Appliances make nice homes

I started the morning, after what I would call my usual walk except that it hasn’t been very regular since being back, and a bath, by cleaning the kettles. I thought this was a necessary and urgent action because I found a cockroach, belly-up, in the less-used kettle, the one that has been standing in the cupboard for the last 8 weeks while we haven’t been having bible study. Unfortunately I found the cockroach after we had served tea, which means that I gave our guests cockroach soup. I noticed an off smell, but wouldn’t have thought it was coming from the kettle! So, post-haste I vinegared it and cleaned it all out. After lunch, which was sandwiches for Caleb and me, leftover pies for Nick, and the remains of a package of 2-minute noodles for Aaron (the rest of the packet was sprinkled liberally on the lounge carpet by Aaron, who had been carrying the closed packet around with him since we bought them yesterday, and had finally managed to accidentally open them, spewing out much of the very crushed contents), I played a few rounds of hide-and-seek with Caleb, as he is complaining that he never sees me – all this because they spent three days at the holiday bible club last week, so now need to make up for lost time. Then I thought that it would be a good time to see if we could get Caleb’s laptop working using a South African adapter rather than the American one we have, which restricts him to using it in Nick’s office where he can plug it into the transformer. Very cautiously, Nick and I plugged it in and switched it on, ready to turn it off at the first sound of any crackling or evidence of fired, and it actually works. This is really great, because now both boys can use their laptops anywhere in the house. I bought a two-point multi-plug in SA, so they both plug their adapter into that, then that goes into a British/SA adapter, and finally into the wall. While I was busy with the final supper preparations which involved frying parboiled potatoes on the stove and supervising the boiling of vegetables, Scilla came by. She arrived back here with the ship this morning, for her three-month optometrical stint. She will be here until 11 April. It’s great to have her back – this is the third time she has been since we’ve been here. She stayed and chatted in the kitchen right up until supper was ready, although declined an invitation to stay to dinner as she had a lot of unpacking to do, to get her equipment sorted out and set up.