[Magdalen] Mike & Everett face a demon.

[Ann Markle]

When I was a kid, I was in 4-H and took home ec in Jr. High and High
school, so knew cooking basics (could boil water and eggs, etc.).  My
mother really tried to get me to cook and clean, but I staunchly resisted.
She was an older mom, and tired, and I wore her down and wore her out.
When I married at 16, we ate a lot of canned soups.  I didn't really learn
to cook well till after seminary, then discovered that I have a bit of a
knack for it.  Here with Cheryl I do all the cooking and food shopping (she
cleans up, mostly).  She's not a picky eater, appreciates everything I
cook, and pays for 1/3 of the food (we'll renegotiate that, now that she's
retired).  I really love to cook.  Summers, I grill a lot; winters, we eat
a lot of stewy-type, one-dish meals.  I especially like to cook beef short
ribs, boneless country-style pork rib meat, chicken, and duck.  With the
beef and pork, I cook the veggies right in the pan with the meat.

Laundry?  When I was young (up till after seminary, actually), we went to a
laundromat, so I always knew about laundry (I could even use a wringer
washer if I needed to, which I don't!).  I can iron, too, but I don't.  I
wear cotton clergy collars, but if you flatten them out after washing and
let them dry flat, they're perfect.  I can't do that
plastic-around-the-neck thing, and I think tab collars are tacky (sorry --
I know some here wear them).

I'm still not very good at cleaning -- can ignore an incredible amount of
dirt.  I prefer to pay someone else to do it.  Right now we've got someone
cheap, and my experience is that you get what you pay for in the cleaning
category.

Ann

The Rev. Ann Markle
Buffalo, NY
ann.markle at aya.yale.edu
blog:  www.onewildandpreciouslife.typepad.com

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 8:52 PM, Jo Craddock <jocraddock at gmail.com> wrote:

> I knew nothing of housekeeping from my parents' house. "Your job is to go
> to school and earn good grades," I was told. (Once, when very young, I
> pulled that line on a dear neighbor when asked to help clean up after
> playing with her daughter...she was good enough to sternly advise that
> wouldn't fly in her house!)
>
> I think my mother hoped that if I knew nothing about housekeeping, I'd
> have to either have a profession capable of supporting a housekeeper, or
> have a partner who could...Instead, I was a bride of three or four days
> (married during college, over Xmas vacation) crying in the Safeway because,
> in case you didn't notice it yourself, in 1981 there were NO instructions
> on canned green beans.
>
> We'd been married about five years when I had a broken leg, cast from
> waist to toe, and hired a housekeeping team to catch up, as Rodger was out
> of town, then, three weeks out of four. I had no clue one should wash
> kitchen cabinet doors and front pieces. It was amazing what a difference
> that made! Now, if I need a quick kitchen pick-me-up, I wash down the
> fronts of the cabinets.
>
> I can cook relatively well, with directions, but it is not intuitive to
> me. I cannot tell you what's needed, what's missing, what would improve it.
> Rodger is a much better cook than I, but doesn't follow directions (almost
> as a philosophy) so rarely bakes.
>
> Oddly, most of my first after-school jobs were food-related, and I learned
> more about food, laundry, and cleaning, there. But, I learned to balance a
> checkbook, handle a savings account, change a tire, engine oil, and jump
> start a battery, at home.
>