Misfits and Freecycle

Yesterday's Misfits box was a cold pack order, items sent in special packing

So I'm all provisioned for eggs, cheese, fish, chicken butter, yogurt, cool items. 

And the cool pack bag, along with a few togs, 

is leaving this morning via Freecycle, took about ten minutes to set up.

The clothes are now packed into the bag and sitting on the step. The taker happened to have business a few hundreds yards away this morning, worked nicely all round. She's reliable about showing up, too, often a problem with Freecycle, people overcommit, then fail to show. 

Now that I'm winding down with Alice B Toklas, the current reading is a Kate Atkinson

on my Kindle, easiest way right now, since most printed books are a little too small to see well.

And a Mrs Pargeter audiobook 

to accompany knitting and sewing - this time an alteration promised to handsome Son, rehemming frayed jeans legs. This will get done promptly, unlike similar tasks for myself, so mom-typical.

And the view from the stairs waiting for Misfits

Carpenter's pencil 

Happy day everyone and hang in there

Sheet anchors and Simon Brett

I have an older mattress, not one of those deep newer ones.  But the sheet manufacturers seem to have lost interest in older mattresses, and I had to buy a sheet set which was intended for the deeper one.

That meant the bottom so-called fitted sheet is way too big, slides around, bunches up and is generally not what you want to deal with in the middle of the night.  Been wondering for ages how to figure out a fix for this, toying with stitching elastic across the corners to hold them better, and never got around to it.

Then in one of those catalogs you leaf through idly, not expecting anything interesting, came across these, the answer:

But they looked oddly familiar, and I remembered, oh, these were known as suspenders (britspeak), and you had to fasten two to each stocking to hold them up.  Miserable days when even young kids had to wear a garter belt.  

At the age of eleven, high school starts earlier in the UK, our uniform demanded long lisle stockings, so as young as that we were forced to wear these horrible things, which would spring apart at awkward moments, and required you hold your skirt down all the time.  

I've never understood the antipathy to pantyhose, which came as the answer to dreams, in the sixties, when they first came on the market.  Much better idea.  I'd seen a Chinese friend, wearing the cheongsam, that dress slit up the side, wearing them, and she explained that they were obtainable in Hong Kong.  Eventually they got to the US, and it was great.

Anyway, it seems that the mfr must have had a warehouse full of these things which became as useful as buggy whips, after the pantyhose market got going, and here's a great way to resell them!  So I applied two of them to the sheet, and they work.  Didn't get around all four, pretty tricky just to get two firmly in place. And they're called sheet anchors, fabulous dramatic name!

Also, if you're mildly interested in pantomime, such as wondering what it is, Simon Brett's Cinderella Murder is a great tutorial on that art form, as well as a pretty good mystery.  

I've tried to explain it to American friends who know it's a Christmas special sort of thing, largely family stuff, kids always taken as a treat.  Based on various nursery rhymes and fairytales, Cinderella, Aladdin, Jack and the Beanstalk.  

But bafflement ensues.  You say the Principal Boy is always played by a woman?  and the male hero by a man, but the Ugly Sisters are men?  And the heroine played by a woman, so there are love scenes with her and the Principal Boy played by another woman? Aladdin's widowed mother is played by a man?  Aladdin by a woman?  There's cross dressing? and double entendre jokes?  and this is traditional childhood fare?  And there's no mime in pantomime?  Explains a lot about brits, they conclude.  But read this mystery, and you'll get a lot!  it's also funny.

Escape reading and noshing

In terrifying times, after we've done all the resistance work available to us, we need a bit of self care.  

This can be reading comic mysteries, like the Mrs. Pargeter series by Simon Brett, pic in poor lighting, so focus not so hot, but you get the gist

and making a batch of Crazy Chocolate Cake, iced with chocolate/walnut/peppermint icing.  

This is that dead simple recipe
 
 Both books and cake are failsafe! Both are recommended.