household duties

1) We're having another heat wave, which among other things means further exasperation with our ancient oven, whose temperature control is slightly broken and never turns entirely off, which of course results in radiant heat. This time I had an idea. (No, not replace the range: it's not ours, it's the landlord's, and as long as it works properly when asked to, which it mostly does, I'd rather not deal with the question, especially as the complex controls on new devices intimidate me.) My new idea was, turn off the circuit breaker when I'm not using the range.

Took me only two tries to locate the right one, and yes indeed, it handles just the range and nothing else, not even the refrigerator (also aging badly) which is next to it.

So, new step in housekeeping. So far I've only once turned on the burner and wondered briefly why it wasn't working.

2) And there's the busted swivel chair which we've been trying to discard since, oh, February. You can pay to have extra things hauled away with the garbage, but the city usually holds free dumping days every three months or so at the recycling center. But the virus has cancelled that. Hoping they'd come back, we've held on to the chair. And what should we get but a neighborhood dumping day, when dumpsters were to be placed at various spots around the neighborhood. The publicity for this failed to say exactly where the dumpsters would be, an omission the organizers didn't notice until I pointed it out, but I did get the info eventually.

Finding that the chair wouldn't fit into my car's trunk but would into the back seat, I drove it over to find the dumpster unattended, which we were told it would not be. Despite age and general infirmity, I managed to lift the chair the six feet over the dumpster sides and tip it in, so it's gone now, and the replacement, a solid armchair we bought at Pier One last fall, reigns in splendor in the living room.