Unspoken battles with your other half…

Hidey tidy – yes. With added “I don’t know where I put it, I just put it away!”

Dishwasher – not as bad as so me by the sound of it but it’s usually not great.

Lids – never on anything and if they are they’re not tightened – the excuse is usually a passive aggressive “I was busy/in a hurry . . .

“1/2 a job – seemingly nothing gets finished ever then it’s on to the next 1/2 arsed job. Yet I have a few things “in progress” and they get tidied away. See above

Car keys or anything regularly used and important.  I have a place for my keys, I come in and they go there.  That way I don’t have to think, I just know where they are. If I didn’t do this I’d forget, it keeps life simple. The wife on the other hand, keys stay in whatever item of clothing, bag, whatever she was last wearing/using and that gets dumed wherever so every time it’s “where is my key?” – give me strength.

The online shopping – I’ll admit it’s something I know nothing about as I don’t get involved and it does seem to be quite awkward with multiple “do you want THIS?” and “are you sure” popups  but the amount of times she doesn’t complete checkout and we end up with 1/2 the bits missing or it arriving at the wrong time are ridiculous. Surely she should have learned by now how to do it.

The washing up – why does the counter have to be swimming in water every time I go to do it?

Dumping stuff on the kitchen counter where it will get wet (see above) – bags, clothes, work writing pads important paperwork.  All just gets dumped on the kitchen counter where it will get ruined by the flood of water from the sink. No “what if” thinking.

Sure that’s not exhaustive and I’m sure her’s is as long as mine.

Do love her

When I turn the fan back on because of the windscreen misting up again she’ll say “You always have to do the opposite ”

I bite my tongue.

You want me to drive, I’ll drive. You want to do it, great. What’s not acceptable is you asking me to drive and then sitting there R2D2-ing for half the journey telling me I’m doing it wrong.

I swear if we ever do have an accident it’ll be because she’ll choose to distract me at the very moment I most need to concentrate, because she’s seen a car in Cancun or something.

The washing up – why does the counter have to be swimming in water every time I go to do it?

She’s very efficient at washing up. Actually, efficient is the wrong word. Obsessive? She’ll fill the sink to wash a pan and two plates, because she says it bugs her seeing it there. Fair enough I suppose.

But then it goes on the draining rack – still filled with the previous round of dry washing-up. Net result, everything we own stacked up on the racks with the cupboards bare because every time something is dry it gets something dripping dumped on top of it. Heavy farmhouse pans stacked on top of glassware? Check. The half-sink filled with rinsed recycling? Check. Tea towels, clammy bibs which make my skin crawl, washcloths all dangling all over the place? Check. My nice paring knife rammed point-first into a metal drainer? You get the idea.

Going to bed, she’ll say “can you do the washing up for me so I don’t have to face it in the morning?” Sure, it’s like a plate and a bowl, seconds of a job, but first I’ll have to go on an archeological dig to render the sink useable.

Sure that’s not exhaustive and I’m sure her’s is as long as mine.

Undoubtedly. I dread to think what would be said about me if she ever discovered Mumsnet.

 R2D2-ing

Top level verbing there.

And one for the stolen from STW lexicon alongside “throbber”.

“Is that actually true?  If it is then it’s surely negligible and probably as much to do with evaporation (ie less liquid) than convection currents.”

Yes, ’tis true. I was sceptical myself so I tried it and it worked. It’s  not about evaporation, it is as you mentioned, convection currents and you can see it in the results.

A standard ice cube tends to be clearer on the outside and white in the middle, kind of illustrating how the water got cold on the outside and progressively colder towards the centre.

An ice cube made from hot water has cracks and fissures running through it, tracing the path of the convection currents as they redistributed temperature through the body of water.

Sh*t ice cubes though, they tend to crack and disintegrate when you put them in your drink, turning your Bacardi and Coke into a Slush Puppy.

(Perhaps that’s how they make slush Puppies? Using ice made from hot water so it crushes more easily??)

You started it Cougar! I’m tempted to refer you to YouTube videos of bottles of water that are hovering around freezing point that instantly turn to ice when tapped lightly, you can se how the convection current principle works within a fraction of a second as the water instantly turns to ice as the cold travels through the water like bolts of lightning. The same as happens within a more gradual timeframe when freezing ice cubes from hot water.

Interesting.

I’m tempted to refer you to YouTube videos of bottles of water that are hovering around freezing point that instantly turn to ice when tapped lightly, you can se how the convection current principle works within a fraction of a second as the water instantly turns to ice as the cold travels through the water like bolts of lightning.

I’ve seen this happen with pressure.  Put a bottle of Coke in the freezer until ice crystals are starting to form, then open it (carefully!) and the pressure drop causes the whole thing to insta-freeze like a chain reaction.  (It’s also devoid of carbonation when it thaws.)

I’m still not convinced that it’s convection though.  Cold water has convection currents, getting water to sit still is actually pretty difficult.

Hmm.

Ah I forgot one – the grill.  I tend to grill things with the door open because I have more chance of remembering it’s in there and I can catch it if it starts to burn because I’ve forgotten it.  Apparently that was how it used to be done, in the olden days, but modern grills should be closed. So we get a lot of closing of the grill door and a lot of “oh ****! It’s burnt” moments.

I’m with the lid off for boiling things party, sticking the lid on just means it will boil over and make a mess/stink.  I’ll live with the few pence wasted in electric to save on cleaning up chemicals.

First Google hit:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-it-true-that-hot-water/

Car keys or anything regularly used and important. I have a place for my keys, I come in and they go there.

Car keys, i have a little storage draw, all the keys go in there, plus a couple of other “useful if i’m going out” things, penknife, earpods, stuff.
The ex keeps her keys in her pockets. She never remembers which pockets.
Came to a peak when *I* lost *both* car keys when cleaning it.
We spent ages looking for the keys, on the drive, under the car, in the vacuum cleaner and so on.

It was still my fault at this point.

Her key turned up a couple of days of searching in the pocket of *her* jacket. Her long, winter jacket, that she hadn’t worn for about 6 months. So the key had technically been lost for months. She’d just been using mine.
My key turned up some time the following week in the pocket of the jeans she’d been wearing when she’d gone to the car (that i was washing) grabbed the key got _something_ out of the boot and then locked the car, and then walked away.
She’d been wearing those jeans *while* searching for the goddamn keys.

I still got the blame for not looking after the keys.

Doing my best Gollum impersonation the next time she misplaced a key was (i thought) absolutely hilarious.

It’s not *actually* why she’s my ex. But i am glad i can always find my keys.

She actually lost the spare key to my place, i properly went off on her about it that time. She now has a little storage draw where all her keys go. And the house key is now looked after by one of my kids, with a lower chance of misplacement.

She has temporarily lost her new partners car keys, and house keys. More than once.

I suspect it’s because she didn’t have to lock up after herself until her early 20’s, her mum was SAH until she was 10 or 11 and then went to work at the school she was at and her dad retired when she was just into her teens, so there was *always* someone home.

Reading that article there seems to be a lot of factors at play, including (and I stand corrected) evaporation.

The article does clarify that hot water may not freeze faster than cold water but will freeze faster than lukewarm water. When I tried my ice cube tray experiment I filled one tray with lukewarm water from a filter jug sat at room temp (not cold from the tap) and the other with hot.

I’m still fascinated by those bottles of water that freeze in an instant with cracks both visible and audible, like an electric shock

I’m with the lid off for boiling things party, sticking the lid on just means it will boil over and make a mess/stink.  I’ll live with the few pence wasted in electric to save on cleaning up chemicals.

Put the lid on and turn the heat down once it starts to simmer – you use less electricity and less of the contents evaporate away. You can simmer covered pots  at a couple of settings lower than is needed without a lid and they don’t boil over. (Obviously, if the intention is to reduce the contents down then leave the lid off…)

Reading that article there seems to be a lot of factors at play

Yeah.  TL;DR “it’s complicated.”

It’s not *actually* why she’s my ex.

Is it because you have draws instead of drawers?

The warm water freezing thing is better know as the Mpemba effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect

Is it because you have draws instead of drawers?

No, i have neither. It’s lådor, kalsonger or byxor that i get confused between over here. And then half a dozen other versions of both words.

“Put the lid on and turn the heat down once it starts to simmer – you use less electricity and less of the contents evaporate away”

You’re late to the party IdleJon, we’ve gone all Tomorrows World and American Scientific on this subject now.

Simmering the pasta with the lid on will result in the starch forming a frothy mess that will burp out of the pan all over the hob. That’s why a rolling boil with a wooden spoon laid on top of the pan (which stops the froth from boiling over) is preferable.

However, I have discovered an energy saving happy medium, I now boil my pasta with the lid half on with the wooden spoon poking out, which still achieves the rolling boil, no starch boiling over result but with the gas on slightly less than full chat, thus closing the gaps in the energy / time / quality coefficient to a level that the average STW  forum member might find acceptable.

IdleJon
I’m with the lid off for boiling things party, sticking the lid on just means it will boil over and make a mess/stink.  I’ll live with the few pence wasted in electric to save on cleaning up chemicals.
Put the lid on and turn the heat down once it starts to simmer – you use less electricity and less of the contents evaporate away. You can simmer covered pots  at a couple of settings lower than is needed without a lid and they don’t boil over. (Obviously, if the intention is to reduce the contents down then leave the lid off…)

Fine if you have glass lids that enable you to see what’s going on – ours are Schrodinger’s pans.

I think my wife is playing cupboard jenga with me. When I need a certain bowl, towel, cup, baking tray etc, I can either try to remove it from the perilously balanced pile without the pile collapsing. Or what I normally do is take everything out and then put everything back in so it’s not a trap for the next person.

didnthurt
I think my wife is playing cupboard jenga with me. When I need a certain bowl, towel, cup, baking tray etc, I can either try to remove it from the perilously balanced pile without the pile collapsing. Or what I normally do is take everything out and then put everything back in so it’s not a trap for the next person.

She’s using you . . .

“Put the lid on and turn the heat down once it starts to simmer – you use less electricity and less of the contents evaporate away”

You’re late to the party IdleJon, we’ve gone all Tomorrows World and American Scientific on this subject now.

I did wonder if I was missing something!

Simmering the pasta with the lid on will result in the starch forming a frothy mess that will burp out of the pan all over the hob

Yeah, I don’t cook pasta with a lid on.

Carry on as you were! 😀

Fine if you have glass lids that enable you to see what’s going on – ours are Schrodinger’s pans.

Weirdly, we only have two lids, both glass, but one is far too big for any pan that we use. Anyway, like I said, ignore me, I was at a different party it seems. 😀

When a toilet roll is finished I would have thought the logical practical thing would be to take it to the recycling bin. But in our house it will sometimes get left by someone on the bathroom shelf, where it sits until the next toilet roll is finished, and then do both cardboard rolls get taken to the recycling? oh no now we begin the unspoken contest to see how many subsequent empty toilet rolls can fit inside the initial cardboard roll! Said ‘roll’ takes residence on the bathroom shelf gaining mass until someone breaks or it gets to the point another empty roll just won’t fit, and someone is forced to put the now near solid cardboard roll in the recycling ( I inevitably break before this point).

Talking of recycling we have two containers inside next to each other, one is for cardboard recycling, and one for metal and glass recycling. The idea being when either is full they can easily be taken outside and tipped into the respective larger bins outside.

In practice we end up with two containers jam packed with mixed cardboard, metal and glass recycling in both. These only get emptied when absolutely nothing else can be stuffed or rammed in, or balanced on top, and inevitably things start tumbling down in a Jenga stylee. At this point it’s now a real ballache to sort them all into the right sort of recycling! I suspect that the other half (and kids) cross contaminate recycling with inner laughter and smiles on their faces as they know it bugs the hell out of me!

When a toilet roll is finished I would have thought the logical practical thing would be to take it to the recycling bin. But in our house it will sometimes get left by someone on the bathroom shelf, where it sits until the next toilet roll is finished,

I think that in our house, the aim is to get as many toilet rolls part-used as possible. And nobody else seems to know how to replace the one in the holder.

I think my wife is playing cupboard jenga with me. When I need a certain bowl, towel, cup, baking tray etc, I can either try to remove it from the perilously balanced pile without the pile collapsing. Or what I normally do is take everything out and then put everything back in so it’s not a trap for the next person.

I sling it straight back in again with gay abandon. I figure, if there’s any complaints, she started it.

Simmering the pasta with the lid on will result in the starch forming a frothy mess that will burp out of the pan all over the hob

Bring the pasta to a rolling boil. Put the lid on. Turn the heat off.

The water stays hot enough to cook the pasta perfectly well.

“Bring the pasta to a rolling boil. Put the lid on. Turn the heat off. The water stays hot enough to cook the pasta perfectly well.”

Acceptably maybe  it not perfectly. Though I’d say for fresh egg spaghetti it’s fine, for any thing thicker, like tagliatell or pasta shapes it is sub optimal.

Probably the most important pasta question though is do increased energy costs eliminate the savings made from using dried pasta instead of fresh??