Joy at Dawn - All Three of Them!

     I have three favorite Dawns. One is the rising of the early morning sun. I greatly cherish the quiet of the early morning hours. I love an early morning stroll out to my garden to see the sparkly dew drops on my tomato plants' leaves. I salute my 7 foot tall sunflowers that stand like sentinels in my garden with their bright faces that eagerly greet the sun each morning. They watch over the comings and goings in my garden throughout the day:  birds splashing in their bath, bugs crawling around in the dirt, and the weeds growing, growing, always growing... Adding to my auditory delight are little birdies in their trees tweeting their morning greeting to the emerging sun.    
     If the Sand Man has shown me favor throughout the night (as opposed to feeling a cuddly child crawl into my bed in the wee morning hours complaining that, "I had a bad dweam"), then I feel industrious in the early morning hours. I am primed and ready to start a load of wash or transfer wet clothes into the dryer, put away drip-dry pots and pans on the counter from the night before, examine breakfast options for the morning and dinner plans for the evening, check my e-mail and look over my to-do list for the day, and see Tim off for work in the morning. After lunch time, I am ready for a nap!

Second on my list of favorite dawns is my high school friend Dawn (on the left in the picture to the left). I met Dawn when we were juniors in high school. We were on swim team together and spent many afternoons hanging out at my house or her godparent's home where she resided. She has overcome significant hardships in her life and has always remained sweet, sincere, and very generous with her care. I attended her wedding about 20 years ago and visited her at the hospital when her newborn baby, Amber (now 19!), was born. We share a mutual friend, Tina, a grade school friend of mine(in the picture on the right side with Dawn). Over the years we've all drifted in and out of contact. Dramatic personal trials have collided into these special friends' lives and I've found myself talking to them more recently. I am so ecstatic about that. Tina and I are trying to coax Dawn to move back to southern California from Albuquerque where she currently lives. Hopefully, with much prayer and patience, we'll get Dawn back out here so we can have some rockin' girls' nights out!
     Lastly, there's Dawn - the dish washing liquid. This post is appropriate for this blog about domestic issues because Dawn is a lady's best friend when trying to get grease stains out of clothing.  After soaking a greasy shirt in water, I then take a nail brush and scrub the spot out of the shirt.(Embarrassingly, these are frequently my shirts!) Sometimes, I fill a small empty 5 quart ice cream bucket (free with ice cream purchase and abundantly useful in many ways) with warm water, place the Dawn-doused shirt in it, and then let it soak for a couple of hours, or days (!) depending on how busy I am. Because I haven't gotten around to clearing a spot off my dryer  to easily scrub out my greasy shirts, I'll just throw them in the wash. Often times, the shirt will come out of the dryer looking like new. So handy! I have a small detergent bottle, or extra liquid hand soap bottle that I have near my utility sink in my laundry area. This way I always have my Dawn nearby to squirt on grease spots. If Dawn won't get a spot out, then nothing will. The shirt is destined for the trash can.

     With just overly dirty clothes (think dirt stains, chocolate stains, snot stains, and of course, ketchup) I place the grimy clothing item in my ice cream bucket with warm water and rinse out the cap I use for pouring liquid detergent into my washing machine. I don't use extra grime-busting products. Why spend extra money and make space in my laundry room for more containers if I don't need to? The concentrated teaspoon or so in the dispensing cup is usually enough of a boost to get extra "yuck" out of dirty clothes. What do you do to get stubborn stains out of your clothing?