Two years ago, we were renovating our current house and one of the things my wife insisted she couldn’t live without was a dishwasher. I didn’t like the idea at first. My mom had a dishwasher that none of us used, although I forgot the reasons why. But my wife’s girlfriend had one which she used daily so the dishwasher quickly became a must-have item. When I say must-have, I mean my wife absolutely refused to move into our new place unless it came with a dishwasher.
After looking around for awhile, we decided on a small, unobtrusive unit called a dish drawer. It came with some eco-friendly features so it fit into our self-proclaimed eco-friendly themed at the time (By now of course, we’ve come to realize our home is anything but eco-friendly).
Anyway, the dishdrawer looked adequate for a small family like ours until we tried to use it for the first time. According to the manual, you’re not supposed to slot the dishes next to one another if you expect them to be clean. You can’t just put the plates straight in either. You have to first take care to clear out all the leftover food and thick gravy to make sure you don’t clog up the delicate innards of the machine. Also, if you have big plates, they take up two rows of slots. If you have a bowl, it will not fit into any of the slots so you just kind of hang it precariously over the top of the entire rack. If you had a pan or a pot, you can probably get it in somehow but it involves moving all the racks about – an operation that takes about three times as much time and effort as washing the pot yourself.
So on the very first day, I already had an inkling that this machine might not make dishwashing the fun family activity it looked like in all the brochures. To add to the challenge, my wife wanted certain items hand-washed. These included her expensive crystal glasses, her antique saucers, her vintage plates, her Japanese stuff, her souvenir mugs, her heirloom stuff, her new stuff and anything else we didn’t want to risk getting chipped or cracked.
The dish drawer came with a small trial packet of soap powder which we are two thirds of the way towards finishing. I reckon we used the machine about six times in the two years since we installed it, possibly all within the first six months when we still felt the need to justify our purchase.
About a week ago, my wife found that the dish drawer has been annexed by a small army of cockroaches. We ran a cycle through it, thinking that would get rid of the problem. Afterwards, I poked around the inside to see if there were any survivors. A small filter at the bottom of the dishwasher was retaining some water. I never noticed this before, so I wasn’t sure if it was normal or if we had a blockage. Assuming it was normal was the cheaper option so that’s what I did.
The next day, my wife informed me that we had a problem. She had run the dishwasher again and halfway through the cycle, there was an error message. The whole thing was filled with soap suds. I tried to take it apart and help the blockage along with a toilet plunger, but the water remained at the bottom of that filter dish, so I gave up and put everything back together. It was about then that my wife sheepishly confessed to having used regular dishwashing liquid in the dish drawer, so that could have been the problem too.
When the dishwasher repairman came, he sorted everything out. The problem wasn’t a blockage or cockroaches. The regular dishwashing liquid just made too much suds and got into some circuit board. He dried everything with a hair dryer, rinsed the soap out, and everything was fine again. The leftover water at the bottom filter tray at the end of each wash was normal. This was some concern to me because bacteria breed in water. But that was the way dishwashers are designed. They’re meant to be used daily, so the water wasn’t supposed to stay there for long periods of time.
At the moment, our solution is to just run the machine in rinse mode every few days or so. So, on top of the initial cost of the purchase and installation, our not-in-use eco-friendly dishwasher is now costing us electricity and water every week.
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My wife's been upset at something lately which kept her awake all of last night, which in turn, kept me awake.
In the end, I gave up trying to sleep and we started to diagnose why this thing was bothering her so much. It bugged me a little that she was spending so much time on this, so I reminded her of some of our bigger concerns and concluded by saying "You're worrying about the wrong things."
As soon as I said it, I realised I'd done the 'insensitive' thing women always accuse us of. So, the whole bad sitcom script unfolded from there - she just needed comforting, she just needed someone to listen, why can't I just tell her not to worry (which, in my defense, I kind of did).
The diagnosis went on for awhile. Maybe something else happened before that we didn't know about. Maybe that other person was stressed out when she said these things, and in any case, what she said wasn't true anyway. Maybe other things have been bugging her and she's not just angry at this one thing. Maybe we just need to pay attention to this or that.
We weren't getting anywhere as far as solutions were concerned, but she was comforted just by our talking, which made me realise we've been doing so little of it. Soon, however, our conversation grinded to a halt, largely because she was distracted by her Blackberry. I could never compete with the Blackberry, so I pulled the blanket back over me and closed my eyes.
Then I heard her say "Okay, I'm getting some good advice from the Internet - It says here, 'Don't water your weeds.' I shall not water my weeds."
I thought quietly about this for awhile, and then these words fell out of my mouth...
"Ya, in other words, you're worrying about the wrong things."
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Every now and then I forget how gullible I am and allow myself to get talked into running fools’ errands.
We were at a garage sale this morning. A nice American man by the name of Kurt was moving and selling off most of his things dirt cheap. We met the Soul Doctor there, and we were supposed to help her pick out some things for her new place. As usual, my wife ended up buying half the things on sale and a few things that were not (at first). We got some more kitchen utensils, three folding chairs and one slightly broken rocking chair. We neither needed nor had space for a rocking chair but my wife liked it, so I knew logic wasn’t going to come into play. My wife loves old stuff. I call them junk. She calls them antiques. I say they’re old, but she says they have history. I don’t care much about items with other people’s history. It’s not my dad or uncle who used the old coffee shop stools we bought or my grandpa who sat in this rocking chair, so to me, everything she buys is just all old, cracked, dusty but otherwise ordinary. My wife, however, totally buys into this faux family history stuff. She once scolded an antique seller for wiping off the dust off a table before delivering it to our place.
Getting things into the car was a challenge as we had with us our visiting cousin, our baby, our baby car seat and our huge toe-crusher stroller. My wife was determined that everything would fit if she could just get everyone to cram into the back seat. I’m normally a pretty sensible guy but I’ve seen my wife pack in two wooden chairs with armrests plus a coffee table into the back seat of our compact sedan, which was something I never thought I’d see in this lifetime. So I reserved judgement until we’ve given her plan at least a good try.
No matter how we rotated the rocking chair, though, it seemed to always have one dimension that was an inch too wide or one armrest jutting out too far. After twenty minutes of huffing and puffing, even my wife’s optimism was starting to flag, so we gave up and left the rocking chair there until we’ve gone home and emptied the car.
Later that afternoon, when everyone had settled down at home, I emptied our car, took out the stroller, removed the baby seat, and headed out to pick up that rocking chair. I drove through two tolls. It was a hot afternoon even by KL standards. I was sweating in places that shouldn’t be sweating, but I was patient and obliging at least for the earlier part of my mission.
Patrick and Min were there when I arrived. We exchanged hellos and goodbyes and then I picked up the rocking chair. Patrick said, “You sure your car can fit ah?” I thought, “Well, it almost fit before and I had 3 passengers, a car seat, and a big stroller, plus other assorted junk then,” so I said as much. I declined all offers for help and headed back to the car with a rocking chair over my head.
The first thing I discovered was that the boot of the car was useless. No matter which way I rotated it, I couldn’t get more than a third of the rocking chair in there. The backseats were hopeless as well as the doors couldn’t open wide enough to even let in half a rocking chair. The only hope left was the front passenger seat and we had already tried that earlier. I was starting to have a bad feeling about the whole affair, but since I'd driven all across town for this thing, I was prepared to give it another try. I pushed the seat as far back as it would go and inclined the back rest all the way down. Then I tried loading the rocking chair. I tried sliding it in gently at first, wiggling it wherever it met a resisting piece of car upholstery. Failing that, I resorted to shoving and banging. I tried getting it in upside down, right side up, sideways on its side, sideways on its back, sideways on its front. I tried pushing the drivers seat all the way back, with the back rest fully inclined as well. How was I planning to drive the car home? I had no idea, but I was really fixed on getting the arm chair loaded. I don’t remember pushing anything as hard as I pushed that rocking chair. I remembered wondering at one point if the roof of the car was going to get dented from my efforts. I even tried putting the car into first gear and putting down the hand brake, thinking that it would make a difference but it didn’t. If the chair had been two inches smaller in any, just any, of its three dimensions, I’m sure I could have gotten it in.
As I came back up the driveway with the rocking chair over my head, I heard Patrick saying calmly to the others, “The rocking chair is back.”
I told Kurt I’d leave it there and we’d figure something out over the next two days. It was a long drive home, so I had time to bring my anger to a nice simmer before seeing my wife.
I told her I was done having anything to do with that rocking chair. I decided I would not move it, fix it, store it nor sit on it. So you could say my wife finally bought something I have a little history with.
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Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote about trying to decide whether or not to let my son climb. On one hand, I can really see us having lots of fun together. But on the other hand, I don’t think I will ever get comfortable with the idea of hanging my son on a rope sixty meters off the ground. Being a new parent has kept me busy enough, so I stopped climbing, postponed the decision and stopped worrying about it.
Lately, my back has been aching to the point where it really interfered with my life. By about dinner time each night, I didn’t want to do anything but lie down. I went to see a chiropractor and an orthopedic doctor. Both of them diagnosed me as spending too much time sitting down and not getting enough exercise. Apparently, it’s a very common problem among people my age (late thirties). I was handed a piece of paper off the orthopedic doctor’s shelf, which basically described about ten exercises I could do. I took a look at the exercises and figured they basically targeted the same muscles used in climbing. I’m not much good with exercise regiments or anything involving discipline, so last week, I decided it was just easier if I started visiting the climbing gym again.
I knew I was really out of shape so I tried to take it easy. It was quite difficult to judge what I could or couldn’t do. The good news is that I still remembered how to do it. My balance was more than a bit off, and my muscles were weak from two years of sloth, but I knew, generally, which hand went where, and what to do with my feet. I was getting quite comfortable with the moves when I came into this one part where I needed to swing my body in a slow controlled way to reach a far hold. Even though my mind remembered the move, it forgot that it accomplished it with a younger, fitter body two years ago. It was at this point that my body decided to send it a friendly reminder in the form of a cramp all up one side of my torso, which put an end to the climbing nonsense for that day.
Today, I went to the climbing gym again. I haven’t done anything special to keep fit or get better at climbing since the last visit. I haven’t been watching my diet. I haven’t done any stretching. I haven’t done any exercise apart from the casual bicycle ride with my wife and son. Surprisingly, everything felt much easier this week. I think my balance is slowly returning to me. As always, the fingers are the weak point, so I try not to work them too hard. I thought that since I’m starting almost from scratch, I’d do it right this time and build finger and upper body strength as slowly as possible, so that my feet have time to learn to balance properly. Strength comes eventually, but bad habits are hard to break.
The climbing session passed almost without any drama this time. My fingers were getting too tired so I decided to just climb the slab (a wall that leans away from you, which is easy on the hands, but you still need to use your feet and legs). My wife and son came into the gym about that time. I took a short break to give the boy some attention and show him around the place and then went back to finishing up on the slab. It was then that my boy made the decision that he was going to be a climber after all.
Video 1
Video 2
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The world must seem like such a warped place for a toddler. My boy has been trying to follow, with varying degrees of success, some 'rules' we first thought were pretty simple. If I put myself in his shoes, this is probably what he makes of the whole situation.
The Rule For Throwing Things
“I’m encouraged to throw and kick my ball around the house, but otherwise, I’m not supposed to throw things. Not all balls are for throwing, as well. That orange fruit thing is a no-no if my dad’s reaction is anything to go by. Oh wait, if I pick something off the floor and it’s something that fits in my mouth, I’m supposed to throw that away immediately too.”
The Rules For Hitting
“I’m not supposed to hit people and animals, although my dad encourages me to hit mosquitoes. I gather it’s a good fun thing to bang on toy drums, and if one is not available, a restaurant table is also good, except sometimes when there are other people at the table.”
The Rules for Drinking
“My daddy and mommy has been trying to get me to drink water from a cup, but they don’t like it one bit when I drink out of the toilet brush holder.”
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