It's raining and I'm writing this from the garage because one of the kids is in my old office practicing guitar. 20 minutes ago, this same child (who is 19 years old) pointed out a stain on the kitchen counter and wished me luck trying to get it out. I no longer think of the kids as disease vectors, but as badly-behaved pets. The kind who do their business on the rug and wish you luck trying to clean it up.
Another thing they do is finish a toilet roll and refuse to replace it; usually they just balance the new roll on top of the empty roll. Yelling at them hasn't helped so I started a new game: Whenever I find an empty roll, I remove all the other rolls out of the bathroom. Is it fair to the next person? Not at all. Will they learn from this? Probably not, mostly because my wife thinks I'm being silly and replaces the rolls.
Matzah pizza was good the first three days but now I'm a bit over it. I haven't tried to make a grilled cheese sandwich with matzah, but I'm close. Yesterday our homestay student was looking for something to eat and asked me, "When can we eat bread again?" I felt so bad; I had no idea she'd stopped eating bread! Even our kids generally eat bread during pesach (although for some reason they don't seem to be this year).
The eldest child won't eat bread because all of the commercial gluten-free bread contains some dairy or eggs and she's militantly vegan, unless it's chocolate, in which case she will set aside all of her morals. I know she feels bad about this because if anyone points it out to her she will scream at them at the top of her lungs. That's a sure sign of a guilty conscience.
There's not a whole lot to report about, not surprisingly. Yesterday I cleaned out the worm farm, which was as disgusting as you can imagine. You're supposed to put some eggshells in the worm farm -- the calcium keeps the pH stable -- even though the worms don't digest them. Well, we've put so many eggshells in the bin that the compost was about 30% soil and 70% eggshells. I put it on the flowerbeds; I'm curious to see what will happen.
The day before that, I cleaned up the pile of tree branches that I'd sawn off four months ago. When I was finished, I pulled out the leafblower that's been sitting unused in the garage for over five years, and which I'd listed for sale just before the lockdown. I'm glad I used it - there was a broken piece that my wife was able to fix - and then I cleaned the driveway until you could eat off it. The next day I came out and yelled at the leaves that had fallen on my immaculate driveway.
When the car battery died at WOMAD -- and we had to wait an hour for AA to jumpstart it -- I decided I should start carrying around the battery jumper I'd bought in the UK just before moving to New Zealand. Of course by the time I got home I promptly forgot about that. When we went to the hospital on Wednesday, though, the battery hesitated, although it eventually started. When we got home, I pulled the jumpstarter out and plugged it in, but the next day it was still flat. The directions (written on the front of the charger) said to charge it every 3 months and never leave a lead-acid battery dead for a prolonged period. It wasn't clear if five years was "prolonged."
However, my wife had a trickle charger that was designed for cars that were rarely used, so I hooked it up to the jumpstarter and the next day it was fully charged! I was quite pleased with myself and it's now in the back of the car. Someone remind me to charge it again in three months...
Next on my to do list is taking down the hut I started four years ago to teach my son woodworking, but he was never interested so it was never finished. I may try to re-use the wood and make a raised garden bed. I also have to sort out my son's bed, my daughter's light, my wife's bike (which, admittedly, I broke), install a timer on the towel rail, organise old photos and file my US tax returns.
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