Tag Archives: Housework

Fuck the sad

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Another autocorrect mishap caused by my inability to monitor what my phone is doing against my will.

Screen Shot 2014-10-06 at 19.11.53

What a concept though, “fucking the sad”.  I’d like to think that most of my sexual encounters have been because I’m clearly highly desirable, rather than because people have taken pity on me.

And that’s probably best left there.

I was indeed going to roast a chicken today. It was my plan for October bank holiday Monday, however, given the pain of cleaning the oven after cooking a roast in it, added to Rocky going into meltdown every time there’s the remotest chance of atmospheric particulates hitting any one of my three smoke alarms, I decided against taking the thing from the freezer and went for the safer option of making spicy butternut squash soup instead. [Cue food photo opp]…IMG_8363

I even adorned it with a swirl of olive oil.  Get me.

Ovens

Anyway.  I decided against the chicken because roasting anything means cleaning the oven afterwards (plus the trauma inflicted on the little dog whenever the oven or grill goes on, and no, I don’t burn that much stuff!).  It’s such a massive fag.  The oven isn’t eye-level, so I have to get on hands and knees to spray noxious chemicals on the interior surfaces.  You leave it for ten minutes, then simply “rinse off with a wet cloth or sponge”.

At least that’s what Cif says is supposed to happen.

In real life, any contact with a moist (MOIST) cloth or sponge sends this stuff into a foamy nightmare that is impossible to eradicate.  You spend at least an hour in the confined space, breathing in gaseous sodium hydroxide (probs no such thing, but you catch my drift) as you try to wipe the stuff off before it burns out your eyes and through your Marigolds.  And how on earth are you supposed to clean behind the wire racks that support the oven shelves?  How?  HOW IS THIS DONE?   On more than one occasion, I’ve been tempted to drag the hose in from the yard to water board the bloody thing.  Bad idea: ‘electrics and that.

Once all the remnants of the oven cleaner have been removed (I often just turn the oven on and let it evaporate), there comes the task of dealing with the glass of the oven door.  Now, I am blessed cursed to have two ovens.  My dearest ex decided that the single oven that came with the house simply wasn’t good enough and so she bestowed on me a double oven.  So, along with the psychological scars that I still bear from that relationship, I now have two ovens to maintain.  Thanks a fucking bunch, a million times over.  Anyway, in one of my OCD cleaner moments, I took it upon myself to give the glass of the top oven a thorough cleaning.  This meant removing the panel that faced the oven, removing the rubber seal, and cleaning both.  Needless to say that the rubber seal has never sat in position properly since that, and subsequent cleaning operations and the bloody thing now sags away from its metal rim.  No doubt this causes all sorts of inefficiencies and is a deeper metaphor for something.  It’s definitely a lesson in leaving the fuck alone.

Do people who use Agas suffer the same problems cleaning their ovens as the rest of us? Perhaps they’re too scared to even use their ovens for fear of using the wrong one.  “Oh GOD! I tried slow cooked porridge overnight, but put it in the bread-making oven and had to eat it at 11pm.”  I quite like the idea of having an Aga; that thing of permanent heat, the Russian roulette nature of the cooking.  The only thing is that I’d have to buy the house next door to accommodate one, so it’s probably not the most cost-effective idea I’ve ever had.

Heating

What with it being October bank holiday Monday (for me at least, and two other colleagues, actually… rude of them to rain on my parade!), I’ve been at home for pretty much all the day.  It’s been lovely, what with soup-making and stuff, but it’s been cold.  Autumn is well and truly upon us and today, I put the heating on.  I used the excuse that I needed to dry washing, but well, sometimes you just have to accept that it’s that time of year and give in to it.

My neighbours were at home most of the day again.  They have a wood burner – in Stoneclough!  For some reason, they seem to chop a lot of their logs indoors.  Rude!

Anyway, happy autumn, one and all!

Notes on the devastation of loss

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Loss of a loved one, somebody who you absolutely adore, is one of the most unbearable experiences a person can encounter. Be it through the end of a life, or the untimely or unexpected end of a relationship, the feelings of bereavement rip through your entire being, leaving you hopeless, alone, empty, numb, distraught, disbelieving.

Sad times are upon us and I am at a loss as to what help I can offer. My sister has been abandoned by the love of her life and she is currently battling those horrendous emotions that all of us have been battered by ourselves.

The worst in my own experience was going to bed and never wanting to wake up. Because when you do wake up, in that confused state of half-sleep, your mind tricks you into thinking that things are fine. And then reality hits you. They’re not beside you, or the wake up text doesn’t come and you have to face another day as a soulless shell, just going through the motions until you can hit the bottle again, reach a glorious oblivion and return to bed. And so the cycle continues.

I recall one occasion, during the worst of times, I drank without consideration of it being a work night, but without intention for self harm – I just wanted to forget. There was wine, rum, a sleeping tablet. It was the only time when the little dog’s half hour tantrum at the window cleaner didn’t wake me. I was out cold. Eventually coming round mid-afternoon, the reality of my situation hit me again, as it would do every day for many months.

But nothing anybody else could do or say helped, it couldn’t help. All I wanted was my life back, my dreams returned to me, but the life I had known had been taken from me and my dreams were shattered. So with my sister, all I can do is that awful thing that people who claim to have emotional intelligence always go on about, but rarely have the ability to: empathise. This, for good or bad, involves me reassuring her that things are going to feel utterly desperate and dreadful for an awful long time, that there’s nothing anybody can do or say that will make things better, and that the only thing that works is time. Even time won’t heal all the scars, I still have many wounds that are, at best, itchy scabs that need picking, and at worst, open sores that run through my very core and affect me and my ability to form any attachment to another. I’m still certain that I will only fully recover if a) Nigella comes calling, or b) I get my revenge on those that hurt me. I’d prefer a Nigella-based recovery and maybe I’m mellowing a little bit and will be happy for Karma to do its business on my behalf.

Failing at life
Or maybe I should just look after myself and then everything else will fall into place.

I have realised, particularly this year, that I am hopeless at life. Certain circumstances have taken their toll and just put me on that terrible road of giving up. It’s nothing major in isolation, but a cumulative effect of the general state of pffft that I find myself in. Like today, I came to change my bed and realised that I didn’t have enough clean pillowcases to accompany the duvet cover and (fucking bastard) fitted sheet. Why? Because I hadn’t washed the previous bedding when I should have done, last week when I took it off. Or the set from the previous week for that matter.

Ironing – given up on that completely.
Dusting – urgh
Vacumming, housework in general. I get myself into such a funk because I feel that I leave these things a bit too late and when this happens, I hate myself. But it doesn’t take too much to fix. Just a couple of hours and it’s all done… with an undercurrent of self-loathing of course. And the inevitability of having to do it again, in a couple of days, which I won’t, because I’m a loser.

It’s very difficult to find purpose when there is none. Maybe the purpose that I need is to make some positive changes and start being a normal person. It’s not even that bloody difficult!

I shall start tomorrow by NOT buying more pillowcases, but by ensuring that I have enough clean and dry bedding to last me two changes. Tick!

Instead of lamenting the kitchen and its floor, I’ll just clean the bloody thing.

Rather than driving into my parking space and sighing at the weeds, how about I pull the fucking things up? Same goes for the persistent buggers that sprout up in the front “bit” (it’s not big enough to call a yard) of my house.

And instead of looking up and fretting at the absence of pointing on my chimney breast, maybe I’ll just get a couple of quotes for the work and get it sorted.

Like a normal person would.

The fresh scent of line-dried cardboard

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Domestic pride has finally started to win the battle against my inherent slovenly nature; I’ve been doing housework this weekend. It all started with me looking despondently at my kitchen window yesterday morning.  There were a few cobwebs, bits of fly remnants, bits of dried, curled-up plant detritus that had fallen from the basil and chilli plants growing there, bits of soil.  General mess.  As much as the spiders had been my friends in terms of pest control, it was time for them to find a new home inside the dust collector of my hand vacuum.  It was time to clean the bloody window. Yesterday was very warm again and despite feeling like I was actually, really dying, the sense of achievement gained from cleaning the window and thefuckingvenetianblinds, spurred me on to tackle other elements of the kitchen that I’d let go for too long.  Next up was the cooker hood, which had grown a skin of greasy fluff that probably had sufficient nutritional value to keep a ballerina going for a month.  It was so easy to clean only laziness had kept me from cleaning it up to this stage. The back of the fridge freezer and the floor beneath it (absolutely disgusting) got it next, followed by… the dishwasher…   The thing about dishwashers The thing about dishwashers is that they’re great for storing all your used crockery, cutlery and pans until the time is right and the load is sufficient to warrant to operate the thing and wash them.  This is great because it means that you don’t have used cups, plates, bowls, pans, chopping boards, utensils, cutlery (that covers most cooking and eating apparatus) hanging around on work surfaces waiting to be washed up.  It’s nice and tidy and it allows you to get on with kitchen activities unhindered, which is particularly important when space and work surfaces are limited. I thought this was pretty logical: use something, give it a rinse, pop it in the dishwasher.  So why is it that this is a completely alien concept to everybody who visits my house?  They use a cup, rinse it out, leave it on the side, or on the draining board.  They even see me do it: rinse the cup, lean over just a wee touch, open dishwasher, place cup in dishwasher.  There are usually one or two items in there already to show them how things go, so there’s a template for them to work to.  And just what do they think is going to happen to the item that they’ve rinsed? It baffles me, it really does. ...Anyway, back to my dishwasher… I slid it out from its slot under the worktop, just enough so I could get the part of the floor on which it sits and give it a good clean.  To my horror, I noticed that the back casing of the thing had melted.  This stuff is made of some sort of heat-labile (not used that word since I was a smart arse) plasticky cardboardy stuff, which is ideal for an appliance that pumps high-temperature water around.  The internet told me that this is perfectly normal for machines that are a couple of years old and the stuff is only put on for sound-proofing anyway.  Why even bother with it then? The temperature was rising, I was weak through hunger and hot and sweaty, but I only had the work surfaces and the floor to go.  I was done in a jiffy.  Done in a Cif-fy ha ha ha!  It’s the smell of cleaning products. Just as I’d finished, my sister and her feller turned up to pick up my niece who’d spent all this time behaving herself upstairs.  My sister was hungover and in need of coffee, which I provided for her.  We sat and chatted for a few minutes while she drank up and my niece got her stuff together.  They left me in peace and picked myself up to lock the back door to prevent an axe murder while I was in the shower.  And there, on the draining board, was the cup that she’d used.   Anything for a streak-free finish Today, my kitchen looks like a bomb has hit it, but that’s the unfortunate nature of the universe.  Undeterred,  I have continued on my cleaning-spree and tackled the glass panels of my interior doors and the inside of the dining room window, the bottom ledge of which had become a graveyard for numerous houseflies and wasps.  My cleaning product claims to give sparkling, streak-free results in seconds.  It makes no mention of lasting elbow damage and the nagging disappointment that comes with the realisation that you’ve missed a bit.   The appliance of a sucky thing and a hot-air blowy thing I’m girding my loins in readiness for vacuuming.  This is a chore that is made much easier by the deployment of a cordless, light-weight, yet powerful vacuum cleaner.  Unfortunately, the little dog objects to vacuuming more than I do and a good proportion of the activity is interrupted by him trying to bite the machine. My house is full of labour-saving devices that make life more tolerable.  I couldn’t live without my washing machine or my melting dishwasher.  I also love my tumble dryer for the way it dries towels into big, fluffy bales.  Alas, on days like today, with the sun shining and the wind blowing, I can’t justify using my tumble dryer on the towels that are now pegged-out and drying to a cardboard-like crisp on the washing line.  What pleasure I’ll get from using them after my shower as they scrape against me and take off layer upon layer of my skin.  People who claim to like using line-dried towels are either liars or masochists.  I’d pity them if I didn’t feel such contempt towards them. I’m off to take out my pent up anger in a fight with the dog and the Air-ram. Bring it!