Smokey the Magnificent

I have not updated this blog for some time. According to all good bloggers, this is very bad practice. Regular content is key. Flee to the south of France for a week without your laptop, and you’ll come back to find all your readers have died of lupus or defected to Steve Pavlina or summat.

The trouble is, things have been happening. And when one thing happens and I fail to record it, something else goes and happens too, and the psychological pressure of writing up a mega-long post doing full literaru justice to both events begins to weigh on the brain like a large, smallish brick. Add a few more eventful days and what do you get? A vicious cycle of sulking and resentment. So I have been grumpily ignoring this-here platform to the wider world for weeks, and only return now because a) I’m cleaning out the freezer, an event which demands publicity and b) I’m bored.

I used to sulk at my diaries too. Also at the freezer. This is why Steve Pavlina is mega-successful and I can’t afford olives. On the bright side, I found some oldish Kapiti double cookies and cream in the freezer. Who said virtue wasn’t its own reward?

Anyway. Events. Yus. Firstly, we now have a flatmate, who for consistency’s sake I shall refer to as Flatmate Man. He has brought with him a rather nice bookshelf filled with graphic novels, DVDs and Terry Pratchetts I haven’t read; also a copy of Nourishing Traditions. So life could be worse, even if I have to wear more clothes around the house. Plus, he reads this blog, so what can I say?

Secondly, my practically only small sister and I went to Rainbow’s End, New Zealand’s fanciest and also least fancy theme park. It was an interesting experience. The trip was largely to determine if my small sister is keen on rides, so she can save up to come with us to Disneyland next year (reliant on Helpdesk Man’s successful pursuit of lucre). As such, having Disneyland on the brain, it was diffcult to avoid noticing that Rainbow’s End lacks a certain lustre in comparison to the Happiest Place on Earth. The throoms were set into a fake rock wall, yes, presumably in an effort to make us feel excitingly like King Saul; but the stromgly-worded laminated list of instructions for cleaning said throoms rather spoilt the effect - particularly as they hadn’t been followed. There were a couple of new, shiny rides called the Invader and Power Surge; but also the Gold Rush ride, whose queue was twice as long as the ride as a pathetic homage to many years ago when the ride first opened and was actually popular. Being a Friday, there were approximately twenty people in the park and four staff members. This was good for queues but bad for motion sickness… it turned out riding the Invader three times running is less efficient a use of time than you might think. And it’s a little awkward riding seven rides with the same two guests - I don’t believe Miss Manners ever adequately delineated the nuances of such a relationship, particularly when much of it is conducted at high G-forces. Nevertheless, as long as we avoided the peeling arcade section and derelict hot dog stands we managed to keep the crippling depression at bay and have a rollicking time. The general atmosphere of the park can be summed up by the website’s description of the Cinema 180 attraction. Clearly worrying that the name Rainbow’s End might conjure up inappropriately fantastical images of joy and splendour, the website tempts would-be revellers thusly:

A more mundane feature of the design is the drain in the centre of the dished floor, which is carpeted with polyester swimming pool carpet. This is so the floor can be hosed down after the inevitable motion sickness felt by some patrons when watching Cinema 180°!

As it turned out, I very nearly availed myself of this technological wizardry during the film. But still though. And in other news, why is it that I can ride the Fear Fall five times without blinching and the Power surge with only a manic giggle, yet become paralysed with terror while floating past animatronic gnomes in an artificial log? The Log Flume is smegging creepy. I eschew it.

It’s Easter Saturday - that strange, lonesome day in the middle of a bunch of public holidays, presumably designed to prevent teenage girls who work at the ice cream shop from spending those public holidays sunning themselves in Raratonga. But I haven’t worked at the ice cream shop for years. The situation, then, currently runs thusly:

• Helpdesk Man is at a friend’s house playing a violent computer game for the second day straight. He will probably stagger in at midnight, have nightmares about psionic monkeys and pull the blankets over his head in the morning, plaintively declaring he doesn’t want to go to church.
• My dear friend April was gonna come by and watch movies, but is sleepy after her sister’s wedding so changed her mind.
• I am home alone with the snortlepig.

On occasions this sort of situation depresses me, but on others - like when, as now, I have nearly half a large jam tart in the fridge - the thrill of possibility runs through my veins. Because anything could happen. I could, if I had the oomph, walk the pig down to the public gardens and feed stale hot cross buns to the duckies. I could concoct a ridiculously elaborate dinner and leave the dishes. I could begin a new sewing project. I could start a novel. I could dance around to the Beatles in my smalls. I could rag-curl my hair and smear kaolin clay on my face, and then quote lines from Restless. I could watch old episodes of Lois and Clark. Or I could clean a small, insignificant part of the house impeccably so that Helpdesk Man would notice in a week or two and make a comment and I could be all smug - I get a kick out of that, sometimes. I cleaned a wall the other day, and it made an astonishing difference. I recommend this.

Or I might watch Monty Python clips on YouTube. Or go through the hand-me-downs in the glory box to see if anything fits the snortlepig for next season. Or, ooh, make popcorn. Or something for church lunch tomorrow, which would be more to the point.

Or, I could get distracted googling the top 10 food blogs while writing this post, and suddenly find it’s 7PM and the piggie has been asleep on my arm for so long it’s gone numb. Still, though. Things could happen.

As some of you may know, I’m a vague, lazy adherent to Traditional Foodism, aka the Weston A Price Foundation system of nutrition. Of late I have decided to step it up a notch, and thus rashly made a pledge in the presence of my online peers to:

• eat fish twice a week
• eat organ meats once a week (and a tablespoon of liver hidden in a largeish lasagna counts - what am I, Wonder Woman?)
• eat yoghurt five times a week
• and consume chicken broth in some form three times a week.

Fish twice a week is a tad pesky, as I don’t drive and only go to the supermarket once a week. I might have to buy frozen, which is problematic because Helpdesk Man once violently hurled after eating some frozen fish - and even though I’m pretty sure it was coincidental, it causes him to view all iced seafood with a rheumy and skittish eye. I cannot blame him, really. I ate a kebab once with little bits of carrot in, and - well, we shall not speak of it. Anyway, apparently fish roe is the most nutrient-dense form of seafood, followed by shellfish, but I simply cannot bring myself to look a mussel in the eye, and the snortlepig made friends with some at the supermarket the other day (”Bath! A having a bath!”), so fish it is. Fissssssh.

So, yup. Tomorrow the lawn-mowing man will be upon us with his claw outstretched for the taking of lucre, so I have to get up early in the morning and walk the piggie to the butcher’s (not as terrible as it sounds). Helpdesk Man is away on Monday nights, so… let’s see here…

Monday: Pasta for dinner, go to butcher’s in morning, get cash out for lawn-mowing man, make hot cross buns for in-laws. Yoghurt for breakfast. Get Helpdesk Man to charm the chappie at work into putting free bus credits on my bus card, which is running out (he thinks the snortlepig is cute in the face - v handy, thrift-wise). Chicken soup for lunch. Try to finish knitting the snortlepig’s other wristlet.

Tuesday:  Yoghurt for breakfast. Go into town and buy wool to knit this top for the snortlepig. Get library books. Stop in at supermarket on the way home and buy fissssh. Fissssh for dinner. Wait, smeg. Mum’s homeschool choir is having its first performance at a rest home, and I am expected to attend for reasons of dubious usefulness. Do the shopping in the afternoon, then. Or whenever the performance isn’t. When is it? Then my choir practice at night. Gotta make something. Something bananoid, gotta use them up. Yus. Defrost gravy beef and liver.

Wednesday: Yoghurt again. Make something crockpoid with the gravy beef, incorporating a minute, token amount of liver. Soak rice. Chicken soup for lunch.

Thursday: Shopping with sister-in-law. Buy fish! Eat fish. Red fish. Blue fish. Have rice with the fish, cooked in chicken stock.

Friday: Date night with Helpdesk Man, a concept that has become laughably meaningless of late, but which will probably involve eating steak on the couch and watching the A-Team while the snortlepig kicks us in the face. Must ask Helpdesk Man what he wishes to eat sometime before Thursday, so as to buy it from the supermarket again. Yoghurt again - by this time, gut is teeming with iridescent life to the point where we will probably cancel Saturday altogether in order to sprint a half-marathon.

Wait. On Friday my practically-nearly-only-brother-in-law will be staying the night in honour of Easter. I shall have to ask my sister what he eats. It better not be fisssh.

At some point during this whole protein-laden debacle, I should also finish sewing the snortlepig’s spotty winter top, query a couple of print articles and write a few more for the web. And clean the light shades, on which flies have rudely throomed. Also experiment with a sugar-salt-water syrup, which tonight I used on my hair admixed with henna as a moisturising agent, but which needs to be more scientifically tested next time I wash it.

K.

To all those who are wont to ring me up for solace and chitchat: don’t bother. The snortlepig put the phone through the dishwasher, and we suspect it don’t sing no more. Clean, though.

Right. After much deep thought I have finalised my list of New Year’s Resolutions. Here they do am.

• Get learner’s and restricted licence
• Spend one solid hour a day (Monday to Friday) doing housework and/or food preparation. Counting up the random minutes of domesticity during the day and hoping they came to an hour does not count.
• Have nine articles accepted for print
• Get singing group ready and worthy to busk by November
• Write one hour’s worth of fiction a week
• Learn to make ferments a la Traditional Foods
• Increase my Suite101 income from *ahem* dollars a month to *cough* dollars a month by December

Now I need to figure out some kind of spreadsheet dealio to put on the fridge and tick things offa, because we all know ticking things off is the essence of success. (Or crossing things out, if you swing that way.)

I also need to hunt up my old road codes. I’ve been taking this test several times a day with increasing levels of success, but I’m still a bit fuzzy about the colour-coding of cats’-eyes and tbe exact applications of the Give Way rule. Once I figure out the soonest time I can go in to take the test, I’ll make a plan of study. (Does anyone know? Do you have to book, or can you just show up?)

Last night we had a successful if sparsely attended braai in order to celebrate the New Year. We drank peach-flavoured grape juice (forbidden under Levitical law, but extremely nommy), watched Zombieland and got sat on by the snortlepig.

• Nobody is going to come to the baby shower-cum-Tupperware party tomorrow. I can’t blame them. I’m tempted to ditch it, and I’m hosting. I did finally get hold of the Tupperware lady, and she assured me she’d “only speak for half an hour”. Half an hour? How much is there to say? What if I bring up bisphenol-A in a fit of rebellion? What if I panic when nobody buys anything and end up with microwaveable jelly moulds? What if the woman gives me a Look to indicate scorn and hatred for my having dragged her out on a Saturday? Only one person has RSVPed, and she made very sure to say she couldn’t stay long - presumably so she could scarper at the first sight of a pourable cereal container.
• I have no idea how to structure this article of mine that’s due on Monday. None. And it’s 800 words too short.
• I also have 6000 more words to go on NaNoWriMo. Most of them will probably be rewrites of the article. Feh.
• I was supposed to go shopping for groceries with Sister-in-Law today. She is not online and has not shown up. How am I to get the ingredients to make the lemon slice, the chocolate cornflake slice, the focaccia, the puff pastry cheese straws, the pecan tarts, the forgotten cookies and the cupcakes? And how will I have time to make them?
• Also, the baby quilt. It is Not Done. Not remotely done. It is barely even a flimsy. I can chain-stitch the stems this evening in theory, but only if the snortlepig isn’t climbing all over me. Hah.
• And I have to tidy up the garden, otherwise the church ladies will turn up and want to investigate every nook and cranny of it. And there’s a dead bird on the back lawn. Helpdesk Man, informed of this in panic-stricken tones, says consolingly “Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere”.

Ha! Word from Sister-in-Law. Am still in PJs. Half an hour, she says. This is OK. Will give the pig more time to nap. I will think of calming things, but not the ocean because that makes me nervy. Maybe the sky, although I had a horrible dream last night that - oh, never mind. I am clearly wibbling. Into the breach!

Occasionally when the dreary futility of life gets me down and I find myself pondering how wizened my knees will look at eighty, I go to TipNut and laugh at the tips.

To soften butter, for instance, it is recommended to take a butter curler or grater to it in order to increase its surface area and susceptibility to atmospheric variation. To which I say: Dude. Fling it in the microwave if you were dim enough not to get it out ahead of time (don’t feel bad, I never remember).

And to soften hard brown sugar, all a harried housewife has to do is this:

Buy a clay disc or if you have a pottery piece on hand (from a broken clay pot, etc.), set it in water for about 30 minutes. Dry the piece so it isn’t dripping wet. Put the clay piece in a container with the sugar and seal. Check after a few days. Keep the piece in with your sugar for months if you’d like–will keep it soft.

Am I just ridiculously lucky, or is hard brown sugar less of a global pandemic than TipNut’s 15 tips on the matter would suggest? Can anyone raise her hand if she’s ever actually found rock-hard brown sugar to be an issue? And keep it up if she’d rather go through the above process than simply stab the stuff with a fork? I didn’t think so.

And then there’s the recipe for “Real Whipped Cream”. “Recipe?” thunk Smokey upon reading this, being the kind of domestic cherub who whips up marinades with a slosh of this and that, all but twirling the pepper grinder. (Helpdesk Man was once impressed by this to the point of imitation, and gave Smokey the Magnificent’s husband-made morning sickness scrambled eggs a dash of red wine vinegar just to be arty. Friends, do not do this thing.) It turns out “Real Whipped Cream” has gelatine in it. Yummers. Better, however, than the imitation variety, made with sugar, egg whites and “2 large ripe bananas, sliced”. The mind reels.

TipNut also provides its readers with various recipes for homemade veggie washing solution. As opposed to buying it, presumably. That way lies madness.

I feel better already.

Apparently we’re very paranoid people. I found three sicky buckets under our be. We could have all vomited at once with ease, safety and hygiene. But we never did, and now we are moving house and it is too late.

Have you ever noticed that any occupation sounds faintly sordid and ironic when used as the descriptor of a corespondent? It’s absolutely true. Try it.

“My wife left me for her chiropractor.”

“Yesterday my husband eloped with an architect.”

“All was going well until Jan abruptly filed for divorce and moved in with the plumber.”

“Natalie arrived home to find her goldfish dead in the bowl, a pile of unpaid bills and a note from her husband saying he had fallen in love with a tour guide.”

“Tonight I ran into my wife with her new flame, a purveyor of steak knives from Tallahassee.”

“After her husband left her for a truck driver Bethanne took to drinking heavily.”

“I don’t see Matilda much any more. Last I heard she was still happy with the prison guard she left me for. They were expecting their third child in March.”

You see? While one presumably has nothing against architects, truck drivrs or even chiropractors, one’s sympathy is aroused - and one finds oneself forming a faint sneer and going “Oh, an architect. I bet his mommy still does his laundry.” Or ringing up seventeen of one’s closest friends to say “Did you hear about Pauline? Her husband ran off with a lady from Greenpeace!”

Also, I have discovered that the good Lord did not dower me with the ability to clean ovens. It’s probably a sign.

Today Brother-In-Law gave us a Kirby demonstration. Up until yesterday I didn’t know what a Kirby was; apparently, up until yesterday I hadn’t lived.

A Kirby is a vacuum cleaner, it turns out - but only if you say so with an ironic smile and a hasty qualification. For a well-trained Kirby not only sucks so hard that topsoil comes up through the carpet, it also blows leaves around your garden, buffs your car, scours your pots, massages your back, sands your furniture, de-dust-mites your upholstery, brushes your dog and unscrews your lightbulbs. I kid you not. And, as Brother-in-Law repeatedly pointed out, its price tag - approximately equivalent to the deposit on a largeish plantation - becomes far less angina-inducing when you consider how much you would spend by rushing out to separately purchase a leaf blower, light bulb unscrewer, massager, sander, dog brusher etc. Which begs a few rather major questions, if you ask me: but there you go.

We didn’t buy the Kirby. We were never going to, in fact. We’re broke, for one; we already have a vacuum cleaner; and we’re moving into a house with no carpets in three days. But no matter. Brother-in-Law simply needed to demonstrate a certain number of Kirbys for training purposes, the law degree being apparently less marketable than one might think. Which all makes me feel a lot better about my BA, although a lot worse about my vacuum cleaner, which we bought from Briscoes with wedding vouchers. Turns out it only removes surface dirt and has little or no impact on dust mites. And here I thought having a cord that goes schlp when you press the button was the height of chic. (Oddly enough, the Kirby does not possess this feature. Brother-in-Law was momentarily fazed when I pointed this out, as he was when I inquired about the company protocol should the Kirby achieve sentience. He recovered both times, however. He will be a good Kirby salesman, I think. I wonder if that’s a compliment?) Brother-in-Law shampooed our office carpet, and a good thing too - so in gratitude, I said I would pass on referrals. Anyone want a free Kirby demonstration, perchance? It’s quite fun. Theatrical, sort of. He fills all these pristine white filters with the scum of ages from your floor, and you can look at it and go “oo” in the same way that you might go “oo” if the doctor showed you a lump of matter extracted from a cyst in your knee, for example. Slightly repulsed awe; you know the feeling. He also flings around bits of sand and baking soda and black cloths, and makes you do a hundred strokes with your own pitiful vacuum cleaner, and asks you invasively leading questions about your tolerance for wallowing in your own sloughed-off skin cells… Helpdesk Man got all defensive and said “I LIKE sleeping in my skin cells, I PUT those there”… anyway it’s faintly provocative and edgy, like good street theatre, and even though you know you’re not going to buy a Kirby and he knows you’re not going to buy a Kirby and you know he knows and it’s all terribly pukkah and above-board, you still feel a faint twinge of guilt at the end and reflect sadly that your life will be a tad more dismal without the option of saying “Darling, you look so tense; let me get the Kirby” and accidentally attaching the sander instead of the massage pad. But then, it’s all somewhat predicated on the housewife actually doing housework, isn’t it? I mean, it doesn’t save time to be able to conveniently clean between the grooves of a ranch slider if you’ve already mastered the art of saving time by not cleaning between the grooves of a ranch slider, and having even felt pretty good about your life during this period. In fact I’m moderately confident having clean ranch-slider grooves would improve my overall quality of life by, what? 0.2%? Not even.

But anyway. If you can deal with all that, let me know. He’d be happy to demonstrate for you; ecstatic, even. You would make a fully-trained lawyer very happy, and if that isn’t the saddest thing you’ve heard all week I don’t know what is.

The question, then: Would you be flattered if someone told you you’d be a good vacuum cleaner salesman?