don’t panic

I do a lot of griping on this blog (…okay, it’s almost all griping, but still), so I thought that it’s only fair that when I find something that actually works well, that I should comment on it.

I found one.

My daughter is mentally disabled, and as such, she has – shall we say – “difficulty” with having her hair brushed.  Up until recently, this step in our morning routine was nothing short of the graduation final for Zen monks everywhere, and would last anywhere from 5 seconds (as in, give up when you realize it just ain’t gonna happen) to 20 minutes of beautician hell.  It’s not just that she fights and complains and turns and runs and snarls and generally does whatever she possibly can to break you, but she also has an amazing knack for making knots and tangles.  I’ve watched her.  She will sit in a chair while she plays a game on the computer and literally twist her hair into knots with one hand. It’s a sensory thing, I’m sure, but those little knots are the bane of pre-school primping.  It doesn’t help that she won’t let me completely dry her hair after a bath either, so basically by morning she’s wearing a tangled rat’s nest and a foul temper (show me a tween that is happy to go to school in the morning and I’ll show you a child on Ritalin).

We tried a number of the standard products to ease this sort of task, such as the various “detangler” fluids and special bath conditioners.  And to be fair, some of the spray on products actually helped… a little.  But frankly, the amount of “pain relief” (hers and mine) was minimal considering the cost.  We could easily go through a bottle a week of that stuff.

So it came to pass one day that she needed a new hairbrush.  We had pretty much demolished the last one.  Our local VONS had a fair selection, and when my wife pointed out a model which bore the label, “Ouchless” I have to admit that I was dubious at first.  I mean, it really didn’t look all that different from the ones we had used in the past (beyond the color), and I still don’t get how it works, but darn it, it does.

Maybe it’s magic, but that brush simply doesn’t grab those knots like her other brushes do.  Of course, that means it takes a bit longer to do her hair, and she still fights me the whole way, but not usually because it hurts… it’s just her.  We used to call the knots “monkeys”, and I would say things like “oop, a lot of monkeys this morning pulling on your hair” when things were especially bad, that way she could blame and hate the “monkeys” and not me.  But I haven’t had to use that excuse at all since we got the new brush.  Amazing.  The brush is the Ouchless by Goody and cost about the same as a bottle of detangler.  Money well spent in my book.  We still have another brush that we use once the worst of the tangles are out, but between the two we save a lot more than just a few dollars for hair care… Sanity is priceless.

Ouchless Brush by Goody

Every year at Christmas my mom gets me a pack of socks.  As a kid, this was almost a gag gift.  I mean, what  pre-teen guy wants to get socks for Christmas?  Clothes?? No way, man, we want the BB gun any day.  But as I aged, those clothing gifts became a little more favorable.  Now as a middle-aged adult, who really doesn’t “need” anything for Christmas because almost anything we bring into our already overcrowded apartment means that something else is going to have to go out, those socks are lookin’ pretty darn good.

But those socks are special.  And strangely enough, I seem to be going through them a whole lot faster than I did before, even as a kid in my physical prime.  I mean, I hiked and rock climbed, ran through the canyons and generally abused my clothing and footwear like any growing boy.  I frequently came home with socks that were so stiff and grungy that they stood upright on their own.  So what gives?  Why am I able to blast through a 12-pack of socks now in a quarter the time I did as a kid?  I walk a little, but for the most part, I’m pretty damn inactive.  Just ask my doctor.

What it boils down to is cheap socks.  The socks I got as a kid would wear out, sure, but they lasted a good half a year without breaking through with holes, and the elastic was never the first thing to go.  Now, if I get two months out of my socks I consider myself lucky.  It’s almost always the elastic that dies first, but even the name brands like Fruit of the Loom just don’t hold up (literally) like they used to.

I blame CostCo and WalMart for some of this.  They put out low-cost big bulk versions of these products and most people buy them, myself included.  It’s hard to resist $6.99 for a 24 pack of WalMart brand socks, when what looks like the same thing in Fruit of the Loom will cost you $18.  But they aren’t the same.  The WalMart socks will be lucky to get through a half dozen washings before they are repurposed as puppets.  But even the Fruit of the Loom socks are going to fail me in less than 90 days.  Not good.

Cheap products.  Cheap for the consumer, yes, but cheap in quality too.  America (and possibly the world in general) is settling for crap, and it’s not right.

And it’s not just socks.  It’s toys, electronics, appliances, food, even cars.  Maybe especially cars.  In America, we used to build the best, most reliable vehicles on the planet.  We don’t even hit the top three today.  Our cars are crap, plain and simple.  On any scale, whether it be milage, reliability, or value, we’re cheap.  Car makers continually advertise how amazingly innovative they are.  But that’s crap too.  We haven’t seen true innovation in the auto industry since Henry Ford was running things.  Innovation is a car that gets 50 MPG.  Innovation is an electric vehicle that can make use of solar panels on the roof to boost it’s range.  Innovation is onboard GPS… 20 years ago when it was first available.  Innovation is a vehicle that can wirelessly link with your home computer and supply you with realtime statistics, maintenance notifications, and iTunes synchronization.  And these are the brainless “oh, duh” innovations!  These are the ones that are so obvious that they should have been standard features a decade ago.

Ug…

Cheap socks.  And we buy them.  Begrudgingly, wastefully, pathetically, we buy them.  Because there really isn’t anything else, and $6.99 seems like such a deal.  We are idiots.

One of the many reasons that Californians may need to start rationing water later this year.

The tap in this picture resides in the public pool area of our apartment complex.  The tap itself has been vandalized such that the hot water no longer shuts off.  In other words, this sink dumps about a gallon of hot water down the drain per minute.  When I noticed this was going on I called the office and spoke to the manager, who promptly passed me over to the “maintenance guy”, who kinda-sorta speaks English.  After about ten minutes for what should have been a ten second conversation, I finally got him to understand that I myself didn’t need anything, but was simply reporting a problem on the grounds.  He explained that he already knew about the issue.  Okay, whatever.

When I originally found the sink in this condition, someone had decided that it would be funny to move the neck of the spigot so that the water ended up pouring all over the countertop instead of into the drain.  As such, I’m sure the counter below is probably ruined and soaked through with water damage, and from the calcium deposits on the ground around the counter area, my guess is that the water had to have been on for days, if not weeks.

Here’s the thing…  at a mere gallon a minute, that’s 60 gallons of HOT water an hour, or 1440 gallons a day, or 10,080 gallons a week.  That’s about the size of a small swimming pool… every week.   Nice.  At a rate of $1.91 per hundred cubic feet of water (a quick number I picked off the web, it should actually be more when you work in sewage rates that are based off of your water usage), that works out to $109.74 per month.

Now on to energy use…  Let’s assume that they have an average household water heater (it’s probably a larger industrial one, but let’s be conservative) which uses approximately 4500 watts of power when on. The average household heater is only actually on for around 3 hours a day total since it really only needs to be on for any length of time when you are using the hot water (like when you take a shower).  But in the case of the runaway pool tap, the hot water is being used continuously, 24/7.  That probably means that the heater is ALWAYS on.  SDG&E currently charges about $.073 cents per kWh at a standard household baseline rate.  The heater is going to use about 108 kWh per day and cost $7.88.  Per month that’s $236.52.  And mind you, that’s at baseline rates, which they are almost certain to go over, raising the rate per kWh to something like $.13.  At that rate the cost will be $421.20.  PER MONTH.  

So, with the water, that works out to $17.70 a DAY or $530.94 a month.  That’s more than many people’s rent… well, not in San Diego, but certainly in other parts of the country.

Just for a broken faucet that they don’t feel the need to fix.