Get that word perky – that is the direction for this blog. Seems at this time February 20 – 2025 – the choices are to fret, marvel and agonize over Trump or do the escape route and pretend that life is normal. It is not, but I am choosing the escape route – hence the perky bit!
My theme is wonderful inventions that make me happy. Not the latest, but relatively new in the grand picture of civilization. Nothing to do with electronics, computers, cell phones or AI. Just some rather down-to -earth items that make me happy. Here goes:
Silicon cooking mats/sheets. Previously making cookies(biscuits in the UK), involved greasing a metal cooking sheet. Then the cookies would stick and break as I tried to get them off the sheet and, then the big pain of the clean up. Oh, then came the silicon mat. Those cookies just slide off and cleanup is a charm. A twin companion is parchment paper which works excellently or better say for roasting vegetables like Brussels sprouts or carrots. You just throw away the paper afterwards. But for parsimonious me, I do like the reusable (for years) silicon mat for that baking. Gold star!
Next: still in the baking department and one of the older items – the stand beater. Took me a long time to get my act together on this one. Then I had an underpowered one. Now I have a nice regular strength one that I use whenever I can. It lives under the sink and I just do a bit of arm training to lift it up onto the counter. Voilà and away we go. Clean up easy peasy: a beater and a bowl. Wipe down the whole stand set-up and back under the sink. Merci beaucoup.
Then I have the camping department that spills over into other areas of life:
The folding camp chair. They can be roomy but the little compact ones are perfect to take along in a canoe or a car camping trip or tucked under my arm and taken down to the dock at the lake. They are so comfy! It is amazing. And for the Cadilac large ones you can even get a feet-up feature. Just give me another beer, please!
And finally, on my modest list: the headlamp, the one with elastic that goes around your head with a nice light out front. Yes, we have lights on our phones, but if you want your hands free and just get on with tasks, go for the headlight. Again for camping, I love it when I can read in my sleeping bag on my air mattress. It makes a big difference to my joy of camping. Not to mention if you have to get up in the night and out into the bushes. A lamp unto my feet!
So there, that is all rather straightforward, quite low tech, non-political and apart from the stand-mixer, all quite reasonable cost-wise. I will count my blessings as I can.