Recently DF committed to giving his older granddaughter a ride to school every morning. She’s in a charter school, i.e., no buses.
The booster seat required by state law is chilly, and she let him know. The next morning he warmed up our biggest rice sock (we have several) and put it on the booster, to create a kind of poor man’s heated car seat. Thus her narrow little butt stayed toasty-warm all the way to school.
Now that’s service. DF also brings along a banana and an old Altoids tin filled with bacon. This kind of thing could give Uber and Lyft a run for their money.
For the uninitiated, a rice sock is a classic life hack. Simple, too: a cloth bag (sometimes an actual sock) filled with uncooked rice. Heat it in the microwave and you have a steady, lasting source of heat.
You can also heat it atop a wood stove: During a prolonged power outage some years back, DF put a rice sock in a clay pot atop the fireplace insert. Until the heat came back on, the rice sock was as good as a hot-water bottle. Better, maybe: If it had leaked it wouldn’t have soaked the bed.
As the headline of this post indicates, that’s not the only use for a rice sock.