my suspicions have been confirmed.

cantaloupe is the best shower snack ever. as we've already established, shower snacks are a wonderful idea after a lot of bicycle riding, but not all foods are well-suited for shower snack candidacy.

cantaloupe, however, is a perfect shower snack. let me tell you why:

1. it is delicious.
2. it is full of sugar and water, two of the things that you need after a long ride (and i suppose that you could salt it if you wanted to. and also sprinkle it with protein powder, making it the ultimate recovery food.)
3. it is actually more enjoyable to eat in the shower. due to the aforementioned delicious sugar and water, cantaloupe is pretty sticky in a non-aquatic environment, requiring the use of a utensil if you are one of the perfectly reasonable people who really prefers not to be sticky in most situations. in the shower, though, cantaloupe juice on your hands can just be rinsed off! it is perfect!
4. it is full of vitamin A and vitamin C and also potassium.

can we all just agree that unclogging one's shower drain without the use of nasty chemicals is a pretty satisfying accomplishment?

as you may remember from the other times i've written about cleaning my shower, between the large amounts of hair that i shed and the fact that the person with whom i share my shower goes through an astonishing amount of soap, our drain is frequently kind of slow.

i try to pretend it isn't happening, and then when i get tired of rinsing the soap suds off of my feet and ankles at the end of a shower/footbath, i remove the drain cover and dig around below the drain for large disgusting hair clumps. i hate doing this. it is gross, especially after i mentioned to audra that i thought it was strange to find so much lint in the shower drain and she told me that it was actually dead skin cells. yuck. (i am pretending that this isn't true, because it is gross.)

i know that there are several products for dealing with this sort of problem, but i don't want to use anything toxic unless it's absolutely necessary. and it's not! because i successfully unclogged a really slow drain!

i put some baking soda down the drain as far as i could (and since the big box of baking soda that we use for cleaning and keep under the sink had started to clump up from getting damp, there were big satisfying chunks to use! yes!) and then poured some vinegar down after it. after that, i poured a pot of boiling water down the drain...and it all drained right down. aw yeah. (also, the baking soda/vinegar combination is very fizzy, and the noise it makes is nice.)

you can cross corn chips off your list of potential good shower snacks.

yesterday i went on a nice long bike ride that included some climbing. especially since i was a little sore from a ballet class and another ride the day before that, it was hard work! but a really nice ride.

when i got home i was really hungry, but i also felt totally disgusting. i wanted, equally and passionately, a shower and dinner. immediately. after eating a few handfuls of chocolate chips, i settled on a brilliant compromise. inspired by liz hatch's brilliant bath-and-a-beer, i decided that i would have a snack in the shower.

and, just for the record, corn chips aren't a very good choice. they are delicious and satisfying, but since i didn't have anywhere to put them except the ledge that was just a few feet above the bottom of the tub, water dripped down my arm and into the bowl.

but i do think there's something to this snack and shower combination. i've been thinking of snacks that would withstand water better, and i have some ideas for the next time i need to eat and wash at the same time.

can we all just agree that there is a lot to say about scrubbing the shower?

because there is. my most recent adventures in shower cleaning involved a disturbing discovery: in addition to forming unholy alliances with the hairballs in the drain, as previously discussed, the soap has also begun conspiring with the shower mold! there are a few lines of grout that are covered with soap, from the windowsill to the edge of the tub, and while i was scrubbing the soap away, all the while thinking about how easy and pleasant it was to gently wash away soap, i realized that there was crazy black mold growing underneath it!

yes, underneath it! it was thicker and scarier and more aggressive-looking than the rest of the mold! and rather than being intimidated or even killed by soap, it just lives beneath it! in a symbiotic relationship! yikes!

can we all just agree that there is something extraordinarily satisfying about cleaning?

today i scrub scrub scrubbed the gross greyish soap scum out of the bathtub. the person who i share my bathroom with goes somehow through truly mind-boggling amounts of soap (like several bars per week!), and the soap he's been using for awhile now has an unfortunate tendency to break up into small pieces, and then it ends up all over the floor of the shower (also known as the bathtub) and then it forms unholy alliances with the astonishing amounts of hair that i shed each time i shower, and then the soap/hairball hybrids close up the shower drain and then the soapy dirty water hangs out while it drains super slowly and then there's crazy soap scum.

that is what happens.

so today, i discovered a fantastic combination of cleaning products for dealing with a super scummy bathtub: this crazy "orange-scented" degreaser called "fabuloso," (although it should be called "¡fabuloso!") and baking soda. the ¡fabuloso! loosens up the soap scum, and the baking soda makes it really easy to scrub it all away! woo!

so yes, i would recommend ¡fabuloso! and baking soda to anyone with soap scum in their lives. that is all.

can we all just agree that dreams can offer a useful sense of perspective to waking life?

because last night i dreamed that i had to cut out thousands of fish-shaped pieces of buttered raisin toast. the fish-shaped pieces of buttered raisin toast, as well as some other foods (which i can't remember now, because they weren't as interesting) were refreshments for a huge wedding shower, but the shower started only a few minutes after we began preparing all the food. and there were at least twenty people there as guests and as members of the wedding party. they were all wearing identical giant purple dresses.

and folks were getting really upset that it was taking so long to get all the food ready. then i realized that the cookie cutter i was using for the fish-shaped pieces of buttered raisin toast was kind of bent, so the fish were sort of misshapen. then i had to go back and trim one side of each of them.

and then i woke up. i had a lot of things to do today, but gosh it was a breeze compared to what i had to do all night while i was sleeping.

from the "wtf srsly?!?" section of the newspaper:

"Tinkling in the pool causes disgust and discomfort"

okay dudes, i know that there are some amazingly dense and inconsiderate people out there, but this article makes me think i should never leave the house again. as the title suggests, it really is an article about how peeing in swimming pools is gross and makes other people upset and, in large quantities, sweat and urine can contribute to health problems. (i don't want to come off as a public pool urination defender or anything, but i still can't think of anything that, in large enough quantities, doesn't contribute to health problems.)

the really totally insane part, though, is the part about poop. yes, cnn.com offers "pool etiquette" tips. and yes, the first one is, "Don't swim when you have diarrhea." i'd like to add to that one. don't swim when you have diarrhea, and if it took reading this article to get you to realize that, don't swim ever. the fourth suggestion, though ungrammatical, is also something that should be beyond obvious to anyone over the age of five who has access to sinks: "Wash your hands after using toilet or changing diapers."

um. yes. yuck. i'll leave you with some more of this article's reflections on poop:

The most common recreational water illness is spread through diarrhea. One of the most persistent problems is Cryptosporidium, a parasite that causes diarrhea and can be found in infected stools.

"With Crypto, if you have diarrhea, it's very watery," Hlavsa said. "It's not a formed stool sitting in the pool or floating on top. It could be very watery, and no one [in a pool] would know."

During the past two decades, Crypto has become one of the most common causes of waterborne illness.

Unlike E. coli and salmonella, Crypto can resist chlorine. In 2007, the parasite sickened more than 1,200 people who had visited recreational water facilities in Utah.

According to the CDC, if someone swallows water that has been contaminated with feces, he or she may become sick even if very little water is consumed.

The agency also recommends that people shower before a swim, because most people have traces of feces on their bottoms, which can contaminate recreational water. In the Water Quality survey, 35 percent reported skipping a shower before swimming.

Recreational water illnesses have been on the rise for the past two decades, according to the CDC. From 2005 to 2006, the agency reported 78 outbreaks of recreational water illnesses associated with swimming pools, water parks, hot tubs, lakes, rivers and oceans that affected 4,412 people and resulted in 116 hospitalizations and five deaths.

so. happy summertime, wash your hands and your booty, and safe swimming.

can we all just agree that waking up GRUMPY is no way to begin a new week?

i don't even know what was wrong—i ate well and exercised yesterday, and today's going to be a fine day. i think it could possibly be that funny letdown after some really fun times; the last week has been exceptionally good. but there's plenty of exceptional good on the horizon too. a shower helped.

your question makes me concerned. or jealous.

the search that led someone here: "what does it mean when your heart races in the shower?"

my answers:
a) it means that you need to go to the doctor.
or
b) it means that you're showering with someone really, really fun.

ingredients for a beautiful day:

1. good friend
2. long bicycle ride with amazing scenery and nice weather
3. large quantities of blueberry pancakes and sweet potatoes with rosemary
4. hot shower

can we all just agree that it's nice when your sweet little eye makes a valiant recovery from an accidental chemical spill?

one tiny drop of diluted shower gel can produce dramatic reactions, apparently. i think left eye is gonna be okay, but it was all halloween-looking for the entire morning. it's a good thing i have glasses, or i would have had to lie in bed reading with the book just a few inches from my nose. instead, i did all kinds of things in the garden, rearranged my kitchen cupboard, and now i'm tackling laundry. so much laundry. left eye and i will emerge victorious! mark my words.

can we all just agree that, although the use of environmentally sustainable cleaning products is an important goal, there's nothing quite like

spraying bleach on stubborn and gross shower mold and then watching it dissolve? don't worry, i diluted the bleach a little bit and kept the window open, but i scrubbed away entire mold continents with a toothbrush! today! it was really exciting!

(i'm ready to stop being unemployed now.)