Full Circle

There's a few threads here, so bear with me? My personal vocational journey was, I suppose, like many people ... completely random. I did not know what I wanted to do. I watched John Glenn's Mercury flight when I was five, and was stuck on becoming a pilot for as long time. That ship sailed when I lost the use of an eye at 14. I still look at every plane that flies overhead and watch aircraft videos incessantly. That probably would have worked. When I graduated high school, I I went back to my summer road construction job of the last three years and converted to a full-time on labour day. Driving heavy equipment wasn't exactly a 707 but it was interesting and I seemed to have a knack for it. Dad didn't like the view in the mirror and had a chat with my boss. I guess he had enough pull to get his son fired. I found out years later. I sold insurance for a decade, supply clerk at the railroad for a decade, then 35 years at the bank. Mostly admin work with a "major" in facilities. The reason I bore you with all of this is to introduce this week's IBAT. For a moment, just after I graduated high school, I had an inkling that I might become a writer. No one was pushing me and no one seemed too interested in writing a cheque, so I climbed on that rubber wheel roller and never looked back. This blog then, is for me, a do over, a chance to write every day. Bradbury said: We are cups, quietly and constantly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out. I'm not sure how beautiful this stuff is, but I am improving. My Grammerly clone hardly ever says "is English your first language?" any more. Thanks for letting me pour out my cup full on you guys each week! My first post in this format was something like eight years ago on FB. A girl friend from work got a dishwasher, and I had posted "Now SWMBO is going to want one too! I have selected this model.

IBAT

So by now, you have discerned that I bought a new appliance. One that I have resisted buying for about twenty-five years. I think dishwashers are bollocks. You cannot clean in a dishwasher ... any dish, that a quick swipe of warm soapy water won't clean. So you wash it first. You scrub it if you have to, then you put it in the dishwasher. To make it all work, you need twelve of everything in your cupboards. Twelve big plates, twelve small plates, twelve cups, twelve glasses, cutlery, pots, and utensils. It's not just a meme that whatever you can't find in your kitchen, is probably in the dishwasher? Hopefully clean, but probably not. Problem #3 is upon us. No one wants to empty the bitch. There are twelve of everything you own in there! Twelve cheese graters, twelve lawnmowers. Any piece not loaded at some arcane Euclidean angle, it will need to be hand-dried. You bend over and straighten up sixty times like a 1950s era tobacco picker from Tillsonburg. These days, another common theme online is why dishwashers don't work as well as they used to? I know the answer. People forget. Forty years ago, major dishwasher manufacturers had dealt with most of the engineering issues I have mentioned above. Those things roared like F-104 Phantoms on the deck of an aircraft carrier! Kitchen counters and the adjacent fridge swayed in time with the perambulating mechanisms inside. Your hot water heater water? Not hot enough. They had internal heaters. Water temperatures were boosted from that luke-warm stuff your Cascade 40 was putting out to the "baby scalding" setting. They generated nozzle pressures we use today to power wash driveways. When it was all over, the fires of hell were lit and glowing hot elements roasted the water off the tops of your coffee cups. They worked. Ever wonder why advertisers always say "dishwasher safe"? It's holdover from the olden days. If you put a plastic spatula in the dishwasher in 1982, you got back a puddle of white plastic melted over your cutlery. These days, a roll of toilet paper is probably dishwasher safe? Why? Everyone wants that Energy Star sticker. That's why they are quiet now. They dribble warm water over your dishes like a diuretic dwarf for a couple of hours. Then a little anemic fans that wouldn't blow out a birthday candle spins uselessly for another hour. The family gathers around to see who can be first to put it all away and the process starts all over again. Christmas and Thanksgiving, you have a house full of people ... I can see the attraction. The other three hundred and sixty-three days of the year? It's a way to get the drain tray off the counter (which, for some unknown reason, all women hate) and a place to hide the dirty dishes.

My Optimum Week

It was a quiet shopping week on the home front with contractors coming and going. We relied on microwavable leftovers and takeout for three days as our kitchen sink was out of order. Ask SWMBO about the Pizza Pizza gift card experience if you have an hour to kill. Job One this week, spend $40 at Shoppers for 10K. Then stay there or head over to Zehr's for a bonus redemption event. It's a big one. I usually do these at Shoppers, but there is a larger selection of cleaning products at Zehr's. I leave it up to you. Also, I have previously whined that it is hard to avoid purchasing U.S. made cleaning products. Canada does not have the scale to compete in this market and nobody wants a Procter & Gamble or Clorox plant in their city. Trust me, making cleaning products is a filthy business. So, we have to buy U.S. cleaning products unless you (CG) are using hand cream scraped from llama udders in some B.C. commune. These are the name brands on sale from the flyer. Tide, Pine-Sol, Clorox, Lysol, Purex, Resolve, Mr. Clean, Fabreze, Swiffer, Air Wick, Vim, Cascade, Dawn & Windex. Go use 250,000 points and get $300 off? Use half a million and get $900 off! Perennials are probably on deep discounts over at the garden centers and you could use your points there? You could. If I come home with any more plants, SWMBO will stab me in my sleep. Here is your grocery list sans any U.S. vegetables, which Zehr's continues to push hard. Stay strong. Elbows up. Let it rot on the shelves!

I gave you chicken drumsticks, so now is your chance to try that Walkerswood Jerk Paste I was talking about last week. Be warned? It is nuclear. What I would suggest is mix half a cup of sweet plum sauce with a quarter cup of the Walkerswood. Slash your drumsticks on the diagonal (like hot dog vendors on Front St.), then dredge your chicken in the resulting mud. BBQ it off-heat until verging, then a quick sear at the end. Serve with some cooling sour creamy sauce or ranch dressing. You can thank me later.

Alcan now makes a "Classic" and a "Non-Stick" aluminum foil? The new stuff is double the price of regular foil, but I can think of times (lasagna, Christmas turkey, eg.) when I might have paid double to save the drama. Anyway, it is on sale and on your list.

... and finally

If you thought emptying the dishwasher was hard on the back, try washing dishes from your knees in the bathtub? I did it the first day, but on day two, my organizational skills came to the fore. Dishes need doing. I need a shower. Dawn Platimum is safe to put on human skin. What is a bathtub with the shower curtain closed, really? Just a gigantic dishwasher? Cost savings on the water use. Ding ding ding ding!

Wait. I could have given Maddie a bath at the same time! It would have been a triple dipper!

Mitch & Maddie