Usually, my dental hygienist and I have conversations that sound like a couple of pals getting together in a coffee shop to chat. But yesterday, our conversation sounded more like a poorly scripted television commercial from the 1970s or ’80s.

Usually, we talk about dogs and crafts and fitness, or whatever music’s being piped in to the dental office in the half-hour I’m there, or she tells me about the fall-out when her in-laws gave her 16-year-old a brand new car without consultation, that kind of thing…

Yesterday — wonder of wonders — we actually talked about clean teeth and healthy gums. Dental health, in fact — go figure!

Do you remember those TV ads where the uber-annoying Madge kept sticking her ditzy friend’s hand in a bowl of dishwashing liquid, while disclaiming about its virtues? A fly on the wall (not that there was one, but if there was — and if it could understand English — do flies even have ears?) would have heard something like this:

Me: You probably won’t have much cleaning to do this time.

She [with one dubious eyebrow raised]: Why’s that?

Me: I’ve been trying out an electric toothbrush for the past month, and my teeth seem pretty clean to me…

She: What kind of electric toothbrush are you using? Is it the Oral-B Vitality? We usually keep some of those around here, for sale.

Me: Actually, I’ve been testing two different Oral-B toothbrushes. One’s the Vitality with a ProWhite head. The other one’s that super-dooper Triumph brush that does everything but pour the mouthwash for you…

[Dental hygienist nods knowingly]

Me: …the one with the wireless unit to monitor your brushing time and tells you when to move on to another quadrant, makes a smiley face when you brush your teeth properly?

[Dental hygienist nods knowingly]

Me: It’s got two different brush heads with it — ProWhite and Floss Action — they sound like dorky superheroes, don’t they? And different brushing modes for polishing and sensitive teeth and like that, base station, recharger that works in different countries with different power systems for when you travel, and a travel case, too… The flippin’ toothbrush has a bigger instruction manual than the one that came with my blender!

She: You do have a thing for gadgets, don’t you?

Me: Um, yeah…

She: My husband, too. He would probably be more fussy about brushing if he had one of those… but he just went out and bought himself a new phone, so he’s going to have to wait until Father’s Day to get a Triumph.

Me [mumbling because the dental hygienist has her hands in my mouth, poking about the molars with a pointy metal thing]: Mhmmphh.

She: You know, your teeth really are pretty clean — I really don’t have too much work to do here. Actually, I think we can skip your next appointment, if you’re going to keep using a power toothbrush.

Me: Mmm-hm-hmm-huh!

She: What’s that?

Me: I just saved 75 bucks!

She: Yeah, you can’t go wrong with Oral-B. Did you know that they’re the only ones who have that patented thing where the head of the brush oscillates and pulses, both at the same time? It oscillates and pulses! [I swear, those were her exact words -- told you, our conversation sounded a whole lot like a vintage TV ad!] And the small head on the brush makes it easier to get in there and do a good job on your back teeth, like this spot right here… see?

Me: Mhmm-hee!

She: Rechargeable, right?

Me: Mhmm. Yes, both of them.

She: What do you think about the vibration? Some people find it feels weird.

Me: The Vitality’s just got a nice little hum, kind of nice. But the Triumph has, I don’t know, the vibration is stronger or deeper or something…

She: Too much?

Me: No, not bad… but you wouldn’t want to use it with a wicked hangover.

She: Just a guess, but if someone’s that hungover, their dental hygiene may not be right at the top of their list, right at that moment. Coffee, more likely. Lots of coffee!

Me: At least they’d be able to get the coffee stains off their teeth. You know, later, when they felt up to it…

I’m pretty sure we’ll be back to the normal frivolous non-product-oriented chit-chat, next time I’m hanging with the dental hygienist — but here’s the bit that’s vitally important here, in case you glazed over and missed it:

I just saved $75 — being able to skip my next appointment for a professional cleaning, with the dental hygienist’s blessing — because the power toothbrushes do a better job of cleaning teeth than the old-faithful manual units that I grew up with.

Yes — like you — I laughed myself silly at the super-dooper Triumph when I first read about it — and rolled my eyes at the hefty price tag, too! (The suggested retail price is $179.99 — yikes! — but you can do much better if you shop around: Amazon has about the best prices I’ve seen, around US$107.)

Love gadgets as I do… honestly, I thought it was a case of Oral-B going mad with the microchips and accessories, trying to find a new-and-improved product that no one really needs all that badly. It seems that I may have been a tad hasty in that opinion, however… because it’s really quite something.

On a budget, however, or for those whose very souls revolt at the idea of over-the-top technological wizardry in the bathroom cabinet, the modestly priced and lightweight Oral-B Vitality Pro-White is the winner. It runs about $25 in stores in Canada; I’m not sure if this exact model of Vitality is available in the US yet, but I think you might be able to fake it quite nicely with the Precision Clean model and just sub in the Pro-White replacement heads for that spiffy tooth-polishing effect. For my money, it’s effective, efficient, and not too self-indulgent a personal-care tool for this thrifty gal to face down in the mirror each morning.

In short, Triumph rocks for sheer macho gadgety-goodness, and I’m irresistably attracted to that for some reason; but the low-key Vitality was simply electric love at first brush.

Sea salt, great big crystals of sea salt, are sprinkled across the luscious sweet dark surface of my chocolate caramels!

Okay, I’ll admit, when my Christmas treat bag arrived from President’s Choice on Friday, I had some doubts.

Caramel, good.
Dark chocolate, fabulous.
Sea salt, very nice in its place.

But all of those put together?

What craziness is this?

Not so crazy, as it turns out. In fact, it’s just about the perfect taste combination for those of us who love both salty and sweet treats. My tastebuds have decided. And the chocolate box is empty.

If you’ve been around Domestik Goddess for a while, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of the inventive PC food products put out by Loblaw’s grocery chain. You may also be aware that the PC Healthy Eating Challenge helped me drop 10 pounds in a month — which has stayed off, by the way — though I make no guarantees about that from this point on, now that they’re tempting me with chocolate! (And we’re not even going to talk about the dark chocolate peppermint candy cane bark. Not. One. Word.).

So anyway, bottom line — I was more than happy to give the salty chocolate concept a fair taste-test… Sold!

So here’s what I’m thinking now:

A quick and fairly light sweet dessert for the holiday season, when you’re doing a lot of heavy eating in the normal round of visiting and entertaining — and you’ve been doing so much baking, the idea of putting together a dessert leaves you weak at the knees — who wants to cook more?

Just throw together a nice fruit plate, with those little tangerines that are in season right now, with green seedless grapes, slices of kiwi, maybe a few chunks of fresh pineapple and melon. Add a few of these salty-sweet chocolates (delightfully upscale for something you can just pick up at the grocery store, I might add!) and there you have it!

Two cheap products with incredibly stupid names have just made yard work a lot easier, and I couldn’t be more delighted.

See, my garden tools are good quality — every garden guru will tell you that’s important — but they’re geting old. (Aren’t we all?) And I have to confess that I’ve never cared for my tools the way all the gardening books say you should. Sharpen the blades, oil the wood, lubricate the moving parts, clean off the mud after using them, store away carefully in a dry place to prevent rust… frankly, who has time for all that?

Particularly at the end of a hot day’s labour, when all you want is a long refreshing shower and some sort of beverage….

As it turns out, however, a bit of time put into proper garden tool care will actually save time (and effort, and unladylike language) later on.

Okay, really I did know that…

But the whole tool-sharpening business is just too difficult and time-consuming (whetstone? grinder? file? what?) — or too expensive, if you tote the tools to the place you get your lawnmower fixed or a full-service hardware store for sharpening.

The Easy Way to Make Old Garden Tools Work Better

Let me introduce you to Jig-a-Loo and the Samurai Shark.

I told you, these products have incredibly stupid names. One sounds like something you’d see advertised on a late-night TV shopping channel, or in a third-rate Ninja movie. And the other one sounds, well, just plain rude…

But don’t be fooled. These two are my new best friends!

They’re cheap, and they work, and you can grab them both at Amazon.com if your local hardware store doesn’t have them in stock.

Here’s the scoop:

Jig-a-Loo is a silicone-based lubricant spray that goes on clear and dries fast. It has a sharp unpleasant solvent-type odour when you first spray it, but that goes away almost immediately. Use it to loosen rusted-together nuts and bolts, fix squeaky doors and sticky locks, lubricate the moving parts of things (like the sliding window in my back door, or the handles of my ancient garden shears) so they move more smoothly and easily…

In short, it’s a great substitute for a spray can of WD-40, the home handyman’s traditional all-purpose lubricant. But Jig-a-Loo doesn’t have any grease or oil, so it’s not going to add to your cleaning problems. And you can use it on leather, wood, metal, and most plastics and fabric. Oh, and it repells water, too — if they could train the little orange can to put itself away in the cupboard when I’m done with it, that would be perfect.

Samurai Shark — I almost can’t say that with a straight face! — is not much more than a plastic handle with a couple of blades and a knob or two to adjust them with. Fortunately, it has two things going for it:

1. it is cheap, and
2. it works.

Sharpen anything from your dainty embroidery scissors to hefty lawnmower blades with this tool, including those serrated paring knives that the knife-sharpening kiosk guy won’t even look at.

It’s remarkable how much easier those heavy garden chores become when you’re not fighting to chop through sod or to divide perennial plants with a dull spade. Simply astonishing. And believe me, both your arms and your shrubs will appreciate it if you prune with sharp secateurs instead of hacking through the branches with a dull blade.

The first day with my Samurai Shark, I rounded up all the garden tools and sat on the back verandah in the sunshine. I spread out the instruction leaflet beside me, weighted it down with a coffee cup, and worked my way through the pile of tools.

The instructions are needed (but be warned, the print is really tiny! — thankfully, there are also pictures) because this is not intuitive. Each kind of knife or blade will need to be sharpened in a particular way, using one or the other of the Shark’s two built-in blades. It definitely takes a few minutes to get the hang of it, especially if you’re not exactly in the habit of sharpening garden tools…

And then I sprayed all the nuts and bolts that hold together the blades of the shears and pruners and loppers and secateurs and scissors with Jig-a-Loo. Just one complaint there, which also applies to good ol’ WD40 as well as Jig-a-Loo — I can never keep the little straw in the nozzle for more than one spritz.

(What do you think, am I spraying with too much enthusiasm? Anyone know a good trick for this?)

The rest of the afternoon, I dashed about the yard doing all the garden chores I’d been putting off — trimming the long grass around the base of trees with my newly sharp-and-lubricated old garden shears, pruning the hydrangea with secateurs as sharp and smooth-moving as the day I got them, and generally being more productive in far less time than usual.

And now that it’s getting on for the season where a lot of the perennial plants in the flower beds need to be lifted and divided, I can face the task with a little more energy (I’ve been doing those darned pushups, after all, eh?) and with garden tools that work for me, not fight against me!

I blame Botticelli’s Venus. Just look at the mythical creature, standing there so coy on her halfshell and looking like she’s made of alabaster — no way those smooth pale limbs could ever sprout a single misplaced hair, let alone the furry forest of neglect that is a side-effect of long Northern winters!

Cold weather, long underwear, you get the picture…

Truly, unless there’s a hot midwinter romance going on, the whole tedious business of shaving legs is likely to be allowed to slide a bit…

Like, oh, until the first hint of Spring and impending bathing-suit season… or until the Swag Fairy sends a new razor to review, whichever comes first.

So, listen up here!

I rushed the deforestation season by at least three weeks, just for you — just to be able to give you the firsthand scoop on Gillette’s new ‘flagship’ razor for women.

Good stuff first –

• I like the soft gel handle in perky green and blue colours, easy to hold onto when your hands are all soapy.

• I like the five blades that do, as advertised, catch virtually every hair on the first pass.

• I like the way the head so obligingly tilts to follow one’s womanly curves.

• And I like how easy it is to change blades, with the push of a button.

But I’ve got some serious reservations about the companion ShowerPod…

The theory of the ShowerPod is fine:
It’s a little plastic gizmo that attaches to your shower wall, to conveniently store the extra blades and save last-minute wet dripping tip-toeing across the bathroom floor when you find yourself in the shower with a dull razor. And the razor itself hangs up on the outside, all tidy and out of the way.

Yes, I pressed the ShowerPod against a clean flat section of wall — heck, I even cleaned a section for the purpose — but would it stay stuck up there?

No.

The third time the ShowerPod crashed down on my foot, the drive-in movie flashbacks started up. Remember Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

I’m as big a fan of science-fiction flicks as the next person, but there’s a new rule around here: no pods in the comfort and privacy of my bath, thanks very much!

(The occasional well-mannered Wookiee, perhaps.)

Okay, so maybe I’ve got a few suction cup issues. They’ve just never worked for me — ever. And I’ve got a trail of broken glass suncatchers behind me, to prove it…

Bottom line?

It’s a good razor for a fair price, and what more can one ask? But I’d love to see it packaged without the ShowerPod, for those of us who are happy enough to live by razor alone. The way I see it, even if you’ve got better luck with suction cups than I do, it’s just another plastic thingummie to have to clean around in the shower stall.