Karen’s Corner

By Karen Barkstrom

I’m guessing I’m not the only person in the world who wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep.

Some nights I get up, eat a banana, get a drink of water and go back to bed. Of course, there’s the mandatory stop at the bathroom, too. Other nights I might read for a few minutes or play Zuma on our computer until I get sleepy again.

But most nights I just lie there, with crazy questions running through my brain:

• How does my bath towel get dirty?

Imean, I don’t use the towel until after my shower, when I’ve already used soap and lots of hot water and my scrubby loofah sponge to get clean! Same with dishes I’ve washed — does the dish towel get dirty ’cause I didn’t wash and rinse the dishes well enough?

• Here’s one that’s bothered me for years: How do our house pets adjust so easily to temperature changes from inside the house to outside?

When it’s really cold outside, we humans put on heavy coats, gloves, scarves, hats, etc. When it’s hot out, we tend to run around in tank tops and shorts. But our four-legged pets — dogs and cats — go from our moderately temperature-controlled home out into the backyard, in the freezing winter or the summer heat, with only whatever natural covering they were born with. Why don’t they freeze in December or pass out from heat exhaustion in August?

I realize that some pets get to wear cute little sweaters when it’s cold out, and some of our four-legged pets come in from the summer heat and want to lie down on the cement floor in the basement to cool off. But if I were to go outside with no extra outerwear in January, I don’t think I’d last more than a couple of minutes.

• Not that I want the U.S. Postal Service to change how they’re doing things, but it makes absolutely no sense to me that it costs the same amount of money to mail a first-class letter from here to Olympia as it does to send it all the way to New York.

I’m just saying — the next time I want to fly to Hawaii, I should expect the airlines to charge me the same amount that it costs to go to Reno? I don’t think so.

• We recently purchased a new washing machine. That Maytag we bought back when the kids were little finally gave up the ghost, and I’ve been wanting a new front-loading machine for years. I’d heard they used a lot less water and were gentler on clothes than the old agitator styles. So we did our research, shopped the ads and bought a new washer here in town.

But here’s what I don’t understand: Why are the front-loaders built so low to the ground? Did they use small children as models to figure out at what level the doors should be? Heck no! They’re that low to the ground because they want you to buy pedestals to raise the appliances 12 to 18 inches off the floor. And those pedestals can cost up to $200!

That makes as much sense as selling a lawnmower with handles designed for someone who is 4 feet tall and then trying to sell you an extension to the handle for another couple hundred bucks.

• And the last question (at least for today): Why does it take me a month to lose 2 pounds, but I can gain 5 pounds easily on one weekend? Shouldn’t it be just as easy to take the weight off as it is to put it on? And why do I love foods that are high in calories, salt and carbohydrates?

I swear, you could set two foods in front of me that I’ve never had before and have no idea what they are, and after trying both of them, I would pick as my favorite the one that’s less healthy.

That’s it for today — but I’m sure before too long I’ll come up with another list of imponderables.

Karen Barkstrom, The Daily World’s editorial assistant, can be reached at 360-537-3925 or kbarkstrom@thedailyworld.com.