Housework – Page 9 – Deborah Makarios

May 20, 2019

Cake! Everybody Loves Cake…

Strolling through the file system this morning, I discovered a photo I’ve never shared with you: the cake I made for the Restoration Day release party.

It was the first time I made an icing other than the plainest of plain (water + icing sugar and a tiny bit of butter). Memory is hazy at this distance, but it might have been buttercream icing. With, as you can see in the photo, the viscera of at least one lemon.

It was delicious. Less delicious was the other photo I happened across: a dead mouse floating in the cats’ water bowl. (Always feed your cat on time.)

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March 29, 2019

Beware the Agapanthus

I can’t believe people actually plant this stuff, deliberately! OK, it’s low-maintenance and mildly decorative, but so is convolvulus, and you all know how I feel about that. Another point of similarity with convolvulus: it spreads, and where it grows, nothing else survives.

Last week, I was having one of those days where all you seem to do is uselessly spin your wheels in the mud. You know the ones? I got frustrated. I got angry. I got a spade and a large garden fork and I took out my anger and frustration on the largest patch of agapanthus.

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February 12, 2019

Dishes: In the Sink or Out?

There are some things that life cannot prepare you for. And one of those things is the inevitable encounter at close quarters with people who Do Things Differently.

I’m not talking about the culture shock that frequently accompanies trips to another part of the planet. No, I’m talking about the first time you start sharing domesticity with someone outside your family, and find that the things you took for granted – didn’t even realize were a thing to be taken for granted, even – are not inevitable, are not even non-negotiable.

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