What are three objects you couldn’t live without?

I smiled as I read this morning’s prompt on my feed. Well, *pauses makes a face and pouts* to be honest with you, if I can’t include people which means my son, partner, sister, and dear friends are excluded and this is based on actual ‘things’ … lemme think, okay got it!

My Tablet:

I use it daily, and it has may most needed apps on Kindle ( for all my books I have in e-book version), game apps, ( I love to play Scrabble, Rummy, and Spades online), also applications for things like astrology, Netflix ( I recently started watching the series Outlander I’m addicted to it!), and  my tablet has general nick-naks I use often. It also allows to me access to the Worldwide Web, YouTube, and the news applications. I actually prefer my tablet over my laptop, I just wish that it was more suitable to write on rather than be social. I guess I associate my laptop with work, and my tablet with downtime and fun. It was a hard decision between my phone or tablet, I went with tablet as I can still communicate with others using WhatsApp on the tablet, or even Skype if I had to.

My Radio

 

That’s right I can’t live without my ‘boom, boom box’ it’s not old school like this one, even though I do like them. A few years back maybe around 2020 I bought an Internet radio,  I have discovered some wonderful radio stations all over the world. In my house, the radio is NEVER off it is always on on a low volume in either the bedroom, or the office I write in. I also sleep with the radio on downlow, I find it much preferable to have this background noise while going to sleep.

I like all kinds of music, and I mean all from chill-hop, or lounge music you’d hear at Starbucks, jazz, soul, rock, pop, there really is not a style I don’t like. Hmm, may be apart from probably very, very heavy metal or trance/dance music they are the only two I can’t and don’t listen to. I can always appreciate everything else in between.

I not only sleep to music, I write to music, read to music, cook to music, tidy up the house to music,  drive to music, I literally do everything … with music.

Some of my favourite stations to listen to are:

• Smooth FM ( London). I just love the variety of music from all decades, and it’s very relaxing to sleep to as the night shift DJs cater to the time of the evening/night it is.
• Cherie FM ( France) to me this is like the equivalent of London’s Smooth FM. The difference is that in France they play one English song and then a French song.  You get the best of both languages. Also, the music is much more random and varied than Smooth FM you will hear Rihanna, then you will hear something in a totally different genre I love it.
• FIP Radio ( France) here they play everything from rap/hip-hop, jazz, classical piano, pop, reggae all one after the other! I love this station it is ‘random’, and so eclectic in terms of the music they play. They also don’t play songs that are played on mainstream radio I noticed, it’s always smaller independent artists that are hardly known.
• Amazing Chill-Hop Radio ( New York). As it says on the tin, here it’s all instrumental ‘chilled’ music that ranges from jazz, hip-hop, soul, funk, beats I love it!
• Smooth Jazz.com ( Florida) this station plays some of the smoothest, sleekest, funkiest, bestest ( if that’s a word) jazz my ears have ever heard, I love it.
• 90s RnB and Old School ( Germany) they play very early old school RnB, from artists that if you’re probably around thirty-five and over you will remember from your twenties, that are not around today. Wonderful station for a trip down memory lane.
• LBC ( London) this is a talk show station, which gives commentary on current affairs.
• BBC World News ( UK) this station broadcasts everything from documentaries, news bulletins, and author interviews for the BBC book club the first Sunday of each month. I particularly love to listen to the book club author interviews, I have picked up many new books from these interviews, I tend to buy them if I liked the author’s interview and how the book sounded. I also like to listen to the questions that readers can pose. I keep saying to myself I need to actively read along with the club, so that I can pose questions to the authors about the characters and plot myself. I also really, really, really enjoy the documentaries they broadcast from around the world, this is a station for the world, it’s very international with news and commentary.

There are many other stations, lots of them are independent ones from all corners of the world that I have discovered. I think that Internet radio really is the way forward if you are a music lover, if you don’t have one invest! They are pretty cheap too, I got mine on Amazon.

 

My Dishwasher!

 

So, three weeks ago I got a dishwasher for the first time in my life! I am telling you I can’t believe I got to the ripe ol’ age of forty and never used one. *Gasps* my mum never had one, I never grew up with one, but I think that had there be space in Mum’s kitchen in my childhood home ( that she lived in for fifty years), I bet Mum would have had one! 

What made me get one? Well, we now have space at home in the kitchen for one and after speaking to others who do have them, I was sold on the idea! Ours is a really pretty black one it is gorgeous. It’s been three weeks of saving my nails from chipping, three weeks of having more time in the evening to spend with my family as the dishes are taken care of, and the big surprise? I have a saucepan that is older than my son, he’s nine, this saucepan must be anywhere from fourteen to sixteen years old. It’s part of a vegetable steamer set so I can cook rice at the bottom, and put the veggies to steam on the top. I got it in Lidl the store I think. So anyway, this pan is always ‘clean’ from handwashing it of course, but with one spin in the dishwasher it was shiny, looked brand new, and as if I had just taken the stainless steel item out of the packet! It had lost it’s luster and silver shine ( understandably look how old it is), now it looks like when I first got it, I was amazed. So yeah, now I have experienced family life with a dishwasher, I can’t live without mine it was so worth the money given the time it saves, and how well it cleans.

What about you, do you have a dishwasher? Is it just for ‘lazy’ people?

What three things can’t you live with out? Let me know.