Better living through chemicals

I know I should be totally focused on tomorrow's first day of classes and all but I just have to get this off my chest. And I've been dying to use the words "colloidal suspension" in conversation for so long I think I just might burst.

Me and The T hit the grocery store this morning. This is a kind of pseudo-synchronized dance routine of which the cart is the moving focal point and the troupe members constantly whirl around, flitting off in search of some item and then swooping back to deposit the prize in the cage-on-wheels. When the chaos portion of the blitz was over, I found The T in the laundry aisle. The T said, "I hope you don't think this is an impulse purchase." And we both simultaneously say, "I've been looking for this for years!!"

The prize was a bottle of Mrs. Stewart's Bluing. I had chalked up the existence of bluing as another entry in The Louie's Book of Fictional or Extinct Things. My father, The Louie, always claimed that bluing was the best way to get white things white in the laundry. It sounded so bizarre that I held off on outright scoffing and began what would end up being a 20-year quest to find a container of bluing. He is otherwise a rational man so I reasoned his claim just might have something to it. While I never actually saw my father do laundry, his father was a tailor/cleaner, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Turns out this stuff is a colloidal suspension of a very fine blue iron powder in water that contains such potential that the future of mankind may hinge on our species' ability to harness it fully. In a nutshell: the whitest whites are those that have a little blue in them. The added blue reflects more light than just white on its own so—voila!—adding some bluing to the laundry makes whites whiter. Works on pets too! Fluffy not white enough? Just blue the pooch. Can't see the goldfish in your pond due to algae? Just blue those pesky greens away.

As a totally unforeseen jumbo/LARGE bonus to finding this bottle of laundry bliss, the info card banded to the cap took us in a new incredibly exciting direction. It turns out this colloidal suspension is the secret ingredient in magic salt crystal gardens. I have always wanted one of those but was never courageous enough to admit it (the slight anonymity of the virtual plane has made me brave enough to fess up). I'm also a fan of sea monkeys and ant farms but these are topics for another day. I'll post pictures of my crystals when they get rolling.