Dish Strainer
I visited my friend Silda’s apartment. The dishes in her kitchen were piled high. I channeled my inner 17-year-old — my first job was washing dishes — and got a rhythm going: scrub, dry, stack. It was a bit of a juggling act since all the horizontal space in Silda’s small kitchen was occupied with...
Mat the Knife
This is the first in a series of Homemoaner’s “Salute to Tools.” Collect them all! Razor knife, utility blade, box cutter. These are just a few of the names for the ubiquitous, handy cutting device available in most handy, Home Moaner’s tool kits. When my father recently went off to his last reward, his corporeal...
When the thingee that pokes out is gone
One of the perks of my new job is the snack vending machine in the hall. It is a remarkable machine. You can feed a dollar into the slot and turn it into a bag of potato chips. The technology behind the dollar bill reader has vastly improved since my first encounter. The early versions...
Hey, you kids!
Alas, or hooray! It’s February and I get to celebrate another birthday. When I was a kid, I used to look forward to my special day with breathless anticipation. When I was a kid I never started a sentence with the words “When I was a kid,” or “In my day,” or “I can remember...
Burnt offering
On any weekend night on Rusty Hinge Road, it’s not unusual to hear voices out on the street. Less rare, but not uncommon, is to hear a loud “pop.” Sometimes it turns out to be a gunshot. So, since I am a nurse and a concerned citizen, I will go to the window, draw up...
Perfect Storm
First of all, let’s fire the person or the agency or the committee that names tropical storms. Psychologically, it is difficult to get overly concerned about a storm named “Sandy.” Hurricane “Attila” or “Brunhilda,” might raise even a skeptical eyebrow, but lately, names like “Bob,” “Irene” and “Sandy,” while devastating in retrospect, seem to me...
Down East
“Drive to the end of the earth and take a right” — directions to Maine. The Schoodic Peninsula Visitors Center was built as a restaurant by a Brooklyn-born entrepreneur’s mother who had made a fortune in Maine-based beeswax products. By the time the restaurant closed down, the building had become a sore spot for the...
Screened
Prior to our indoor cat epoch, we’d leave our doors open on hot days. With luck, a cooling breeze would offer respite along with a variety of airborne insects. Nowadays with three adventuresome cats, who are often poised at the door when I stagger in exhausted from a night of nursing. We rarely enter or...
Patience
I have everything I need. But — and there is always a but — I can never be too sure about that. My garage rehab (see Homemoaner, June 2012) is coming along to the extent that I have organized the nuts, bolts, screws and tools. I am inches away from painting tool silhouettes on a...
Home Moaner — Weightlifting for seniors
While going out to the garage to fetch a Stillson wrench early this spring, I noticed that some sort of varmint had recently chewed a small entry portal at the bottom of the door. This made me feel somewhat anxious, since I had no way of knowing if I ran the risk of cornering a...
Wisteria Lame
Early black and white photographs of my childhood home capture the wisteria that grew on a trellis by the arch-topped living room door. Through years of renovations, the bush bloomed with ferocity every spring — its lavender petals hanging like Japanese lanterns, followed shortly by the fuzz-covered teardrop pods. Melissa’s childhood home had a wisteria...
Denial on Deporch
One of our porch steps is rotting. Not long ago, we had our porch redone. And although subject to New England weather fluctuations, damp, arctic and tropical, the porch has held up well. All except this one step, which was in the path of a leaky gutter for a couple of years. It now presents...
