Oh Horror! she doesn't cook!!

I confessed to my friend who is a gourmet cook and is coming to visit for a few days that I don’t cook. After her initial surprize and my explanation as to why I didn’t cook, she graciously dismissed my concern and agreed it would be lovely to eat out one night and get nice take away the other.

Now it’s not really accurate that I don’t cook.  I am a whizz with the microwave although strictly speaking that’s more about heating and reheating, including nuking frozen dinners, warming heatpacks and hotting up coffee.  I also have a George Foreman Grill for grilling chops and steak, which I do less and less often.  I’m not exactly a vegetarian but I rarely these days eat red meat. In addition I have a deep fryer – also used less and less often these days.

In the old days as the saying goes I was a great cook.  General cooking of meals for our family of six for many years.  Plus baking – there I really shone.  Cakes and slices and pavlovas.  I was famous for my pavlovas.  I would whip up a batch  of four dozen patty cakes – half of which would be gone before they were cool enough to ice and the rest I would make into little butterfly cakes with homemade mock cream and icing sugar.  Slices like marshmallow slice and passionfruit slice and custard slice all went down famously with kids and friends alike. In addition I made great pancakes all from scratch – no packet mixes for me. 

When I was a young mum a group of us young mums who were neighbours, would play cards one night a week, taking turns holding the card night at each of our homes.  When it was my turn, I would spend most of the day baking slices etc. and we would spend less time playing cards than eating and chatting and laughing, and a good time was had by all.  I think these card nights kept us all sane for those early years. Later a different group of friends all living in different suburbs, would visit each other - kids in tow, to play canasta.  I used to take the pancake batter and make them up and serve them hot with butter and sugar and lemon juice –mmmmmmm. I would often make them for lunch for my kids when son RR was 4 years old.

All this was done on the basic electric standalone stove and oven. Just the dials to turn on and off and the temperature to set and knowing which shelf of the oven to use and how to tell when things were cooked. Unlike today with ovens that look like the command centre of the Starship Enterprise

Then I got out of the way of cooking for a number of reasons. One was that I was working in jobs that had me out until fairly late in the evening and R was off work for a couple of years after an accident.  He began to take up cooking as a hobby at first and then began to do much of the cooking of meals at night. Eventually as the kids left home and he was back at work which had him home by 4:30PM and I was often home at 8PM he became chief cook.  Also in the intervening years sweet things like cakes and slices went out of fashion and savoury treats came into fashion.

So not only did I get out of the habit of cooking much when R took over but now that I’m on my own, I can’t be bothered cooking for one.  Except at Xmas when the family comes and I traditionally do the big baked dinner. Now in this new kitchen of mine I have of course a new oven which has many different ways of cooking and is all electronic.  This was not the most complicated oven I could buy but still requires a degree to figure out how to work it and what settings to use.  So because I use it once or twice a year I never remember how it all goes and I have to look up the manual every time. Then disaster - Last Xmas I couldn’t find the manual. I discovered this  on Xmas morning. After an hour or so searching I gave up and winged it.  And to my surprize it all came out OK.  The girls think it’s hilarious that I have to look up the manual every time I use the oven.  OK for them they have the old fashioned type.

So I don’t really cook these days and I have a very bland palate. I’m not interested in gourmet food and the fact that I could turn the TV on at any time of the day or night and find a cooking show on one channel or another stuns me. But I have a healthy diet and these days I have to watch the calories.  So I have no intention of taking up cooking again.  I use the time I save not cooking and cleaning up after, in other productive and enjoyable ways.  To all of you out there who collect recipes and watch all the cooking shows and love cooking and experimenting I say go for it! Enjoy.  Me?  I’ll keep on being a not cook.

The Gadget

The following story is one I wrote as an exercise in my writers group. The task was to describe a gadget, in detail, that you were holding in your hand 30 years in the future. When I came to write the story I had misplaced my computer glasses and had been searching for them for days. I kept thinking that if it was my phone, which I misplace regularly, then I could just ring the phone and it would be easy to locate, but glasses don’t have a ring tone.  Thus was born the gadget story. The final version presented below has been redrafted and rewritten using the helpful editing tips from the members of my group.  Hope you enjoy it.

The Gadget

Last week I misplaced my mother’s engagement ring. I wasted an hour frantically looking for it before I found it.  However the panic filled experience threw me back 30 years to another time when I had misplaced my computer glasses.  Back then, in 2012, when a computer screen sat on the desk in front of me, I needed the computer glasses to be able to sit comfortably back in the chair and read the screen, while I typed on the keyboard.  Unlike today where we have voice operated computers and the work is projected onto the wall so we can see clearly. 

While the computer glasses stayed elusively out of sight, for four days I had to lean in close to the computer, reading glasses perched on my nose, peering at the screen, while hot sharp lances of pain built up and played viciously across my shoulders, every now and then side tracking and burning down my back.  In desperation I would once again go on the fruitless search, but to no avail. Finally on the morning of the fifth day I found the glasses on the vanity in the bathroom lurking behind the makeup jars, and yes, when I wasn’t looking for them.

Reliving that memory I thought “That’s it!  This is the third time in as many weeks I have misplaced something and wasted time searching for it”.  It was time to bite the bullet and pay the seemingly exorbitant amount of money for the gadget that 30 years ago I fantasized about being invented, every time I found myself searching for frustrating hours for some lost item.

So today here I am unwrapping the FINDER.  I have been tracking the ever new and inventive upgrades of this gadget for
the last couple of years, thinking I should wait until they had finally perfected it and in the hope that it would eventually be cheaper than the cost of small second hand car. The prototype was about the size of mobile phones back in 2012.  Newer versions came out, each one smaller than the last. In addition I was concerned about the possibility that while it would be helpful to have the Finder to locate lost things, what if the thing I lost was the Finder?   But I get ahead of myself here.

What is a Finder?  It is a gadget into which you program the details of individual items, of which you don’t want to lose track. Such things as sunglasses, phones, keepsakes, electronic keys, jewellery, even articles of shoes and clothes, as well as tools of various kinds, and larger items like cars, for when you forget where in the multistorey parking station you have left it. In short all the things that you are in the habit of misplacing. On request from you, the Finder then directs you to the item’s location. It is a time saving and stress relieving gadget that I have wanted for years.

Now technology has come a long way in 30 years since my computer glasses incident in 2012.  I unwrap the box and take out a teardrop shaped crystal pendant on a long silver chain. The newest Finders come in a variety of shapes and styles to suit the individual.  I have chosen one I can wear as jewellery or hidden under my clothes so I won’t misplace it.  However there is a small one inch square box that can be stuck on the wall in the house that is called the Finder’s Finder.  So if I do misplace the Finder I can easily access it again by asking the Finder’s Finder. 

The Finder pendant is hinged on one side and as  I touch the release it springs open revealing a small almost invisible microphone and a tiny light which when I lift it to my eye, reads my retina imprint and programs itself to me specifically. The computer chip is voice operated and has a tiny sensor pad which when passed over the object I want it to record, reads, and then locks into its memory, sensory recognition information of that object, including the voice label I give it.  These days of course cars have a personal ID signal that can easily be picked up by the finder.

So .. let’s try it.  First up my mother’s engagement ring.  I run the sensor light over the ring and record “my mother’s engagement ring”.  The device answers “Mother’s engagement ring recognized and recorded”.  I close the device. Now let’s test it out.  I place the ring on the floor under the window in the front bedroom.  I walk downstairs and out onto the deck.   I hold the closed device up to my face and say “Find my mother’s engagement ring.”  The pleasant female voice of the tiny computer says clearly “Mother’s engagement ring is on the floor under the window in the front bedroom of the house”.   When I am two feet from the window the Finder emits a happy little chirping sound that increases in volume the closer I get to the ring.  As I pick up the ring the device says smugly “you have found your mother’s engagement ring.”

Now I’m not really sure how this technology works but I believe it’s developed from the original GPS signal technology back in the early part of the century. By 2012 newer technology had just emerged where using an app on an I-phone someone could locate exactly where you were down to a specific room in a house, if you too had an I-phone at the time. However it works I love my Finder.  No more wasted time looking for lost items.  Why did I wait so long to buy it?

Well I have list of things to program into the Finder and I’m sure I will need to update that list from time to time. So I’ll go and do that now and I’ll talk to you later.


Postscript

A week ago I went looking for my very expensive recording device that I needed for my day job. This looks a little like a small phone. I estimate I spend altogether about 6 hours over a period of four days searching for it.  I found all the attachments but no recorder. I searched every cupboard, under desks, behind furniture – often using a torch to look into inaccessible nooks and crannies.  You know how when you search so long for something how it tends to leave the house turned upside down and how this adds to the frustration?  Well I haven’t found the thing.  My friend says it’s up in Nannies room behind the wallpaper. – Those bloody borrowers. All the while the Finder Gadget was running through my head. Oh how I wished I had one.

While I have set the gadget 30 years in the future, I believe that with the way technology is expanding almost at the speed of light, it will probably only be a few years when some clever techo will come up with it as an app on the phone. Bring it on guys.

Hope you had a happy Mother's Day

I hope you all had a happy Mother’s Day  - yesterday for those of us in Aussie and today for those of you still in Mother’s Day. Thinking back to the Ghosts of Mother’s days past I suspect there were some lovely gifts, some funny, some a bit weird but charming, some that truly came from the heart.  

One family story I have been told is that when I was a little girl and taken shopping for a gift for my mum I chose a heavy glass beer jug, the kind where the top curls in at the side of the pouring lip.   The grown-ups with me tried to talk me out of it because my mother was a dyed in the wool teetotaller – a result of a very difficult childhood.  Nothing however would dissuade me and I’m sure my mum oohed and aahed over the jug when I proudly presented her with it.  Now I have that jug  and I treasure it as a reminder of my Mum.

When my kids were little there were the usual gifts from the school mother’s day stall, which all the mums had donated items to.  And of course the treasured cards made with little hands and printed so carefully.

My sister –in-law, when she had her twins and brought them home, had 4 children under 3.  She was much more organized than me.  The first time my brother gave his kids money to go and buy her a mother’s day gift they went off in four different directions to find the right gift. Every one of them bought plastic flowers. Now my sister-in-law hated plastic flowers with a vengeance and had never had them in the house so I suppose the kids thought they were a treasure and said sister-in-law had to display them for months until they were forgotten and she could finally throw them out.

These of course are the gifts we really cherish because they are so personal from our children. So I hope you all have spaces for little handmade cards or if your kids are grown maybe you have some from your grandchildren. Now I have grown kids and two daughters took me out for breakfast and spent the day with me.  It was just lovely.  I know they are so busy in their lives but they spared the time for me.  The boys contacted me from a distance away and I had a lovely chat.

Now today things have gone back to normal. But the memories stay – both old and new to warm my heart.

On the Eve of Mother's Day

I write this as dusk begins to gently creep in, on the eve of Mother’s Day, and my thoughts turn to my mother as they often do at dusk.  I’ve noted elsewhere that my mother, towards the end of her life, would sometimes say to me “after I’m gone if you want to think of me, think of me at dusk”. This evening I think of many things; of how the roles we played, she and I, gradually shifted over the years, and of how we grew closer as time moved forward.

 I remember my teenage years and the squabbles we had that seemed so important at the time and now can be seen as just part of growing up.  I remember when I first started work and was earning a small pay taking responsibility for buying my own clothes, and one day coming home and finding a brand new chenille dressing gown laid out on my sister’s bed and one on my bed too. At the time my sister was at Uni and Mum was on a very tight budget. I took for granted that Mum needed to buy my sister clothes but I felt I was responsible for myself. Mum passed it off lightly when I asked her about it but it felt like such an amazing  gift.

Years later when my children were growing up I understood a little more about such things.  The children’s clothes were always bought before mine and it took me a couple of years when they were independent and working before I stopped looking for and buying things for them.

After I had children Mum and I grew closer.  I understood her more and we shared so much. I have lovely precious memories of watching my tiny mother – she was only 5 foot tall,-  holding my babies, gazing into their little eyes and talking to them in a sweet loving voice, and feeling that love enveloping me as well.    

I would save the funny stories of things the kids did to tell her about. This sharing of everyday things some funny some sad, some a bit of a worry, continued through the years.  After she died I found there was such an empty space in my life.  I realized all these everyday things I saved up to talk with her about, I shared with her and no-one else, and now I had no-one to share them with.

Eventually as she grew old I was able to do for her all the things she used to do for me. It came to be that what I experienced from her was truly unconditional love.  She seemed to look at me through rose coloured glasses.  She saw no fault, made no criticisms, and I felt not just loved but truly liked as well. That was such a gift and gave me confidence in myself through sometimes difficult times.

My mother loved violets.  She grew them in her garden, the old fashioned sweet smelling ones.  Always a little corner or two for her violets.  In the years since she died, every now and then when I am sitting alone, I get the faint smell of violets for a few moments and I find myself saying “ Hello Mum, I miss you, … thanks”   

What your first Car should be

I heard someone say the other day when they heard of someone who just got their driver’s licence and was given a brand new very expensive car with all the trimmings,  “That’s not right!  Your first car should be bit of a bomb that you have to work hard to pay for and you have stories to tell your grandchildren about´ You know stuff like –  “I loved my first car.  It was a twelve year old Torana and it was green with one blue door and the handles used to stick and I had to sit on a cushion because the seat was too low for me to see across the bonnet properly.  Oh how I loved that car!  It was mine, all mine paid for with blood sweat and tears.” 

I’m very much inclined to agree with this sentiment. Thinking back to the first car we got after we were married.  R came home with it the afternoon before we had to go to a wedding.  It was a yellow Humber and it meant we didn’t have to catch the bus or get a lift anymore, we had our own wheels.

Next day my Mother came over to mind the babies while we went to the wedding.  We sailed out in our best clobber, got in the car and it wouldn’t start!  We had to get a taxi to the wedding.  And in those days there was no warranty with second hand cars.  Eventually we got it fixed.

Some years and a few old bombs later we got our first ‘second car’.  R brought it home – it was a bargain – a grey mini-minor. Loved that car.  It turned around on a penny and I felt like the queen of Sheba in it.  It had no floor covering and several holes in the metal floor that let in the wind and cold in the winter and splashes of water in the rain.  I used it for work.

One day while out I noticed the water light had come on.  I decided I knew enough about cars by this time and I could fix this myself.  So I found an empty ice cream container and filled it up at a tap in someone’s front yard and began to fill the radiator.  And filled it and filled it.   Drove around for the rest of the day and went home quite proud of myself.  After about a week R thought the mini was not driving well and decided he needed to replace the head gasket.  This was a major job because to get at the head gasket you practically had to take the engine apart. 

Nevertheless one weekend R worked for two days with much swearing because it was a small engine and he had thick fingers. When he was finished late on Sunday afternoon I was sitting in the car watching him put water in the engine.  I was a little puzzled and asked “why are you putting the water in there R?”  He said because that’s where it goes. “doesn’t it go in the front where the radiator is “ says me.  "No this is an east-west engine."  “What’s an east-west engine? I ask.  R froze.  “where did you put the water the other day”?   [this said In a dangerously calm voice.] “There in the front where the radiator always is” I reply in my innocence.  “That’s where the oil goes” he says still dangerously calmly.  “Oh, I thought  the cap was a bit dirty when I undid it” I say.

R stood up and said even more dangerously calmly “Go Away now!  Go away!”  then he went out and got drunk.

It was always difficult when we were forced to trade up to another car.   We would set a budget but the next car was always over the budget.  One time the car dealer took our trade in for a test drive while I sat in the office re-working the budget to find an extra few dollars a week to pay for the newer car.  The dealer guy was away for a long time and finally word came that the transmission had fallen out of our car and it would have to be towed. So we were forced to do a deal with that car yard even though it was sailing close to the wind with finances.

One time R bought a bright yellow “sin-bin” van.  The back was carpeted and set up unusually.  After we bought it we found a small safe tucked under the carpet.  Leaving it to our imagination who might have been the previous owners.  One day with the kids in the car I pulled into one of the few personal service petrol stations left and the man – a nice Italian man came out and as he filled up the car he asked me “what’s a nice-a lady like you doing driving a van like this?”

The car we traded the van in on was probably the first really nice car we ever had. A Ford Fairmont with a vinyl roof – air conditioning, power steering – pure luxury. We had it for years and I thought If I won the lottery I would still keep that car and just keep having it done up.

But over the years we kept trading up to better cars with a bit more of what we thought of as luxury but had become standard on cars. I don’t ever take the car for granted. I really appreciate it. There are a few of those cars that I still think of nostalgically.  But if I had been given a luxury car to start with I would never have come to appreciate all the cars over the years.  I’m sure many of you have fond memories of your First Car and will tell them to your grandchildren one day.  I’d be happy to hear some of your stories if you want to tell them in a comment.

Victory for a Technophobe

The sun has been out today – Hurrah!  And right now the late afternoon sun is highlighting pockets of the bush at the back.   My mother used to say to me towards the end of her life “after I’m gone if you want to think of me think of me at dusk”.  Isn’t dusk a lovely word?  For my mother I think dusk represented ‘downing tools’ time and relaxing. And so I often do think of my mum at dusk. I love how the sun creates that lovely wash of golden light at this time of day.

CED has now taught me how to download photos and put them into the blog. I am very chuffed with myself that I can do this.  So yesterday I bought a new camera.  The other one was held together by blue-tac.  Well not really all held together just the card inside was held down with blue-tac so the camera recognized photos on the card.   So I’ve been out and taken a couple of photos of the golden afternoon sunlight on the bush and have read the instructions on how to download the photos and hopefully put them on the blog.  I don’t think it has captured the real beauty of the colour but what the heck let’s do it anyway.

As I ventured into the daunting technical details of downloading Digital Camera Solutions Disk, and then when that was done, downloading  the photos from the camera, all the while reading the instructions carefully, I thought back to a woman who about four or five years ago told me she had come home from work one afternoon to find her four year old playing a game on the computer.  The woman knew this was a game she had just bought and had not yet opened or installed.  She asked her little boy – remember he was four years old – who had installed the game.  “Just me” he said cheerfully.  “How did you do that?” she asked.  “Well you just put the disk in and then keep pressing yes and its there, see?”    Now I, along with this mother, was mightily impressed by this, and have never forgotten it.

So I reminded myself today – if a four year old can do it then I can be brave and courageous too and stop worrying I’ll break the thing.  Just keep going and keep telling yourself “I think I can!  I think I can! I think I can!”, and bury the panic every time it starts to creep up until you say “I know I can  … I DID it.  Go me”.

Now to all of you technically very clever people who scoff at those of us who are actually scared of new technology – I believe we are called technophobes, see it’s an official disorder- I say “everything is relative and we take our victories where we find them”.  

So now new photos are downloaded and not only that I have adjusted the colour and other technical details.  Be impressed folks, be very impressed.  And now I will download one of the photos right here on this blog right now to show you.  It may not be the best photo ever, but it is mine and represents a great victory over technophobia. To all the other technophobes out there, there is hope for us all.  One day soon all this will be operated by voice command and we will just tell the technical thingies to sort themselves out.