Redneck Mother's best homemaking discovery ever

The perfect solution to my household cleaning needs.

I've been harboring an eco-secret for a while now. All the eco-cleaners I've tried suck.* They stink up the joint with cloying herbal scents, leave the bathrooms grotty, waste my money, and piss me off. I'm not a clean freak--with two boys, two adults and eleven pets in residence it's simply not worth trying--but I do love an unspattered mirror and a toilet bowl not overgrown with mold.

My solution has been to fall back on the kinds of chemical-soup cleaners that come in a big, resource-intensive metal spray cans. Over the past few months the house looked great, but my soul--despite my use of recycled rags and copious ventilation during cleaning--was developing a waxy guilt buildup. I dreaded being caught at Costco with a three-pack of scrubbing bubbles by someone who knew me as that woman with the organic garden and the solar panels. I rationalized that my choices weren't major enough to make a real difference but in my incrementalist little heart I knew better.

My belly dance teacher unwittingly provided a way back onto the path of righteousness: vodka. She recommended cleaning our heavily-beaded, unlaunderable dance costumes with a spray bottle of half water, half vodka. Spritz, let dry and behold--fast and cheap freshening. I tried it on one of my own costumes and was pleased with the results. It occured to me that if it works for costumes it should work for other clothing, too. And hell, if it's that good at killing odors, why not try wiping down the mirrors, the bathroom counters and the windowsills with it?

Dude, y'all. It works. No streaks on the mirror, no grit on the sills. The only thing it couldn't handle was bottom-of-the-sink soap scum, but that's what baking soda is for. A little goes a long way, meaning the seven-dollar bottle of cleaning fluid above should last me several months. No weird chemical mashups, no funky perfumes, and a recyclable bottle when it's done.

Metaphorically drunk on my cleaning success, I grabbed the sprayer and went after the most noxious thing in the house--kid sandals. I sprayed down the insoles and waited. They were still a little damp when Rocketboy put them on (he declared this "refreshing") but even with the temperature over 100 degrees on our afternoon errand-run, his shoes stayed stink-free.

Vodka. I wouldn't drink it, but I love what it does for the house.



*Okay, not baking soda, but you can't use baking soda for everything and it leaves grit behind. Also, please don't email me your vinegar recipes. Vinegar stinks to high heaven and, in my experience, is pretty ineffective. If it works for you, great, but the grime and the olfactory sensitivity are strong at Rancho Barton.

Say it three times fast: a jillion gulf fritillary mystery caterpillars

See the update below.

As always, you can click to enlarge.

A friend brought over some daylilies from her grandmother's garden the other day and her little boy announced that we had the "caterpillar jackpot." Sure enough, he'd spotted what looked like a hundred or more little black wrigglers about a quarter-inch long on the sunflowers near our mailbox.

"They're baby asps," Hurricanehead said upon inspection. "Don't touch them."

But, three days later, we can see that they're not. In fact, they've become obvious gulf fritillary caterpillars with surprising speed. And there are still a lot of them.

But not quite so many as before.

I got three minutes' worth of sadly blurry footage of this red wasp going all Dracula on the caterpillar above. While I was shooting, perched on the edge of a flowerbed near the street, I was struck by the fact that we have a half acre and get frequent visits from cottontails, snakes, woodpeckers and other suburban wildlife, but this particular episode of Wild Kingdom could play out anywhere there's enough soil and daylight for a few sunflowers.

Update 6/23: A commenter and Stefani both suggested that these are bordered check caterpillars, based on their appearance and sunflower-leaf diet. Stefani's butterfly wrangler came down day before yesterday to gather some critters for study but we could not find a single one. I don't know if they were all eaten, if they crawled away to cocoon somewhere else or if they were beamed back up to the mothership, but there was nary a one. Pffft.

Having an observant neighbor kid helps, too.

In other wildlife drama news, I tupperwared a recluse-looking spider on the stairs last night, then saw it was not quite dreaded-brown-recluse material. A quick Google search and some reading in an actual book revealed it was a spitting spider, named for the venomous glop it spews at prey. They're considered good pest control, preying on critters including the brown recluse. Bonus!

I promptly released Mr. Spitter in the downstairs john, where we've been having some ant and--whisper the name--cockroach issues. I'd never seen a spider appear to stride purposefully before, but I swear Mr. Spitter was going over the details of his newfound mission as he swaggered off behind the commode where the wild things are.

What's the circle of life up to in your neck of the woods?

So my man wrote this book

And it's out now:

Yes, it actually glows. You can even take it into a closet with a blacklight if you're so inclined and really see something cool.

Because I've spent close to half my life with Hombre, because I've seen live and in person how much research and time and joy he put into writing The Day-Glo Brothers, and because I am over the moon that his eight-year project is now honest-to-dog ink and paper, I cannot possibly be objective, neutral, unbiased or anything other than a shameless booster for what I personally think is the coolest children's book going. Between his writing and Tony Persiani's retro-cool illustrations, how could it not be?

If you don't want to take my word for it, I understand and refer you to less married-to-the-author reviewers:

"This is the real life story of two young men who rose above adversity, rolled with the punches and in the end managed to live out their dreams in some wholly unexpected ways. Better still, The Day Glo Brothers is nothing like the dry, you might be tested on this information, encyclopedic accounts of some old person’s contribution to society that are all too prevalent in kiddie lit." Blue Yonder Ranch

"Barton does a fantastic job taking the reader through the life and times of the Switzer brothers. He shares how these two brothers experimented and problem-solved to created fluorescent paint and how that paint has been used to enhance magic shows, theater costumes, Christmas displays, road signs, and more." Dr. Quinn's Book Blog

"Not only is this biography chock-full of arresting details: a fluorescent angel food cake, a headless Balinese dancer, a flaming billboard, and a terrible accident involving a railcar full of ketchup, but also... oh come on, do I really have to finish this sentence?" Pink Me

There's also the little matter of a starred review from Kirkus. Stefani at Blue Yonder Ranch is giving away a copy of the book this weekend to one lucky commenter--maybe you.

Enough bragging now. I'll just sit here and glo.

Gone shakin'

No, I haven't forgotten or abandoned the blog. It's just that I have, as Dick Cheney might say, other priorities at the moment. Unlike Cheney, mercifully, my priorities include a belly dance convention this weekend, followed by the culmination of a solo-performance preparatory class that will involve--egads!--an actual in-class solo performance.

In addition to the actual dancing, there's been an awful lot of costume-altering, beading and sequin-sewing at Rancho Barton this week, and it probably won't stop until at least mid-June.

What are your priorities these days?

When Learning Explodes, Part Deux

Don't know what it is, but I like it. (Image: Rocketboy)

Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. Rocketboy saw UT's robot dog team a few years ago at the campus open-house day and still talks about it. I would love to get him on a Lego robotics team; I even considered starting my own but gave it up because it would have involved thinking about robots. (Spare a thought for Rocketboy, the born-engineer child of two lifelong writers who once nearly divorced over the installation of a sliding screen door. We work hard to be supportive, but Rocketboy laps us every time.)

Alas, there was no convincing him that the chicken coop qualifies as a HazMat project. If chicken flop exploded or made cool noises, I wouldn't be able to keep him out. Unfortunately it just stinks, which isn't cool enough for kids these days.

At any rate, our latest homeschooling adventure is one where you can have all the weapons and explosions you want--making comic books. For this we're drawing on spelling, storyboarding, plot (such as is it), character development, drawing skills, different media, comic book styles, and elements from Rocketboy's recently completed unit study on comedy. We're learning about revisions, rough drafts and the importance of presentation when trying to reach an audience. Good stuff.

What are you working on?

When learning explodes

Rocketboy, now ten years old, has never been much of a joiner. He learns best on his own, prefers reading to group activities, and while he's social enough he's no extrovert.

He has, however, expressed an interest in the local homeschool science team. He's not quite old enough yet--he'll be ready next year--but in the meantime I asked him if there were any academic teams or groups he would like to try out.

Turns out there are:

• Fighting Robots Team
• Blowing Things Up with Chemicals Group
• Junior HazMat Squad

Alas, none of these groups exists outside his imagination and hopefully that second group never will. Maybe I can give him some protective gear and convince him that scrubbing the bathrooms and picking up after the dogs qualifies as biohazard containment. Any other ideas?

Best crappy investment ever

Slate has discovered the "brown market" in used cloth diapers, tying cloth's popularity to the recession. But some of us were hip to cloth years ago, and even with the laundering I still think using cloth dipes was a good decision.

Dig: I spent about $400 on diapers and waterproof covers over the course of my baby-raising career. (Most I bought used from eBay before they decided to ban used diaper sales. Nowadays there are boards like Diaper Swappers for buying and selling.)

I used cloth with Rocketboy until he was done and then passed them to my friend J, who used them with her second boy and then handed them back to me for Hurricanehead. I used them until Hboy was about one (he had rash issues) and then passed them back to Miss J for her third baby.

I'd forgotten them until J showed up with two giant sacks of freshly laundered diapers and covers--mine plus some she had bought. Being out of the baby business and not knowing anyone with a baby at the time, I put 'em on Craigslist. I made it clear that the diapers had been through at least three kids and probably more, depending on when they were bought and whether they were bought used.

I sold the lot that day for $200.

When you think about how much disposables cost (a box of 216 Costco newborn diapers is $40 and will last two to three weeks), a net cost of $200 plus laundering for three and a half years of diaperage is pretty damn good, to say nothing of the fact that my friend got years' worth of use out of them as well.

Granted, daycares and public pools generally require disposables, and there is a time and place for them. But as money spent on baby care goes, cloth diapers are a pretty good deal.

What's the best money you've spent on baby or child stuff?