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Who said romance is dead ?
Bugs are threatening to take me down before the week is over. I thought the aeroplane kerosene and general traffic fumes inhaled on the way to work would help me kill them but no, day 2 and still suffering. The internet doctor says I will live and don't go bother your GP with it but Him Indoors is not taking any chances. He has shown his true love by sacrificing some of his Orkney single malt (Scapa) to make me some kind of voodoo medicine involving whisky, hot water, honey and cloves and he did not mutter once about what a waste of a good whisky it was. True love I tell you, true love...
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14.1.04 22:19 |
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You know you are getting older - or should it be wiser ? - when...
You take a look outside at breakfast time and seeing how the Camelia is being shaken about by the wind you decide walking to work might be a safer option than biking it. I regretted it when I had to walk back in the dark this evening.
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16.1.04 23:56 |
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I need to find my library card.
I have had a look at the list of 100 most challenged books (1990-1999). The American Library association compiles it. A challenge is when somebody (it can be a parent or a group for example) tries to remove or restrict access to a book in an American Library or the school curriculum. Anyway I was most puzzled at some of the titles which appear on the list. Even more puzzled that say 'James and the giant peach' was challenged more often than 'The Anarchist cookbook'. I may be a neurotic mother but I can sort of see why your average parent would prefer for the later not be be widely available in school libraries - something to do with teenagers and excessive testosterone- but James and the giant peach ? Is there a highly subversive message in it that I failed to notice ? And how about where's Waldo ? I know I often sit during films thinking 'I know there is some deep meaning somewhere in there; if only I could think of what it was' but where's waldo surely does not fit in the deeper meaning category. Somebody please enlighten me !!!!! I wonder, if I borrow every single one of these books to check them out for myself (ok maybe not the goosebump series - there are limits to the mindless drivel I am willing to read in a day), would I be put on some secret anti subversives list which would mean that when we save enough to take The Boy to Florida to check out the space centre and the everglades (to see gators) we will end up in the "go through customs so slowly you'll be ready to go home by the time they have checked your luggage over queue ?
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17.1.04 00:27 |
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Encounter of the housing kind - Episode 7
Just to resume Kim and stroppycow had settled nicely in the house they were renting together. Everybody was happy. The Boy had his own room and a railway line view from the climbing frame in the garden. Kim had acquired a new boyfriend, the infamous It Wasn't Me It Was My Twin Brother. Him Indoors did not know it yet but he was in the process of being persuaded that he absolutely needed to spend the rest of his life with me. There was an extra room in the house and we decided to rent it out (sub let). We advertised and despite our reservations we said ok to a couple (not sure a couple would fit in with our group dynamics). Kim is notorious for having a terribly screwed up weirdo detector. Mine is normaly quite well tuned but somehow it proved defective when we interviewed S+R. We failed to notice the clues. "I cook fish" she said. "Do you mind ?". No we thought. We cook fish too. You just open the window, wash the pan straight away, double bag the remains so the fox does not tear the rubbish bag to pieces. We couldn't see a problem with cooking fish. YET. They moved in. She was ok but yes, she was right she did cook fish, A LOT. After a while, every single pan and implement in the house smelt of fish. I threw a fit one day finding the apple sauce I had cooked to go with the roast pork had a distinct fish flavour. She was lucky she was not in. She would have worn the apple sauce. Kim had a similar reaction when one morning she pulled the grill pan to find a cold, grilled mackerel staring at her from his foil bed. Fish came off our menu. "I work shifts" he said. "Do you mind ?". Well as long as he was aware that there was a toddler in the house so sleeping during the day may not always be easy. We could not see the problem. YET. They moved in. His work started to call him to work o/t and extra shifts... at 4 O'clock in the morning. It was unpleasant enough to be woken up by the phone at times when most people would like to be sleeping but we could have lived with it had he been prompt to get up and pick it up but no, the phone would ring and ring and ring until one of us would get up, pick up the receiver, bang on their door for ages until he got up to answer. They did have to go eventually (after arguing about their share of the bill, they wanted their share to be about 0% - we didn't go with their estimate). Last year when Him Indoors and I were looking at supplementing our income by letting a room out a handfull of people came along and had a look. One of them was very interested. He asked a question that started with do you mind if ? I told him I would think about it knowing full well he was never moving in. I think my weirdo detector is back in full order. |
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20.1.04 23:52 |
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My job is making me fat.
Well not really. Eating too much and not moving enough is making me fat but more to the point my new job is a contributory factor. Here's how I reached the above conclusion. Since I started my new job in September my clothes have slowly but surely started to feel a bit tighter around the waist and my already ample bosom is threatening to burst out of previously well fitting bras. They are not so much puppies any more, more like full grown St Bernards - I hate to think of the work I would give to the local eye hospital if they broke free inadvertantly (cast your eyes back to the 23rd November entry if the puppy theme escapes you). The new job is closer to home than the previous. So instead of a 35 minute journey into work it now takes on average only 12 minutes to cycle into work which is not long enough to even start glowing. In the old job food was not just bad, the smells emanating from the kitchen were enought to put you off any lunch that was not just for pure sustenance. In the new job the food is nice. The canteen serves very comforting food and I happen to sit just around the corner and lovely smells waft in all morning destroying whatever little resolve I have to stick to something light by the time lunchtime comes. To make it worse, our meals are subsidised. If you stick to the main hot meal you lunch is free and you even get pudding. I thought I would try and get up a little bit early and maybe gesticulate in front of the TV to an exercise videos. Alas I am not a morning person and despite Him Indoors' best efforts to try and kick me out of bed an hour he has remained unsuccessful so far. I thought I would try and be good today and turn down pudding with my meal and have a piece of fruit instead. Then I spotted pudding : chocolate sponge with chocolate custard. It would have been rude to refuse. If only I could get the willpower to get up early and turn down a free meal... |
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21.1.04 23:51 |
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Don't ask me to choose
Friday five asks :At this moment, what is your favorite... 1. ...song? 2. ...food? 3. ...tv show? 4. ...scent? 5. ...quote? Well the quote is easy. " There are things we know that we don't know. We know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we don't know, but there are also unknown knowns, the ones we don't know we know" (Donald Rumsfeld) It's my favourite because it makes me laugh but also because it explains a lot about the state of the world today. If that is an illustration of the train of thought of decision makers then we need all the help we can get. TV show, that's easy too : The Dinnerladies (uk gold are kind enough to run it regularly) Favourite song at the moment. How could I possibly narrow it down to 1. Ten maybe but 1. Do I like My Good Fortune (PJ Harvey) more than L'Ange Dechu (Jean Louis Murat) or This Charming Man (The Smith) for example ? I am having the same problem with food. I have a really sweet tooth so I could say homemade tablet but then again if you offer me a nice juicy steak with lovely "proper" chips I am unlikely to turn it down. I love most food you see from the humble buttered toast to won ton soup via apple crumble. I just cannot choose, do not ask me to make a decision. Scent same problem again, lets face it if you like food you will like most food smells. Plus I am a total perfume adict (light lemony fragances in the spring and summer and more powdery smells in the autumn and winter). Sorry once again I can't choose. |
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23.1.04 15:38 |
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I am Victor Meldrew, only with boobs and long hair.
l have been in a foul mood all week, a mega strop is brewing. No major reason, just getting to the point when evenings aren't quite brightening enough yet and the darkness is getting me down, making every little life irritant just that little bit less bearable than usual. So far the following have been really grating this week: I find it very hard to say "if you could please write your name in the little white box that says name" without sounding too patronising (try it for yourself), it is even harder to say it again in a different way when the person you were talking to still finds a way to write their name in a completely different place. I have taken to pointing with a pen to the exact location of the box and the ****** still gets it wrong. I smile sweetly and say "sorry, it needs to be there, where it says name (pointing to the box with pen again)" when all along I want to say, well what I want to say would not really be repeatable. Anyway, I must have suddenly started to speak mandarin without even noticing because more people than ever seem to not get the message. The colleague who wanted me to lick her stupid enveloppe closed because it was beneath her to do it herself. People who have been shouting at me on the phone because of things somebody else failed to do 3 months ago and when I explained how I was going to do it instead and put it in the post the same day still shouted it was not good enough because they had asked for the info 3 months ago and that's when they want it. If any of you out there use this technique, stop now. It does not endear you to the poor sap who has been unlucky enough to take your call and seriously does not make them want to go out of their way to help. I can get the info and pass it on. I cannot go back in time and send it 3 month ago. I do not control Time and the Universe (YET!!!!) but when I do be sure you will be first in line for extinction. Car drivers who feel they own the road and think the highway code and the rules of priority change when the person you should be giving way to is a bike. Oh, and pedestrian who cross the road right in front of the bike because it is a well known fact that it is ok to do that if the oncoming traffic is not a car rather than go to the crossing a few meters down the road. The colleague who wanted to change her battery and when I explained that the charged batteries where on the shelf marked charged batteries and that she should put the dead on on the shelf marked dead batteries snapped back that she knew what to do, only to put the dead battery amongst the fully charged one so I had some fun working out which one was hers and retrieving it once she had left. The headmaster from The Boy's School surpassing himself in pompous gittiness in his latest letter to parents. The man is so full of himself it's a wonder he can walk around without a sick bucket attached to his neck. Apparently some parents have pointed out that they would be better able to attend the consultaion meeting if it was in the evening rather than the middle of the afternoon. Well, he wrote that it couldn't possibly be held in the evening because it would be too difficult to get all the teachers together for an evening he is sure we will, I quote "appreciate the staff of the school are very busy professionally". Of course it goes without saying that parents are not very busy professionally and can take an afternoon off work to attend the meeting. Surely the idea of scheduling a meeting for which you expect a wide participation is to choose a time convenient for the largest number of people. Mind you it shows the amount of consideration which is likely to be given to the parents' input at the meeting. People making appointments and then being late for them. People who do not believe in punctuality are a pet peeve of mine. It is the ultimate rudeness. If you are late, it says to the other person that your time is more important than theirs since it is ok for them to wait while you are doing something that is so much more important than turning up at the agreed time. Somebody 'outing' Oberon and Late. Why ? Who cares if it is fiction rather than reality. It is entertaining fiction and now they may disappear for ever and I may not not find their new incarnations for ages. And it's only wednesday Things that have stopped me throwing the strop so far. Making the right decision in walking this morning to go to work (way icy road am and wet and very windy with not much visibility pm). I enjoyed a glorious crisp morning and enough sunshine to cheer me up a bit. Stopping at a cafe (a proper one, not a coffee shop) on the way home when the wet and cold became a bit too much and having a mug of tea while watching the rain turn to snow and listening to the customers talk about it in the local accents (T is not a letter often used in these parts). My colleague Kay who has a wicked sense of humour and can spot a cretin when she sees one. Watching crimewatch which I had not done in a long time and seeing that Kim has not made it on the programme yet as a victim. Let me explain, she has terrible taste in men, her choice of boyfriends is fairly unfortunate and she is too trustful. For a while we used to watch crimewatch in the hope that one of the mugshots may turn out to be one of her exes so we could call her and give her the number to call so she could cash in on the reward so that at there would be at least one good thing coming out of her creep detector being dysfunctional. The Boy being very excited at the sight of snow. The Boy building his first den/hut in my father's new garden at the week-end. Finding out I can still carry The Boy up to his bedroom when he falls asleep in the car (I thought he was too heavy for me by now ). Seing that my niece's bruises are fading and she no longer looks for an advert for the NSPCC (she is a little hurricane and has been climbing on furniture and jumping off it even though she has only just learned to walk. The landings have not been particularly successful). Now that she does not look like a victim of abuse any longer my sister has been able to go and get her travel documents sorted so she will be able to come and see us soon. Seing that my nephew recognised me when we saw him at the week-end (2 1/2 with some obvious gross motor skill and speech delays as well as some strange behaviour patterns). It was not so long ago he started to recognise my sister and my parents who see him on a weekly basis so it is quite a good thing as he only sees me every 3 months or so and then only for a few hours at a time. It is hard to say how much of his problems are due to physiology and how much to the way he is being brought up. If there ever was a child who is benefiting from not being with his mother 24/7 it is him. He has progressed a lot recently and a lot of the progress is down to the care and attention he receives from the childminder and from his grandparents. In our usual family way, nobody discusses the problem, my mother wears the biggest blinkers ever made and refuses to see something is not quite right, my brother (his father) compares him to my niece and points out he is better at some things than her (she is a year an a half younger for crying out loud, it should worry him that he feels the need to benchmark him against her rather than other children his age), my father knows there is something not quite right but refuses to talk about it, I suspect my sister in law likes having a child that causes so little problem (a child who is not mobile does not require constant surveillance, a child who does not play does not make a mess etc...). My sister and her husband are the only ones who talk about it. Shame. I was also glad that Him Indoors can be such a fusspot at times. You see, he likes all that hiking stuff and he believes that if you are going to go up a hill it is a good idea to buy a decent pair of boots and a decent waterproof because if you are cold and wet and you have blisters on your feet by the time to get to the top the descent is going to be fairly miserable. Anyway he has made me buy a decent waterproof a few years ago and was I glad to have it on tonight. As for the boots I am sure I will love them if it snows some more overnight. A bit overkill for pavements in urban areas but surely no more than your average 4x4. That was the rant of the day. |
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29.1.04 00:57 |
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