Rainy Days PJs and Ponjos

Reading a post on Facebook this morning  of YD bemoaning the fact that on this wet cold miserable day today she was  planning a  lovely ‘stay at home in the PJs and dressing gown with movies and some tasks etc.’ day til she found she had to go out and brave the weather to get printer ink.  A friend then advised her to get a Ponjo – later corrected to a Poncho  - as you can disguise the PJs and other issues under it without getting changed.  YD did then reluctantly -minus Ponjo - go for the printer ink and came home got back in the PJs and with wet hair curled up on the lounge, snacks to hand and settled back to enjoy her day.

All this reminded me of a Saturday Mother’s day eve about 6-7 years ago. YD,  R.  and I wanted take away for tea but the other two wouldn’t go.  You’d think it being almost mother’s day they would.  But no!!  lazy sods left it to me.  I wasn’t dressed well [understatement of the year} – I had odd bed socks and black, white-cat hair covered trackie-daks  on and it was a bit cold.  So I rooted around in the cupboard and extracted an old oversized pink jumper.  I hummed and ha-ad about my face – no makeup – and I rarely go out without some makeup –don’t want to scare little children do we and have to keep the image up – but decided I would only be out of the car for about 4 minutes and who would see me really??.  After asking for an opinion about whether I looked OK and getting reassurances from 2 people who barely looked at me  I set off.

Driving to the shop I got into a car smash – banged my head on the side window probably out for a couple of seconds – no-one came to help and I finally managed to stutter my way off the road in the car with one wheel wobbly and scraping.

Upshot was I called the 2 to come and help. Organized the insurance and a tow etc. and YD decided I should go to the hospital GP-after-hours-service because my head was bleeding.  This was the point that I did a quick squiz of my attire and found I looked like a bag lady. I finally agreed to reassurances that no-one I know would see me and after all I had been in a car accident. The old adage “It doesn’t matter about clean underwear  - if you’ve been  run over by a bus your underwear is going to change colour anyway” comes to mind.

So off we set to the hospital.  We sat for a time in the waiting room with YD laughing hysterically at my mortification of having on 2 odd bed socks, cat hair covered track pants and a large grubby pink jumper with food stains and a hole in it, not to mention that I looked as if I had been dragged through a bush backwards .  Eventually we were  ushered into the GP. whose name I recognized as a Doctor who had been referring people to see me for therapy for the last few years but whom I had never met.  My hope that he wouldn’t recognize my name was soon dashed  -[ bright man – he is a Doctor after all so what would you expect] - as he realized who I was and we had a little friendly chat with me trying to hold the shreds of my dignity together by pretending in my mind that I was properly dressed with at least a little makeup on.  

Despite the damage to my dignity and, I felt to my reputation as a professional woman, there was no serious damage to my person.  So we set off home  still without the take away.

And this folks is why to this day no matter how short the trip I never go out without a little makeup on and reasonable dressed.  And I do have  a Ponjo – sorry Poncho  - type thing to wear but it only folds around like a cape so it would probably fall off at a crucial point and I would be back at square one.

Share back funny stories in the comments section.

Washing Machines I have Known and Loved

I currently have a washing machine that almost needs a licence to drive it.  This machine communicates with sound and text messages.  For example when its load gets out of kilter it stops and Cheeps – yes Cheeps – like a wounded baby bird until I come to read its pathetic cry for help.  “Help me.  My load is out of balance.  Please reposition my load. Then press start.”

At another time after three warnings it refuses to wash until I have run its self-cleaning program - required after 100 washes it tells me.  Sounds simple Eh??  NO!!!  this thing has about 30 different cycles and the self-cleaning cycle direction is buried under two different menus.  It took me a week to figure out how to access that one while the washing piled up.

If I want to wash a doona it wants to know if it is synthetic or feather.  How do I know what the thing considers to be bulky items?  Blankets have a different cycle – again synthetic or wool??  Are towels considered bulky??  Are they colour fast??  Are they heavily soiled?? What needs hot water and what needs cold?

Nine times out of ten after puzzling over the options I give up and just press regular.  But there again it wants to know if I want it to add softener and have fast spin.

I’m expecting any day to get a text message on my phone from Willemena the Washing Machine saying “you never talk to me these days.  You rarely visit and after I’ve given you the best years of my life!  CHEEP!!!” 

Well I really shouldn’t be so critical of Willemena; given the history of washing machines I’ve had and at times not had over the years.

My first experience of washing was in the fifties when my mother and my Aunty would do the washing for our extended family of eight.  In those days it was necessary to set a full day aside for the washing.  They had a huge wood-fed boiling copper in the corner and double concrete tubs and well as wringer machine. Sheets and other whites were boiled in the copper and hot water from the copper was used in the washing machine. The sheets and the clothes were transferred through the wringer into the 1^st tub of cold water and again through the wringer into the second tub and finally through the wringer into the washing basket and then taken out and hung on the long clotheslines which were then held up high by a large wooded prop.

When the clothes were dry they would be brought in and then dampened down using an old sauce bottle full of water with a rubber stopper with holes in so the water could be sprinkled over the clothes which were then rolled up and left to be ironed the next day.  This obviously took all day to do. I could never understand why they would get the clothes dry on the line and then wet them again.  This was done of course to make ironing the creases out easier because there were few synthetics in those days and no steam irons. When I was 12 we moved to a new house and Mum had a front loading semi-automatic washing machine which cut the work enormously.  

Then I got married and the first few places we lived in we shared a laundry with others who had washing machines.  Again the wringer type - so triple handling.  When we moved into our first house we had no washing machine. Just an electric copper and two cement tubs and an empty space where a washing machine didn’t sit.  So I boiled up the whites and hand washed the coloureds.  One day just after I had bought new white Jokey Y undies for ES 2yr old and R, I was boiling them in the copper and unbeknownst to me a red rag fell into the copper and all the undies turned pink.  What a disaster as ‘real men’ no matter how old they were didn’t wear pink!!

Eventually we bought a second hand semi-automatic washing machine. Oh joy.  No more hand washing.  However I soon found out why the previous owners had traded it for a new machine.  The opening at the top was about 12 inches square and lined in black rubber which had begun to perish so you had to carefully pull the clothes out just from the centre or risk getting black goo on everything. That wasn’t the worst problem however.  The machine was meant to be bolted to the floor but the laundry floor was cement so the machine just sat on the floor. UNTIL it was time for its spin cycle. THEN it would rock and roll all around the laundry floor, at times it seemed, trying to get into the kitchen.  So I took to sitting on the thing when it was spinning. Many a visitor was startled to bemused laughter when invited in by a laughing woman perched on a washing machine that was doing its herky-jerky dance on the spot to the tune of a rumbling and tumbling noisy rhythm.

Eventually I began to dream of getting a hoover twin tub.  My sister-in-law had one of these.  She the incredibly organized, 4 kids-under-three, mother. She swore by the Hoover. One day I was at David Jones and came across a twin tub.  I took the step of asking the salesman how much and did they do time-payment.  This was before credit cards. He said yes they did and worked out the payments at 12shillings and six pence a week  [about a $1:25].  I thought I could just about manage this from the child endowment and we signed up.  Next week I waited with baited breath for the delivery. I had the laundry sparkling clean and ready.  Eventually a knock on the door and huge man-mountain checked I was me and went to get the machine.  I asked him if he need any help as he was alone “No lady I can carry it” and he did!  In his arms like a baby, up the back steps and deposited it in the corner. I was so impressed.

This machine required moving things from the washing well to the spinning well and hosing it several times to rinse, then a final spin.  So labour and time was still involved with washing.  Eventually a neighbour got the first fully automatic washing machine in the neighbourhood.  As we all helped one another out when things broke down we all wished for the day when our twin tubs  broke and we could try out the new machine.

Then I finally got my own German brand fully automatic machine.  It was so simple to use. Put in the clothes add some washing powder to them spin the dial to the correct cycle push the dial in and leave it. Heaven!!  This machine worked like a dream for 17 years.  It came through two house moves with flying colours and I thought it would last forever.  Then on the last move when I plugged it in it sadly gave up the ghost. 

So now I have Willemena. And although I have joked about her here I have to say I will always always appreciate the luxury of an automatic washing machine. The amount of actual labour time to do a load including gathering the clothes and pegging them out is about 10 minutes. This means I could do the wash my mother and aunty did when I was a little girl in about an hour and a half.  But it also means I can do a load every day if I wish because I don’t have to heat up the copper and drag out the machine etc etc.   So viva labour saving technology. But I don’t think I would appreciate Willemena as much without the history of washing that I have. 

If you have a funny washing story please share it in a comment.

Wallpapering Stories from the Past

It seems from some of the renovation shows on TV these days that wallpaper is somewhat back in fashion.  It takes me back to the very early 70s when wallpaper was going through a fashionable cycle.  At that time we were renovating the girls’ bedroom.  Mind you at the time we didn’t know that there would be 2 girls in the room as I was eight and a half months pregnant with YD but in those days we didn’t know in advance the gender of the baby soon to be born.  Clever eldest daughter [CED] and Eldest son [ES] were both at school and youngest son CJ was a bit over two.

The wallpaper was chosen and, instructions to hand, Hu R started the job.  Neither of us had wallpapered before. Unfortunately R was coming down with the flu and had little patience.  So after the 3^rd time he attempted to put the 1^st strip on the wall and it ended in disaster with the air growing bluer by the minute with frustrated words, I convinced him to go to bed and I set out to conquer the task myself.

Being eight and a half months pregnant with a baby who turned out to be 9pounds 2 ounces [ don’t ask me to convert to kilos- that’s a lost cause even today], lumbering up and down a ladder, wallpaper strip in hand and  trying to get the patterns to match, was no easy job.  Buy hey; I was young and confident in those days – nothing would beat me. On the floor in front of the section of the wall to be papered I had positioned the water-well containing the wallpaper roll and water to activate the glue.  I eventually got into a rhythm that was working well.  Two year old CJ was outside in the yard playing in the sandpit.  He kept coming in and out to talk to me and watch.

Then just as I started up the ladder he came in again and stood with his little hands behind his back solemnly watching me.   Just as I got to the top of the ladder and had begun to position the paper he whipped his little bucket from behind his back and tipped a heap of sand into the water-well. He stood for a second as I watched in horror and then he took off like a little rabbit.  I lumbered down the ladder and took off after him.  But what was I to do when I caught him but scold him and laugh.  Then I went back to try to salvage the mess.

I soldiered on at the task all day.  My lovely friend and neighbour P came over later in the afternoon with a bacon and egg pie for the family’s tea.  God bless her heart because by the time I was finished I was stuffed.  But the room looked fabulous and I had become a whizz at wallpapering. Over the next few years of constant renovations I wallpapered quite a few of the rooms.

These days I can think of few things worse than having to wallpaper. I’m content to watch others on the TV do this and just feel grateful I’m not doing it. 

As a footnote to this story – years later when the kids were pretty well grown we set out to do some minor redecorating in order to sell the house we had after the one mentioned above.  CED offered to strip the walls of the out dated wallpaper. She laboured for some weeks at this task – a horrible job to do.  Now we had 2 Berman cats at the time – long haired white with red tips who were very curious of the whole process.  Eventually we realized that they had become covered in glue and their fur became knotted.  We spent weeks combing or cutting out the knots. A process neither we nor the cats enjoyed.

So anyone else with wallpaper stories  they’d like to share, feel free to comment.