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A new addition to the menagerie

I didn’t buy it, find it, breed it or rescue it, but there it is.   A tiny little mouse. Over the last few days there has been a lot of huffing and puffing and sniffing round the kitchen from the three hairiest residents.  Tonight a bout of hysterical barking broke out and when I went to investigate I found the so-called wee cowering timorous beastie sitting in state on my granite chopping board.  Far from being afraid of the proportionally titanic beasts yowling and bowling below him, he looked more like a mini emperor gazing down on his subjects. That is until I tried to take his picture.  With a flick of his tail and a sideways glance worthy of the most high-end A-list celebrity, he squeaked “see my agent” and dived between the fridge and the drawer unit.

Unfortunately for Izzy, who has not figured out that an Old English Sheepdog head is somewhat wider than the almost two inch space, she tried to snatch him on the way down.  She’s looking a bit stunned at the moment.

Accidents in the Home

We all have them. But some days are special.

Incident 1

1. Toast for breakfast. Inhale instead of swallowing and commence choking.
2. Dive to kitchen sink in search of water, bang head off open cupboard door.
3. Concerned Canine Companion #1 lunges to my rescue. Still choking
4. Step back and only to find CCC# has taken a backup position (right behind me).
5. Still choking, drop glass of water and fall on ass.
6. CCC#3 licks face with much compassion, while still choking.
7. Hysterical laughter clears breadcrumbs from airway.

Incident 2

1. Can't be ar**ed chopping onions so invent new recipe for not bland salmon - wrap it in smoked bacon, slop in a load of olive oil and basil and bake at 200. Use pyrex casserole dish.
2. Caution: it is not advisable to use an oven when the door is broken
3. Caution: it is not advisable to open an oven with a broken door unless you have at least 3 hands
4. Caution: oven gloves are a bit too thick to pick up glass or glass-like containers that don't have serious handles on them
5. Caution: if you use a lot of olive oil then it won't all be absorbed in the cooking, some of it will float about the pyrex casserole dish and just boil.
6. Caution: when there is an interesting smell coming out of the oven with the broken door, don't let the Concerned Canine Companion team into the kitchen. They will just want to help.
7. Result: Open oven door which then closes rapidly of its own volition. Lose grip on casserole dish, which drops and splits in half. Olive oil spatters oven, floor and legs (ouch!). Rapid retreat, skidding on olive oil. CCC team lunges to the rescue, human lands on ass (again).

What remained of the salmon and bacon was actually quite good....dogs had a rather special dinner too.

Incident 3

1. When attaching a hose to one of those high powered cleaning devices, be sure it really is attached before switching on the device
2. The nozzle really should be facing away from you
3. It should also be facing away from anything that is not nailed down. This includes nice blue ceramic flowerpots
4. Concerned Canine Companion team should not be permitted to wade through ensuing mess and greet next door neighbour in the pristine white T-shirt.

Evolution of the kitchen

Around 2001 it was decided that my brother would move, with his wife and son, back into the family house so an extension was built onto the side. The picture on the left shows Tim and the late Shelley examining the work in progress as our garage slowly morphed into a kitchen/living room.

As it happens I don't have any pictures of the first version of that kitchen. Time went by and things didn't work out, so brother and wife both left the house but son remained. He ended up with full run of this room and he kind of turned it back into a garage again, but this time with a fridge and cooker installed. Picture on right shows the room in it's full glory, with graffitied (Iknow, graffiti is NOT a verb) fridge, breakfast bar turned into an amp cab and a selection of motor oil on top.

In August 2008 there was, even for Ireland, an unbelievable amount of rain and the entire street was thigh deep in flood water. On the left you will see the kind of transport you would never expect to find in a north Dublin suburb. What I didn't catch there was when the inexpert canoeist collided with a submerged parked car. I would sincerely have liked to see the insurance report for that particular claim. Anyhow, while we I was busy hanging out of an upstairs window getting photographs of this bizarre and wonderful occasion, my roof developed a severe leak and water started dripping through the ceiling, the upper floor and downwards. There was quite a lot of damage and I ended up having to make my own insurance claim.

To cut a long story short, after much palaver with the insurance company and a lot of stalking of plasterers and decorators (not easy people to pin down to a date, let me tell you!) the kitchen was finally restored to a semblance of normality, here's Chloe on the right checking out the new facility.

This picture reminds me that one of these days I must invest in a shade for the light.....

Turning a white elephant into a stroke of genius ... sort of

Late last year I "rescued" a kitchen from what had devolved into a sort of garage/workshop with a cooker in it. This was a sort of post disaster recovery after the floods in August. Anyhow, fuelled with excitement over finally having a kitchen where one could swing a couple of reasonably sized cats without tripping over any dogs, I hauled ass over to the temple of Argos in Blanchardstown and purchased some really funky glass panels for use as splashbacks. Before departure I carefully checked the measurements of the space between the sink/cooker and the cupboards above them. Everything seemed hunky dory. I did think the packaging looked kind of big when the acolyte bearing the panels arrived out from the rear depths of the temple, but figured "they're glass, they need a lot of protection".. and blithely hauled ass all the way back home again.

Once home, pausing only to grab the power drill and the rawl plugs, I happily ripped the cardboard off the panel, only to find the packing was minimal and the panels were in fact far too big to fit in the space I expected them to occupy. Checked the measurements again.... I measured centimetres, the bloody panels were sized in inches.......

Then I thought, what the heck, let's just stick them up on the wall beside the table, they'll look kind of nice there... but the new kitchen used to be our garage and rather than plaster walls, they are nice firm concrete or stone or something equally inpenetrable for someone of my minimal home decoration skills.

So now what, bring them back and get a refund? Well, you need a receipt to do that..... wherever it went.. The panels ended up carefully hidden behind the printer table for most of the winter. (So I didn't have to see them and feel like such an idiot..)

Now, prior to the flooding disaster I had a brainstorm about the price of gas heating and got this copper heater/fire removed from the front room. In exchange for turfing the nephew out of his "workshop" as the newly decorated kitchen used to be, we had struck a deal that the front room would be his to install his computer, Xbox etc and for entertaining his mates. The thing is, with the open fireplace, the poor buggers froze their nuts off the whole winter long, and gale force winds ripped through the house everytime the door was left open.

Anyhow, now that winter is "over" and theoretically the weather is getting warmer, it dawned on me that the panels are just the right size to erect across an open fireplace, and with a little double sided tape, are perfect draught excluders. Pity I didn't think of that in December............. :)