Today, we could no longer tolerate the stickiness of the kitchen floor, so we tried to do a bit of mopping. I think we did quite a good job of it considering our method. One of us was doing the mopping and focused mainly on the kitchen while the other walked in and out of it, spreading thin the stickiness from the rest of the house with her feet.
Of course, you could say that it would be helpful if we were more systematic and did things in the right order – say only mop the floor when we have time to do the whole apartment and preferably only after we’d picked up the dirty laundry, books and magazines. And of course, we while we’re picking up the dirty clothes, we should consider doing the laundry as well. You could also say that if we’re going to do that, we might as well hang up the load that is in the washer but before we do that, it would be a good idea to wait for the ones that are already hanging to dry, so we could put them back into the cupboards but then the cupboards are already full because we’d been doing too much shopping (You might notice I’m using “we” more often now because we’re both really trying to think of ourselves as a single unit from now on). And we’re not buying any new cupboards for this apartment because we are planning to move out next year. Besides, not all of the clean laundry goes back in the cupboards. The towels are supposed to go into a towel box which has not been accessible for the past six months because it has barricaded itself behind a wall of books and magazines. The books and magazines themselves have nowhere to go, which means we’ll need more bookshelves. New bookshelves are also out of the question because the study is already full, not to mention also inaccessible for similar reasons.
And so on and so forth, until it is impossible to even think about the correct order of things to clean. So we just do the little bit that we can when we need to. We use the same two bath towels over and over, so we don’t need to worry about storing them. We throw out the garbage before it makes us retch – most of the time. We mop the floor before it stops our ability to walk to the phone and call for help.
I guess you could say we’re both dying to move into the new house because it would be like having a bigger carpet to sweep our dirt under. We can hardly wait!
(Anyway, the London pages are here and should slowly be filling up in case I do that instead of blogging.)
[ 7 comments ] ( 2013 views ) | permalink | related link
No blogging for the next ten days or so because we'll be in London. Should be fun.
[ add comment ] | permalink | related link
(originally written on November 15)
(…continued from part 1)
I don’t know – maybe I’m just envious because my wife and I are trying pretty hard to have kids.
About ten days ago, I took my wife in to her gynaecologist. She insisted I go in with her in case the doctor wanted me to undergo any tests. While we were waiting, the nurse was filling in a form and asked my wife if she was pregnant. She said “No! I’m here to ask the doctor why I’m not!” Those exclamation marks are not exaggerations, by the way. You could almost see them coming out of her mouth and landing on the nurse’s face. The rest of the form was filled without any further help from us.
It was the second time I was meeting my wife’s gynaecologist. The first time was two years ago, before we were married, and we were there because my wife was not well. This time, we were there for help with fertility, which I knew, even though we didn’t say it, meant that I was there as a patient. When we told him what we wanted, he said okay and told us what the plan was. The plan was my wife would need a pap smear and I would need a sperm test and if everything looked okay, my wife would eat some medicine and see if the eggs are getting fertilised on such and such a date and if not, then it’s phase two – which is to see if something is blocked. I don’t know if all gynaecologists are like this but this doctor is possibly the most matter-of-fact guy I have ever met. I had the feeling he could have been discussing our imminent amputations and his expression would still not have changed. It was either professional objectivity or just a vague indifference - I’m not sure which. Anyway, the reason I am saying all this about him is it largely explains our reaction when he got up from his chair, pointed towards this bed and said “Come on”.
My wife and I looked at each other and there was a paused before she said “Me or him?”
Turns out, it was my wife’s genitalia he wanted to examine. I sighed a sigh of relief.
Later, as I was making the appointment to do my test, I was actually thinking of postponing the experience to another day even though I was already at the hospital and collecting the sample would only take a few minutes (or so I thought), and the drive to the hospital would take the better part of a whole other morning, and we really didn’t want to delay the rest results any more than necessary. In the end, common sense prevailed and I did the test. We shall not go into that in detail, but I will just say it was not easy and unlike all the jokes you’ve probably heard, they don’t provide any reading material. My wife was most supportive and helpful.
Last Friday, my wife called up the hospital and the nurse said she had the results but we’d better call back because it was better to have the doctor explain everything to us. My wife was in her office and I was in mine but I could feel both our hearts sink. I kept trying to call back and the doctor was always out in surgery or out to lunch. Finally, late in the afternoon, he called back and said “Let’s see…”
“…Hmm. Your count is 142. Yup. Okay.”
“Huh?”
“Looks okay.”
“Err…”
No reaction.
“What do we do?”
“Just go on as usual. Keep trying”
So that’s it. We keep trying. Sounds like good news and a good plan.
[ 5 comments ] ( 88 views ) | permalink | related link
Sorry I’ve been moody and slack, but here’s an update on the ebay situation.
We didn’t make it to Singapore over the weekend. The Soul Doctor was busy, so it was just going to be the two of us. My wife still wanted the furniture and I still wanted my to maintain my 100% positive ebay feedback. Then we realised my passport was expiring in less than six months, so I couldn’t have made it across the border. I tried to renew my passport on Friday but it takes a whole work day to get it back so I only picked it up on Monday. I’d like to take credit for this clever little twist in our story but the honest truth was I forgot. In short - no passport, no me, no driver, no trip, and ultimately no sale. Even though my wife has postponed the transaction to Thursday night and the seller has accepted that, it looks very unlikely that either of us is going to have the time to honour that as well. So I’m finally going to be getting my first bad feedback on ebay and there is nothing I can do about it.
It’s easy to accept a situation when I can say there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s kind of liberating, really. I know I sound like a quitter, but I like it this way because I get to be the victim. I hate it when I have a choice between two or more crappy situations because I know that whichever one I pick, I'll end up as the villain.
So here I was thinking how I’m finally getting my first bad feedback on ebay when suddenly, it occurred to me that I’ve been going about the whole thing the wrong way. All along, I’ve been trying to do the right thing and be a good buyer and a good husband, which is why I offered to drive ten hours to complete a transaction that was done behind my back (speaking of which, I doubt my back would have survived the journey).
Now that I’ve had some time to think it through, I think I was looking at the whole thing from the wrong perspective. I'm such an idiot. I can't believe I couldn't see this before. It’ll do me good to have some bad feedback on my ebay account. In fact, instead of waiting for my wife to bring my reputation down, maybe I should take the proactive approach and do a little dishonourable shopping myself. I figure by the time I get up to about 40% negative feedback, people should more or less stop wanting to sell things to us.
That would be good.
[ 2 comments ] ( 25 views ) | permalink | related link
Good news for people who use lots of AA batteries.
I first saw these GAIA and Eneloop advertisements on billboards and posters in Japan in June but did not realise what they were. I thought it was just the Sanyo marketing department highlighting the environmental advantages of rechargeable batteries. As it turns out, Sanyo has come out with a new type of rechargeable battery that is actually easier to use.
These new batteries can keep 85% of their charge after a year of storage at 20 Celsius. At higher temperatures, they lose their charge faster, but still a lot slower than current NiMH batteries. This translates to less time fiddling with chargers and more actual usage.
Also, if you need some batteries in a hurry but don't want to buy non-rechargeables, you can just buy a pack and start using them as soon as you open the package because they've already been charged up at the factory.
Read about them at http://www.sanyo.co.jp/koho/hypertext4- ... 01-2e.html
Sweet!
Edit: Okay, I just realised this battery was released last November and that I'm one Christmas behind in terms of shopping trends. You can safely ignore this post.
[ 2 comments ] ( 17 views ) | permalink | related link
Back Next
Avatar
