Help is coming

The cleaners are coming, today! This just one day after I get the mess in the kitchen down to the stuff that has to be hand-cleaned only, and a few minor mop-ups from dinner spills.

I am much looking forward to having an orderly house. That way I can focus on working out what to do for Chaos' birthday [She wants a steampunk party and I'm kind'a stuck for ideas that don't involve me doing a shit ton of artsy fartsy stuff and knocking myself out for a month] Fortunately, I have a gift for making things out of cheap shit that looks fantastic.

And I have absolute loads of plastic gears that I can spraint up to look realistically metallic. And I know where to get wire relatively cheap, so I should come up with some reasonably affordable gimcrackery for the kids to play with.

It's food that I fail at.

I could do octo-weenies, because Steampunk is inextricably linked with Lovecraft's intense fear of seafood¹ and therefore the octopus is everywhere.

Gear-shaped bikkies might be a hit, but I don't have any gear-shaped bikkie cutters. OTOH, I have egg rings and some decent pliers, so never say never.

Somehow, feeding a bunch of kids Horrible Victorian Food doesn't seem to be a winner in my mind.

I shall plot with Beloved. Assuming they're not busy with building the company toolkit. Plan B, research the heck out of Steampunky party favours, has to wait for tomorrow.

Good news for me: I have figured out the best way to consume balsamic strawberries² and mascarpone. And that, for me, is to stir them all together into a pudding. The rest of my family won't firkin touch it so that's one guaranteed safe-from-predators treat for my good self. Hooray.

Also - I now have a whole bunch of new sleeves for my singles and more sleeves for LP's than I know what to do with. I haven't seen all my new LP's yet, but it's almost guaranteed that more than one of them doesn't have a sleeve. That speaker place is great for speakers, but more than a little bit rotten at looking after vinyl properly. If they can't sell it for more than $60, they don't really care.

Mind you, out of roughly 100 rescue singles, I've only found one, so far, that is unplayable. And that one was in a dust-cover in optimistic condition. It had its own little sleeve and all. But no, it had the kind of scratch on it that makes it loop. On both sides. And I couldn't save it.

I shall wait until I've gone through all of my rescue singles before I return with them to the place and then go rescue more singles from their uncaring hands. By then, I should have all the storage I should need. And I might be able to interest them in some proper storage. Maybe. As I said, they don't really care about cheaper vinyl.

As it stands, I'm nicking one of Beloved's collapsible crates to store the clean and working singles in, some in fresh new sleeves. And working my way through the rest as fast as I can listen to them.

My disc-drying cloths are getting a little tiny bit filthy as a direct result. I'll have to wash them very soon. Tomorrow, belike. After another Singles Session.

There's some real treasures in this lot. I don't understand how nobody else cares.