Raised by Rats

Playing with new toy. Washing machine. Yes, I know, I don’t get out much! Some months ago, um, maybe a year, I wrote about the old machine exploding water all over my floor and a panicked call to the rental agent. Who said, in effect, “There, there, it’ll be all right.” It was, once I spent the rest of the weekend cleaning/drying up in prep for the next week’s inspection!

Anyway, finally decided I had spare funds enough to buy one. And also experienced a brain snap a few days ago when I couldn’t face another load of handwashing and bit the bullet. Ordered online from Fridge and Washer City, three or four klicks away, and lo and behold, shiny new machine was delivered yesterday morning and set up. So I’m now running it through its first tub-clean cycle, having had to do parental wrangling yesterday.

Yesterday wasn’t a huge amount of fun. The weather had gone suddenly and excessively hot – maximum of 35^C and close to that while travelling there and back – and of course the trains were off again this weekend, meaning Rail Replacement Bus hell. The buses were very crowded and also hot; if their aircon was working, it was overridden by the heat, and you jolt all the way to the city.

I also found my phone had decided not to make outgoing calls and thought I must have hit something I didn’t mean to. Still haven’t found any sign of that, or evidence of an outage, but after a few tries of turning it off and on again, I found the needed duration of “down time” and after that it appears to be working again. So who knows? It meant I woke M up when I arrived, not beforehand with a call, that was all.

There wasn’t too much that needed doing, and the care arrangements are now in place and proceeding [one hopes for a while!] so I tried again to interest M in a Scrabble game, a passion of hers for around 60-70 years. She can’t remember when she began playing but the old diary which recorded the games is from 1957. M took me up on it this time, having waffled before about not being sure she could remember the rules etcetera. And it’s true I did need to refresh her on some points. And do the scoring.

M proceeded to absolutely thrash me by at least 100 points, leaving me wondering whose stupid idea this had been. Oh yeah. It’s like M’s original memory/abilities took over and just knocked out anything I tried to do. And I’m good. One act of most excellent bastardry blocked me from a triple score – M could not utilise it herself but put tiles in the way to obstruct me. After that it was all over. So yeah, one of the less stressful visits apart from the weather and the RRB torture.

Back to the washing machine. This thing actually tells me how long it’s going to take with the wash!

I’ve had an eye test with the regular optician, who was gratifyingly enthusiastic about my results.  I never ‘passed’ an eye test before.  I still need computer glasses, that mid-range where the over the counter reading glasses don’t quite measure up and it’s not far enough for distance vision to be any use.  At least I’m reusing frames and these are less expensive than they were before the op, for sure.  Beila, the optician, told me about the horrors of South African cataract surgery when she was starting out.  Honest to God, I thought that stuff was back in the 19^th century.  I got it so easy.