Sunday, April 4, 2010

Of cleaning, kittens and dentures

I realize it has been a while. I'm afraid I've been a little busy. Not too busy to write if I am being honest but indeed too busy to want to write. Writing requires a kind of mental space whereas recently I have had only 'mental'.

We have put the house on the market. Note the use of 'the house' rather than 'our house' because I have no claim of ownership. It is also worthwhile to note that 'we' have put the house on the market. I take partial ownership of the act on the grounds of many many hours of cleaning.

I'm not entirely sure that 'many many hours' encompasses the sheer pain and torture I have endured. I am not a cleaner by nature. That's not to say that I live knee deep in filth, at worst it would be ankle deep. It is not so much the cleaning I abhore as the tidying, and putting a house on the market involves more tidying than cleaning. I would estimate a solid 30 hours of tidying and a mere 15 hours of cleaning.

I may have mentioned, I'm not so keen on housework. I am not keen to have to repeat the exercise. As a result we have had some changes in the house.

Firstly the kittens have been shipped off to my mother's house. I momentarily left the door to the spare bedroom open while I took some boxes downstairs. The spare bedroom contained a newly made bed a vision of perfect snowy whiteness. By the time I returned upstairs it contained one white bed, one very self satisfied he-kitten deflowering the virgin snowy landscape with masses of brown cat hair and one she-kitten comanding a rigourous assault upon the newly purchased pillows.



We decided perhaps it was best for them to have a little holiday. Better that than kittenicide.

So the kittens, their carry cage, bed, box of toys, food and 6 foot tall cat tree were deposited in my mothers small house. They think it's great - the wood floors make an excellent noise when galloped over and there are fly screens for climbing. My mother has not told her partner that she found the cats licking his dentures. Probably for the best. Much better that he should find out when she's had a few drinks at a dinner party...

We are also no longer cooking in the house. I didn't spend 4 hours cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom just to have to clean it again. All invitations greatfully recieved. We've been eating at Mum's quite a bit. She must have been really bad in a former life.

So fingers crossed the house sells quickly, if not for my sake or for the kittens sake then for my mothers. Worst case scenario she plans to skip the country in about 3 weeks and head about as far away as she could get without being on her way back. I'll try not to take it personally but I will miss the dinners.
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About Me

I once made the mistake of cooking the entire 1966 Edmonds cookbook in a year. Now I blog from the safety of the couch. I live in New Zealand, a tiny (well relatively small compared to, say, Russia) cluster of Islands in the South Pacific. It's a verdant, smog free (except for Christchurch), sheepish, laidback kind of a place. I've lived at both ends of the country so I feel entitled to make jokes at the expense of both the Aucklanders (the "big city" where most of us Kiwi's live) and the Mainlanders (the folk who live in the south of the country which is rather more dramatic of aspect,devoid of population). A kumara, for those who aren't aware, is the Maori (the native peoples of NZ)word for sweet potato - generally refering to the purple/red skinned variety with yellow flesh. Kiwi's love kumara. If you dance with one you will probably need to lead. I am by training and past experiance a food scientist and by profession a food marketer, two professions blamed for messing with the nations food. I'd like to give a little something back to the food by letting it mess me up a bit. This is a collection of random musings about food and life in general.