Introducing... Dustin!

No, Dustin is not a new cat, nor any other animal. Neither is Dustin a lodger, or a guest or a new family member. Not a human one, anyway. But an extremely effective worker, mostly found under the front window in our living room...

A decade or so ago, when I first heard about robot vacuum cleaners, I thought they sounded like a great idea. But they were very expensive, and reviews suggested that they had a lot of flaws. Quite apart from the infamous stories about dragging dog mess over expensive carpets, I was concerned about tiny pieces of Lego, or little electronic components that might have fallen to the floor. 

So I hadn't thought about them much until a couple of months ago when we were in a shop that had robot vacuum cleaners on special offer, at a price that was similar to that of regular vacuum cleaners. Not that we needed a new vacuum cleaner; the one we have works perfectly well. But it's noisy, and a bit heavy to take upstairs, and I find vacuuming one of the most tiring household chores - so I didn't do it very often. I aimed for once a week in the main part of our house, once a month upstairs. I rarely succeeded in either aim. 

We have mostly hard floors, so I did also clean them with a dry swiffer,  and mop with a wet one. My aim for that was once a week upstairs and twice a week in the main floor. I didn't always succeed in that aim, either, although it did help to reduce dust and thus sneezing and - most importantly - snoring.  Every so often I would read an article about dust mites, and shudder, and determine to vacuum more often. But 'good intentions' do not lead to a good place...

And mostly it didn't matter too much. Cyprus is a dusty country and if someone visiting the house feels judgemental about dust, it's their problem, not mine. Before it got too bad, I would take action, if somewhat half-heartedly. If guests were expected, I would at least dust the tops of shelves and mop the floor in the living and eating areas of the house if I hadn't done them on the previous Saturday. 

This year I have been a lot more tired than previously. I said in an earlier post that it was perhaps due to my advancing years, and two different people pointed out that my years are less than theirs, so perhaps not. It's not as if I have any chronic health conditions. But Covid in January left me very tired. I thought I was mostly myself by the end of the month, ten days after I was finally released from isolation, but I am not sure that I ever fully regained my prior energy. And I've never had a lot of stamina. 

I was beginning to feel more myself by the end of March. Then I had a booster vaccination in April, which made me feel extremely grim for 24 hours, and fatigued in the extreme for a couple more days. I still don't feel as if I've returned to normal. My brain is foggy, my energy levels fluctuating even more than they used to. If I have a busy, active day (and my 'busy, active' days are calm and relaxed compared to those of many people I know) I can't do much more than sit and read a day later.

All of which, combined with a generous financial gift, came together to convince me that a robot vacuum cleaner would be a Good Thing. We didn't just buy it in impulse, even so. We came home, and researched the many available options - most of which are now reasonably priced - and eventually decided on a 'Roomba'. 

There are buttons on top to tell it to clean, or to go home. But the instruction manual recommended downloading an app for our phones. My phone doesn't have room for any more apps, and I'd rather use the actual buttons anyway. But Richard downloaded it, and that's when we learned that we had to give it a name. 'Roomba' seemed rather boring, so I Googled for a site that listed names others have given to their robot vacuum cleaners. None of them appealed until we came to 'Dusty' - but, as I pointed out, we didn't want it to make the house dusty. We wanted it to eat the dirt, to suck the dust in... and thus it got its name. And we sometimes started referring to it as 'he'.  

One of the reviews I read said that these robot gadgets lurched around the room like drunken babies, and when we set it off for the first time, we could see what the reviewer meant. It started off in a fairly straight line, bumped into something, changed direction, set off until it bumped into something else... it seemed entirely random, and we could hardly take our eyes off it. 

The cats were puzzled too, disturbed at first, but quickly accepting that it didn't mean any harm. And over the course of the next ninety minutes or so, it managed to find the entire main floor. I hadn't vacuumed the rug for about ten days, and had swiffered (but not mopped) the floors a few days earlier. So it had to work hard. But I was still rather shocked when it returned to its base after about an hour and a half, and we opened the dust container to check and empty it:

We were surprised it hadn't choked and stopped. According to the app, it had found 39 'dust events' - places where it was so dirty it had to do a kind of twirl to get properly clean.

We thought we had better run it again the following day, and did so. It struggled a bit on some of the lighter-weight rugs, so we lifted those out of the way - they're easy enough to throw in the washing machine.  More of a problem was its proclivity for trying to swallow electrical cables, of which we had rather a lot on the floor: at the back of the TV, around my computer, and elsewhere. It was a good incentive to find ways to move them off the floor. 

On the Saturday, when I would normally procrastinate about cleaning as I so disliked vacuuming, I had a burst of enthusiasm for dusting the shelves, and even lifted the chairs so Dustin could clean under the dining room table: 

Mopping suddenly became less effort, too, as less dusty floors meant less general mess... so I didn't have to keep stopping to clean the mop. Dustin has cleaned upstairs, too, and is excellent underneath the bed. Twice a week seems to be about right for upstairs. We had read that it was supposed to be able to sense stairs, so we watched it the first time it ran upstairs, hoping it would see the stairs coming and move away. I sat on one of the top stairs watching it approach... and was ready to catch it, if it didn't turn around. 

What happened was that it stopped, rather precariously balanced with about a quarter of it hanging over the edge. A red light came on, and a message appeared on Richard's phone, telling him that Dustin was teetering on the edge of a cliff. We rescued it, and decided to put the cat litter box at the top of the stairs, as it's fairly heavy and bulky, and would prevent the robot from toppling over or sending out the SOS. 

About ten days ago, I remembered that it's probably six months or more since we last moved our big sofa to clean underneath. Sure enough, when I moved it, this is what I saw: 

I had to pick Dustin up and put it in the right place a couple of times, but the resultant dust-free floor was quite a contrast: 

It's been quite a revelation having this robot vacuum cleaner. I didn't think the house was THAT dirty, and assumed that once or twice per week would be sufficient to keep it clean. But we've been running it six times a week in the main part of the house - we give it a rest on Sundays - and still it sucks up a significant amount of dust every day, albeit not as much as the first time. Here, for instance, is today's offering, after about six weeks of use and something like 55 hours running time in total (according to the app):

The white bits that fell out when I opened it are probably plaster dust; considerable work is happening upstairs, which will be the subject of another blog post when it's finished. But there's not much of that. The cats are moulting as the weather warms up, so no doubt a large part of the dust is due to cat hairs, but even so... the house must have been much dirtier than we realised, and it may be months before we can run the Roomba less frequently.

And I'm happy to report that both sneezing (notwithstanding the plaster dust) and snoring have reduced considerably. 

A quiet 'day in the life'....

Since the family departed, I have taken very few photos. I've been scanning a lot of negatives from the 1960s and 1970s, both my own and some of my father's, and knitting, and proof-reading a book which my brother is writing. These don't take up my whole time, yet the days seem to move on increasingly fast. I suppose it's a sign of late middle age.

However, one photo I did take was of a Middle Eastern wedding, which took place on the beach where we were sitting with our friends, a couple of weeks ago. As we watched, hotel staff came and set up chairs and a table, guests started to arrive - the men in suits and ties, the women in dresses and high heels, which looked a bit awkward on the sand. After a while the bride and groom arrived, and the ceremony itself cannot have been more than ten minutes. People out on the beach watched with interest. Three of the children from our group went up quite close...

Today, I haven't spoken to another person (cats excluded). For an Introvert like me, that's actually a relaxing and energising way to spend a day. Richard went up to Nicosia yesterday, in preparation for providing PA for a day conference organised by some friends. So he's been out all day. Last night I decided I'd read in bed for a couple of hours, so went upstairs around eight o'clock, the cats having put themselves to bed already (we shut them into our dining room/kitchen area overnight so they don't wake us in the early hours!).

As ever, after about an hour my eyes started to droop, and I eventually turned out my light about 9.30pm and must have fallen asleep immediately. I woke shortly after 5.30am.  Normally, at this time of year, I would then go for a walk with my friend Sheila. But they're away at present, and I can rarely motivate myself to walk by myself, unless I'm doing some errands.

After feeding the cats, dealing with cat litter and reading for a while, I realised that I had forgotten to soak the dried fruit for a 'celebration cake' I was planning on baking this morning. I'm not being ultra organised for Christmas; this is an extra one which I promised some years ago to Richard, for his forthcoming special birthday. So I weighed the fruit, and put it in brandy, and put it aside.

I was also planning on making another batch of tomato ketchup today, and some more apple-and-tomato chutney. I had bought a 4kg bag of tomatoes at the local fruit stall a couple of days ago, for the grand price of a euro. They were still in good condition, but I needed to start using them.  So I chopped apples, and onions, and garlic, and tomatoes and started them both off in separate large pans.

I should perhaps also mention that in the middle I had mend my kitchen scales; they're very light, and have a tendency to stick to the bowl. I keep on forgetting, and I don't know how many times they have landed on the floor. I managed to break at least one set in the past by doing this, and our last set became unreliable, weighing incorrectly, after such a crash.  My current scales seem to be quite sturdy, and are still accurate... but today's crash made part of the insides come off and rattle around. I had to find a cross-point screwdriver and undo them to fix it - and was quite pleased with myself for succeeding.

I glanced at the time... and it was already eight o'clock. Time for breakfast, and a glance at my email and Facebook...

Then I washed up the utensils I'd been using; when I poured out the washing up water, a cockroach (shudder) ran out of the sink and behind the microwave. These are an ongoing problem in Cyprus in the summer; I've reached the stage where I no longer drop everything, scream, and leave the room. At least, not every time I see one. Instead I armed myself with Biokill and sprayed behind the microwave.  I turned around to stir the chutney, and turned back in time to see the roach running down the counter top and into a corner.

I didn't want to chase it around the kitchen spraying more potentially toxic insecticide, even if Biokill is milder than most. So I grabbed our large broom from the utility balcony, and swept the roach outside. I'm getting a lot braver.

Once the computer's on, it's easy to get distracted. There was an interesting discussion on one of the Facebook groups I'm on. I decided to start scanning some negatives... and kept going, finishing two or three films rather than just one. I answered a few questions on an online forum I participate in... and kept finding more that I could respond to.  I played moves in my Lexulous games. I checked my email. I briefly browsed the BBC news site.

In between doing those things, I kept popping to the kitchen to stir the chutney. I decided to move all the appliances on the worktops and clean behind them, but only did a couple at a time. I made our bed with clean sheets, as I do on Saturdays now, and I put on some laundry.

I usually clean the house on Saturdays too, and try to get that done before lunch-time, but my back was aching after all the chopping of vegetables, and I kept getting distracted by the computer. I followed links to interesting articles on Facebook. I went to Picasa, my photo-editing software, to check the results of the negatives I'd been scanning, and to add names to the faces.

Then I spent half an hour at Memrise - where I'm teaching myself some world geography, and Greek vocabulary - and DuoLingo, where I'm attempting to get better at modern Greek.  Not that I seem to make much progress in understanding other people speaking Greek - and almost everyone we know speaks excellent English anyway.

After lunch I dusted the whole house with my long-handled faux feather duster, including the ceiling fans, then turned them on as it was getting a bit humid. Summer is coming to an end, with the temperatures 'only' about 30C in the shade, at the most, so I was a bit surprised at the sticky feeling this afternoon.  I'm still using air conditioning in my study, as computers can't deal with anything over about 28C.

After another break at the computer (more photos, more forums, a Sudoku game) I swept the whole house, vacuumed the living room rug and dining room chairs, then mopped everywhere.  In between times, I sterilised six jars and transferred the newly-finished chutney to it.

Later, I labelled the chutney and put it away, next to the mango chutney I made at the end of August. I don't particularly enjoy making chutney, but I like eating it very much, so am always pleased to have a supply that should last us at least another six months or so.

When I'd finished the cleaning, I sat down at the computer again and caught up with some email.  And Facebook, and forums, and did a bit more photo organising...

By the time I'd had something to eat in the evening, I realised it was too late to make the cake, which might have to cook for three or four hours, so I'll do that tomorrow. I cleared up the kitchen, yet again, and put the dishwasher on. I am still, after eleven years in this house, very thankful indeed for my dishwasher.

I've been thinking for a few days that I needed to write a blog post, so although I was going to close my computer down an hour ago, I thought I'd 'just start' one. As ever, once I'd started, it was hard to stop...

The cats had a bit of a fracas this evening; Alex went out for a while, and then Jane started attacking him when he came in again. It's happened a couple of times before, usually when he's got into fights. I don't know what caused it this time, but I separated them for a while.  Happily, she soon got over it. And while I was in the middle of writing this blog post, Alex came and started nibbling my legs, a sign that he wants me to go to the kitchen with him. I did so, and as Jane came too - and was quite affectionate with him - I shut them in for the night.

Oh, and if anyone's read this far, and is wondering where our grandchildren and their parents are... they are at last on the Logos Hope.  It's less than a month since they departed from Cyprus, though it feels like considerably longer. They spent a week in Canada with other relatives, then flew to the Dominican Republic. Yes, that country on a small island in the Caribbean, shared with Haiti, where two hurricanes have hit in the past couple of weeks. We were very anxious as Hurricane Irma approached, but they were in a large building with other new recruits on the south of the island, and - when they briefly managed to get online - we learned that the only effect for them was heavy rain. The ship and the crew had to go out to sea for a couple of days.

Our family and the other new recruits (around 100 people in all) have joined the ship now, according to its site updates, and again had to go a way out to sea when the port closed as Hurricane Maria drew new. They should be back by now, so we hope to hear from them soon.

Featuring falls and feet

On Sunday afternoon, had you chanced to call by our house, you would have found me, if not sitting down, doing something like a hop-shuffle. 

I was not practising tap dancing. Far from it. No, I had been oddly clumsy, about an hour before we had lunch...

But first, I should backtrack some more, to Monday last week. We were on our way to play a Settlers game with our friends, walking our usual route after dark when, to quote Dr Seuss in one of my favourite children's books, 'I stubbed my big toe on a very hard rock, and I flew through the air and I went for a sail...'*

The rock was actually a large stone thing near the edge of the pavement, supposedly to prevent cars from parking there, and it was totally in shadow as we walked... because there was a car parked right beside it.   I was chatting with Richard... and suddenly I was flat on my face. It was extremely painful, and I could feel blood beneath my chin. My right knee was hurting too. So I hobbled the last few yards to our friends' home, where I bathed my chin and knee (which was bleeding, although, oddly enough, my jeans had not sprung a hole) and put some arnica cream on the places where I felt bruised but not bleeding. 

I felt somewhat in shock, and it was painful to talk (worse to smile or laugh) but I managed to play a game and then walk home, and by the following morning felt mostly fine. My jaw was a little achey and my knee had a big scab, but otherwise I seemed none the worse for my experience.

Fast forward to Sunday, when I'd almost forgotten about the indignity of falling over. I was wearing flip-flops, as I usually do around the house in warmish weather, and was about to pop upstairs for something. I think my right flip-flop must have somehow flop-flipped underneath me, so instead of stepping onto the first (marble) step, my toes hit it, and I tripped and fell. I caught myself on some of the higher steps, but somehow bashed the top of my foot extremely hard. 

It was very, very painful. I could not put my foot down, at first. To get anywhere at all, even to a chair, I had to hop. Richard fetched me a bag of ice so I could hold it against my foot, raised on a beanbag, to try and ease the pain somewhat. And yes, the first sharp pangs did ease a little; after lunch I took some aspirin in the hope of both reducing the swelling and the pain. 

Despite - or perhaps because of - having grown up around medics, I tend to avoid doctors or hospitals whenever possible. I didn't think I had broken anything, and when I asked knowledgeable friends on Facebook, they all seemed to agree that even if an x-ray showed that I had cracked a bone in a toe, nothing would be done other than strapping it to the next one, and telling me to rest. 

Hopping wasn't really helpful because every time I hopped, my right toes and foot jarred badly, and I was worried about overbalancing.  So I came up with the idea of encasing my foot in a lengthy roll of bubble wrap:

I found that, with this soft pad, I could put my foot gingerly down and shuffle around the house, at least on the level. I didn't attempt much, but it was better than being unable to visit the bathroom or get a drink of water. In order to go upstairs to bed in the evening I had to sit down on the stairs and reverse up, which wasn't easy, but it worked. 

I went downstairs the same way on Monday morning, and was pleased to find that, with the bubble wrap, I could now hobble around without too much pain. We didn't have any surgical tape, but masking tape worked well to tape my right toes together, to stop them jarring as I hobbled. Two of my toes looked very bruised, as did about half of the top of my foot, but most of the time there was almost no pain, for which I was very thankful. I remembered to elevate the foot as much as possible, too, and found I could even sit at my desk and type with my foot up: 

In the evening, we had been invited out to supper with our friends Mark and Joan. I'd let Joan know what I'd done, and they did offer to bring the meal to us here... but I was feeling somewhat cabin-feverish and said I would prefer to get out. I noticed that my foot was not as swollen as it was, and found that I could even fit a trainer on, with the laces very loose. So, clinging onto the banister, I hobbled down our outside stairs, and Richard drove me the half kilometre or so to our friends' apartment. Thankfully they have a good lift in their building, and not far to walk.

By bedtime, having made my way up two flights of stairs, my foot was aching once more, but I was glad to have been able to get out.

On Tuesday morning I felt so much better that I wore my flip-flops, and progressed to limping around the house. I hadn't cleaned the floors for several days, and they were looking pretty bad, so I swept and mopped the entire main level.. .it wasn't until I had nearly finished that my foot began aching again. Perhaps I over-did it. I took it easy for the rest of the day, and hoped that by Wednesday it would be significantly better once more - and was then disappointed that I was still limping and didn't feel much improvement at all.

This morning I was pleased to find that I have progressed further, to the stage of walking awkwardly rather than limping. At least, that's how it feels to me. I suppose the healing process is likely to be slow, now that the worst is over... and I'm just hoping that clumsiness and falls are not going to be a regular feature of my advance through middle age.

As I said on Facebook, I hope that I will never again take for granted the ability to walk without pain.


* from: I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew

Too many jackets?

Neither of us is particularly observant, so we tend to get used to the status quo, whatever that might be, forgetting to do anything about it. Over the winter, several jackets hang on the coat rack in our living room. We were still using light jackets in early April, but have not needed any since we returned to Cyprus early in May after our UK visit. However, somehow it didn't occur to either of us to move them somewhere else for the summer.

Until this morning. Actually it started yesterday when I put a load of laundry on, and realised that now we're wearing shorts and tee-shirts, I wasn't going to fill the machine. So I looked around for something else to add to the load, and decided to wash one of the jackets. Then I thought that perhaps today (Saturday) I'd do an extra load of laundry, and wash all the rest, then put them away in one of our closets for a few months.

So I removed them all, and the umbrellas, leaving a rather empty coat rack with nothing but sun hats:


I put two kagoules (waterproof light jackets) away at once as they're not washable. And I put away my warm winter jacket, one I've had for at least twenty years, but which I hardly ever wear as it doesn't often get cold enough. Everything else went in the wash.

Except that it was two entire loads. Just for jackets. Just for two people. This seems to me a little over the top. And while I forgot to take a picture of the overloaded coat rack before I removed them, I did take a photo of the jackets hanging out to dry:


That's two very light-weight zip-up hooded jackets of mine, one denim jacket that used to be Richard's but which I appropriated, and two fleeces of mine, plus three of Richard's fleeces, and his black body-warmer. All of which we did wear in the winter and early spring at different times. But somehow nine jackets - indeed, twelve including the three I put away without washing - seems somewhat excessive. Particularly as we have a few others that never left the closet, oh, and the one I washed yesterday.

And no, we don't buy clothes if we can help it. None of these jackets or fleeces is new. Somehow clothes, like other clutter, seem to accumulate in our house.

Rather like the large number of sun-hats now hanging on the coat-rack, which don't even include the ones Richard keeps in the boat for sailing.

Busy morning

Since I went to the PO Box on Friday, I didn't need to go today, so thought I'd have a fairly leisurely morning. I thought I'd do a bit of dusting and mopping, and I wanted to prepare a beef/bean casserole to cook in the slow cooker all day as we have two visitors staying at present. And I thought I'd bake a loaf of bread for lunch, and do some laundry... really, not a lot. And I thought I might pop out to the froutaria later, for some oranges.

At 8.00 I realised that I didn't have either onions or tomatoes, both of which I needed for the casserole. So, I thought I'd go to the froutaria early. I had a card to post, too, and knew I'd go past a letter box on the way.

I arrived home with two bags of fruit and veg... still clutching the card. So I dumped the shopping bags and went back to the letter box.

Then I prepared the casserole - including chopping and lightly stewing the tomatoes before adding them, and also soaking some beans so I could boil them later and add them too.. and set the slow cooker to work. So far so good.

Then I thought I'd better get the bread on, and remembered that I needed to make some almond milk to put in it. No problem, I put the almonds to soak yesterday. So I made that, and then got the bread ingredients in the breadmaker.

Then I remembered that we'd run out of lemonade... but I'd frozen some rind and juice last time we were given a large batch of lemons, so I pulled those out of the freezer, and made the lemonade.

Then I remembered that we'd almost run out of yogurt, so I prepared another batch of that, and put in the yogurt machine.

By then, it was about 10.00. So I put some laundry in the washing machine, and put away the dried laundry from Friday that was still hanging out.

I do like my kitchen 'servants'...

I was a bit tired by then - the cough still lingers - so I sat down for half an hour with a cup of blackberry fruity tea, and read some email.

At 10.30 I thought I'd just do the dusting and mopping, which I didn't think would take that long.

Then I remembered that on Sunday morning we'd woken up to find that the windows looked like this:


and the outside steps looked like this:


due to a rather blustery sandy rainstorm late Saturday night. If I'd been a good Cypriot housewife I would have cleaned them all on Sunday, but I try to take Sundays off as much as I can. I did brush the steps - not wanting sand trailed into the house - but that was all.

So I mopped the bathrooms, and the indoor stairs, and then had a go at the outside ones - I needed two entire buckets of water, and although they looked a little better by the time I'd finished, they weren't great.

Then I dusted the inside of the house, which was a bit more dusty than usual - perhaps also due to the sandstorm. Then I swept the floors, and dry-moppd them.

Then I thought I'd have a go at the windows... and that took me rather longer than I'd expected, but they did look a great deal better when I had finished. Then I cleaned the kitchen, including the sink and the area around the window.

Then I finally got to wet-mopping the floors. After that, I hung out the laundry, removed the bread from the breadmaker, and bottled the lemonade.

By which time it was 1.00pm... so I set the table for four of us for lunch.

I'm kind of tired this evening...