Caped Gooseberry – Page 21 – Deborah Makarios

October 4, 2014

The Floor is Made of Lava! and other Saturday fun

I did something really old-fashioned this morning: I filled a bucket with hot soapy water, got down on my hands and knees, and scrubbed the kitchen floor. And the laundry floor, but somehow that doesn’t have the same ring to it.

There is fun to be had, even in such a task! But before you picture me as one of those women (if indeed any such exist) who enjoy crawling across a wet dirty floor dragging a heavy bucket about, let me assure you, the scrubbing itself is not the attraction, although there is a certain satisfaction in seeing pristine cleanliness where once – well, let us draw the veil of charity over what it looked like before!

The really fun bit of scrubbing the floor is drying it – rather like Amélie’s mother enjoying polishing the parquet with her slippers. Where else in one’s daily round – all right, conscience, weekly round – all right, monthly – look, never mind how often I scrub the floors! The floor is scrubbed; let conscience be content.
How often in one’s regular (or irregular, insists my conscience) life as an adult does one have the chance to play The Floor is Made of Lava?

OK, if you’re a footman at Buckingham Palace, you may be called upon to skate up and down the dining table with polishing cloths tied to your feet, but we can’t all be footmen. Especially those of us who are of the female persuasion – but then, the royal website says the Royal Household “strives to ensure that all employees are able to contribute to their maximum potential, irrespective of gender” etc etc, so you never know. Any readers who are female footmen (footwomen?) in Her Majesty’s employ are welcome to comment below.

Fool that I was, I failed to take the example of the footman and Amélie’s mother. Instead of attaching the cloths to my feet, I draped a couple across the kitchen floor. All very well until I had nearly scrubbed myself out the back door and found there was nary a cloth in sight. There lay the glistening laundry floor, as barren and bare as the Arctic plain, and there was I like Frankenstein’s monster stranded on its ice floe.

Yes, it was lava, and now it’s ice. Try to keep up. No, I am not wearing skis.

In the end I simply howled for the Caped Gooseberry to come and save me, which he nobly did, hurling cloths across the intervening space like some sort of mythical giant hurling rocks into a lake of lava. (Yes! It’s lava again!) Be warned: it is dangerous out there; take a cloth with you.

Restored to the relative safety of the kitchen archipelago at last, I leapt lightly from place to place about that most crucial part of all household work: making the cup of tea. Actually, archipelago is overstating it: there were only two cloths and they were a stride away from each other, and from everything else. An arabesque enabled me to extend the kettle as far as the tap – rather like this:

only more sensibly dressed. I may strand myself on a laundry ice floe without skis, but I would never wear ice skates when the floor is made of lava. Credit me with some sense 🙂

How do you have fun with your housework? I’d love to hear your ideas!

September 6, 2014

Relax!

It is one of the interesting variations between humans that we find different ways to relax – or perhaps more precisely, that we relax in different ways. What produces the effect of relaxation in one person will have a completely different effect on another.

Case in point: the Caped Gooseberry finds strategy games a fun unwinding leisure-form, while I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about them.

Contrariwise, I find few things more relaxing than curling up on the couch watching a DVD, but for the Caped Gooseberry it’s more an energy-user than an energy-giver. And so it goes.

When we were preparing to marry, our minister suggested that we might need to put some effort into finding ‘mutually enjoyable leisure activities’, and how truly she spoke.

This is one of the reasons why we so often read aloud to each other: it’s a leisure activity we both enjoy. This works in well with another favourite form of relaxation for me: handwork (as long as it’s going well and I don’t have a deadline hanging over my head). It is particularly handy as I am not yet skilled enough to knit and read at the same time.

My favourite form of relaxation, however, is strictly solitaire: chain-reading. Generally I chain-read books I’ve read before, or books of a genre I am familiar with – nothing that requires too much focus. I do of course read mentally stimulating books, but not when I’m tired and stressed. Then I read to relax: Christie, Marsh, Wentworth, Sayers et cetera.

When I’m really stressed, I can feel the itch to sit down with a book almost as a physical symptom – unfortunate if the stress is due to the old problem of So Much To Do, So Little Time. Addict? Perhaps.

Perhaps I should consider other ways we can combine our relaxations. The pair in the first photo inspired me to consider strategy drinking games – tea drinking of course. Except the Caped Gooseberry doesn’t care for tea at the best of times, and adding the bitter taste of defeat would probably not improve the flavour in his eyes.

Who am I kidding? The game would probably end with him triumphing by strategy while I drown my sorrows in tea, as yet untasted by the gentleman in question.

Any other ideas? And how do you relax?

August 23, 2014

I Don't Wear Make-Up

The first time the Caped Gooseberry saw me fully made up was our wedding day. It was also the last time. It wasn’t that heavy, either, because I didn’t want to be one of those brides you only recognize because no-one else would have the gall to wear white. I wanted to look like me. And I don’t wear make-up.

It’s not that I have ethical objections to make-up per se (unless it’s tested on animals). It’s just that it isn’t a part of my life and I don’t see that it needs to be.

There are some women who love to wear and experiment with make-up. Good for them. Making yourself up can be fun. And if you’re having fun with it, have fun with it! Why limit yourself to the one look ordained by culture’s present demands for thin brows, full lips, large eyes?

But far too many women wear make-up because they feel they have to, and that makes me boiling mad. Is it any wonder that women and girls have such low opinions of themselves and their appearance when we practically trumpet at them that “You Are Naturally Sub-Par!”?

And then they internalize it. What I find most tragic is women acknowledging that it’s a pain getting ready for display in the mornings, but then defending the reasons why they ‘have’ to – it’s more professional, everyone else does, I look washed-out without it.

Really, can anyone explain to me how wearing a thin layer of complicated chemicals on my face is going to boost my job performance? I’m not in the alleged world’s oldest profession.

Not the world’s oldest profession: telephone exchange operator.

Okay, if you’re the kind of woman who puts on make-up when she gets dressed, then yeah, not wearing make-up will give you a bit of a schlepping-around-in-the-dressing-gown feel, which can lower productivity.
But if you are that kind of woman, you probably don’t need to be told to wear make-up; you’re wearing it anyway. And if you aren’t that kind of woman, how is it supposed to help?

If your boss insists that you wear make-up, why not come to work as a goth? or a geisha? or a clown? or simply wearing the White Hand of Saruman?

As for looking washed-out, I find it very disturbing that we are conditioning ourselves to interpret female faces in their natural state as “sick” or “tired” – simply because we are used to seeing women made up to a certain level of tone or colour.

There is nothing wrong with your face the way it is. I don’t care if you’re old and wrinkly, young and spotty, or even piebald from vitiligo.
There is nothing wrong with your face the way it is.

What’s your stance on make-up? Love it, hate it, wish you didn’t have to but do anyway? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts!