Tough as Nails

An alien has replaced the Long Suffering Husband since some time back. Having worked very hard to train the man to be more house proud I now wonder how I can train him to be a tiny bit less fastidious. He's running around the place picking up anything left lying around and placing it in the most puzzling places. 

Like the today when I had planned on spending the day on the couch, eating pralines and painting my nails. Minus the pralines, that is, since I don't actually eat sweets very often, but you get the picture. 

The couch is no where near as comfortable as it used to be since the Long Suffering Husband took over and banished the cushions and throws. The only thing left on there is the Christmas red towel the cat demands to have there (she protests and gives you the eye if it isn't). He claims cushions are frills and he can't see the point of them – much like Steve, from Coupling if anyone remembers that.

I settled for no cushions and went to fetch my nail varnish. To my horror my better half seems to have tidied the bathroom cabinet together with all the other cupboards. My top coat I could find, some of my nail varnish as well but the base coat (as well as my favourite colours) were no where to be found. Nearly at the end of my tether I asked husband and his answer was that he'd thrown the other bottles since they'd gone dry. Thrown out my nail varnish?! If he's going to take this interest in my make up he may as well take over as manicurist as well!

Now that's a thought! The Long Suffering Husband might look really sweet painting my nails. I'm never going to get him to take care of my feet though as he absolutely detests feet.

At the end of the day he really either needs to Nancy up a bit more or Butch back up. It is true as they say ”Be careful what you wish for. You may get it”...

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

As many will testify I am an excellent cook – if the food is either served in the dark or to the blind. My mother lovingly calls my cooking ”party food for the blind”. Sometimes it looks better, sometimes it's worse but usually it tastes all right. Michele Roux Jr – that famous chef from Masterchef Professionals – wouldn't be impressed.

Being an avid follower of various cooking shows on telly I decided to finally start cooking according to recipes, back to basic so to speak. Given that I had, in fact, already mastered the art of making tea I went straight to the next step – boiling an egg. Hard boiled eggs no problem. Sure the yoke was nearly green, but hard boiled they were. Soft boiled I failed to manage so I went to the Queen of Cooking, Saint Delia Smith.

Saint Delia is on a mission to teach the world to cook. She has written several excellent cook books but my personal favourite is Delia's Complete How To Cook. It actually starts with teaching you how to boil an egg. 

One morning I decided to treat the Long Suffering Husband to breakfast. Can't remember the date, but it may have been his birthday. We were going to have tea, toast and his favourite – soft boiled eggs.

I selected Delia's Complete How To Cook from the book shelves, a good choice I thought. There were detailed instructions on how to go about this, from what the book said, fairly menial task. I woke my better half up, telling him he was in for a treat and to get up and make himself comfortable on the sofa. I then dressed in my best apron and set about preparing his birthday feast.

Tea making went fine, as the water for the eggs started boiling I set the timer and plonked the toast in the toaster. The breakfast tray looked beautiful. Husband was going to be so happy, and I was proud to play the Domestic Goddess once more. This would be the start of a wonderful, romantic day for us where he was going to be spoiled.

You should have seen the look on my dear Long Suffering Husband's face when I entered the sitting room with the tray. He looked chuffed! However, as soon as he cracked his long wanted for egg open the look on his face quickly turned from chuffed to disgust. 

The Goddess was returned to Daemon with the speed of lightning...

Loose egg white oozed out over the egg cup, revealing a perfectly cooked hard boiled yoke floating around in it. According to all physical laws this ought to be impossible, but the Domestic Daemon had indeed managed it.

The return of the daemon

So, nearly a year after my last post I have once again decided to enlighten the world with my wisdom. I'm on annual leave from my night job at the moment, so I'm more idle than usual and let me tell you that being bone idle can be very exhausting. I decided to occupy myself with something. Since housework really isn't my forte, I opted for some writing. Thankfully I still go into the office once in a while, or I would probably go mad with a brain muddled and soaked of too much coke.

Daytime TV is otherwise an excellent way of passing a day. We do get some rather exciting series on Swedish TV during the weeks. The majority of them American or British, but there are one or two Swedish shows I follow too.

Now, let's take a look at what my day looks like:

I start my morning around 8 am with a nice cup of tea in front of the Jeremy Kyle show. Still in bed I can revel in the misery of the poor victims of abuse/drug abuse/cheating or what ever else is the topic of the day. I never cease to be amazed by the sheer madness of it all. It's a slightly less garish version of Jerry Springer. This one at least pretends to put an analytical spin on the whole thing.

Between 9 and 11 am I breakfast and attempt to look busy. This I usually do quite successfully. Admittedly I sometimes also do a spot of tidying and hoovering, as we recently bought a new hoover which appeals to my love of all things mechanical. I am, however, still looking for the ultimate cleaning tool – the one which keeps your house spotless whilst not even being taken out of the cleaning cupboard. Heroic Husband believes they are called servants, but apparently they are quite high maintenance. I'm looking for a self supporting one.

At 11 am is Army Wife time. Always good for a cry.

12 am calls for The DogWhisperer. He's rather dishy, that Caesar Milan. Anyone know where you can get one?

1 pm there is a Swedish show called Det okända (The unknown), or as it is called in our family – the spooky show. It's a show where mediums go around to people's houses to clear them off spooks and other nasties. Not really my favourite, but it passes the time to...

2 pm, when The GoodWife starts. Now that is a good one. A series without even as much as one likeable character, yet very addictive. It's about Alicia, mother of two, wife of the ex state attorney Peter who's been caught up in a prostitution scandal causing Alicia to go back to work as a defence lawyer. Peter is nasty, Alicia is cold as a fish, Alicia's colleagues are scheming bastards and the children meek and hapless. I love it!

3 pm the cleaning ladies in How Clean is Your House? takes over. Isn't it amazing how good it feels to watch someone else's mess. My house is messy, not two ways about it, but in comparison with these people's places it's a gleaming palace!

Wife Swap UK starts at 4 pm and once again I get to feel like a perfectly normal human being. What compels people to take part in these shows? Do they honestly believe they are so perfect that they will be able to deliver another family from their sorrows just by imposing their own ways on them?

By 5 pm I get to feel a bit cultural and intellectual in front of Antiques Roadshow...

Thus is my day spent!

Ship Ahoy

As some may now, but some others may be blissfully unaware of, I live in in the suburbs of Stockholm - the beautiful capital of Sweden. That is Sweden, not Switzerland. I am convinced Switzerland is a lovely place to live, but I have no desire to do so.

Swedes are, at times, a funny nationality. We are very proud of our frog leaping round the May Pole, our sing-songy crayfish parties and our tax funded welfare system but these are not the most Swedish of phenomena - the booze cruising is!


If we live on the east coast we tend to cruise over to Finland, or more importantly Åland. A small island between Finland and Sweden which is one of Europe's few remaining duty free zones. You're allowed to buy booze and fags on the ferries are rock bottom (harumph!) prices.


Strangely enough these cruises seem to bring out the very worst in man. People who would under normal circumstances most certainly be perfectly respectable citizens suddenly turn into moronic chavs who you'd think had never before left the trailer park. Seriously, some of the people you come across on these ferries really make you fear for the human race!


Are these the hope of the new generation and the pride of the old? Do these people actually exist in the real world?


Then again, who am I to judge? I've been making a prat of myself on those boats too. Though in a much more stylish and respectable way - of course!

Suffer for your art...

We have new neighbours two stairs up in our building. I'm sure they are very nice, and that they have the best of all intentions in life, but I fear they aim to make a living from their art - which incidentally seems to be some kind of performance art involving drills.

Today said neighbour have practised their art to their hearts content, and my discontent. I'm not entirely sure what they are working on, but by the sound of it I would hazard a guess that it has to do with a very large piece. For a moment I thought they were trying to drill their way all the way down into my bedroom.


What is wrong with being a mime, I ask? Mimes may be a bit odd, have weird ears and bad dress sense, but they are wonderfully quiet. Something sadly lacking in my building, I must confess. Next time I move house I will choose my abode on the quality of the neighbours. No drill artists, no old people with bad hearing, no families and no garden enthusiasts. Everyone knows they are the worst, always prying into your own English Park inspired patch, suggesting you may want to prune this hedge or that...

The Art of Cooking by Proxy

My men have usually started out hard core non-cooking men and for the first part of our relationships this has been all dandy for me. I have sort of enjoyed playing The Little Housewife, ironing their shirts and cooking up three course meals, but this usually wears quite thin after as the first romantic months of the relationship passes. After that I start planning how I shall rid myself of the burden of everyday cooking (though I still enjoy throwing the odd dinner party for appreciative guests).


Over the years I have devised a cunning three step plan which is almost fool proof.

1. First major occasion with an excuse for gifting larger items, buy them a whopping big grill with all the bells and whistles to go with it.
   
   There is something about men and fires. They seem genetically programmed to be drawn to it and once the flames turns to embers they will start scouring the house for something to put on them.
   
2. Make sure the kitchen is always well stocked with the perfect food to throw on "the barbie". Since you're trying to train your man to cook, you should start out with large chunks of beef and then slowly turning him over to such delicacies as marinated aubergine and similar. If you live in a suburban area you could encourage him to join up with the other chaps for "barbie" marathons. Remind me to tell you all about the year of the Great Barbie Competition in our neighbourhood sometime!
   
   By now he should be sufficiently trained on dinners. All you need to do when the winter comes is to smile sweetly and tell him that he's such a wizz with the meat/veggies/fish - couldn't he see if he could replicate some of that masterfulness with the grill pan? Most men will rise to the occasion.
   
3. Get into the habit of having a full cooked breakfast every day. It is a well known fact that men are more likely to sort breakfast out if it is a cooked one. Alternatively, if the thought of all that grease and bacon turns your stomach, cuddle up to him like a kitten in the morning and whisper sweetly in his ear that being served breakfast in bed makes you feel like a Princess and this makes you HOT. 

This plan will work for most men, occasionally you may have to revise it - as I had to do for Husband. The way to get him into the kitchen lay more in lines of hard nosed refusal on doing certain things, on my behalf.

- No, you filthy minded person! Not That! That I do willingly, if not wantonly!

I simply refuse to cook offal, and later on to clean!

From the Mouth of Hell

Some people swear by it. I do too, but for entirely different reasons. In my case it is not raving about how marvellous this product is, it is purely from the sheer Hell it is using it.

Lots of women rave about how they only need to attend to their hair removal regime once a month, how silky and smooth they are and how "it only hurts a little bit the first time". 


Bollox!


This little white and pink, innocent looking machine is actually a more advanced remainder of a piece of torture equipment used during the inquisition.

Other women just claim that it is practically pain free because they are trying to lure a fellow sister into the Epilady using cult, hoping that if they widen the usage they pain will be wider spread. Don't trust them! They're cult members!

There is, in fact, only one solution to painless hair removal and that is to NOT DO IT. Plucking is time consuming and painful, epiladying is excruciatingly painful, shaving leaves you with blotches all over and and itchiness that makes you lose your will to live.

Lets look at our reason for hair removal - we claim it is to be sexy for our partners but I don't actually buy that. The only entirely healthy people post puberty who are hairless are very old people - trust me, when you reach a certain age it starts dropping off - and the thought of my partner chasing octogenarians is frankly a tad disturbing. Not that there is anything wrong with octogenarians, nor is it necessarily something bad in fancying mature people, but I wouldn't like to be dumped for a great-granny.

In fact, the only people who would ask you to pull your own hair out are sadists or other women. Women uphold the myth of the sexy hairless goddess in order to lure other poor saps into the Cult of Pain and Sisyphean tasks. Going through hell once isn't enough. The hair keeps growing back and you keep having to torture yourself.

Solution? Join the Cult of the Yeti Women!

Let's create a fashion for braided underarm hair and downy legs. Just think of how warm and cosy you will be in the winter, not to mention the savings you will make not buying shaving stuff!

Our motto shall be "Hair is Here" and we will live happy and teach our daughters a hairy way of life!