Smokey the Magnificent

So I was walking home from the shops today when I realised I hadn’t removed the chocolate chips from their nestled position in the top of the pram in order to pay for them. And by the time I trekked back to pay for them there was a giant queue,which I felt was karmically unfair. Not that paying for one’s chocolate chips is really enough of a moral victory to entitle one to cosmic brownie points; one could almost say it was the bare minimum, morality-wise; but still.

Anyway, the same thing having happened some months back with a tube of basil, it made me realise just how easy shoplifting must be. Or was it the crystal clarity of my unstained soul shining out my eyes that made the checkout girls assume I had paid for the goods? Difficult to say. It’s a pity one couldn’t be a sort of mystery shopper for security devices - “whatever you can get out of the store without us noticing, you can keep”. See, that would be a fun job. Similarly for casino heists and breaking out of prisons. I have no particular desire to do any of those things, but it’d be nice to know if I could. I bet the chappies in The Great Escape occasionally had thrills of glee at their licence to do illicit things - forgery, vandalism and petty theft, for instance - for a good cause.

It is Tuesday morning, and The Canadian remains unmulched. Aren’t you proud? I had Mother’s billets over last night for dinner - also Canadian, as it turned out - and we waxed very merry and all was well. One of the girls gained my approval by being properly sensible of the perfections of the snortlepig - in fact, she was pretty enthusiastic about everything. Apparently, not only is my lasagna better than her momma made and my butterscotch chiffon mousse the best thing she’d ever tasted, but Helpdesk Man and I are the perfect couple. Which, uh, we don’t get told a lot… at least not in a good way. So there that is.

Today I plan to spend playing catchup with the housework. Having an extra person in the house kinda throws me off, which is unfortunate. So when this pig wakes up I’ll finish cleaning the stove, hang out the washing, vacuum and try to nip down to the shops between squalls of rain.

Yesterday the billets came over and helped paint the sewing room… or junk room, as it should more precisely be called. We only got one coat done, but it already looks considerable brighter. It’ll do my psyche no end of good to be able to keep my sewing machine out all the time without cluttering up the kitchen table.

In other news, we have a camera! My photography skills are non-existant, as this blog so amply demonstrates; but with a more-than-six-pixel camera they may improve.

So, tell me. If you could have any job in the world, what would it be? I mean a job that actually exists (ie. not “chocolate taster at the Cadbury factory” - unless that does exist, but I doubt it); and a job category rather than a person (ie. you can’t just say you want to be Bill Gates, although I hope my Gentle Readers wouldn’t dream of wanting to be him). Helpdesk Man, when asked this question, immediately said “Graphic designer”, which happens to be exactly what he’s starting up a business doing. And while that gives me a warm glow and all, I had to question his imagination. Wouldn’t he rather be the swordfighting consultant for movies, I asked? He wasn’t sure. But anyway, I can hardly complain, given that my own choices were eqully second-guessy. They included:

• Travel writing, my initial response. But on the other hand, it’s not a career which meshes well with a snortlepig. I’d always be wanting to take Helpdesk Man and the pig along, or feeling guilty about leaving the former at the mercy of the latter.. and the chances are high that I wouldn’t last ten minutes on foreign soil. I’d lose my toothbrush or my sense of direction or my life or summat.
• Designing theme parks. Which I would very much enjoy, I think. Only I have no engineering or draughtsmanship experience, and not a very practical mind. Plus, the first yobbo to kill himself by attempting to leap from a moving roller-coaster to the Ferris wheel would unleash crushing guilt upon me, not to mention the scorn of public opinion and a hefty lawsuit. And then the Dead Frogs haunted house ride would get clogged up by someone’s vomit, and the hedge maze would become littered with Coke bottles and lose its woodland charm, and I’d end up hating the human race and wearing a dingy red bathrobe, rolling cigarettes with crabbed hands in a tower. And I’m not sure that’s healthy.
• Being a midwife. Which again, I’d enjoy… but out of all the careers in the world? Not really. Not when it would involve staying up all night, a fet I’ve never successfully managed to accomplish. Pretty near, the time we saw the midnight showing of Return of the King; but not quite. And again, too much potential for crushing guilt, the sc. of pub. op. and a h. laws.
• Writing fiction. Possibly the strongest contender thus far, with the caveat that said fiction be successful. Doable from home, own boss, no capital, and the potential for travel and glamour should things pan out - and of course, the prospect of being able to say to people in singles bars, “Oh, I’m a writer”. Too many careers have been chosen without due deference to this criterion, and the world has suffered accordingly.

But then, being a movie reviewer would have its charms. As would working in the movies, as a director or writer or something I mean, not the Best Boy Grip. And I’ve always fancied being a clockmaker or a jeweller. Or a chocolatier. Even being a really top-notch waiter in a v. swanky establishment sort of appeals, but I do not have the moustache for it.

Yourselves?

So. Plan for this week:

1. Feed The Canadian.
2. Attempt to amuse The Canadian, possibly by learning to boogie or donning a false moustache. (I rag-curled my hair last night after reading a book about 1940s hairstyles, but it didn’t seem to make an impression. Side note, pin curls do not seem feasible for wrist-length hair. A pity. If masked men ever come and shave my head, remind me to try pin-curls at pixie-cut length before it grows back.)
3. Tomorrow: Make dinner for guests (Helpdesk Man is away at choir practice, so am inviting Mamma’s billets for dinner in order to prevent The Canadian and myself from sitting across a vast polished-oak table eating snipe in silence, while the grandfather clock ticks until I finally do him in with the fish fork just to break the ice); walk the pig to the shops in the morning to buy sugar soap; vacuum the sewing room and lay plastic dropcloths down for painting; think of Tuesday’s dinner (logistically, not wistfully; that would be Silly).
4. Auxiliary plan: compost The Canadian.

I write this squirreled away in a corner as my home is overrun with Canadians. Well, one. He isn’t German after all; that one was married, so stayed with his wife in someone else’s bigger house. At present The Canadian isn’t here, Mother having taken pity on our inability to exchange more than six meaningful words with each other. In an attempt to be bright and cheery when he arrived I asked if he was into super-heroes (we’ve just started watching Smallville; kinda lame thus far, but apparently it improves) and he said “What?” We made him watch the pilot episode of Firefly today but he stared in silence and then went to his room. Seven more days…

On the bright side, it has caused me to rethink my vague notion that we could earn some extra coin by having an international student board with us for a term sometime. Social interaction and gracious hostessing, clearly not our thing. I tried to make a list of potential conversation-starters for the rest of the week, but I don’t think “Would you rather be killed by a chainsaw or a grater?” is likely to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And I already know how many siblings he has. (Two. Brother. Sister. Both older. His words, not mine.)

On Friday I spent much time slugging round town on errands. Who knew that baby-sized gumboots are impossible to find? The only ones that nearly fit had Disney Winnie-the-Pooh on them, which I eschew. I did manage to buy four metres of nice sort-of-steampunky blue-grey stripy fabric for $12, and to get a poster laminated. I also had to trek to a distant suburb to pick up some books for a friend, which wasn’t entirely a success. The woman with the books wanted me to pick them up from kindergarten while she was picking up her son. I was pleased, because it was the kindy I used to work at and I hoped one or two of the teachers I knew might still be there. I didn’t expect they would, because last time I talked to them two of them had said they wanted to get out of teaching due to increasing fascism of the part of The Man. So when I strolled in and saw a familiar face at the board I smiled winsomely and said “K, I didn’t expect to still see you here! How are you?”

Only later did it occur to me that a) her name is J, K is the other teacher, and b) it probably sounded like I felt she had Failed in Life for not being a principal now. Or something.  Strike two for socialisation.

So anyhoo, what do you think about the fact that no Pixar film has yet featured a female protagonist? This open letter sparked some interesting discussion, and as I was just involved in another discussion about the sexism or otherwise of the Disney Princess franchise, it seemed timely.

Would you rather live in a house where the laundry smelled perpetually of fish, or where there was an unremoveable moosehead on the living room wall that was not the taxidermist’s finest work?

Helpdesk Man is no good at questions like this. First he insisted that he’d be able to remove the moosehead, and then he said he’d rather have the moosehead because it wouldn’t bother him, and when I pointed out that by gaining the moosehead he would be losing a Smokey, because I would not cohabit with such an object, he tried to suggest selling the house, which is clearly cheating. So then I changed to premise to the fish-smelling laundry vs having a pile of dead frogs fall into his lap once a month with a sodden ftthhp, and he refused to answer. He is a gurly man.

Anyway, that’s not what I came here to post. This week’s Challenge has been all shot to I hardly like to say. And tomorrow I have Errands to run. Viz:

• Take Tolkien poster to laminating shop to be laminated
• Pick up books for friend
• Buy velcro, double-sided interfacing and possibly material for steampunk skirt
• Go to library (?)
• Look for v large woollen op-shop jumper to felt into coat for the dude

Today the snortlepig learned how to wipe her nose on a hanky and wipe her smeggy hands on my jeans. I guess one out of two isn’t bad.

She has also perfected a game called “CHICKEN, CHICKEN, LIGHTBULB”. Despite the name it is a relative of neither Duck Duck Goose nor Badger Badger Mushroom, but a rather abstract pastime performed by pointing. She points at the chicken calendar on the wall until one says “CHICKEN!”, then beams with glee. She then points to the cut-out chicken picture from last year’s calendar on the other wall until you say “CHICKEN!” again. More glee. Then she tips her head back and stares at the lightbulb with an upthrust finger and a beatific grin… you see where this is going. Sometimes she mixes it up and we have a hilarious game of “LIGHTBULB, LIGHTBULB, CHICKEN CHICKEN CHICKEN”, and occasionally, when it’s late at night and she’s out of her mind on milks, we have a wobbly-fingered game of “CHICKEN DOORFRAME FLY-SPECK-ON-CEILING”. She is an odd child, and will probably turn out badly.

Thoughts?

For me, cleaning the house is 99% inspiration and 1% perspiration; it’s all about the mental rather than the physical oomph.  My mind usually being on Higher Things (such as the perplexing question “Would you accept a million dollars if it meant that once every week for the rest of your life at a random time you would throw up with only thirty seconds’ warning?”), it is unlikely ever to occur to me that the doorframes need wiping down or the valance needs waxing, or… you know… whatever it is housewives do.

But just last week I lit upon a stratagem so brilliant I’m considering approaching the publishers of The Secret and marketing it as a sequel.  What you do is take a microfiber cloth, the kind that works wet or dry and can wipe up an entire powdered elephant without flinching.  You clean something with it until it is good and smeggy, then toss it in the machine.  When you next do a load of laundry and are hanging up the wet clothes, you come across the now-pristine and usefully damp microfiber cloth and think “Aha!”  So instead of hanging it up to dry, you wander round the house with it until you find a surface that needs cleaning and clean it, pausing not nor blenching until the cloth is once more in a state of disarray.  Then you simply toss it back into the enpty washing machine, where it awaits the next load.

The good thing about this is that microfiber cloths can be used on a whole range of surfaces that are easy to forget about cleaning, such as mirrors and windows and windowsills and… well, in my house, everything really.  The first time I did this I got all excited and wiped off half the house, starting with cleanish surfaces and moving to more atrocious ones. I’ve been doing it for three weeks now, and my ceilings have never been less fly-specked.

Try it.  It’ll make your house a good 3% cleaner, I guarantee… and when your husband comes home from work and says “What did you do today?” you can beam at him with the smugness of a Stepford wife and say “I wiped the skirting board in the bathroom“.  And he’ll be like “Uh, k” and then cautiously congratulate you, eyes flicking round nervously as if he is afraid you will go for his neck.  And that is a Good Thing.

I didn’t get any sewing done yesterday, even though I carefully packed up several small projects to take to Mum’s house. It turns out transcribing music and arranging it into two-part harmonies for women is not the doddle one might think. I have a whole new respect for upper-class Victorian young women. And you know what? I bet embroidering fire-screens is harder than you’d think as well. My small sister and I spent about four hours at the piano and ended up with a mere two songs - “Bilbo’s Last Song”, lyrics from a poem by Tolkien and music by Donald Swann, and a humorous madrigal-type do called “Bethnal Green” with slightly saucy lyrics.

Challenge-wise, I made a citrus tart and wrote a Suite article entitled “Elements of Steampunk Style”, which promptly won an Editor’s Choice Award, if you don’t mind. So today I’m working on another couple of steampunk-related articles, although somewhat intermittently due to my unexpected desire to clean the house. Long experience has taught me to go with this feeling, as it comes but rarely. It’s a pity we aren’t conditioned to think of housekeeping as a creative venture, whereby we can legitimately claim to suffer from “cleaner’s block” and blame our shortcomings on the lack of a Muse. As it is, the only way I can be reasonably sure of wanting to clean the house is by entering late pregnancy, which requires some extensive pre-planning and is ultimately counter-productive, cleanliness-wise.

So here’s a question. If someone offered you the chance to be a magnificent sculptor on the condition that all your other talents decreased by 50%, would you take it?

This weekend had its ups and downs. The snortlepig slammed a water bottle into my eye socket, causing painful although not visible bruising on my cheekbone. And Helpdesk Man was sick yesterday almost to the point of spewage, so had to stay home from church, poor sossage.

On the bright side we took a nice long walk into town on Saturday, road-testing a harness/leash contraption for the snortlepig. It worked pretty well - she didn’t seem to mind it or anything. Of course, a woman from church frowned when I told her about it and told me it was treating her like a dog. Unfortunately this reminded me that as soon as we’d put the harness on the pig had started crawling on all fours, snuffling through the hedges and squatting down every few minutes with a distant look in her eyes… which made rebuttal difficult.

Ooh! And I bought some boots. By myself! Uncoerced! For someone who hates shoe-shopping as much as I this is a distinct psychological victory. My previous boots were literally worn through, despite being re-soled at astronomical cost quite recently, so it was about time.

Anyhoo. This week was going to be as free as a bird, but through a series of circumstances outside my control it appears we’re hosting a German Bible college student for eight days, starting this Saturday. So I’ll need to spend a good portion of this week cooking and squirrelling away food. It is perhaps unfortunate that Mother told me he is German, as we have all been muttering “Don’t mention the war!” to each other ever since and will probably offend him terribly. (My plan was to be supremely tactful verbally, but to serve nothing but Polish food at each and every meal until he succumbed to crippling national guilt; but Mother vetoed it.)

So this week’s challenge is:

• Bake/cook something every day to freeze
• Write one Suite article every day
• Do a small amount of sewing every day

I’m going over to Mum’s tonight to riffle through her sheet music for singing group-appropriate pieces, so I also gotta bake something to take - a dessert, I think. And somewhere during the week I need to do my Bible study homework, make a vague plan of action for the next singing group meeting, bake for ditto and deal with a bunch of  Suite101 comments.

Right, so, anyway… more steampunk! I found a brilliant site, The Steampunk Home, which contains absolutely drool-worthy libraries full of sextants, chandeliers made from laboratory glass, bookcase doors, bathrooms papered with old world maps… It is only our incipient brokeitude which is preventing me ordering vast quantities of wrought iron and brass nails online. I have decided that at the very least, the library/study/office of our dream home has to be steampunk. (See? It’s just as well we didn’t already build our dream home. If we had I’d be wandering round our perfectly nice vaguely-country-themed office thinking “Meh”. That’s the worrying thing about building a dream home, not that we’re in a financial position to actually justify losing sleep over it for another twenty years.) And I want a steampunk bathroom with exposed copper piping and my various hair potions in flasks and test-tubes… and Job 38-42 written in sepia on the cream walls. You see? My needs are few and modest. Oh, although I do want a wunderkabinet. And a dirigible, obviously.

I should also give a nod to Steam Society’s Etsy shop - the highest-quality collection of steampunk jewelry I’ve seen yet, even if quite a few of the pieces do look reminiscent of the Snitch. And for the sheer “Huh?” factor of it: Steampunk Star Wars.