Low Tech Girl In A High Tech World

So, as many of you know, I have a Tassimo. Sadly, it has been some time since it burbled happily away on my counter, bringing forth steaming hot cups of individual deliciousness. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, my bank account has yelled at me about the need to do adult stuff such as paying bills and buying nourishing food for my children before purchasing those lovely T-discs. Then, just when I had decided that it was time for a green tea in all its grassy goodness, I clicked it on and a new light appeared. It was red the color of bad . The color of broken. The color of no delicious beverages now or ever. I bowed my head and said a silent prayer for the hot boozy bevvies I could no longer enjoy. I looked in my book and found that all it needed was descaling. Easy, right? Just run vinegar, that miracle of miracles through the machine and all would be well. Oh, but this is a Tassimo, right? A fine, pedigreed beverage maker such as this is too good for mere vinegar. In fact...

Having a chinchilla has taught me many things. Not all of them good, not all of them actually useful, but many of them interesting. For those of you who are not aware of what a chinchilla is, it is a small rodent about the same size as a mitten (conveniently). Their fur is very warm and very soft. They have long ears like a rabbit and a long tail like a squirrel. When they are hiding behind your couch in order to surprise you with their presence, it looks very much like a squirrel has climbed into your home (through a broken dryer hose perhaps) and is hiding behind your couch. This is only distressing when you left it shut up in its cage in the basement the night before. Here are some lessons that I have learned from the chinchilla: 1. Even the worst book is still tasty (sorry dear, we can go book shopping when you get home to replace the nibbled volumes) 2. You don't need thumbs to open things (like cage doors). You do need thumbs to open metal clips placed on cage doors. Humans a...

You may wonder why, after so many months of silence, I have chosen to make the subject of 2011's first post about laundry. There is a simple explanation for this. I hate laundry. I really, really do. I loathe it with the same depth of hatred that is normally reserved for spiders and white supremacists. I detest it on not one, but many levels. Oh laundry, I hate thee, let me count the ways. 1. For you are never truly, TRULY complete. Even if I choose to streak about my house so that every last stitch makes it into the machine, I never fail to locate a sock, or a shirt or a pair of child-sized pants balled into as small a bundle as possible and hidden somewhere about my house. 2. For I have small children who feel that wearing a vest once, or looking at an old Hallowe'en costume or not feeling like putting clean clothes away makes them dirty, so my baskets overflow with items that should not be there. Of course, having been put into the basket the clean socks that are still fol...