The scenario:
While in the military, I made a DITY (do it yourself move). Thanks to good planning, and a little bit of luck in getting an incredible deal on a rental truck from one of the big three reputable rental agencies, I was set to make about $2,000 on the move.
The sin:
Rather than gloat in my good fortune, I decided to drive back to my old base and clean the house myself, thereby saving about another $200 in cleaning costs.
The result:
Loading a truck, driving 600 miles, unloading a truck, and driving another 600 miles the opposite direction reduces your ability to reason rationally. Severely fatigued males shouldn't be allowed to play with cleaning materials.
But, I did have a miracle cleaner, recommended by someone, that would clean the grout in tile effortlessly and clean that lime residue that's hard to remove from the sliding shower doors. Coat the bottom of the tub in Comet (with chlorine bleach), coat the shower tile with my miracle cleaner, close the bathroom door and take a break. Wow, I wonder what could be in this miracle cleaner to make it work so well? Hmmm, it's an acid based cleaner and the warning says ... DON'T MIX WITH CHLORINE BLEACH??!
Auuggh! The cleaner was already dripping down into the Comet in the tub. I quickly turned on the fan and debated whether I should wait it out for a day or two or try to prevent a major chemical disaster. I opted to limit the damage as best I could by holding my breath as I quickly rinsed the Comet down the drain while wiping off as much of the acid cleaner from the tile as I could. Fortunately, Comet doesn't have that much chlorine bleach in it, so I survived.
I did finally get both the tub and the tile clean, but the miracle cleaner wasn't as big a miracle as I'd been led to believe. I wound up scrubbing the grout and there was still a little bit of a lime residue on the shower doors that just wouldn't come out (in fact, none of the miracle chemicals I tried worked on anything - I wound up having to resort to old fashioned elbow grease). Worse yet, my timing was bad. Everytime I refreshed my bucket of water for cleaning walls, cabinet doors, windows, and/or mopping, I wound up dumping the old dirty water down the tub drain (I just don't even know why). Eventually the tub quit draining and the old dirty water just sat there in the bottom of the tub that I'd risked my life to clean.
Well, I'd had enough of chemicals. I figured a plunger would be safer. The problem was that if you plunge the drain, air just rushes down the overflow tube and it doesn't plunge the plugged up part of the pipe at all. There was still a non-toxic solution. I'd just plug the overflow hole and all would be well. A rag should do the trick. Thwuup!
Dang! I sure didn't think a plunger would create enough suction to suck the entire rag down the overflow hole! Now what do I do!?
That took some thought, so I didn't deal with it until the rest of the house was clean. I finally resorted to bailing the water out of the tub, cleaning it, and absorbing any left over water with a sponge, including a little bit of standing water in the drain itself.
Final result: At final inspection, I had a sparkling clean tub, sparkling clean shower doors (I resorted to using Lemon Pledge - the stains don't reappear for at least a day), and not even a hint of water in the tub. Perfect job!
I feel sorry for whoever moved in after me the first time they used the tub, though.
wait a minute - either you're using the wrong word or else I finally understand why the Montreal Expos were such a failure.
). Suffice it to say I can't write it here. 
it made me laugh at the time...) A couple of days later, he replied! Woo! Only in the email, he told me about all the tragic aspects of his life and was really solemn and caring. It made me feel awful. 
Unfortunately, my teacher thought some of us did outstanding work and contacted the public library, they decided it would be great to showcase the reports and art projects in the front entrance of the library. My poodle and report were among three chosen. The library planned to also display the book our project was based on for people that would like to read it. 
The library said they couldn't find my book and wanted to make sure the name and author were correct because they had no record of either (rut roh) I made up the book name and for the author I used my brother's first and middle name. I decided to play the dumb 10 year old and got all teary and told them it had been awhile since I had read the book, and I was pretty sure that was correct, but maybe not. 
