Crepes and Mulled Whine in your pants

[Auriga]

Somebody had to do it

DH's job is to put the washing out to dry and then collect it up to be sorted.

He is getting better (after 17 years!!!) at not crumpling it all onto the radiators (whilst he hangs his shirts on hangers) and then sort-of folding it into a pile for sorting. However he seems incapable of knowing whose socks are whose

Aaaargh BTM the crumpling wet washing onto radiators puts me into a decline.
Having said that dh irons.
But he has a mortal fear of the washing machine. Given that its a machine and therefore intrinsically a thing if interest , I can't work out why.

Glad it's not just me! DH irons his own shirts. DD and DS don't iron anything (well, DS occasionally irons the odd thing) I only iron my stuff in an emergency

BTM - I have trouble with the socks and I am chief sock sorter . I have banned clothes on radators and have bought a dehumidifier after getting a damp bathroom and one of the bedrooms which never gets the sun. I am now and obsessive at monitoring the relatve humidity of each bedroom.

Dp, I swear, stands 5 metres away from the clothes horse (and without shaking anything out) throws the laundry at the thing - I am sure he is mentally playing a game in his head. 10 for a direct hit, 5 if it hangs on by a sleeve.....

He can Hoover if nagged regularly and actually does a better job of mopping floors than I do....

Hatty, how do you monitor humidity? I am getting a bit obsessed with my dehumidifer since I read that if you have doors and windows open when it is on, it tries to dry out the world. This made me feel quite anxious and I am considering asking the rest of my family to move out so I can provide optimum drying conditions. They will keep moving around, breathing and opening doors.

lalsy - I'm a bit like that at the moment. The relative humidity is shown on the dehumidifier when I switch it on. After much research on the Home and Property threads I found that over 70% can cause mould to grow. The average British(and in my case French) home is usually about 50% to 55%. So I usually aim for 55 - lower than this takes hours. You need to shut the doors and Windows when it's on though. Have I bored everybody yet?

I wanted to ban radiators (no probs with humidity, more the ugliness of socks and pants everywhere) and bought a lovely 3-tier drier from Lakeland which DH then vetoed and I had to return it

In a previous life in a damp, partially subterranean house with no central heating, I had a fearsome warhorse of a dehumidifier. I used to use it to dry the washing. :) It took a while, but it sort of worked. Made a bloody racket, though. In comparison these days I live a life of luxury: central heating, a tumble dryer, a Lakeland drier and a bottle of mould killer. Oh yes.

In the previous life, I had a husband who used to do the hoovering. He took his de-humidifier when he left.

Not me Hatty, not me! I'm off to check the dial on mine - I usually just set it to "4" but do remember something about %. Family will just open doors without good reason though. BTM, I don't want to make you jealous but my dehumidifier sits next to my 3-tier Lakeland airer.....

have you noticed we are in 'most active'? think it must be the allure of the thread title or perhaps the perennial allure of dehumidifiers

Oh the exciting lives we all lead - dehumidifiers, driers, hoovers...... Be still my beating heart ;-)

Ha! at 'most active' it must be the knickers and socks drying over the radiators that has people hooked

Lalsy and Hatty: we are in the big red button club. Ucas form has gone .
Hi-5!
< goes to lie down >

For various reasons, DP does all our washing. I put it away. Allegedly. (In practice I delegate.)

Hola, Ladies of Pantitude. I have finished today's feature. Tomorrow's editing has not arrived (ha!). DD1's parents' evening went rather well apart from a history teacher of stunning dullness. No wonder it's her least favourite subject. I asked her how I could enthuse DD1 about history and she simply didn't understand me: I said what about things like historical novels/museums/etc and she looked blank and suggested various websites. Gah.

high five Crem.

That's a shame, MI.
DD had the most inspirational history teacher in Y7/8. He looked like a young OU lecturer from the 70's, but they LOVED him. He left to do air-traffic control, or something

I collared a teacher I happen to know is terrific at history and asked her. She's going to email me.

It's not that I want to coach her or anything. I just want her to understand what fun history can be.

Maths teacher otoh totally took the point about long division and is going to give her a hand

Mi I remember well talking to dds history teacher in year 9 or 10 and she was equally unenthralled by my suggestion that dd might like to 'read around the subject ' and perhaps she could suggest some books about 2nd WW. Teacher just looked at me like I was weird and I don't think she understood what I was saying.
I was thinking ( of course) of interesting books like Charlotte Grey or the boy in the striped pyjamas or that kind of thing to help dd get enthused.
Duh...,silly me thinking that history wasn't about learning the dates of various military campaigns to pass an exam

FFS, all her other teachers clearly get her enthusiastic. And she confessed she did have an interesting class the other day...but it was with the supply teacher .

DD1 has an uninspiring history teacher at the moment, although it doesn't help that they are doing the ancient Greeks and Romans at the moment, which she did to death in her last two schools. She is very enthused by WW2, which she did a project on in her last term at her last school, and plods around where we live, seeing where the bombs fell, and trots down to the IWM on a Sunday to learn a bit more.

It's quite sad really, to think that someone can make history dull, when it really should be utterly fascinating with very little effort. My history teacher at school stuck on a moustache when he was teaching us about Hitler and the Weimar Republic and made some of us wear yellow stars on our arms. He was quite bonkers but he certainly got results (I let him down by being the only one in the class to get a B in my O level).

I went down to the "Gin and Jag Belt" (as my dear late father used to call it) this evening and took DD1 out for dinner. I had a G & T with Fever Tree tonic and was not impressed - I think it is too flowery for me.

High five Crem

Nice thread title!

I disliked my history teacher intensely and the lessons were very dull, so I didn't even choose it as one of my O level options. Dd wasn't "brave enough" in her essay writing for her history teacher, so she didn't select it as one of her options either. And then after she had chosen her options, her essay writing suddenly got better and she wanted to do it, but wasn't allowed to change her choices.

So, when your offspring have set their heart on following a particular career pathway that you believe is a no-go, what do you do? I am currently trying to encourage dd to get some work experience with a vet, as despite the fact that she struggles a bit with chemistry, she insists that she must do science A levels and aim for vet school. Our vet would be happy to help on the work experience front, but dd needs to take the initiative and apply in writing. (Which may happen, but currently looks somewhat unlikely) She has to choose her A and AS options in January, which seems a bit mad and guaranteed to cause even more stress. We have already had a week of huge despair as she says that she's not interested in doing any of her A* predicted subjects at A level (aside from maths) because they are all "boring" and she can't do anything with them. She has her heart set on vet science or some other kind of sciencey career path as she says everything else is for losers. (like me, as she has pointed out on occasion)

Does she actually like animals, Stropps?

(BTW your cheese sauce recommendation saved us after parents' evening as I could put together low-effort supper for offspring barking with starvation.)

I like Fever Tree tonic. Particularly with gin in it, obviously. And the juice of a fresh lime. Though concede it is probably not a yearning I should be having while awaiting some editing that was supposed to arrive two days ago and is allegedly urgent...