Dear Miss Manners...

My Mum doesn't have her own blog, but she certainly contributes ideas for mine from time to time.

She is particularly good value for a giggle when it has anything to do with computers.

You see, I'm very impressed with the fact she (who has almost entirely missed the computer age) can read emails and blogs and can buy stuff on eBay. That may be about all she can do, but it's pretty impressive for a woman whom I can remember getting excited about the fact that a personal computer will automatically put the whole word on the next line, without her worrying about how many characters are left and where the hyphen should go according to correct syllabilification (see, I don't even need to know the correct term for how to split up words correctly when you run out of characters in a line of type!)...

This afternoon we were talking about everything under the sun and she was telling a little story about wanting to respond to her sister's email, but that her sister had recently changed email address and Mum could no longer just click on her contact details and generate an email because Dad hadn't updated the contact list.

Apparently my Dad suggested that she could just click on the little button with the word "Reply" and it would go back to the new address from whence her sister's email message had been generated in the first place.

I thought that was entirely logical, but it was at this point that I learned a very important lesson in email etiquette.

According to the wacky world of my Mum it is just plain bad manners to send someone's email back to them with a reply message. In her view it is polite to generate a new, clean message to send back, with none of these strings of previous emailed interaction in the way contaminating it.

And her unregenerate daughter, who has been using email professionally for years, (as well as using the media for catching up with friends) laughed rather immoderately at her prejudice, followed by the request to please allow me to blog that.

How many people in cyberspace share this particular prejudice?

... I'm guessing, maybe, approximately none?

And what are the chances that we got to the point of her story about replying to my aunt's email?

... Approximately None!

The Rainbow in my Granny's Garden

This morning was a little foggy. This usually means it will clear to a beautiful clear blue sky day, but not today. Today was cloudy and there must have been odd spots of actual precipitation from time to time, if things that were dry, then were no longer dry are to be believed. I never caught it happening, though.

About mid-morning I looked out to our view to see a shadowy rainbow. And I tell you for certain that one end of it must have been firmly planted in my Grandmother's front yard.

Walked around to her this afternoon, but how many pots of gold were sitting about the place?

... Approximately None! *sigh*

A Great Day

Just a few years ago a group of impressionable young women from different parts of Queensland met at a University residential college. Our friendship rapidly developed during the process of escaping the various evening entertainments offered during the ritual of O-week without being caught by the vengeful O-week committee.

We each had different courses and different dreams, and despite the ones that we've already gained, we haven't finished with the world yet.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Today four of us got together. One all the way from the UK, two from rural Queesland centres and one is still located in Brisbane. We sat and ate fish and chips and caught up on each other's lives. There might have been a bit of laughter.

This was the stimulus for some of my laughter. Nothing like supporting smokers by removing their bin! Just drop your butts on the concrete here beside the entry gate.

I wanted to leave good company to come home again...

... Approximately None

2 Green Pellets and a Recipe

Well, last night was a two green pellets on the kitchen benches night.

This contrasts favourably with the 15 green pellet night the night my Beloved put the baits down, and the regular 15-20 black pellet nights prior to that.

The problem is that yesterday I needed to cook and didn't have time to do the full surgical scrub-down of my kitchen that is required if foodstuffs (or any implement that may possibly come into contact with foodstuffs) are to come anywhere near it. I'm not keen on my food having the slightest chance to come into contact with faeces. Particularly poisoned faeces. And although I had cleaned the bench of visible remains, I know that I can't see the germs that might have survived my quick clean.

It resulted in much careful placement of stuff so that any surface that may touch food did not come into contact with the bench. Anything that did touch the bench was discarded and a clean one sourced. It makes cooking very difficult. And mountains of washing up.

However, I did make dessert for our family Sunday lunch. And as I can never leave a recipe alone I created a winner all of my own.

Jen's Tropical Crumble

Filling:
440g tin crushed pineapple
825g tin Pears (whizzed in the food processor)

Topping: (this is a generous amount of crumble)
1 cup sugar (I used white, but brown or raw would also work)
1 cup rice flour (I used MacKenzies because it's not as fine as some)
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
1/2 cup of macadamia nuts (when whizzed in the food processor)
about 75g butter, cubed
1 teasp ground cinnamon

1. Drain the tins of fruit and whizz the pears in the food processor
2. Spread the fruit evenly over a baking dish (I used a 25cm quiche dish)
3. Whizz the macadamia nuts in the food processor
4. Mix all dried ingredients in a bowl, then add butter and whizz in the food processor (I had to do 2 lots)
5. Spread topping over the fruit.
6. Bake in a moderate (180 degrees) oven for 30 mins.

Serve with the mango icecream that I also made specifically for the purpose.

Boy am I hungry now. Must go and get into the left-overs.

How much time does this have left on the planet?

... Approximately None!

Would the mouse baits happen to be green?

I stymied my Beloved by ringing him up at work with this question yesterday.

He wasn't certain how I could have worked it out, given the fact that I've not been in any way involved in operation "Bait the Little Blighters".

I had been in the kitchen and noted that the tiny pellets the mice had left were a very pretty shade of forest green.

I think they've been eating the baits.

Now we await the massive pong of several dozen dead mice.

Looking forward to that...

... Approximately None!

Rude Old People

Generally I love old people.

I've sat by the bedside of old people I don't know as they struggle through that knife-edged balance between this world and the next.

I've sat and talked with them about many things, amazed at how much better the world is because they have lived in it (even if they only feel they've influenced a tiny part of it).

I've lead funerals where their lives are celebrated by those who love them.

And I've probably known more of them than most people my age because I grew up within the church family, which is one of the few places where cross-generational activities are still encouraged (at least in small churches where I've always been involved).

The thing is that I've also heard the tisking and negative comments made by some older people about children and young people. I do stress that these were not by all older people, but certainly a representative sample of them.

I couldn't help but reflect on this as I madly vacuumed the church hall floor yesterday morning before setting up for our children's music morning. You see, after 35 years in the church I know that it is the kids who create mess, not the adults who came to yesterday's funeral.

We are incredibly careful to clean up after ourselves, even to the point of making the kids sit and have their morning tea on a tarp that can be shaken out afterwards and catch any liquid spills. And here I was trying to scrape ground-in icing off the carpet with my thumbnail and pick up cake crumbs and the occasional cakey sultana with the vacuum cleaner. (And I must stress that as a member of my church I would have been happy to vacuum the floor after the funeral yesterday, I just didn't need 20 minutes of vacuuming added to the set-up time this morning when numbers were down in the set-up team due to illness!)

We all know that it is the kids who create disturbing noise in church, but it was two ladies well into their retirement who used to talk throughout the distribution phase of communion in one of my former churches.

It also reminded me of an incident from a shopping trip where I was standing in the line a the bakery waiting my turn to buy bread rolls, when a lady of mature years pushed in front of me to buy a loaf of sliced bread that she'd picked up. I was so stunned at her behaviour that I couldn't come up with anything to say. I could even have been standing there with my mouth hanging open at her behaviour, I was that shocked. You see, I know that it's the kids that are rude and don't consider the needs of others or take their turn.

The thing is, I guess rude people get old as well as the dear, happy and polite. As a society we don't cull people with bad manners (although, maybe that's not a bad idea?!) At least the rude kids are in the process of learning manners. The chance that rude old people ever will?

... Approximately None!

It turns out that mice are opportunistic whether or not the household includes an absent cat...

We had a great time away over the weekend. Kid-crazy, noisy, busy and exhausting, but wonderful.


We got home to find that a mouse that seems to have invaded recently had had a great time too.


But this is not just an ordinary mouse, this is a daring, exploring, frontier mouse. You see he doesn't seem to have a particular home. My Beloved (who has to get to work by 7am and so is up earlier than I am) has seen him in both the lounge room and abseiling from the kitchen bench down the cupboards to the floor. We have found no evidence of where he might be living, but there is mouse poo in multiple locations from my office desk at one end of the house to the kitchen benches and our ensuite handbasin countertop at the other.



Yes, I'm clinging to the vain hope that it is mouse, singular, with bowel trouble, rather than mice, plural. But the sheer quantity of tiny pellets indicates mice, plural. Yes, Russell brought friends. Maybe he decided to relocate his whole family.



And my Beloved and I are not pleased that we have illegal immigrants. But they enjoy the food we put out for their delectation each evening.

Without setting off the trap.

Sneaky.



They have not taken up residence in the pantry where they can be caught by running up my Beloved's trousers.



Now my Beloved has put out other food for them. I'm not certain about baits because I forsee trying in vain to track down the source of dead and decaying rodent smell. But there are times in a woman's life when we just have to allow a husband to make a decision. And make certain to have the vet's number really handy for the occasion that the LBD is the one who tracks down the source of the dead and decaying rodent smell first (the bait is somewhere that he can't get at it).



What I am hoping happens is that I will be able to leave the clean washing up to drain once more. You see, small mice look on stacked clean dishes as a small child would a super-dooper playground. This lead to my best ever clean washing up stack because I had to rewash the cooking dishes that I'd washed up before leaving for the coast, plus the things we'd taken to the coast, plus Sunday night's dishes.

Hopefully, how many mice will we have by this time next week?

... Approximately None.