The Vine: August 10, 2006
Hey Sars,
While I’ve never tried it for duct tape adhesive, this has worked on many other kinds of adhesives for me in the past. Pharmacies sell little wipes (similar in size/packaging to alcohol wipes) for use in removing tape adhesive. They’re used by anyone who has any kind of apparatus they wear that’s held in place by tape — illeostomy, insulin pump, et cetera. The wipes basically render any kind of adhesive non-sticky, and able to be wiped or scraped off of a surface. She might try wiping the rug fibers with them, and/or asking at the pharmacy if they sell the actual chemical in another form that might be easier to use on carpet fibers. (Side note: the wipes are terrific for getting labels/price tags off damn near everything!)
BTDT Insulin Pumper
Dear B,
Thanks for the tip. Other suggestions appear below (always spot-test an out-of-the-way patch of carpet, and remember that some of these may require follow-up cleaning — follow instructions, ventilate, and caveat Vinor). Suggestions I got more than once are asterisked.
Orange oil/lemonene extract
Place a paper bag or old towel on the adhesive and hot-iron it
Paint thinner
Goo Gone*
Goof Off*
Ronsonol lighter fluid*
Melt ice cubes onto the adhesive, wait for them to melt, then scrape the adhesive up
Non-acetone nailpolish remover
Avon Skin-So-Soft
Baby oil
Ooops
Un-Du*
Methyl hydrate
Attack it with a stiff-bristled brush
Elmer’s Sticky Out
Rubber cement thinner
WD-40*
Peanut butter*
Crisco
Warmed-up vinegar
Eucalyptus oil
Kerosene
Rubbing alcohol
Diluted hydrogen peroxide*
dirtdoctor.com
Search home-decorating mag sites like Real Simple or Domino
There’s also this.
Dear Sarah,
I live with a group of friends from college; we’ve all known each other for three years of drinking, work-avoidance, and all that other good stuff. For nearly a year now one of us, “David,” has been going out with “Anna,” a graduate of our college who we knew before she and David got together. She’s a year older than him and works for a company in town. David and Anna obviously care about each other a lot, and seem terrifically happy together — David has said he’d love to move in with her, but one way and another it’s not practical at the moment. Ours is a really expensive town to live in, and our university bans students from paid work during term-time. We can only afford to live here at all because the college provides insanely cheap student accommodation. That means David can’t move out, and, since our building is for students only, Anna can’t move in. So some nights David stays at Anna’s place, and some nights she stays over here.
The problem: I mentioned how they seem terrifically happy together? They are terrifically happy together. Often, screamy and moany and “Oh, God, yes!” happy together. And…the walls in our house are not thick. “Jess,” who has the room opposite David, doesn’t find this very funny. She has been complaining about it to the rest of us for months, and now is so upset that she wants us to stage a kind of house intervention to make them stop.
I think this is a kind of dreadful idea. Firstly, it’s not like they’re up all night doing it. And though the walls aren’t soundproof, it’s…you know…not like hearing an express train coming through. I share a wall with David; when I have my stereo on I can’t hear anything outside my room, and I’m not blasting the drum and bass here. It’s not that I’ve never heard anything, but it…well, it doesn’t wake me up at night. Secondly, I more or less believe that hearing other people have sex is one of those things you just have to live with as an adult. I’d much rather my friends were happy, and giving me easy material with which to gently mock them, than alone. Thirdly, can you imagine how that conversation would go down? Sitting stony-face around the kitchen table, telling our friends to stop screwing, doesn’t rate highly on the list of great household bonding activities.
So — what do you think? Jess wants us to get together and tell Anna that she’s not welcome here any more. I kind of…don’t want to do anything. I think it would be awkward, and hurtful to our friend. Then again, Jess is obviously upset, and insisting she just puts up with it would be hurtful to her. I can’t see a way of avoiding drama here, short of taking evening classes in interior wall reinforcement. Any ideas?
Stuck in the middle, with headphones
Dear Stuck,
Jess has been “complaining to the rest of you” for months — has it occurred to her to take David aside for two minutes and ask him directly to please make an effort to keep it down?
It’s a perfectly valid courtesy issue to address with a roommate; if she feels he’s being inconsiderate, she needs to tell him that. Herself. Dragooning the rest of the house into staging a come-to-Jesus meeting is both an overreaction and wimpy to boot, because basically, she doesn’t like the noise and she wants it to stop, but she doesn’t want David to get mad at her, so she’s hoping to spread the blame around with more people.
But you don’t really have a problem with the situation, so you need to let Jess know that this is her problem, and therefore it is she who will have to deal with it. You don’t have to tell her she’s being a baby, although she kind of is; just decline to deal with it and make it clear that’s the end of the story as far as you’re concerned.
I’m 21, and I came out of the closet last year. After first just telling everyone and then hiding away, I started hanging out with a crowd of gay boys who were…well, I didn’t quite get along with them. Not really at all.
So I slept with one of them, and the physical stuff was fine, but I realized quickly that I was not attracted to any of them, in the least. So I felt very lonely and worried that I would never find a gay guy anything like me and since I live in Nebraska, it’s not like the pickings are anything but slim.
Well, through mutual friends, I met a kid, we’ll call him T, who was very nice and just happened to be gay. We seemed like we’d be perfect together. We’d rather talk about movies than fashion, we’d rather cook at home than go out, yeah…I don’t know. We clicked in a lot of ways, and started dating.
Things were a little iffy at first. I’m a bit of an introvert. It’s not that I don’t like going out, I just need a little time to go through things every once in a while, and I really can’t do that if other people are constantly around me. Well, T didn’t like that, and he thought that because we were only hanging out twice a week, I wasn’t really showing interest in the relationship.
So, we started hanging out more. He started coming over every other night, then every night, then he’d stay the night and we’d only separate for work.
Well, it got to the point where I couldn’t think. I let my nice new apartment get messy because I didn’t have time to clean up after him, I stopped writing and reading and doing all the things I used to like doing before this damn relationship got started, and a general feeling of malaise kicked in.
About a month ago, T went to Mexico for two weeks. I cleaned my apartment, unpacked (we’ve been dating since I moved in, and he hasn’t really given me any alone time to do that), and generally got my shit together. At the same time, I missed him very much and was glad when he came back.
But when he did come back, whoo, things ratcheted up. He decided he didn’t ever want to miss me again or something. He started dropping by my job. He started calling me twenty minutes before he got off work so that I’d be waiting to let him in. He got…
Clingy.
Blech.
So, great guy, lots of fun, and then, emotional overload. I lost all ability to have a second to myself, thus losing all ability to organize and categorize my thoughts, et cetera and I started to go a little insane.
After two straight weeks of this, I just decided not to answer my phone for a couple of nights and paint or go get drunk with some different people or, you know, live a life that isn’t completely controlled by this relationship.
Well, I took two nights off, he called, and I answered and told him I was hanging out with other people. He got snippity. He said I was blowing him off. I said we were just hanging out a little too much and I needed my space. He didn’t feel like we were spending too much time together. He said I didn’t communicate well. He marginalized my feelings.
The worst thing is that we’ve had this talk before. I’ve told him I need a couple of nights to myself, and he’s all understanding, but then, no follow through. So I just took matters into my own hands and took a few days off. And since he freaked out, I freaked out and dumped the motherfucker.
Well, he’s called me a couple of times since and said how much he misses me and how he can’t stop thinking about me…and…well…that he knows I need space and he’s willing to adjust. But he has proven himself incapable of following through on that.
I guess, really, I feel like shit. I genuinely liked him, if not loved him, and I don’t want him to sound like he’s crying every single time I talk to him. He’s nice. He’s sweet. He’s really bad at follow-through, but his intentions are good. And he’s warm, and I’ve never really felt comfortable sleeping in the same bed with someone else until him.
I guess this all leads to my question(s): Should I take him back? I feel like he is putting a lot more into this than I am, and that he wants some grand epic love and I want a nice, laid-back relationship without any of this bullshit. To complicate matters more, there isn’t a single gay boy in a fifty-mile radius I’m interested in, and I kind of want to date someone. I’ve been alone for almost two years, and I want to, you know, get out there and try on my new gay skin, so to speak. So do I settle for a guy who isn’t perfect but is still better than anything else I’ve got going, or do I move on and try to find something else?
Signed,
I Swear This Was Three Paragraphs In My Head, And I Am So, So Sorry
Dear Three,
No, you shouldn’t take him back. He’s clingy; he doesn’t respect your feelings and isn’t on the same page as you, relationship-wise; if you had anyone else to date, or any potential hook-ups, you wouldn’t be giving this a second thought.
No guy is “perfect,” and you will have to learn in your romantic life to let some little shit go, accept some differences, and so on, but this guy was actively annoying you, and your instinct told you to dump him — which wasn’t the wrong instinct. It just feels like it now because you’re lonely and bored, and you miss having a boyfriend. But when you had that boyfriend, you missed yourself, your alone time.
The problem is not that you should “learn to settle.” The problem is that you don’t live in a part of the country that’s conducive to finding a boyfriend without heroic amounts of effort, or drastic lowering of standards, or both — so you’re in the position of dating this guy or no one because those are your only options. Might be time to move.
[8/10/06]
Tags: Ask The Readers boys (and girls) etiquette roommates
