musingsponderingsandrants

Parenting, profundities and humour

Category: Humour

It’s Lonely Out Here in Glitter Land… — December 6, 2015

It’s Lonely Out Here in Glitter Land…

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I think these were from 2012

My children and I have this tradition. Well we have many and at this time of year, at the very beginning of Advent, we have a huge amount. Christingle, decorating the house so it looks like a cheap grotto,  Advent calendars without chocolate, making reindeer food etc. But the particular tradition I am meaning here is the making of cards for teachers and close relatives.

Every year I convince myself that what every Primary teacher really, really wants is a card lovingly handmade by their pupil. Maybe with a thoughtful handwritten message, complete with poor spelling and illegible writing. And not a bottle of wine.

I am probably wrong. It is probably me that would really like a handmade card complete with a poorly spelt but loving message. And in a master stroke of psychology I am persuaded that others would like this too. Preferably with glitter.

Nothing says  to me ‘I appreciate you’ more than effort. And time. And so that is what we try to do for those important people in my children’s lives. Take time and make effort.

Every year I come up with an age appropriate card making activity. I have to confess that this is not a totally altruistic act on my part. I am quite crafty. In a glue, paper cutting, glittery way. Life does not contain enough opportunities to undertake such activities. And so this one is very welcome.

When my three were little it was hard to manage their enthusiasm. It was safe to say that the finished products certainly looked home made. I was often a wreck of stress uttering  phrases like ‘No its your brothers turn!’ and ‘Please don’t use the glitter whilst your brother is spraying me with gold paint!’ and ‘Try to keep the glue on the card and not on the carpet/ table/ your hair’ and such like.

We had to form queues for each to ‘have their go’. There was a scramble to make those odd cards for godparents.

Then last year the reluctance set in.  Well certainly amongst Eldest and Middlest. Instead of making one card each for every relative they made only  one to send signed by all three of them. And even then Youngest made the lion’s share.

This year I have come up with an activity that most people would find hard to resist. I wanted something that would attract even Eldest. Therefore it needed to be messy. And quick. Some of those card recipients will be reading this so I am not going to elaborate further. Well, OK, it involves paint…and a toothbrush…and glitter….

I have cut out templates and cards and had a dry (well wet and messy but you know what I mean) run. And Youngest has come down and made one card. The others cannot be persuaded away from Minecraft.

So there it is. Is there a sadder sight than a mother sat at her newspaper covered table surrounded by bits of card and paint. But completely lacking in children.

I miss those enthusiastic years. A lot.

The teachers will probably be pleased with the Pinot Grigo though….

I made those….in case you thought my 8 year old was a genius with the scissors…

Hair Raising — November 29, 2015

Hair Raising

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Youngest has a lot of hair. And I mean a lot.

She was born with a fairly large quantity of dark hair, just as her eldest brother had been. It grew steadily. For the first few months of her life her hair defied gravity and grew straight up.

Eventually the weight of her hair meant it was no longer able perform such a feat and it fell into a cute sort of bob.

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Over the following years it grew and grew and got fairer and by the time she started school it was half way down her back. She had her first proper cut as one of the last things we did together before she left preschool.

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When washed and dried it is ram rod straight, just like mine. But usually it is  wavy. And that is because it is always plaited.

Her hair is never ‘down’. For several reasons.

  1. She doesn’t like it down unless she is going to a school disco or eating dinner at a posh foreign hotel.
  2. I am paranoid about nits.
  3. She plays a lot of sport and it gets in the way.
  4. School does not allow such long hair to roam free (probably partly because of reason 2 but also for safety reasons). And…
  5. It is almost impossible to brush when it has been safely reigned in in plaits never mind when it has been blown free in the wind.

And so her default style is two pigtails. Unless it is a swimming day when we do one pigtail.  She also sleeps in one pigtail. To avoid suffocation.

Even so twice a day we have the torment of brushing her hair.

She creates. She screams. She complains.

Yesterday when I tried to get the detangler brush through the ends it was solid with knots. I asked her what she had got in it. She was not sure but knew it was some sort of foodstuff. How? Because she had had to scrape it out after lunch. We narrowed it down to carbonara or jam roly poly. Trust me neither is great in hair. We had to resort to the spray. Even so it took me 15 minutes to tease out all the gunk.

Whichever food stuff it was though it was not as bad as glue. Glue is the ultimate nemesis. I have resorted to scissors before now. Although this brings on hysteria…

If she had informed me earlier in the evening that a foreign substance was in the ends of her hair I would have got her to wash it out. (Glue doesn’t wash out, believe me). That doesn’t work at 7.30pm. Because her hair takes about three hours to dry enough to avoid her risking pneumonia overnight.

We only wash it twice a week. Once on her swimming day. And once after football on Saturdays. That is because chlorine and mud are not great in hair either.

On holiday I need an entire tool kit to deal with her hair. When she has spent 6 hours in a swimming pool her one plait gets sort of fatter but shorter. Presumably it has absorbed a whole load of noxious chemicals.

We employ adult conditioner in the shower. A conditioner and detangler spray after. And the best brush I have ever owned. Well it is our second one. The first broke after one particularly knotty evening. Still my worst record for getting it combed out after a post holiday swimming day is one hour. After that I made her wear a rubber swimming hat. Which helped enormously. She was happy to wear it. To avoid that hour of pain.

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Swimming hat!

 

She is also not the sort of child who enjoys her hair being played with. She will not sit still whilst we try out different braids or weaves. Even if I knew how to do such things. No this sort of activity would use up time that could be spent more productively booting a ball into a net or flipping on the trampoline.

And then there is her ability to manage it herself. Just recently she has become able to wash it herself. Without leaving most of the shampoo and conditioner in the hair.

But she still cannot brush it or plait it on her own. When she goes on Cub camp she just leaves it in my plaits for two nights. I realise that will not cut it eventually. Our deadline is in two years time when she has to go on a week long residential trip with school.

Of course by then she might agree to a bob. I have mentioned before that she is not a girly girl. And her hair is never down. And so I have suggested that she get it cut. I would gain at least half of an hour of my life back a day. As would she. She refuses.

I suppose that would be a sad day though. Because although it is real pain her hair really is her crowning glory.

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My beautiful daughter!

Parent’s Evening… — November 22, 2015

Parent’s Evening…

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parentteacherconference.jpg

Last night was parent’s evening for Eldest. It was the first one at his Senior school.

Historically parent’s evenings have involved me sitting in front of one teacher, usually at least ten minutes later than booked, hearing about the exploits of my off spring. Good or bad. All dressed up in euphemism. But lets be honest we all know what ‘lively enthusiasm’ means in relation to maths…

This was going to be a different affair. On offer was a five minute chat with each of Eldest’s fifteen teachers. Yep fifteen.. and that didn’t include any sports teachers. For whom a special appointment needed to be made. We didn’t bother.

Eldest was also expected to be present. And listen. I therefore needed to be mindful of what I said so as to strike a balance between finding out what I needed to find out and not embarrassing my 11 year old. As any owner of an 11 year old will know this is problematic. In the extreme.

Things had got off to a tricky start as it was beholden upon Eldest to book the appointments with these myriad teachers himself. I did try to provide some guidance. Such as leaving 5 minutes between each 5 minute appointment to ensure we did not end up with a cascade of lateness.

I also suggested he miss out some teachers. For instance Drama. It is not that I have anything against Drama. I am sure it is a lovely thing to do on a Monday afternoon. Week 2. But I wasn’t really sure I needed chapter and verse on his ability in that department. He can be quite a good actor at home. When lying about brushing his teeth or making sure his sister gets the blame for some atrocity involving Nerf guns. But I am not sure it translates into the Drama theatre. At school.

Anyway he dutifully organised slots. Including Drama. But not Philosophy. There is a ‘big’ question to explore later. ‘The Relevance of Drama versus Philosophy. Discuss’.  He did have to book some consecutive slots which set me on edge a bit. Although we did get an early reprieve as his Geography teacher had not made it. The Sixth Former helping out was not privy to why.

So I arrived to collect my name badge. And map. Oh my life. A map. It dawned on me then that this was going to be an ‘operation’. I had a quick cup of tea by way of fortification.

I then entered the canteen and was confronted by a sea of desks and chairs. Maybe it could even have been classed as an ocean. Each desk had three chairs. On the parent side. I immediately felt inadequate about my lack of occupant for the third chair. Husband was busy earning money to pay for that chair.

I was early. Eldest was early. Its a trait. This helped us out. As it often does. Most of the desks where unoccupied by parents and also staff. An exception was his DT/Art teacher. The name sign on her desk proclaimed her to be a man. I didn’t comment. The world is such that one never should. Just in case. ‘She’ beckoned us over. And explained that as she teaches five Year 7 sets her night was a little ‘frantic’ and could she see us before official ‘kick off’. As Eldest had booked her later in the evening straight before IT I readily agreed.

She was lovely. No hint of a moustache.

And so the evening went on. At some point Middlest arrived from his Christmas Show rehearsal I think it was between History and Maths but I cannot be sure. He dashed off some grammar on a spare chair. And ate far too many biscuits. Luckily Youngest was at home with grandma.

Between Science and IT Mr/Mrs Art/DT  popped over in a rare break in her schedule (presumably when we were originally to be seen, I had lost track) to ask why we had not pointed out the error in her name plate. I mumbled something incoherently and luckily she was distracted by her next interviewees arriving. I think I got away with it. Eldest hadn’t even noticed the sign was wrong. That’s 11 year olds for you. He of course knew her name. Me less so.

I have never been to a speed dating night. But I imagine it was quite similar. Some teachers had little passport photos of each child next to their name. I couldn’t blame them. Some seemed to see one set of parents after another with no break in between. For all three hours. They put me to shame. I couldn’t remember one Art/ DT teacher’s name I could hardly expect them to know all 120 of theirs.

I felt most sorry for his German teacher who not only had to remember who each child was but also what language he was teaching them. Poor man. I settled for his generic ‘working hard, doing well’. We are only in Week 9. It could have been worse. He could have used another generic ‘could try harder, needs to improve’. We spent two and a half minutes there. I used the left over time to bang home my point about spelling to Mr English.

Many other teachers clearly remembered Eldest, all for good reasons. Thankfully. Amazingly they kept to time. More or less. We nipped in early to several when they looked free. And then mysteriously we could not locate his French teacher. Je ne sais pas pourquoi. And so we got out a full ten minutes earlier than predicted.

Still it was two hours of full on diplomatic interaction. I was knackered. And more than slightly confused. I just held onto the overarching comments and placed the finer detail in the deleted file in my brain.

And I am glad we saw that Drama teacher. Unbeknown to me she has taught Eldest for all three of his years at the school, in both Junior and Senior, and she was very perceptive about him. She did really know him. And was almost glowing in her report. I found it all a bit over dramatic. Eldest grew about a foot taller though, so I will forgive her.

15 Years and Counting… — November 18, 2015

15 Years and Counting…

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wedding

I have a vague idea I should write something about marriage.

The reason is that today (well at 3 o’clock this afternoon) I will have been married for 15 years.

Also it is Week 3 – see Keeping Clean Sheets if you don’t understand that reference- and so I am employing as many avoiding tactics as I can. I have done three fifths of Week 3 and have re-jigged it a bit so I no longer have the family/ scuss bathroom to do- poor Week Two is the down hearted recipient- but still major avoiding needed. The Kitchen Diner is left…need I say more?

The downstairs loo is leaking again. The number pad on my PC keyboard has stopped working. I have the mother of all weeks meetings/ helping at school/ parents evening/ ferrying/ school concerts wise. And so feel like taking this morning easy before I leave the house at 1pm and do not return except to briefly stuff sandwiches into kids until gone 9pm. My ‘working’ day, always a bit odd.

And anyway Christmas is arriving after a flurry of on-line activity yesterday and I do not want to miss a courier whom I have accidentally drowned out by over zealous vacuuming.

So there we have it I thought a quick post avoiding the use of as many numbers as possible would be the order of the day. And as today is my wedding anniversary it seems like as good a topic as any. Although it involves, already, too many numerals.

I have started this entry and discovered that since I last wrote Wordpress, my lovely blog host, have decided to change everything. I cannot find buttons. I no longer appear to be able to link to my other entries in a logical way. The Save button has mysteriously disappeared. I don’t need this in Week Three, I really don’t. Don’t they know I have been married for 15 (arghh) years today?

As you may have gathered we are not doing anything special today, despite its significance. Well I am having bacon on cheesy rolls for lunch but otherwise, no.  At about 5.30am husband used the assistive light on his phone to blind me and also deposit a wrapped article on the bed. I tried unsuccessfully to fumble under my bedside table for his gift and card. He told me to leave it until later. He has probably forgotten that there won’t be a later. He ordered me to get more sleep (probably the most romantic thing he will say to me all day- in fact one of the few things he will say to me at all today) which I tried to do. It was difficult with burning retinas.

In any event that present isn’t up to a great deal. I am far beyond those times when I spent every available lunch hour devising, planning and purchasing a perfect gift for each anniversary (and birthday and Christmas). The present was purloined off his Christmas list which I only extracted from him on Saturday morning. And so although Youngest and I tried to find something more inspired between football matches and rain showers in town we failed. Fifteen years is crystal. We have enough tumblers. And what would a grown man do with a small glass animal? And in any event my mind is too full of what to buy small people for Christmas and what other people can buy my small people for Christmas and what I should buy the teachers for Christmas and what I would like other people to buy me for Christmas…. perhaps more time? It is like this every year and led me once to forget our anniversary completely. I was that ‘buying flowers in a petrol station’ cliché. My tip is not to get married in November.

Anyway back to this morning. Once the alarm went off a mere half an hour later I struggled blindly through my minimal ablutions and then took a pause to open his gift and card before rousing the kids. Do not fret dear reader my retinas are recovered. I always struggle blindly through my morning ablutions in a kind of denial. About morning. About the day to come. About, well everything really. I do not usually leave this ‘denial’ phase until the caffeine from my first cuppa has kicked in.

The gift was lovely. A pair of earrings and a necklace. Some sparkle. I love a bit of sparkle. Oddly for someone so un-girly. We recently went to the V&A in London just to do the jewellery section. It was darkly lit with everything on black velvet and looked simply stunning. Although come to think of it my retinas did hurt a bit then too…

I put the earrings in. This took longer than it should as the holes have partly closed up as I haven’t worn such adornment since around  2004 (or blank blank blank blank as my duff keyboard would have it). Which does, not unco-incidentally, co-incide with the birth of Eldest.

Not one of my children liked the earrings. It is just the shock I think. They will come round. My new hair cut (which my mother does not appear to have noticed, or if she has noticed she does not approve of enough to say anything, either is worrying) apparently calls out for earrings according to my good friend. And maybe, judging by today’s gift, silently husband.

Just so you know I have now found the Save button. But not the Review button. I shall keep going and also keep you posted. But hopefully not this entry. It is too soon for it to be posted. As I haven’t reviewed it yet. I digress.

All this anniversary guff meant we were behind schedule. The kids gasped at the clock. Corners were cut. It is likely Eldest will have to swim in Speedos out of the Lost Property basket. Is there any fate worse?

I shouted instructions through the open window of my friend’s car as she pulled out of our drive. ‘Find out your cello lesson’, ‘Don’t forget to find your snack pot’, ‘Get out quick tonight so I can get to my meeting’, ‘Please remind me you need hike boots for Cubs’, ‘For god sake do not let me forget piano again’, ‘Eat a hot school lunch it is only packed tea tonight’. Etc. Etc.

I retreated indoors to the carnage left from the morning and the relative peace. I retrieved that gift from under my bedside table and put it in the grubby Kitchen Diner where hopefully husband will see it when he returns from Cub pick up much much later tonight. I will find out if he likes it when I get in from my last meeting at circa 9.30pm. It does not have much sparkle. I do feel slightly out done gift wise. It is not as bad as on our first anniversary when he bought me a diamond eternity ring and I got him a….magazine subscription. In my defence the first anniversary is paper.

Somehow this post has got quite long and yet I have said hardly anything about the nature of marriage. Or have I?

15 years ago I walked up the aisle- well a corridor made by two sets of chairs we didn’t do the church thing- to start on this road of married life.

To begin with the road was a flower bordered bucolic path meandering through fields and by river banks. We idled along hand in hand taking in the view. Revelling in its beauties. We took long metaphoric picnic lunches and the sun shone.

Over time the road has changed beyond all recognition. It now feels more like a motorway whizzing along at breath taking speed. I do not know when this happened. When the route morphed from footpath to bridleway to A road to six lane monster.

At times it has felt like two parallel carriageways with far too few shared service stations . It can be full of pot holes and road works. Nearly constantly it is crowded by other travellers getting in the way and driving recklessly with no regard for the rules. I am not always a good driver. I go too fast or do not look in the mirror enough. I get road rage and shout at the sat nav. Sometimes I know where this road is headed but often I need a map.

But at the heart of it all there is that other person racing along too. Providing solidarity. And earrings.

Glad its you Andy.

x

 

 

 

 

Vicarious Pleasure — November 15, 2015

Vicarious Pleasure

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Minecraft_-_Stampy's_First_Home_2

In my last post I mentioned that I am a late adopter, technology wise.

As such my children feel like pariahs. I know how they feel. When I was a child I was not allowed to watch Top of The Pops (unless Mrs Pugh our lovely babysitter was round in which case we did, sneakily) and so on Friday mornings at school, in between bouncing a tennis ball secured in the foot of one leg of a pair of old tights off a wall, I felt at a slight loss, conversationally.

I became an expert in ‘faking it’. Pretending some intricate tights/ ball manoeuvre (that sounds worse then it should) was requiring of my total concentration whilst I absorbed the first TOTP conversation of the day. Thereby allowing me to interject into subsequent conversations. Just enough to ensure my class mates believed I was an avid a viewer as them.

This is a skill that has served me well. Especially in my work when ‘blagging it’ was often necessary. I left the tennis ball at home though…which reminds me we now have an outside wall large enough for this game. I must introduce the offspring to it forthwith.

So where was I? Oh yes. Children. Pariahs.

For instance I resisted purchasing Minecraft for Middlest for a long time. I am sure everyone in the world has heard of Minecraft. If not I suggest you look it up. He pestered and pestered and pestered and pestered and in the end I relented and bought it for the PC for his birthday in August.

And the main reason I gave in was that I was sick of Stampy. Again everyone the world over (well certainly those reading this with kids around eight plus) will know exactly who I mean. Middlest is obsessed with watching his you tube videos.

In case you are not the owner of such a child I will fill you in. Stampy is a man who seems to make his living filming himself playing computer games- specifically Minecraft. He may play others but I doubt he has time.  Stampy does not appear, well only in avatar form (which apparently is a cat), as the films are of the screen he is playing on and he then commentates over the top. I imagine it is actually quite a skill commentating constantly. But I had reached the point where if I heard his slightly high pitched voice ever again I was going to explode.

So I bought Middlest the game and went through the pain of installing it. To begin with I searched Amazon for a CD Rom of the game in a pretty box that he could actually unwrap. You see? Completely behind the times. It has to be directly downloaded from the Internet onto one’s computer. I was able to buy him a piece of paper with a randomly generated string of characters on though. I wrapped it up as excitingly as possible, which wasn’t all that exciting, not really. Anyway I ‘bought the game’ I thought it was preferable that he actually engage with the process, which as far as I can see is like virtual Lego but with monsters (but only on Survival mode- kind of Death Lego), rather than watch someone else play it.

And yet he STILL prefers to watch Stampy. And now a really rather endearing couple who play together. Pat and Jen. Although their names sound like something out of a Ladybird early reader do not be decieved they can hack away at creepers with the best of them.  When I listen carefully I can detect a slight inequality in their relationship. And she is very giggly which annoys me. Tremendously. But otherwise quite endearing. I actually prefer them to Stampy. And at least it shows that IT geeks can get girlfriends. There is someone out there for everyone. But be quick I doubt there are many Jens left in the world.

This way of entertaining oneself is a phenomenon that puzzles me. Middlest is not alone in this house in the partaking of vicarious pleasure in such a way.

Eldest will watch other people assemble, adapt and test drive Nerf guns. For hours. I actually believe he would rather do this than fire actual foam bullets out of his actual Nerf Guns.  He did say once that it saved him collecting the bullets….I despair…  He will discuss the relative merits of the seemingly endless supply of you tube videos of youths testing Nerf guns. For instance he likes the style of a particular guy from Canada but the films are outdated as they get Nerf guns much later than everyone else and so he is always testing older models. And such like. Ad infinitum. Ad naseum.

I once caught them watching other people on you tube open packets of Pokémon cards. The excitement generated in my kitchen diner when one lucky random stranger got three EXs in one pack was palpable. I have heard of younger children watching other children open Kinder eggs on line.

I guess this is an extension of that other phenomenon. I call it ‘bees round the electronic device’. If one child has a personal electronic device other children would rather watch that child play on it, even if that child will not share the ‘go’s, than do anything else. At all. I think I saw this demonstrated once in a TV show (The Secret Life of a 4 Year Old?). The draw of these devices is incredible.

I  have been trying to think of an equivalent from my childhood. And I have failed. I just can’t.

All credit to these people making money out of such ventures. It certainly saves me buying the actual guns, games, cards. But it is odd. Really odd.

Wow look at that Grandma is playing basketball… — November 7, 2015

Wow look at that Grandma is playing basketball…

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miis

Sorry for the radio silence….I don’t really have a solid reason for the lack of posts over the last week or so… lack of inspiration, the depression of post ‘clocks going back’, no time… that sort of thing…

Anyhoo this afternoon the kids and I decided to have a Wii tournament.

Mostly because I am sick of hearing myself say,

“Turn off that I pod, I phone, I pad (delete as appropriate) and come out of your room and be damn sociable for a bit”….

But the weather has been absolutely foul. It hasn’t got light properly all week. We spent the morning getting soaked on various pitches. Middlest won’t play board games without me employing the kind of enthusiasm that a dreary November day does not illicit in me.

And so I decided to go with Eldest’s idea of a Wii Sport’s Resort tournament. We don’t possess an X Box or a PSP and so the Wii is our only option for playing together, even so we only have two remotes and nunchucks and so they have to share. Which usually means that Eldest produces a highly complicated spreadsheet containing order’s of play, which always favour him. Then we have the usual arguments about how an archery match is in no way equivalent to slicing pieces of melon and eggs in half. And such like…

I decided to push these annoyances aside and try really hard to enjoy it.

I especially enjoyed the cow racing. Although not Eldest and Youngest playing billiards. Which was very loooong and painfuuuul especially as they could not work out the controls. Never has it taken so long for 9 balls to get in several pockets….

The thing I love about the Wii more than anything else is that about a gazillion years ago when we first had it and played it a lot, before it had got out of date and you could still get new games for it, we all designed Miis of ourselves.

For those not in the know these are versions of the little people that appear on the screen that look like real people. We have a collection including both Grandmas, a Grand-dad, all the kids, husband and I, a couple of Uncles and Aunts and some friends. Over time Eldest has added a moustache to his Mii and now looks like a dodgy Italian waiter. But generally they are remarkably recognisable. Although Middlest’s sunglasses give him an incognito air.

These Miis pop up in crowds cheering you on as you cycle up a volcano. Manys the time I have dived handle bar first into molten rock whilst waving at an old friend in the crowd. Or they applaud your bullseye in archery, sedately as befitting of a crowd at such an event. Or they perform a Mexican wave in the football ground.

And so randomly today Grandma was recruited to play in Youngest’s three on three basketball team. Twice. She was the queen of slam dunks…

Anyway it made me smile.

Doing nothing… — October 29, 2015

Doing nothing…

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Today we are doing nothing….

Actually that is not strictly true as later we need to go to the hairdressers as Eldest looks like one of those Old English Sheepdogs. And not in a good way.

But other than that we are doing nothing.

We got up exceedingly late. I let them watch TV and play on mindless computer games for far too long.

Eldest and Middlest have spent a fair amount of time refining, rewriting and redrafting their Christmas lists. Following extensive on line research into the pros and cons of various Nerf guns.

I sent them out to buy an onion, one carrot and a loaf of bread. My on line shopping often goes awry in the holiday. They went on their bikes and came back with the change and a mouldy onion. So I went out to get another….

Then I banned all forms of electronics. Thus ensued an amazing Nerf gun battle. Which was just as well because I am not going to buy any more foam bullet firing guns unless they will actually get played with. I am pretty stumped Christmas present wise but I am not going to buy stuff that merely languishes in drawers.

Obviously the battle descended into carnage. It started well but deteriorated. People were cheating. Youngest was adamant she was ‘going to win’ and hacked the other two off. I tried to explain that no one ever ‘wins’ in a war, not really. That was too deep for them during their ‘red mist’ and so I took several green disks to the backside. Play fighting became actual fighting. So we stopped.

I made them make their own lunch. Inch thick slices of cucumber anyone?

Then we had an hour before our appointment at the salon.

I left them to it. Boredom is good for kids. It fires their imaginations.

And this is what they decided to do.

Sometimes it is best to leave well alone.

Ugg…fire! — October 25, 2015

Ugg…fire!

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That took me four hours....
That took me four hours….

We recently moved house. Again apologies to my regulars. I know you know this. And I know that you know that I know you know this. I have new people reading though (eek) and they might not know.

Actually soon I will have to stop writing that we ‘recently’ moved house. It was in fact in May and so we have been here 5 months (bigger eek). I guess the whole process was so traumatic; you know lawyers, estate agents, removal men, boxes, boxes, boxes; that 2015 will forever be ‘The Year We Moved House’. We will probably start measuring time from it. Next year will be ‘The Year After We Moved House’ etc. 1PHM. Or some such.

Anyway where was I?

Ah yes we moved house. And now we are the proud owners of two wood burning stoves. Really, really, really big eek.

I have never lived in a house with open fires. Or wood burners. Or anything that doesn’t involve a thermostat and automatic timer. I still have the thermostat and automatic timer. Which is a good thing. And the reason that it is a good thing is that these wood burners are not all that easy. Not really.

If the wood burners were my sole source of heat I would be typing this in fingerless gloves. And boiling kettles for a bath. Luckily they are not and so they remain, for now, a fun and totally voluntary addition to the home.

My first hurdle was acquiring fuel. Yes that is right, the previous owners did not leave us with a neatly stacked woodpile. I guess it was May. And so they had no need for one. And anyway they would probably have moved it even if they had had one. Just as they moved everything else. (Let the curtain pole thing go, Sarah, just let it go)…

And so I needed to acquire wood. It sounds like such a simple thing to do. Find a bloke selling wood and order it. But then I got that ‘telephoning fright’ thing that I get. Before I am able to ring up people like timber sellers I have to gird my loins. I am worried about making an absolute fool of myself. I did not know how much wood to buy. What sort of wood to buy. Where I was going to store that wood. Also I wanted to be sure said wood had been sourced responsibly. Before making such phone calls I have to be in the right frame of mind. A frame of mind where I feel able to make an arse of myself and not care.

That time was about two weeks ago. I found a company on line who looked pucker and had free local delivery. And I called up and got a lovely man called Steve. He was very, very nice and gave me great advice. And so I ordered the minimum amount I could and he turned up a week later with his tipper truck and a bag of free kindling and dumped that smallest quantity on my drive.

Well it is safe to say that over the next few days that ‘minimum quantity’ of wood gave me a great work out as I stacked it down the side of my house. Out in the open as advised with a ground sheet on the top for a certain level of weather protection.

We were set to go. Steve’s number was on the fridge. He had told me not to hesitate to call with any fire starting issues. He muttered something about ventilation. Pah, I thought to myself, how hard could it be?

Apparently quite.

Just by way of background you ought to know that I am a Girl Guide. Well I was. I am also a Queen’s Guide, don’t ya know. Further more I was always on permanent ‘fire duty’ at camps. Most of the other girls spent their whole ‘fire duty’ rosta screaming and running away from the smoke. Pathetic. I did not feel like I had camped unless every article of clothing I had taken reeked of wood smoke. We camped rough (no gas urns here) with a permanent fire going under our tin dustbin full of water. I banked it up at night to ensure easy lighting the next day. It got me out of ‘latrine duty’. And ‘gadget building’…my god the tripods and washing up racks, torture. My snake and square lashing suffered but my fire building and tending skills were legend.

So there we are. Safe to say I am a bit of a pyromaniac. And I have no trouble starting fires. I never have. Tis easy. Newspaper, kindling, small bits, big bits. Off you go. And this technique has never let me down.

Keeping an open air fire going is just a matter of fuel, but not too much, oxygen and, no that’s it. Fuel and oxygen. Oh and keeping the rain off if at all possible.

Wood burners are a whole different ball game. They are temperamental. They have vents and require their doors warming. Bless.

I can light them, no worries. Keeping the bugger going though is a whole other ball game. Search the t’interweb for log burners and without fail they all tell you how to start one….I do not need that people. I need to know how to keep it going. What to do with my door and air wash adjust and primary air vent. When to refuel. When to leave well alone. These wood burner things do not behave like a normal outdoor fire. At all.

On my first attempt I lit it straight off and within half an hour it had gone out. I tried again after some instruction manual reading. I hadn’t bothered the first time as the type is SO SMALL. This time I shut the door having ensured all my ‘vents’ were open and the door had ‘warmed’. Almost counter intuitively it went better. For a while. Then it went out again.

Any how a lot of kindling later I finally got it going (third time lucky) and it lasted about two hours.  And then it went out again again. By which point it was nearly time for bed so I gave up.

On our return from holiday yesterday the house was cold. I had had the foresight to bring some wood in to dry before we left. Even so after a successful light it was dwindling to almost nothing and I had to again rescue it with kindling and smaller bits of log. I am running dangerously low on ‘smaller bits of log’. Finally I got it going and it lasted until bed time. About 5 hours. Woo hoo. During those five hours it consumed an awful lot of that ‘minimum quantity’. However I was too nervous to adjust my vents to regulate fuel consumption. So I let it eat wood…at least it was hot.

Today it has taken me four hours to get it to a point where it seems beyond going out. But I have spent an awful lot of those four hours sat in front of it. Tending. Poking. Blowing. None of that is anywhere near as much fun as it sounds. Well ok it is quite fun. But it still takes up quite a lot of time…

So I guess I need to ‘get the hang’ of my wood burners.

And buy a hatchet.

And get up really, really early on Christmas Day.

Artistic Licence — October 22, 2015

Artistic Licence

/sarahsmale/Leave a comment

Apparently my husband is a bit miffed. Or so he says.

He recently started long distance biking on Sunday mornings and has developed a peloton. A whole bunch of Lycra clad men of a certain age take to the roads of our rural environs and sweat around a 35 mile ish course scaring the locals and holding up traffic. That distance might be a tad inaccurate as I tend to skim over the multiple ‘Strava’ Facebook posts that appear within seconds of them arriving home.

Anyhoo. Apparently the posse have detected a ‘tone’ in my blog posts which, again allegedly, sees my poor down trodden husband getting a raw deal. Bless.

I cannot for the life of me imagine where this feeling comes from….

I have not had time to proof read all my 80 odd posts again. Although from my recollection a large number refer to him not at all.

From memory I may have implied that he doesn’t like cheese. On more than one occasion. This is merely a fact. And a very annoying and puzzling one at that. And it does actually have a daily impact on my life. I feel at liberty to mention it.

At some point his ability to lose things has come up. Again true. And annoying.

I wrote a whole piece very early on about the differences between men and women. It is possible that I based a lot of it on him. One can only write from experience surely. And it was very tongue in cheek. And funny. I apologise for any offence caused.

I may have implied that he ‘made me’ move house and get rid of beloved furniture. Of course this is not true. I cannot ‘be made’ to do things. Except eat chocolate. If you ‘made me’ eat chocolate I would, without hesitation, oblige.

Things came to a head last week when I suggested that when he cleans a room he merely gives it a ‘lick and a promise’. I would like to set the record straight on his behalf. He cleans thoroughly. And takes hours. I was using artistic licence. It is a strategy writers use. Or so I am told. Sorry about that.

So for the record my husband is a lovely man who works very hard, he is a great father, he never ‘makes me’ do anything and he can clean adequately.

He still, however, hates cheese and loses things.

To my mind there are two solutions. Suck it up. Or write your own blog.

Revenge may be sweet.

Love ya…

Footnote: should you wish to check out his claims for yourself please see my posts

Women are from Venus men are just odd

Lasagna

Have you seen my...

Food Glorious Food

Keeping Clean Sheets

My Sofa

My House

In the interests of balance feel free to read any of the seventy odd other posts too….

Keeping clean sheets… — October 15, 2015

Keeping clean sheets…

/sarahsmale/1 Comment

cleaning

I may have mentioned before that I do not really enjoy cleaning. If I have not mentioned that before then just so you know I do not really enjoy cleaning.

I would like to say I enjoy the results of cleaning. And I guess that for the couple of hours before the kids come back from school and husband descends a clean room does look good. And then it doesn’t. Again.

Within seconds of them arriving home the kids’ stuff starts to migrate downstairs. I am sure at some point in my Geography lessons I learnt about ‘soil creep’. Nerf Gun bullets have the same properties. Although the timeframe is speeded up. Massively.

A clean bathroom is lovely. It is impractical, however, to ban one’s family from using the facilities for any length of time. And so that shiny tap is soon covered in dried on toothpaste, the mirror acquires a sheen of hair gel and the toilet is smeared with, well, poo. And that hour you spent in there earlier seems fruitless. I resent my husband shaving, my children excreting.

Conversely when I do clean I like to do a proper job. I move furniture. Clean skirting boards and door handles and architraves. Empty the waste bins. Dust and move all the ornaments, shine towel rails and mirrors, clean the windows (inside only I have a man for the other). Etc. This is why I do not employ a cleaner. Well partly I don’t employ a cleaner for fiscal reasons but also I don’t because every cleaner I have ever had never moves anything. They clean only what they can see. What is the point of that? That is why a cleaner comes round and says it will take three hours to do my house from top to bottom. Err no it won’t. So when I clean a room it takes me a while.

In upshot I have to force myself to clean. And so to ensure I do the bare minimum I have devised a rota. As I do like ticking things off lists.

As this house is somewhat larger than my old abode I have spread the chores over three weeks. This ensures that all of the house is cleaned (to my standards) once every three weeks. If a husband or small child does a ‘lick and a promise’ on a room at some point in between all to the good. And the rota also ensures that bed sheets get changed before they walk off and stick themselves on a boil wash. Although Middlest objects to new sheets. Unless they are line dried and put straight back on. He resents that I have washed away the smell of ‘him’ that he has painstakingly built up over three weeks. Unless it is replaced by an odour he likes even more. Tough you scum bag…

As an aside here I must add that I am braving all sorts of abuse airing the fact that I wash bed sheets on a three week rotation. I am a member of a parenting forum and the most hotly debated ‘threads’, aside from who can park in mother and baby spaces, are how often to change bed sheets. Some people do it daily. My god have they not heard of the environment. At least when the world heats up so much that we all die they can do so in clean sheets. I am sure that comforts those polar bears struggling to find enough sea ice to survive. When I am lying in my own filth I feel comforted by my carbon footprint.

Anyhoo back to the rota. I have tried to split the tasks up equitably. For instance I only schedule one child’s room in any one week. There is a limit to how many ‘special shelves’ one can dust in a week. Apparently my limit is one room. Then I give myself any easy room a week- spare room, utility room, study. I end up with 5 rooms a week and some degree of laundry.

I am on Week 3 this week. When I wrote the rota it was clearly Week One. And so I had closed my eyes to Week Three. Week Three is a git. Week Three contains Eldest’s bedroom- he is the eldest (quite obviously, I do really, really spoon feed you here) and so he has the most stuff on his ‘special shelves’. In fact the tut has leaked from his ‘special shelves’ to his ‘special book shelf’, ‘special chest of drawers’, ‘special desk’ and quite often to his ‘special floor’.

For some reason I though it would be wise to link Eldest’s bedroom to the family bathroom. The family bathroom is used by all those of a male gender in our household. I leave you to draw your own conclusions about the general scussiness of that room. I do not enter except on Week Three or when I need to extricate a boy who is late for school because he is ‘on the toilet’. Usually what he is actually doing is playing Minecraft.

Also on the list is the kitchen diner. Oh My Actual Diety Of Choice what was I thinking. The kitchen diner is vast and commodious. It also contains the kitchen (again evidently) and is our main living area. That Nerf Gun bullet creep always ends up there. Along with everything else. In order to clean it I first have to spend an hour clearing it. And then it is full of shelves and dressers and musical instruments and nick nacks on pianos. And the dining table. Which rests above its cache of old food items camoflagued on the beigeish floor tiles. It is truly awful to clean.

Add in the lounge (not a big job but newly decorated and so requiring of care with the vacuum hose) and the study (books, books, books, Lord of the Rings lego) and Week Three is a bitch.

Week One on the other hand is a breeze. I am looking forward to embracing Week One next week.

For now, however, I still have the hoovering to do in Eldest’s room and it is Thursday and Week Three started last Saturday.

I am going in now.

Wish me luck.