Sigh

The move has been postponed. We are now back to the original date of between Christmas and New Year, if all goes to plan. Him Indoors is demanding to know the details of plan B ie what will happen if things do not go to plan.

I am trying to embrace the "if you have no control over it, there is no point worrying about it" philosophy with a small measure of success, although I suspect the success of it maybe due more to denial than acceptance of the imponderables.

In the meantime enjoying some of life's little pleasures like the smell of just blown out candles.

 
2.12.06 09:40


Some things I learned this week-end

Acording to The Boy when I put on the special gladdes that allow spectators to see Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D ( be warned, the site takes forever and a bit to load) I look "just like the woman in Scoobidoo, you know the one with glasses".

The Boy looks just like Thunderbird's Brains with the same 3D vision glasses on.

Duchy Selections bacon shrinks into almost nothingness when grilled.

Apparently my brain has a special detection device that stops me snoring for a little while when attempts to record it on a mobile phone are made. Snoring resumes the second the attempt is abandonned. However with time and patience it *is* possible to catch a snippet of it and use it.

The Boy's attention span has recently decreased to that of goldfish whose water has be cafeinated. He can forget what he was on his way to doing between the time it takes to get from the bottom to the top of the stairs. It is both amusing and exasperating.

 
3.12.06 21:32


Blergh

Sometimes it feels like there's a dark cloud surrounding me.

The dark cloud warps everytind and makes even the nicest things appear bland and the unpleasant things appear insurmontable.

When the darcloud decides to visit, keeping it together is just that little bit harder. Foods that I normally would be ok with eating becomes unappealing or too "complicated" to eat (anybody who has seen me deconstruct a sandwich will know what I mean) and I get an additional level of cranky from not eating what I should when I should.

I don't know why the dark cloud settles, it just does, It's rather miserable to have it hanging around and it's quite hard keeping it together and carrying on with trying to keep up with just functioning day to day.

I just wish I didn't have to put on a pretend "cheer up" face on on top of it all. If I had the umpf for it i'd probably thump the next person who tells me "it might never happen".

Anyway, if you'll excuse me, I have a hot date with a sofa, a light box and a cup of tea to keep.
6.12.06 19:36


Fingers crossed

Tonight we are experimenting in order to resolve the not so much dry at night as sleeping in a puddle situation.

A combination of:

  1. tumble drier giving up the ghost after 10 years of loyal services making the almost daily bedding washing exercise somewhat more of a chore (ie it's not possible to strip the bed first thing in the morning, put the washing machine on before leaving the house for work and drying it all on returning in the evening, istead there is bedding on clothes horses all over the house in various states of dyness)
  2. an impending residential school trip which The Boy really, really, really, really want to go on, please, please, please mummy let's remortgage the house and sell one of your kidneys so I can go. I asume it would be rather problematic if his classmates found out about his not quite having mastered night time dryness .
  3. the blergh making me less able to handle the "not making the child feel guilty about it" part of dealing with nocturnal enuresis , because knowing that while he'll probably grow out of it there's a chance he might be like 5% of 10 year olds and 1% of 15 year olds and take that little bit longer to do so. It's one thing to know it's not the child's fault, it's another keeping your calm and composure when faced with the never ending washing for years.
  4. The Boy minds that having to wash his bedding everyday means he is contributing to a huge waste in electricity and water and the precarious housing conditions of penguins and polar bears (he watches too many animal programmes and I blame David Attenborough ).
  5. nappies were coming close to being an appealing if costly and counter productive solution whether we chose disposdable or washables.

... made me resort to the pavlovian training solution (I couldn't get the game to work but you might get the bell to ring) .

I have purchased a bedwetting alarm after discussing the option with The Boy.

I feel like I might have puchased snake oil in the shape of a plastic box with a loud ring. Still according to the information available it is the most effective treatment with a success rate of 60 to 90% depending on which study results are quoted and a lower relapse rate (around 40%) than drug based treatments (with a relapse rate on stopping the treatment well into the 80% the already unappealing option of drug based treatment become a non starter, especially since the main one on offer is used as an antidepressent in adults so does not scream side effects free to me). It can take up to 6 months for the alarm to work its magic but some parents on discussion boards report fast results so I am hoping we will be part of the lucky batch.

The alarm was delivered tonight, and we followed the instructions and did the little role play on the accompanying leaflet. 5 times I dipped the sensor in the glass of warm water, 5 times the alarm rang next to The Boy's ear and he disconnected it and walked to the toilet and reset the alarm so that hopefully when it goes off in the middle of the night he knows what he is supposed to do.

It's hard to type with crossed fingers but I wonder if it will mean I made less typos than usual (fat chance :-) )

8.12.06 23:08


Reasons why we are making bread

  1. I have read so many entries recently about Jim Lahey's no knead bread as reported by the NY times (thanks to Blork for putting the link open to non subscribers)that I feel like I am being hypnotised into having a go.
  2. Jim Lahey claims a 4 year old could attempt the recipe successfully so it seems like a perfect one to try with The Boy.
  3. When we move I will miss Him Indoor's bread very much and I hope this will prove an acceptable substitute as I don't particularly want a bread machine to be added to the vast number of rarely used gadgets in the kitchen.
  4. I may -on being told by The Boy that he had a sore throat and a headache- have been less thatn sympathetic to his plight. I may have reminded him that his last bout of illness has cost precious days of leave and that if he were to be sick again I would not have enough leave left to cover the Christmas school holidays. I may have said words along the line of "tonsilitis OR christmas, darling, you need to choose, you can't have both". Of course in the purely hypothetical case that I may have uttered those words *cough cough* and that I may have felt a touch of guilt on uttering them, what better cure for the ensuing guilt than a spot of mother and son baking? In case you are wondering, his sore throat did not seem to bother him much when he was eating dinner (3 chipolatas, 1 fried egg, half a dozen cherry tomatoes and 2 portabello mushroom), and pudding, and a teacake, so you don't need to call social services just yet, honestly.

 

Anyway, here are the first steps: the plopping 3 cups of flour in a bowl with a teaspoon and a quarter of salt and a quarter teaspoon of yeast, the pouring a cup and a half of water on top and the gathering it all into really sticky dough. An update will follow when we get round to the next bit.
11.12.06 21:22


So where were we?

Oh yes, I remember... bread.

So the bread was in the oven, out of the drafts and doing its stuff and it was morning and I had this thought that maybe if I switched the oven on, on it's lowest setting for a few minutes, ie not long enough for it to get hot but just long enough that it took the chill out then it would give it a helping hand.

I suppose the sensible thing would have been to empty the bottom oven of the various moulds and pans and put the dough in there on the prooving setting but it was morning and I was in my usual morning state and it seemed like too much hard work. So I went for the switch the oven on, have shower, switch oven off solution.

It would have been a perfect solution if by the time I had had the shower the rest of the instructions hadn't vanished from my brain.

The "switch oven off" part came back to me while driving down the M4. Cue telephone call to my lovely neighbour and technical instructions on how to switch the oven off and certainty the yeast would be cooked and not do its stuff by the time I got home. It goes without saying that people like me *need* lovely neighbours, preferably retired lovely neighbours who can be entrusted with a spare key for such emergencies.

I need not have worried. The bread turned out ok, if a bit tasteless, despite being 1/3 rye. Evidence below.

loaf

The best bit about the recipe. The heavy use of flour means that once the pan has cooled down, little boys can write messages in it for their mummy to find at breakfast time.

message in a saucepan

In other news, The Boy being a caring, sharing sort of a person has given me his sore throat. I guess its motherly karma coming back to bite me.

14.12.06 19:17


Nothing like diplomacy to spare the ego.

I change the background on my desktop at work quite often, just because I can. When I am doing something that requires pen and paper rather than screen and keyboard I minimise all applications and then I have something nice to look at. Today there was a picture I took of my favourite Canuck. A colleague had a good look as she walks past. She normally comments on the pictures I put up but I wasn't quite ready for today's exchange.

Her: Who's that then

Me: My toyboy boyfriend

Her: He's rather handsome 

Inner voice: I guess she has to say that, it would be rude to say she doesn't like the look of him but hey I happen to think he is quite hot, but then again I'm biaised. 

Me: Thank you

Her: Are you sure he is your boyfriend? For real?

Inner voice: of course I'm sure you nutter, what do you think, that I cut his picture out of a magazine and scanned it? You weirdo how desperate do you think I am?

Me: Yes I am sure.

See, that's the bit where I should have known better and left it at that. Only I didn't and added the fatal question "why do you ask?"

Her: because he's well out of your league ain'he!

*stunned* 
15.12.06 19:11


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