Also welcome to Biobabbler. Your photos are stunning – I got lost for ages in your blog. I can also tell you that cleaning cat sick out of a computer keyboard is no fun. So I didn’t - I bought a new one. Just glad it wasn’t a MacBook.
I wrote a while back about my Boston fern slowly giving up the ghost. I decided that for a change, I wasn’t going to idly sit back and do nothing to help it, so I consulted the oracle that is Google to find out more about it.
I discovered that the most likely cause of its decline was that its position was wrong – it wasn’t getting enough natural daylight, so I moved it.
And I’m more than delighted to report that it’s picked up. Yay me!
After checking on the orchid (alive and thriving) and noting that the fern looks reasonably healthy now, my mum looked at my hands a couple of days ago and declared them to be a watery green.
Eh?
My brain was having a slow day, so she had to explain it to me. In simple terms.
“Green. Fingers. You. Can. Grow. Things.”
Who, me? No way – holy shit!
To celebrate, I went and bought myself a new vacuum cleaner.
I had to buy a new one, as cleaning The Pit dealt my current one a fatal blow. I used it the other day and as I was pushing it round, I realised it was making all the right noises, but there was no suck. So I cleaned out the dust filter (gawd almighty, where does it all come from?) then started to take it to bits so I could check to see if there was a blockage.
Then I stopped and put gloves on. Just in case the blockage was a wrapper…
There was nothing bunging up any part of it (phew), so I turned it back on and it seemed a little improved, but then it died. It just cut out and no amount of CPR, or swearing at it, would coax it back to life.
I jumped onto the internet, reserved one online, and then drove to the shopping centre to collect it. None of this ordering online and waiting indoors all day like a total mug two days for delivery for me – when I want something, I want it NOW. Yesterday would be even better.
Before I collected it, I wandered around the shops and bought a few things (but no shoes. Hmm, I must be coming down with something). I also browsed through the books in Waterstones and WHSmith.
(To the mother of the child who was repeatedly blowing one note in short bursts on that feckin’ recorder:
I don’t care if your prodigy was expressing himself musically; it hurt my head and made me grind my teeth.
Please be extremely grateful for the remarkable restraint I showed in not grabbing it and shoving it where the sun don’t shine - then seeing whether you could blow it as well as your child could.)
I found myself strangely drawn towards the gardening sections. I think reading quite a few blogs about gardening/growing veg and then being told I have pale green fingers – well, what can I say? It enthused me.
I browsed through quite a few books, but many of them seemed a bit intimidating, so I looked at gardening for beginners but ruled them out as it means I would have to dig (garden + digging = worms).
Then I moved onto growing veg in containers. Ooh, more promising. I spent quite a while flicking through various books.
And I bought one.
Yes I did.
You want to know what it’s called?
Well, I’ll tell you.
It’s called…
wait…
are you sitting comfortably?
The book I bought…
is titled…
Slow Cooker, Quick and Easy Proven Recipes.
It was only £2.99 and far more useful to me than a bloody gardening book.
There is a slight problem though.
I don’t own a slow cooker.
Yet.
But I am now the proud owner of a vacuum cleaner that’s full of life. It also happens to be the same colour as my toenails – a deep wine shade. Pure coincidence. I did NOT buy it for that reason. That would just be such a girly thing to do.
FYI - if you think I spent five minutes singing ‘I’m Too Sexy For This Carpet’ à la Right Said Fred to the new vacuum cleaner
It was more like fifteen minutes.
=) Love the nail-matching-vacuum and esp. the bought slow cooker cookbook previous to owning said implement. =) Thanks SO much for the VERY kind welcome--jeepers! Very glad you enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteExcited about your potential budding gardening stint. If it's any comfort, I seldom (almost never) come into direct contact with worms while digging in garden. Usually they're a shovel's length away. They generally stay below ground, but it's very dry here, so it may be different where you are. (hm, possibly still not comforting...)
You've bought a Dyson, haven't you? Well, let me tell you, they're SHIT.
ReplyDeleteMine gave up the ghost a few days before the warranty expired. I took the lump of crap back to the shop, where a spotty Dyson technician (he was more like a bloody inbred retard from where I stood) took it apart, examined the filter, and declared I had hoovered up grit, and the Dyson doesn't like grit.
Obviously, he had mistaken me for a rational and normal human being, so after I had declared as loudly as I could that a Dyson that didn't hoover up grit was fuck all good to me, and if he thought for one second that I was going to just stand there and not insert the useless piece of crap into his anus, piece by piece, he was sorely mistaken.
He gave me a full refund.
You too will soon be on this journey.
Did someone mention Right Said Fred? Makes me want to shave my head and buy a mesh shirt.
ReplyDeleteAt my bookstore, we have a table where kids can play with wooden toy trains. It's right next to my music department. There is also some sort of bell attached to the table, sounds like a bicycle bell? That the children RING ALL DAY LONG. That bell haunts my nightmares. As well as all the screams from the children who are fighting and crying over who gets to play with the trains, whilst the mothers ignore their children and eat cheesecake. That they've brought over from the cafe. And then they leave said half-eaten cheesecake on the floor for me to clean up once they finally (literally) drag their crying, exhausted children out the door.
I really want a slow-cooker. But for some reason I think I'd not use it that much and it would just take up counter space, so I refrain.
biobabbler: If it was as dry here as it is where you are, I could probably kid myself that worms don't exist, and I think my garden would look very different - as would my blog!
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts turned to growing things in containers as then I'd have control over the compost that's used - after getting someone to inspect it first.
I may start small - maybe a tomato plant or two next year and see how it goes. One hint of a worm though, and that'll be it unfortunately.
IG: The one that died was a Dyson, which I'd had for several years - so I steered well clear and bought a Morphy Richards.
I must admit I was forever cleaning out the filter on it and it was really pissing me off.
Dysons shouldn't be listed under the 'vacuum cleaners' category in stores/online. They should have their own section called, 'Over-Priced Poncey Excuse of a Vacuum Cleaner'.
I hadn't realised how bad the Dyson had got until I used the new one and half my carpet disappeared!
Kyna: Please don't do that. But if you do, post pictures!
They're all actually doing you a favour. These are:
a) testing your hearing (while you're being paid to work - bonus!)
b) the nightmares give you something to do at night (other than sleep, or, er, other stuff)
c) cleaning up the cheesecake proves to the management you're aware of health and safety issues. If, on the other hand, by "half-eaten cheesecake on the floor for me to clean up" you mean you eat it - well, I suppose this shows management you're willing to do whatever it takes to maintain a clean working environment.
I am going to buy a slow-cooker soon, I think I ought to seeing as I've got a lovely new book, bursting with yummy looking recipes. otherwise, it's going to sit on the book shelf gathering dust *cough* with the others *cough*