Rock star : Supernova the band is coming to Australia! In March next year. And the ticketing website which is selling the tickets is currently not working so I can’t even find out how much it is or even put a link here to it. grrr. Apparently Toby Rand and Juke Kartel will be the support act which is fantastic news. I definately want to go. ;)

Today we went shopping, we did not go to see the movie I wanted to see because my other half is a pain in the ass about movies, he’s a right snob about what he will and won’t go to see. But he’s happy to watch those silly anime cartoons for hours on end! I’ll probably end up going to see it on my own :(

Then we cooked dinner for my parents, a yummy Jamie Oliver recipe. Except I just use normal mushrooms, remove the thyme and add bacon. I also use half a cup of wine and half a cup of water otherwise the wine can be a little bit much. I’ve tried a few of his recipes and they always work out well.

I have an admission to make to you all. I am somewhat of a germophobe. Not to the point where it’s keeping me from going anywhere, but at times I think I can see there from here.

The two biggest issues I have are food preparation and door handles. I don’t like touching door handles and (this is hard to say) if it is somewhere really germy I sometimes open them with my jacket sleeve instead of my hand. Especially if I’ve just washed them in a public bathroom.

With food prep I absolutely hate tea towels and and refuse to have them in my kitchen at all – paper towel is your friend, I find. I don’t like using sponges and try to avoid them where I can and certainly would never use one to wipe a bench top. I also tend to wash my hands a lot in between handling different foods. It’s probably excessive but we all have to find a way to live with our little insanities, right?

But to a germophobe, my mother’s kitchen is an absolute nightmare. Tea towels! Sponges used all over the place! Dishes not perfectly clean even though she has a brilliant dishwasher, she throws the dishes in there with chunks of food still on them (ugh! I can’t watch her do this, I have to walk away) and no matter how good a dishwasher is there’s only so much it can do.

When I openly show how this situation makes me feel, it makes her mad. She’s like “Well, you managed to grow up in a house where the kitchen was this way” – what she is forgetting is that often when she had “cleaned” the kitchen I would sneak in there when she wasn’t looking and do it again to my level of clean-ness. And as soon as I moved out of home, I was insanely strict about the kitchen must be clean before *and* after you cook in it.

Today she had to go to the dentist and she wasn’t feeling well, when we dropped in before we went shopping she was having a nap. This was a great excuse for me to come back here with all the shopping, cut everything up on my clean chopping boards and do things my way, and then put it all into little tupperware containers, and take it over there mostly done. What a great idea, I never thought of it before but I will be doing that again.

Here’s an example of an argument we always have – about mushrooms.

Mum sees me rinsing the mushrooms off in the sink

Mum – “Why do you need to rinse them, they’ve been washed already at the supermarket”

Me – “You see all these little black spots of dirt? You know what that is? They grow these things in manure, you know, that’s what that is, and I really would rather not eat shit if I can help it”

Mum – “I don’t know why you have to be so picky about everything”

Me – “I’m not picky about everything. I’m picky about this. “

Mum – “I never did this when you were growing up. You ate them like that all the time”

Or the other night –

My other half was about to cut up onions for hamburgers –
Me – “Stop, that knife is filthy!”

Mum – “I just used it to cut the skin off the onion, it’s only onion on there”

Me – “No it’s not, it is something dried on from the dishwasher”

(the other half walks to the sink and starts cleaning the knife)

Mum – “You’re being ridiculous”

Me – “I’m not being ridiculous, I just want to have things cut up with a clean knife, that’s not too much to ask”

(the other half returns and it is still there)

Me – “That’s not clean, it’s still there!”

(the other half starts scraping it off with a knife”

Mum – “, That knife is perfectly clean”

Dad – “I don’t think it is, he’s trying to scrape it clean with another knife and it’s still not coming off”

Mum – “Just use another one”

The other half got it clean and washed it again but in the meantime she’s handed him another filthy one! I quietly say to him – use the one you just cleaned.

She thinks I’m too fussy about it but then again, I have to live with *her* insanities so she should live with mine! What’s her insanity?

When shopping and you make a purchase, you must take that purchase out to the car before entering another shop. And of course she’s parked in the furthest park from the supermarket, so you have to walk a kilometre anytime you buy something.

I do not complain about this. I just recognise that she has an issue with that, and deal with it. It’s annoying, don’t get me wrong! I mean the bag has the receipt in it, and even if the other shop does not sell that product, there’s no talking her out of this. It just is.