Consumer report.

Three things have come across my radar this week that I just need to share:

• Bounce dryer sheets. Don't try to save $1.50 by buying generic-brand dryer sheets. Once you go from those to Bounce, you will never go back. It's like embracing the Snuggle bear while being wrapped in a sun-warmed blanket hung out to dry in the spring (yes, it mixes brands, but I can't help what I feel).
• AAA Roadside. I've been renewing this every year for $55 and have never used it. Until this year, when I've used it twice. Both times, the AAA person has come in less than five minutes. It was worth $55 alone to have someone change my tire on the side of I-35 after my blow-out...but did you also know that the service is transferable? Last week my neighbor locked her phone, purse, keys, and dog in her truck. I called AAA, they came in three minutes, popped the lock, and everyone was happy and healthy. It cost nothing, and I was the neighborhood hero. I highly recommend.
• Banana Republic sweaters. Don't bother. I've always known this, but I always forget it, especially when they are one sale. Pretty much ever BR sweater I've ever bought has balled up within 90 seconds of putting it on. Today I was nearly overcome by the fluff and fuzz drifting off my sweater--I was like Pigpen with a halo of dirt. But instead of dirt, sweater fluff. And of course, the sweater was balling like a mofo. I am just saying no to their sweaters from now on. (Or maybe starting after Xmas, since I'm sure some of those might be under the tree.)

Pooing fabric.

As discussion of one cultural zeitgeist came to an end last night--it was our last "What is Modernism?" class through the UT Odyssey program, and I must disappointingly admit that I walked out of the door with exactly zero new insights on modernism--a new cultural zeitgeist was born. Or rather, renewed.

Project Runway, welcome back to my life.

Welcome back Tim, who is wonderful and sincere; Michael, who is slightly less orange-looking; Nina, sour and underwhelmed as ever; and Heidi, not pregnant for the first time since season 1. The gang's all here. Here's who I love so far: the tall skinny blond guy and the fat guy. I mostly love the fat guy because, despite the editors' best efforts to make him the "Boing! This guy doesn't belong!" character, he turned out a really stunning dress. You go, guy who makes salad-themed dresses sometimes!


In other, non-fabric-related news, today is my parents' anniversary. They were married less than three months when they found out they were preggers with me. It kinda wrapped up a hell of a whirlwind year for them: met in the spring, married in the fall, pregnant the next spring. It was the 70s, so maybe that was de rigour, though it strikes me, of the post-Mary Tyler Moore generation, as pretty quick. Anyway, those quirky kids have been married for 32 years; they've been married longer than they were single. Weird when you can start to balance your life like that.

I have a cousin who's been missing for 2 1/2 years. Missing as in, no one knows where he is, why he went, what happened (to him), or if he'll ever come back. He didn't take his wallet or his keys or his cell phone. He just...vanished.

Because he fell in age right in the middle of all us girls cousins, he was always the groom when we played wedding on my grandma's front lawn. I remember him also having a certain zeal for the 1988 Olympic gymnastic team and for Patch and Kayla on Days of Our Lives. When he and his sister Amy used to come to our house, we would all sing along to the Footloose soundtrack.

The last time I saw him was right before I moved to Memphis in 1999. He seemed like the kind of person I would be friends with, but alas, as these things do, the cousins had all drifted apart over the years, and we only saw each other on Christmas Eves at Grandma's house.

I had a dream last night about him. In the dream my sister Kristin, cousin Aaron, Amy, and I were going to his apartment near Disneyland (he's never had an apartment near Disneyland, though Amy did work maintenance there one summer). When we got to the apartment, we were all sitting on the couch and talking when it dawned on me: Aaron was back. He was there. I'm not sure why it took so long for me to realize it, but when I did, I started frantically signaling my sister to make sure that she noticed, too.

Then I woke up, to the sound of dumpsters being emptied in the middle of the night.

Nick or treat

When we were little there was an annual Halloween contest on Nickelodeon. You sent in your phone number in hopes that Nickelodeon would call your house on Halloween. If you answered the phone "Nick or treat," you won.

We never actually submitted our number for the contest, but Kristin and I still like to answer the phone on Halloween with "Nick or treat," just in case.

This year continued my streak of no trick-or-treaters, now about 7 years running. Yet I always buy a bag of candy, just in case. When I pulled up yesterday evening, one of the kids in the complex (I think he might actually be the only one, come to think of it) was standing in the parking lot in his costume. Just kinda hanging out, eager to hit the streets but his mom probably told him they wouldn't go until after dark. So I went over to him and gave him a piece of candy. (I didn't even make him say "trick or treat." Which, I love when kids say that, all rote and automatic.) He was excited to get his first piece of candy of the night, I think. Though it was hard to tell because he was wearing a Scream mask, one with an extra skein of plastic over the top to allow the fake blood to pour down the face whenever he pumped the mechanism in his hand. It was a bit creepy. I told him so. He squeezed the pump to squirt more blood down his mask, which I took as a sign of approval.