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.