.jpg "©photoBrigitta Huegel")
Dear You,
the above photo shows you a (once) glazed tile on which I drew a picture decades ago that I had spotted in a Cosmopolitan - oh yes, now you know what you might have always suspected: I was an avid reader of Cosmo (British edition) - and it might have shaped my
Nowadays I don't read Cosmo anymore - more precise: I don't read women's magazines anymore - too much to do.
So much, that today I wanted to test a quality they say women are good at: multitasking.
My dear Tamagotchi Exprelia (you remember her? Let me assure you: first impressions are very often very right: the exclusive coffee machine is the most demanding and outright brazen thing I own - but her coffee is very good, so I try to come even with her. In Berlin we have horrible calcareous water, and though I always use a Brita filter, the machine insists on being decalcified after less than a month (!!! and it does not - as they pretend in the 82 !!! pages of the user manual they hide on a DVD while innocently (though with a faintly noticeable sardonic smile around their lips) handing out to the naive buyer - me - a little leaflet to read, - pretending ultra simplicity and pure convenience, har, har, har... - oh, I lose the thread (but never, as husband sometimes remarks a bit reproachfully: the point of my crusade) -- SO: decalcifying does NOT take the pretended 35 minutes, but 55 minutes (of your life)!
In which you have to be THERE (because T. gives you a hundred and one little orders, and like a little cat that is wrongly handled it pisses on the floor if you don't dance around her...)
Ah - come to think of it: I might write a backup-book - "Coffee-Meditations for the Modern Woman - How to be fully in the Here and Now" (As I said: you HAVE to be HERE). Might even sell it to dear Cosmo.
So multitasking I took out the wonderful cookbook "Plenty" by Yotam Ottolenghi and prepared inbetween "Roasted Parsnips with sweet potatoes" (yummy! - which takes an hour to roast in the oven). AND multitasked the fridge (taking part in The Kitchn's January Cure Apartmenttherapy - which told us followers to clean the kitchen deeply on this Saturday/Sunday, AND in between I memorized my Italian vocabulary and grammar, AND put down a few hints for some questions a journalist asked me to answer.
In the end I and everything was finished.
I have to confess: from now on I take again the male viewpoint and stick to it - "One thing at a time."
Mindful.
Of course.
PS: Son lectured me on never to personalize THINGS - makes you prone to subtile assaults - and as I follow his advices
(Am too busy for games like that, have to... oh! ...it bellows: "Fill up the water tank!" Sorry... )
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/a-better-kitchen-by-sunday-evening-the-january-cure-assignment-6-214535?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tk
Oh my, Dear Britta.... I do not always intend to multitask, but in the midst of one task, I get side-tracked into another... And another until many are begun and few are finished! I do wish my husband's wife was better at these necessary household duties! Perhaps 2015 is the year... Take a rest... Enjoy a cup of well deserved coffee! Smiles... Susan
ReplyDeleteDear Susan, as always I fall in love with your way to express things - this time: "my husband's wife". Great! Oh yes, I enjoy that coffee.
DeleteI am still laughing at your interactions with your appliances. I sympathize. At the same time I am so easily amused that I am content to sit and watch as the coffee maker fills the pot or the dryer spins the clothes around.
ReplyDeleteDear Emma, I'm glad to make you laugh. And you are doing what Son also told me: he does drip brewing - and I have a lovely coffe-machine for that, which heats the water to over 100° C, and a good coffee-grinder. But no: it had to be latte macchiato :-)
DeleteDear Britta - I think perhaps I will stick with my stainless steel Caftiere, it only takes two minutes to unscrew and clean the filter, and sometimes I can't even be bothered to do that.
ReplyDeleteDear Rosemary, had I but a choice :-) (I mean: now it is here, the machine...) When I went to a Monmouth Coffee at Borough Market I saw that the latest fashion is: filter coffee!
DeleteI'm just laughing out loud here. I often thank the skies that I have a cordless headset for my phone. In the amount of time I have spent on hold for for tech support and other even more ridiculous things (20 minutes and 4 calls to succeed in making a dr's appointment, e.g.) the ability to get other, particularly menial tasks, done at the same time is my savior. SAVIOR!!
ReplyDeleteDear Sue, a headset is a wonderful thing - it gives you "the hands back" to do other tasks. To be on hold is awful - I once spent a whole hour fuming -- but as I needed the Telecom "support", I could not leave... At the moment you see me quite peacefully waiting in a queue - mumbling for example "uovo strapazzato" = "the stressed egg" as the Italians so wonderful call "Scrambled eggs" - meaning: I always have a list of vocabulary with me to fill the time of waiting.
ReplyDeleteBritta: I have been absent for a while, and I missed your blog. Tell your son you must be you! My wife and I are complete opposites. She multi-tasks constantly, while I tend to stay on a project ad nauseam.
ReplyDeleteDear JJ, good to see you back again! As to Son: he is a wise one - and usually right - though everybody who knows me will laugh at the idea that I change without wanting that. Of course I enjoy my "fights" with my coffee- Tamagotchi.
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