Archive for November, 2007
November 30th, 2007 - Elementary school for Maggie
I know what school I want to send Maggie to: Appleton Public Montessori where the school motto is “Learn to love to learn.” I love the Montessori methods and every time I read or hear about them, I get excited because it seems so right to me.
However, the school is on the east side of Appleton, 23.4 miles away (about 40 minutes, up near our church). WI requires 175 days of school. That’s 16,380 miles (back and forth twice a day) not counting evening school events. That’s 819 gallons of gas at 20 mpg. $2457 at $3/gallon.
Well, it would certainly be an incentive to buy a hybrid sooner than we planned. (Actually, Maggie won’t go to 1st grade (following Montessori guidelines, they don’t have a kindergarten in the charter school since they would also have to have 3 and 4 year olds and 3 year olds are not provided free public schooling) until 2010. Our CR-V will be 7 years old then; I’d hoped to keep it 10 years. And it surely won’t get 20 mpg nor will gas cost only $3/gal by 2010. That much driving would certainly be an incentive to upgrade our vehicle.
That would more than double our yearly mileage. Right now, even with all the trips out east, we’ve averaged less than 9000 miles per year.
Is a fantastic school program worth the cost–both monetarily and to the environment?
The school encourages carpooling and we would expect that Eric would become the driver as a stay at home parent. Someone else may be in the same position. So the costs could be shared, but they would still be there to one extent or another. I think 3 hours a day of driving would also limit our ability to do foster care.
Neenah also has a charter school with some Montessori influence, Alliance Charter Elementary. From their website, they don’t appear to adhere very strongly, however. For instance, instead of 3-year groupings, they have K, 1-3 and 4-5. They also say something like “the best practices of Montessori and project-based learning” which makes it sounds pretty wishy-washy to me. On the other hand, it’s only 14.6 miles away (about 20 minutes). (Oddly, both of these schools are on Forest Ave, but in different cites.) That is far more palatable time, energy, and money wise, 10220 miles, 511 gallons, $1533.
Maybe we’ll get luck and a Montessori charter school will open in Oshkosh by then. If only we lived in Milwaukee; they even have a new Montessori International Baccalaureate High School. I’m also intrigues by IB schools; there was a small one in Appleton I heard about a few years ago but I can’t find it back so I guess it closed. And Green Lake is turning their entire school district to IB. They are 45 minutes away, however.
November 29th, 2007 - Black Friday purchases
I should have written this last week, but I forgot about it. I did indeed go out shopping on Black Friday.
At PJ’s Patch, which is closing and had 70% off everything (unfortunately, I forgot my key tag which would have given me an additional 20% off), I spent about $25 for
- a set of wooden doll house furniture ($6). Don’t know if Maggie will ever have a doll house, but the furniture can be used without one of course. Or maybe she’ll make her own out of shoe boxes like I did as a kid. It includes beds, chairs, sofa, vanities (one with a mirror), end tables, and dressers. At least 20 pieces, maybe more. A wonderful future birthday or Christmas gift!
- a new Melissa and Doug Egyptian floor puzzle. I think this was about $3 but it looked so neat. And brand new. Another future gift.
- two skorts for next summer, two dresses for this winter and next (one is corduroy), some shirts and some pants. And a green short sleeved shirt for me.
I could find any of my consigned items so it looks like they all sold. Probably won’t make much money, but even a little bit will help. I wish I’d remembered to go yesterday–the final day–but oh well.
I also returned things at two stores, bought peanut butter, and spent $26 on three Gamma Seal Lids for the 5 gallon buckets for wheat berries and sauerkraut (or other things I might make with the third bucket next summer). And found some things at St. Vincent’s for $6–some wool items for felting, cool orange gloves for Maggie’s stocking, two pairs of mittens for Maggie (she had no kid ones that we could find! she loves to wear my magic gloves, but they aren’t quite appropriate for playing at preschool!), and a green sweater for me.
November 28th, 2007 - U.S. may phase out incandescent light bulbs in favor of energy-efficient lighting products
An interesting article Eric sent me: U.S. may phase out incandescent light bulbs in favor of energy-efficient lighting products.
We’ve discovered a side effect of energy efficient items. The den used to get pretty toasty during the winter–one person, two dogs, sometimes a cat, a computer (homemade PC circa 2005, needed 3 fans to keep it cool), a fridge (circa 1988), a light, and a TV (circa 1998). Now we have a compact fluorescent bulb in the light and the TV, computer, and fridge are all brand new. (The person, dogs, and cats are still older models. LOL)
Eric gets cold at night and has to turn on the space heater (circa 2003?)!
Relatedly, the whole house seems colder this year, even though it’s set at the same temps we used last year. Upstairs is particularly noticeable. Maybe that’s only because I’m spending time up there after Maggie gets ready for bed (we cuddle in our bedroom and talk about her day for a while). But Eric notices it when he’s trying to sleep. Last winter we didn’t use the space heater at all, but this year even I am almost ready to turn it on!
Relevant info here: Only Maggie’s bedroom has a heating vent. The other two bedrooms are unheated/cooled. My house growing up was unheated at night (turned thermostat down to 55 and it was turned up around the time I got up in the morning) so I am used to col sleeping and actually prefer it. Eric, on the other hand, is not used to that and it was difficult to get used to. But he was fine last year as I said. I think we’ll be doing heat shortly. I wonder if we can get a timer so that it turns on a couple hours before he goes to bed rather than turning it on when I go to bed. Then we’ll both get some time when it’s the way we prefer it. And he doesn’t have to try to remember in the middle of the night to come up and turn it on in preparation.
I’m guessing it’s in the low 50s upstairs overnight.
November 27th, 2007 - Small plates
Because we have a tendency to drop plates (and glasses) around here, we have less than a full set of plates and sometimes run out before the dishwasher is run. The other day Eric went up to the top cupboards to bring down my Christmas plates–we haven’t used them before because they have gold plating, which will rub off in the dishwasher and can’t be put in the microwave. We rarely use the ‘wave and I’d rather use the pretty plates than worry about the gold coming off. While he was up there, he brought down the saucers that were part of the place setting. He didn’t realize what they were until he got them lower. He was about to put them back when I said they’d make nice little plates, to supplement the usual small plates which we also run out of.
It’s true what they say about using smaller plates leading to eating less. Two examples. Thanksgiving dinner: only a small portion of turkey and stuffing (I wasn’t about to touch the cranberry jelly Eric and Maggie adore) fit on the saucer. Supplemented by a large apple, I had plenty to eat. Yesterday, I had the choice of two donuts for breakfast. I could have just taken the box to the living room to eat out of, I decided to use a plate. Taking a little plate meant only one donut fit at a time. By the time I finished the donut and the last of the eggnog, I realized I wasn’t really hungry for a second donut. I’m certain that if I’d put them both on the larger plate, I would have gone ahead and eaten both. But my making sure I had at least a couple minutes of time in between finishing one and starting the other (needing to go to the kitchen, turn on a light, open the box, etc.) gave me space to truly think about whether I needed more food. And I didn’t. Okay, three examples: I have leftover frosting from Maggie’s birthday cupcakes. It’s delicious on graham crackers (great snack from my childhood). Two frosting sandwiches fill up a little plate but would look piddling on the small plate and I would probably make 3 or 4 of them. (I know, because I’ve done so in the past.)
Oh, did I mention I made the frosting for the cupcakes (both sets)? Wow–homemade frosting tastes so much better than store-bought! I need to buy more powdered sugar so I can make more. Not that we have any need for cake, but I do like dessert….
The irony of this is that I’ve only once used the large Christmas plates, now. And only because Eric grabbed me a plate for the omelet last night. (My favorite cottage cheese omelet. One good thing to come out of Jedi being sick is we found a brand of cottage cheese I adore–the cheapest store brand!). Hmmm, I wonder if cups and saucers came with them, too?
Carrie talks about food portions being out of control back in September at The Real Food Revolution and has a list of ideas for keeping portions in control, including the small plate of course.
November 27th, 2007 - Cool cutting board
If only I hadn’t just bought a Pampered Chef cutting board: Recycline Preserve cutting board. Not only is it made from 100% post-consumer recycled PAPER, but i comes in PESTO GREEN!
I might buy one anyway. We could always use another cutting board.
The EcoCulinary is a similar board.
They are made from Paperstone, which I believe is a product Eric and I read about when we were thinking about buying that house last year. I would have loved to use it as kitchen counters.
November 27th, 2007 - Oh these carrots are yummy!
Yesterday after work, I finally dug the carrots and rutabagas. I was a bit nervous because of the snow and freezing temps we’ve been having. The snow turned out to be an advantage–it’s melted making the ground nice and soft to work with! It’s wasn’t trouble at all and I easily did it by myself.
I gave the three largest rutabagas to my neighbors and kept two little ones to eat.
And the carrots? They are oh so sweet! These are delicious! I think I might leave carrots till the end of November on purpose next year!
November 27th, 2007 - Solar toothbrush
This Science new solar toothbrush, which could make toothpaste obsolete, just sounds so very cool.
The only problem is that I do actually often brush my teeth in the dark. Not pitch dark, but I don’t bother turning on a light in the room when there’s ambient light from elsewhere.
I hope it comes with replacement heads. Would be lousy to have throw out the solar cell every 3-6 months.
November 26th, 2007 - Sick dog
We found out about 10 days ago that Jedi had lost about 14 pounds in a few months. (He’s normally just over 80#, which means for those who know them, he’s only a little heavier than Emma, who’s about 60-63# normally.) Tests last week indicated that it was neither his liver nor his kidneys shutting down (which would have menat he was imminently dying). It appears that his stomach is not processing his food, so he isn’t getting needed protein. They will be doing surgery to get internal biopsies this week or next–as soon as they can get him on the operating schedule.
Since he’s a Boxer, the most likely thing is that he has cancer and a lot of it.
If we caught it early and there’s only a bit, they can remove it during the surgery and he might be okay. If it is extensive, there are options of chemotherapy and medication. In that case, his life expectancy would be less than a year even with the most extensive chemo. There’s a really quite small chance it’s just an ulcer, but that’s pretty far down the list, past three or four different types of cancer.
He has a history of intestinal problems. A year ago, he was throwing up a lot and they determined his stomach acids were off. He was on a special diet for about a year. He went back on the regular one this past summer. Perhaps those problems were also cancer (if that’s what he has).
Shmi was my cat, and she died almost a year ago. Jedi is Eric’s dog. Sure, we love the other pets, but these we were the closest to. In retrospect, we may have let Shmi live too long (about 2.5 months after we learned how sick she was). We likely would not make Jedi suffer long at all.
If Jedi dies, we likely will get another dog right away. Maybe Emma’s over her severe separation anxiety, but we hesitate to actually find out if she is or not. (Not that we wouldn’t like an excuse to buy new living room furniture.) And winter in Wisconsin is the perfect time to house train a new dog. NOT.
Thank goodness for our fully funded emergency fund. We are not overly concerned about paying for the surgery nor the costs of a new pet (we may wish to go with a purebred again, although not a Boxer). Still haven’t decided how we will re-fund the emergency fund when it is used. But we don’t need to face that yet.
Your thoughts and prayers for Jedi are appreciated. He isn’t in pain and seems about as exuberant as ever. I think he’s sleeping more, but that might just be because he’s bored in the house. It’s too cold for them to run outdoors for long, and he’s used to do that for the last 6 months. He just looks really skinny.
November 26th, 2007 - Apples, apples, apples!
Saturday, I spent about 10 hours making apple cider and applesauce, and canning the results. Yes, TEN HOURS! Aack. I love the results and it’s definitely worth it, but it’s hard when the outcome is only
- 6 canned quarts of cider, plus 2 quarts drunk last night, plus a few other cups drunk Saturday
- 1/4c apple cider syrup (which might be jelly; I cooked it a wee bit too long I think?)
- 7 pints canned applesauce
- 2 quarts? applesauce in the freezer for apple crisp to be made this coming Saturday
- 1 cup applesauce from the burned area on the bottom of the kettle (did the same thing last year, so this time I wrote myself a note on how avoid doing this)
The funniest part is that I ate all of one piece of an apple while cutting them up, ate maybe 1/4c of the burned applesauce for lunch yesterday, and had only ONE sip of the cider last night.
Oh, and for a couple hours work Sunday morning, I also have 3 3/4-pint jars of apple butter.
I used 97 apples, keeping the last one out so that I didn’t have to cut it by hand. It was too large for the new apple slicer. What a time saver that new gadget it (cuts the core out and makes 6 slices at once)! I tried to make notes about timing. The more I do this–this was only the second time I have–the more able I am to time things better. For instance, I had no idea how long it took to boil the canning kettle, but now I know it takes 40 minutes. And I wrote that down. Maybe next year, it will take only 9.5 hours. (Oh, I should note I took about an hour off for lunch, which meant I had to reheat the juice and sauce longer before canning them. The break was a really good idea, however!)
Total cost for the apples: About $16. Supplies: Had everything on hand already except wide mouth bands/lids (I have some cool 3-cup jars that have handles and I thought it would be fine to put some cider in them; but they are in between wide mouth and regular, as I found out when I tried to put the first lid on) which were about $2 and ground cloves for the apple butter which was $9.99! (The cheapo brand was sold out. I think I should have waited. The recipe took only 3/8ths tsp.)
November 23rd, 2007 - Buy Nothing Day
I have to admit I’m not participating this year. I could go out tomorrow, but I think I might finally make my apple cider and sauce, which takes pretty much all day. And I have time today after work. However, my plans are the following places:
- Village Market, the local natural foods store, to return two lids purchased inadvertently for the new pails for the 50# of winter red wheat berries purchased via the other natural foods store.
- PJ’s Patch, the consignment store next door to VM. They are closing, so I’m going to look at the few remaining items which are 70% off now. Will also pick up any of my items that remain. They close Tuesday.
- Goodwill, for a purse for SIL Rheanna for Christmas, my one holiday shopping item today, and wool sweaters for felting
- Fleet Farm or Menards, for Gamma lids for the afore-mentioned new pails.
November 23rd, 2007 - Weather and food
It snowed!!!! It snowed enough Wednesday evening/night that it’s still on the ground this morning (Friday). That’s atypical for first snows. Actually, it snowed on Tuesday, but it didn’t stick.
The only problem is that since it’s still be relatively “nice” for November, I planned to dig out the rutabagas and carrots yesterday. Seemed like a perfect chore for Thanksgiving Day! I’m going to recruit Eric to do it tomorrow instead as I suspect the ground will be too hard for me. I hope the rutabagas are ruined, but I wasn’t going to eat them anyway. I’m going to give them to my neighbor who loves them. It was nice to have a couple for soup stock, but I don’t think I’ll make any more stock. Maybe I will–I’ll have carrots, onions, two squashes and rutabagas I suppose. And tomatoes. Hmmm…might have to do that Sunday!
All last week, I made coffeecakes for breakfasts. Unfortunately, Eric and I really like different ones. LOL I figured out a solution for two of them. He and Maggie can’t have nuts–so I put nuts on 1/3rd of it before the topping and I get nuts! He also didn’t like the nutmeg in one, so I can put that on my side with the topping as well! The only drawback to the coffeecakes is that they use 100% white flour. I’m not sure how they’ll do with whole wheat, but I’ll start trying that next. (Actually, I think I used 1/4 ww in one of them. I hope I noted it!) I guess I finally got bored with the bread machine fruit breads. I’ll still make them, however, as I have lots of dried zucchini to use up. The nice thing is that Eric eats them, and he doesn’t care for the fruit breads, except banana.
I’ve avoided bananas since summer. The 90% reduction made me think about how non-local they are. We still buy them for Maggie–they help keep her regular we think–but I haven’t eaten one on my own in ages. I sometimes eat part of hers when she doesn’t finish it. And I’ll make a banana bread tomorrow as one went too soft to eat. I’ve barely missed them since I have so many other local fruit to eat–peaches, blueberries, apples, pears.
November 23rd, 2007 - GreenDisk [Technotrash Pack-IT]
Do you have small amounts of technotrash, like disks, cords, computer parts? GreenDisk
will recycle them for you for a small amount of money–$6.95 for up to 20# and 30 cents for each pound over that. you are responsible for shipping costs.
One of my goals for Dec is to round up stuff we have sitting around and mail it off. I know we have tens of feet of cable cords and a number of cds, plus old cords from computers we’ve gotten rid of.
When e-cycling, you need to be careful and find out what happens to the materials. Greendisk says they keep everything the US, first trying to reuse and refurbish what they can. Let me reiterate: Hazardous materials are NOT sent overseas! They even have a white paper describing what happens to various components.
November 20th, 2007 - Independent kid
Generally speaking, I feel lucky that we have a fairly independent kid. Remember, she’s not quite 3–she’s still 2 but for only 2 more days. I think this fits into the theme of this blog because the more independent she is, the more she is able to help us. The more she can help, the more we can get done. Also, the more independent she is, the more I can do without having to keep an eagle eye on her. Which again means the more I can get done.
Not that it doesn’t take time to get to this point. Watching her try to open her bedroom door took a couple minutes the other night. It would have been far faster to simply open it for her. But tonight, she opened it on her own without me in the room. Which meant I did not have to quit getting ready for bed to open it for her. (She likes to close her bedroom door while we are getting ready for bed, then we have [in the past] had to go open it before she freaked out about being left apart.) Or shoes–she got a new pair of shoes tonight (Robeez). They are bigger than her previous pair, which she has never successful put on by herself, although I’ve tried to get her to do so. She was excited by them, and wanted to put them on. So I let her. She needed just a little bit of help at the end. Two minutes later, she took them off–something she hasn’t done with her other shoes except when told. So I told her to put them back on. It took another 2 minutes for her to get it done–but she did it. And we no longer have to worry about putting her shoes on! (Her sneakers are another story–we’re still working on them. And her new sneakers are have laces so she’s not able to put them on nor off without assistance. Now I get why velcro is so awesome! But we couldn’t find canvas or leather shoes for her with velcro. Actually, we couldn’t find leather sneakers period. Everything was fake materials, which I’m trying to avoid.)
It’s also be good preschool-wise. We left her there at 6:30am and didn’t pick her up until 3:45. She had a wonderful time and the teachers find her delightful. No problems or worries at all! (Except, as expected, she did not nap during nap time. I thought they made the kids lay down anyway for the 2 hours. But they have an “awake room” and after 10 minutes, she told the teacher, “Maggie awake! Maggie awake!” Oh well. :)
I can’t wait for her help in the garden next spring/summer. I think she will be more of an asset than a hindrance. And if it’s still the latter, at least I will be preparing her for her 4th summer when she definitely will be able to help!
November 16th, 2007 - It’s snowing!
It’s snowing!!! The first snow of the season! Eric called me up and said I had to go outside immediately. I was confused, then said hopefully, “It’s snowing?” “YES!”
I fairly ran down the hallway and raced up the stairs to get outside. It’s was lovely!!!!!
November 16th, 2007 - Strange coincidences
The director of the movie Van Helsing, Stephen Sommers is a 1980 graduated of St. John’s, one of the two colleges I attended! (And my brother.)
A year ago, we adopted Pi from the shelter. His name there was Van Helsing. I’d never heard of the movie and Eric had never seen it, so we rented it. The lady at the shelter rolled her eyes at the name and hoped we’d change it because she said it was a really bad movie. I loved it! But we changed his name anyway. [edited to add: I just read the post from last year. Eric thought we had seen it, I didn’t remember it. We watched it on TV rather than renting it. It stars Hugh Jackman.]
November 14th, 2007 - Maggie’s off to school!
Since she rarely sees other children, except at Sunday church preschool, we intended to sign Maggie up for the preschool here on campus come spring. They run only during the college semesters and take enrollments for spring semester.
When they have room. Which they don’t this spring.
So I scoped out other local preschools and given the prices, declined to pursue that avenue further. The least expensive was over $1000/school year. The Children’s Learning Center here on campus is only about $250 for 12 weeks. That was in our budget, $1000 wasn’t! Plus, none of them accepted kids except in September and they have to be potty trained.
We planned to sign Maggie and me up for a parent/child swim class through the rec department in the spring. So I looked through the booklet for other available morning activities. In doing so, I read the page of ads for local daycares. One of the places I was interested in is Arts for Kids! but they didn’t have a website and after finding out the prices elsewhere online, I didn’t bother making a phone call.
But now I did. What did I have to lose…plus we needed daycare all day this coming Tuesday and maybe they provided drop-in care. I called. They don’t actually have a preschool for 3 year olds–only the 4K program with the school district, which by the way is only THREE blocks away. (For those who know it–it’s on the grounds of the Paine, across the street from the back building.) But they do have children who attend part-time for the same reasons we are seeking.
They have a full time art teacher with a studio that the kids can go to at any time for as long as they want. Some kids spend hours every day in there! Of course, art activities also happen in the regular rooms. There are also teachers for dance/drama, music, environmental education, and Spanish, who come in once a week to each class. Unfortunately, the latter two right now are only in the afternoon. While we toured and talked with the director yesterday, Maggie stayed in the room. She brought home her first preschool art project already! She used glue (which she thinks is lotion–probably not a good connection there! But she’s never used glue at home before and adores lotion) and what I called “puffballs” to her (pompoms) and she proudly proclaimed that her paper had “footballs!”
And it is very affordable: even full time care (over 5 hours/day 5 days a week) is about $150/week for kids over 2 and not much more for infants/toddlers. That’s the least expensive I’ve seen, even less than the CLC here on campus. For hourly, which Maggie will be, it’s $6/hour. Eric chose 3 hours on Tuesday and Thursday. Thursday because she’ll get music class. And it includes lunch (which actually I’m not a fan of, since she’ll be eating meat, 1% non-organic milk, and who knows what else, but schedule-wise it makes sense to leave her there through lunch).
We specifically asked about diversity. There are only a few minority children (which is generally true of Oshkosh anyway) but they have a lot of diversity in income levels. They have a number of foster children, which we thought was neat. (The owner is a former foster Mom in fact.) They do accept children with special needs, as long as they can participate in a group environment.
And we can get additional hours when needed, so she’ll be able to be there all day Tuesday!
So why am I willing to pay for childcare 6 hours a week when we have a free stay at home Dad? Good question on a simple/frugal living blog of course. It’s mainly about socialization. Eric doesn’t want to participate in any parent/child activities–a Mom’s group or playgroups or such just aren’t his thing. So Maggie mostly sees the house, runs errands, and goes to church 3 times a month. Plus of course other odds n ends. But very few kids and few other adults are regularly in her life. A preschool gives her these things. I personally don’t feel it is terribly important to the average or above average preschooler to have these in their lives if their have enriching home lives, which I feel Maggie has. But Eric feels very strongly that she should. As does my favorite early childhood educator (a professor I work with weekly).
We can afford it. Eric will appreciate some time off. Maggie will ADORE this place, we’re sure. She loves art things, we just rarely do it at home. She loves music. It’s a casual place. It’s a bit busy–20 kids in her room and lots of things to do. Might be overwhelming but we’re hoping it encourages her to speak up (she’s been doing a lot of whispering lately) as well as improve her language skills (which are on the low end of average for an almost-3 year old). Last night when I went in before I went to bed to say goodnight to her, Maggie asked “Go downtown Daddy later?” Yeah, she’s already asking to go back to preschool!
Funny note: preschool is where she goes when we go to church. So she’s a bit confused now and thinks the new preschool is also called church. It’s actually in an old mall–the first indoor downtown mall in America.
November 14th, 2007 - Warped sense of cost…or the right one?
Yesterday, Maggie wore her winter coat for the first time. Both Eric and another person had trouble getting it to zip, so we figured the zipper was broken and we’d have to buy another coat. My comment: “Shucks! I think that was a $5 coat!” (As opposed to say a $2 or $3 coat….)
And my plan for buying another one was to go to the consignment shop which is going out of business and finding one for the same price or less.
When we got home, I tried out the zipper and had no problems, so we haven’t bought another coat. Which is nice, since this is a size 4 and should fit her next winter, too!
My husband pointed out that I should be glad it wasn’t a store-bought coat that cost $25 and we laughed. We can afford to buy a second $5 coat. And I started thinking about something I could do to re-purpose it (I wasn’t about to put in a new zipper. I don’t do much sewing and zippers are beyond me).
November 13th, 2007 - This is the type of person I’d like to be someday
‘Anonymous Friend’ gives $100 million to town - CNN.com
November 9th, 2007 - BYOGREEN
If you use disposable things like plates, cups, etc, you might be interested in BYOGREEN, a new company that supplies biodegradable versions *in small quantities.* Perfect for home or office use!
It was started by a UW Oshkosh graduate, who was recently featured in our alumni magazine. I haven’t bought disposable kitchen products in ages, but I am tempted now and then….
November 8th, 2007 - Return of the shower curtain
Back in May, we bought a 100% organic cotton shower curtain. Unfortunately, we hate it. It’s heavy cotton and gets wet. Very wet. And takes over 24 hours to dry. If we lived in a hot dry climate, it would probably work quite well. But not in WI.
So we’re going to get rid of it (sell on EBay perhaps?) and have already bought replacement polyester liner and curtain. Why polyester? Becuase Umbra suggested it.