As soon as I left the door space I felt it creep up my back and neck -  the realization I had just locked myself out.

Now normally this is not a major issue.  Planning ahead for contingencies, we have provisions for just such a situation because we have locked ourselves out several times in the past.  But in this case, I was drowsy, half-naked and bare footed, and assumed I would have to come around the house and into the front door to get back in. Immediately the thought of going out the back gate with just my t-shirt on and a rather exposed bare bottom seemed, well, unseemly.  My first steps were to check again and make sure I couldn’t break into my door, which, of course I couldn’t, but I had to try.

My mind started racing.  The thought of someone seeing an older grey haired woman, bare bottomed and without shoes hopping and yelping along the side of a darkened house at 3 in the morning could be humiliating for a truly butch wife.  Right? Could this situation be cause for losing my ‘Butch Wife Extraordinaire’ card for all time.  What if a policeman caught me trying to get into my house?  Would going to jail for breaking and entering really be a good idea while wearing only a t-shirt and no bottoms?

Therefore, I did the only thing I could under the circumstances.  I turned on the dog and blamed him for closing the door in the first place!  No actually I tried to find a place to sit and think about the best way to avoid the social humility of walking up our street half-naked.  This turned out to be harder than one might think, since it gets foggy around here at night and finding a dry spot to sit on that avoids the possibility of splinters wasn’t easy.  It’s not like pulling off a thoughtful pose like Rodin’s The Thinker or anything, but I was able to situate each cheek just so nothing got pinched or bruised on the only dry spot I could find.

Do real butch wives actually have these kinds of thoughts or issues I wondered.  After all, we’ve all done something dumb like this, right?  Anyway, the avoidance of public humiliation was achieved when I remembered I hadn’t locked the upstairs deck doors.  Upon inspection sure enough I could get in without running half-naked through the neighborhood and felt safe and warm once my bare bottom was inside.

But the whole situation brought up a question for me in the end (no pun intended here).  How do we learn shame?  I saw a movie once where the parent asked his gay son, “When did I teach you shame?” when the son was reluctant to come out to his family.  They knew he was gay and loved him anyway but somehow this son couldn’t accept it in himself.

Being caught in the cold with less than is generally accepted clothing on reminded me that shame IS taught.  I like to think the use of ‘shameful’ is more directed at what one does perhaps rather than for who someone is.  However, some think anyone who is not like themselves must at their very core be a ’shame to mankind.’  Can you imagine growing up with the knowledge that your family and those who are supposed to love you unconditionally think you are a ‘shame to mankind?’  Wow.  Can’t say I know any one person with that much power to impact all of mankind, except maybe John Lennon.  But that’s just me.  I vote for the elimination of ‘shame’ from our social lexicon.   What d’ya say?

Butch Wife Tip #17

Question: Do you realize how cold and wet outdoor furniture gets in the middle of the night?  I do now, and caution all to check the targeted sitting apparatus with your hand before plopping down on it with a bare bottom after 1am in San Francisco.  For those of you who simply MUST plan ahead, ensure your sleeping t-shirts are long enough to cover your butt when you sit down.  Improper t-shirt length considerations could someday lead to handcuffed arrests for indecent exposure.  I’m just saying…and if you ARE caught wearing less than you’d prefer, stand proud and tall with confidence, because you are okay just as you are.  (You could try whistling but then that might not look good given the circumstances. )

Julie Butch Wife Extraordinaire-in-Training

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