The Junk Drawer

Today marks the beginning of a new Junk Drawer series that I’m calling What’s That? Wednesday. It may turn out to be a supremely stupid idea, or it might be really cool and fun and awesome and everyone will steal it from me.

How it works:

I post a picture of part of an everyday object or product and you try to guess what it is.

First one to guess correctly receives something from the Junk Drawer Stuff gallery.

The caveats: I might forget sometimes if it’s Wednesday and not have anything to post. The pictures may be less than perfect and you’ll be annoyed at my crappy photo-taking skills. Or, I may tire of it at any time and discard it, just like all those bunnies I got rid of when they stopped being so cute. Just kidding. Really. I’M KIDDING!

If that’s OK with everybody, here goes!

OK, so what’s that?

I swear I’m not a vain person. If I was, I’d work out at the gym every day, in full makeup and a cute outfit. But I don’t and the result is something I think they call Letting Yourself Go.

But over the years, I’d always been bothered by a decidedly non-cute part of my body that I couldn’t tolerate anymore about the time I turned 40.

I had fangs.

My canine teeth used to be very pointy and I was always self-conscious of them, such that I hated smiling broadly, especially in pictures. The teeth are also positioned slightly higher up on the gum than my other teeth, making them more noticeable if I wasn’t careful to smile close-lipped.

I had been seeing my wonderful dentist for years before it finally occurred to me to ask if anything could be done about them. He said “Sure, we’ll just cut the tips off, file them down and then cap ’em.” God, I wish I had thought to ask sooner.

Before I knew it, I was fangless, happy, and smiling big again. I even saved the tips. For what, I don’t know. And evidently I lost one. Here’s the one that survived.

I’m not the first in my family to be introduced to cosmetic dentistry. One of my sisters used to have a space between her teeth, with which she used to entertain friends and family. She had a remarkable ability to squirt water through the space in a half dozen directions. Grab your raincoat!

I was sad when she got the space filled because isn’t it a sister’s duty to perform water fountain stunts whenever I wanted?

And my other sister got braces in her thirties. God bless her. Can you imagine? Of course, when you have braces as an adult, and anyone makes fun of you, my guess is you can tell them to go to hell with confidence. As a kid, not so much.

So have any of you changed something about your body that you hated? If you’re like me, you’re happy you did it and wonder why you waited so long.

Now everybody say cheese!

Someone once asked me if I would post my typical daily routine. I won’t do that because it would bore you to tears, but I will tell you what I do first thing in the morning. The cats don’t get fed, I don’t make coffee and the newspaper has to wait.

The first thing I do when I get up is check my blog for comments because they make me laugh and set the tone for the rest of my day. At least until I run into my first cranky client at work.

Your comments give me a little glimpse into your world, but I want to learn a little more about my readers. So for the next couple days the blog is all about YOU.

You gotta dig deep because this is all about firsts. Ready?

1.   When was your first kiss?

2.   When did you first start buying holiday or birthday gifts for other people and stop thinking about what people would buy for you?

3.   When was the first time you thought of yourself not as a kid/teen, but as an adult?

4.   What do you remember about the first time you drove a car?

5.   Tell me about your first pet.

6.   What was your first job?

7.   Who was the first teacher to make a positive impact on your life?

8.   If you’ve lived in more than one house or apartment as an adult, tell me about your first one.

9.   What was it like the first time you got drunk (assuming you remember).

10. Did you marry your first love?

Answer all, some or just one that really got you thinkin’!

Yeah, that’s right. We buckled up our takeout food. Got a problem with that?

First person to correctly guess what comprised our precious cargo gets a Junk Drawer magnet. Hint: There was a protein (x6) and a side (x2).

To those who were following me on Twitter two hours ago, we never got the ice cream.

Boring post coming up. My apologies, but I’m desperate.

I don’t ask for much in this world. I just want my washing machine to clean clothes, my microwave to heat stuff, and my vacuum cleaner to suck up dirt.

It’s not sucking anymore.

At least not very well. We have a cheapo Red Devil vacuum that we’ve had for a couple years. The only benefit is that it’s very light, unlike my former Bissell vacuum that made me feel like I was pushing furniture around every time I cleaned.

But it fails to suck well enough and I want your recommendations on a new one. All it needs to do is adequately vacuum up kitty litter and not spit it back out through the sucky part.

And it needs to have its electrical cord coming out the top, not the bottom.

Look at this stupid thing. See where the cord comes out? Try vacuuming with that. It falls on the floor, I curse, I run over it, I curse, do the mambo trying to get at it, and I curse, all while trying to dodge kitty litter spraying out like shrapnel.

If you have an unhealthy love for your vacuum cleaner, I want to hear about it. Does it make you want to vacuum for the sake of vacuuming? Do you brag about it to your friends? Did you give it a name?

Bring it on. I need the exact make and model. Money is no object. It just has to have a cord that won’t trip and kill me, and it has to suck real good.