the risks of puffing

I have been trying to go green.  Really.  I am getting better at not using as much plastic, saving aluminum cans, and using glass plates.  (Steve still uses that OTHER stuff, the styrofoam stuff, to eat on, even though I tell him in 5,000 years some archaeologist will be digging those things up intact and making an inventory of his dietary habits, which is actually kind of disgusting to think about.  What he eats that is, not the styrofoam.)

So here I am trying to be innovative and recycle everything I can.  I have this puff I use to wash with.  Those soft net things that come in a ball.  They last for a long time, and the only reason I ever get rid of one is because I can't get the soap out of it, which usually causes a funky smell after a year or so.

So today I am in the shower, and I notice that the nice tight little puff I had purchased last summer has gotten too poofy and soft, and is spreading out and getting bigger (kind of like my hips in fact).  I am looking at it, standing there under the shower head, and while I am examining it, I notice that the little thread hangy thing isn't sewn on.  So I spread the puff and have a look at the inside of it, the mystery part I have never figured out...what makes it a puff.  (At this point I am feeling a bit like a gynepuffologist.  Or maybe just a puffvert.)  I notice this little rope thready thing goes completely around it, and makes a slip loop over it (kind of like a choke leash on a dog), with this little disk thing holding it tight.  So being the genius I am at figuring stuff out and how it works, I pull on that disk, and loosen it up.  Sure enough, the noose that kept the puff nice and tight loosens a bit...so I loosen it a bit more...and then it happens...

The puff explodes in my face.  And THAT is when I found out that puffs aren't round.  They are long.  Several yards long.  It looks like the puff has committed harakiri and it's guts are hanging in a dangling pile from my fingers.  Then I realize something else.

I haven't washed my body yet.  And the thing I use for the scrubbing tool is a disemboweled mess.  I'm standing there, knowing I have to do something before I run out of hot water.  My mind is racing.  Then it comes to me in a blinding flash of insight.  I'll just FIX it and it will be recycled, nice and tight, and ready to serve my hips like a new puff.

Only I didn't notice how it was put together when it exploded all over me.  But I was a seamstress at one time, and I am a nurse, and that combination should be enough to get this nylon bowel put back together.

WRONG.  I tried scrunching it up from one end to the other.  It was too fat to get through the rope loop it came out of.  So then I try scrunching from both ends and meeting in the middle.  Why did I think the result would be any different?  I mean, it's the same amount of nylon hell no matter which end you scrunch from.

So I spend about ten minutes scrunching and twisting and nothing works.  And I am managing to work up a sweat....IN the shower, UNDER running water...speaking of which, is getting cooler by the minute...

About this time panic mode sets in so I grab as much of the blue net gut in my hand as I can get, stuff it through the rope loop, then start cramming what's still hanging into the middle of the loop.  It looks ok on one side, then I turn it around and notice the other side is pushed out like a big blue hemorrhoid.

By now I am cussing and shoving and getting colder by the second.  In desperation I start grabbing loops of the blue net hell from either side of the loop and tying them in knots...I manage to get most of it in place, grab the disk and yank the hell out of the thing...then I spend the last two seconds of hot water washing and rinsing with my new puff. 

I finish, hang it on the wall, then notice what it looks like.

                                      

I've googled some information on how to resurrect a puff that has died...I found an article on how to knit the gutted puff into a pot scrubber.  But there is just something so basically wrong with scrubbing your pots with something that has scrubbed your butt...

Wonder what Steve will think when he knows his deer chili recipe is cooked in a butt scrubbed pot.