28 March 2007

Penguins Grrr!

The fourleggeds have just eaten our dinner (chicken risotto) and then puked it all over the flat. Frankly they could at least have had the decency to keep it down. Now I have to clean cat vomit off the carpet, yeah!

Anybody looking for two cats, useless at mousing and with a habit of refusing to use the littertray when miffed about something? Oh and one of them "nags" for Scotland.

27 March 2007

Varying Shades of Beige

Things have been a little blah around here recently. The FB has come down with yet another cold so he is feeling very sorry for himself, and MrV and myself are suffering from sleep deprivation. It is not fun sharing your bed with a three year old but it's that or get up every ten minutes to give him cuddles when he cries. And we're on the lookout for spots - chickenpox has invaded his nursery oh joy!

And when we do manage to get the FB to sleep in his own bed my mind won't shut up long enough to let me sleep, instead it insists on partying all night with my bladder. Grrrrrr

So some thoughts that come to me in the middle of the night

This pregnancy feels like it has gone on for a year already and I'm starting to worry that it isn't going to end. That the Peanut will just stay on in there and I really really want my sense of smell and taste back, not to mention being able to roll over in bed without the pops and cracks of my pelvis and subdued gasps of pain to accompany me.

This weekend we are decluttering. I want rid of the rubbish in our bedroom now. I'm fed up with things piled on top of other things and just want to get stuck in.

Koalas - Isabelle you genius. I could have used this word in my list. My Grandfather brought me back a koala from Australia (they must have stopped off en route to the UK from New Zealand where they lived) which if I remember correctly, and family lore is to be believed, was made of real koala fur. It was incredibly soft but wasn't very appealing to a small child.

The other word I could have used was Kin. I come from a very small immediate family but have a huge extended family spread out all over the world. At one point there was at least one familial member on every continent bar Antartica - travel is in our blood. I'll do a post at some point on all the places I've lived I promise.

23 March 2007

Brought to you by the letter K

I won the letter K in Peasoup's scrabble meme, and I believe (haven't checked mind) that you are supposed to list 10 things beginning with your letter with either a photo or a paragraph to accompany each one. Perhaps I should read the instructions first.

Anyway

1. MrV. My favourite K. Yes I know. MrV, three letters, none of which is the kicking k. But, MrV is not his real name, which does begin with a K so hah! Definitely my favourite K. I should post my reasons but I won't. He reads my blog and if I did list his best atributes he would either blush with embarrassment or gently point out which ones I had missed

2. Kindergarten. Most kindergartens and nurseries have an official pet whether it be a hamster, some goldfish, or in the case of the FB's, a tank of giant snails. Mine was a little different. We had a camel. OK he didn't actually belong to the kindergarten but he lived in the scrap of desert behind the kindergarten and spent his days with his head peaking over the wall watching us play. We called him Rudolf. Guess why.

3. Klutz, or to possibly invent a word, klűtzlich (to mean impossibly clumsy). I once split my right elbow open whilst shaving my legs. Need I say more?

4 and 5. When I was 18 I lived in Kalamazoo in Michigan with my then boyfriend. Alas, actually not alas, hurrah, things didn't work out and I ended up living with some of my family in Kanata in Canada.

6. Kitchens. MrV and I plan on building our own home one day. So far the only room I have planned out in my head is the kitchen. I dream of having a kitchen with enough storage, and sensibly planned too. One of the many downsides to renting is that landlords often have a very odd idea of how much storage to put in a kitchen and how to plan where the cupboards should be. Mine has also very kindly built in a catproof mouserun. I can only imagine he lies awake at night worried about the amount of exercise mice should be getting and can't because of our pesky cats.

7. karma. I have a strong belief in karma, though like most people I get the basics wrong. I believe that if you do something good in this life you are rewarded in this life, do something bad and well you get the picture. But it's not like that. Your reward or punishment comes in the next life or so they say, which is a little late I think.

8. Kan't get it out of my head (sorry I'm cheating a little) - David Bowie's Life on Mars. MrV and I have been watching the first series of the BBC program of the same name and the song is stuck going round and round in my head. Good show though. Worth watching if it comes to a tv screen near you

9. Kűchen (cakes) preferably chocolate, though not German. Am not a big fan of German cakes they are a little too heavy for me, and not nearly chocolatey icing enough. But yum cakes. and doughnuts. and well just call me Homer.

10. Kurses, it's after midnight and time for me to go to bed with my bump pillow. Goodnight all.

20 March 2007

Mishmash

If a strange child (by strange I mean unknown rather than odd) aged about 5 was bullying your child (age 3) and the parent of strange child was sitting, reading his newspaper and ignoring his daughter, would you tell the child off? I took the FB to the local leisure centre today as he loves the soft play area there and a little girl corralled him with a giant exercise ball and wouldn't let him move until another parent told her to let him go, then she refused to let him play on one of the toys there, and finally told him he wasn't allowed to play in the actual soft play area and he was to go away. That's when I intervened and had words with her. What would you have done?



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On our way home from the supermarket yesterday the FB and I saw this tree in bloom...
A few hours later the sky had darkened and it hailed. Today it snowed!





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No Rule of 3 today done. Instead the FB and I went out. He played and I read The Book Thief and sobbed at it. Beautiful book, thanks for recommending it Nutmeg.


How do you get Blogger to behave and publish posts without messing up the formatting? Grrrr

19 March 2007

Make Your Mind Up Will You

The Nor' wind blows and in a trice
What was water now is ice
What sweet rippling water was
Now bewitched is into glass

We used that poem in handwriting class in Primary 6 and that's all I can remember of it. Can't find it on the web alas so I can't even tell you who wrote it, but it has stuck in my head for almost 2 1/2 decades.

Last week Spring had sprung, the daffs were in bloom, cherry blossom adorned the trees and the sun shone gloriously. Over the weekend the wind started up from the north and carried the smell of snow with it. Today, ok the sun is shining as I type, but we've had thunder, sleet and hail. No snow but that may still come. We're back to winter again. Nevermind, maybe tomorrow we'll have fast forwarded to my favourite season, Autumn.

(Rules of three going very well today. Kitchen, utility room and bathroom have clean floors, or rather had. The FB is now in the kitchen with his playdough.....)

16 March 2007

The Fly(lady) in the Ointment

I'm lazy. There, I've said it and hopefully you haven't run away in disgust. I would infinitly prefer to sit on my couch and sew or read than get off my rapidly expanding butt and do something, anything about the mess my flat is in. For years I've put it down to disorganisation but well, it is time to face facts. No amount of lists, programmes or control journals is going to solve the problem. Today I started writing down three things that I have to do then and there. No diversions, or sitting down until they are done. When they are ticked off I write out another three and so on. Has it worked? Well my bathroom, utility room, kitchen and hall are tidy, not clean, but tidy. It's a start. I only hope I can be bothered to continue.

14 March 2007

It's not easy being green

We are experiencing a plague of frogs in our home at present. The little buggers keep turning up in the most unlikely places, a yellow one in the bathroom, a red one in the bedroom and at one point two of them were chilling out on top of the freezer. The FB is in playchef mode. He likes to pretend to cook the frogs, present them to you then whisk them away and hurl them down the stairs. Which explains why there has been a green one hanging out amid the tangle of wellies, trike and scooter.


12 March 2007

We now return to our usual schedule



Well the parents left this morning after a very busy but good weekend.



On Friday we went for a ride on this and remarkably we got good weather for it too. I thought it would at the very least pour with rain with possibly a hurricane chucked in for good measure but as you can see blue skies! It does get buffeted about in the wind when you're at the top which is a little nerve racking, especially if, like me, you don't like heights but the view is worth it....














(It's the London Eye)








And on Sunday we took the FB to the Imperial War Museum to see the "Family Tank" it was ridden in by a member of the family, has his photo and nickname on the front) - it was very tempting to see if it could be liberated from its current home and brought back to mine; I'd rather like to see the traffic wardens try to clamp or remove a tank for parking without a ticket! But he was more interested in the submarines and aeroplanes than a tank from the 40s.







Oh, did we pass the white glove test? Well as the FB was taken out ALL DAY on Saturday by his grandparents AND they babysat for us that evening I guess the flat must have been slightly cleaner than its usual shambolic mess.

08 March 2007

There will be a short intermission

Parents are arriving this evening for a long weekend so won't be able to put any posts up. Am off to make sure there are no dead mice under the couch bed and that the flat passes the white glove test

k

06 March 2007

Thoughts and thankyous

I think one of the most important things we learn from pregnancy is not to take your health for granted, and I'm not talking about morning sickness here. I'm thinking of how lovely it would be to be able to sit, stand or walk without pain. I'm so very thankful that in 11 weeks or so it will all be over and whilst the sleep deprivation bit will begin, the joint pain will stop and I just can't wait. Right now I am very glad that this is short term; I cannot imagine what it must be like to live in this kind of pain every day for years on end...

Thank you all very much for your kind comments on the dreaded cold lurgy going round. It is getting better - the FB is back to sleeping in his own bed at night, and my lungs are only occasionally doing orchestral impersonations, however, much to MrV's disappointment, the snoring has not improved!

02 March 2007

Bleurgh

The dreaded lurgy has reared its dastardly head again infecting both myself and the FB with its germs so we haven't been up to much recently. The FB is generally fine during the day but starts feeling awful shortly before MrV and I am due to go to bed, whereas I feel equally lousy during the day as at night.

Have finished all the library books but can't face the walk to the library so until I get better or MrV carries me there (am I sounding pathetic enough yet?) I shall have to rely on what I have at home. Currently this is "Diary of a Provincial Lady" which despite being set in the 30s seems eerily modern at times.

I am off now to feel very sorry for myself!