Angel of Death, Appliance Division (Canada) revisited

This morning my friend Jen wrote a blog post about breaking her glasses and her cell phone.  She called herself Calamity Jen.  I can relate.  See, for a while, a couple of years back, I was the Angel of Death for appliances in my house.  They kept breaking.  And in all cases after the warranties had run out.

And then, after a while, the deaths stopped.  Life returned to normal.  I was lulled into a false sense of security.  But I think that the curse may be back.

New Year's Eve.  My house.  Ten-thirtyish.  Leah and her friend Alice (of the scary, barking iPod) were playing down in the basement, Rachel was already asleep on the couch, and I was reading in the living room.  Suddenly I could smell an unpleasant odor.  Like something burning -- a chemical, plastic stink.  I checked the candles I had burning.  Nothing.  I checked the stove/oven.  Off. 

Then I realized that the smell was coming from the dishwasher.  I opened it and a cloud of greasy grey smoke billowed out.  There, in the bottom of the dishwasher, draped like a Salvador Dali clock over the heating element that dries the dishes, were the remains of a plastic-handled pizza cutter.  Apparently the melting temperature of the black plastic pizza-cutter handle is greater than the melting temperature of the white plastic dishwasher enclosure, and it had melted a hole through the bottom of the dishwasher under the element, compromising the watertightness of the appliance.  And watertightness is kind of integral to the whole dishwashing experience.  Sigh.

Yes, the appliance Angel of Death has returned.  Her original adventures, from 2009, are recounted again here:

"So, you still, uh, reap around here, do you, Mr. Death?"

There are many questions that roll around in my brain when I wake up in the wee hours of the morning.

Did I close the garage door?

Do I have any clean underwear for tomorrow?

What was that noise? I'm sure I heard a noise. Did the cat make that noise?

 Should I be worried that the people in Rachel's artwork look like acid-fueled Charlie and Lola stick figures with giant Monty Pythonesque stomping feet?

 How am I going hook up the DVD player, the VCR, and the rabbit ears to a TV with only an antenna input? I could attach the rabbit ears to the VCR, and then run a cable from the RF output on the VCR to the antenna input in the TV, but what about the DVD player? And the switch box?

 The last question is a direct result of my apparent debut as the Angel of Death, Appliance Division:

Last week, the dishwasher breathed its last. Two days ago, the hot-water heater ate the metaphorical salmon mousse. And yesterday morning, when I turned on the TV just after 5 a.m. to catch the previous night's The Hour while I sat and drank coffee made lunches for the girls and fixed my hair, all that lit up was a narrow band in the middle of the screen. The audio was fine, but the video was down to one line. It has joined the choir invisible. And the other, spare TV I had stashed in the basement doesn't have any AV inputs. Sigh.

 I don't think these deaths are coincidental. I'm very afraid for my toaster oven.

I'm going to need a scythe.

Bon Jovi probably didn't see this one coming

(This was not one of the deer we saw. I found this pic on Google.)

So, just past dusk a couple of nights ago, the girls and I were in the car, driving Kylah, one of Leah's friends, home from our house.  She doesn't live too far away -- a couple of minutes in the car, tops.  There aren't many street lights in this residential part of the village, and I slowed down when the brake lights of the SUV in front of me flashed red. 

I was wondering why he was stopping in the middle of the road, when my answer arrived in the form of two large does bounding over the snow bank and in front of the SUV and disappearing between two houses.  A third one trotted through the snow after the first two, and, tracing her path backwards, we could all see that one of the homeowners has set up a feeding station in their unfenced back yard.  Three or four deer were eating out of a trough underneath a suspended light, just perfect for viewing from a window.

"Well that's pretty stupid," I said.  "Someone is going to get into an accident trying to avoid one of these deer.  You look out for them on the outskirts of the village, but you don't expect to see them coming out from between houses.  People are going to get hurt."

"Deer, too," replied Kylah.  "Some poor deer is going to end up dead meat."

From the back seat, I could hear Leah singing something, and then a whole bunch of giggles from the girls.

"What are you singing?" I asked.

"Oh, just a Bon Jovi song," Leah answered.

"Really?  Which one?"

Leah [singing louder]:"♫This deer is just bad venison, bad venison is what I need. Eat it up just like bad venison, bad venison will give me disease.♪♫"

[hysterical laughter from the back seat]

Someday I will learn not to ask these kinds of questions.

Thank you. Come again.

Saturday was beautiful.  We got dressed in our outdoor clothes, bought some sunflower seeds to feed the birds, and headed out to the Jack Pine Trail in the Greenbelt. 

Rachel (to each chickadee who landed on her hand): "Thank you for dining at Chez Rachel.  Please come again."

Why the world needs translation editors: "But sometimes the mistakes make me happy, especially when I'm drinking beer with lunch" edition

I was looking through my photos from France this summer, looking for a suitable profile picture for Facebook, and man, I took a lot of pictures of us sitting around tables eating and drinking.



I found a couple of photos that I took of not-quite-right translations that I found in menus. (I warned you that you'd be hearing about my trip to France for way longer than you were going to want to.  Promise kept.)

The first one was from the Restaurant L'estragon in Monaco-Ville, Monaco, where we stopped for lunch:



"Assorted Pork-butchery"

Okaaaay.

I'm sure that they meant this:



Rather than this:



It might be kind of hard to bring an entire butchery to the table. At any rate, none of us were brave or curious enough to order the butchery -- we settled for warm goat-cheese salads and omelettes.




Then there was this, on the menu at the Nid d'Aigle in Eze village:

"Grilled Lamb Shops"

Again, I'm sure they meant this:

Rather than this:

But, hey,  you never know.

I ended up ordering this:




and two of these:

Which may explain why I found the menu so funny.

Things we made at our house yesterday

Home-made French bread:

Lemon meringue pies (which had a bit of a sliding accident in the oven):

Zombie babies:

I think you can probably figure out who made what.

The best way to serve haggis

This is especially for you, Jen. Oh, and for Lynda too, who will be dining tonight on haggis nachos. Which, as we all know, is the second-best way to serve haggis. :)

Happy Robbie Burns day!!!

All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up

My friend Jen put up an interesting post a couple of weeks ago about self-image and photographs. Here is some of it:

"A couple weeks ago, I posted some photos of myself and talked about how hard it is for me to do something like that. Your comments were interesting and I really enjoyed reading your thoughts about having your photos taken or not having your photos taken.

I have to admit, however, that your comments made me sad because, for the most part, we women (no men commented) do not like how we look in photos. Like, we really don’t like photos of ourselves. Many of you even shared your tricks yourselves look thinner or taller or just disappear altogether (e.g. hiding behind children) in photos.

I blame Hollywood and the glossy magazine industry for giving us unrealistic expectations of what we should look like. There are no perfect bodies or perfectly beautiful faces. We are all beautiful in our own way and I’m sad that, while we can easily see other women’s beauty, we don’t look in the mirror and see our own.

As we approach the holiday season, I’d like to encourage you all to make sure that you get some photos of yourself, either alone or with your family. Don’t hide behind your children or a big dog or your Christmas tree. Just stand tall and proud and revel in your beauty. Enjoy the moment and laugh. Remember that you’re capturing memories that your family will enjoy for a long time.....

If there’s interest among you, I’d love to do a post in January of your photos and share with the world (okay, a very small slice of the world) just how lovely we all are."

My comment to this was:

"...Some pictures that have been taken of me are better than others, but we are always our own worst critics and cringe from photos that others find fine or even flattering. So, unless I’ve been caught with my mouth open, or my eyes shut, or a really stupid look on my face, I’m fine with posting them. It’s what I look like, after all."

We really are our own worst enemies. Mostly, I like the way I look. Without makeup or with, this is me. (Or sometimes a stick figure representation.) So, as challenged by Jen, here are some pix of me. Flattering or not, they are me and I'm OK with that:



This is me with my sister, Lise, taken during a winery tour in early December.  We are gorgeous broads!



Here I am with my family, flour on my pants and stickers (courtesy of Rachel) on my shirt.  I am not a tiny woman, lol.  Also, no makeup.  I am a shiny-faced woman.



Here I am, again with my sis, on the balcony of the condo we rented in Nice, France last summer, makeup free and jetlagged after 16 hours of travel.  I don't know where my eyes were in this picture. I might have left them on the plane.



And going from no eyes to really big, scary ones, here I am back in 2007, taking pictures to amuse my chicken-pox-ridden kids.



And finally (admit it, you're relieved I'm stopping now and therefore I'm not totally self-involved and exhibitionistic), here is my favourite picture of me.  Ever.  Or at least since I was three.