Did you know November 1st is Saints Day? With Halloween around the corner, I thought it might be fun to see how the word evolved. So, here goes:
November 1st is All Saints Day
Therefore, October 31st is All Saints Eve
October 31st is All Hallows Eve (‘Hallow’ also means to make holy or respect greatly and hence, synonymous with Saints)
October 31st is All Hallows Even (It is the evening after all)
When you try to say ‘Happy All Hallows Even’ about 30 times in 2 minutes, you get at ‘Happy Halloween’. (I suggest you try the exercise in private.)
All this is fine so far, but if you are unsure as to how All Saints Day got associated with ghosts, ghouls, spirits and ugly decor, please check out this news item that walks you through the progression of Halloween over the centuries.
In the meanwhile, two diabolically different worlds are coming together in the household this year for Halloween. A perfectly poised Hermione Granger (replete with the fake British accent) from the Harry Potter Universe will boss around 3 year old Lightning McQueen. Uncharacteristically, for Lightning McQueen, he will listen humbly and follow unquestioningly all the directions that Hermione sets forth for him. So what if the Harry Potter Universe is still using floating candles and speaking Latin, while Lightning McQueen is off touring the world and racing big-time? Who said there should be no collision between fictional worlds?
Speaking of fictional worlds, it is time for us to peek into that lovely forest with all the animals to see what they are doing to celebrate Halloween. Halloween In The Jungle is now available in the iBook store. Tango Tiger, Oby Elephant, Biso Bison, Percy Parrot, Zebo Zebra and many more join in this adventure to make Halloween a success in the Jungle. Please grab a copy, and listen to the story while sipping some pumpkin juice from Farmer Hasalot’s pumpkin patch.
The Jungle is a busy place with Halloween approaching, eerie orchestra sounds, pumpkin juice and lemonade stalls, spiders at work. You must feel just a little bit compelled to chip in, right?
The Jungle is a busy place preparing for the Halloween Party
I read somewhere that these great and wonderful kings of yore were excellent orators. They probably approached their troops the morning before the war and enthused their troops with words dripping with honey, infused with rage, that sent their blood pumping with pride, so they performed their best on the battlefield. We cannot, in all honesty, lay any such claims when we sent the poor husband off to wage a war with the Dishwasher company, but we tried.
Not only were tempers short, but festivities abounded. There was Krishna Jayanthi, Vinayaka Chaturthi, Navarathri, a couple of full moons, a couple of new moons and all the days of waxing and waning moons in between. Every God had to be appeased, and every blip in the lunar cycle acknowledged. What was one to do? How does all this affect dishwashing you ask. If ever there was a race to determine the maximum variety of dishes cooked, I am sure the sturdy South Indian family will lead the race with a resounding burp. Festivals provide ample opportunity for the palate to be challenged and rewarded. Consequently, the dishwashing load increased. It did not help matters at all that in the 2 months since installing the new dishwasher, the repairmen had clopped into their house with large horse-like feet twice with little to show. Much like horses, these men, left their shoes on as well. The slight pursing of the lips of the parents-in-law may have been lost on them men, but they were not lost on me.
All in all, there was sternness in manner and reproach in tone when telling the husband clearly that he must throw his weight about and create a ruckus.His parents did their best to buck him up. They told him that their generation did not stand for such namby-pamby nonsense as polite calls to customer service. He was urged to gain inspiration from such sturdy souls as his uncle.
“Remember Kichaa Maama?” said the mother-in-l.
“I thought you didn’t like him much.” said the husband smartly for he seemed to know where the conv. was leading.
“That is not the point. Kichaa mama achieved things.” There was pride in her voice. Kichaa Maama’s mother could have learnt a thing or two on feeling proper pride at her son’s achievements.
“Who is Kichaa Mama?”I asked, nibbling a persimmon, from the sidelines.
The husband shot me a dirty look that said, “Et tu Brutus?”
It was just the cue that the parents-in-law were waiting for. They tripped over themselves explaining. This Kichaa Maama’s middle name was ‘Follow-up’. He was also a close relative: only twice-removed-on-the-paternal-side and once-removed-by-marriage-on-the-maternal-side. He never quailed at simple things such as customer service calls. Apparently, no atrocity of service was left to simmer in kitchens like this. He called and called them again. (“You mean, he made a pest of himself.” said the husband in a brooding low-tone. This slur on Kichaa Maama was ignored for the moment)
They were dealt with firmly in letters to the CEOs by that uncle. CEO’s, apparently, reacted much better to customer complaints than customer service representatives and this legendary uncle had received new items as replacements in his firm dealings with companies. Legend has it that he once received a new television set from the CEO personally. I am thinking he received a set of AA batteries for his trouble sent personally by the CEO’s secretary’s assistant.
The husband had a martyred look about him as he slunk out to call the customer service department that day and live up to the dubious precedent of Kichaa Maama.
The day wore on and the husband adroitly avoided all calls from home. The first words to greet the tired warrior as he stepped into the home were: How did the customer service call go?
The man grinned somewhat sheepishly and I knew what happened. There were things I am sure that the husband would like to imbibe from Kichaa Maama, but yelling at customer service representatives was not one of them.
“I did try.” said the endearing man. “But, the image of a sad customer service rep earning a regular paycheck to talk to irate customers all day long rose before me. What do they care about an Indian man whose house is filled with dirty dishes?”
“So, what? Did you even try to tell them that this was the third time that all this is happening?”
“Yes. Yes. I did. “ said he rather pained and stung that he should not have mentioned the trauma the household was in. Another repairman will come to take care of things anytime between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. before the next full moon. (I exaggerate, but this time he did not even get a shorter window in which to make ourselves available. Really!)
“Let’s go for a walk.” I said hurriedly before proper admonitions were forthcoming. It was clear that the man was incapable of having a customer service rep reach for their earplugs, so why harp on the point?
“Did you let them know that there are upset people in the house?” I asked when we had reached the safety of the sidewalk lined with trees whose leaves had started changing colors to welcome beautiful Fall.
The husband laughed and said that he did start off in an irate tone of voice, but then he thought of the poor lady’s life. “I mean, she has a life and we have ours. Her job was to note down complaints and take care of them. Two sentences into my call, I think she sensed my reluctance and I started laughing. I told her that everyone was upset and she said very fairly that she understood our situation. So, she noted it down in her comments that, we are upset, and that it has happened twice already – so, the CEO knows the nourishncherish family is upset over the dishwasher.” said the man, a smile quivering over his lips.
Sigh. If a bird tried to roar like a lion, could it?
Dishwasher Chronicles – Can birds roar like lions?
P.S. The third set of repairmen clopped into the house looking like Laurel & Hardy and this time spoke with great Spanish comedian authority that the slider was the problem. All in all, all the innards of the dishwasher have now been replaced. We walk gingerly around it, just in case. Friends suggest a tribal dance to appease the Dishwasher Gods.
P.P.S.: Last night, the dishwasher knew that the saga around it was coming to an end and made a weird noise like it was thudding shoes around inside. Please keep your fingers crossed.
I have always wondered how it must be to be an agriculturist. What if you had fields of coconut trees and jackfruit trees? How do you detect from the outside given the rough and tough exterior of the produce if it is ready for harvest or not? Let’s take coconuts for example. Do you gaze up at the trees and think, “That big one over yonder looks big and green enough, so it must be ready.” . Then, you go fetch some ropes, hoist yourself up there and sever it from its tree and plop open its head.
What if, after all this bother, you find it still has another week before its prime time? You can’t seal it closed again and attach it back to the tree, can you?
Examined from this angle, I suppose, the plight of modern dishwasher users is better than that of a coconut farmer at harvest time. Though, the methods are the same.
You still need to hoist yourself at a safe distance from the dishwasher to determine whether it is done or not, for the only way to find out whether the dishes are done is to plop open the dishwasher. If it is not done, you run the risk of having the dirty or partly clean water give you a splash. All the controls and progress indicators are set on the top panel which slides out of view when the dishwasher is closed remember? I must say, the husband is the most skilled at this among us. The rest of us baboon around till there is water on the floor and are still unable to see how much of the task remains.
As was so often the case, the dishwasher stopped midway through and the husband’s skill-sets were increasingly called upon. Initially, he was able to tell us how much of the cycle was done.He would say, ’23 minutes remaining’, so just switch it on again, or ’46 minutes 30 seconds left, let’s just do the dishes’ and dash away from the premises for an (ahem) important meeting. But later on, he professed ignorance. I don’t think this kind of degradation of service is acceptable anywhere. How can you go from giving the exact number of minutes and seconds remaining to nothing? There was much murmuring and looks-exchanging at this.
The parents-in-law accosted him one morning and said enough was enough. Either he shouted at the person he got on the phone, or they would call the nice fellow who came last time and assured them in Spanish about the parrots-liking-green-tea and ask him for explanations. The husband looked cornered – there were three belligerent-looking blokes/blokees demanding explanations or a new dishwasher. He buckled and said he would do his best to shout at the customer service representative.
I caught his eye and couldn’t help smiling. The husband may be the head agriculturist if ever we become coconut farmers or jackfruit orchard owners. But he shall not be the one shouting at the coconut if it is not yet ripe. I gave him a much needed cup of coffee from a cup picked up from the dishwasher and sent him on his war.
I have a sneaking suspicion on what happened on the call and this, I shall share, with you all in the next blog entry.
The gleaming stainless steel dishwasher made its way home after a 2 week waiting period. There was great rejoicing in the house when we switched it on for the first time, since we could not hear it. The previous dishwasher was an autocratic leader. When it spoke, no one else could. This was a problem because that meant we could only use the dishwasher between the sweet hours of 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. (we have a gamut of late-sleepers and early risers in the household who just don’t get the beauty of a long night’s sleep), and since there was no timer, the autocrat was ousted. But as with the end of every regime, there was euphoria initially followed by a period of wistful thinking and even yearning for the old dishwasher. If only ousted monarchs stayed to watch the wistful periods, they might have died happy deaths, but since most of them were taken in bloody coups, the chances of that were slim. So, it was with our dishwasher.
Every night, I washed the dishes almost clean and then placed them in the new dishwasher to completely clean, set the timer to start 4 hours later, smiled triumphantly at everyone in the room and went to bed. Things were marvelous the first few days, we ran the dishwasher right through our conversations and there was not even a beep and all the stake holders were happy. Things started to crumble toward the end of week 1. The grim period was about to begin.
You know how in the old dishwasher, we knew right away whether it was allowed to complete its job or not because the dials were so prominently placed – like bright large bindis on a broad forehead?
The Expressive Dishwasher (Not the primitive one!)
The new one, had the controls hidden, so there was no way to know whether it had done its job. Absolutely poker faced. Now, one was stuck with the joyful task of identifying the almost clean ones to wash again. The only possible way to know was by feeling the dishes. Looking at the dishes were a fat help because they looked almost clean. The first few times we figured the dishwasher had stopped midway through, we had already put away more than half the dishes. I don’t know about you, but none of us in our house have eidetic memories. In fact, it isn’t far from the truth to say that we give as much attention to the intensely-dull tasks such as putting away the dishes as a well-fed cat does to a caring otter. http://www.themarysue.com/indifferent-cats/ Given this, how was one to find the dishes that were almost clean and put away?
There were brilliant suggestions to ascertain the ones that were in the dishwasher when it decided to go belligerent and stop working on us. “Smell every cup” said one with a long nose, “Just look closely” said the one who forgot to wear spectacles, “Maybe we should try to pat every cup and examine the tissue paper we used to see whether it needs cleaning” said the environmentalist. So, we’d wash all the cups and plates again to make sure.
The Poker Faced Dishwasher
After the fifth time, the husband took command. He placated the dishwashing public. His spirited speech to remain calm was heard and he contacted the service desk. A repairman would be sent between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m. said the appointment. So, the house waited for the men of action to arrive.
The father-in-law is a man of practical talents. He has a way around fixing the odd things in somewhat odd-fashions, but they work. He also takes a keen interest in seeing how things are fixed. The mother-in-law knows her limits in this realm and prudently keeps away, but feels obliged to point out to her husband that he must fearlessly question and prod. Luckily, they don’t know English and the Spanish speaking repairmen did not know Tamil. One shudders to think of the outcome had they understood each other. I formed a loose sort of dam between the spate of questions from the household and them. “Why was it broken? Is the connection to the water-hose done properly? Do they really know how to fix it? They look young, they look like they eat chips a lot, do you think they will ask for juice? If they ask for coffee, we need to buy a can of milk in the evening. When you are at it, also buy tomatoes.” I have to marvel at the ability to fit a grocery list into the proceedings when one is questioning means and methods of dishwasher repair.
The sliding rack was the problem said the knowledgeable men and though question arrows were splicing my back (Are they sure the rack is the problem? What if the cup area was the problem? How did they know the rack was the problem?), I bore the arrows painfully on my back, asked them civilly to drink up a cup of orange juice and sent them on their way. There was talk about me being a softie and not being brave enough to ask them all the questions, but one cannot please everybody. You either pleased the d.repair folks who displayed something like brute strength when they lunged the rack out of the dishwasher, or you pleased the parents-in-law who shot grocery lists at you during dishwasher repair. Not both.
To save you all from the events of the next few painful days, I implore you to go back and read paragraphs 3,4 & 5 again. The husband, this time, was asked to take a firm stance and ask for a different set of repairmen, but really, what could you ask to see? Their poly-technic certification? What if their degree, if they did have one, was for repairing washing machines, but they picked up dishwashers along the way? You were fighting a losing battle with this and he knew it.
The second pair decided that the spine of the dishwasher was the problem. It pushed the rack out and that is why the dishwasher stopped working, they said. If it stops again, ask him if he will change the dishwasher for us, asked the parents.i.l. I tried telling them that these people had no clue whether the company would replace the dishwasher or not and that would be a different call to make. I could see my rationale was not being received well in their mind. With this, I seemed to have sunk even lower in the efficiency department. I went upstairs for a brief moment and I came back to see a thriving session of puppetry and dumb-charades flourishing between The Spanish and The Tamil. They managed to ask him their question and he was managing to smile at them and answer them something. I think he was saying, “Parrots also like green tea, have you tried giving them coffee? You should see their faces then!”
But everybody was happy and the second set departed. Before the third set came in, there was positive yearning for the old dishwasher. (At least, it just made a noise and if you did not have to watch TV or talk when it did its work, it did a marvelous job!) . Our dishwasher’s psyche was taking a beating and dishwashers from next door were ready to come and give the one in our house a hand.
Our dishwasher was an old one. I suppose it did its job, but its noise was inversely proportional to its efficiency. Speaking of noise and efficiency, I remember a maid we had once who treated the dishes with the same crashing nonchalance. There too, the noise and cleanliness were inversely proportional. The lady was a force to reckon with and neither the vessels nor the people stood up against her. She once scared the bejesus out of my sleeping brother causing him to leap like a salmon from the floor to the couch in an elegant upward arch at 6 o’clock in the morning. (https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2006/08/01/salmon/) My father, a brave man, once mustered up the courage to tell her he could hear the dishes crashing even without his hearing aid. I gave him a bracing cup of coffee afterward and told him how proud I was to be his daughter and all that, but I don’t think it affected her or the dishes in any way.
On a related note, when you plot the state of wakefulness in the household, there are a bunch of continuous sinusoidal waves like this:
sinusoidal sleep waves
So, I suppose when you interlace them together, you get a pretty good picture. Between visiting maternal and paternal grandparents, 2 children (1 toddler), Molly & Sally the fishes, the husband and I, the state of wakefulness in the house in a somewhat hazy positive at all points in time. To further elucidate, If we were to have an owl as a pet, it would be hard put to find a time when it thinks it really is night. For there are late sleepers, early risers. And just to make things interesting, there are folks who sleep early, then get up at midnight and stay up for a few hours. I am telling you, we house all varieties of sleep monsters.
I know you think I am driveling (dishwashers, maids, sinusoidal waves, owls: what next?), but bear with me for a moment. Let’s back track to the d.washer model. The problem with the poor thing was that it did not have the option to let us program the time at which it was welcome to start crashing the dishes. The dishwasher was so loud, if we actually had a couple of bulls stampeding into the china cabinet looking for a cup of tea or some bears trying to nip food from the kitchen, they could have done so under the cloak of secrecy hiding well behind the dishwasher’s sounds. The dishwasher running in the kitchen meant that nobody could hope to get a word in to each other in terms of conversation and all thoughts of enjoying a quiet television show was out the window too. Basically, the only way one could get quiet time downstairs was to camp out in the backyard with the kitchen door firmly closed, but that can be hard when one is also looking to keep warm and comfortable. All in all, a hard spot, you’d agree.
So, then I hit upon the best solution available: I would load the dishwasher and make a general announcement that the last person to come upstairs must switch it on. Every person who went upstairs afterwards, scoured the area and passed the baton to the people remaining downstairs. Usually, that worked pretty well, unless the last person (no points for guessing the most frequent offender)forgot to switch it on. Worse still, there were times when I would switch it on as I was the last to leave and still find the dishwasher hadn’t finished its job because the husband would have popped out of bed after that to get milk for the baby, and switched it off.
Dishwasher
Every time something like this happened, there was mayhem the next day. Remember I told you it wasn’t a very efficient one? So, I’d wash the dishes almost clean before putting them in the dishwasher. I will not do them perfectly clean, because the dishwasher has to work no? As I write this, I realize I have been a priceless ass and that I could have just washed them all myself and be done with it. But I don’t get to write this blog if I was efficient like that. Anyway, the point is that, whether or not the dishwasher ran, the dishes looked pretty clean.
But the dishwasher being an old model was also primitive in it’s operations. There was a large dial on the control panel that slid all the way to ‘Off’ as the dishwasher worked its way through. If the dial was halfway through, you were warned it was not done properly. Then, you sounded like a hurt werewolf on full moon night, evacuated the residents out of the kitchen and switched on the dishwasher. If you got no talking done during the entire hour that it crashed about, that is punishment enough to make one remember to switch it on at night what? We had a few interesting moments when it was revealed the son as a baby had learnt how to rotate the switch and we had therefore let the dishwasher rewash dishes unnecessarily on a number of occasions.
After a series of these punishing days, we were goaded beyond tolerance. We complained sorely for a few years. And then, with the speed that it takes for lightning bolts to strike (just a few weeks), we went in for a new dishwasher.
The daughter and son said their goodbyes to the d.washer in a touching manner.
I shall continue the new dishwasher chronicles in my next blog. I suppose I don’t very much like the idea of leaving the readers hanging from the cliff like this: do the dishes get washed in her household or not?Hang Tight folks. Hang Tight.
Given that I live in the Bay area, I have grown used to the fact that waiters at restaurants ask you whether you want ‘Water With No Ice’ a term that is so jarring in its construct, that the first few times I laughed every time I heard it. You ask for ‘water without ice’ or you ask for ‘water-@-room-temp’. How do you make water with no ice. Is ‘no-ice’ a thing that you plop into the water? But ‘no-ice’ is nice and like so many other lovable quirks in the USA, I have embraced this one over the years.
Water-with-no-ice however brings me to a question that I am sure has occupied the mind of every attentive waiter in the Bay area at least once. Why are folks who hail from a hot country like India not going in for a cold drink? I’ve wondered this quite often myself. Why are we this obsessed with hot food, hot tea and hot milk, not to mention the piping hot coffee?
Given how much we enjoy the hot food, imagine my chagrin then when the microwave danced out on us.
On a side note, I wonder whether you notice a trend here. The dryer showed us what it is capable of, the oven hasn’t been on talking terms with us the past year and now, the microwave. (I don’t wish to offend the dishwasher by not dedicating a few blogs to it. It has been begging me to do so with its recent behavior and I have been holding firm thus far, but I may just have to write it up too) All very wearying and worrying and all that. Sigh! Where was I? Yes. The Microwave.
So, one hot evening I walked into the kitchen to make myself a hot cup of tea. The microwave started humming, rotating slowly and the dull lights inside showed me it was working on it. A full minute later, I picked up the cup gingerly expecting it to exude warmth, but it was stone cold. I mean porcelain-cold. It hadn’t done its duty. I gaped at it, and tried again. (Did you expect different behavior when you try the same thing? I see your censorious question and say, “Yes. “ Maybe the heating coil was taking a breather and the gentle nudge that I gave on the bottom of the microwave may have spurred it to act again) However, gentle nudge or ferocious roar, the microwave had retired. As unobtrusively as it seeped into our lives, it retired.
I have lived without a microwave in a very cold place for two decades and I can assure you it is possible. Yet, it is only when it isn’t there that you realize how kindly and painlessly this device helps you lead your life. You put in a cup of milk and a minute later, there you have it: a cup of hot milk for whatever use you have for it.Every morning now, there was definite hungama over the coffee:
The milk took its time to boil.
The water took its time to boil
The coffee took it time to drip.
Then the coffee and milk together, was not hot enough.
Ask any proud South Indian coffee drinker and he will tell you that directly heating the coffee dilutes its flavor. (For the record, I see no difference.)
More than any of that, the microwave knew to stop heating the milk in 30 seconds. The stovetop didn’t. The entire three minutes that Istood watching the milk, nothing happened and the moment I turned to pick a spoon, a loud sizzle told me that the milk had boiled over. Morning coffees were a milk-bath.They were becoming long-drawn affairs in molly-cuddling the milk, comforting the coffee andsoothing the drinkers. One morning, the mother-in-law, a sturdy lady who has taken life by its horns, could be seen sitting with her hands on her head with the morning coffee routine. Needless to say, the milk boiled over at that very instant and all hands great and small gathered around to help clean the mess.
That was how the husband and I went shopping for a microwave without a penny on us, and still managed to bring a gleaming microwave into the house. (We both forgot our purses at home – coffee-less people do that apparently)
Please indulge me once more as I meander down the memory lane. After all, The business of life is the acquisition of memories.
The business of life is the acquisition of memories
Regular readers of my blog know that I grew up in a beautiful hill station surrounded by hills, forests, springs and tea estates. Obviously, I spent a good part of this time enjoying my life. I’ve tasted berries whose name I know not, played in the rain, walked through the fog not knowing whether I am heading for a cliff, I have walked and run so far away from home, but nature always guided me back to my home (well, mostly, folks who worked in my parents’ school and realized I was lost), drank water from fresh water springs, cycled on ‘bridges’ made of slender logs, ran helter-skelter after spotting wild boars hiding in bushes.
Lovely Nature, Sweet Nature
Maybe, I could have died in a hundred different ways, but I also lived in a thousand beautifully different ways.
Which is why modern parenting makes me stop and think. Do we structure our childrens’ time too much too soon to remove the true benefits of unstructured time? Are we over-protective? So many of the things this article spoke about resonated with me.
But today, to keep our kids “safe,” we drive them back and forth to school. “Arrival” and “dismissal” have morphed into “drop-off” and “pick-up.” Kids are delivered like FedEx packages. About 1 in 10 use their legs to get to school.
Do we really need 599 cars dropping off 599 children in a school less than 5 miles from home every morning? What happened to biking, walking or taking a school bus to school? It is no wonder that obesity rates are spiking.
The fact that I don’t see residential neighborhoods filled with children playing on the street saddens me. The only way to change that is to open those doors and step outside. Let children play.
I am a tad spirited in expressing the way we are consumed by technology these days. I look at videos that show us how we are all peering into our phones with a vehemence that is perhaps overdone and say ‘Ha! See? I told you so.” I may have been getting a little chatty of late about the topic. Of course, the wrong gadgets got offended with my unguarded statements. The tumble dryer that has been huffing and puffing along noisily but religiously in the background shuddered and refused to dry the clothes. It still chunked and bunked about, threw its weight around like it always does. It tried to remain the General in the laundry room, but there was no mistaking the fact that no drying was being done there.
The husband and I tried all the methods of repair we know without having to consult the vast Internet. That is to say, we reset the switches, gave resounding thumps on random areas of the dryer. We have seen mechanics do the same with astounding success, but our own thump quotients yield nothing. In fact, our oven got so offended with the Thump Technique, it refuses to acknowledge our presence anymore. “I Won’t Beep! Not EVEN If You Reset The Switch!” it said and turned its LEDs off with a spectacular flourish.
That is when the husband went you-tubing and found a whole lot of things that can happen to dryers. He went into the laundry room squeaking clean one Saturday morning accordingly and within minutes we saw a mountain of lint and the husband somewhere in there sounding like an astonished frog deep in a well and saying something like ‘Holy Moly! There is soooo much lint in here.”
“Do you want any help?” I asked peeking into the room with the toddler son in tow. He might have accepted my help, but he looked alarmed at the son’s expression. He looked gleeful at all the soft lint available for a variety of projects – there was a possibility of lint fireworks, lint flakes drifting in the room, lint piles for jumping in. The husband was quick to realize that the biggest help was probably no help at all. “NO! Just keep him away. I am fine!” said the martyr and went back to de-linting the machine.
If you are one of those folks who regularly move the refrigerator so the space under the fridge is clean, you can stop reading now, but for the rest of us, here is news. Apparently, the lint does not only accumulate in the lint filter (You know that narrow piece that says, “Please clear after use!” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothes_dryer#Lint_build-up_.28tumble_dryers.29). Apparently, the lint overflows into every inch of space the lint can find. It expands, it builds its regime. It cranks hard at tubes going out into the big bad world and it frightens rodents into leaving. It seems to me like Genghis Khan could take a lesson or two from Lint on empire building.
Lint Lint Everywhere Lint Near & Far
A few hours in lint saw the husband emerge looking like he had been rattled by rabbits in a bag full of fur. He was clutching a large garbage bag full of lint, several portions of lint clung to his clothes, hair and feet. He looked a sorry mess. I felt a pang for the man and thought of inserting a bit of humor to the proceedings to lighten him up. “Have you been tunneling in lint?” I asked. I was shocked to hear my sarcasm was completely pointless for he was doing just that. “Yes…did you know that the tube that tunnels through the wall is filled with lint too? I got most of it out, but there is still some sticking to the pipes and I am heading out to the other side to extricate the remaining.”
I suppose this is often the case with technology. You never know which one will truly grow into epic proportions.Who knew The Vortex of Lint Terror or the Holy Tunnel of Lint would come from that small lint opening?
Thanks to the awesome skills of the Lint Remover, we are now wearing dry clothes again.
You know how William Blake said something about Wonder? I had forgotten, but luckily the Internet is there for souls like me who wonder vaguely what was it the bloke called Blake said about Wonder and Voila there it is.
You can use your sense of wonder for a great many things: To marvel at the bunk beds as the daughter and her friends did, or at the restrooms as the son did on our recent camping trip.
The husband and I fulfilled our sense of wonder by watching the night sky. Where we live, the stars are dimmed out by the lights of civilization, but even then, we set out every now and then to star gaze. Every time, we are a little farther away from the lights of civilization, we look up and admire all those generations before us who studied the skies and named the constellations. What a gift it is to us! One truly realizes the value of accumulated wisdom when one gazes upon the limitless night sky, does one not?
On that warm summer night, as we sat around the campfire after an exemplary meal, it was with that feeling of humility and gratitude that anything to do with the stars brings on, that we gazed. As we sat there, every now and then, we would detect a satellite moving across the sky. We even saw a few shooting stars in the sky. Conversation turned to how even the campfire’s lights can mask the true glory of seeing the Milky Way.
Time wore on and we turned in for the night.
We may have retired, but the son’s mind was still reflecting subconsciously on the wonders of the automatic flush or the blinking red light in the bathroom, I would never know. What I do know is that he got up enthusiastically every few hours to get a whiff at the wonderful restroom. It was at his 3:15 a.m. marveling session that I decided to make the best of it.
Stars Shine Down
Maybe, this was nature’s way of granting me the joy of seeing the true beauty of the Milky Way. I slipped out and stood under the stars inhaling the grandeur of it all. The mortal sufferings, the pain humanity goes through, the agonies we endure everything seems to stop for that moment when the stars shine down. It is as beautiful as it is therapeutic.
I came back yearning to see the beauty of the night sky again and found this trove of beautiful pictures of the night sky:
Everybody should get themselves a dose of the night sky every once in a while, even if it means visiting the restroom fifteen times with a wonder-filled toddler.
The summer heat beat down on the grasslands, the ranches and the river flowing nearby with a kind of fierce energy, determined to show us both how hot and long it can go on, on the summer solstice. We were out on a camping trip, and I cannot imagine how it would have been had we been pitching up tents and hitching it in the heat. As it turns out, we went in for cabins with full blast A/c and bunk beds that provided hours of entertainment to the bendy amongst us. The children want to climb something. If trees are not available in the searing heat, the bunk beds were just fine too.
The campsite was near a river and the thought of flowing fresh water nearby is always a calming influence.
We played by the river for some time.
Then someone suggested that we beat it to the swimming pool instead. So, we did. I had brought along a pair of pink and blue goggles and the children were remarkably well-behaved around them. When I had the extra one in my hand, one child asked me politely whether they could please use it, “By all means!” said I beaming. A few minutes later, another mermaid swam up to me and said, “Could I have the pink ones please?”
I beamed again and gave the pink one. This is when things started getting complicated. The mergirls and merboys were having a go in the swimming pool and every now and then, one of the merfolk would splash up to me and ask, “Aunty, can I use the pink goggles?” I’d say ‘Of course’ and go on chatting with my friends. A few minutes later, another merchild would ask “May I use the blue goggles please?” and I’d nod my consent to that too, little realizing what my little assents were causing inside the pool. It turns out that there was a fierce war raging around the goggles. One group wanted to use them and the other did not. The game had me fogged when the details emerged. So, every time somebody came up to me and asked me whether they could use the goggles and I said ‘Yes’, the folks went to the opposing lot and said that I had allowed them to use the goggles and the rightful owner of the treasure was their team. Then, another one would come up to me and I would nod again and the drama would start all over again.
When did I catch on, you ask. Well, to tell you the truth, my school teacher parents would have detected the war a mile away, but I was so intent on chatting with my good friends and it had been such a long time since I spent a summer teaching children, that it took a large-scale splash party in the pool to make me stop and think. What helped was that two folk were swimming up to me in great speed clearly trying to get to me first. The moment I had nodded my assent to one, child 1 whipped up a victory splash and whooped in joy. I saw the crest fallen Child 2 and only then realized what was going on.
This poster should have come to my mind a little earlier, but it didn’t.
Well, if anything, despite their struggles to get all the goggles to their own teams, they had been exceedingly polite and had maintained the quorum of splash-envy, and so deserved a goggle each whether they wanted it or not.
The waters don’t always show the currents and depth, do they?
Nourish-n-Cherish 
