Personal History

 It's so much harder to pretend you're sane when you get into your thirties.

I was with a girl for 5 years, we lived together in a house she owned.

When we broke up I found myself homeless late on an otherwise unremarkable Thursday, calling a friend of mine to see if I could crash on his couch.

For reasons I cannot fully articulate I decided that every year I would dedicate three days on the anniversary to fasting and remembering. It seemed like the right thing to do.

I stand by that decision but it is damned difficult to explain to friends, let alone strangers.

"You're not drinking tonight?"

"No, I'm fasting."

"Why?"

"The personal holiday I keep that doesn't yet have a name where I fast in remembrance of the time five years of relationship crumbled into ashes and I was homeless."

Let me tell you, even people you've know since childhood will give you strange looks at that one.

It was so much easier in my twenties. Real life was still some distant concept. The objectives were pretty clear and simple. Go to class, make some gesture at doing the work they required, meet up with friends and have a good time.

That was it.

Heartbreaks were intense but short lived. The stakes were low and nothing reached deep enough to have a lasting effect. There just wasn't enough history.

 Ten years later there is just so much history everywhere.

7 Things I've learned about cleaning my car interior

 No preamble this time, we're just going to jump right in to it.

Microfiber towels

I used to use paper towels for everything but I hated all the little bits of lint they would leave floating around. Microfiber towels are a game changer. They're cheap, and reusable though you can certainly get higher quality with a higher price point. I use them for basically everything these days.

Bissell 3624 Spot Clean pro

For those of use with cloth seats this thing is amazing. It's portable, about the size of a good sized crock pot, with a long cord for connecting to distant outlets. One thing: don't go bananas on the handle. If you use two hands as I did to really press the handle into the fabric it will crack. It'll do just fine if you use one hand but not two.

Magic Eraser

I've always had a lot of trouble with streaking when I clean my windows, which drives me nuts. Partly this may be due to the towels I've used, but something I find that helps is Magic Erasers. 

Pro tip: magic eraser is just a brand name, if you want to pick up a bunch of 'magic erasers' cheap search for melamine. It's the same stuff without the pricey marketing.

Vacuum First

Vacuum the interior as the first step on your interior cleaning process, before you start cleaning the seats, or the floor mats, or windows. 

Pro tip: when you're vacuuming the sensitive areas like the radio, use a soft brush in combination with the vacuum to get all the little bits of dust and lint. The same is true for the air vents.

Clean Seats Second

If you're going to deep clean the seats with the afore mentioned Bissell do this second. Inevitably the sprayer will get solution on areas you didn't mean to, like the floor mats, which is fine if you're to clean those later anyway.

Pro tip: if you get serious use a pump sprayer for your cleaning solution. Fill the Bissell's cleaning solution tank with water. Spray the water as you suck up the cleaning solution. When everything is coming up clear through the Bissell you know you won't have any soapy residue left in the fabric.

Floor mats:

Now clean the floor mats. I have all weather mats so I just use simple green and a scrub brush.

Plastic Protector

It is amazing what plastic protector can do. I use 303 Aerospace protector and man it really livens up the plastic to looking like new again. Especially in areas that get a lot of sunlight and not too much attention like the dash. Looks great.

Pro tip: if you have all weather floor mats like I do you can use the plastic protector on them to get them looking fresh but be warned it also makes them incredibly slippery. So if you have people getting into your car you might want to warn them.

To the Bone

There is an element of masochism in endurance sports.

The essential question being: how far can I push myself? How deeply from the cup of suffering can I drink before I turn away?

I've done centuries, marathons and ultra-marathons and there is a gratification from prevailing through the pain and conquering the distance.

Which is why I think I found To the Bone strangely alluring.

To the Bone is a Netflix film that follows an anorexic girl as she goes into therapy. We meet some other characters with eating disorders along the way and at the end everything is wrapped up by fading in upbeat music.

To say that I am deeply skeptical that a serious eating disorder can be overcome so quickly is understating the matter.

However, I came away from the film thinking that the anorexic and I aren't really so different.

That drive, internally competitive, to see just how far you can starve yourself before the whole system breaks seems to me not that far from how many miles can I log. Indeed, at the upper echelons of the sport, the anorexic and the ultra runner don't even look that far apart.

What then is the difference or is there even a difference?

I would argue that endurance sports, while grueling, are at their core life affirming activities. The people drawn to running and cycling are happy when they do it. Whereas people who are drawn to eating disorders are miserable.

That the person with an eating disorder may derive satisfaction from their self-denial of food there isn't the joy you can find in people who run.

Shampoo

 There was a time I had luscious, flowing, locks of auburn hair.

Picture Fabio but not a blonde.

And not in as good a shape.

And not as good looking.

Aside from these caveats I was basically exactly like Fabio, ready to grace the cover of a romance novel on horseback, with my gossamer shirt thrown open by the wind, luxurious hair, trailing behind me.

Because of all this hair I was in the market for shampoo.

I read somewhere that people choose their shampoo not be how well it cleans hair, which you would think would be the real trait people are after, but by its smells.

I was dumbfounded by this information.

In choosing shampoo for myself went into the shower to see which kind my sister used. I had borrowed a bit one time when I was out of shampoo myself, and lathering up I remember thinking: this smells like grapefruit. It must be doing to dirt what it does to my tastebuds!

Now, I loathe grapefruit. Why they are sold at grocery stores is something I've never been able to puzzle out.

I will accept only one use for grapefruit and that is shampoo ingredient.

One whiff of that gaggingly astringent odor and the dirt hiding in your overgrown follicles will beg for mercy.

These days my hair is much shorter.

As it turns out women are only into long hair on themselves and on romance novel covers. Real life guys not so much.

But if you need a real clean, go with one that smells like it could curdle battery acid. Go with one that smells like grapefruit.