Meanwhile, here at the dig site ...

So I was down on the floor wiping out my refrigerator (no, I'm not still nesting. As soon as I blogged it, the urge went away. This burst of housekeeping was precipitated by my spilling a bowl of coleslaw down the bottom three shelves of my fridge. Grrr!)

Anyway, since I was down there I figured I'd clean the outside ('bout time to scour off my Patch Of Nameless Crud - which I do at least bi-yearly ... ok, ok, I'm joking ... I do it twice as often as that) and while I was doing that I discovered how truly grody the floor was in front of the fridge doors so I had to clean THAT. Cleaning the floor anywhere in this house is rather like an archaeological dig ("Spunkmeyer, come take a look at this!", "What the hell is that?") at the best of times and this was no exception: I learned something.

I learned that a small piece of banana, mixed with baby saliva, surreptitiously spat out onto the floor, and subsequently trodden upon by a herd of toddlers, will transform itself into a BLACK mass - sludgy/gooey at first - but then, aging over time into a cement-like fossilized smear of blech that has to be scraped off with a putty knife*.

One day, thousands and thousands of years from now, when mankind has stupidized itself into extinction and ruminants rule the earth, aliens will find this planet, unearth this house, and discover the perfectly preserved footprint of Bitty Girl ... in banana.

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Speaking of cleaning, my (albeit brief) frenzy of cleaning quickly necessitated a huge-mungus (man, I'm making up words left and right today!) trip to the dump with bags and bags of rubbish. Our dump is quite cool in that they have convenient and clearly marked places to sort everything, especially recyclables. I love this since I hate waste (as well you know).

Well, since they have the furniture/household goods/construction waste type stuff separate I can take a stroll around and see if there's anything I can use.

# Let me pause right here in my narrative and say that if there is anyone reading this blog who thinks that this thriftychik is too proud to take something useful out of a dumpster rather than let it rot in the landfill, you'd better just leave now.

Anyway, as usual, I was stunned at what folks will toss in the trash. It's a damned shame really, since the world if full of thrift stores and charitable organizations that NEED these things. Every town of any size has homeless shelters and battered women's shelters (one of my fave charities) and there's always Freecycle, one of the coolest things ever.

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OK, rant over ... I gotta get the putty knife back out. There's a patch of something over by the wood stove that will be achieving sentience soon if I don't scrape it up.

*which, on the upside, presents a perfectly legitimate reason to go to Lowes!