The Dreamwidth Account

One of the problems that comes with having a serious tea habit like mine is tea tends to leave tannin stains on the mugs I use. Some mugs are worse for this than others (the T2 mug with lid and infuser set I use at work is terrible for this, going deep brown inside about the length of a week; also the mugs I got from Effin Birds are pretty bad for it as well) but generally anything you use to drink tea on a regular basis is going to get tannin stains. This is particularly a problem if you tend to forget about your cup of tea and let it get cold.

Now, normally tannin stains will come off with a bit of hot water, dish-washing detergent and scrubbing, but the thing about scrubbing is over time it damages the glaze on the inside of the mug, and it makes it harder to remove the staining. Dishwashers don't do much of a job at removing the stains either. However, I have discovered one thing which works like magic to remove tannin staining, without damaging the interior glaze of the mug, or requiring a lot of effort when you're low on spoons.

It's grated bar soap, or soap flakes, if you can find them. Soap flakes are sometimes sold in the laundry aisle of supermarkets, as special care for woollen items, but it's been a long time since I last saw them (it was the "Lux" brand at the time). What I tend to use is the tail ends of bars of ordinary old bar soap, grated up on a standard cheese grater. It's best to use some kind of protection over your nose and mouth when doing the grating, since soap dust tends to make people sneeze. Put the grated soap into a lidded container (again, soap dust is a sneeze hazard, you will need the lid).

When you need to clean a mug or teacup with tannin stains, put two teaspoons of grated soap into the bottom of the mug, and fill to the top with boiling water. Stir to dissolve the soap, and then leave it to grow cold and solidify. The soap jelly tends to contract as it solidifies, so you may want to top up with some more boiling water as this happens. Once the soap jelly has solidified, tip it out, and you'll find most of the tannin comes out with the jelly, and the rest can be wiped off easily with a dishcloth and some hot water. I tend to use the jelly as a detergent for whatever dishes we have handy at the time and do a small load whenever I'm cleaning a mug (and I'll start the mugs going when I'm getting my first cups of tea for the day).

This mainly works by the application of a long soaking time (you're leaving it to sit for long enough to cool down from boiling to cold, after all), but also because bar soap has a different chemical composition to detergents. This also means grated bar soap or soap jelly is very effective for cleaning things like stainless steel (if you have a stainless steel sink, you'll notice it comes up a bit more shiny after you've done a load of dishes with soap jelly as the surfactant). I tend to use this to clean my glass teapots as well - they have stainless steel infusion baskets of a very fine wire mesh, which can get very clogged with tannin particles - in that case, put two or three teaspoons of grated soap or soap flakes into the infusion basket, fill the teapot with boiling water, leave to cool, and you'll be able to clean most of the tannin off in no time and restore the infusion basket to "just like new" condition. Same thing works for a wire-mesh tea-strainer that's become clogged, although in that case you will need to give it a bit of a scrub with an old toothbrush or something similar to remove the tannin build-up from the mesh.

I find this a very low-spoons method of cleaning things, and I enjoy the near-magical transformation of my mugs from dingy brown to shining white again.

I've been made unemployed again (my contract expired at the end of last month - if you're hiring admin staff in Western Australia and need someone three days a week, let me know!) so I'm spending a lot of time at home. This is (fortunately or unfortunately) currently coinciding with a bout of rather nasty pain from my right temporo-mandibular joint, which means I'm currently drinking one heck of a lot of tea in an effort to keep things from getting entirely too painful[1]. Plus, of course, it is SPRING in Australia, and it's been about three years since the rear courtyard and steps of our place were sprayed with weed-killer. So in order to be dealing with the combined problems of a) boredom; b) too many weeds in the paving; and c) no money to spend on weed-killer, I've been using what I call "the poor person's glyphosate" on the weeds in the rear paving.

What is the poor person's glyphosate? Boiling water. To kill weeds in paving, pour boiling water over them until they start to either a) wilt; b) smell like cooking greenery; or c) both. If it's a really big, bushy weed, pour the water over the base of the plant - kill that and you'll get the rest of it, trust me.

This has several advantages over commercial weed-killers. Firstly, it's entirely non-toxic to the rest of the garden (and to the gardener, for that matter). The thing which is killing the weeds is the heat, not the chemicals - the water itself is entirely non-toxic to the garden when it cools down past boiling point. Secondly, it's not toxic to animal life (if you have pets or fish, you can use this particular weed-killer with no problems whatsoever - just keep them out of range for about five minutes while things cool down). Thirdly, it's also a nice, non-toxic way of dealing with the ants in the paving (pour boiling water down an anthill to give the ants the hint you're not interested in having them excavating Right There). Fourthly, it's cheap and easy. Or at least, it's certainly a lot cheaper and easier than buying commercial weed-killer and using that would be.

Essentially, what I've been doing is each time I boil up the kettle for a cup of tea, I've been taking the remaining hot water out the back door while the tea brews, and pouring it onto a clump of weeds. So far I've managed to clear the back steps, and I'm getting started on the paving nearest the door to the house. At this rate, I'll hopefully have everything cleared by about the end of the next week or so. Then I can get started on the front paving, and clear a bit of that.


[1] Long story short-ish: the temporo-mandibular joint is inflamed, which refers pain to the nerve on the right hand side of my jaw, which means if I'm not taking regular painkillers, I wind up with everything from my wisdom teeth to the front edge of my right incisors aching like blazes. Including the upper pre-molar which was removed a few years ago. It's a bit annoying, to put things mildly. (Actual joint pain: about a 2 - 3 out of 10. Once the teeth get involved: easily a 6 - 7 out of 10, if not higher). This only gets worse if my right ear or the right side of my jaw get cold. Hence hot liquids as a palliative measure.

The place we're renting at present came with two massive old Cape Lilac trees, one out the front, one out the back. You'll note the past tense there. This is because during some high winds (about 60 km/h) on Saturday night, half the back tree snapped off, and fell downhill (fortunately all into our garden, not onto the neighbour's place). So we now have one-and-a-half massive Cape Lilac trees.

We've reported it to the real estate agents/property managers, and I'm going to be giving them a phone call on Monday to see whether we can get firstly a tradesperson or similar to come out and deal with the task of removing the half-a-fscking tree from the back garden so we can get at the washing line again, and secondly a tree surgeon to have a look at the remaining half-a-tree which is still standing and recommend whether it can be left alone (doubt it!); whether it needs to be trimmed or lopped (so if it does fall over it won't cause major structural damage to the neighbour's house, the house we're in, or the car parked in the driveway); or whether the blasted thing is so unstable there's no chance of it remaining up safely, and it needs to come down completely.

After clearing a few branches away from where the clothesline access was, we've discovered the clothesline frame has been bent down and forward to the point where the poor thing ain't usable (I would not be wanting to try and straighten out the gorgeous gentle curve the support strut has been bent into, quite frankly - the thing is so old I think it would snap instead). So we have to report that to the real-estate people as well. It also took one tile from the roof of the lean-to shed which contains the laundry and the exterior toilet. Given the size of the blasted thing, I'm almost surprised by the amount of damage it *didn't* do - if it had fallen directly to the right (facing toward the back fence) the blasted thing could have taken out the entire wash-house in a single thump, but instead it fell to the lower right, which means it clipped a single tile from the wash-house lean-to (and given we don't use the exterior toilet anyway, a leaky roof there isn't really an issue) and mostly hit the clothesline.

But either way, I get to call the real-estate people and find out what's going to be happening. I sent a couple of emails through their web-page over the course of the weekend to let them know the state of play; I'll be following up by phone today to see how fast we can get things moving. I may just mention that the longer they delay on this, the greater the chance the passionfruit vine I planted last year is going to regard the whole lot of fallen lumber as fair game for growing into!

I feel I owe everyone who's read anything I've written for the past week or so a rather profound and massive apology. Unfortunately, the best you're getting at the moment is an explanation.

( Lengthy stuff under fold )

So, apologies for the rather frequent brainos I've been having over the past week. I will try to do better, but first I need to get my brain back...

The nice man from the washing machine repair firm found he had time enough after finishing his last job of Tuesday to come out and deal with our washing machine yesterday evening, about 4-ish. Which means we now have a working washing machine again. No idea why it wasn't working, but apparently unplugging all the leads inside the machine and plugging them all back in again seemed to do the trick, so I suspect what happened is it essentially shook something out of contact. For a nearly twenty year old machine (we got it when we were in Canbrrra, so it's heading on for "old enough to vote") it's doing quite well.

This week everything happened at once.

I've known for a while that I had an essay due, a rationale and reflection document due, a short story to write (1500 - 2000 words) and a rent inspection due at some point this month. This week, the uncertainty bubble surrounding the date of the inspection collapsed, and we discovered when it was going to happen: this coming Wednesday (it's due in May, Wednesday is the 31st of May, it apparently counts).

For those of you not ensnared in the morass of the Australian rental market, let me describe the joys of a rental inspection to you. Firstly, you get told the inspection is happening at some time on a given day - usually with about a week's notice. The current real estate agency are nice enough people - they narrow it down to "some time between 12pm and 5.30pm", which is positively generous. Before this happens, you need to have the property in a condition which would satisfy either your mother, or your mother-in-law (depending on who has the more rigid housekeeping standards - if neither of these qualify, pick your unfriendly local germophobe). You also need the gardens (if there are any) looking good as well - the local mowing places do a lot of good business out of people who have inspections due! So, once you have the property in pristine condition (including things like cleaning off light switches, wiping down walls and cleaning the oven) you wait for the property manager (if you're renting from a real-estate agency) or the owner (if you're renting directly) to come in and have a look over the place. Now, technically, they're not supposed to be judging you on your housekeeping standards - but we all know this is so much horse elbows, so yeah, they are. If it's a property manager, they come in and often (these days) take photos of the interior of the place, in order to prove you've left the walls where they were when you came in, and to prove the roof hasn't spontaneously fallen in or similar. This, of course, means they're usually taking photos of your goods and chattels as well. Anyway, they come in, do their walk through, make sure you haven't knocked the place down since they were last there, then breeze back out again after making a report for the owner. The whole business takes about fifteen minutes to half an hour tops, but it requires about a week's solid effort in preparation because the place needs to be pristine for them.

This happens every three months, by the way (four a year).

We had the tradesman come around to have a look at the kitchen cupboards on Friday at about 7.30 in the morning. He brought the owner with him, which I would have appreciated knowing about beforehand (while the house wasn't in "complete dog's breakfast" condition, it wasn't quite at "suitable for unknown strangers visiting" levels of cleanliness). Basically, the owner and the tradesman consulted with each other, and I suspect the outcome is going to be a replacement of at least some (if not all) of the kitchen benches. Now, when this will happen (and whether we'll be in the property when it does) is currently all up in the air - our lease expires on the 21st of July, and while I'm going to be talking to the property manager about getting another twelve months in the place nailed down, what may wind up happening is the owner might decide (in the interests of "not disrupting our lives", gods help us[1]) to give us our notice to quit at the end of this current lease, so he can get the tradies in to do things uninterrupted. Now, I don't know whether this is certain, probable or merely in the range of possibilities out there, but it's something I've added to the list of potential worries coming up.

I've mostly finished all the uni assessments - I finished off the editing of my major essay for one of my units this morning (it's been sitting there waiting to be done like an albatross around my neck for the last three or four days, but when I try to do it in the afternoon, my brain basically throws up an "Out of Spoons" error and refuses to parse the wretched thing). I just have the short story to write a first draft of (for workshopping purposes) by Tuesday. Which should be fun, right? But once I've submitted that short story (due the 1st of June) I've finished for the semester, and all I have to do after that is wait for my results.

Of course, this also means I have to go and speak to AtWork regarding Work for the Dole, since at present my university study qualifies as my Work for the Dole activity - and technically they have me on the books as needing to do Work for the Dole until about August or thereabouts. So I need to find out whether I'm going to be breaching my mutual obligation requirements if I don't immediately start doing something else (like picking up litter, sorting rags, washing bottles, or picking oakum) immediately the moment I've handed in this last assignment.

Still going on MFF, have deleted Avengers Academy from the tablet (since it wasn't going anywhere, and was crashing on a regular basis every time I tried to open it) and I'm getting very fond of Final Fantasy Record Keeper, which I've been playing for over a year now, and which hasn't crashed, glitched, or demanded money from me in all that time. Why can't there be more games like that?

[1] The logic here being that having renovations done around us would be disruptive. Which, yes, it would. But having to move out on short notice, and find another place to live in for the amount we can afford (preferably close to uni - that's the main qualifying feature of this place, by the way - it's close enough to the university that we can basically be there within 15 minutes of leaving the house) would be even more disruptive.

I went and visited my parents yesterday, and picked up a collection of plants for our garden.

( Long blatheration under fold )

(I'm considering the possibility of contemplating the idea of starting an Instagram account or something similar, so I can share pictures of this garden as I work on it. If only because I want to keep a record of what I've achieved).

So in the ongoing saga of things going wrong that require workmen, the latest instalment is that part of the ceiling of our garage came loose and fell in. As in, the plasterboard ceiling and attached cornices basically dropped about 2 feet in one corner, breaking the plasterboard, and pretty much putting the structural integrity of the rest of the ceiling at risk (according to the workman who came around yesterday to have a look at the extent of the problem - he was expecting maybe a 2 inch drop, apparently). This means we're getting more workmen in today, arriving at about 8.30am.

Fortunately, my being up and dressed to deal with them is not going to be a problem, mostly because for the past few days we've had stinking hot humid weather (high thirties, low forties C and humid with it), and last night I doubt it got much below about 30C. There was a bit of rain at about 4.30am here (I know this because I spent a ruddy awful night tossing and turning trying to keep cool and get some sleep and I was awake at the time) but it wasn't much more than the humidity finally reaching the point of "well, bugger" and condensing out of sheer inertia. Big splats of raindrops, but not enough to seriously wet the paving. We spent most of yesterday with the air-conditioner on, and a fair chunk of the day before, and today is currently looking like more of the same, so it looks like our next power bill (due around the beginning of February) is going to be a hefty one.

I wound up getting up at about 5.30am after a night of attempting fitfully to sleep, so I'm well and truly awake by now, and I've just let the nice man from the ceiling repair firm in to start working (at 8am). They're talking about having to come in tomorrow as well, to finish sanding things down. Yay.

My partner wound up with an unexpected windfall. He spoke about it too often where our appliances could hear him. The washing machine has now sprung a leak somewhere in its innards.

Which I wouldn't mind so much, except there's two and a half loads of washing left to go, and neither of them are large enough that I'd be willing to trust them to a laundromat machine. I can't call my mother and ask to use her machine, because hers just sprang a leak earlier this week, while I suspect my partner would have Views about me asking his mother whether it would be okay for us to run them through her machine (of the "oh gods, anything but that" variety).

Either way, the earliest we're going to be able to get the wretched thing repaired is some time next year...

(I told him he was talking about that windfall too loudly and too often!).

Just to bring people up to speed on what's happening in my life and what I've been up to.

The good news:

1) I have a new smartphone! I've been saving up for this for most of the last couple of years, and the Telstra shop had a fortuitous sale. My old mobile phone was a little Nokia handset which had been a bit dodgy from the word go - one of its little quirks was that whenever I used it for phone calls, the "6" key somehow kept being pressed. No, I don't know how. Either way, calls were constantly interrupted by beeping and at the end of the call I'd have a page of 6's to delete. Plus it only had text entry from the keypad, which meant it was slow and fiddly to use, and meant I didn't really get much use out of the non-phone functions.

My new phone is a Samsung Galaxy Trend, and it seems to be a lot closer to what I was actually wanting (which was a replacement for my old Palm m515 which could also make phone calls). Certainly it's far easier to use the calendar, note-taking and contacts features than it was on the Nokia. I don't think I'm likely to be using the web-based features of it all that much, though - while I'm at home, I'll use my computer for web browsing, and while I'm out, I'll either be driving, or if I'm on public transport, I'll be working on crochet.

2) I've started to work seriously on improving my performance as a housekeeper. I'm using a combination of Chorewars (to track what I've done, and how much I've "earned" for it - at a rate of 10c per chore) and Habit RPG (to keep up with the weekly and monthly chores and try to keep me up to a couple of daily targets). I'm trying to do 20 "chores" per day on weekdays, and 15 per day on weekends (which, at 10c per chore, means I'd be earning about $13 per week for the housework. Given that by setting my own pace previously I was averaging about $10 per 8 days, this means I'll be saving up for things off my wishlist a bit faster than I was before).

The not-so-good news:

1) Himself was home earlier in the week with a nasty cold/cough combination which I appear to have caught off him. Woke up this morning with a scratchy sore throat, and I'm feeling a bit flattened and dull. Hopefully it will burn through in the next couple of days. In the meantime, lots of peppermint tea, and maybe some lemon and honey later on. Oh, and lots of feeling very sorry for myself, always an essential part of being unwell.