Tag: family

Domestic disaster and delight

Disaster’ and ‘delight’ are perhaps overstating it. My 32 year old washing machine finally did what I’d been expecting – broke down on the last spin. Over the phone, my regular repair man (well, I’ve needed him twice in 32 years) said he was semi-retired now, but suggested I try wrenching the bowl to reset it. To my relief, that worked and I was able to hang my heavy flannelette sheets on the line. However, he advised that my old Hoover Commodore, purchased in 1993, had had its day. Some quick research (including reading helpful reviews) and consultation with my sister resulted in the purchase of a new energy efficient Fisher and Paykel machine.

Old and new

My sister and brother in law replaced their dish washer the same day. Their son had picked it up for them. Before long, he arrived to collect my new washing machine. There followed a Dukes of Hazzard adventure in his girlfriend’s black, double-cab ute, with his younger (but taller) brother riding shotgun and me in the back wielding the credit card. We roared up the road to a northern suburb distribution centre where a man donned a helmet and safety harness and collected the boxed machine from a high shelf with a large fork lift. My nephew had the gear to strap the machine onto the deck of the ute and we took the scenic route along back roads to home. There the two young heroes un-installed the old machine and installed the new one. Just like that.

I read the manual carefully, ran a Quick Cycle to check the pipes were correctly connected and then a Hygiene Cycle to clean away any residues from the manufacturing process. There are 14 cycles available! I was awake in the night strategising the alteration to my usual ‘chuck everything in together’ routine.

This morning, it was good to go and proved efficient – and quiet! My old one sounded like a jet plane taking off and creaked and groaned and even shrieked. The new one has greater capacity, but is about the same size otherwise. It is also gentler on clothes, with no tall central agitator to tangle things up.

It’s a little sad to see an old stalwart go – but the delight of watching a digital control panel go through each cycle will win me over in time! Maybe it has already.

Goodbye, old friend.

Nola’s nursing days

I took a picture of this painting in the From Here on the Ground exhibition at the art gallery this morning. It shows the Nurses’ Home where Mum lived while training in the early 1950s. She remembers the beauty of the building with its terrazzo floors and elegant arches. More recently, we would admire it when we visited the heritage rose garden which was planted in 1950 in the foreground of this painting. Mum is sad the Nurses’ Home was demolished to make way for the hospital extension. However, she enjoyed very good care in the new part of the hospital after breaking her hip.

Sunlight aka The Nurses’ Home, Hagley Park 1938. Artist: Cecil Kelly

The Nurses’ Home was built in 1931 in Spanish Mission-style. Mum doesn’t remember connecting it with the buildings in Santa Barbara where she visited family in the early 2000s. She has these souvenirs.

Spanish Mission buildings in Santa Barbara are distinctive to the place, as are the ‘painted ladies’ to San Francisco.

Here’s part of Mum’s year group of trainee nurses. They wore pink uniforms to indicate they were in their first year. Can you spot Nola?

Nola: third from the right in the second row with Adrienne on her right and Eleanor on her left.

Today, Mum has taken up knitting again after many years. We found some bags of wool in the back of the wardrobe and a roll-up knitting-needle holder, and here she is casting on the first row on very small needles, following a pattern in a book I found in the library for her.

A ‘domestic powerhouse’

Somehow this phrase popped into my head as I cleaned the bathroom basin yesterday – thinking of something else entirely, probably. But there it was, this phrase, sticking in my head for the rest of the day and recurring today much to my amusement. “You’re a domestic powerhouse.” I had walked to the nearby shops for milk and vegetables, and done the usual morning routine of hand washing Mum’s things, getting breakfast, giving Mum her calcium injection and put out two loads of her washing. I went on to make Anzac biscuits before I headed off to play Rummikub with friends after lunch (homemade minestrone). Then came home to bring in the washing, sweep the driveway, pick up cabbage tree leaves, get the fire going, give Mum her cheese and crackers and do the ironing before getting dinner.

Today, I decided, would be just for reading – apart from the usual routines of morning, lunch and evening. There was only one thing on my list:

Now, at the end of the day, I have read only a couple of chapters of my book. I made bread, cleaned the bathroom, washed the shower curtains and bathmat, washed the floor and the front porch and steps. Before long, it was time to set the fire and fetch in kindling and wood. Is ‘retirement’ a misnomer?

I began to make a list in my head of the things I do about the house each day. I thought how weird it is that I tend to think about what I haven’t done (washed the inside of the windows, sanded and polyurethaned the window sills, cut back perennials…) rather than what I have achieved. I imagine this is typical. It reminded me of Flip Grater’s recent column in The Press where she wrote that the unpaid work of women in caring for family, children, the elderly, the disabled, and general voluntary work, is what supports our economic system, namely capitalism. And what about the women who do all that and still do paid work? Marilyn Waring has long since argued that unpaid work should be factored into our Gross Domestic Product. I agree.

Christmas trees

As I worked in the garden this morning I could hear the hum of many bees. Sure enough, the Rōhutu (lophomyrtus obcordata or NZ myrtle) is beginning to flower and is attracting honey bees.

I associate the Rōhutu with Christmas, although we have a ‘traditional’ tree in the house, kindly delivered by my sister and family on Saturday (we were anxiously keeping busy while Mum had her hip-replacement surgery).

It’s usually Mum who decorates it, but this year it had to be me. She is keen to be home, but has a wee bit of recuperation to do first. I’m sure Felix misses her.

Felix takes a break from chewing Santa’s hat

While I’m on the subject of trees, I took a photo of this amazing, huge tree in Hagley Park as I walked to visit Mum at the hospital on Monday.