Smokey the Magnificent

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?

Well, duh. To do a third of the things required to move house.

I’ve made a list, three pages long and counting, of tasks ranging from “scrape paint off the bathroom floor” to “check if Tia Maria has gone off and throw out bottle if so”. Actually Helpdesk Man has to do the Tia Maria thing, all alcohol tastes like the sputum of Satan to me, wouldn’t know if it was good or bad. Does Tia Maria even go bad? Anyway. I was going to give myself Points for each task, but alas - the spirit is willing, but the funds are gone. All my Suite101 money has been amassed into the common fund, like a pure riverlet being swallowed by the roaring ocean. Bear in mind that analogy says more about the size of the riverlet than the ocean. But still though. Frivolous spending is on hold for the time being. Just as well I got that fabric before we found the house, no? :p Then again, I suppose I could still amass the points and hope my Suite income will start skyrocketing enough for me to make good on the debt one day. It’d certainly make moving house seem cheerier.

I’ll probably have to spend a good chunk of tomorrow taking the snortlepig back to the doctor, too. The nail failed to make its appearance, so she’ll need another X-ray to see what it’s up to. (Probably been assimilated, which means it will take only the mildest of electric shocks to transform her into Iron Pig, snortliest superdude of them all. Good reason not to get a trampoline, at least until she’s past the terrible twos.)

Oh yeah, and… anyone want to help us move house? *beams* Not this week, obviously. When the time comes. Sure you do. You promised you would, at Lent.

It is dis one. (Drat. Classified just expired.)

Now we just have to…

• try to coerce some poor homestay student into staying with us
• break the news to our current landlords, who were hoping we wouldn’t need to move until nearly November
• switch over Internet
• redirect our mail
• pack up all our belongings, decluttering as needed
• buy (preferably through bartering loaves of bread or Helpdesk Man’s soul or summat, being a bit strapped for cash) a mattress, some bookshelves, a desk lamp, two desks, three chests of drawers and a drier in order to accomodate our new arrangements and the homestay student
• come up with the dosh for 3 week’s bond plus 1 week’s rent (see above and cash-strappedness)
• clean the house
• scrape paint off various windows and floors from dodgy paint jobs
• get someone in to clean the carpet to erase the presence of the snortlepig
• find someone to babysit the chickens, as Mother (who kindly agreed to adopt them if the landlord didn’t fancy the idea, which he doesn’t) is away for moving week
• empty the garage, oh my

and… am I missing anything? All before October 2.

But still. A house. Yay. Better than a dose of swine flu, I always say… with conviction and fervor these days, as it happens.

…is to do at least one thing every day that will make moving house easier when the fateful day comes. I was thinking of cleaning under the spare bed today, for example: the snortlepig hid a potato under there some weeks ago and I’m curious to see how it’s coming along.