This weekend I am grateful for.... handymen

This week's Maxabella-inspired Grateful Post is about that wonderful species, Handy humanis, the common handyman. B and I are not at all handy when it comes to home repairs, and we are quite happy to contract out. It's definitely worth the cash, cuppa (always, always white with one) and two biscuits.

This week we decided it was time to have our front door trimmed to fit our house's La Niña dimensions (which evidently have a different lean from the El Niño version). This was all achieved, and I was grateful for Jon the Handyman's handiness. Even more so, as I swept away the wood shavings and collected the offcuts I realised that I am even more grateful when I encounter that rare subspecies Handy humanis cleanupafterwards. Even so, it's nice to have a front door that opens.

Image from http://find-a-handyman.com.au/, which I didn't use to find a handyman.

Everybody needs good neighbours

I'm not a fan of the soapie, but I am a big fan of neighbours. I love our house and garden, but what money couldn't buy was landing in an altogether friendly pocket of suburbia. As well as lovely adults, there is a bunch of kids around our boys' ages with whom I'm looking forward to them growing up. And it's the sort of street, without us being overly chummy and all over each other, that there's no shame in asking a neighbour to collect your mail or feed the chooks.

The patriarch of the block is an elderly Sicilian gentleman (any lesser descriptor wouldn't be appropriate) who has been in the neighborhood for years (and spread his loquat seeds) who knows everything there is about everything. He's our real estate sales reporter, neighborhood watch and voluntary handyman, sometimes to the point of embarrassment: he ended up showing up, goods in hand, to fix our fence, then wouldn't accept a bottle of wine (he makes his own), or a cake (no good for his cholesterol).

Our next door neighbours were away for a few days after Christmas and asked us to put their bins out, and help ourselves to their ripe tomatoes. Good deal... until their bins migrated to the street without our input. Ok, we were too slow. Then, early the next morning as the boys and I waved to the garbage truck we caught a glimpse of the Sicilian rocket whiz out his gate in the truck's wake and return our neighbours' bins to their yard, still warm from the garbage truck's exhaust. With a small splutter I wondered, who needs good neighbors when you've got the Super Neighbour?

Day 3: moving on

Today's Project was to prepare our high chair, folding change table and solid (unfolding? fixture?) change tables for passing on to a pregnant colleague. It wasn't really one of those tasks I have been procrastinating about for ages, because it came about because the recipient was passing by this way. Either way, it was a project in itself to get things looking a bit less used with only a day's notice.

Fortunately, my cleaning assistants were as willing as ever.

The change table is a bit of a Melbourne Research Institute heirloom, requiring a quick modern history lesson to explain its genealogy. When I started my PhD I took over the desk of a former student, L, sharing my bay with a scientist, H. H played soccer with another scientist, C, who had worked next door to us. When I started in my current position, C and his wife both worked with me. Where this all relates to the change table is that it was made by L about 20 years ago then passed to H, who passed it to C, who passed it to me, who now passes it to the next link in the chain. I told her that the only deal in receiving the change table was that it has to be passed to another researcher!

Somewhere on blog.crojack.org (sorry, can't find the specific post) is the observation that economics courses always cite blood donation as the only completely altruistic industries of modern society*- meaning the donor receives no benefit- yet the hand-me-down system of baby clothes and equipment is just as altruistic. Except that, in this case, the donor (=me) received the double benefit of decluttering and a topic for APrADa!

*except if you live in the USA where in places like Denver homeless people queue for $20 to donate their blood plasma....

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While there are plenty of things we "need" to get during pregnancy, pre-natal education is one of the few which is positively correlated with improving outcomes for mothers and children. A $55 donation to Oxfam can support the training of community members who will provide pre- and post-natal education for women living in rural Cambodia.

The Not-Quite-Fridge Chronicles

Maxabella, Queen of Linkies (by my estimation), has been running The Fridge Chronicles for several months, which I excused myself from on the basis that we have a non-magnetic and therefore barren fridge door. I have been granted an exemption from the letter of the linky law, so I'll show a couple of pictures of what might be on my fridge if it were stickable... the fact that I don't blutac anything onto it probably suggests I'm not a fridge door type personality... and besides, the kitchen cupboards have way more surface area for covering...

Most of what we post is kiddie art work. I put up my favourites of the reams that come home from kindy (do us parents reduce their recycling costs?)

First up, "My weekend" and Untitled, both by Big Bro, and which I liked in a Picasso-esque way. They demonstrate two stages of Big Bro's artistic evolution: Untitled is his abstract style, which explores the textures and melding of the media (ie, he evidently spends a lot of time testing of mixing colours and different ways to colour, as well as creating abstract masterpieces like "Blue Pencil Line on Recycled White Invoice Sheet"). "My weekend" is a response to the demands of institutionalization for normalcy and representative art (ie, when I complimented him on the people in the middle, Big Bro replied "the teacher told me I had to to draw pictures, not scribble any more". Fair call, I thought.)

Next, a bit of ancient and modern: the top are Big Bro's pre-2 art, while the bottom was fairly recent. I thought it was a digger and a truck, but apparently the purple is a rainbow, yellow is rain, the green is a house and the blue is water running off the roof into a rainwater tank. Atta boy!

A bit more art, in a picture of Dada- glasses and all, drawn in one line by my experimental artist (he needs an etcha-sketch?), plus the most exciting things we get in our letter box- the occasional post card, in this case all from my mum. Big Bro still doesn't understand the postal system, and wonders why she dropped them off without saying hi.

Then there are recipes around the place. Ilipilli's sourdough bread is on a postit elsewhere for quick reference, while this caramel slice recipe from the side of the condensed milk tin was intended for a guest who hasn't yet come back... And the (few) birthday invitations Big Bro receives take months to remove. I only removed last year's version of this invitation a couple of weeks ago.... did I mention this will probably be my only Fridge Chronicles, as things won't change for ages?

Finally, odd little notes and aide-memoires, again without expiry dates. This book recommendation- Cinnamon Gardens- is from a Sri-Lankan-Canadian visitor in early 2009. I have actually bought it for B's parents who didn't say whether it was any good so I suspect it wasn't... (hmm, must read it myself?) Evidently the stick of the postit ran out so rather than discard such a vital piece of paper, for some reason I used extra sticking. Y- why- indeed?

I think by this point you're seeing why a non-magnetised fridge is a good thing for clutterbugs like us?

New Chooks on the Block

Ok, so they're not exactly new, and they're not at our place, but we have scored *the best* neighbourhood favour: feeding our neighbour's two chickens for two weeks, and collecting their nicer byproduct, two eggs a day.

I've never kept chickens, but so far it seems they seem to have pretty straight-forward short-term needs. The information we were given by the owner was:

1. Chickens need a constant supply of water, which needs to be changed every few days as it tends to get dirty.

2. Feed the chickens layer pellets and a seed mix every day. These chickens seem to eat the seed mix in preference to everything else.

3. They can also be fed other kitchen scraps, apart from citrus and banana peel.

A quick check online and I can supplement with

4. Chickens are happy to eat anything humans eat, but avoid salty or sugary foods, and avocado. So far the favourite kitchen scraps have been yoghurt and lamb chops.

5. Chickens will also eat leafy plants like dandelions, oxalis and clover. These chickens seem to especially like salad greens.

They're certainly better recyclers than worm farms or compost!

Two weeks seems to be a great length of time as it's not long enough that we get lumped with the dirty jobs like cleaning or worming, yet it's long enough to get lots of eggs and get used to the chicken routine, and for the boys to get used to the idea that we'll get more eggs home by sharing the egg-carrying job than snatching the eggs away from each other!

Hence our egg carton in an egg bag... seems a bit excessive for two eggs, but better than broken eggs!

DIY indoor washing line

Household chores are such a mundane topic, but they do seem to occupy a sizeable chunk of my time and energy. Nothing unusual about that, I'm sure. My big love-hate relationship at the moment is with the laundry. Of all the chores, I really don't mind washing (helped by my love of our front-loader!), and hanging out the washing is a good excuse to stand outside and ponder the garden... and it's even better when I remember to bring the radio and listen to a snatch of News Radio! That's all well and good, but my problem with the washing is how much there is: we're up to around 6 or 7 loads a week. And when the weather is as wet as it has been recently, that's a lot of washing to hang up inside.

This rather cluttered cupboard-under-the-stairs is a great size for housing our clothes horse where it won't get tripped over or bumped or climbed on. However, our clothes horse isn't a great size for our family and recently I keep finding myself guiltily directing some of the washing straight into the dryer. A visitor suggested getting a ceiling-mounted clothes rack for the laundry, but they all seemed pretty pricey.

I had some eyelet screws left over from a trellis wire kit and combined with some $5 washing line from Kmart and four drill holes I was able to make some extra hanging space out of the way in our under-stair cupboard.

Total cost under $10, total time under 10 minutes.