Making a little pile

Well hello dear readers. I keep forgetting about this tipster blog over here.

Today's tip is to do with vacumming.

First tip is how to spell it.

It's apparently how I've spelled it up there. Just a fluke I think.

Second tip is how to avoid dragging it out of the cupboard, finding a socket for the plug, being annoyed when you quickly realise that you'll have to use more than one electrical outlet to do the entire floor. It always seems such a nuisance getting that thing out, doesn't it? Having to put the hose in, extend the hose. Bloody nora!

Now, please note, the following tip will only work if you have a smooth floor covering, ie wood boards, linoleum, tiles. NOT CARPET.

What you do is get a broom and you sweep up all the dust, dirt, hair, fluff bunnies and their children, shreds of paper, dropped cereal, lint, skin shreddings and finger nail bits and you make a pile in the corner somewhere. You leave the broom over it. This stops people a) seeing it and b) walking on top of it.

Then next time you have the vac out, you suck it up.

Try it. It's very European.

a while between tips

i have one tip for you, dear readers.

it's possibly the biggest and most important tip i can impart.

floss your teeth. always. no matter how tired you are, how drunk, how sure you are there is nothing stuck in between them.

i have just returned from an hour in the dentist chair - session #2 of my SECOND root canal.

it's uncomfortable. it's expensive. and it's probably avoidable

BY


FLOSSING


EVERY


DAY.


that is all.

restoring white havaianas to their pristine glory

ok, so i know it was a mistake to buy white havvies. i know that now. but the fact is that the black ones i bought at the same time i bought the white ones, are long dead. and the brown ones i bought after the black ones died, broke yesterday. yes we were walking up fitzroy street from checking out the festival of st. kilda when the bit that goes between the toe snapped just outside that coolsie bar on the corner of fitz and canterbury rds. no, not the prince, and not the terminus and not the chemist [that's not a bar you fool] but the other one. while gigi was trying to get in the door past the rather slim bouncers, i kind of twisted my foot and snappo. so my brown thongs are now in the bin outside that bar.

so i had to walk barefoot home.

do you realise how dangerous this is in st kilda?

do you realised that within a 200 metre radius of the pig and whistle/elephant and wheelbarrow place there are a billion shards of broken glass?

anyway we got home without me slashing my feet.

and then i went and got my grotty, dirty, grubby, blackened "white" thongs out of the cupboard.

they are horrible.

but until i get my next pair [i'm going brown again. it's my fave colour] i would like to try and clean these ones.

yes, i've tried an old toothbrush with some sort of ajaxy powder.

any tips?

did you know when you freeze leftovers, it's hard to tell whether it's chilli con carne, spag bol sauce or sausage and cous cous?

if you're like me and you cook way too much each time, either intentionally or not, then your freezer is probably chokkers of left overs.

this is good. it means people like us can pull stuff out of the freezer, defrost and dine like royalty quite quickly and easily.

i have had a labelling problem, though. first, i got sucked into the tupperware type system where you have a coloured plastic disc that gets shoved/clipped into the end of the box. on this you are meant to write, with the special pencil, whatever it is that you are freezing. you can rub these out (unsatisfactorily, i might say) and re-write as often as you like.

this "system" lasted about one time with me.

but i've come up with something better, which only today was tested properly.

get yourself a whiteboard marker. it's important you don't use a permanent marker. (the permanent marker of choice in our home is the sharpie. they are great, but they stay forever.)

what you then do is write the name of the food, probably not bill or percy, on the lid before you freeze. i just did this with bol sauce which was in one of those plastic spc? fruit bottles with the green lids. i find these are good for freezing leftovers.

and the label i'd written on it just washed off perfectly in the soapy water.

i am so pleased with myself. needless to say.

you give it a go if you want.

i haven't tested this yet on other plastic-ware so i suggest you be cautious with your really expensive/spesh stuff.

but so far, it's looking good and i think i may have created a solution to something that has been bothering me for a long time.

my first comment asking for advice

the delightful dxxxx left a comment about a problem with some tights.

it reads as follows:

Hey tipster - Got any tips on what to do with a pair of gym tights which *someone* (ie not me) put in the wash with towels and are now covered in green fluffy type stuff? Are they a lost cause or is there something you can do to get rid off the the offending fluff?Much loveDxxxx

don't you love it that she calls me tipster?

here's my response:

i presume the "green fluffy type stuff" to which you refer is pilling which has transferred from the towels to the gym tights?

are they small tight balls or is it a looser fluff?

if small tight balls you can get a little machine that's kind of like a circular electric shaver which shaves the balls off and they collect in a plastic repository. my brother gave me one of these gadgets years ago. i don't know what happened, perhaps i got rid of it because it didn't work, but if i had it, i'd sent it straight up to you.

failing that, you might just have to spend an hour or more picking the fuckers off. have a friend help you.

if it's looser fluff, you might just have to go the manual pick, or there are i think combs that can comb stuff off.

or try the razor method mentioned in the first post, on sheet pilling. it worked for me.

if anybody else has anything to suggest, please do.

and sorry dxxxx for taking a while to get back to you. not sure how long your question was there, i haven't been here for a while.

x

how to make a cat, and it seems a dog, take liquid medicine

this tip comes from another outspoken female who is a genius about many things, it seems.

gigi, the dog, was very sick last week.

the vet gave me a pink liquid and a syringe (sans needle) that i had to use to get 20mls of this gloop down her throat.

i was able to get the syringe in, well at the back of her throat. i pushed the hammer and it went down, but then as she swallowed it alot of it came back up, through her lips, which i was holding closed, and then oozed out onto my hands and the floor.


mmm. success.


then when i mentioned this on my blog, aof stepped up with the solution. she said it worked for her cat, and thought it might be a goer.

natural yoghurt. that's it. yoghurt. mix the medicine in to some natural yoghurt. dogs love yoghurt. well, the gigi does, she loves anything, even wood which might be the reason she ended up with colitis in the first place.

i put the medicine in the yoghurt and she licked the bowl clean from one side of the patio to the other. ok, it's a small patio, but she was pushing that bowl around with her tongue like crazy.

and if it's tablets you are giving the dog, i find that they wolf it down if it has a bit of cheese wrapped around it.

so there you go. cheese and yoghurt. yoghurt and cheese.

how to find out if there's an annoying yappy dog in the vicinity when you want to buy or rent a house

so there's this house that you want to rent, or buy. you hate noisy dogs, and you want to make sure there's not going to be an annoying one nearby.




this is really easy. and simple. i can't believe you haven't thought of this before.



first, get hold of one of these:










or these:













i myself use one of these, which is quite effective:














this is the gigi. can you feel the gigilove?







then you need one of these:











attach to the dog like so:






do i have to tell you everything?





and go walk in the street where you want to check out a particular property. whenever we walk around the streets all manner of dogs come the howling, the baying, the snapping, the rowfing, the yap-yap-yapping. it's like a kids' book, with all the different noises that come from behind fences when we walk past.

and then you know where they are. works every time, 100% guaranteed.