Tuesday, February 01, 2022

Even Rice Krispie Treats Can Turn On You

 Hi! Not sure what happened to January - I guess I spent the whole month still learning to cook for two and doing my daily exercise videos (because, sorry, I don't jog fast enough to stay alive in 20-degree weather) and scrambling frantically to find a new plow guy for our neighborhood (signed the contract at 10 AM the morning of our first snow, if you want to know how close I cut that one). 

Seriously, I don't know why anyone lets me be in charge of anything around here. 

All my snow pictures came out really Ansel Adams looking

Oh, and I've been washing dishes, because guess what? The dishwasher (you know, the one that is less than 2 years old?) is broken. I'll give it credit - it kept going for 15 whole months after the previous repair, through a houseful of people and multiple holiday gatherings (including 2 Thanksgivings and Christmases). It waited until a celebration-free month with only 3 people in the household to conk out on me again, and for that I will be forever grateful. The bar is really low around here, I guess.

Luckily, we had bought the protection plan (because, yeah, we've been down this road before) (MANY TIMES) and the service people told me that it should be only a week or so to get the parts they think it needs, which sure as heck beats the 6-8 weeks it took in 2020, so I can't find it in my heart to complain about that, either. Maybe I'm just getting mellow in my old age. Or beaten down, really. It's like raising too many teens. The first one you're all "You're not leaving the house wearing that!" By the last one, you're just sending her internet memes making fun of her pants.


And I just got lost down memory lane by searching on "dishwasher" in this blog and looking for the right posts to link to in that last paragraph. Turns out, I have practically an entire book's worth of essays detailing the havoc wreaked on this household by malfunctioning appliances. Appliance stories - is there a market for that? Maybe it could be a subgenre of romance novels? Lord knows my heart has been broken multiple times by the shiny false promises of these unpredictable machines.

Or maybe I should just get a real job. Lord knows I'm trying, but no one wants me. Which situation is particularly demoralizing in a time of record low unemployment, etc. I mean, they must REALLY not want me. I even persevered and earned the Google IT Support Professional certificate, which I found doesn't so much qualify me to be a true IT person as it makes me someone who can almost understand what the IT guy is trying to tell me. But it does look nice and new and shiny on my resume, so there's that.

I am most certainly NOT competent

We had an unfortunate incident with Rice Krispie treats recently, wherein the marshmallows congealed too much and we ended up with an inedible mass shaped strangely like West Virginia. Susie insists that this was due to the fact that she had to use the regular-size marshmallows and not the mini ones. I informed her that in my day we only had the regular-size ones and we had to melt them while walking to school uphill in the snow and they still came out okay. Susie was unconvinced, but what does she know?

Gen Z'ers can't HANDLE the regular-size marshmallows

Oh, and a bunch of you had questions about our new camper van! It's made by Recon Campers, which is owned by a guy who is trying to replicate what is apparently quite common all over Europe - a small van that will fit in a city parking place or a garage but which can also be used to travel and sleep in. I guess Americans tend to go for the larger type of RV, but he is still finding quite a market among US urbanites who can't park a bigger vehicle or a trailer anywhere.

One owner called it the "Swiss Army knife of camper vans"

There are some videos on the website, and here is a video made by a Recon Envy owner that is pretty thorough. I do wish I could tell you how it is to camp in it, but it's been pretty darn cold ever since we got it in November, so we haven't had a chance to do that yet. Larry and I take day trips in it on the weekend, just to break it in, and sometimes I'll park it in the sun somewhere so I can watch on my nifty phone app as the solar panels feed into the house battery. 

Hey, everybody needs a hobby.

I'm hoping to take it south in February to visit my brother and am unsuccessfully trying to convince one of my grown children to accompany me. I mean, why would they not want to telework from sunny Florida for a few days, right? I'm trying not to take it personally that so far no one has taken me up on that offer. Trying.



8 comments:

  1. The rice krispie mishap...I've had that happen with older marshmallows. Just throw it in the microwave for 10 seconds, it's still good. :p

    I do so like that van. I can't imagine your adult children not wanting to join you in a road trip. Silly kids!

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  2. The van looks AWESOME!

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  3. I'll go if your kids say no, it sounds great to me haha

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  4. I am sad that your new-ish dishwasher is broken but thankful it held out until it was just the three of you. I hate appliances; particularly new ones; since they are designed with planned obsolescence in mind.

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  5. Oh how funny you are. That jeans meme is hilarious. I look forward to a report on your first camper experience. Why does no one want to hire you? It is a mystery.

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  6. I am currently in the midst of a washing machine meltdown. Literally. Seems when there is a teeny imbalance due to overloading the 8ft capacity with oh, 6 towels or so, (insert sarcasm) it doesn't register to shut down and produce an error. Instead it picks a cycle (sensing, rinse, spin, etc.) and does it for hours. And I mean hours. It picked the spin cycle one night, and spun for 9 hours, ripping holes in Youngest's brand new Christmas clothes, melting through the agitator, breaking it in half and melting white plastic all over everything. While the agitator has been fixed (hello 2 weeks for the part to come in) the underlying problem is still yet to be resolved.

    And because we had the blizzard of blizzards and got 22" of snow dumped on us in 12 hours last weekend, we had to dig out the access to the basement before it's a giant block of ice so that *if* they determine we need a whole new washer they can get in the basement.

    Did I mention it's only 11 months old?

    Anyhoo, thanks for letting me vent... and as for the job thing, the hard part is that you're one in 4K applicants of which only maybe 6, including you, are actually looking. The rest are just ticking a box for unemployment. It's hard for any prospective employers to weed through to find the good ones. Hang in there, it will happen.

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  7. The epistolary novel of broken appliance posts - with Fabio on the cover in the Maytag repairman uniform? ... it could sell.

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  8. Your Recon van is so cool!
    Bummer about that dishwasher. I do believe you are cursed in that part of life.
    Your rice krispie treats look perfect to me, I prefer the ultimate goo of full marshmallow with a bit of crunch.

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