Monthly Archives: August 2026

August 27, 2026 · 9:10 am

Tupperware fallout

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Jackie Wells-Fauth

Why is it that those Tupperware dishes (and by Tupperware, I mean any plastic storage ware) can’t hang onto their partners? They lose each other faster than Bo Peep lost her sheep!

I have fourteen square plastic lids in my cupboard and 19 round bowls. If there are rectangular lids, they do not fit my rectangular dishes and there is never the right number of lids for the number of dishes, regardless of whether they fit or not. This is a perplexing conundrum.

These random thoughts came to me as I was digging through the cupboard for a dish and a lid that vaguely resembled each other to store some leftovers. As I was pawing through the containers on the second shelf, the stack of old cottage cheese containers (just the containers) on the third shelf hit me in the head.

That is the first time that plastic containers have openly assaulted me, but make no mistake, they have it in for me. They do whatever is necessary to make my life miserable.

“What in the world are you keeping in this cupboard? It’s a plastic nightmare,” Roy observed, peering into the jumbled mass one night.

“It so happens that this is the Tupperware containers cupboard,” I responded in an offended voice. After all, I am well aware that the cupboard resembles the aftermath of a nuclear explosion.

“Tupperware is putting out bowls that say, ‘Cool Whip’ on the side?” he asked sarcastically.

“Those work as storage containers—at least for as long as the flimsy lids last.”

“Same with cottage cheese containers and the ‘I Can’t Believe It’ s Not Butter’ butter bowls,” he continued, picking through the debris that is the Tupperware cupboard.

“Those dishes work for leftovers, and they fit just as well in the refrigerator,” I insisted.

“Yes, and they make it impossible to tell if you are actually getting cottage cheese, or a seriously decomposed leftover helping of broccoli,” he stated. “I still get nauseated thinking about that.”

“Those dishes save me a considerable amount of money. Do you know how much custom storage dishes cost?” I insisted.

“Do you know what decades-old broccoli looks like?” he shot back, adding, “It would probably help if you cleaned out this storage disaster. You could match dishes with their lids and see how many don’t work.”

“Now, why didn’t I think of that? It just so happens that I cleaned this cupboard less than a month ago,” I defended.

“And…”

“I ended up with twelve containers without matching lids and 20 lids that had no match and I’m not sure they ever did,” I reported. “I threw out so much Tupperware that there was a rumor that we were moving.”

It’s true, I did clean it out recently. I stacked all the bowls of the same size, with their corresponding lids under them. I put the large rectangular dishes next to the small ones and had everything neatly stacked.

And for a week I was diligent about keeping things organized. After that, the Chaos Gremlin tossed everything around and I was too busy to keep to the plan and soon I was cramming dishes in there and trying to get the door shut before the whole thing rained down on me like confetti at the Christmas parade!

I justified my behavior: after all, how uptight do you have to be to want your bowls and lids to actually match? If you put the food in a small bowl, you can balance a larger lid on it and that will keep things in order, right?

The plain fact of the matter is that Tupperware lids do not remain loyal to their corresponding dishes. It is much the same truth as can be applied to socks going into the dryer. Until someone invents a method to keep these things together, my Tupperware dishes and lids will continue to have separation anxiety.

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August 20, 2026 · 2:27 am

What happens when therapy gets physical

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Jackie Wells-Fauth

You know those round, silver disability buttons you can push to open a door? Those are a remarkably handy invention. And it’s one I always thanked heaven I didn’t have to use. In fact, I thought it would be kind of a lazy act for a person who can perfectly well open a door to push those silver buttons. Hold that thought.

After the rigors of having my knee replaced, I was passed on to a process known as physical therapy. Everyone told me, “Oh, just you wait! Physical therapy is also known as torture. You are in for a horrible experience.” Well, I’m still waiting for that myth to happen!

Now, I don’t know how many of you have been in the physical therapy section of our local hospital, but I have spent enough time there lately to consider myself a bit of an expert on the topic. In fact, I have learned several truths about physical therapy.

For instance, they don’t mind at all if you whine. I go in frequently (early in the morning usually) and I always feel like I’m sacrificing myself by going. After all, that’s a lot of work and my knee is sore, and I’m tired, and I’d rather go out to breakfast. As I said, they don’t mind at all if you whine. They also don’t listen. They have heard it all, and they further know that in order to get me past the whining, they are going to have to (as my grandmother would say) turn a deaf ear.

Now, that’s not to say they are unsympathetic. They are extremely sympathetic and they work hard on their facial expressions to keep it sympathetic. It’s just that if they listen to all of my complaints, and all of my whining about the machines being too heavy and my knees being too delicate, they know that in a few months’ time the machines will still be too heavy and my delicate knees will not have improved at all. And that is not the point of my being there!

Second thing I learned: there are some words they don’t know the meaning of. For instance, they seem not to know what “can’t” means. “But Kayla, I can’t stand up without using my arms.” “No Marissa, I can’t walk over those little track hurdles of yours.” “Forget it, Bobbie, I can’t bend my knee that far.” “You must be joking, Tim, I can’t go upstairs with a walker.” They apparently don’t have a definition for “can’t.” They continue to stand and look at me until I move.

And upon reflection, this part might be my own fault. After telling them I can’t do something, it is not good training for them if I turn around and do the very thing I said I “simply can’t do.” This behavior gives them the idea that I was just whining, and since I have eventually done all of those things, then I most certainly can do them! How did they know?

When you are in physical therapy, it is important to keep your eye on the therapist, because they are kind of tricky. “Why is it so much harder to move that forty-pound weight today? I could do it last time!” I will grouse; certain I have gone backwards. “That’s because I put up the 60 pound one today,” will come the answer. I never saw that coming.

And that brings us to my biggest observation: the ankle weights. They insist on having me do some of the exercises with an ankle weight. In vain have I told them that I will not be wearing ankle weights in normal activities. And there again, you have to keep your eye on them. “Wow, this five-pound weight is heavier than I remember.” “That’s because it’s ten pounds today.”

The biggest observation I have made about physical therapists is that they have to have a tremendous amount of patience. They have put up with my whining, changed my bandages, pushed me farther than I ever thought I could go, and because they did it all without strangling me, I have a new knee, and I am on the road to taking full advantage of it.

And that brings me back to those silver disability buttons to open the doors. I normally don’t use them, because they are for those who truly cannot open doors. However, after a good physical therapy session, I always push those buttons; not because I really need to, but because I figure that on those occasions, I’ve earned it!

Want to feel better in a real hurry? These guys have the answer. Thank you, physical therapists, I couldn’t have done it without you!

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August 13, 2026 · 2:46 am

Deep thoughts on deep-cleaning

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Jackie Wells-Fauth

I found a dead bug in the bottom of my stove this week.

But, I’m getting a little ahead of my story. Let’s go all the way back to the beginning. A long, long time ago…

As a teacher, I have been trained over the years, even in retirement, to conduct an annual, ritualistic deep clean of my house. I don’t know what there is about it, but the idea of returning to the classroom always seemed to spur me into making sure the house was in good shape…a cleaning that was to last the entire year and never be thought of again during the nine-month rush of lesson plans, corrected papers and gradebooks, and dramatic performances—on the stage and in the classroom!

I know what you’re thinking—one cleaning a year does not make for a clean house. I agree with you; but one true, deep cleaning a year is about all I can scrape together the enthusiasm for, since, as I have mentioned before, I’m not a cleaning fan and school duties did keep me very busy.

I have since ditched the teaching responsibilities, but the inclination or habit, if you will, to commit—I mean, conduct a deep cleaning of the house every August is very strong. The weather heats up and I’m looking at dresser drawers that won’t close and a freezer that won’t shut, and I’m thinking it’s time to do that thing we do every August. (I don’t even like to say “deep clean”.)

Now, when I say—that phrase—I don’t mean sweeping floors and dusting the furniture. Oh no, I mean cleaning out closets, defrosting the freezer and cleaning behind cupboards and appliances.

It has been suggested to me that at the hallowed age of 70, perhaps I shouldn’t be turning mattresses and dragging around heavy furniture in the August heat. I would definitely agree, but I can’t leave this sort of thing for my lovely housekeeper: one look at the frost buildup, confusing array of half-emptied frozen vegetable bags and tinfoil-wrapped packages of mystery meat in my freezer and my very fine housekeeper would quit! No, the deep-cleaning is the cross I must bear.

But I digress. We now come to the kitchen deep-clean this fall…and the bug. After wiping down cupboards and scraping the unidentified gunk off the refrigerator door, I was ready to face the stove. My stove is located in the middle of two counters and there is enough of a distressing gap between stove and counter to allow spills. The first time I encountered this, I had been in the house for several years when it finally occurred to me to clean behind the stove. The two were so glued together with food residue, that some of the molding around the counter had attached itself permanently to the stove. Now, I try to get to it at least once a year—during the deep clean.

So, as is my August habit, I pulled out the stove and discovered a year’s diary of cooking disasters, written on the sides of the stove and the counter.

The sides of the stove where they joined with the counter were a positive artwork of cooking dribbles and drab running all the way to the floor. The worst was a drooled sheet of red spaghetti sauce that looked like I’d been making blood stew for Dracula. And it was while I was scrubbing the months-old spaghetti sauce off the stove and floor (not happily) that I happened to notice the bug. It was lying in the spaghetti sauce and was glued to it on the floor. It was lying on it’s back and had all six legs sticking straight in the air.

Now, in normal circumstances I might suppose it had drowned in the spaghetti sauce. But since I am a little paranoid about my cooking, I thought its position suggested that it might have tried the spaghetti sauce and was poisoned. I quickly cleared away the evidence, but it might be a while before I serve spaghetti again!

Next year, during deep cleaning—Roy gets to clean behind the stove. He won’t care what killed the bugs, as long as they are dead!

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August 6, 2026 · 12:51 am

Letting It Hang

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Jackie Wells-Fauth

My husband and I are in agreement on a great many things. That probably explains why we are still married. However, I will admit that we are a mixed marriage on a small number of issues and this month I have been reminded of one of them. If Shakespeare were to state the problem, he would say, “To hang, or not to hang, that is the question.”

No, I’m not talking about an execution; I’m talking about the laundry. Roy insists that the smart and economic thing to do is to hang clothes outside to dry. I, on the other hand, from a very young age in Sunday school, have always believed that if God intends us to hang clothes out on the line to dry, He would not have invented the dryer! That is such a clear sign from above that laundry lines are evil!

It is obvious to me on several levels that Roy did not grow up hanging out the laundry. He had two sisters and a hard-working mother and laundry is clearly “women’s work.” That means he never had the pleasure of standing out at the laundry line trying to wrestle a sheet over that flimsy string in high wind. I still remember the time my father looked at the laundry after I had finished slapping on the clothes pins and remarked, “It looks like it was hung by an indifferent drunk.” He was half right: I was definitely indifferent!

The only time I remember getting in trouble in elementary school was when we were reading The Long Winter. When they described laundry day, I blurted out, “What? Are they crazy?” The teacher pursed her lips disapprovingly and told me that further observations on my part would not be necessary; in that way teachers have of letting you know that the next “observation” will be shared with your parents.

I shut up that day, but seriously, those people took clothes outside in the middle of a blizzard-after-blizzard-winter and hung them up in the freezing cold! Then, they brought in the frozen remains and hung them behind the stove so they could both thaw and then dry! Am I the only one that thinks this does not make sense? Just let me sit in the cold shed and twist hay into burning sticks—at least that activity had a useful purpose!

Now, I should state here that when Roy insists the laundry be hung outside, he is willing to do the hanging. But I am not willing to deal with the results. Let’s start with the towels. I don’t care how much the wind is blowing, towels always come off the clothesline with all the softness of a pan scraper! I went to take a shower the other day and I had to go down four levels to hit a towel that I had washed and put in the dryer.

I think we may have reached an agreement on towels, however. Even he can’t deny that a towel dried outside has all the desired textural comfort of sand in your shoes. I see that in his last round of laundry, the towels actually made it to the dryer and not the line.

And so we go on to the rest of the clothes. Now, on a personal note, I like my neighbors far too well to subject them to the sight of my bedraggled undergarments hanging on the line like dispirited and grungy flags. On top of which, we have the same texture issue. My sister used to dry them for ten minutes in the dryer and then hang them out. That might have taken care of the texture issue, but it didn’t take care of the “I’m way too lazy to do that much work” issue!

And that leaves my outer clothes. I will never be a snappy dresser, and I generally wear my clothes until they are pretty much falling off. But when Roy puts them on the clothesline, they come back with all the smoothness of an accordion. I am then left with two choices. I can either wear them as is and hope nobody notices, or I can iron them. Now, we all know that I am not going to go through the “sprinkle clean clothes lightly, roll them up and put them in the refrigerator (usually until they’ve picked up refrigerator odor) and then take them out and IRON them!” No thank you, I’ll just tell everyone the accordion look is in!

Until I am back to full strength from my knee surgery, Roy is in charge of the laundry, so the question of whether to hang the clothes or to conveniently throw them into the dryer which is right there, will continue to plague us. But nothing will ever change Roy’s mind that it’s more practical to hang clothes out, nor change my mind that laundry lines were meant to be seen and not used, so I guess we will remain a mixed marriage on this issue!

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