Monday, November 16, 2020

Miscellaneous Taken To A New Level

Whelp, here we are, once more at the end of our family's birthday season. If you check out the info on the right there, in the sidebar, you can see that all my kids are getting really old. I don't know how that happened, actually, but with Theo having just turned 29, I can't ignore it anymore. I'm not sure if people without younger kids are even allowed to blog, so I'll have to check the rule book on that and get back to you. In the meantime, let's catch up!

Halloween still life, with Twizzlers

Halloween - our second year with no resident trick-or-treaters, and I'm still sort of annoyed about that. It's no fun stealing candy from myself, TBH. We saw 54 trick-or-treaters for our modified festivities this year (candy left at the end of the sidewalk, with us old people waving and exclaiming over costumes from the front porch). I am currently experiencing the remorse of one who has way overindulged in those fat little strawberry Twizzlers that are sold only for Halloween.

But the most exciting news from October was that the appliance repairman finally returned with all the needed parts and fixed our dishwasher. Honestly, toward the end of our broken-dishwasher ordeal, I had pretty much convinced myself that we were way more efficient at doing dishes when we had to do them by hand. "This is actually much better," I would announce to anyone who would listen, as I washed my 51st fork of the day and balanced it in my overworked Michael Graves dish-drying rack

"Dishwashers are a waste of time and energy resources," I'd say primly, as I tried to scrub the food stains off my white plastic cutting board. "Really," I told a not-listening Larry, "let's just take out the dishwasher and put the condiment fridge in that space."

The other residents of our household wisely chalked up my ravings to the dishwashing version of Stockholm Syndrome. But now we have our dishwasher back, and oh, it is a joyous experience to load up those 3 racks and start it up. JOYOUS, I tell you.

It cleans ALL THE THINGS

8 WEEKS, people. We went without this miracle of modern convenience for 8 weeks. No wonder I was suffering delusions by the end.

Spending less time washing dishes means I finally finished knitting the socks I've been working on since March and which will forever remind me of COVID-19. I am now fixated on knitting fingerless mitts, because it is November and Christmas is coming. Also, bulky cowls. And watch caps for the boys. That's my plan, anyway. Hopefully that dishwasher stays fixed.

The official colors of COVID, I guess

In other not-so-exciting news, I cleaned out some kitchen cabinets and discovered that I possess not even one complete set of measuring cups. Also? I unearthed a sippy cup lid (we haven't used sippy cups here in the past decade) and some taco holders (ditto) which I recall made some of my children very happy a long, long time ago.

Remembrance of things past

I do hope no one came here expecting anything other than the mundane. If there is one thing you can count on in this crazy, mixed-up world, it's that I will continue talking about broken appliances, my inept housekeeping practices, and knitting, all while waxing maudlin about the inexorable passage of time.

Oh, I almost forgot - I voted.

All the cool kids were doing it

I spent the 2 days before the election canvassing for Get Out the Vote, and I spent 4 hours volunteering at the polls on Election Day (hey, someone had to erase those ballots and fill them in the right way, you know - HA HA JOKE JUST KIDDING NO FRAUD HERE), so I spent Wednesday lying on our couch and wondering, along with the rest of America, just what was going to happen. I was exhausted. Spent. Wiped out.

But hey, at least I didn't have to do any dishes...