Wednesday, September 16, 2009

If Organic Ant Killer Doesn't Do the Job, Your Kids Will


A few weeks ago a horrible thing happened. It was a hot Sunday afternoon, and I went to Costco. No, that wasn't the horrible thing, although a Sunday a Costco is pretty bad. When I got home and started putting the groceries away in the pantry, I noticed a bunch of little brown crumbs on one of the shelves. I went to wipe them out, and one of them crawled away.

And so I felt it in the pit of my belly, that same kind of dread that you feel when you accidentally hit the gas too hard and you run over a metal sign in the parking lot near the valet station, not like I know what that feels like: we had bugs.

Weevils. Lots of them. I mean LOTS OF THEM. I opened every box, bag, and jar and found the little evil things in most of them. I threw out so much food, it was shameful. My dad was here to witness my pathetic attempts to NOT dissolve in to a colossal meltdown. Boxes and bags and pots and pans and utensils had to be removed from their storage places and strewn about the house on one of the hottest mother effing days of the century. Despite the air conditioner, I sweated through it all.

Stewart was charged with the task of finding a chemical that would kill them dead without giving us cancer or lung disease. He went off to Target to buy some bug killer and some plastic sealable bins for the new food that would go back into the pantry. Hours later he returned with EcoSmart Organic Ant Killer. He proudly said "This is safe to use around the kids!" Okay, I know it didn't say Weevil Killer, but I was willing to trade specificity for non-toxicity.

I read the ingredient list, and it reads like a recipe for a nice cup of hot herbal tea. Rosemary oil. Cinnamon oil. Wintergreen oil. Etc. How bad could it be?

It is not bad at all. Stewart used the whole can in the pantry, which was overkill probably, but that's how he rolls. In the morning, the kitchen had to be wiped down, so I walked the kids down the street to Burger King for their very first fast-food breakfast, at which they proceeded to act like hellions and Kyle peed his pants. Awesome! If the bug poison doesn't get us, the children will.

Eventually we made it back home and the kitchen was clean and reassembled (in Stewart's words, "A leaner, meaner kitchen.) and there are no bugs. I dare them to come back. Okay, no I don't.

The only downside is that the entire house smells like Ben Gay now. I'll take that over the weevils, though.

EcoSmart and I are so delighted that we are giving you some. If you have troubles with ants or roaches, leave a comment here and tell me why a green product like this is important to you, and I will pick a winner by random after next Wednesday night (September 23, only one week before my birthday!) at 11:59. Your comment MUST INCLUDE SOMETHING ABOUT THE GREEN BUG KILLER and a clear path to your email if I don't already know you, to qualify. So comment away, crazy bug paranoid readers!

***Updated to add: PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO GET IN TOUCH WITH YOU OR YOUR ENTRY WILL NOT QUALIFY. Thanks.

Monday, September 7, 2009

The One About Maxi Pads

So, this is a weird one. Well, I guess it's not weird, exactly, in the way that reviewing an alien life form would be weird, or reviewing something totally unrelated to my life, like guitar picks, would be weird. Because I don't need, want, or ever have occasion to use guitar picks, so if someone sent me a bunch of guitar picks and I had to use them to review them, I would probably use them to scrape the goop from around my faucets, or maybe I'd use them to pick my teeth, or perhaps I'd make a lovely mosaic with them. You know, if I was crafty. Which I am not. So guitar picks would be a weird thing to send me.

Always Infinity pads
are not weird things to send me, although it feels weird to be writing about them online, which is what I meant when I said "This is a weird one." Essentially, telling you that I reviewed them is saying "Hey, world! I had my PERIOD! And it I used this PAD! And it worked!" I mean, ick. You don't want to know any more than that, right? RIGHT? If you do, that is just gross. I suppose I could tell you that I got some of that blue liquid to pour into them and see if any moisture comes out, like they do in the commercials, but that would be too science-experimenty for me, and everyone knows I barely have enough time to sneeze these days, so I'm not going to be staging any product use demonstrations.

I will say that ever since I started choosing and buying my own pads I have been buying the Always brand, until Target came out with a generic that is the same exact thing but cheaper, so I've been buying those.

This pack of Always Infinity pads is different than I remember the Always dri-weave pad. It's more papery, less plasticky, and there are little hole-like depressions in it ("microdots"), and there are contours ("channels") that are supposed to prevent leakage. So far, I say, so good.

Lucky you that you made it to the end of this review, because Always is offering a giveaway to my readers. Leave a comment here (and make sure I have your email address) by 11:59 PM Pacific Time on Sunday, September 13. I will choose a winner using random.org and the winner will receive a year's supply of Always Infinity (24 boxes of 18 count regular flow). Not a bad deal, right?

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