Category: domestic mysteries

New age TV

So, even though our television is circa 1988, we watch it the modern way. By waiting until things are way finished and then watching them back to back on DVD. We have been watching The West Wing. The result was a lot of late nights, because of that whole ‘just one more?’ thing. But I very much like watching things this way. It’s a lot more like reading a book than watching television.

Now we’re watching Love My Way. We haven’t finished The West Wing – we’ve still got series five and six to go – but no one feels like going to JB hi-fi right now to get series five. And since Love My Way was just sitting there waiting to be watched, we started on that.

I’ve got a small dilemma. The mister, who doesn’t know anything about such things unless I tell him, has no idea what is about to happen in Love My Way. And I’m not sure whether I should tell him. On the one hand, at least he’ll be prepared. He’s very bad at death and infedility. But on the other, he’s really gonna chuck the shits if I say ‘just one more’ and he stays up later than he wants to, and then…well, you know…

I guess it will resolve itself one way or another over the next couple of days.

a photo post


IMG_1538Originally uploaded by adelaide writer

A propos of nothing in particular, except that suse is right and I hardly ever show pictures and I do believe that blogs with pictures are best, this is what an apple looks like when you find it one year and a bit after you unknowingly left it in a bag which was accidentally shoved into the back of cupboard and later hidden by a row of empty jars which were being kept, as they were emptied one by one, in the hope that they would one day be (re)filled by the mister’s mother’s chutney, vintage 2008.

Amazing, innit? I do wish I’d been able to take a better photograph of it. Its folds and wrinkles were something to behold. They reminded me of that kelp you find on the rocks of the southern coasts. I think I find the sticker the most intriguing thing of all.

We’ve known each other (intimately) for twenty years, the mister and I

Things had been a bit scratchy, and…what’s that…oh yes, the stench of burning martyr was most definitely in the air when I said…
“but I said I didn’t want to go out for breakfast…I told you, after that first place you rang was full…I said ‘no, don’t worry about it, I don’t want to go after all'”.

I sat on the lounge, then swung around, lifted my legs and reclined.

To which he said:

“yes, I know what you said, but I did what you meant”. His hands clasped the back of his chair, but the whites of his knuckles never show.

To which I replied, “no, I meant I didn’t want to go out for breakfast after all. If I’d still wanted to go out for breakfast, I would have said ‘yes, that’s a good idea, let’s try King William Road instead”.

I cleared my throat and thought to myself I really need a shower.
And do you know what he said? Can you believe it? He said:

“You can’t start changing the rules of engagement now”.

To be continued I suppose.

Feng shui amongst other things

Somewhere not far from where I sleep is an apple. I suspect it is a half-eaten one. Certainly, it is more than just the core.

Do you remember the 70s Green Apple? Shampoo, laundry liquid, the powder other people’s mothers sprinkled on their carpets before they vacuumed.

This isn’t like that. You would not bottle this smell, artificially infuse it into things.

You would not advertise this smell.

I fall asleep vaguely aware that the apple is near. I wish it weren’t there in the way that I wish the week’s newspapers had not sprawled from my bed to the door, that my list of un-read books were stabler than it looks, that my glass of water were fresh.

The apple flavours my dreams which are, nonetheless, of enormous waves which carry without swamping me; of elevators taking me high and low; of children who purr.

I wake. The apple’s smell gives shape to my days. Before I have finished drying myself I am thinking of the lunchbox which didn’t get emptied last night and of the washing which needs to be done (this being Friday).

I would find it. Or at least I would look for the apple and it’s half-exposed core.

I would look, if, when I flicked the switch, it did not – even after two weeks – make me think ‘oh, someone really should fix that’.

I suspect it’s got personal

I could not get a rescheduled appointment with the oven man – who, you might remember, did not turn up the other day – until today, when, they promised he would be here first thing. Nine o’clock.

Ten thirty and not a sign.

Can I just say, the people installing the sky light totally rock.

Looks like there will be no muffins again this week. Though when we are in the kitchen, we will be able to see.

UPDATE: the oven man has arrived. And on the day that I am getting a hole cut in my ceiling and my roof, the heavens have opened up. Which I’m not complaining about. I’m just saying it’s kind of bad luck for that patch of carpet.

FURTHER UPDATE: the oven man has finished. $202.73c!!! And not even knocking off the 73 cents for goodwill in light of inconvenience caused and so on and so forth. The peace lily has bounced back a treat after that short period of neglect. The rain has stopped. You aren’t at all interested in this, are you? No. I’ll be off.

Crumbs and sandpit sand

‘Just follow through. Just get the dustpan and sweep it up,’ the mister said as Adelaide rested the broom, carefully nesting the pile of crumbs, glitter, paper snow and sandpit sand between the bristles and the wall.

There was a silence between them – despite the boy dressed up as Spiderman and the boy with the basketball – and her silence was this: when you aren’t here, I open the door and push at the mat with my foot and swoosh the sweepings into the yard. And then I hold the broom at shoulder height..I look at the shit that is scattered around and I think ‘that will all just blow back in’. And then I get the outside broom and I sweep it all across the pavers and over towards the lawn.

His silence was the grout. And the way that he always said oh, look here they are whenever she said I can’t find my keys.

Adelaide looked at the pile she’d swept and it was all the piles she’d seen. They’d been on parquetry, floorboards, lino, slate. This house, that house, that one too. The brooms were blue and yellow and red.

But those piles underneath the orange broom…against the lino that was never quite Handy Andy white…whose piles were they? Probably Mum’s. Possibly Dad’s. And who in the end had scooped those up? Who was the one who followed through?

Adelaide cleared her throat and wished again that if the cold she had almost got this week were going to appear it would just get on with it, she wouldn’t mind the day in bed with a book. And then she said: ‘would you like a cup of tea?’ and the mister said ‘yes’ and she put the kettle on. And later on, he stuck his face over the top of her book and said ‘peppermint or green?’