Coffee mugs and global commerce...

My husband really likes his coffee. So much so that, as a Christmas gift from me, he picked out one of those whiz-bang super-duper fancy-schmancy coffee machines that, if it had a set of wings, surely it could fly!

Six weeks after Christmas he seems happy with his coffee maker. He’s a mechanical engineer, after all, and he seems to be rather pleased with his new toy, fiddling with this control or that, visiting all manner of specialty coffee shops, buying tiny sample bags of this exotic coffee or that, all for trying out in his new…it grinds its own beans!...coffee machine.

One of the more interesting side effects of his new coffee obsession is his attention to coffee cups and mugs. Like most people, we have an eclectic collection of odd mugs, mostly broken sets, but a few strange souvenir mugs from various venues. They come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, some tall and narrow, some short and stout, all of them holding differing amounts of liquid. Hubby likes a big cup of coffee, but one of the unfortunate things about his fancy-schmancy coffee machine is that, while the spout height is adjustable, it is only adjustable to accommodate mugs of the short, shorter, shortest variety. A tall mug that will accommodate a man-sized serving of coffee just will not fit. Alas, my man’s hero-sized Tigger mug from Disneyland has had to be shelved!

So, the other day we were wandering through our local Pick ‘n’ Pay (South Africa’s answer to Safeway, for American readers) and happened upon some mugs that seemed to be the answer to his prayers…just tall enough to slip under the spout and wide enough…in a pleasingly tapered shape…to accommodate a healthy helping of coffee. And, to make them downright serendipitous, they were blue and white, which is the colour scheme of my kitchen accessories. We bought four, but only after searching through a dozen or more to find four relatively perfect ones…the rest having nicks, chips, kiln-marks, sloppy paint, or other such imperfections.

Hubby was overjoyed…we got home and he slipped one under the coffee machine’s spout and it was one of those millimetre-close fits. “Super,” I said. “Give me the mugs and I’ll wash them for you and you can make yourself a cup of coffee.”

Did I mention that they cost less than R7 each…less than a dollar? A peculiarly low price, considering that they seemed to be well made out of quality materials. They had a soft matte glaze that I recognized from more high-end crockery in the States, and while they were obviously seconds, they were nicely designed and made. It hadn’t seemed particularly odd in the store…just a really good buy…but at the sink I had to give them a second thought. The bottom of each mug was covered with a bar coded paper sticker and as I removed the first one I saw the words “The Cellar.” Odd, I thought, continuing to work the sticker off…wasn’t “The Cellar” the name Macy’s uses for its housewares section (which is ordinarily larger than an entire Boardman’s store and more fully stocked with higher quality merchandise)?

I continued to scrub at the sticker until it finally rolled up into a little gummy ball in my fingers and what did I find beneath it? “Made in China Expressly for Macy’s”! I let out a hoot of laughter, distracting Hubby from communing with his Beautiful Machine. “Macy’s!” I crowed. “These were made for Macy’s!” He looked momentarily non-plussed, then wondered aloud if Macy’s knew that merchandise made expressly for them was being sold by other retailers. Ordinarily, when seconds of this nature are released through other outlets, the identifying labels/marks are removed or obliterated…there should have been a big blob of black paint obscuring Macy’s name before this went on the shelf.

Other questions are brought to bear? Did the Chinese manufacturer have Macy’s permission to wholesale Macy’s QC rejects to other vendors? Did the Pick ‘n’ Pay buyer recognize that s/he may have been buying goods that the commissioning retailer may have ordered destroyed (a common practice for seconds in the ceramics industry)? Does Macy’s know that substandard merchandise bearing its name is being sold overseas? Is Macy’s earning anything from the sales of its goods here in South Africa?

My husband is happy with his new mugs, but this whole thing brings up some hard questions for me in relation to South Africa’s newest trading ventures with China. Will my next trip to America find me looking at South African goods that the commissioning manufacturer never intended for sale in the US…and for which he receives no earnings? Somehow, I don’t think that’s such a far-fetched idea anymore.

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Trees, SUVs and Chainsaws

Yah...so what do they have in common, trees, SUVs and chainsaws?

I couldn't have answered that question either until Thursday of this past week rolled around. Hubby, who has been rather jaunty since his promotion last November, cheerily ambled into our newly air-conditioned bedroom on Thursday afternoon and smilingly inquired of me "Did you know that a tree limb fell on your car?"

Given his cheerful and smiling disposition, it was clear that he was pulling my leg. I think I answered him with something like "Uh huh, yeah, right," and went right back to my computer. But he persisted. "No, really, come see," he urged. But I know his puckish sense of humour, so I naturally assumed that he actually wanted me to "discover" something new or amusing that he brought home...and so I went along with him and padded barefoot behind him out to the garage.

Imagine my surprise when he opened the garage door and in the driveway I saw a huge tree limb, with all its associated leaves, twigs, branches, bits and bobs, astraddle the bonnet of my Mercedes ML! He was not kidding!

Upon examination (after my heart was returned to its normal position in my chest), it wasn't as bad as it looked. Although the entire bonnet was buried under a heap of green, the limb hadn't fully separated from the tree and it was tenuously suspended just inches above the paint. Slowly, carefully, Hubby backed the car down the driveway until it had cleared the Limb of Damocles. Miraculously, the car was unscathed, but now we were faced with the problem of getting a humungous tree limb down without squashing anybody or sending someone into heatstroke...our little bow saw was going to take a lot of sweat to get through those broken limbs.

So today we took ourselves off to De La Rey, Cape Town's answer to Home Depot or Lowe's, and ended up bringing home a 2000W Ryobi electric chain saw. A rather pricey alternative to the bow saw, to be sure, but it cut through those tree limbs like a hot knife through butter. Hubby, an engineer and not one of those super-macho lumberjack wanna-be types, seemed to enjoy the experience tremendously. Bzzzzzzzzzzt! Before I knew it, the offending limbs were in the driveway and in only a few minutes more, those limbs were cut into manageable pieces and stowed away. Only a dearth of chain oil slowed his hack and slash enjoyment of his new toy.

Next Saturday promises to be an interesting day. By then Hubby will have secured a supply of chain oil and it's a sure bet that no woody plant in either the front or the back garden will be safe!

Alone

The older I get, the more I find I value my solitude. Not as a retreat from a stressful world or for any grand purpose, but for its inherent restorative value.

I love my husband. He’s a great guy and ordinarily easy to live with. I enjoy his company, even when it consists of the two of us doing separate activities while sharing proximal space. But even this companionable pairing needs the occasional break…sometimes I just want to be alone.

It isn’t that I want the alone time for any particular purpose…I’m not planning to go on a shopping spree or a binge of one kind or another. In fact, that’s the whole of it…I’m not planning anything. I don’t need to consider cleaning the house, cooking a meal, making sure there is enough of this, that or the other…none of the ordinary considerations of my ordinary life need be considered. I have a pass to be mentally and physically lazy, to let go the reins of the household and my responsibilities for a day or so. Rather like being on holiday without any of the hassle of planning, packing, and making sure I get my money’s worth of sights, sounds, and tastes. Just permission from myself to veg.

Sometimes I crave the restorative virtues of solitude. Sometimes it’s good to be alone.

Sweet (African) Violet

My mother wasn’t particularly domestically-inclined so I learned many of the womanly arts from my grandmothers. As a result of their patient instruction, I can cook, bake, clean, launder, mend, and can do a credible job of most common forms of needlework. I can even keep a vegetable garden (and preserve its produce), and do a fair-to-middling job of keeping some nice houseplants. But, despite my moniker, I’ve never been able to grow African Violets.

Now this is kind of an embarrassing admission, considering that one of my grandmothers was actually named Violet and the other one collected Occupied Japan porcelain in the “Sweet Violets” motif…and grew African Violets by the hundred. It’s not that I don’t understand their basic needs…filtered light, “wet feet,” and no water on the leaves…it’s just that once their original hothouse blooms have faded, I am left with a shelf full of identical pots full of identical flat hairy leaves. They never, ever bloom again.

Oh, I’ve probably tried all of the tricks and remedies you can think of…changing the watering schedule…“African violet food” in liquid, sticks, and tablets…soil specifically formulated for African violets…changing the light exposure…nothing helped. Eventually, getting no reward (blooms) from the plants for all my ministrations, I would begin to neglect them and one day sadly find their dried and shrivelled corpses where once fat hairy green leaves had flourished.

After several fruitless forays into African violet cultivation, I pretty much gave up and bought fake ones for the pretty pots, but still, they beckoned me. In the supermarket thick emerald leaves crowned with a topknot of beautiful blooms called to me. A beautiful white…a frilled white with lavender edges…a robust traditional violet…”Buy me!” they called out “Only R14! ($2)” “Take me home!”

Seductive little buggers that they are, I am soon hopelessly plunking three new African Violet plants in the bathroom…actually, our toilet is in a separate room of its own, with a tall opaque window, and I put them in there. The shelf over the commode is just the right width for three of them, but within a few days some of the larger leaf stems are becoming soggy. Alarmed that they might actually die before even the hothouse blooms have finished, I move them to the window sill, careful to open it no more than an inch, lest the blazing Cape Town summer sun burn them to a cinder. Within days they have recovered (although I did lose those leaves) and their pretty little blooms liven up the tiny loo.

But all good things must come to an end, and eventually I found myself picking the shrivelled brown petals out of the leaves and resigning myself to three pretty plants on the window. They seemed to like the window, after all, with new leaves bursting out and the old ones growing thick and sturdy and crisp. When I would wash my hands I would check their saucers and refill them as necessary, taking comfort in the knowledge that even if they never blossom again, at least I am cultivating the healthiest crop of African violet leaves I’ve ever seen!

And then one morning, it happened. Looking up from the local gossip rag (we keep a rack of them in the loo), I thought I saw something suspiciously round nestled in the middle of one of the violets…not a new leaf, but something I hadn’t seen before. When I washed my hands I took a close look and, to my great amazement, saw buds! Buds! The plant was planning to bloom for me! But which one was it? After months of watering and moving them on the shelf according to who needed more light (based on leaf sturdiness and size), I had no idea which violet was about to burst forth into bloom!

Within a few days it became apparent that it was the white one and about the time it began blooming, the purple one started showing buds. And after a lag of a couple of weeks, the ruffled one began setting buds, ready to flower. I was amazed! Delighted! Enthralled! For the very first time in my life, my African violets were blooming for me!

Seems all I needed to do to grow African violets was to move to Africa…

Happy New Year

Hubby's mum, brother and nephew are here for a week so we had to plan our New Year around the presence of a precocious 12-year-old. No wild partying, no clubbing, no celebrating with reckless abandon...as if we might do that anyway...just something appropriate to share with a 12 year old.

At first we thought we'd go down to the V&A Waterfront where they set off fireworks at midnight and all the ships in port blow their horns, creating a cacophony that startles the snoozing seagulls into swooping excitedly over the celebrating crowd, occasionally dropping little wet seagull bombs on the unsuspecting below. But a couple of days ago a local nutcase and member of a local nutcase terrorist group was arrested with three pipe bombs on his person. During a vigorous interrogation it was discovered that there was a total of 11 pipe bombs, but Mr. Nutcase was not forthcoming with their location, only the information that they were intended to be planted in and around the Waterfront. This news, of course, put the kibosh on our plans to take the kid over to watch fireworks and terrified seagulls and we had to come up with something else.

It's been cold in Cape Town the last few days, with intermittent rain and cool breezes. After dark, the breezes become brisk and the air distinctly chilled. So, deprived of our Waterfront venue for celebrating the New Year, we decided to go down to the beachfront here in Table View and watch the Waterfront fireworks from across Table Bay. It was a brilliant plan, spoiled only by the fact that enough other people had the same idea that we couldn't get parking in the parking lots right on the beach, so we had to park a block away and walk in the wind-whipped cold. Bundled in winter coats and fluffy shawls, we trudged to the beachfront and took seats in the little brick amphitheatre and huddled together for warmth. Five minutes before the critical moment, Hubby cracked open the bottle of chilled champagne we had brought with us and, as the ships across the Bay began their basso profundo warblings punctuated by the sharp reports of exploding fireworks, we raised our glasses and ushered the old year out while welcoming the new year in.

And now we've returned to the warmth and comfort of home, heads a little fuzzy with fizzy , and ready to turn in.

Happy New Year to you all, may it be your best year yet!

Merry Christmas!

Here's a Christmas card for all of you! Hope your holidays are the absolute best!