Life in Cowtown

I work in a downtown office like thousands of people.  Sadly I’ve been in this environment for several years now, and soul-sucking as it may be, it pays the bills and indulges my many and varied interests. It also sucks away much time and energy to indulge those interests, but that’s a different rant altogether. Most of the time I’m a very laissez-faire person, pretty unflappable, and while others indulge in the exciting office drama of missing staplers and corporate take-over rumors, I just sit quietly and watch the action. But. There are some things that just escape my comprehension, and it’s just been a week where I feel the need to get it off my chest.

• People who lick their fingers before rifling through a stack of printouts: keep your mouth germs to yourselves please. I will go through the trouble of reprinting my work rather than touching the saliva tainted papers. Seriously, why?

• People who don’t wash their hands after bathroom breaks. I’ve read tons of blogs that point out that this is sadly rather prevalent in male bathrooms. Well, I’m here to shatter some illusions and tell you that it ain’t that different on the other side.  Most people at least have the courtesy to limit that behavior to when they’re alone, but several times in recent months I’ve heard the telltale flush, exit… and the door opening. There isn’t enough Purell in the world to get rid of that feeling of contamination.

• Office cleaners that don’t clean. At all. I mean, it’s a pretty common complaint all over offices. The property mgmt company hires some huge company, that’s staffed exclusively by new arrivals with more problems on their minds than making sure they diligently wipe down that sink for five bucks an hour.  I get it. But it has been my belief that they really don’t do anything other than remove garbage. They may push the vacuum down the middle of the hall, and lift up the toilet seats in the bathroom in an attempt to convince us of their cleanliness, but my office is certainly not graced with said vacuum very often, nor are the really gross bits ever touched, like doorknobs, faucets, and the bathroom floor.

• Stay home if you’re sick. No, contrary to your inflated sense of self-worth the world will not stop spinning if you’re not here to prop it up. But if you feel the need to drag your red-eyed self here and sit slumped in a cold drug coma, then have the decency to stay out of my office while you bond with your viruses.

Whew, it’s been a week. While often I marvel at the human diversity on this planet and ponder how people who share over ninety-nine percent of their DNA can be so vastly and uniquely different, there are many other times when all I can do is shake my head. Some unique snowflakes just have their own special place in their minds. And my patience for stupidity is getting weaker and weaker with age. God help me, I’m going to be worse than Maxine if I should live that long.

Photo by Joshua at www.blogto.com

I’m a libertarian at heart. As a rule of thumb I am very dubious of authority, believe in individual’s right to choose his or her lifestyle in every respect, provided it does not infringe on someone else’s person or property. What does this have to do with chickens? A good deal, apparently. Calgary is currently evaluating going ‘back to its roots’ and rescinding the bylaw restricting chickens on residential lots.

Why were they ever banned? Apparently for two reasons, one – to seem more ‘progressive’ (snort) and less redneck (fail), and due to lack of common-sense rules that created a sizeable number of nuisance complaints.  So instead of implementing intelligent regulation, like a limit on a number of chickens per family, and removing the noisy roosters from the coop, they threw the baby out with the bathwater and prohibited all barnyard animals.  And all I wanted for Christmas was a goat…

There are many great reasons why people want chickens in their yards – the joy of impeccably fresh eggs, teaching children about food production and animal care, not supporting factory farming, reducing food miles, the joy of producing your own food, the ability to recycle some green scraps and on and on. Since banning roosters, the noise is hardly an issue (a lawn mowing neighbor is multiple orders of magnitude louder, and so are my neighbors children), and even the poop from a small number of chickens can be used as fertilizer.

Of course there is such a thing as being a responsible owner, which means cleaning the pens with some regularity, not exceeding the allowable numbers, and sharing excess eggs with your neighbors, or allowing local kids to drop by and say hello. But people who want to take on the responsibility of raising their food generally tend to respect those concerns, and it’s no different than pet ownership. Most will be caring and responsible and some will not. In either case I don’t believe extra government intervention and regulation is the answer.  I’ve kept a vague eye on stories of Seattle, Vancouver, etc. since their backyard chicken keepings and haven’t seen any horror stories to date. A few simple rules are enough for the vast majority of people to be good chicken raisers.  

So c’mon Calgary, get with the times (again), and let the chickens come home to roost.

When I was a kid I was convinced that we (humanity) would have robots to clean our houses by now. I pictured a happy future where there is no vacuuming, laundry folding, where floors mop themselves, and fridges get stocked without any effort. Where our energies as human beings can be best directed towards leisure and hobbies, and thinking up new ways to do less chores. Why did I have this utopia in my head? Because over a span of a few years I watched my mother’s load (and mine) get lighter as unthinkable luxuries became commonplace.

 I’ll never forget the moment when we got our brand new washing machine. It was just a little guy, probably a third of the size of today’s hippos, and you could forget washing say, sheets or comforters in it, but I clearly remember doing a first load of cloth diapers and blankies that belonged to my little brother (no Pampers in Russia), and the magic of that moment can be imagined by anyone who’s ever washed laundry by hand.  

Even though we certainly had a fridge, it was the old model that you had to unplug and de-ice every week, so when we graduated to a frost-free fridge it was a blissful feeling of pure joy – again mainly for my mother, as she could say good-bye to the ritual of removing everything from the freezer, thawing and chipping at the four-inch layer of crud and starting the cycle over again.

Since doing the dishes was my (much hated) job as a kid, my personal nirvana came when we finally got a dishwasher. I must have been about fourteen, and I don’t think anyone has ever been happier that such a piece of magic was here to replace twice daily toil of washing a mountain of dishes.

It seems like my parents generation got a huge boon in technology that really went a ways in making their lives better and easier. From all the household appliances, TV’s, stereos, microwaves, vacuums and blenders there was a sense of excitement in the air as life around the house got easier and less time-consuming. I gave free reign to my imagination trying to picture MY house which seemed oh so far away, and picturing all the wonders I was sure to have, if the rate of progress is any indicator.

So now I have that house. But where is our revolution? Where are our self-cleaning floors, de-clutter machines and laundry folders? Sure we got ipods and blackberries, but they seem to steal time more than free it.  I still spend huge amounts of time each week vacuuming, doing laundry, picking up stray socks and dishes that migrate.  Seems like since the early appliance revolution we’ve been stagnant on the household chores front. Sure everything’s been refined, and now our fridges are quiet and problem-free. Our washers and dryers are huge and all powerful. Our dishwashers rarely need a hand, and they use less energy than doing dishes by hand. But there hasn’t been a really new advance in shrinking the dreaded chores list since then.

I know that there are fridges out there that scan bar codes and let you know when you’re out of milk. Just in case it’s hard to check manually. I HAVE the Roomba vacuum robot, which is a relatively useful gimmick, but not even remotely close to an actual robot. (In case anyone cares – yes, it vacuums. All by itself. BUT, there’s always a but, he requires daily gross filter and brush cleaning. The floor still has to be clutter free for him to be effective, he is rather loud, he will never clean as deep as my built-in, he takes quite a long time to finish the job. So he’s good for light maintenance, but not at all for real cleaning). And I still long for the day when i-robots are a reality. I’ll take my chances on their desire for autonomy, if it means never having to clean again.

Here is a plea for members of my generation that are all about da engineering and such. Lets liberate ourselves once and for all from the time-consuming and brain deadening chores of housework. Let’s stop building dog robots (Japan, I’m talking to you here), and put our dollars into something really useful. Let’s usher in the era of time where after work we can go home to a clean house without a single thing to be put away, wiped down, organized or fixed. Surely as a species we’re smart enough to do this, it’s just a matter of priorities. Someone else can look for the dryer-eaten socks and dust baseboards.  

And to anyone who’s reading: what’s your most dreaded household chore?