Coffee heat rising

Product reviews

Beautiful Toes! How to beat back toenail fungus

by

This is a tacky topic. Sorry. BUT…it really is so amazing, I’ve just gotta tell you about it. According to Wonder-Dermatologist, if you don’t need to know about this now, sooner or later you will.

Here’s the deal: It turns out that as you age, your immune system ages (not surprisingly). And as your immune system ages, its ability to beat back the normal yeasties and other fungus critters that occur naturally around us tends to…well…fade. Hence — Gawd Help Us! — toenail fungus!

So a few weeks ago, I’m at the dermatologist’s office forking over some taxpayer dollars to be told (as usual) that I don’t have malignant melanoma, so while I have him trapped in the examining room, I ask him about the nails that are lifting off both toes, “Fungus,” he opines.

Then he says the drug they give you to beat back toenail fungus can make you passing sick, and he doesn’t recommend it. BUT, he has an alternative. He suggests

…hang onto your hat…

Vick’s VapoRub.

I give him The Look.

He stands his ground and says that there’s evidence that the aromatics in Vick’s are mildly fungicidal, and that if you use it often enough and long enough, it will beat back nail fungus and keep it beaten back.

Suspecting he’s been smoking some of the ingredients, I come home and look it up in the Hypchondriac’s Treasure Chest; to wit, the Internet. Of course, the usual LiveStrong woo-woo is on the float. But lo!! I do find a study, one that appears to be a real study, published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. It’s a very small study — that is not good — but it does hint at the possibility of positive results.

The researchers followed a group of 18 participants over periods of 4, 8, 12, 24, 36, and 48 weeks, during which subjects were asked to treat affected nails with Vick’s VapoRub and periodically self-report the results on a 5-point Likert scale. Cutting to the chase: about a third of them — five patients — experienced a “cure” in that the fungal microbes were no longer detectable after treatment. (Several fungi can cause nail disorders; one is a common yeast infection and another is also very much in our environment — these two and only these two were found to have been eradicated by the end of the study.) Ten had a partial improvement, and three showed no improvement.

Yet — here’s the weird part — when asked to assess the results subjectively, all 18 participants “rated their satisfaction with the nail appearance at the end of the study as ‘satisfied’ (n = 9) or ‘very satisfied’ (n = 9).”

Okayyy….this looks like a “nothing ventured nothing gained” affair. The dermatologist said that if it worked, keeping the fungi at bay would require applying the stuff for the rest of my life. But why, I ask myself, not?

Meanwhile, I also learn that miconazole is sometimes prescribed for nail infections. Well, hell. Miconazole is available over the counter — gents, you can find it in the feminine products department of any grocery store or drugstore. It’s used to treat vaginal yeast infections. Just pretend you’re buying it for the wife.

If one’s good, two must be better, I figure.

So I buy a course of miconazole treatment — 3 vaginal suppository tubes of 3% cream plus a small tube of 2% cream for external use — plus a little jar of Vick’s VapoRub. Over at Michael’s, I pick up the cheapest small, stiff oil-paint brush I can find: this is ideal for applying said chemicals.

One suppository tube of miconazole lasts for a couple of weeks: dab a small amount of it under the top of your nails, around the sides, and along the cuticles. Then do the same with the VaporRub.

The VapoRub does, it is true, stink to high heaven when you apply it. However, the odor quickly dissipates. I’ve learned to cover my feet with ankle socks for an hour or so. After that, the stuff has soaked in and the smell is gone.

But here’s the thing:

After six  weeks, it’s as the day to the night!

The nails are certainly no worse. If anything, they’re better. But the rhino hide that had grown around the nails? GONE.

After six weeks of applying a small amount of miconazole and a generous amount of Vick’s twice a day (morning and evening), the tough, calloused skin around the nails — especially around the worst affected ones — has softened so effectively it now looks normal. The result is that even if a clinical cure is not accomplished, the feet look so much better cosmetically that one wants to do a Dance to Spring!

VapoRub is your basic petroleum jelly with some aromatic chemicals mixed in. So it’s prob’ly not surprising that it would moisturize and soften damaged, toughened hide on your feet.

As for the nails: it will take quite a long time for them to grow out, of course. So I think no decision can be made about a “cure” (or whatever) for several months — the term of the study was 48 weeks. I’d guess that’s about when one can risk an assessment as to whether this works or not.

But in the meantime, I’d say it’s very much worth a try. In the present case, the nails themselves already look better, and the skin around them appears to have returned to normal.
_____________

And remember: I am not a doctor. No part of this post constitutes medical advice. Talk to a real medical doctor before applying or swallowing drugs, quack nostrums, or experimental treatments.

Day from Hell After$shock: The Water Heater Bill

by

Nine hundred eighty dollah and twenty-six cents. That’s what a new water 50-gallon water heater costs, installed.

I expected this, because the last time I bought a water heater — about 11 years ago when I moved into this house — the plumber said prices were headed for the stratosphere because of new safety requirements. He said then that heaters would run upwards of $600, which indeed they do. This one was $820, plus the cost of installation.

And now I see that Bradford White, the brand my new guy installed, is almost universally disliked and reviled. One buyer said their four-year-old model turned into a “blowtorch,” burned their house down, and killed their dog. That was just outside of Tucson…three months ago!

Well, the plumber didn’t get the icemaker line reattached. I may tell him to return the thing, when he comes over here tonight to connect that. Wish I’d had the sense to look it up yesterday before he installed it!!

Wouldn’t you think a plumber would know the products better?

What am I gonna do here…? There’s no way the guy is going to be able to return the thing, now that he’s installed it and filled it full of water. But holy mackerel…another Consumer Affairs commenter said a year-old model filled their home with carbon monoxide, poisoned her and her husband, and killed their dog. The thing is in the garage and the door between the garage and the kitchen is supposedly a fire door. But that door leaks like a sieve.

He wouldn’t take AMEX, so I had to give him a check. So that means I don’t have the credit-card warranty/insurance deal.

Why do I think I’m lined up for a royal screwing here? This does not look good.

I guess what I’ll have to do is buy a home warranty, which will replace the unit when it craps out (assuming it doesn’t explode my home), and also put a fire alarm and a CO alarm in the garage. There’s already a smoke alarm in the kitchen.

Another half-assed home warranty…dayum! Just what I need: another monthly charge. They cost about $500…maybe I’d be better off to simply put $42 each month toward the next water heater, which, if this one doesn’t burn the roof down around my ears first, will be in about six years and two days. It comes with a six-year warranty…which the guy failed to give me attached to the unit.

Five hundred dollah times 6 years is $3,000, enough to buy three new water heaters…

Well, meanwhile, it’s off to Costco to return the Panasonic telephone lash-up. The instructions are so complicated they are simply incomprehensible. I never have figured out how to bring up the “menu,” and to use the “Block Call” button to beat back the phone solicitors, you can’t just push the button. You have to somehow “select” the phone number, but you can’t find a way to “select.” And apparently “out of area” is not a blockable code.

The thing wasn’t that expensive, but with a thousand-dollar bill for a new water heater that may kill me, the dogs, or all of us, every little bit helps.

Communication Complication

by

🙂 So yesterday I bought a new communication complex at Costco. We used to call these things “telephones.” I’m afraid that term no longer suffices…

P1030444I bought it because if you have caller ID  you can use this contraption to block up to TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY nuisance callers. Hee heeeeee! That is SO much better than the five-minute answering messages that cause robo-calling machines to hang up.

Also, my beloved Uniden set is getting old. Replacement batteries for the Uniden are hard to find and a pain to install, especially now that Radio Shack has closed. I used to take the dead handsets up to the Radio Shack around the corner, where the guys would not only sell me new funny-looking battery thingies, they would put them in, too. That was very nice.

The Panasonic uses ordinary AAA batteries — well, the rechargeable kind — which you can get about anywhere and you can replace easily. So that’s a big plus.

But…just lookit that thing. You can connect not one but two cell phones with it (does that mean when you’re using your cell you’re not using up minutes??). Its base unit will run on a handset’s batteries, so when the power goes out your phone doesn’t instantly go dead. It does things that no one ever heard of and no one really has any desire to do.

And thanks to all that functionality, the damn thing is SO COMPLICATED that the instruction manual is NINETY-SEVEN PAGES LONG!

The quick-start pamphlet alone is nine pages long. Holy mackerel.

However, once I figure out how to get it to work, it will have just as many extensions as the Uniden does (a phone in almost every room!), and it will allow me to block incoming nuisance calls.

Most times when the phone rings anymore, it’s a nuisance telemarketer. AARP (I suspect) sells its mailing lists to the crooks, so if you’re in the “senior” category you get blitzed with scammy pitches and frauds at all hours of the day and night. On average, I get three to five of these calls a day, even though I never answer the phone to them.

Only drawback I can see is that if someone calls in such a way that “no number” is available, the Panasonic will automatically block the call. Both M’jito and SDXB have phones that occasionally register with the Uniden as “Unknown Caller,” so I’m a little concerned that it will reject calls from them. Maybe there’s some way they can adjust their phones to make their numbers visible — it’s not consistent, so I don’t know why that happens.

Sure would be nice, though, to stop people from harassing you without having to buy a telephone that requires 97 pages if instruction…

New Model Shark Floor Steam-cleaner: FAIL!

by

Some of you may remember the raves I wrote, way back in the Dark Ages, about the glories of the Shark steam-cleaner for hard floors and the Shark steam iron and the Shark vacuum cleaner. Oh, how I loved that little Shark steam-cleaner…far as I was concerned, the Shark company had a customer for life.

Welp…mind changed!

Four, five years later, the handy-dandy steamer gave up the ghost. Naturally, I went out and bought another one, figuring to replace the thing with a unit that would be just as good or better.

Wrong.

Why, why, why do manufacturers think they have to “improve” products that already work perfectly? If it ain’t broke, guys…

The new Shark has an on-off switch — the old one had to be plugged and unplugged to turn it on and off. The new Shark has a larger footpad that can be flipped over — steam will come out of either side. Nice.

But whereas the old one operated quietly, the new model makes a stupid, annoying noise when you turn it on, one that increases in annoyance factor the higher the setting. Okay, you can live with that…

The new footpad, though, is much larger, too large to allow you easily to clip on a microfiber rag with a couple of clothespins. You HAVE to use their mitt-like thing that has to be pulled on with a great deal of back-bending hassle and that just. doesn’t. WORK to pick up dirt.

On closer inspection, actually, what doesn’t work is the device itself. Force it to hold a rag that will allow steam to pass through with one helluva blast, and you get the same result as you get with the steam gasping and struggling to get through the shag-rug thing that comes with the machine: a mess.

After a week or ten days on antibiotics, Ruby the Corgi Pup is down to peeing on the floor only a couple of times a day — a big improvement over a couple of times an hour. So I figured it was time to break out the contraption and clean the 1680 square feet of tilework that is my flooring.

Wasn’t very pleased with the Shark’s performance the first time I used it, two or three weeks ago. But by the time I’d vacuumed and dustmopped and done a lot of other housework, I was beat, and so I figured I’d just not done a very good job because I was so tired by the time I reached that last housecleaning stage.

No. Not so.

This time all I did was clean the floors, and since there wasn’t a lot of dog hair, I used dustmops to pick up the hair and dust. So was still feeling pretty gingery by the time to fire up the steam-mop came around. And after running the thing on the kitchen, family room, and dining room, I got exactly the same result that 265 Amazon.com customers got: it stinks.

The old cleaner’s pad (or microfiber rag) would need to be changed by the time I finished the kitchen. If I’d run it over all three rooms, it would be black. This thing’s pad was barely soiled.

The floors, however, were still plenty soiled: streaky, dull, and dirty-looking.

Damn.

Rather than go over all that tile again (and have to do that two or three times throughout the house), I decided to cut my losses and get out the wet-mop. Ordinarily I’m not fond of mopping with a wet string-mop…to my mind that process mostly just pushes the dirt around. But seeing no other choice, I filled up a bucket with hot water, Simple Green, and vinegar. Wrestled the mop in there, slopped it around the floor, et voila! In short order, the mop water was black, the floors clean, and the grimy-looking haze gone.

Very, very disappointing. I’ll never buy another Shark steam-mop again, and I probably won’t buy another Shark product at all.

Unfortunate. And highly not recommended.

Huge Rip-off Narrowly Averted

by

Review freshly posted, by me, of Leslie’s Swimming Pool Service, on Angie’s List:

My pool pump stopped working about a week ago. It’s one of the old single-cycle pumps, and I’ve expected it to go out  sooner or later, but this could NOT have happened at a worse time: one  unexpected expense after another, starting in early January, has drained my emergency savings and then some.

I tried to reach my go-to service, Swimming Pool Service and Repair, but when I called the number I have — and that’s still posted on the Web — I got a “no longer in service” message. So fell back on Leslie’s.

On Saturday they sent a guy over. He took one look at the thing, listened to the “hummmmm” it made when power was turned on, and announced I needed to buy a new pump…to the tune of $1500!!!!!

This is $1500 I don’t happen to have. I explained that I’m trying to live on Social Security and that I’ve had a series of burdensome unexpected expenses. I asked if he was sure  he couldn’t fix it. He said no, it couldn’t be fixed. I said I’d seen a pump like it at Leslie’s website for $625, so why can’t I have that? He said our lovely legislators had passed a law stating that only the new power-saving multicycle pumps can be installed. That sounded a little fishy — you can say many things about Arizona’s elected representatives, but “environmentally sensitive” is not one of them.

As it developed, the soonest the new pump would be in was today, Tuesday, but this particular service dude was going to be off work today. So, he said, they’d send another guy.

Thank heaven for small favors!

This morning, a young man named Chris shows up.

In the course of conversation, I happen to mention that $1500 is a hit I can’t afford. He says, “Well, do you mean you don’t want the pump?” I say, “Well, I’ve gotta keep the pool running — it would cost more than fifteen hundred bucks to fill it in.” He says, “I think all it needs is a capacitor.”

Say what?

I say, the guy who was here last week said it couldn’t be fixed. He says, I’m sure I can fix it. I say, will you get in trouble? He says his boss will be mad. I say, I don’t want you to get canned. He says, no problem. He goes off to acquire the part.

Not counting the junket to get the part, it took Chris all of about 10 minutes to replace the thing and get the pump running happily. Total cost: $141.97.

The part itself cost $32.29. Leslie’s gouged me $85 for the “service call” (what d’you bet Chris never sees much of that?) and $22 for the “trip charge”: that would be $107 just to drive over to my house.

Chris obviously is worth a great deal more than that, since an honest man seems to be hard to come by these days.

I’m hugely relieved to save $1400 that was needed to cover food bills. But on the other hand, I’m not pleased that at the outset Leslie’s sent a guy who obviously tried to cheat me. I don’t think I would do business with Leslie’s again: evidently their business model is such that their workers are treated in a way that tempts them to rip off customers. Next time I’ll come back to Angie’s List and look for some other provider.

Does that take the cake, or does that take the cake?

What’s Clean? And…the incredible wastefulness of cleaning products

by

Sunday afternoon: reduced to cleaning the filthy house. There’s a limit to how much dog hair and floor stickum a human can live with.

I also was reduced to having to buy another Swiffer dustmop, since I’d worn the old one completely out. It was eight or ten years old, and it’s dust-mopped many an acre of flooring—so it was no surprise when it pretty much fell apart.

The new, more chintzily built Swiffer came with two FREE!!!!! dry Swiffer rags and one FREE!!!!! wet-mop rag. I don’t use those things, having found that a microfiber rag works better with less hassle. But since they’d tossed them in with the push-mop duster thing, I decided to use them up.

Have you ever noticed how wasteful cleaning gear that’s marketed to Americans has become? All these individual throw-away paper towels impregnated with this, that, and the other chemical, to say nothing of a different chemical for every purpose…bathroom cleaners, kitchen cleaners, tile cleaners, plastic “wood” floor cleaners, real wood floor cleaners, wall cleaners, window cleaners, counter cleaners, special sanitizing throw-away wipes for the kitchen, special sanitizing throw-away wipes for the bathroom, special toilet cleaners, special shower cleaners, special throw-away wipes to dust the furniture, special stuff to clean off the top of the useless glass stove…holy mackerel there’s no end to it!

Swiffer seems to me to be a special case in point.

The stupid little throw-away dust rags you’re supposed to clip to the gadget…have you noticed how they clog up after one or two rooms? Okay, at 1860 square feet of tile, I suppose my house has more hard flooring than most…but maybe not. A lot of people like to be able to clean under the sofa and the bed, and quite a few think carpets aggravate their allergies or are simply dirty, because it’s impossible to get them clean. Which, of course, it is.

So there you are with your tile floor. You Swiffer up a couple of rooms, take a look at the bottom of the gadget, and see the throw-away duster rag is chuckablock full of dust and dog hair.

But you have miles to Swiffer before you rest. (Click on the image to appreciate its full, high-res glory. This is how a Swiffer looks after I’ve vacuumed the floors: to get this place clean, first I have to vacuum, then dust-mop, then wet-mop or steam-mop. Yes. Here in the low desert we do have dust, and here in the Palace of the Queen of the Universe, we have dog hair. A lot of dog hair.)

Now you think, ah! rather than throwing this thing away, I’ll flip it over and do another room or two with the backside, thereby extending its life a little and cutting the waste a tiny bit.

Well, no.

Proctor & Gamble has designed its Swiffer rags so that they’re puffy and absorbent on one side and shiny and UNabsorbent on the other—the better to block consumers from doubling up on their use!

Cute. How much environmental degradation is a dollar worth, anyway?

Absent the questionable throw-away towels, Swiffer dust mop gadgets come in handy, and you don’t have to buy into clear-cutting Montana for the privilege of using them. The trick is pretty simple: get yourself a bunch of microfiber rags. These are available in lifetime supplies at Costco, and you may be able to find them at hardware and auto supply stores.

Attach a microfiber rag to the bottom of the Swiffer duster in exactly the same way as you attach the Swiffer cloth, by punching the fabric into the little punch-in clips.

Et voilà!

Because a microfiber rag is bigger and softer than a Swiffer paper, obviously it’s going to flop around the floor a bit. But for me, that’s just fine—provides a wider pick-up swath and makes it easier to push into corners. If you want it tight and neat, you can fold it envelope-style around the Swiffer head and clip it on with clothes pins or binder clips.

Microfiber fabric is much more efficient at picking up dirt and pet hair than a disposable Swiffer paper. Here’s what happened when I ran the clean rag over the area that I’d already Swiffered:

And a microfiber cloth will dust your entire house, not just a room or two. So you’re not having to fiddle around with changing the things out every five or ten minutes, as if throwing one dustrag in the trash every time you clean the floors weren’t wasteful enough. Here’s how the microfiber rag looked after I’d gone over the rest of the house:

Why can’t dog hair stay as cute when it’s off the dog as when it’s on the dog?

Jeez. Just imagine how much I’d spend on these Swiffer paper dusters if I went through four or five of them every single week? And think of the incredible waste of forest products, energy to produce the stupid paper rags, more energy to package them, still more energy to ship them, and still more energy to cart them to the landfill. Think of the waste of landfill space!

Microfiber rags last for-freaking-ever! There are some out in my garage that have gotta be eight or ten years old. Do they get grungy when you use them to clean the floor? Sure…that’s why we have clothes washers. Though they do get stained and tired, that doesn’t interfere with their ability to magnet up dust and animal hair, a job at which they are very, very efficient.

Well, anyway, now the floors are as clean as floors can get.

It was Erma Bombeck, I think, who once held forth humorously about how different people have different ideas of what makes their homes “clean.” She was talking about women, but it applies to men, too. Bombeck reflected that she didn’t feel like the house was truly clean if there were finger smudges around the light switches. Other women felt the house wasn’t clean until the kitchen counters were spotless or the baseboards dust-free or the house redolent of furniture spray or the bathroom fixtures polished bright enough to blind all comers. Everything else could be dirty, but as long as those things were right, the house was “clean” enough.

😀

It’s true, I think. For me, it’s the furniture and the floors. I can’t abide dust on the furniture or grime on the floors. And when I can write my name on the top of the file cabinet and feel the grit under my bare feet, I know it’s time to clean. SDXB was obsessive about the bathrooms: if they weren’t clean and sanitized, the house just was not clean. La Maya believes clean baseboards make a clean home.

What’s the gold standard of cleanliness around your house?