Category Archives: appliances

Whoops, in a Vacuum

Soapy Opera

Among the stats I’m made privy to here on WordPress, my favorite is the list of search terms that, on any given day, lead to clicks on this blog. It’s always interesting. There are a lot of “mockingbirds singing all night,” tons of “oleander poisonous?”, and a good number of “old Gaffers and Sattler dishwashers.”

Yesterday, though, I got a new one: “innocent bystander handsoap.” And I just love it. It begs so many questions. Did the searcher find what they were looking for? What was it? Could it be that they, too, were assaulted by a renegade TJ’s hand-soap and came online to find help? Or is something else–something strange, dark, and bubble-related? Something about which I am clueless?

We’ll never know, most likely. Yet I will enjoy wondering. And googling it myself, if I get the time.

Yesterday

Search	Views
innocent bystander hand soap	1
poisonous trees to humans	1
bra thumbs	1
Other search terms	1
Unknown search terms	1
Total search terms	4

This is Forty-Five

4 Replies

I’ve been feeling less than my usual self lately. I’m attributing it to a mid-life crisis–I took a quiz online and answered “yes” to eight out of ten questions. I’m not having an affair, of course. But otherwise I fit all of the criteria. I’m 45, mildly depressed, cranky, tired, obsessed with having another baby, and experiencing a sudden and overwhelming desire to trade in my car. For a Honda Fit EV. But still.

So I’ve been, emotionally speaking, a bit unstable. Grouchy with Mike, prone to weeping, listless, singing a lot of 1980’s commercial jingles. Who knows why. And I’m stressed. About everything. Mortality, global warming, inexplicable moths in my bathroom…and as if all of that’s not bad enough, I have another round of AE coming up–that’s Afternoon Enrichment, for those of your who missed spiderfest six weeks ago. I’m a wreck about it. Again. I mean, really. You’d think I was prepping for a ten-year trial at the Hague and not for two hours of crafting with a handful of pre-schoolers.

I blame the mid-life crisis. It tells me, you see, that my life amounts to nothing. What have I got to show for myself? A small family and a wobbly house. Some blog posts, a few CD’s. Oh, and a handful of broken appliances. (With a new one added just today: the garbage disposal. Because I poured MJ’s innocuous-looking cup of “perfume“–which had gone rancid–into it, not realizing that said concoction was loaded with six hundred pebbles.)

Anyway. It seems like so little. Compared to most of the people I know, anyway.

Which brings me back to AE. Because all I can think about is how spectacularly the other parents do it. You should see the “crafts” they come in with! Looms, to teach the kids to weave. Silkworms, to help the kids grasp metamorphosis. They teach them to make artisanal paper, then use it to make books. There is gluten-free baking, vegetable dying, block printing, silk screening. I halfway expect to come in one day and see the kids grinding their own flour. Which they’ve grown, right before class, in their newly-fashioned hydroponic garden. That they mulched by hand and fertilized with fish carcasses that they mashed themselves after first raising said creatures in a hand-blown glass bowl–also made in class–that they later recycled into a terrarium in which they built a microcosmic universe, complete with teeny-tiny galaxies, all made from hand-dyed dark matter.

Then there’s me. I have no fucking ideas. Or I do have some, but they’re all inchoate and utterly illogical. Each possesses a fatal flaw. If only there were a craft that employed those. I’d be so well equipped. Fatal flaw God’s Eye, anyone? Hang it on the Christmas tree!

Oh, I considered making perfume. That seemed like a great idea for a second. It fits the “emergent” theme. It uses natural materials. Engages the senses. There’s a recipe for simple rose water online. But it requires boiling water. And I refuse to bring anything scalding into a group of four-year-olds. Unless its my wit. So that idea is out.

There were others. Many of them. None panned out. So I went to Michael’s. My beleaguered husband offered to take me. I think he was at his wit’s end. I am not quiet about my suffering. I am not subtle. I agonize, vocally and often. Between nervous rounds of “Oscar Mayer Wiener,” of course. These AE classes may be harder on him than they are on me. So to the strip mall we went.

There we found–on sale for fifty cents apiece–some small cardboard birdhouses.

I’m not sure why they were so discounted. Unless it’s their size. The holes in them are so wee that a real bird could never fit inside. OK, maybe a hummingbird. But only a baby. A runt, actually. Still, I bought ten of them. My “students” are going to decorate them and give them to their dads for Fathers Day. I know, it’s absurd. It makes no sense. It’s un-emergent, requires no motor skills, and uses nothing natural. Unless you count cardboard, which is, after all, recyclable in some states. Still, no father in the world needs a tiny, unusable, paper birdhouse that’s been painted, covered with glitter, and dotted with stray beads. No father bird, even. But that’s what they’re going to get. And damn it, they’re going to like it.

Because I’m having a mid-life crisis, and right now this is the best I can do.

“‘Cause if I was an Oscar Mayer Wiener, everyone would be in love with me…”

Here Comes The Bridling

2 Replies

I’ve set myself one task for today. One idiotically simple task. I told myself the entire day would be a success if only I got it done. And why wouldn’t I? It’s relatively easy. It requires no real effort, thought, or concentration. It’ll bring in money. It’ll clear space in our house. It’ll relieve me of a psychic burden of no small significance. For it’s a thing I’ve put off for awhile, now. Ten years, to be precise.

No wonder, then, that here I sit, writing instead of doing it.

What is this Herculean task, you wonder, that she avoids so strenuously? Has she been asked to rewrite the tax code? Master symbolic logic? Solve the crisis in the Middle East?

No, just to sell her wedding dress.

And nobody’s asking me to do it! I want to! This may sound harsh, but my last marriage was a farce–a well-intentioned one, true, but a farce nonetheless. Of unnecessarily long duration, I might add. I was over it before either of us said “I do.” I do not, then, possess a shred of sentimental attachment for it or any material item representing its tenure.

Why, then, can I not get this thing done? Pure, unfettered laziness, mostly. And other neuroses: The dress is sealed in a box, like some mummified ancestor. I’ve never liked corpses, even of the sartorial variety. I’ve always been more of the “let the dead stay buried” type. Plus, what if I cut the dress accidentally while opening the carton–as I will–with a large paring knife? Vera Wang could get Freddy Kreugered before she’s even out of the box. It’s likely, if I’m involved.

Then there’s the measuring, the descriptions, the photographing. The latter, especially! What a pain! First of all, I don’t have the right hanger. And as far as backdrops go, I’m even more screwed. Anywhere I hang my five-thousand dollar frock there’ll be an antedeluvian appliance hulking in the frame behind it. Gaffers and Sattler dishwasher with your ballgown? That should up the bids.

Then there are the lighting issues. Today, for example. It’s like “Wuthering Heights” out there. I can’t take pictures on a day like this. That’s why I’m on the couch with a cup of Earl Grey instead of crossing this vintage frock off of my interminable to-do list.

The fact is it may never happen. And if it doesn’t, why, I’m nothing if not resourceful. The box the dress is sealed in, for example, could make a very suitable coffee table. We’ve needed one in the guest bedroom forever. Drape a little cloth over it and you’ll never know the difference.

Or I may, but I’ll be too busy resting my feet on it to care.

Write You Are

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There’s a wonderful article about writing in this week’s New Yorker. It’s by John McPhee–a man whose essays usually throw me into a frenzy of irritation. But this one won my admiration. It was compassionate. And wise. Replete with helpful suggestions. It isn’t the first piece he’s published on the subject, but it is, in my opinion, the best. It starts at writers’ block, then ranges to rewriting, copy editors, a writer’s despair, the virtues of dictionaries. It’s a charming meditation–ruminative, loving, and, to me, at least, encouraging.

I don’t consider myself a writer, of course. How can I? I’m not paid to do it–although I have been, on occasion, in the past. Still, a person oughtn’t to toss around titles like “writer”–or any other, for that matter–without a certain on-paper credibility. I’m touchy about this. Perhaps because I had a husband, at one point, who used to routinely call himself a “film producer.” He’d never gotten within a thousand miles of a piece of celluloid. But he had aspirations, and felt that one could become something only by claiming to already be it.

“Great,” I replied. “I’m the president. Get me Air Force One”

Needless to say we didn’t stay married.

I do write, though. Obviously. So I relate to certain dilemmas encountered by writers. Block, specifically. But not just that. The elation that comes from writing a good sentence. And despair. Oh, despair. Mine, of course, has applied to far more than the words I pen. But I do get the literary variety. Particularly since I started blogging. I’ve written before about the senselessness I fear is attached to this particular art form. At least the way I practice it. I’ve talked, too, about bloggers I don’t think are senseless. Those I admire desperately. Lisa B. Adams, for example, whose poems and prose about living with metastatic breast cancer continue to devastate and awe me every time I read her.

But me? I’m mostly silly. I write about dishwashers, pipe cleaners, dog hair. I pen odes to Trader Joe’s. I discuss my daughter’s bodily functions at great length. I keep things superficial, anodyne, occasionally humorous. I never talk about my marriage. Or politics. Sex is off the menu completely. On the blog, mind you. In real life–ahem.

See? I’m clamming up.

I don’t even tell you my name.

There’s a level of self-revelation I really should aspire to. It’s what nearly all successful bloggers employ. They talk about their body image issues. Their fear of wrinkles. One mommy blogger I know described in great detail how she made grocery lists while her husband screwed her. Others discuss depression, illness, mania. Me, on the other hand? I stick to cleaning debacles, light chats with my three-year-old, cooking disasters. Does this make me a coward? Blocked? Or just a mildly bad housewife?

McPhee suggests, in his article, that those unable to get a first draft on paper should use a little trick. Just, you know, to get the juices flowing. They should start with a clean page. At the top of it write “Dear Mother.” And then start. Just start. Talk to mom, tell her anything and everything they’re thinking. When they’re done they’ll have a semblance of a first draft. Now cut off the salutation, rewrite, and presto!

Finished piece.

I didn’t try it this time. But I know Mom is reading. So maybe I did. My name is Jessica, by the way. Nice to meet you. Maybe on the next date I’ll tell you my last name.

Or maybe I’ll show you my Japanese toilet.

Intimacy comes in many forms.

Portrait of an Immaculate Appliance

4 Replies

I admit it–I went a little crazy. Yesterday, after stumbling upon the New York Times’ article about hidden bacteria in the kitchen, I got massively freaked out. My fridge hasn’t been deep cleaned since the Pleistocene era, so, after reading about the E. Coli known to be hanging out in vegetable drawers (not to mention on blender gaskets, spatulas, and everything else one never thought to suspect), I decided that today was the day to make things right. Mike, after all, was home. He had no major plans. He had, in fact, declared that he wanted to watch MJ–that I should take some time for myself.

So I did.

Two hours, six rags, two sponges, forty-odd paper towel sheets, one cup of boiling water, and three kinds of cleaning agents later, I had the fridge I wanted. The one that you could eat off of, if dining off of frosted glass shelves was your thing. The one respectable families seem to have all the time. The one that, at the very least, isn’t going to kill my three-year-old daughter when she accidentally, say, brushes her mouth on it on the way to feeding the dog. Or whatever.

So here it is, in all of its anti-bacterial glory. Notice the fine details: the immaculate butter compartment, the lack of encrusted maple syrup on the walls, the newly scoured hot sauce bottles (for another day: do we really need twelve different kinds?), the pristine exterior, finally denuded of all food-specked pictures, ineffective magnets, and outdated postcards.

I’m so proud. I’m so pleased. I’m so sorry it won’t last. Still, for the five minutes it does, I’ll enjoy it more than a little.

Tomorrow? The blender.

Stop Payment

5 Replies

Yesterday morning, bright and early, I got a ticket for rolling through a stop sign. It was totally legit–the ticket, I mean. Although my actions were also, in my opinion, completely justifiable. My neighborhood is filled with moronic, pointless, arbitrary stops; you have to run some of them if you ever want to get down the hill. Or so say I. My husband disagrees, but he’s always had the lion’s share of the patience in this household. I, on the other hand, just have the lead feet.

So I got the ticket. I asked the cop if he might consider letting me off “just for the heck of it,” but he demurred. Odd. Anyway, I figure I’m out around $300. It’s brutal, but true. At least I can do traffic school, because I haven’t gotten a ticket of this kind in, oh, twenty years. Which isn’t too bad, when you consider the ambivalent relationship I have with traffic laws. Still, it’s a tough pill to swallow, financially. Especially with Mike about to go on unpaid hiatus.

Then the dryer broke. Suddenly it sounded like it had an ecstasy-induced drum circle inside of it. I got a repair man to come in. It’ll cost $150 to fix.

Finally I returned four kids’ books to the library. I knew they were a little late, but really? $7.10? Sigh. The galling thing about it is they all sucked. “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom?” Lousy. It makes no sense. And it’s terrifying. Baby letters falling out of a tree, incurring various highly visible injuries? Um, if I wanted to traumatize my daughter like that I could just take her sight-seeing to the local emergency room. So that was a bust. Then there was some story book about a puppy; the dialogue consisted almost entirely of the words “bow wow.” Try saying that fifty times in a row. “Bow wow! Bow wow! Bow wow!” You’ll want to scream. You’ll want to die. You’ll want to throw yourself out of a tree like a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom lower case “p.”

The other two books were equally forgettable. Making the entire experience totally dispiriting. If I’m going to pay usurious fees for late books, I’d prefer that they were of the “War and Peace” variety. Or whatever the kids’ equivalent is. “Tantrums and Snuggles.” Why didn’t Tolstoy write that?

There was one item in the plus column yesterday. I took MJ to Michael’s to buy her some new “treasures.” She selected three heart necklaces from the sale bin, a mesh bag of glass stones, and a package of metallic beads. In total these came out to about nine bucks. But I had one of those coupons for 40% off of one item. They’ve been coming regularly in the mail since I sunk my entire life’s savings into that frame awhile back.

This saved me $1.40.

I am thinking of applying for a job at Trader Joe’s. Or finding more stuff to sell on ebay. But one thing I am doing for sure, right now, no question? The thing that’s sure to keep us a bit more solvent than we would be otherwise?

Stopping. At every. Damn. Sign.

At least until I’m eligible for traffic school again.

Oh Broth, Where Art thou?

3 Replies

I sometimes feel, where preschool is concerned, that we are paying more for an idea than a reality. Because between the holidays, illnesses, and trips out of town, we seem to be never there. Except on my workdays. Which, because the school is a Co-op, I can only miss if I’m in traction. Or dead.

So when I got to drop MJ off at school this morning and leave I was psyched. I was giddy. At last! Three hours of liberty!

Or such was the plan.

The idea was to grocery shop, then relax. Or that’s the simple version. Technically I needed to shop, walk the dog, put a meal on, then relax. But this was totally doable. I had it all worked out. I planned to make a crockpot chicken dish for a friend who is sick. Last week I was a lame-ass schmuck and brought him frozen IKEA meatballs and mashed potatoes. With two packs of gravy mix. Still, I know. Pathetic. It might not have been so bad if I had actually heated the stuff up for him, but, as he wasn’t hungry when I arrived, I left it all in the freezer for his roommate to prepare when he got back. Even the gravy packs. I mean, who wins jerk-of-the-month? One guess.

But I meant to make up for it this week by preparing my friend a spectacular feast. For it I had chosen a braised chicken and vegetable recipe I found online. (May I just add that, among all of the recipes I got after Googling “chicken crock pot,” slow cooked raccoon was the most unexpected? I felt–in the spirit of sharing pain with friends–that this was worth mentioning. I’ll get out of my fetal position now.)

Back to the crock pot. I would’ve made the dish last night, but was missing one ingredient: chicken broth. Which is weird, because I try to always have that around. I try, in fact, to have everything around; a missing ingredient is one of my biggest pet peeves. I buy in doubles, multiples, army troops. There are, for example, four jars of pickles in the cabinets. Three bags of Trader Joe’s salt and pepper chips. Five boxes of lasagna noodles. But no chicken broth. Not even a half-opened container in the fridge, long-ago expired and scary to ingest. I did find several cans of chicken noodle soup, which I considered trying, but in the end rejected them. I couldn’t risk another screw-up after last week’s debacle. My friend is in hospice, for God’s sake.

Well, then, thought I, I’ll do it tomorrow. When MJ is in school. I’ll get the right ingredients and make it right. Then I’ll kick back and read my book.

Cut to: today. I drop MJ at school. She is sad. She weeps.”I want to spend the whole day with you!”

“I know,” I tell her. “And I with you. But Mama really needs to grocery shop.”

“I can do it with you,” she sobs.

Visions of us at the Fresh and Easy swim to my mind: MJ, insisting on scanning every item herself. Screaming if denied. Hours passing as we check ourselves out. People on line behind us raising their eyebrows, muttering under their breath, shaking their heads…

“I think I’ll do it myself today,” I say brightly. I kiss her tear-streaked cheeks. “You’re gonna be OK.”

At Fresh and Easy I am alone, blissfully; the aisles are wide and empty. I have as much time as I need. I have three attractive straw shopping bags. I have a $10 off of $50 coupon.

I shop liberally, grabbing more of everything than I need. A ten-gallon container of unscented eco-laundry detergent? Why, yes! Buttermilk? Sure! Tomatoes? Those are good to have. Canned tomatoes! Diced tomatoes! Crushed tomatoes! Tomato paste! Red tomatoes from Chile. Yellow tomatoes from Mexico. A box of the latter drops accidentally on the floor; small golden orbs roll everywhere. I pick them up–I am a decent person–and put them back in their plastic case. Then I put them in my cart. Why not? The world is my plastic clamshell! Anyway, they can be washed.

And so it went. I shopped. And shopped. And shopped. When I finally rang up my purchases I had crossed the $240 line. Gah! Outrageous! But everything I’d purchased, I knew, would get eaten. Or most of it, anyway. For I have sworn off of waste. And I am learning how to cook. If it meant preparing a Cajun raccoon for twelve guests and their housepets, I would use all of those damn tomatoes.

I drove home, ten bags of groceries rattling in my trunk. At the house I lugged them , two at a time, from my car into the kitchen. “I am a good shopper,” I muttered to myself, as I put away gorgonzola crackers, Triscuits, organic bunny bites, and a bag of multicolored tortilla chips. “I buy a good variety. I buy lots of fruit. I buy–”

It was at this moment that I realized. My eyes widened in horror. “No!”

But yes. I had forgotten the chicken broth.

Muttering angrily, I finished putting my groceries away. I walked Mina quickly (“go to the bathroom! Go to the bathroom!”) and put her back in her crate. Then, taking only one shopping bag, I headed back to the store.

Once there, I bought every container of chicken broth they had. This would never happen to me again. While I was at it, I got MJ a couple of packages of roasted seaweed snacks. Because God forbid she should ever lack for a crunchy treat between meals. God forbid, for that matter, that any kid in L.A. should be without multiple sheets of dulse to cram messily into their mouths, shedding little flakes everywhere, making their parents feel that, finally, they have given them something “healthy” to eat when, in fact, it was nothing more than green air and salt. But I digress.

Throwing my bag irritatedly into the passenger seat, I dropped into the car and drove quickly up the hill again. Because now it was getting late. Once home, I raced to prepare the slow-cooker recipe–which only called for a quarter of a cup of the damn broth–then dashed back to school to get MJ.

When I arrived, out of breath, she was in a dog costume, drawing happily with her teacher .

“Hi, Mama,” she said, upon spotting me. “I got something from Lydia.” She showed me a small, plastic glow-in-the-dark hand that a classmate had given her.

“That’s great, sweetie. I’m glad.” I paused. “And I got…some groceries.”

“Oh.” Myra-Jean considered me for a moment. Then she swiveled her head and looked out the window. “I want to go on the swings.”

And so we did. Dog ears flapping in the breeze. While, at home, the grandest feast in the world cooked slowly away in its pot.

Lest of the -Est

6 Replies

I should mention here what I neglected to say yesterday — when, as is so often the case, I was interrupted by my waking child before I could properly finish my post:

I truly, adamantly believe that, were there a competition for oldest functioning dishwasher, ours would win it. And this gives me some small sense of pride. I can tack few superlatives to the list of my accomplishments in life. I am certainly not the best mom, the most organized homemaker, or the most likely to be featured in her own reality TV show. Clearly–judging by my recent two-month disappearance– I am an unreliable blogger at best. I studied Latin for four years as an adult, yes, which could have rendered me the stay-at-home mom most adept at a dead language. Except that, three years later, I remember virtually nothing. The Latin I have at my command could fit on the side of a teabag. If you had a permanent marker. And a lot of patience.

Compared to Thomas Jefferson, then, I am pathetic. (Yes, I’m reading the biography. Sue me. Literarily speaking, I’m a lemming. And yes, I know that’s all a myth.) I do feel rather superior to his wife, though, who insisted, on her deathbed, that he never remarry. He was thirty-nine. A single father. It was a crappy move on her part. Still, “more selfless than Patty Jefferson” doesn’t get me to the top of any list worth being on. Plus, Patty sounds silly. Perhaps if her name had been Elspeth…

Anyway. “The owner of the oldest extant working dishwasher?” This is something I can be proud of.

You have to take it where you can get it. So, even if we had the money? Screw the Bosch. Who needs excellence when you can have a world record?

Rack to the Future

9 Replies

I was standing in the kitchen this morning loading my dishwasher when it came to me. Like a bolt of lightning. A visitation from cherubim. An Annunciation.

“You have the oldest working dishwasher in the world.”

Just like that. The voice resounded and shook, a subterranean train pulling into the crumbling, elevated station of my brain. As I thought it, moreover, I knew that–unlike so many other of my fantastical and hyperbolic thoughts–it was true. The voice was speaking the Gospel. Of appliances, at any rate. I had finally, finally excelled at something.

We have the oldest working dishwasher. In. The. World.

I know. I’ve remarked upon our old appliances before. But I don’t think I really stopped to acknowledge the utterly antediluvian state of this one in particular.

It’s made by Gaffers and Sattler. Notice there’s no link to their website. That’s because they don’t exist anymore. And they didn’t go out of business a year ago, folks. Try forty-three. Forty-three years ago. Or that’s when, according to this quite interesting and totally random website, they were subsumed by Magic Chef. (Who was acquired by Maytag in 1986). So this dishwasher is at least 43 years old. But it could be more. Much more. I’m guessing, by the graphics in its owners manual, (which, thanks to the OCD of the previous owner of this house, we still have), that it came out in the fifties.

At which point, of course, it represented the apex of domestic accomplishment. Or so it seems:

And look at these fingernails. They scream fifties!

The G&S uses — wait for it — sixteen gallons of water per wash. If, that is, you’re using the “Hygienic Super Wash,” (otherwise known as “the only one that has any effect.”) My dad recently bought a Bosch dishwasher. I think it was $1500. It uses four gallons of water per wash. It “likes” food to be encrusted on the plates. This makes it work better. It holds the silverware in gentle plastic fingers, caressing each fork and spoon individually with filtered, temperature-controlled, ultrasonic jets. It hums at a decibel level so low it is indiscernible to the dog. Who, to be fair, died several years back. My dad’s dog, that is. Still.

Our dog is not dead. And she hears our dishwasher just fine. As does the dog fourteen houses down. And his owners. And the dog fourteen houses down from them. The G&S is so loud it can be heard back in the fifties, by the man who first designed it. Who is also dead. Even so…

All I know is, I want a Bosch. I want to “put my home in the modern picture.” Hell, I want fingernails like the lady’s in the manual. But I don’t have any of it. Certainly not the nails. And with the amount of time I spend scraping ossified, super-hygienically heated food from my “clean” dinner plates, I’m not gonna have them any time soon.

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