Just so you don't think the world suddenly endowed me with a team of servants to take care of the daily minutiae, I'm back with an update, but first, a tip about dealing with hard water.

Foist of all, as the Stooges might say, what is hard water? It feels pretty squishy coming out of the tap, right? Sure, sure. Hard water is everyday tap water that has a high amount of minerals - yes, rocks and stuff - dissolved in it. This is because the water comes from a well on your property that's drilled waaaay down where there is a chamber or cistern in the rock with water in it or a stream running deep below the surface of your lawn, between the bedrock. All that friction over millions of years is bound to pick up molecule-sized bits of mineral. When that comes out of your tap, it will feel decidedly unslippery, more so if there's more dissolved mineral in it.

Hey, I like Pellegrino, you might say, and if it's pouring out of my tap, so much the better. The problem is, when the water dries on a surface, it leaves behind the dissolved rock, a favorite target of the Scrubbing Bubbles people, and it also reduces the effectiveness of soaps. So, if you manage to travel away from home to a place with soft water, you'll notice that it no longer takes a half-cup of Head and Shoulders to get lathered up. Hard water also affects how well your clothes wash, whether they start to turn a bit grey over time and how well your dishes wash without spotting. And now that automatic dishwasher liquids are doing away with phosphates in order to do good by the environment, that spotting may be even worse for you hard water folks.

So, what's the solution? First of all, whether you rent or own a house, it's a good idea to find out what you're drinking. There are various water testing products on the market that range in price from $10 to $25 and Sears will test for the hardness of your water alone for free, at least in my neighborhood. If you have a well, you'll want to know whether Jimmy has fallen down it and what nasty stuff may be present. Really - this is important.

Once you've determined that you have hard water, you can a) install a water softener or repair the one you already have, b) say 'whatever' and chalk it up to nature being a pain (chalk - get it - it's a mineral . . . a ha ha ha) or c) deal with some of the most common things we do with water with some simple and inexpensive solutions.

Vinegar is a great way to reduce the alkalinity of you water and increase the effectiveness of anionic surfactants. In other words, good ol' white vinegar, used sparingly, will help reduce the stiffness of your clothes and reduce spotting on your dishes. A splash or two in the dishwasher (before starting a cycle) helps tremendously in most cases. There are also commercial solutions, the best of which, in my opinion, is also the cheapest, or pretty darn cheap, anyway, and that's Lemme Shine (lemmeshine.com) which can be added to dishwasher and is consistently amazing. I last saw it at Target for about $4 for the standard size.

There are filtered shower heads, but they won't fix hard water. If your hair is dull or you think that the water hardness is affecting the quality of your tousle, get a gallon jug of distilled water (water that's been evaporated and recondensed without any minerals at all) at the drug- or chain store and see if your hair feels better after a few washes.

Products with EDTA, which is an amino acid compound that will attach to heavy metals, with a final distilled water rinse, or citric acid rinses (1/4 tsp. in 1 cup distilled water) to chelate minerals on your hair. Vinegar might work too - 1 tablespoon in 1 cup distilled water.

Hard water in the desert or where rainfall is very low tends to be alkaline also. Acidic rinses might be helpful if that applies to you.