The Bleaching Mystery

My son has been blaming our laundry maid for getting bleach spots on his favorite skateboard T-shirts. The laundry maid a.k.a. Dad claims he hasn’t been using beach lately. I started to wonder if our year-old front-loading washing machine was to blame. So, I dug out the 50-page instruction manual from our filing cabinet. Fortunately, two-thirds of it is in foreign languages. I found the troubleshooting questions that included “stains on fabrics”. Some reasons are not using HD detergent; using too much bleach or detergent; and iron in the water. None of those seem to be the problem although we considered getting an iron filter for our hard water.
Then, I was talking to my hair stylist about passing on clothes. My son’s T-shirts are not good enough because they are stained with white marks. She said, “Does your son use benzoyl peroxide on his skin?” I replied, “Yeeessss, he uses Oxy-10 for acne. Why?” She explained that she had the same experience with her sheets and towels when she was using it. You would think the product would have some kind of warning on the label, but it doesn’t. I looked up “Oxy-10 acne” online and found the phrase “may bleach hair or fabrics” and “avoid allowing this medication to come into contact with your hair or clothing.” This is a great web page that tells how to avoid bleaching: http://www.acne.org/faq.html#prevent-bleach. If only my son will follow the recommendations.
The mystery has been solved and the laundry maid has been forgiven.

A Deluxe Gift

My husband gave me a gift certificate for a “Deluxe Pedicure” at a salon I regularly patronize for pedicures. Saturday morning, I went into the salon and signed in for a pedicure. I was told to sit in one of the massage chairs and dipped my feet into the hot spa. When I told the technician that I had a gift certificate for a “deluxe pedicure”, she asked to see it. I told her I didn’t even know what it was. She took it to the shop manager, came back to me, and said, “How about if I don’t tell you what it is and you just enjoy it?” I said, “Okay” since I knew what to expect from a regular pedicure. Then, she asked “Would you like a glass of wine?” I replied “Is that part of the deluxe?” She said, “No, we just started doing that.” I said, “No thank you. It’s a little early for wine.” She didn’t offer me any coffee, tea or water and I didn’t ask.
The technician proceeded to trim, file, and buff my toe nails. I pressed the arm chair buttons to start the rolling and compressing massage on my lower back and to receive the full benefit of this experience. Meanwhile, she exfoliated, masked, moisturized, and massaged my legs and feet. Never before did I have teal and purple gels smeared upon my legs, one of which was an exfoliator made with eucalyptus and the other a mask. Then, she dipped my feet into hot lavender wax four times to form a hard shell and wrapped them in plastic. Wow. When all of that was done, my legs felt like running away because they were so energized by all this attention.
When she asked me what nail color I wanted, I said, “Red for the fourth of July.” She showed me four different shades of red to choose from. I picked the lightest one called “Real Red.” She painted it so perfectly on my cuticle-less toenails. She asked me if I wanted a decoration painted on them. Thinking this might be part of the deluxe package, I said sure. (It wasn’t.) She painted on white, blue and silver glitter fireworks on both big toes. Very pretty. I felt like a pampered queen. I doubt that I will ever spend the extra money for the deluxe package or the decoration, but it was a very special gift that I’ll long remember.