todayiamadaisy | Entries tagged with home

I had barely turned the shower on this morning when my mother started banging on the bathroom door. "Shower quick!" she shouted. "Come outside, quick!" So I showered and dressed as quickly as I could and came out of the bathroom to find her hopping up and down in the garden. "Look, look!" she said, pointing up into the magnolia tree. So I look, looked, and this is what I saw:

It climbed to the very top of the magnolia tree, where it curled up for a nap... until the birds found it. The crows kept circling the top of the tree, the magpies sat on Next Door's roof and stared at it, and a very angry mudlark got right in the magnolia and cheeped loudly at it. So it climbed down and stomped down the driveway and along the street.

After that bit of excitement, I went to the bakery, which was staffed by two teenage girls. As I came in, one of them was saying to the other, "So I told him to go and he went out the door, then he came back and I had to chase him out again." She was in the middle of serving me when the other girl said, "Look, there he is again!" I turned to see this persistent rowdy customer, but it wasn't a customer at all. It was a wasp. They were still trying to chase it out the door when I left.

Today we cleaned out the second half of the kitchen cabinet.

Things thrown in the bin:
A shiny purple teacup (cracked), given to my mother as a Christmas gift in the late 1950s by an aunt
A wooden pestle that no longer has a mortar

Things put in the box to take to the charity shop, on the grounds someone might want them:
A plastic lemon keeper shaped like half a lemon (purchased by me, never used)
A teapot shaped like a tree stump with a nesting owl, two matching stump mugs (belonged to my mother's late partner, who went through an owl phase)
A wooden beefeater and bobby pair (a gift from my mother's late partner's family in England to him)
Ceramic money box with a Victorian lady on one side and "Chocolate Fund" on the other (my mother thinks this was a work Kris Kringle gift)
Green plastic photo frame shaped like a flower on a metal stem (neither of us know how we obtained this)
One round red serving dish with a Christmas tree on it (source unknown)
Three glasses with cartoon characters on them (probably "collectible" jam jars that my grandmother kept)
Three small wooden ducks (used to sit on the kitchen windowsill at my mother's late partner's house)
Tin money box with an Australian $100 note design, completely sealed and needing to be opened with a tin opener, containing one coin, probably a 20c or 50c judging from the sound (this was a work Kris Kringle gift to me)
Two mugs with legs like Humpty Dumpty that overbalance when filled with liquid (source unknown)
Two small (10cm) pewter jugs (Christmas gift from a relative who had just come back from Singapore)
Two square white ceramic dishes that you'd put dip or nuts in (source unknown)

Day two of the new year was spent planning and preparing. Last week, I helped my mother clean out her gardening cabinet. Does she really need nine pairs of gardening gloves? No. No, she does not.

Today we did half the kitchen cabinet. We've got a box for charity full of spare bowls and knick knacks and scented candles, mostly received as Christmas presents over the years. Tomorrow, the last day of my leave: the second half of the kitchen cabinet. I had a quick look, and there's a large wall clock and two ceramic money-boxes, so that's three things that can go.

If I get time tomorrow, I'll also go through my wardrobe. I'll be back in the office more or less full-time now, but it's been about two years since I had to wear office clothes. I think there'll be a few things that can go out, or at the very least, will need a wash after being untouched for two years.

Honestly, that was the next question on the World War I US army literacy test. I make no comment as to its relevance today.

This week: signs of spring. The sweet peas are out, electric pink and scented. Tulips and daffodils out the kitchen window. Colours other than winter green and brown.

Also this week: we had a visit from Charlie! ( This is Charlie )

Charlie came into our garden for a visit. My mother thought she'd seen him being walked by the new-ish family across the road, so I carried him over there, but there was no-one home. Fortunately Charlie had his name and a phone number on his collar, so I called and found it was the people across the road, who had just gone to the supermarket and had no idea he had escaped. So we kept Charlie in the enclosed patio until they came to collect him. I found an old tennis ball, which kept him occupied.

Finally, a long domestic meme from

emma2403:

1. What kind of soap is in your bathtub right now?
I have neither soap nor bathtub. But there is a bottle of Body Shop Wild Argan Oil Shower Gel in the shower.

2. Do you have any watermelon in your refrigerator?
It's winter, so no. Citrus season!

3. Is there anything moldy in your refrigerator?
No, the fridge is okay. I suspect there's some stuff in the freezer that's not mouldy, but older than it would be advisable to eat.

( Read on to find out what brand of dishwashing detergent I use )

I had one and a half days in the office this week, which felt a bit weird. I had to work on something with one of my colleagues, so we got permission to go in and work in one of the meeting rooms, sitting on either side of a meeting table and connecting the laptop to the projector screen on the wall. The meeting room is amply stocked with hand sanitiser and cleaning products, so we were able to maintain distance and hygiene while working on the biggest spreadsheet you've ever seen.

Unlikely to be repeated, though, as cases in Melbourne are going up again (twenty-five new cases yesterday and nineteen today), so our lockdown restrictions are being tightened again. For the first time, they're talking about regional variations, as the City by the Sea only ever had five cases, all people returning from overseas travel, and none in the last two months. But for now at least, another month at home.

I forgot to say last week that Alistair had his annual home visit from the vet. Vaccinations up to date, and he's lost 100g since last year, so the vet was pleased with him... or was pleased with him right up until he bit the vet's finger. In fairness, the vet had just poked his finger in Alistair's mouth, so it was more of a reflex action than a vicious bite, but there was a lot of blood. So I think both cat and vet are glad that trauma's over for another year.

This week brought a letter in the mail from an old LJ friend, who is sending out little pieces of art to brighten people's days. It certainly made my day. I've pinned it to my work pinboard.

Also, I bought a new toothbrush this week. It's fine. It does the job. But the packaging was over the top. All caps and random bolding telling me the toothbrush offers:
- 4 ZONES OF BACTERIA REMOVING ACTION
- <0.01mm CHARCOAL DUAL CORE SLIM TIP BRISTLES GENTLY REACH 7X DEEPER BELOW THE GUM LINE
- INNOVATIVE TONGUE AND CHEEK CLEANING DESIGN
- RUBBER POLISHING CUPS
- 300% HEALTHIER GUMS

Finally, a headline from the local news:

DAIRY FARMER WRITES POEM

Page three, that was. High importance.

[I feel a bit ill just looking at that.]

This week's excitement: I bought a new toothbrush. It has a rough surface on the back of the head, so while you're brushing your teeth, it's massaging your gums. A bit weird at first, but I quite like it now.

Other than that, it was a week of gardening (weeding, mostly) and making biscuits.

Coming up next week: time to plant garlic.

I have been feeling a bit twitchy today. I spent the morning trying to think of something I needed urgently but didn't have, so I'd have an excuse to leave the house. I couldn't think of anything, so I made some more biscuits instead.

( Weekly knitting photo )

Thank goodness it was my mother's birthday on Friday, otherwise the big excitement from this week would have been Wednesday: the day my alarm clock needed new batteries. Not that it mattered. No need for alarms when I have a five-second commute to work.

Anyway, my mother turned seventy on Friday. I was working, and from the office I could hear her answering her phone for most of the morning. Some of her friends dropped cards in the letterbox. Her friend Barb rang the doorbell and dropped a bag of apples off. (When my mother bought this house twenty-five years ago, there was a sickly apple tree in the garden that clearly didn't like where it was, so my mother sent it to live on Barb's farm, where it thrives, and every year Barb gives her a bag of apples.) I went to my bedroom, which is at the front of the house, to get a scarf and caught another of her friends about to put a bright red potted cyclamen on the doorstep.

One of the morning's phone calls was from her best friend, Colleen, who doesn't live in the City by the Sea. Her daughter does, though, and just after seven in the evening, she knocked on the door, having just finished her shift (she's an emergency nurse), to drop off a present on Colleen's behalf. Mum sent her home with some fresh-picked tomatoes, a couple of apples and a slice of birthday cake.

(My gifts to my mother were a new iPad, which she has had for several weeks now, and a Japanese hori hori soil knife, which seemed to go down well. She also has her eye on an incredibly dangerous-looking Korean sickle, so that's Christmas sorted.)

( Weekly knitting photo )

[A change from vintage medical ads today for some terrifying rabbit-egg hybrids. Teal rabbit on the end there is particularly menacing.]

An official announcement today that our current restrictions will be in place until 11 May, when they will be reviewed. Another month at least, then, which motivated me to do some more thinking about my working arrangements. There was a little bookshelf in the passage, filled with random books. What if I shelved those in the big bookshelves so I could move the little one to next to my work desk? A bit of vacuuming and dusting later, it was done and the City by the Sea's bank statements are now shelved rather than sitting on my spare room floor.

That inspired my mother to suggest a series of furniture moves: that chest of drawers to there, then the chair to here, then the chest of drawers to where the chair was, then swap that desk with the chair. So that was fun. I'm still not convinced the chair ended up in the right place, but we'll see.

It's that time of year again: keeping myself on track with my ( weekly knitting photo )

Now I have lived with my new home office for a couple of weeks, I spent part of Sunday rearranging things to my liking. An old chocolate tin to hold my work-issue highlighters, a little pinboard for various reminders, a couple of prints so I'm not next to a plain cupboard wall. Settling in for the long term.

I have finally started knitting this year's cowl. I thought I could easily crank out ten rows a night and I would be wearing that cowl before winter. Tonight I knitted two rows. I am such a cautious person normally; I don't know what makes me so wildly optimistic when it comes to estimating my knitting speed.

A crackle of hail on the window just before, and then a deluge that turned the garden white. Less picturesquely, it also blocked the gutter and made the kitchen ceiling leak.

For working from home, I have commandeered one of my mother's two sewing desks, the one she uses as a cutting table. It's right in front of a window, so I have a view of Next Door's garden, mostly a giant fuchsia that is covered in hot pink and purple flowers and, at least twice a day, a chittering flock of honeyeaters. West-facing, so I can see the weather coming, banks of clouds or clearing to blue sky. I was already giddy with excitement at working in the council's building, on the first floor in an open plan room surrounded by windows and so much light, so having my own window is delightful. (I spent a year working in a windowless room at the charity; one of the many reasons I wasn't all that sorry to be made redundant.)

Do you know who is going hungry? My piggy bank, my poor little blue piggy bank. I put a gold coin in him every week out of my spare change, but I discovered this morning that I don't have any spare change because I haven't spent any cash. I haven't been anywhere to spend money, except the supermarket, and they've got signs up saying cards preferred. I'll have to write an IOU for the piggy bank and fill him up once this is over.

This week:

1. I discovered the existence of lamington-flavoured chips. I read a review online that described them as "chocolate flavour with a potato aftertaste". That is surely something no-one has ever asked for.

2. I went out for lunch with some people from Old Work. It was the last week for the Accounts Officer who was made redundant at the same time as me. She spent her last day printing life-size photos of her head and sticking them all around the office: on the wall behind her desk, on the back of the bathroom door so she'll appear in the mirror above the hand basin when someone's washing their hands, stuck to the back of a cupboard so it looks like she's peeping over the shelf. (She brought news of the former colleague with a brain tumour: apparently it was removed successfully and she was out of hospital three days later.)

3. The electricians finally came and installed ceiling fans in the bedrooms and computer room. They were supposed to do it before Christmas but were delayed. The electrician left his teenage apprentice to do most of the work, returning later in the day to check it, and it seems Jack the apprentice likes a chat as much as my mother, because I got a detailed description of Jack's life when I came home from work: what football team he plays for, what football team the electrician plays for, Jack's thoughts on the rash decision of Kieran, the other apprentice, not to finish the apprenticeship and work on his parents' farm instead. All the important news. Alistair, on the other hand, did not enjoy the electricians' visit, particularly when they were up in the roof. In fact, he had a bad day all round, as my mother's brother G popped in for a visit from South Australia. Uncle G is a burly man who loves cats; Alistair does not like humans who are not me or my mother. My mother described a battle of wills, with Alistair on the back of the sofa looking grumpy while Uncle G ruffled his fur, saying, "Puss-a! Puss-a! Puss-a!"

Today:
1. I walked over to the shop to buy the newspaper and noticed that one of the houses I had to pass, with a garden full of gnomes and cement lanterns, has a new statue: a life-size zebra in the middle of the lawn.

2. I went to Old Work's annual Australia Day second-hand book fair in Port Fairy. I used to go to it before I started working for them, so it seemed churlish not to just because they made me redundant. Port Fairy was packed for the long weekend, so I had to park a couple of blocks from the venue and walk the rest of the way. I had to pass the civic green where some sort of Australia Day ceremony was happening. A man was giving what sounded like a very boring speech about a local quarry and how it had sent Port Fairy bluestone all around Australia.

3. I read this story about a grieving pig.

My alarm clock died a couple of weeks ago. The battery sort of fused itself to the clock and neither could be resuscitated. Hence, I have been on the market for a new alarm clock.

I remember buying the old alarm clock. I had decided that my clock radio was too bright, so I wanted an analogue clock. Do you know what I did? I went into a shop and I bought the first alarm clock I saw. So simple! And it was such a good little clock. It was an 11cm cube, so not too big or too small, with big numbers for ease of looking at during the night, a little button that lit up the face when pressed, and a silent sweep (no ticking). I mean, my needs are modest.

This time round... well, the jewellery shop I bought the last one from has closed down. I tried another jeweller, but they no longer stock clocks. Another jeweller only had one tiny model. She suggested the gift shop across the road. They had several models, one that was too big, one that was too small, one that ticked. What a Goldilocks I am.

I've been using my folding travel alarm clock in the meantime (which I have because I also find hotel room clock radios too bright). It's good for short stays, but it's also too small and it ticks, so I can't put up with it for too long. Happily, last week I found Australia's largest online clock purveyor, and today I took delivery of my new alarm clock. I'm so looking forward to a tick-free sleep tonight.

This is the last of my spam titles. What would happen if I actually did wrap my feet in aluminium foil and waited for an hour? Nothing except me feeling a little foolish, I suspect.

I have been thinking about doing a daily entry in June. I have been tossing up between saying "I have half a mind to do a daily entry" or saying "I am in two minds about doing a daily entry". I suppose half a mind by two minds is one, so perhaps I have a mind to do a daily entry. Half a mind, a mind, two minds, all meaning the same thing. Word maths.

We had a dead tree removed from the side of the house a few months ago, leaving a new and empty area visible from the kitchen window. We're still working on a long-term plan for it, but today I filled it in for the short-term. A few months ago I bought a big bag of tulip bulbs, thirty in all, ten different varieties in shades of blue, purple and pink. They've been chilling in the vegetable crisper for months and today I finally got my act together to plant them in the new bed. Something to look forward to through the winter months.

Last week my vegetable steamer fell apart. It was one of those metal ones that sits in the saucepan and folds out like a flower, and a couple of its petals fell off. Today I went to buy a new one. I found one just like my broken one, but the helpful lady in the homewares shop took something off the shelf and said, "Have you seen these?" I had, in fact, seen them, but I'd thought they were measuring cups. But they weren't! They were steamers. And they were bright and they were novel, so I bought them instead. I look forward to steaming one sad individual serve of vegetables in the little one.

May books read

i have been doing cross-stitch of an evening lately, which cut back on my reading time in May. That, and having a bad run of starting and stopping books I'm not enjoying, means it's a short reading list this month.

* The Purple Valley - Malcolm Saville (1964) ★ ★ ★
( Read more... )

* The Plant Messiah: Adventures in Search of the World's Rarest Plants - Carlos Magdalena (2017) ★ ★ ★ ★
( Read more... )

When I was little, there was an ad on TV for a product called Tarn Off. It was a bottle of cleaning fluid, and in the ad a glamorous lady in a lovely blue dress had a pile of tarnished jewellery and what not, and she would dip each item half into a bowl of Tarn Off, and hold it up to show the half clean, half tarnished brass coaster or whatever. I wanted nothing more than a bottle of Tarn Off. Why, if I had a bottle of Tarn Off, I would be the happiest child in all the world! But my mother refused to buy it, stating (correctly) that I would leave a trail of half-dipped spoons around the house. To this day, I think about Tarn Off more often than you'd expect.

This week, for instance, I found myself thinking about Tarn Off when I went to get a silver chain necklace I haven't worn for a while, and found it was discoloured. If only there was a product that I could dip it into to clean it! You can still get Tarn Off, apparently, but I just used bicarb soda and boiling water and the necklace cleaned up beautifully.

Next problem, though: I hang all my necklaces on a miniature (30cm high) silver hatstand that I inherited from my grandmother, but they somehow manage to tangle themselves up. They seem to be hanging there, motionless, but when you turn your back, they knot themselves together. You can't wear just one of us, they say, you'll have to wear us all at once. I searched for "jewellery storage ideas" and this was one of the first things that came up. So I bought one and it arrived on Friday and I have spent far more time than I should admit sliding it along the clothes rack in my wardrobe to look at one side and then the other. I am so easily entertained.

This week is also the start of the very short period that achachas are available in the supermarket. I bought a bagful, as I always do whenever I see them. I'm apparently the only one, because the kids at the supermarket checkout have never seen them before. Today's checkout assistant was a teenage boy who looked at them curiously and asked what they were. I told him and he poked at the touch screen before saying in triumph, "There they are!"

Finally, this week I went to the theatre. The theatre has a new policy of allowing people to take glasses of wine in with them. I don't know why this annoys me as much as it does. I mean, you can buy water and snacks at the bar and take them in with you. Why should the glasses of wine you buy at the same bar be any different? Maybe it was the smell, just because I'm not used to smelling it in the theatre. (I don't like the smell of popcorn either.)

PS: Tarn Off! (Why did she let all her silverware get into that state in the first place?)

Here is a thing I never knew existed: a pasta tap. As in, a tap right above the stove top for ease of filling your saucepan. I can't say I'm tempted by this idea. It looks cluttered. And I think I can manage to carry my saucepan of water the single metre between my sink and my stove top.

Do you remember last year Sydney had a competition to name a ferry and it ended up being called Ferry McFerryface? Well, it turns out Ferry McFerryface wasn't the winner. It wasn't even on the shortlist. It's all a bit confusing, because there seem to be multiple lists and different numbers of votes, but as far as I can tell, the winner was, sigh, Boaty McBoatface, but since that was what the English one was meant to be, they picked Ferry McFerryface as being in a similar vein. Only now all this has come out, they've renamed it after children's author and illustrator, May Gibbs.

But! Late breaking news! When I was looking for the links to the story I read this morning, I came across an update saying that May Gibbs may have been ineligible as a name under the competition rules, because the name was meant to be science or environment-related (which doesn't explain how Ferry McFerryface got through). So there may be more to come. (There is also an actual, living person, Ian Kiernan, who was apparently told last year that the ferry would be named after him, and he has done nothing but complain ever since it wasn't. I mean, I get that he was excited to have it named after him, but he could do with being a bit more chill about it.)

In other news, my new driver's licence arrived today, resplendent with my face sans glasses. It was gratifying to discover that I am no more hideous without them than I am with them. No less hideous either, but no more, so that was nice. Only I look... do I look... do I seem a bit... "You look ginger," said my mother. "How did they turn your hair red?" What magic has the VicRoads camera wrought? At least it's my hair this time, not tomato bright cheeks like it normally is.

I think I've mentioned before that I absolutely cannot pass by decorative items that are alone on supermarket shelves. Why does no-one love that last one? Why does it call to me? Why does it look at me with such sad eyes?

In related news, I now have a Christmas penguin. Look at its little face!

This afternoon, we cleaned the filters from the kitchen flue. Eek. And ick.

I wrote yesterday about Geelong's high tech parking meters, only to open today's paper to discover that the City by the Sea is getting even higher tech ones. Apparently our new meters will link payment to a registration plate, so if I only use 30 minutes of my hourly ticket, I won't be able to pass it to someone else. Boo. That's something I've always liked about our parking lots, people offering their tickets as they leave.

I looked out the kitchen window this morning and saw a little dog dashing about the garden: Chester Next Door, who is not allowed out of his yard. We still don't have a fence between us, but Brian built a temporary, waist-high, dog-proof fence half-way across their lawn. Only not dog-proof, apparently. I called Chester over then picked him up and carried him home, noticing that the not-dog-proof fence had been moved a couple of metres further out.

I said to Kim Next Door, "There's been a breach of the perimeter." She shook her head at Chester, and he looked back, unrepentant.

"I think it will be behind the shed," she said. "He was sniffing around the back of it while I was hanging the clothes out. Did you see Brian moved his little fence? I made him do that because he'd put it in front of the clothesline, so I had to lift the clothes trolley over it to get to the washing line." We tsked at Brian's lack of priorities.

When we renovated the bathroom, we also bought a new loo. I didn't put a photo in my tour a few weeks ago because... well, I mean, it's a loo. It looks exactly like you imagine it looks. Only it's slightly higher than our old loo was. That took a bit of getting used to. You'd sit down and find yourself sitting much sooner than anticipated. And now I have got used to it, the problem is reversed. All other loos are now too low. I went to the loo at work yesterday and nearly fell in.

I am still working one day a week at my old work, helping with audit preparation. I will be doing that for another month or so.I have made some spreadsheets that are works of art. I am enjoying that. There is stuff I do not enjoy, but that's for another day.

Jenny/NA is organising her annual Linkee party (Linkee being a board game she bought specially for the occasion last year). Last year she did all the catering herself. This year, I said that as the party is next Friday and I don't work Fridays, could I help? So I have been tasked with making mini quiches. I am thinking three sorts: pancetta and roast capsicum, spinach and feta, and maybe mushroom and caramelised onion. Any other suggestions?

I received the grade on my final Masters paper. Apparently my thoughts on the lightly fictional 'Western Doctor Training Ltd' as a learning organisation were worth 92%. I'm quite pleased with that.

Weekly update: This week, a tour!

Back in September, when I was on my death bed with the flu, my mother took a few photos of the old bathroom. ( Old bathroom )

And what does it look like now? ( New bathroom )

(Just as a note, this is the last of the Dame's contemporary romance novels. Next time: she ventures into non-fiction.)

Do Not Call
The phone rang last night. The woman said, "Oh, hello, Miss Daisyname. I'm just calling from the Do Not Call register, and I want to know if you are receive many nuisance callers?"

I said, "I think you might be the nuisance caller. It's ten o'clock at night." As I put the receiver down, I could hear her saying, "Oh, at night?"

Anyway, I didn't really think it was the Do Not Call register, so I googled to see what sort of scam that call was. Apparently if I'd said yes, I receive nuisance calls, she would have asked for my credit card details so she could deduct a fee to put me on the Do Not Call register. Cheeky.

A conversational u-turn
The painters were hard at work earlier in the week. The head painter talks in a theatrical boom, and his offsider is a quietly spoken man called Kel. On Friday, they were looking forward to the car race at Bathurst over the weekend. On Tuesday, they talked of nothing else. Well, almost nothing else.

Painter: Bathurst, Bathurst, Bathurst.
Kel: Bathurst, Bathurst, Bathurst.
Painter: Car race, car race, car race.
Kel: Car race, car race, car race.
Painter: Car race, car race, car race. [pause] So, tell me Kel... what do you think about Kim Jong-Un?

That... took a turn.

A win (nearly)
After many, many weeks of coming third, the quiz team made it up to second this week. Woo.

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todayiamadaisy

May 2022

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Entries tagged with home

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