Toothpicks

I'm suffering from blogging exhaustion. Is this common, pray, tell me all you wiser and more experienced bloggers? Would you like to read my shopping list? That's about all I've written today, and it contained strawberries and dog food, among other important items.

Also toothpicks. I love toothpicks, and every house should have lots of them. They might even work against terrorism. The only thing I don't use toothpicks for is the picking of the teeth. But they're excellent for fixing door hinges: you stuff the screwholes with toothpicks and when you reattach the hinges, voila!, they're no longer loose and the door closes and opens sedately.

Toothpicks are also the second most important tool (after your nails) in house-cleaning. I love to clean the metal plate with my stove's name on it with toothpicks, never mind the dried sauce rivulets in the front, and I also love to clean the crevices in baseboards with them.

But there are also really bad uses for toothpicks. Some restaurants stick them into sandwiches, and if you're not aware of this you can have a toothpick stuck vertically between your tongue and your palate. This is very unpleasant, and then you need to insert your thumb and forefinger in your mouth in public to snap it into two (the toothpick, that is). And people will stare at you, wondering if you're performing emergency tonsilectomy on yourself.

Hank has the same problem with tree branches. (Hank is a dog who frequently contributes to this blog). She snaps at them ferociously, and then the middle bit is lodged horizontally in the back of her mouth. The first three times the veterinarian didn't charge us anything for removing the branch, but then he started charging. I bought a tool from a mechanic for removing these branches myself, fifty bucks it cost, and then Hank stopped doing it, the devil that she is.

Mae West is famous for saying witty things about real women as opposed to toothpicks, but I really like toothpicks, as long as nobody tries to get them into my mouth.