Feel like a hummingbird

Yes, I am feeling like a hummingbird. Just flitting from topic to topic.  Hither and dither.  My brain couldn't just settle on one thing to discuss, so here we are.

Firstly, o. m. g.  Did we have a thunderstorm come raging through here last night or what?  Wind, hail, sideways rain, thunder and lightning like nobody's business!  We were without power for a couple of hours but nothing major.  The power company said on the news that 190,000 were powerless after 9 separate transformers went down.  Check out this link to the local news site where people sent in their photos of the storm.  Of course, these are all amateur shooters, but they are good pics nonetheless.  I am going to go out and check out the neighborhood and see what all was tossed about in the wind.

Do you iron?  I do.  I iron a lot of things.  I like, no that's not right, I really love the smell and the feel of freshly ironed sheets, pillowcases, tablecloths, napkins, most anything made of cotton or linen.  I even buy ironing water to give my sheets a light fragrance.  Here's the thing, I was throwing away multiple cans of spray starch and Magic Sizing (whatever the ingredients of that product are!) every week and put my foot down and said "No More Cans!" This was years ago, by the by.  So I started buying the liquid concentrated starch stuff and mixing that in a spray bottle and that worked pretty well.

But then when we started moving and globe-trotting as ex-pats it was not convenient to haul big gallon jugs of concentrated starch around.  And I found that many places still sold the old school starch in a box that you cook and then use.  Do any of you remember this?

One of my most vivid memories of my childhood is coming home from pre-school or 1st grade and it being ironing day.  My mama would have the big pot of starch cooked and the smell just perfumed the air and the clothes were starched and sprinkled and then rolled up so they wouldn't dry out too quickly.  She used an old over-sized glass coke bottle with a cork stopper that had a little sprinkler head on top to sprinkle the clothes with water.  And then when the hot iron hit those clothes with the starch, well that is just about the best and cleanest smell in the world.  I love this starch.

So this is what I have been using all these years.  When I was living in Mexico they also sold a box of Niagara starch and I had several of these that got pushed to the back of the pile.  And recently, I was running low on starch and started checking out all the local stores.  No one had any, and I repeat, ANY little aqua boxes of starch!

Then I had to start looking online.  And wrote to Faultless and to Niagara both to ask where I could get my beloved little box of starch.  You know what happened?

They both wrote me back.  Shocking, isn't it?  And the Faultless people sent me the nicest really long really informative letter as to what happened, why there is no more box of starch.

I kept searching and found the Argo people, yes, those same ones that make your regular corn starch you cook with, have laundry starch.  It is available through Lehman's and Amazon.  So I ordered a box of starch.  A box, meaning a case.  A case of 24 boxes.  Enough to last my lifetime.  My kids may inherit a box or two of starch, is what I am saying.

I will report back after I make my first batch with this new brand and let you know how I like it.  I better like it with as much of it as I have!  This new stuff better be really good if it has a chance of replacing the memory of my Faultless.

R.I.P. little aqua box of Faultless starch.  I will miss you.  Something that was around on the shelf at home and at every grocery store all of my life is gone now.