When the time comes to replace an old door or to upgrade to something new, you can simplify the installation by using a prehung unit.  This means the door is already on a frame, saving you the work of mounting the frame and then the door and adding hinges.  The prehung units are ready to receive the door knob and exterior prehung units already have the weather-stripping attached. 

Most home centers have common size doors and new styles in stock, but sometimes you may need to special order your door if it is not a common size or if you just want a different style.  When ordering your new door, make sure you measure the width and height of the open space without the old frame in it. 

Last post I said somethin about being ansty and hoping to calm myself down. Finally, I think it weared off. Thank God. I was really freaking out because sometimes I’d do something and two seconds do it again…as if I never did it before. Isn’t that weird? I don’t do anything that would make me act like…that, but I dunno, it was weird. It was like I was really hyped up about nothing. I don’t know if anyone else feels that way, I hope someone does cuz it’d be weird if I was the only one who acted a little…strange(I guess thats the word) sometimes. Since I’m tapping my foot, I think it’s coming back though. I’d rather be like this though then in tears.

This weekend I cleaned up my room really good-surprisingly (me cleaning my room happens like never!), I’m pretty proud of myself. Especially for “risking” my life by going under the bed and cleaning up all that stuff underneath and finding a place to put my shoes (I have more shoes than space to put the shoes in.)

This past week has been really hard figuring out when to be nice and when to be not so nice to people. Some people make me wanna be not so nice but I know I probably should be nice. I used to find it easy to be nice but now some stuff are really testing me. Its like I just wanna lose it and explode but then I don’t cuz I know that if I do then I’m probably gonna regret it later on. I just think back to when I was telling my best friend on the phone a few weeks ago how I feel as if sometimes I’m too nice. Now its like I’m starting to that its also easy to be mean. I don’t wanna be mean. I get mad, yeah-I say stuff I really shouldn’t say…I do stuff that probably does nothing to help…but I don’t wanna be known for being mean.

I just really gotta hold myself back and figure out how to show patience to people and its hard to give it to people who just push me to the edge. Since I’ve been antsy I don’t think of it too much cuz I’m all bouncing and tapping and doing happy stuff. This week I’m gonna take control and figure somethin out about when to do what. And this is a really long post….:D

I was washing the dishes earlier today (one of my least favorite chores) and I started to think about the word “clean” along with the word “cleanse” and how they mean pretty much the same thing don’t they, or do they have a difference in meaning, and why do we have both words, and what’s the essential difference between the two words?  Is “cleanse” an archaic form?  And if so, why do we still use it?

Thank goodness for that ultimate reference tool, the internet, to stop these spinning questions in my head!

First I did a google search, and found this information from Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms: “Clean is the word in common and literal use for the removal of foreign matter (as dirt, litter, and debris) typically by washing, sweeping, dusting, or clearing away…  Cleanse in this relation seldom wholly loses some hint of its basic notion of making morally or spiritually pure: it is, therefore, the term of choice when the matter to be removed is or is felt as foul, polluting, or noxious or the action is rather one of purifying than of merely restoring to order, freshness, or neatness…  Unlike clean, cleanse is common in essentially metaphoric extension in which it always retains the suggestion of removing what is vile, harmful, or obnoxious…”

From that I was reminded of the spiritual use of “cleanse,” which feels rather obvious in retrospect.  Maybe this experience of looking it up will cement the concept in my memory.  Actually, this was probably one of those cases of knowing how to use a word, but not being able to define it, like the meaning only existed at an unconscious level of my brain.  Isn’t it strange how that happens?  Does that happen to other people?  Sometimes I’m perfectly confident using a word in conversation or in writing, but if I was asked to define it I would be stumped.  And then when I do look it up I find that I’ve been using it correctly after all.

Anyway, the Dictionary of Synonyms is an interesting and exciting book to have discovered through my clean/cleanse distinction quest, and I’ll probably seek it out again for similar questions.  It seems more useful than just a basic thesaurus.  Or has a more refined purpose, anyway.

I also logged into my school email account so that I could access the Oxford English Dictionary and read old English usage examples and such.  The OED seconded what the Dictionary of Synonyms had said, of course, and also gave me a few more examples of differences between “clean” and “cleanse.”  “Clean” can be used to mean “streamlined.”  It can also be combined with other words: “clean out” is to clean by emptying, “clean up” has financial connotations, etc.  “Cleanse,” on the other hand has the distasteful relationship with ethnic cleansing, its purification meaning corrupted by prejudice.  Yuck.

Again, I knew all these meanings already, but it was interesting to read about them again.  It was satisfying to have a thought, a question, and then to go and answer it for myself.