10 years

Today we are ten.

And so my Beloved has taken two days off work, and we are going to an idyllic cabin beside a creek in the lovely country just to the south of us, where we shall have a real fire, and nothing we need to go and do...

... except for keeping each other from freezing, because it's supposed to get really, really cold on the weekend, and we will be in the surrounding countryside to Stanthorpe, the place in Queensland where it is most likely to snow.

And how much of a problem do I have with keeping each other warm on what is, after all, our wedding anniversary?

Precisely.

The Mathematical Conundrum of Fatima and Bruce

Once upon a time there were a young couple who were married.

Let's call them "Fatima" and "Bruce".

Let's stipulate that in the year 2011 they would celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary.

Let's also make the disclaimer that any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely accidental. Even if there were elements of truth, they haven't been allowed to get in the way of a good story.

When they married, they joined all their wordly goods. (Neither of them had much in the way of expensive wordly goods, but they joined them just the same.)

This meant that they had:-
Washing machines: 2 (one newish automatic and an old twin-tub)
Microwaves: 2 (both in use)
Televisions: 2
VCRs: 2 (One that showed snowy/stripes when you viewed videos, but would record ok; one that you couldn't record on, but you could view clear images on if you could be bothered to get up to press the buttons on the machine because the remote had gone AWOL)
Fridges/Freezers: 1 fridge/freezer. 1 fridge. 1 bar freezer.
Computers: 2 (both reasonably old and put together out of old bits by their brothers)
Stereos: 2 (1 turn-table and cassette; 1 CD and cassette)

Because they lived out of town, they swapped the newish automatic washing machine for a nearly new twin tub because the older one was not pumping out properly. So now they had:-
Washing machines: 2 (one newish twin tub and a dead twin-tub)
Microwaves: 2 (both in use)
Televisions: 2
VCRs: 2 (both dodgy, but usable within constraints)
Fridges/Freezers: 1 fridge/freezer. 1 bar freezer. 1 now dead fridge.
Computers: 2 (now combined to make 1 better one and 1 dead one)
Stereos: 2 (1 turn-table and cassette; 1 CD and cassette)


Then, sadly, Bruce's Dad died in 2003. There was some stuff that was added to the household. So now they had:-
Washing machines: 2 (one newish twin-tub and a dead twin-tub)
Microwaves: 2 (both in use)
Televisions: 4 (including one that had a yellowish picture and one B&W)
VCRs: 2 (Possibly 3 for all Fatima knows. 2 dodgy, but usable within constraints; and possibly a nearly dead one hiding in the garage)
Fridges/Freezers: 1 fridge/freezer. 1 bar freezer. 1 dead fridge.
Computers: 2 (now combined to make 1 better one and 1 dead one)
Stereos: 3 (2 turn-table and cassette; 1 CD and cassette)

Then in 2005 Fatima decided that it would be useful to be able to veiw DVDs. This might also mean that they could have one reliable VCR machine if they got a DVD/VCR. She also started working from home and needed an up-to-date computer. So now they had:-
Washing machines: 2 (one newish twin-tub and a dead twin-tub)
Microwaves: 2 (both in use)
Televisions: 4 (2 usable, 2 dead)
DVD or VCRs: 3 (One that worked; 2 (possibly 3) that were dead)
Fridges/Freezers: 1 fridge/freezer. 1 bar freezer. 1 dead fridge.
Computers: 3 (1 good one. 2 dead ones)
Stereos: 3 (2 turn-table and cassette; 1 CD and cassette)

Then they were living in town again and Fatima's grandmother kindly passed on her old automatic washing machine. So now they had:-
Washing machines: 3 (1 older automatic; 1 newish twin-tub and a dead twin-tub)
Microwaves: 2 (both in use)
Televisions: 3 (including one that had a yellowish picture and one B&W)
DVD or VCRs: 3 (One that worked; 2 (possibly 3) that were dead)
Fridges/Freezers: 1 fridge/freezer. 1 bar freezer. 1 dead fridge.
Computers: 3 (1 good one. 2 dead ones)
Stereos: 3 (2 turn-table and cassette; 1 CD and cassette)

Then the washing machine started making odd noises. Bruce fixed it, but it wasn't really healthy. But that's ok, because Fatima's other grandmother moved into a nursing home and gave them her old-ish automatic. So now they had:-
Washing machines: 4 (1 older automatic; 1 working twin-tub and 2 dead)
Microwaves: 2 (both in use)
Televisions: 3 (including one that had a yellowish picture and one B&W)
DVD or VCRs: 3 (One that worked; 2 (possibly 3) that were dead)
Fridges/Freezers: 1 fridge/freezer. 1 bar freezer. 1 dead fridge.
Computers: 3 (1 good one. 2 dead ones)
Stereos: 3 (2 turn-table and cassette; 1 CD and cassette)

Then this year they decided that since analog TV is going out later in the year, it would be good to have a digital television and recorder and to take advantage of the post-Christmas sales. So then they had:-
Washing machines: 4 (1 older automatic; 1 working twin-tub and 2 dead)
Microwaves: 2 (both in use)
Televisions: 5 (1 digital, 2 dodgy analog, and 2 dead analog)
DVD or VCRs: 3 (One that worked; 2 (possibly 3) that were dead)
Fridges/Freezers: 1 fridge/freezer. 1 bar freezer. 1 dead fridge.
Computers: 3 (1 good one. 2 dead ones)
Stereos: 3 (2 turn-table and cassette; 1 CD and cassette)

Then the bigger and better of the 2 microwaves died. This means that they now have:-
Washing machines: 4 (1 older automatic; 1 working twin-tub and 2 dead)
Microwaves: 3 (2 in use, 1 dead)
Televisions: 5 (1 digital, 2 dodgy analog, and 2 dead analog)
DVD or VCRs: 3 (One that worked; 2 (possibly 3) that were dead)
Fridges/Freezers: 1 fridge/freezer. 1 bar freezer. 1 dead fridge.
Computers: 3 (1 good one. 2 dead ones)
Stereos: 3 (2 turn-table and cassette; 1 CD and cassette)

Their mathematical conundrum is this:-

If the garage has 35 square metres left over for storage of dead appliances after the car is parked in it, how many years can Fatima and Bruce remain married?

How close does this story come to truth?
...Hmmmm.

A problem. A solution. A problem. A solution.

My name is Hippomanic Jen, and I'm a book-aholic.

I love to read books.

I love to buy books.

I love to reread books.

I hate to give them away, because I might want to read it later.


I once answered a phone poll, and among other things they wanted an estimate of how many books I own. The options were along the following lines:

a 0 books
b 1 book
c 2 or 3 books
d 4 or more books.

I was astounded. So astounded that I can remember that the first and last options were 0 and 4 or more respectively. Who would have fewer than 4 books in their possession? I still don't know what the question was trying to acheive.

When we were having Dad design the house one of the essentials on the list was a wall to place our bookcases against that wasn't in a bedroom. I've known people who have had to give away thier libraries when they are expecting their second child, because they need the spare room for the new baby. This was not going to happen to us.

But over time, one acquires more books (particularly if one is studying and/or needs resources for preaching).

Then one ends up with the following problem:

Books on a cupboard in my office.

One of two huge bookcases full of books against the book wall my Dad made certain was in the house plans (it would've helped if I'd rotated the image, but you get the drift).



Books on a small shelf in the spare bedroom (it needed to be rotated too).

Books on a shelf in the cupboard in our bedroom.

Hmmm. Even though I have brought myself to do some selective culling of the book population, there are a few issues.

1. I'm asthmatic and seem to be having a problem with house dust.

2. I'm a terrible housekeeper and never have time to dust all the bookshelves.

3. I really need to rationalise book locations. After all, there is a perfectly good book wall to have a consolidated library.

The solution:

We priced cabinets with doors to keep out / minimise the dust and that would take up the entire length of the book wall (which had some space for more bookcases - but inevitably not enough length to fit the little bookcase that lives in the spare bedroom).

We measured the lineal metres of shelf required. Checked out what was available, and ordered three units (2 x 1200mm wide units and 1 x 600mm wide unit). If the skirting and cornice was removed from the sides, and they were made to fit together, they should fit perfectly. We looked at the example in the furniture shop and decided that the shelves were reasonably spaced, and that if we got the 2100mm high rather than the 1800mm high units we would get an extra shelf and that would get us closer to our desired lineal metres of shelf.

They came today.

They looked pretty.

They were heavy for the blokes to manhandle.

My Beloved had to take the skirting board off the walls along the book wall so that they'd fit. We were really hoping that the walls of the alcove were plumb. We joined the three units together and then slid them back into the space.

My Beloved pushed on the joins with his feet and I ran back and forth and pushed the ends back little by little until it fit snugly into the space.

Beautiful, hey?

Unfortunately, despite their beauty and the functionality of the new bookcases there is a problem.

We decided not to specify the distance between the shelves, because we decided that what they had was about right, why would we stuff them around any more? They were already putting doors on, and taking skirting and cornice off, and making them to fit neatly together.

It didn't even cross my mind that a taller 2100mm high bookcase would have THE SAME NUMBER OF SHELVES as the 1800mm one. (Doesn't everyone want to absolutely maximize how many books they can store? Or I might want to have all my 4 books on separate shelves, you know.)

And who would guess that those shelves would be evenly spaced, so there's not a hope of putting an extra shelf in between two existing shelves, because they are all 370mm apart and my shortest books are all 190mm tall.

One of the things I was looking forward to was not having books stacked on their sides.

Another was not having two rows of books on the shelf so that you can't see the back ones.

Grrrrr.

But my very clever Beloved has come up with a solution.

The smaller books could be stored in two rows with one behind. But this means you can't see what you've got.

However, by putting a half width shelf along the back that is slightly lower than the top of the front row (and entirely behind them) we can raise a back row so that the majority of each spine will be visible.

He is very clever, my Beloved.

And the chance that I'll let him go?

I'm shrinking!

I had heard that as we age we begin to shrink, but what no-one told me was that it can start before age 40 and can be very quick to occur...

...or maybe my Beloved just wound the washing line up so that he could mow under it on the weekend.

And the liklihood that I didn't put it back?

Fancy-Schmanzy Architects may have a point.

At different times I've seen photos of swish houses where the en-suite has two basins.

Sometimes I've seen them on TV.

You'd reckon that I might at some point have stayed in a hotel room with this feature, but we don't stay in places that cost that much. Even in Asia.

I've always thought that it would just mean more work cleaning...

... but last night as I was wiping down the handbasin in our en-suite I reflected on the fact that two basins (as long as they were strictly 'his' and 'hers') would give clear evidence of who was the messy one who therefore is the one who should be wiping down the handbasin.

Same location, same amount of atmospheric dust and linty fluff, same degree of 'hardness' or 'softness' in the water. Different user.

How impressed was I to find a blob of toothpaste in the clean basin this morning?

Nine

There was always going to be some tension in our household today when our ninth wedding anniversary clashes with a State of Origin footy match.

Or at least, there was huge potential as soon as my Beloved informed me when he returned home this afternoon that it was the final State of Origin tonight.

But, for the record, he then informed me that I was more important than the footy.

Then he went and got us some Chinese takeaway from our favourite place because I'm still not well enough to go out in the cold and wet.

And he loves me despite mucous, whey-face, unwashed hair and dark circles under my eyes.

And how much attention would I pay to anyone who told me that he's not the most wonderful Beloved that there happens to be in the Whole Wide World?

... APPROXIMATELY NONE!!!

But for some reason he's off watching TV right now. I wonder what's grabbed his interest?

Men and Women are Different

In marriage there are many moments that you stare at your spouse in utter bewilderment at how they could be so different and still be part of the same species.

I like to have new clothes. I like having things that give me some variety and choice. I prefer it if they are flattering in style and colour. I like them to fit nicely. I like to know that they don't gape at the neck or produce peepholes where they button up. It's nice to know that they aren't pilled, pulled or too thin from wear. They have no stains, no repairs are necessary to the buttons or seams yet.

I like having new clothes.

My Beloved on the other hand doesn't really care. If I suggest he needs a new shirt for church he looks at me blankly and says, "why?". When it comes to his normal week he's in work uniform each day, so only really feels he needs a couple of shirts and a pair of jeans for the rest of the week, and some old grungy clothes for working in the yard.

So when we were going on holidays I insisted that he needed some new clothes. He would be wearing 'civvies' for 15 days and a couple of sets of clothes were not going to cover it (particularly once the ones that I wouldn't let him take were removed from his options). So I dragged him to the shopping centre, then he reluctantly used a Christmas gift voucher he'd been given, and we got him some new clothes and they were, "all right".

This morning I was hardly awake when he came in saying he was going to have to use his oldest work shirt to work around the yard in, because he had run out of suitable old clothes. In my half asleep grogginess I managed to list off about three other shirts I could think of that were not longer suitable (in his wife's humble opinion) for wearing as casual clothes. He dug around and found them, then did a little happy dance around the bedroom, "I've got lots of old clothes, I've got old clothes!"

And the chance I haven't worked out that in the future I can sell him on the idea of buying new clothes on the basis that the old ones can be worn around the garden?

... Tee Hee.

No. Such. Luck.

I fixed the vacuum cleaner.

The true state of emotion that goes with the previous statement can't be expressed without telling you a story. A story that perhaps my male readers will not be able to grasp, but a story that may well stir the hearts of the girls.

Once upon a time I was just starting out living by myself and bought the cheapest vacuum cleaner that there was, because I'd also had to buy a fridge/freezer; washing machine; TV; a dining table and some chairs. I couldn't afford anything fancy.

Not long afterwards I heard friends talking about saving up for Dyson vacuum cleaners. They sounded really good, and I loved the concept of the cleaners being bagless because I hated emptying my vacuum cleaner bag. Also, according to their reports, Dysons really suck (which is actually what you want in a vacuum cleaner).

My Beloved and I then married. We now had two (2) vacuum cleaners, neither of them new and one I had to purchase disposable bags for.

"My" vacuum cleaner burst its bag. Although I managed to stitch it up, the little red vacuum was demoted to my Beloved's shed. We now had one (1) vacuum cleaner.

My mother bought a Dyson. It was good.

I began to look hopefully for any signs that our remaining vacuum was about to die.

It died.

I celebrated secretly and began to dream...

One Saturday my wonderful Beloved came home with something for the new house that we needed and it was a surprise.

I couldn't guess at all.

He presented me with a wonderful, bagless...

...Volta vacuum cleaner.

Isn't he a wonderful, considerate, surprising, lovely bloke?

Well, the Volta does a reasonable job so long as the very centre of the head is placed directly over any matter with a diameter greater than 0.01mm - but it is bagless which makes it easy to empty once the dust gets in there. I've always been an empty-the-thing-after-you-use-it-each-time sort of girl, and my Beloved is not. But that's okay, I am now an empty-the-thing-before-I-use-it-saying-prayers-of-thankfulness-that-my-Beloved-actually-cleans-when-so-many-women-complain-that-they-don't-get-any-help-around-the-house sort of girl.

We've been using it for about three years now and I was surprised during post dust-storm cleaning when a little red light came on. I didn't know what the little red light meant. The owner's manual wasn't in my file of appliance manuals and neither of us can find it, so we couldn't work out why the little red light had come on. I was sort of hoping for something expensive to fix which meant it wasn't worth fixing, but then again, we recently threw our savings into a medical waste facility along with my wisdom teeth, so timing was dreadful if that was the case.

I got on the net to try to find information and found a manual for a different model of the same make. It has a little red light that indicates when the bag is full. I wondered whether this might be the case, even though our model is bagless, so I went and emptied the non-bag. Turned it on. No red light.

The chance that this vacuum cleaner will not last for 30 years?

... Approximately None *sigh*

Okay, so this makes me an accessory after the fact?

Desperately needed to go grocery shopping last week. A couple of weeks of just getting what was essential will eventually empty the pantry, so I toddled off to the shops to restock.

Just had enough cloth bags to carry the piles of stuff from Bi-Lo, and spent a small fortune at the butcher to restock the freezer as well.

Was not terribly happy upon returning to the car to find myself stymied by my Beloved. The boot* was pretty full of husband-junk, namely a huge blue tarp and a shovel. So I had to load the groceries into the back seat.

And at this point I began to wonder what it was my Beloved had been doing that required a blue tarp and a shovel.

Now, maybe I've been watching too much TV while I've been recuperating, but the only activity I could think of was burying a body.

I don't think my Beloved is one of the types of blokes who goes around disposing of dead bodies, but they do say the wife is the last to know. There was always that time not long after we were married when the police rang up asking if my Beloved (who has a fairly common series of names) had ever lived in Mackay.

But the chances that I'm off to chat to the police about this?

... Approximately None - because I might be the next one wrapped up in the blue tarp in the boot!

UPDATE: My Beloved informs me that he used the tarp to cover a trailer load of green waste that he took to the dump** last weekend, and the shovel was to scrape out the last of the grass clippings. Likely story!

*boot = trunk
** dump = waste transfer station at the local land fill

Advice to an About-to-be-Married Friend

I was cleaning up some old files on my computer and came across a document that I'd written to be included in a scrapbook for a friend's hens party. Among other things like recipes, and what our friendship had meant to me, we were requested to give our best tips for a happy marriage. I take it that I didn't want to do the usual sugarly stuff that everyone else would do - I found this gem, just as true today as when I first penned it:-

"Look, just ignore the state of the hand basin. It’s never going to get any better. Those days of it staying clean-looking between cleaning days are gone. Get over it. There is something about shaving that requires water to be spread over as great a part of the hand basin, mirror, walls and floors as possible. They get taught this by their fathers, I’m certain.

Don’t get me started on the toilet floor."

My Beloved, I do love you and appreciate how much work you do around the house mowing and whipper-snippering, washing up, vacuuming, washing windows, painting and all those odd jobs. It's just a reflection of the number of reasons why I love cleaning the bathroom -

... Approximately None.

In Cleavage and in Saggage...

I've noticed something in the last couple of days.

Something that is not entirely good, something that indicates that I'm... not as young as I used to be. Something that has obviously snuck up on me (or slumped down on me) when I wasn't looking.

I generally expect my figure to be a little flatter and lower hung on washing day. That's only to be expected because I wear my 'Washing Day Bra' A.K.A. 'The Oldest, Least Favourite Foundational Undergarment Available' to avoid the 'why didn't I wash that one?' regret later in the week. In fact, you probably don't want to visit me on washing day because I'm just sitting here trying to remember the last time I washed my Washing Day Bra. Hmmm.

Anyway, back to the story. When I looked down earlier this week, I was slightly disturbed to think that things were just not quite right. It was even worse when it then hit me that not only was it not washing day, but that I was wearing my absolutely favourite, newest bra.

Since then (and I'm not entirely free from embarrassment mentioning this) I've been checking things out. Yep. There is definitely a softening, and I'm very nearly certain that things are a bit lower than I remember. Things seem sort of flatter, and that maybe the recent decrease in my bust measurement is nothing to do with my latest fitness craze and that I've lost some fat across my shoulder blades, but that things just aren't as firm as they used to be. Then I panicked thinking of all those little old ladies who only have the belt of their granny-dresses holding them up.

OK, so it's not that bad...yet. And there is no reason that I ever have to wear a granny-dress.

I asked Hubby for his opinion. He didn't want to go there, and I really can't blame him. It does remind me of a line from a book I read ages ago where the wedding vows read,

"For richer, for poorer,

In sickness and in health,

In cleavage and in saggage,

As long as you both should live"

You're stuck with me now, sweetie.

In some ways this is worse than when my best friend from high school and I realised that we were starting to get little lines around our eyes. This sign of aging can't be removed by skin creams or taking off my glasses.

The chances that it's not all 'downhill' from here?

... Approximately None *huge sigh*