Category Archives: Eclectic grab-bag

There’s (still) a rat in my kitchen.

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We have been enjoying our cosy old world kitchen, feeling very capable handy people and project managers. Having spent several thousand dollars renovating, precipitated by the need to seal the floor to stop the rodents getting in, it was a bit of an anti-climax to find it was still happening. Hmmm, but I’d removed all the furniture including built in cupboards and nailed down stainless steel mesh robustly over any hole bigger than a pencil, and curved it up under the masonite walls before nailing on the trim with pedantic satisfaction; a job well done. So where could the rat be getting in?

Ah: under the stove was a small hole. Not to be thwarted as the mightier, larger and supposedly more intelligent creature, I took some quick set epoxy putty and plugged the hole. That’s that!

Over the next  couple of days, I heard sounds like the shed door closing loudly. Metallic sounds. I assumed it was the westerlies although I couldn’t see what was making the noise. The dogs kept going toward the back door and barking. Then I realised the sound was coming from the oven area, but as soon as I walked into the kitchen, the sound stopped. Undeniably, the sound was still happening periodically… a loud sound… could a rodent be trapped in the oven? Repeated examinations and openings of the oven door and sneaking ins with a torch revealed no rodent. I started to worry I had somehow sealed in the living when I blocked that hole in the floor, but why would it sound metallic?

Just when I thought I was going insane – well I am, but anyway – after tapping the floor of the oven compartment trying to mimic the exact kind of metallic noise, through a gap at front under the door hinge, I saw the rodent, exhausted under the bottom tray of the oven with a look that said, “OK you got me. I can’t get out. I suppose you’ll kill me now.”

Well at least I had finally SEEN the rodent, so at least there was a diagnosis, but looking at the oven construction was bringing to mind some very destructive and expensive scenarios for getting the little fellow out. It clearly couldn’t get itself out as it had been rattling around in there for a couple of days, poor thing. There was some sort of black tray in the compartment with it and I wondered if that had slipped in position as the rodent got in, trapping it there. Luckily, while feeling around to see how the very bottom panel might come off, it opened effortlessly to reveal a storage compartment for oven trays! I didn’t know we had a bottom compartment in this oven. So I looked in and the frightened rat disappeared up the back wall, into the cavity behind the oven compartment, which I assume is where it had fallen in, from the gaps at the top.

So I left the compartment door open, turned off the light, put the dogs in the bedroom and left the back door open. Problem solved I think. The only thing is if it likes it in there and chooses to return, although I hope it’s learnt its lesson. Extreme vigilance will nevertheless be required prior to lighting the oven. I think we’ll open the bottom tray first, just in case a quick exit is necessary. THAT may deter a long term settlement but I’d hate to roast a live rodent, or realise too late and have a flaming furry rat charge about like Halley’s comet, setting fire to everything.

So the good news is that:

1)      At no time had a rat been in the actual oven space where we cook food to eat, and

2)      The tray in the storage compartment turned out to be the oven griller shield we have been looking for for months now, ever since the oven was installed! I will obviously need to CLEAN this, but at least we can now use the griller after all.

I’m dangerous when bored.

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I have great affection for the furry creatures of the earth, this is true, but when the local rodents, who’d long been using the holes in our floor boards as the rat superhighway, started to feast in our kitchen at night, first spreading scraps on the floor then going for the fruit in the bowl on the table, this was really stretching the friendship. Time to pull in the welcome mat. Poisoning is not my cup of tea, and I like to keep it that way, so I’d have to plug the holes in the 1890’s floorboards, the historical remnants of plumbing past.

Being unemployed, there was no excuse why the tools couldn’t come out of the shed. However I wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable mess I’d find lurking behind the kitchen cabinet kickboards, as I approached with resignation, crowbar in hand.

I wasn’t in love with our 80’s chipboard kitchen, not even the “classic” orangey coloured benchtop, in fact especially not that. Chipboard: surely whoever invented this stuff deserved to be the one dealing this mess. Chipboard: just add water for a soggy flaking mess. Rat urine will do nicely if water is not available. The industrious little creatures had chewed right through the stuff and made themselves at home.

Well that was easy. Too easy: the kickboards came away leaving the disintegrating cupboard walls looking at me. It was then that the conviction and spontaneity possessed me. I declared, “I’m going to rip out the kitchen”.

I was a little tentative at first, which was potentially life-saving.  Slowly but surely I uncovered a Pandora’s box of previous dodgy renovator oversights. Of course you would just tack a power point inside the cupboard and install a cupboard with wiring running outside the wall behind it. They very forward thinking individuals who put in the ex-kitchen, revised the sash window sill up several inches to put the bench in, which explains why our kitchen window can’t be locked (project for next time). However, once I started with the power saw, reservation went out the window. I managed to remove the entire cupboard, leaving the sink in place on a temporary wooden frame.

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What a journey of discovery as I replaced damaged Masonite walls and matched trims, removing obsolete plumbing from the wall space and discovering the original house didn’t even have a kitchen and that it was constructed on the existing verandah. Taking the bit in my teeth, I removed the sink taking it out the back to wash up using a hose and bucket.

Then I sealed the floor. Hooray, but what about a kitchen now? Five weeks after the crowbar entered the kitchen, we had repaired the walls and painted and had a new cabinet made and installed…. but what about the hole in the floor under the stove?

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ANZAC Day

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Our family didn’t go to war. My Father was an  electrician and therefore essential services. Both my Brother’s escaped conscription in the seventies as their numbers didn’t come up and they were in uni which may have saved their bacon. Lots of other people weren’t so lucky. Like an evil lotto, their birthday was drawn from the bowl and off they went, unless they wanted to go to jail. My Father’s friend wound up in the guts of a bomber, stuck there with no way to bail out if the plane went down. He learnt Morse code and had to keep his mind focused  to send and receive messages as all hell was going on around him. He returned from WWII, but as a frail nervous wreck for the rest of his life.

My Father the tradesman was sent out with a mate on an American warship to fit some fans in the mess hall. The US soldiers were not used to the tropical heat. The ship went out on exercises in Moreton Bay while the work was being done. As the ship walls were metal, the fans were welded on. Then the on-board guns were fired, modern day cannons and the fans fell off the walls, such was the force. Not to be outdone, they then welded the fans onto the walls so that metal of the fans’ cases and the mess wall flowed freely together, industrial strength. More explosions but the fans stayed put. They explained to the Officer in Charge that not only would the fans not last long with all that vibration, but whoever had to replace them would have a hard job removing them. “No problem,” was the reply.

Clearly the best possible outcome would be the elusive “world peace” as perennially spouted by beauty competition contestants, but humans fight for territory and resources… they even fight for peace, which is ironic.

Because of war there are today millions less people than there would otherwise have been. People who weren’t born because their potential parents were shot, gassed, bombed and tortured. Countless lives were ruined by disability both mental and physical. Perfectly healthy people with all their lives ahead of them, wasted. Looking for justification or meaning for all this is futile but of course, today is the opportunity to pause for thought, for solemn contemplation to honour those who collectively changed the course of history…. as they say, “Lest we forget”.

Wisdom: it’s not what it used to be.

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We’re often quoted the words of the ancients as being evergreen and relevant to our lives today. Why not instead hear from the ordinary folk? Surely everyone wasn’t parading about in a toga philosophising. Instead of Pliny the Elder, what about Plonko the dimwit? Surely volumes could be written from his lips… but why would you bother, you ask? “Don’t bend over to look in a cupboard and then stand up abruptly,” doesn’t compare with “I think therefore I am.” No, actually it’s a lot more practical isn’t it?

I’ve seen any number of people who would benefit from this sort of grass-roots advice:

  • If you are fat and forty, parcour is not for you.
  • If you spend all your money you’ll have none.
  • Don’t use an edge trimmer to mow a whole lawn.
  • That person is only being complimentary because they work for you.

In case you think I’m being smug, I would benefit from not bending over, walking into our metal chicken shed and then standing up. In fact, at the risk of demolishing my own case that prior advice might help, I’ve done this on more than one occasion!

Nevertheless, Plonko, who has done every stupid thing in the book, reminds us not to walk around with our head in the clouds, over-engineering things and ignoring the obvious.

Technogumbies are made not born!

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Did you know that Windows 1.01 was released on November 20, 1985?  So there is no excuse why, in 1995, I didn’t know Word existed.

Returning to University as a mature age student, I strode confidently into the library, familiar with what tertiary study was all about… looking for the library catalogue… looking for the filing cabinet full of paper cards with the book details typed on them, yes, typed on them with a typewriter. Instead, there were only a lot of little televisions. Other people were looking at the details of books on these screens. “Oh, the catalogue is on these screens. I can see it there.” I sat at a blank screen, and discovered that there were many, many key combinations that did not result in anything like instructions appearing as to how to work the catalogue. Eventually someone spoke to me, as you might to someone seriously brain impaired, “Hit this key twice.”

“Oh yeah, that’s simple isn’t it, smartarse,” I thought on my way to the desk to get a set of instructions.

Later in semester, I went to the printing centre to print out my assignment which of course I’d written in DOS, as I’d suffered long teaching myself how to work in DOS. When I’d asked my young friends about DOS, they’d thought I was some sort of uber techno-geek interested in archaic IT. However, now I noticed a page on someone’s screen for the first time that looked a lot better than mine… “It looks like a page that a typewriter makes,” thought I. So it was quite reasonable to exclaim, in a tone reminiscent of someone seeing a space alien, “What is THAT?”…

“What do you mean?” said my fellow student as if I really needed medication. I repeated, “On the screen, what’s that?”

“It’s my assignment. Do you think it looks bad?”

“No, I mean how are you doing that? How are you typing that?

“It’s Word,” was the infuriatingly simple reply. “Yes, don’t patronise me: it’s many words,” but before I could open my mouth, the student recognised the look on my face for the complete ignorance it represented… “It’s a computer program that does this.”

“Wow,” says I. “Where can I get it?”

“Um, just on every computer on campus… on every computer around.”

So my life was transformed. Oh well, I helped others with their Anatomy and Physiology and they explained computer applications to me… win win.

Now when I teach my 82 year old Mother how to use Word 2010 and how to play minesweeper, I do so with a certain humility, understanding that she is not stupid and NO software is intuitive.

Charades, anyone?

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I’m a planner. Before our holiday to Thailand, I checked the flights and our passport expiry dates. I looked up the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to see their advice as to safety and customs. We were vaccinated within an inch of our lives and listened earnestly to dire prognostications of the kinds of illnesses that could befall us if we ate anything that wasn’t boiled in front of us. I don’t like any nasty surprises… but I’m human… female, in fact… so guess what I forgot.

No problem, of course; I’ll just go to a Chemist. I’m a mature adult and it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. The sign even said, “English speaking chemist.” Great.

My question regarding feminine hygiene products was met with a polite, benevolent but puzzled face. Obviously the chemist speaks some English but not this particular phrase. I speak no Thai. OK, she’s a woman. Great. I try to explain about sanitary napkins: “You know, you put them on your underpants.” No luck. I consider any sort of gesture or diagram which might describe tampons but remembered that it’s very important to be polite in Thailand.  A very rare thing happened: words deserted me. So I smile and look around the shelves, looking increasingly like someone who should be returned to the asylum from whence I had obviously escaped.

“This not medicine?” The chemist broke the silence, for which I was immensely grateful. Clearly chemists in Thailand only sell medically relevant products, which, in retrospect, is perfectly sensible. “No, not medicine,” I managed, backing slowly out the door, nodding and smiling, hoping that no closed circuit television would be capturing how supercilious I looked for later display on TV or the web.

Thankfully, in the main street was a cluttered shop with bulk washing power and toilet paper… aha! All the things that are now crammed into our Chemist shops at home but at twice the price of a supermarket. There I found tampons and, so relieved was I, that I purchased enough to last until menopause. The “super” napkins that were apparently 20% longer than normal were so short I need to put two together lengthwise. At least I didn’t have to wrap toilet paper in papyrus and secure with a length of string.

Please, don’t let this put you off at all. Chiang Mai is fabulous as I’ll relate elsewhere.

Start as you mean to continue…

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As much as “Hello World” is traditional, it’s a bit ostentatious for my style. I will nevertheless be irreverent, eclectic and just plain odd as I see fit. Thanks to WordPress and DreamHost, this technogumby can foist her brain-spam upon the unsuspecting. So this is all the warning you will get, gentle reader: gird your loins.

Urban Ms