Kristin Homemaker

School started for everyone yesterday. The whole family got all loaded up on the school bus to begin their new year, A. driving and everyone else slumped in the seats, resigned to their fates. (My children do not like school.)

Except for me. I did not get on the school bus. I will not be getting on the school bus, because I quit my job there. 

Last week I had to fill out some forms that asked for my occupation. I wrote "homemaker."*

Of course, the maker of our home is what I have always been, it's just that I did that in addition to working at the school two days a week as an educational assistant (teacher's aide). 

But now, all I am doing is at home. So what am I doing now? Let me show you what I've done so far this morning!

Still doing tub laundry. Our washing machine is still in for repairs, waiting on a "control board," which sounds intense. Thank goodness it's still under warranty. The repair guy said maybe another week. I'm taking that as another two weeks.

Watering the garden and picking tomatoes, yay!

Softening butter in preparation for making oatmeal cookies for the younger children's snacks.

Later I have to go to the village for a bank visit. Maybe I'll finally get around to vacuuming my filthy floors.

But if I don't get around to it today, I have tomorrow. And the day after. 

I don't anticipate having a problem filling my time, and it's such a relief to have the time. Some might see this as a demotion, but I see it as a great increase in my quality of life, as well as my family's quality of life.

* I prefer this term to housewife. Housewife can just be a wife who sits around the house. Homemaker describes much better what I actually do. I really have made and continue to make our home, which requires skill and a lot of work.

A Teaser

When we went to Colorado, A. stayed home to take care of the animals. He also took the opportunity to completely demolish the children's bathroom. There were leaks in the tub, toilet, and sink that were causing the floor to buckle, as well as forming an unwelcome swampy area under the trailer. The toilet only flushed with help from an extra bucket of water, and the bathtub was the original avocado-green plastic fixture from the seventies.

It was way past time to address it, is what I'm saying.

So while we were gone, A. pulled out the toilet, the tub, and the entire floor.

The old tub out the back door, awaiting its trip to the dump.

The new plywood floor. Delightfully solid underfoot.

With a great deal of hard work, he managed to have the floor and toilet installed before we got home. Then we chose some peel and stick vinyl floor tiles to cover the plywood. Since these tiles are going in our 1970s trailer-with-additions, we definitely do not need to worry about resale. So we chose exactly what we wanted.

And what we wanted were Moroccan-style tiles in blue.

We're waiting on the tub and shower fixtures to be delivered this week, and then A. can finish putting in all the plumbing. 

I'll post some pictures when it's done. Stay tuned.

The Mystery Kitchen

I have a habit of re-using things, especially in my kitchen. I hate to only use a jar or container one time and then throw it away. I keep the plastic jars A.'s instant coffee comes in, the empty containers of cottage cheese and sour cream, any glass jars, ziploc bags if I can easily wash them (so not if they've had anything really greasy or raw meat in them), and of course, canning jars and lids get used over and over again. 

Most of these things end up in my freezer at some point, and I always label things I put in my freezer, on the lid with a permanent marker. Most of my food containers have been labeled more than once. Sometimes so many times I run out of space on the lids or on the bags.

It's kind of funny to track what's been in the containers with that particular lid.

One lid is new and still has the original label. The other one? First it had chicken stock, then ham stock, then pinto beans, and now the jambalaya base I froze last month.

This lid first had pressure-canned pinto beans in 2023, then rooster stock in 2023, then sauerruben in 2024.

What this means is that you can never trust the lid that's on a container to actually tell you what's in that container. That canning jar lid, for instance, is currently on a jar containing pickled radishes and onions. It's not sauerruben.

Likewise, sour cream or cottage cheese containers are just as likely to have leftover baked beans or tomato sauce in them as the dairy products suggested by their labels.

This is why when my sister visits, she always holds up whatever she's taken out of the refrigerator and asks what's really in it. Because it really could be anything, and only I can tell for sure.

So tell me: Do you do this? Or do all your containers tell the truth about their contents?

The End of an Era

Okay, that's an awfully portentous title for what is actually not that big of an announcement: I'm going to buy a clothes dryer.

Some of you may not have been aware that I don't have one, but I don't. I haven't had one for about four years now. This is absolutely doable in New Mexico, where it's sunny and dry almost all year. Even in the winter, the sun is strong enough to dry clothing on the line during the more-limited daylight hours.

Easy line drying in the summer.

Except not always. 

Several times a year, we have weather that makes it very difficult to get clothing dry outside for a week or so. Sometimes that's because of rain. Sometimes that's because of snow or ice. There is also the incredible wind in the spring, which can be strong enough to actually rip the clothing where the clothes pins hold it to the line. 

An example of a winter clothesline.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the best days to hang clothes outside. Should I hang them on the pasture clothesline, which is more exposed to sun and wind, or the backyard clothesline, which is surrounded by a board fence for protection from the wind, but where the woodsmoke drifts in the winter? Also if I have to work that day, can I get them hung up before I leave for work, or should I leave them for A. to hang when he gets back from the bus run? And if I leave them for him, will they have enough time to dry or will I end up having to hang them around the woodstove to get all the way dry overnight? Which clothes are the ones I should wash first? Who's out of pants? Who has a uniform that has to be dry by a certain day?

It was all starting to contribute too much to my mental load, which feels kind of heavy most days anyway at this stage of my life.

So, one day while I was sitting at work, looking at the weather forecast and thinking about all these things, I decided that the time had come to buy a clothes dryer and silence this continual mental plotting.

This will most certainly not be the end of my line-drying our clothing. I will still line-dry most of the time, even in the winter. But it's a nice thought that when there is literally two feet of snow on the ground, I will not have to put on my snow boots and dig a path to the clothesline to hang laundry.

Luxury, indeed.

Happy Halloween

A rare Thursday post mostly to show you A.'s pride and joy:

A. calls it The Plumpkin.

This came from some random seeds of a squash that hybridized. Quite obviously one of the parents was the Atlantic Giant A. grew a couple of years ago, because it got bigger than any pumpkin we've ever had. A. was very excited about it, and decided he just had to make it into a jack -o'-lantern to put by our front gate. So he did.

My contribution to the Halloween decorations was on the table, of course.

Orange zinnias, cosmos, and calendulas, plus some buffalo gourds.

A seasonally appropriate breakfast table.

We will of course be trick-or-treating in the village this evening. This year, we'll have an Arab, Jim Corbett, a lumberjack, and a ballerina. My most important job for the costuming is doing a proper ballerina bun for Poppy. It involves rolling her very long hair around a sock, and it's harder than it seems.

Wish me luck, and happy Halloween! Are you doing anything fun?

Out to the World

Please excuse my late post today. My oven stopped working on Sunday, which is something of a situation in my heavily-used kitchen.

I needed a new range, which of course meant a hundred-mile drive. As do most purchases here.

So after I got the kids off to school this morning, I took myself off to the city to buy a new range. While I was at it, I also (finally) bought a new dishwasher.

In for a penny, in for a pound! Or rather, several hundred pounds.

Unfortunately, I couldn't bring the range home with me today because we use propane here, which meant a gas range that had to be converted. And the guy who does the conversions wasn't there today. So I had to schedule a delivery for both appliances.

Amazingly, this store will deliver to my house. For free, even. They had a delivery set up in our area just next week, in fact, so I'll just be without an oven for a couple of weeks.

Of course I had to go to the grocery store while I was in the city. I always expand my horizons at Walmart.

I had no idea one could purchase ready-to-bake cookies shaped like footballs, pumpkins, and ghosts, for example. Not that I could bake them at the moment. (And not that I would buy them ever.)

I also stopped at the produce trailer on the side of the road to buy what is certainly the last fresh corn of the season.

This particular trailer was pulled by a de-commissioned school bus, which is just so . . . New Mexico.

So that's what I did today. I spent most of my day off--and all of my month's paycheck--buying appliances and groceries. 

I like to lead the glamorous life*, indeed.

* It's a song. The video is here, and it's so incredibly 80s. I had never seen it, and so have just now learned that Sheila E. not only sang, but played the drums. At the same time. Impressive.

Little Hands

One of the best chores for a small child to help with is pulling the basil leaves off the stems.

Small leaves for small fingers.

Other things she has done with/for me recently: 

--Skinning and pitting thawed peaches

--Bashing cabbage for sauerkraut

--Hanging the socks and underwear on the clothesline

--Sweeping the covered porch

--Dusting the couch feet/lamp bases/anything low down

--Organizing my bathroom drawer (I did not ask her to do that one)

--Chopping potatoes

--Making a fly swatter out of a stick and a piece of cardboard . . . that actually works

--Decorating for the Fourth of July

I'm not saying my sons weren't helpful as young children, but this girl is a whole other level. It might not last, but I'm enjoying it while it does.

Dishes and Dishwashers

About a month ago, my dishwasher stopped heating the water. Without hot water, dishes don't get clean. I looked up the error message on the dishwasher's readout and figured out what needed to happen to fix it.

I also figured out that it was not a fix we were going to do ourselves.

I found a place in the city 100 miles away that will look at it, but I have to bring it to them. And that, I have not yet done.

So I don't have a functioning dishwasher.

This is not as bad as it might be, since it's summer. I don't work in the summer, and we're not running all over creation for school/sports/religious education/whatever. This means I have the time to do dishes twice a day.

It's been eight years since I've been without a dishwasher, but before that, I did dishes by hand at Blackrock for a decade. My handwashing skills were a little rusty, however, so I had to remember my method.

What, you don't have a dishwashing method? I definitely do. And here it is!

First, I fill the sink with soapy hot water and put all the silverware in the sink to soak while I wipe the table. 

Next, I wash all the silverware, three pieces at a time. The MiL thought it was very funny that I always do three pieces at a time, but that seems like the right number to me. Enough that I feel like I'm moving quickly, but not so many that I can't properly clean and rinse them all.

Next, I put in the cups and mugs to wash. 

Bowls next.

Next is plates.

Next are the miscellaneous cooking things, including pots and pans. 

Last, I wash cast-iron skillets.

And when I'm all done, I microwave the dish cloth for a minute to sterilize it, since I can't just throw it in the dishwasher.

A dishwasher that no longer washes is a very handy dish drainer, at least.

I will get the dishwasher in to be repaired before I start work in August. If it can't be repaired, I'll buy a new one. But until then, I hand wash, starting with silverware.

Do you have a dishwasher, or do you do dishes by hand? What's your method?

We Have a Floor!

Or perhaps more accurately, we have carpet on the floor.

I am speaking, of course, of the floor in my bedroom. This is one of the rooms in which a window broke all the way through during our Severe Weather Event in July. It is also the only room with a blown-out window that had carpeting in it.

That carpet got completely saturated and I had to pull up the soaked part of it. This left an area of particle-board sub-floor at the entrance to my room that was . . . displeasing. To say the least.

Yeah.

The carpet itself was no great loss, as it was a very ugly brown carpet from at least the 1980s. But having part ugly old carpet and part sub-floor was worse.

It still took us until now to get it covered over, though. I am not good about making decisions for things like this, so I spent more time than I should have figuring out what to put in there. 

Laying down actual carpet is pretty tricky, and we have no experience with it. The nearest place that does it is 100 miles away. So I decided instead to try out the carpet squares that are peel and stick.

Many of these are very institutional looking, of the sort you would see in a school or doctor's office. That was not what I wanted. I wanted something that looked like an actual carpet, with some pile to it. 

Most of the options for more carpet-like material for home use were in shades of gray, which was also not what I wanted. I am not into gray, and its ubiquity in interior design things lately is irritating to me. But I finally found some that looked like carpet, were a shade of light brown, and weren't too expensive. 

I had A. do the measuring of the room and the figuring of how many boxes we would need, because I am hilariously bad at such things and would certainly have messed that up in a big way.

I ordered them from Walmart and went through that situation so common nowadays of frequent e-mail updates on the status of my order, culminating in an e-mail two weeks later telling me the order was canceled entirely. I got a full refund, but still. Annoying.

So then I got to do it all again, but this time with Amazon, who actually delivered what I ordered. (I got these, in case you were wondering.) 

And then the boxes of carpet squares sat in our living room for . . . a long time.

It's like an extra table! I guess.

They had to be in the living room because they couldn't get dirty/wet/hot or otherwise messed up, and there was nowhere else big enough to put that many boxes.

So they sat there.

In our defense, I REALLY did not want to try to do this project with all four kids at home. The interruptions and general chaos would have been too much. 

Just feeding them all with all of this surrounding the dining room table would have been a mess.

That meant a Tuesday or a Thursday when they were all at school, but A. and I were both home and didn't have anything else to do.

This confluence of events has not happened much in the past month or so, what with sick children home from school, surgery for one, me substituting at school, A. getting hay, etc.

But finally, FINALLY, I declared Tuesday to be The Day of the Carpeting.

And so we did it.

Well, A. did the carpet part. I did all the cleaning--there was a lot of that--shifting of things, finding of tools, fetching and carrying, and general assistance.

A. did all the demo of the remaining carpet, removal of padding, pulling up wood strips with tacks around the edges of the room, and taking out staples. Lots of pulling and prying that required hand strength that I do not have.

He also did the actual laying of the squares. The reason he did this was because the laying down of these squares, while simple in theory, actually required quite a bit of figuring and cutting to get them to fit snugly up against each other so you couldn't see the seams, and also to fit around closet doors and corners. 

Another thing I would be hilariously bad at. Visualizing shapes has never been my forte. Just ask my geometry teacher in high school.

Anyway.

The instructions for installation on the back of the box were actually sort of complex, recommending snapping chalk lines and moving out from the center of the room in a specific pattern and all that. A. did not do any of that. He started at the door and worked his way through the room from there.

Because we weren't working with all one big piece of carpet (and because we didn't follow the installation instructions), we didn't have to move the biggest furniture out of the room. We did one part of the room, then shifted the bed over onto that. Then we continued until we got to where the dressers are, shifted those onto the squares already in place, finished up, and moved it all back.

Here's a side-by-side in-progress of the new carpet and the old. Ugly brown on the right is the old one.

From the time I started moving furniture out of the room to the time I got it all back in, vacuumed, and everything cleaned up was almost exactly 7.5 hours.

It was very tiring, but I am SO HAPPY to have a real floor in my bedroom again.

A vast improvement.

So! The final verdict on the carpet squares? Recommend.

A. did all the work with them, and he kept saying what a great product they are. Not easy, exactly, but certainly easier than a big piece of carpet that requires laying padding and tacking down and all that. It was very do-able for someone handy like him. Even I probably could have managed it, albeit not as quickly, neatly, or efficiently.

I was sure they would smell terrible to start with, but there was no chemical odor at all right out of the box, which was a nice surprise. Nothing shifted when I vacuumed them after installation, either. I was a bit concerned that the corners or something would pull up, but no.

Two cons I will mention, however. 

A. did an excellent job setting these against each other to make it look as much as possible like a single piece of carpeting. But, if you're looking very closely, you can see a couple of seams in the room where the squares abut. This doesn't bother me in the slightest, especially because 80% of the floor is covered in furniture. But if you're a perfectionist and you're using them in a more open room, it might bother you.

Also, my children, who spend a lot of time flopping on the floor of my room, complained that there isn't enough padding now. There is actually no padding except the bit on the back of the squares themselves, because the squares are laid directly on the hard floor. I guess I can tell the difference when I walk on our old carpeting in the hall and so on, but since I'm just walking on it, not lying down on it like my kids do, I don't care about the small difference in padding.

I have no idea how these will hold up in the coming years, but for now, I have a nice carpet in my room. And that makes me very, very happy.

Mid-week Validation

This is a long week. I normally only work two days a week at the school. This week, I have to be there four days*. 

But at least my stove is clean.

The reason my stove is clean is because I got sick of the blackened rings around my burners and spent 45 minutes on Saturday night scrubbing the hell out of them with baking soda and vinegar.

Because Saturday night's not just alright for fighting. It's also alright for scrubbing. Or something.

It hurt my hands. But I got the stove almost all the way white again!

I didn't get a "before" photo, but this is an "in progress" picture. One side is done, obviously. The other is . . . not. Gross.

I have no idea how a stove that I just bought new six months ago got so nasty. I mean, I wipe the thing down every single night when I do dishes. 

But I don't actually scrub it hard. And I do use it quite a lot. 

By "quite a lot," I mean that I have cooked dinner on that stove every single night for the entire time I have had it. Plus all the breakfasts, lunches, desserts, canning, yogurt-making . . .

Well, it's a lot. And it obviously takes a toll. So yes, I guess I DO know how it got so gross.

I finally decided the time had come to address that situation. So my trusty nylon scrubby kept for filthy jobs and I dove in.

It was hard. And I didn't get every last little speck of black stuff, but I got almost all of it.

Perfect? Definitely not. Better? Definitely YES.

So tell me! What unpleasant and unappreciated task have you done lately? Allow me to bear witness to and acknowledge your efficiency and general awesomeness.

* I know. Four whole days in a week? Cry me a river, right? What can I say. I'm spoiled.  

Another Domestic Pat on the Back

I've done it again. I've cleaned something so neglected and disgusting in my kitchen that I feel the need to announce it to the Internet at large.

Lucky Internet.

Last time I did this, it was the high edges of my kitchen cabinets that I had spent a lot of time cleaning*.  Then I shared my subsequent pride in this (admittedly minor) accomplishment with all of you. And then you all told me the unappreciated but satisfying tasks you had accomplished yourselves so that we could all indulge in some mutual appreciation.

It was nice. Let's do that again.

So! This time it was the top of my refrigerator. I, um, do not remember the last time I really cleaned this. I store some things up there--the extra-large bags of store-brand cereal we buy, the large economy box of oatmeal, the extra-long roll of aluminum foil that doesn't fit in a drawer--so cleaning it requires first clearing it off.

Also, I'm five feet, five inches tall, so I don't actually see the top of my refrigerator unless I climb up on a chair to retrieve something.

A., however, who is over six feet, can see it. And did see it when he was looking for something up there. Even A., who is possibly the least fussy man on the planet when it comes to house cleaning, said he was a little shocked.

Yeah. It was gross. It was that special combination of grease and dust that builds up in kitchens--or at least, in my kitchen--with the added complication of the textured surface of this refrigerator that traps all this stuff and requires serious scrubbing to get clean.

Nothing for it but to get scrubbing, however. So I got some very soapy water in the sink, my old nylon scrubby thing that I keep for just such disgusting jobs, and got to it.

Ew.

It was probably only about 15 minutes of actual scrubbing, but it was HARD scrubbing. My hands were cramping by the time I was done. 

But it's done now! And I took a picture for you:

Back to its original white. A great improvement over sticky gray. Yuck.

I did not take a "before" picture, because this is supposed to be self-congratulations, not self-castigation about its original filthy state.

So tell me! What have you done lately that I can applaud you for?

* Okay, so it was only 45 minutes, but that's about 40 minutes longer than I want to be climbing up and down and scrubbing grease and dirt.

Behold, My Nemesis

 

I am the first to admit that I am not a scrupulous housekeeper. I don't scrub my baseboards with any regularity, and my kitchen floor definitely goes longer than it should in between dates with a mop. Dirt doesn't bother me that much, but clutter?

Clutter does.

This is unfortunate, given that I live in a house with five other people. I don't care how much of a minimalist you are, even minimal possessions times six adds up to a lot of stuff. And the one place where that stuff seems to just explode is the front entryway of our house.

Every child has a pair of shoes, a pair of sandals, and a pair of rubber boots*. Every child has a light jacket and a winter coat. Three of the children have backpacks. There are sunhats, winter hats, and winter gloves. Then there are A.'s giant boots and coats and gloves and on and on and on and on.

And that's why, when you walk into our house, this might be the first thing you see.

Ugh.

That's actually a little worse than it usually is, but there are ALWAYS someone's shoes in the middle of the floor, or the bin of gloves and hats has been overturned so they can all dress up as Meatish Monsters (I don't know, either), or whatever. Chaos and confusion reigns. 

It's actually a pretty big area, and there are some places in the corners where I could probably put up shelves or something to contain things a little better, I just . . . haven't. It's not like we have a Container Store nearby.

And so I just continue nagging children about shoes and constantly toss things back in bins. 

So what's the most irritating spot in your house? And do you have any suggestions for what I could do with mine? (Other than move out and live in a tiny house all by myself, which is sadly not an option.)

* At least. Some of them also have cowboy boots, or more than one pair of shoes, or moccasins, and then there are the winter boots . . . SO MUCH FOOTWEAR.

The Newest Member of the Kitchen Team

I've been holding out on you. I mean, we've had a new range for three whole days now and you didn't know about it.

I know. Shameful.

Anyway, I guess it's not really that exciting, because the new range is pretty much exactly the same as the old range. Which was really old. It was a brand called a "Holiday," that is no longer made. It was in the house when we got here, so I don't know exactly how old it is, but I'm guessing about thirty years old.

To replace the Holiday, I purposely bought what is euphemistically referred to as an "entry-level" range, for which you can read "cheapest." I did not want anything with excess electronics and digital displays. Or buttons. Not only does that stuff always break sooner rather than later, but I wanted to be sure that I could use it when the power goes out.

The Holiday didn't have any electronic parts at all. But since it's no longer possible to buy propane stoves with pilot lights--at least not at a standard appliance store--I settled for getting one that only has electric igniters. If the power does go out, I can still light the stove burners with a match.

A. installed this thing in about fifteen minutes, which was something of a miracle. I was sure there would be some mysterious parts that would need to be ordered and would delay the installation. But no.

There was one part that had to be taken from the old stove and put on the new one, but other than that, it looked pretty easy. Possibly because I didn't do any of the work.

Range Senior and Range Junior during installation.

Although they look similar, the new range has several important differences. For one, the burners actually light on their own without the aid of a match. For another, the oven door closes tightly. Also, the burners aren't clogged with decades of grease, resulting in dirty, greasy, sooty stuff getting all over the bottoms of my pots and thus all over the kitchen.

And finally, and perhaps most excitingly, the oven has two whole shelves. I've been working with a single oven shelf for two years now, so this is a very welcome change. 

There are a couple of things that I'm still getting used to with the new range--namely, two of the four burners don't seem to have a low setting, so I have to be careful which ones I use when I want to cook something gently--but overall, it's a great improvement.

There. Now you're all caught up with the excitement at our house.

Carry on.

Let's Play a Game

I saw this question around on Twitter somewhere, and I was intrigued by it: If you were to build a house on two acres for which money was no object, what five features would you insist upon?

I don't have a Twitter account, so I'm going to post my response here in a whole, long blog post that is going to be way more than 280 characters. WHEE!

Number one will probably surprise no one: a garden. But not just any garden. I want a walled kitchen garden. Like this:

Be still my heart. 

(This is West Dean, in England, and the full gallery of photos is here.)

I have always wanted one of those walled gardens with the espaliered fruit trees and tidy rows. And of course, were I ever to possess such a thing, no weed would dare show its face in those perfect rows.

Ahem.

Number two: A sort of butler's pantry just inside the house when one comes in from the garden. I don't know if butler's pantry is quite the right word, but what I mean is a small room with lots of counters and shelves, and a big farm sink. This would be so handy to have for things like butchering and cleaning produce and storing large canning pots and so on. And, you know, having a place to store extra food that is not the floor around my woodstove.

Which leads us to number three: A proper laundry room off the pantry, with an easy-to-clean floor and a place to store brooms and things. This would lead to . . .

Number four: A kitchen of my own design, with a really, really nice range. I have probably the world's worst range right now, so this has been on my mind lately. I don't necessarily need a really big kitchen--what with that handy pantry I would also have--but I would like to have a good range. And a bigger refrigerator. And maybe a wood topped island.

The kitchen could be its own entire post. But moving on.

Number five: A small library room. I wouldn't really want a huge library, just a small room with shelves for books and a comfortable chair with a reading lamp. Plus a soundproof door with a lock on it to keep my children out.

Just kidding about the door.

Kind of.

Okay! Now tell me: What five things would you have in the house of your dreams?

I'm Just Here for the Validation

You know how it is when you accomplish something relatively small but nonetheless satisfying and you just know no one else is even going to notice, much less congratulate you on your accomplishment?

That was today, when I finally climbed up and down a chair many, many times to scrub off the disgusting combination of grease* and dust that was furring all the high edges of cabinets and the ceiling fan in the kitchen.

No one will notice this in my house except for me. Therefore, I'm just going to share this minor accomplishment with the Internet at large so as to feel appreciated.

Have you accomplished anything unheralded but satisfying lately? Please do share so I can congratulate you.

* I fry things a lot. Mostly meat. I have often thought that my kitchen would be a lot easier to keep clean if I wasn't feeding so many militant carnivores every day. 

Further on the Fringe

About three years ago, I mostly stopped using laundry detergent when I washed our clothes. I noted at the time that this was hardly a mainstream approach to laundry, but I also noted that I didn't care. The word I used was "fringe."

And now the fringe continues to unravel, you might say.

About two months ago, our dryer broke. A. fixed it briefly before it broke for good. Instead of buying a new dryer right away, A. built a winter clothesline for me in the pasture, where the clothes get sun and wind. That is not the case with the clothesline in the fenced-in backyard, which is great during the windy season or in the summer, but not very useful in the winter. So the new clothesline does get clothes dry here in New Mexico even in the winter, except for on days when it's actually raining or snowing.

Yet another glamour shot of a clothesline on this blog. There can never be too many.

At about the same time, our washing machine ceased to actually clean our clothes, instead depositing visible dirt on clothes that hadn't really been that dirty to start with. It was clear there was significant filth in the innards of the machine somewhere.

Eventually, A. took the whole thing apart so we could clean it. He needed a special part to get the drum all the way apart, which we ordered.  But the part didn't come for almost a week, during which time both our broken dryer and pulled-apart washing machine were sitting out in front of our house on the patio. A lovely home decor statement right by our door.

During this period, we were doing laundry in the bathtub again.

A. did manage to get the whole washing machine back together again, and it worked for two loads before it refused to drain water out of the drum.

A. was so sick of dealing with laundry machines at this point that he declared he would rather do laundry in the bathtub indefinitely than buy another machine.

I disagreed. Strenuously. I told him I was willing to live without a dryer, but definitely not without a washing machine.

I found a place in a small city 90 miles away that sells refurbished appliances and called them to make sure they had some washing machines. It took another week of tub laundering before we were able to make it in to the city to buy a machine, but we did eventually.

They actually had sets of both washers and dryers, but I told A. not to bother getting the dryer. After two months without one, I realized I really don't need one here. I mean, sure, it's sometimes a pain to be rushing laundry out first thing to make sure it gets dry, and hanging clothes on the line when it's still below freezing is no fun, and sometimes the dirty clothes pile up a bit if we have a couple of days of inclement weather, but generally? Nope, don't need a dryer here.

So now in addition to not using laundry detergent, I don't use or even own a clothes dryer. Fringe, for sure. But still okay with it.

Way Back Wash Day

I've read a lot about what you might call the history of domestic work, and one thing that has always struck me is how much it sucked to wash clothes. Every history of women's work I have ever read has specifically outlined the incredible physical labor involved in a wash day. So much hauling of water and pouring it in and out of tubs and agitating and scrubbing and wringing and NO THANKS.

Then my washing machine stopped working and I got a very small partial taste of  hand-powered washing which did nothing to change my mind about how much it must have sucked.

See, on Tuesday when I opened up the washing machine to take the clothes out to hang up on the clothesline, they were still sopping wet. I quickly ascertained that the agitator and spin cycle weren't working.

I pulled the clothes out anyway, wrung them out as best I could outside, and hung them on the clothesline to drip and eventually get dry*.

Now. We do not live in a place where it is easy to A) get appliances repaired or B) buy new appliances.

I figured A. could probably fix this machine with the aid of YouTube tutorials. However, he didn't get home from New York until Tuesday night and has been trying to catch up with work ever since.

He brought a bunch of dirty clothes home with him, and the rest of us keep producing dirty clothes, too. And while the washing machine isn't operating all the way, it's still partially working. That is, it fills with water and drains by itself. All I needed to do was the agitating and wringing part.

Or rather, A. did. He's much stronger than I am, you see. So I put in a load of laundry, soaked it in warm water for awhile, and handed A. Cubby's Little League bat.

He used to bat to agitate the clothes and sort of lift them up and around in the water. Then I drained the water and re-filled it for another round with the baseball bat. I don't use soap anyway, so I wasn't required to do multiple rinsings to get rid of the soap.

Who needs a machine agitator when you have a baseball bat?

After that, I just squeezed them out as best I could in the washer and hung them on the clothesline. They didn't get as clean as they would have if the machine had done it all--I probably should have done another rinse--and they certainly didn't get as dry, but they definitely got cleaner.

I did another load after this one by myself, which convinced me that I would have been a terrible pioneer woman. My hands were sore from the agitating and hand wringing, my sleeves were wet up to the elbow, and that was only one load. And I didn't have to haul, heat, or dump out any water.

A. promised me he would take the machine apart and look at it this weekend. Until then, if you need me, I'll be here doing my laundry with a baseball bat. Because that, my lovelies, is how this weird and wonderful life goes sometimes.

* I was once again grateful to have a good long clothesline as it meant I wasn't putting the sopping wet clothes in a clothes dryer to burn propane for the two hours it would have taken them to actually dry. Hooray for long clotheslines and excellent New Mexico drying weather.

The Eminently Quotable Charlie

If you have ever had the pleasure of having a whip-smart kid (or two), you know that they are often very, very funny. Charlie has been my most consistently unintentionally funny child of late. He gave me a Valentine he made at school that said, "Mom, I love you when you . . . give me leftovers."

I just love a low bar.

The other day when Jack was arguing with me about something, Charlie told him to stop arguing with me because I know best. I felt compelled to point out that Charlie himself argues with me all the time. "Yeah," he replied, "But I am always right."

At the school pep rally, the elementary kids--all eight of them--were playing a game of Family Feud. When it was Charlie's turn, his opponent buzzed in first to answer the question, "What shape is a basketball?" "Circle!" she announced triumphantly. Everyone cheered, the person in charge prepared to move on . . . and Charlie grabbed her arm and had a quick conversation with her that resulted in her handing him the microphone and him announcing very firmly into the microphone, "A basketball is a sphere."

This photo is also funny, as the hot air blowing out of the furnace has given skinny Charlie a distinctly muscle-bound appearance.

And just so we don't leave out that other smart kid we have in residence . . .

The other morning when Cubby was making himself some eggs for breakfast, he informed A. that I discourage him from cooking (totally untrue, by the way). "Because," he went on, "Jack and Charlie like my cooking better and she's jealous."

Yup. Those smart kids sure are fun.

My Idea of Fun

A couple of weeks ago while I was pushing Poppy in her stroller aimlessly around the village, I went down a side street I hadn't been down before and saw a property that had two trees absolutely loaded with apples.

I didn't know who lived there, but based on the age of the pick-up truck in front and the neatness of the property, I was guessing someone elderly. Also based on the fact that the majority of the village residents are elderly, but whatever. I felt very sleuthy.

Anyway.

About a week after that, A. was pushing Poppy aimlessly around in her stroller, with Jack trailing along as well, when Nick the Peach-Giver pulled up in his truck and informed A. that there was a man who had lots of apples and wanted anyone who wanted some to come pick them.

Same property I had seen. It is indeed an older man, who, although not elderly, has multiple sclerosis and therefore can't pick the apples himself.

A. returned with the bottom basket of the stroller overflowing with apples. And there was much rejoicing in our house.

My children absolutely adore apples, you see. But not mealy, tasteless grocery store apples. Their apple palate has been formed in the apple haven of New York State. They know good apples. And they know the ones from the store are not good. So when ten pounds of good apples showed up, they were thrilled.

I was, too. I was all set to make applesauce, because that is what I do when presented with a bunch of apples. I had a suspicion, though, based on the texture of these apples, that they might be more like baking apples instead of saucing apples. Saucing apples break down readily into mush when cooked. Baking apples hold their shape.

When I cooked an experimental small pot of the apples, not only did they hold their shape, they didn't break down at all. I managed to force them through the food mill after much effort, but the resulting sauce was quite mealy and dry.

So now what? Still have a bunch of apples (with more to come*); still needed a way to preserve them.

Then I remembered Rafael telling me about his mother drying apricots. I decided when in New Mexico, one should do as the New Mexicans. So I prepared an experimental sheet pan of apple rings and put them out in the sun (covered in cheesecloth to keep off flies).

The jar in the background of that photo has apple peelings and cores with water to make apple cider vinegar. I did this a few times in northern New York with varying levels of success, but it's not as if it's hard to do or costs anything.

Anyway.

Result? Perfect. This is the perfect climate for sun-drying. Not only is the sun very strong, there's quite a bit of wind, too. Those apple rings were all the way dry after about twelve hours in the sun.

And then they were gone within about an hour in the house. They are so good. And so convenient to just pick up and eat. Even Poppy can eat them.

So I made more, this time also using the broiler pan from the oven.

And then I decided I really needed a way to get more apple slices in the sun without taking up a bunch of space with pans. So now this is in my driveway:

Hi, neighbors!  Don't mind us crazy new people.

If that arrangement works, I can string up as many apple slices as I want. My only limitation is the number of apples I can peel, core, and slice by hand with a knife, because I don't have one of those machines to do it. If this is going to be a yearly event, I might get one of those, but for now it's just me and my paring knife versus a LOT of apples.

And that makes me happy.

* We brought a loaf of bread to the man last night as a thank you--because sourdough bread has now become my currency--and he asked us to pick more apples. We were happy to oblige.

Ready, Set, Bake

For someone who doesn't really like to bake, I seem to do an awful lot of it. Four loaves of sourdough bread every ten days or so, occasional muffins, rare cinnamon rolls, even rarer cheese crackers . . .

It's all my own doing, though. As I said to A., if I were okay with buying Entenmann's at the grocery store, I wouldn't spend so much time covered in flour. But I'm not okay with buying Entenmann's because, well, it's not good enough.

Let's be real: I bake because I really like to eat baked goods that taste good. So it's worth it to me, even though I don't like the process much.

That said, I feel the baking for Cubby's birthday this year is a little excessive.

His birthday is on Sunday. It happens to fall on a Sunday when he has Sunday school, so I figured he could bring in some muffins for a birthday treat for his Sunday school class and I would be off the hook for birthday cupcakes for his class at school.

He agreed that bringing in muffins would be good. But then, this week, he said everyone in his class brings in a birthday treat, even if their birthday is not on an actual school day.

Damn.

He also wants a cheesecake for his actual birthday cake on Sunday night for the family celebration.

And yesterday, with unfortunate timing, I took the last loaf of bread out of the freezer.

So here's my schedule:

This morning I started a new batch of bread and baked 24 cupcakes. (I even remembered the flour! A good start.)

This afternoon I'll make frosting and finish the cupcakes so I can bring them to the school tomorrow.

Tomorrow I'll bake four loaves of sourdough bread. (Traditional sourdough is a two-day process.)

Saturday I'll make the cheesecake so it can chill in the refrigerator for Sunday.

Sunday morning I'll bake two dozen blueberry muffins.

And then I'll be hanging up my apron for the foreseeable future, because that is a lot of baking. But I have my new 25-pound bag of flour, four packages of cream cheese, a few dozen eggs, and a lot of sugar.

Oven fired up and here we go . . .