The things I find while shopping for vacuum cleaners
A winter coat, to start with. Was looking what prices Walmart had on machines and wandered by accident into Winners, as one does. Came out with cheapish plastic/ vinyl/ something jacket, figuring oh it will do now that my best beloved black cloth coat is ten years old and fraying badly. It more than does. It's waterproof. It's warm. The silly pockets that made me curse the first five times I wore it because they open *backwards*, open backwards so rain can't blow into them. It velcroes on top of the zipper (a good thing because I'm a button person all the way and zippers are counter-intuitive.) I can wear it without a fleecy underneath until the temps go below zero, and it's light. Ugly as sin, but light. Go me.
Then I went to Canadian Tire to get a vacuum cleaner and discovered a) what they have are Dirt Devil type things that b) don't have the kind of heads I'm used to and that c) are too heavy to get home on a bicycle anyway. But what CanTire had as well are solar powered Christmas lights, that I'd looked for in vain for several years. My house has no outdoor outlet. I can't wreathe my overwrought iron porch rails in fairy lights like next door. But I can wreathe them in a strand (these things are *expensive*) of solar powered lights that turn themselves on at dusk, so my house at last looks cheery at Christmas.
Also standing in line at the supermarket I saw a snack labelled, in our bilingual fashion, 'Maïs à la marmite.' Marmite-flavoured popcorn? Could not believe it. As well. That's 'kettle-popped corn' to you. This is partly why I'm taking French next year.
Then I went to Canadian Tire to get a vacuum cleaner and discovered a) what they have are Dirt Devil type things that b) don't have the kind of heads I'm used to and that c) are too heavy to get home on a bicycle anyway. But what CanTire had as well are solar powered Christmas lights, that I'd looked for in vain for several years. My house has no outdoor outlet. I can't wreathe my overwrought iron porch rails in fairy lights like next door. But I can wreathe them in a strand (these things are *expensive*) of solar powered lights that turn themselves on at dusk, so my house at last looks cheery at Christmas.
Also standing in line at the supermarket I saw a snack labelled, in our bilingual fashion, 'Maïs à la marmite.' Marmite-flavoured popcorn? Could not believe it. As well. That's 'kettle-popped corn' to you. This is partly why I'm taking French next year.