a tragedy, and a little ingenuity

First the tragedy. The bodum broke. This is a real deprivation. We will look for another at Value Village but that may take time. We do have a little electric coffee pot that leaks and that we don't like, and which makes the coffee taste odd. I don't think I can handle months of that. I also recollected today that I bought a glass percolator in the thrift store in Nelson last summer for camping and it must be somewhere though possibly still in the now frozen shut trunk of the Crown Vic. The real irony here is that for years I had stuck in a cupboard a large coffee pot with an espresso attachment that I rarely used and a couple of months ago I gave it away.

The ingenuity involves the recycling box. Ours was stolen a few months ago and I have been using an old cardboard box. They usually throw it in the garbage but as long as I get out by 9 to fish it back out, that system has been working pretty well. Then winter arrived and cardboard boxes disintegrate when they get wet (actually moot until it warms up a bit). So I made a waterproof box by taping plastic bags to the outside. I now have a handsome box that can sit in the snowbank with impunity. [picture of recycling box. Note the historic Canadian touch with the Bay bag] The bonus is that the recycling guys didn't throw the box in the garbage this week.


The other good news recently is that I found a jaycloth buried at the bottom of the kitchen cupobard. Good news because we were down to one dishcloth and one raggedy jaycloth. [picture of raggedy jay cloth.]The other good news is that I found an old flannel shirt to use for a floor cloth because let me tell you, cotton sheets make lousy cloths.

The sins of november

Apparently the meaning of "sin" or rather the word from the original hebrew in the bible that we translate as "sin" means missing the mark. In that senses, November was again marked by sin. I bought new lightbulbs for the shower and the fridge. I tried it for a while in the dark. Of course I have managed to justify the energy expenditure if not the purchase by persuading myself that I would use more energy without the lights. It clearly takes a lot longer to find things in the fridge without the light but I may be a little on the wimpy side on the shower. Having sinned once, with perfection already shot, why not do it again. The poor cats were so truamatized by their trip to the vet that I bought them each a little toy--a felt mouse for one and a felt carrot for the other. Though if consumable means "nothing left for others to use when you are done" cat toys might count.

Of course so might my sheets count the way they are going. My next task will be to learn to mend sheets as I think we are down to one sheet with no holes. I cut a sheet up earlier this year to use as floor clothes, a bad idea with cotton weave, so can take the rest of that sheet and use it for patches. I think if I just cut the ragged material away, fold under the edges and then sow a piece onto the underside of the sheet it shouldn't be too lumpy and I won't need to hem the piece on the bottom. Any advice from the experienced gratefully recieved.

I walked through the mall a couple of weeks ago on my way to the library and was sucked into a shoe store by a pair of red blundstones. My year is up on April 29th and my current plan is to buy a pair of jeans, a sheet, some socks and the red blundstones and then take a crack at more non-shopping. I think it is getting addictive. Oh and maybe I'll have to get the pink reading glasses with the rhinestones. I have lost a couple of pairs of reading glasses and at this rate may be down to less than a dozen by April.