Daily Prompt: Housework and love in the tulip

What’s the household task you most dislike doing? Why do you think that is — is it the task itself, or something more?

Read all about it Those Dishes won't do themselves unfortunately. Actually the job I hate most is cleaning the bathroom. I did it this morning as it was Tuesday and on Tuesday morning I clean the bathroom. Not just a tickle in the bath and sink, but the whole McCoy including wall tiles and floor. I hate the job and even being tall does not make it easier: backache is backache. However, being woman, I have a built in bathroom cleaning intuition and according to my time table it takes about 45 minutes all included. If I did the job once a month it would take longer and I do not like long jobs.

And now for something completely different.

Yesterday I had a visitor in the garden as I was sitting on the porch outside writing my fantastic prize suspicious blog. I told you all about it. Fred the Rose bug flew into one of my mother’s days tulips. First of all he did an inspection tour and then decided that this was the right tulip. Actually it seems he was looking for Mavis, his partner for the year. She had arrived half an hour earlier and was busy doing things that female bugs do already in this tulip. If you look very carefully you can see the edge of her body on the bottom petal on the right.

Of course there was a reunion ceremony. Mavis decided to stop playing hide and seek with Fred and moved to show herself in her full beauty.

“Mavis at last, I was searching for you everywhere, but then I sniffed that well known scent and saw you hiding in the tulip.”

“Even a female bug has to have a private sphere sometimes Fred. We are only now getting to know each other. I was just thinking how nice it would be to share a tulip with you and there you are.”

“So let’s do it.”

“Do what Fred?”

“What Rose bugs do in Spring.”

“Not so fast Fred. We only met yesterday. I am not one of those bugs you just pick up by chance. There are certain rules and one is “do not fly with every bug you happen to meet.”

“Come on Mavis, we are made for each other. Let’s have a cuddle.”

“Oh Fred, you do have sexy legs, stop tickling. I have never met a bug like you before.”

I decided to leave the two of them alone, after all every bug has a right to its own private sphere. It seems that they are rose bugs, but at the moment there are no roses because the roses have only now begun to grow. In the meanwhile they feed on pollen and nectar from any flowers they find. When the roses appear then beware, they have a particular taste for the buds.

“It’s my first Spring Mavis, so I am a bit of a beginner.”

“I don’t think so Fred, you seem to know what to do.”

And so Fred and Mavis spent their honeymoon in a tulip on the table on my porch. After some time Fred decided to get some fresh air, so he crawled out of the tulip, tired but happy. Yes” he thought “life as a rose bug is fun.”

After a while Mavis realised she would become a mother and carefully deposited her eggs in the earth, ensuring that they would have enough rotting leaf material to digest so that they would grow big and strong like Fred. Unfortunately Mavis would not survive to see the firm wrinkled bodies of her babies with their small heads and legs. It was the fate of Mavis to die after giving birth, so is the life of a female rose bug.

WordPress Daily Prompt: Those Dishes Won't Do Theirselves

What’s the household task you most dislike doing? Why do you think that is — is it the task itself, or something more?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us HOME.

A household task I do not like doing? I am woman and therefore I was born to spend my wordly exsistence with household tasks.

The dishes will not do themselves, but for that I have a dish washer. You do not have a dish washer? In our local supermarket you can buy plastic plates, knives and forks, no problem, they can be disposed of after use in the garbage can. On the other hand washing dishes manually is a creative work of art. Imagine a soiled dish with remainders of a meal adhering to the surface. I am sure Picasso used these patterns as an inspiration for his paintings. When you rinse the dish you have a feeling of achievement, removing the remainders of the veg, meat and gravy. You then immerse the dish in a soapy mixture. Look at the soap bubbles and the brilliant colours they show on their reflections: more aesthetic it could not be: applying energy when scraping the remains of the meal is a good physical exercise. Afterwards the dish is showered with clean water and you are left with a shiny plate to be dried with a cloth. So let us be honest ladies (and men), you have a certain triumphal feeling when you have completed the task and you see the plate showing the reflection of your face, although I do prefer a dish washer.

Remember the days of the Neanderthal, they lived in caves. They had no hoover, there was no dish washer. They did not need these instruments of power cleaning.Their home was a cave. Today you pay a fortune to have a floor fitted with natural stone. The cavemen had it all free. There was, of course, a problem with decorations, but even this was solved. Forget the cavemen illustrating the walls with paintings of their hunting expeditions. It was all done by the women. They wanted something pretty on the walls, just bare stone was boring. The colours they used were probably recycled matter from their meals.

Admittedly our ancestors just threw everything on the floor, it was biological cleaning, very environment friendly.

Today we have a place for everything. We no longer throw everything on the floor. There may be some families shaking their heads and saying “tell that to the kids”. This may be true, but we housewives would feel unwanted, redundant, if the kids had a tidy room with no objects lying on the floor. Something would be missing in our housewife life.

I can speak from experience, I had a family where the men outnumbered the women. Imagine one clean pair of socks every day and every evening the socks disappearing in the sock eating monster (dirty wash container) to be washed. The sock wash programme might be once a week, perhaps twice a week. We will take the once a week as an example. If you have three men work it out – that would be twenty-one pairs of socks a week equalling forty-two separate socks. If your men have various sizes that would cause a further problem. There is a further complication. When sorting the washed and dry socks, if they all follow the modern trend in colours, you will be confronted with forty-two black socks in three different sizes. Are you with me? The next problem is a discontented sock user that finds he has a pair that does not match. Whose fault is this? The washing machine, the sock eating monster or the lady of the house, who never wears men’s socks generally. Her socks are more daring in colour and the housewife always recognises her own socks. As men generally do not concern themselves with the details of the wash programme, it will be the housewife who is at fault.

How to avoid this problem? That is quite easy. Search for a large empty place, a table is suitable. Put the socks on the table and call “come and get it” You are then surrounded by three helpful males sorting their socks and pairing them together. The housewife is happy, the men have found a new responsibility in their domestic life and are proud of their achievement. This is pure task psychology.

So where is the problem? There is no household task I dislike doing. It is just a matter of domestic education.

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WordPress Daily Prompt: B+

Write about what you did last week-end as though you are a music critic reviewing a new album.

New albums from the household are not always so new, but sometimes spiced with a little change in the tone, perhaps louder, perhaps not so loud. From the Angloswiss albums we can always expect something different and this time we were not disappointed.

The first tracks on the album are nothing really new, but the sequence is a little different. Angloswiss tuned up as usual to the rhythm of Cereal and milk accompanied by a switch on of the computer. There was a sweep through the tunes and notes at the customery tempo, although now and again the beat became somewhat hotter, especially to the tune of Facebook. Angloswiss was working with four tabs and accompanied by the Outlook programme showing various e-mails. Somewhat monotonous, but there was a new note from one of her online colleagues, showing a little brightness in the tune.

The next track was taking place in the bathroom, so the tone was somewhat milder, accompanied by the flow of the water from the shower and the mechanism of the electric toothbrush. There was a refreshing start to the next track, although not with dynamic, more a routine sound and some sighs.It seemed the physical functions of the music became more exhausted as the tune continued. It would have been better perhaps, to have omitted this track or perhaps placed in the middle of the album, where it could have been less noticed. Window cleaning is never advisable to start the programme. However, it was well organised, a super cleaning system and regular operations in this context made the work less exhausting. Monotonous, but well carried out. There seemed to have been a relaxed sigh pass through the track when this sample of difficult music came to an end.

And now to a relaxing smoothness caused by the iron and the washing. This tended to be a routine rhythm, but well accomplished and relaxed. Perhaps somewhat repetitive, but the shirts from the male members of the family ensured a contrasting upbeat to the boring phases passing through the bed linen. There was a grand finale when the ironing board was again folded away into its place ready for further music perhaps during the next day.

A wonderful contrast occurred in the kitchen afterwards, a music accompanied by rice, pork chops and a delicious dressing of mustard sauce. Of course a vegetive sound was caused by chicory, fried in butter.

There was now a slow movement in the afternoon music from the Tai Chi practice and the creation of a blog, regular and with feeling. Some small evening entertainment occurred, but just an interval where a washing programme was started in the machine.

The second half of the record began similar to the first part with a refreshing breakfast, accompanied by tea and the computer, but as it was now Sunday, a certain quietness and relaxed tone could be noted. Leisure seemed to be the theme for this part of the music, no rush, no stress, just comfortable. Even the lunch break with its accompanied dish was something to be cooked with time and leisure. Boiled beef garnished with a mixture of Winter vegetables and accompanied by potato was a long track, but rewarding. The meat was put to cook already early in the morning hours, and the musical ambiance was filled with aromas from the kitchen.

A background accompanying silence appeared after lunch, the musician relaxing from the exhaustions of the morning masterpiece. Three felines decided to accompany the music from time to time, but their voices were in clang with the surroundings and they often fell into a somewhat more pianissimo style when they were sleeping.

To sum it all up, nothing spectacular, but a regular rhythm accompanied by some never to be forgotton highlights. The Sunday reading session was most relaxing. I would recommend this album to all frustrated, houseworking ladies.

What did we do today?

I was quite proud of myself today. Now being retired I sort of decide now and again in a fit of energy to start cleaning all that stuff I did not clean so well over the last few years. As a working woman I sort of squeezed the necessary jobs in when I could. Windows were cleaned on Saturday mornings, bathrooms and showers once a week when I had the time, although thanks to the fact that my husband was retired a few years before me, he did quite a lot. There were a few things that never really did get as much attention as they should. Windows are easy to clean, but the surrounding bits need a bit more time. We have blinds on our windows as can be seen in the picture. As you can see this blind is clean, shining and really showing itself from its best side (the rays of light coming out of the blind were from the photo programme, but I thought it looked even better). Anyhow this afternoon I decided to attack this metal blind. As it is on the ground floor it was not so difficult. I had a water supply from the hose in the garden so the first part of the work was to turn the water on full power and wash the whole thing down. Yes I did remember to close the window first of all. I must say it was quite dirty, even a bit of green deposits at the bottom. I noticed about 20 homeless spiders running in all directions when I started.

After the initial shower of the blind I took a cloth and did it all from hand. Unfortunately the blind had two sides and it was not so easy cleaning through the spaces of each layer, but after 45 minutes work I was more or less finished. It was a piece of cake afterwards to clean the window underneath. To use a german word which I have never been able to translate into another language, I felt quite "kaput" afterwards but was proud of my work. The mad things that come into your head when you are retired. This was the second blind I did in two weeks. Now I only have another five and then I am finished for the year.

The morning was also quite profitable. We went shopping as usual and I noticed there was a special offer in the gardening department of geraniums. Now basically I am not really a member of the geranium fan club. They are ok, but a bit sort of boring. Everyone has geraniums in their window boxes. On the other hand I did have a large box waiting for something to be planted. Last year I put begonias in it, although wonderful flowers, they got a bit top heavy for the stalks and bent over quite often. Geraniums do at least what you want them to do.

I had another problem. This big box I had needed some topping up with earth. Now geraniums prefer a heavy sort of earth with no peat and I did not have this earth. As luck would have it one of my neighbours is doing some sort of agricultural wonder in her garden and had a delivery of earth, but too much. She asked me if I could use it and when I had a look found it to be exactly what I needed, so that was the first stroke of luck, I did not have to buy any earth. I only had to carry the earth across to my garden.

Eventually I arrived at the gardening department of the store. The geraniums were pink or red. Husband said get a mixture, but I said that one colour would be better and so I got 10 red geranium plants. They were selling for 1.90 Swiss francs each instead of 3.80 Swiss francs and combined with a special token I had for 10% cheaper in the gardening department, I had quite a bargain. I have a new hobby since being retired. I have started intensively studying prices and special offers. It is really quite fun. I never used to have the time when a working woman, just a quick look around the shop and grab what you need. Now it has slowly developed into a field of study. Even my choice of vegetable is influenced. Today we had Swiss chard which was quite reasonable. I would have got kohlrabi, but they were very small and for 2 Swiss francs per piece, I found that a bit expensive.

Anyhow, they were the highlights in the day of a retired person. Tomorrow I will have fun cleaning the kitchen, a half hour job, so I usually combine it with giving the doors a quick wipe over. I might even put a few seedlings in the garden I have been growing since March. Oh, isn't life exciting. And presenting my window box with the geraniums. They are naturally now quite small, but they will grow I am sure.