3 posts tagged “domestic duties”

Mr FD is trying to gather all our documents and receipts together to do our tax and hand it on to our accountant. To Mr FD this means a number of large boxes left for days and days in the foyer near the front door, just outside his study. A work in progress he calls it...a long snake line of boxes.

Martha's Thursday hint:

WHAT IF YOU EVER NEED TO USE THE BAKING PAN, FOR LIKE BAKING?

In Flamingo Dancer World that would mean that all the stuff in the pan would have to come out of the cupboard and onto the kitchen bench, along with the all the baking ingredients, and then they would have to sit there until the pan was free again, and in Flamingo Dancer World that could mean they may all sit there for at least 5 weeks, maybe a month or three longer.

Surely you can do better than this, Martha? Can't we fold our own box out of origami paper and then stencil kitchen motifs on the side as well create a stamped name label that says "Pantry Staples" in our favourite font, from a rubber stamp we chiselled ourselves while riding the bus to work? I think Martha's standards have dropped, don't you?

The Anti-Martha in Flamingo Dancer World

On a normal “work” morning the alarm goes at 5.30 am and Mr FD and I play snooze alarm tag for awhile before I roll out and start the day. Mr FD continues the snooze tag game until 6.30am.

In the meantime I dress and go down stairs to start my day. If Daughter 1 or I haven’t made lunches the night before I will make lunches for all three of us. Every morning I still have my private joke about how even though Daughter 1 is 29 I am still making school lunches for her (she is the teacher, not caught in groundhog remedial class!)  Most mornings I take the kitchen scraps out to the large compost bin in the garden, empty the water that has dripped our of our air conditioner into a watering can and water a couple of pots with it – I am endeavoring to be the water recycling queen – and decide what we are going to have for dinner that night, and sort out whether things have to defrost or not.  If it is a day for the milk man I bring in the milk and move things around in the fridge for a few minutes. Then onto emptying the dishwasher from the previous night and stacking whatever has been used since then. That job done, I start the kettle going and make tea, including a thermos cup for daughter to drink on her 45 minute drive to work as she is always running late and misses a cup of tea!

Next job is making breakfast for Mr FD and I. I usually make him toast and eggs for breakfast, but if he doesn’t come down as expected he gets it cold – he knows better than to complain. Sometimes I make breakfast for Daughter 1 depends on whether I want bonus Mummy points or not that day. I stack everything into the dishwasher and wipe the kitchen down.

This morning Mr FD is away so no breakfast for him. Instead I took the wheelie bin out to the footpath in readiness for tomorrow’s collection, so I don’t have to wake in the middle of the night to the sound of the garbage truck in the next street and do a made dash in my pjs to get the bin out in time. I also dead headed my gardenia bushes to assist them to continue flowering. Please.

The yellow pages phone book, two volumes for Brisbane, was left on the footpath so I also had to walk that back into the house and find a home for it, and wonder why Mr FD has a collection of yellow pages books, 2 volumes for each year and going back the last 6 years. No wonder his study looks like the city dump. It is the city dump – why did I waste time taking the rubbish bin out to the street?

Then I spent a good 7 minutes running about the house trying to find my black shoes. I am a creature of habit and always return things to the same spot – as the memory lapses get with worse this is becoming more important – but my shoes were not in any of the 3 usual spots. So I tried to think as a Flamingo Dancer would and chased about the house like a mad thing – only to find my shoes about a foot from their usual place. Someone must have moved them! Death to the intruder.

Backed my car out the house, but as my remote clicker for the garage door has ceased working, and somehow son and heir has purloined the remaining one, I had to hop out of the car and walk back into the house to close the garage. Locked the front door and then realized that I had not set the alarm. Back into the house and set the partial alarm. Partial alarm because son and heir is asleep upstairs and no doubt will be until about 3 o’clock this afternoon. He is amidst university exams and still keeping his crazy hours – up all night, asleep all day, which I think is his way of avoiding me, why I have no idea as I am the perfect mother – and I know that he will sleep so soundly that any burglar could come in with an earthmover and empty the bottom floor and son would not even murmur in his sleep. So hence the partial alarm.

Back to car and I made the gross human error of brushing against a trumpet flower and bright yellow pollen went all over my black pants…. Mad brushing and stomping and a high degree of Flamingo Dancing would have been viewed by the neighbours had they been watching, though it is probably no different to what they normally see when they look our way!

Semi-clean I hit the road. It was 7:15 am. Another day in paradise.