What’s a key pocket?

They needed some help. I’d cooked dinner, cleaned up and promised to be back to make lunch next day.

They gave me a set of keys so I could get in should they be out when I got to their house.

I put the keys carefully in my pocket and went home for the night.

Next morning I put on my jeans, felt in the pocket and my heart sank. No keys. I patted all my pockets. No keys. I put my hand in each pocket. Still no keys.

I looked on the floor, I shook out all the bed-clothes, I took everything out of my handbag and found a set of keys for another house. I looked under the bed, I took every item of clothes out of an overnight bag beside the bed and shook them, I got down on my hands and knees with a torch and scoured the floor again.

No keys.

I went out to the car, felt down the back and sides of the driver’s seat and found some small change but no keys.

I told myself a key ring with two keys can’t disappear into thin air, put my hand into my pocket again and found only a tissue.

I looked everywhere I’d already looked again and still no keys.

I gave up, gathered the makings for lunch, drove to the house of the people I was helping and let myself in with another spare key.

The home owner arrived home soon after and I confessed to losing the keys.

“I saw you put them in your pocket last night,” he said. “Are you sure they’re not in the key pocket?”

“Key pocket?” I thought, “What’s a key pocket?”

I put my hand into my pocket and as I did my thumb slid into a wee opening on the right hand side of the main one and felt something metal – the keys.

A key pocket is a good idea, but the key to its working properly is for the wearer of the jeans to know it’s there.

 

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366 days of gratitude

One of the Domestic Goddess’s rules of relativity states that the length of the vacuum cleaner cord will always, but always, be fractionally shorter than the length required to clean a given space.

Enter the extension cord which allows me to clean the whole living room and part of the hall without the need to unplug, find another socket and re-plug the cleaner.

For this simple solution to a domestic irritant, I’m grateful.

366 days of gratitude

A group of USA farmers on tour called on us.

They had lots of questions about farming matters and one had a domestic query.

“Do you have a clothesline?” he said.

I replied in the affirmative and asked if he had wet clothes he wanted to dry.

He said no, but wondered if I had a clothes dryer too.

Again I replied in the affirmative and he responded by saying he’d noticed dryers and lines at all the homes he’d visited and wondered why we needed both.

I said the dryer was used in wet weather or when we needed something dry in a hurry and the line was used the rest of the time.

“Why not just use the dryer?” he asked.

I said there was both economic and environmental rationale  for using the line more than the dryer.

A Presbyterian upbringing taught me not to use power when there was an alternative and the line was also the small g greener option.

But apart from that, line-dried clothes smell better.

Today I’m grateful for the scent of freshly washed, line-dried bed linen that smells of sunshine.

 

For stubborn lids

J Bloggs has been offering suggestions in the Friday’s answers post for tools to open jars with stubborn lids, neither of which are like the one I have.

I don’t know how to get a photo in a comment so here’s what I mean:

When you squeeze the bottom arm it allows you to adjust the size of the grip.

For someone who has everything . . .

A tubemaster from Brix.

It’s a simple idea and it works, not just to get the most out of a tube but also to save arguments about who squeezes it how.

It does not, however, solve the problem of people not putting the lid back on.

That will have to wait for another clever invention.

A pricey cut

On Sunday evening I stabbed myself with a carving knife.

I was taking a metal ring off a wine bottle at the time, the knife slipped and went into the gap between my thumb and forefinger. *

It bled a lot but I didn’t think it needed a stitch.

However, I couldn’t remember the last time I had a tetanus injection so phoned my doctor’s surgery next morning for an appointment.

The nurse, agreed the wound didn’t need a stitch but I did need a tetanus injection – the last one I’d had was in 1996.

She gave me the option of a double vaccine against tetanus and diphtheria or the triple vaccine one which also protected against whooping cough.

I opted for that – and a bill of $65 for the vaccine plus $30 for the consultation.

That made it a pricey cut but the protection will be worth the cost.

* This wasn’t an alcohol related accident. I hadn’t drunk any of the wine.

We’d bought it when in Argentina at least five years ago because we liked the painted bottle.

Our hosts warned us the wine wasn’t very good. When I came across it in the process of decluttering its colour indicated it hadn’t improved with age so I opened it and tipped the contents down the sink.

The smell as I did so confirmed that it wasn’t a good wine but the bottle will serve well for holding water to accompany meals.

If there’s a good time to lose power . . .

. . .it’s not when there’s three builders, a plumber, electrician and floor layer who all require it.

And when you have a bath full of sheets and pillow cases to be washed because there’s been mice in the linen cupboard.

And when you’re in the middle of baking for the Rotary auction tonight.

And when you have a media release to write which requires files on your computer.