The Perfect Sunday Speed

If you’d like your snails with more of a sense of urgency then check these out

 

Lists-a-go-go

I love lists. I spend my life making lists. On several occasions I’ve actually caught myself making lists of the lists that I need to make. Is there a job I could do making lists? I drive Mr. P insane. I’m like Monica from friends except without the team of comedy scriptwriters. Anyway, I’m wondering if I can enliven my posts with some listy action?

I like the idea of those “10 things that make me happy today” lists. They’re uplifting & thought provoking but somehow not quite me. They don’t allow for my sardonic streak. (can anyone even think of 10 happy things - a day for goodness sake?)

I’m more with the “let’s talk about what’s good but lace it with a nice dollop of mockery” gang. I felt so at home working in Birmingham with the self deprecating humour of the brummies. Who else would create the most passionate and upbeat website about their home city and call it “Birmingham: It’s Not Shit.”? Hilarious.

So, how bout a list where the good stuff and the not so good stuff is all jumbled up – much like it happens in life? So here goes:

10 erm “things” about our Greek holiday.

 

Cordial Capers

I’m sitting here getting wafts of something smelling really lovely. I did turn the air freshener on earlier but it’s not just that. Ah! The basket of elderflower heads sitting next to me on the table might have something to do with it – doh!

I think I might have got away with it. The flowers were out the week before we went on our fortnight hol. I was convinced there wouldn’t be any left when we got back but sadly didn’t have time to make any cordial before we left. Was amazed to see a few flowerheads still on the go when we got back but it’s taken me a few days to get the citric acid together and even then I forgot to buy the lemons – double doh! So I dragged R out before tea today on a “flower hunt” and managed to find just about the last dozen elderheads in the whole county I reckon. Boiled up the water and dissolved the sugar before tea and now R is settled, toys semi tidied away and the washing sorted, I can get to zesting those lemons. That is, if Mr. P hadn’t decided to be a model husband and do the washing up and in the process chuck my nicely cooling cordial base down the sink. Is someone somewhere trying to tell me this cordial was not meant to be? Of course that only makes me more determined to make the stuff!

 

When Nature Gets It Right

 

They Say The Funniest Things…

… kids, that is. Tonight on her way from her bath to her room, idling along in the nip, R said in a casual, sing song way “What is the earth?” (pause) “The earth is everything”. Me n Mr. P looked at eachother dumbfounded. I’m so looking forward to more of these philosophical nuggets as time goes by.

Here’s some visuals from R’s eye view

 

Spinning and Life Cycles

I spent a very dreamy day pottering and pootling around yesterday. It is the second day I’ve done this, this week. R was in nursery both days and I just faffed about doing nothing in particular. This is my idea of heaven. I felt so terribly guilty about it though that I couldn’t relax 100% and confess to jumping to attention a few times Mr. P came down from his office – making out I was being busy! I was recently saying to a friend that the sort of “day off” I crave is being at home doing absolutely zilch and how nice it was too. I spent some of the time eating, some of the time looking out at our birds and animal neighbours, much of the time thinking and alot of the time on the computer reading and writing about random things. This is the story of my life: to the undiscerning onlooker, it may appear that I’m a lazy bugger yet really I’m ever so busy mentally. Yeah right!

 

Ironing’s Never Been So Much Fun

I’ve not posted for a few days. I’d been doing it late evenings when I have my best “me time”. Last week I’d had a bit less “me time” as I was going to bed / getting up earlier for my new morning jogging regime (haha! Still can’t quite believe I can say me and jogging in the same sentence) .

Last night I found a new distraction. Ironing whilst watching iplayer. I tell you it’s all rock n roll round here. Ironing’s bad enough. Made slightly more bearable by watching telly. 9 times out of 10 you’re just watching whatever mindless drivel is on at the time. But NOW, wey hey. I know I’m probably slow on the uptake compared to you other cyberkooks but my new laptop lets me choose what I want to watch whilst doing the most boring job on the planet.

When I worked at the BBC a few centuries ago, I went to a seminar hosted by a man who had just met with a fella none of us had heard of at that time - Bill Gates. Apparently Bill had said that the media was going to change beyond all recognition in the future. We wouldn’t need to buy newspapers to read the news, we would call up whatever news or entertainment content we wanted to consume and watch it not on screens but on other convenient surfaces like our fridge doors or kitchen tables. Sounds like he knew what he was talking about that Mr Gates. I bet we’ll be hearing more from him soon

Who would have thought, when I was a fresh faced and eager media miss in those days, that I would be reaping the rewards of that technology in quite this humdrum way. Where’s Mrs Gates when you need her, to come up with some way of deleting the need for ironing?

 

Eye and thigh ache

A nice spring sunset from yesterday evening. Left the tea bubbling on the hob to run outside and take some snaps. Returned with my eyes blinking and fizzling with all the strange sun spot colours on the insides of my eyelids. Note to self: shouldn’t really look at the sun even through a lens. Reminds me of an interesting thing I read today. R asked me what worms eat and the handy Yahoo Answers website helped me out. I then got distracted by a link to another question which I’ve often pondered myself. What do blind people’s dreams look like?

After all the easter egg chocs I’ve decided I must get round to losing some weight so have started running /stumbling up and down the local hills every morning. My thighs are killing me but I’m pleased I’ve managed it 3 days on the trot. I feel so lucky to be out among the baa-ing, crowing, tweeting and cock-a-doodle-doing rather than inside a smelly gym with headphones on. Ok the dog barking, manure smells and rain-misted glasses are not so brill but at least not had to go out in the snow. Yet.

 

The Coming And Going Of Life

I loved making our easter tree. I hadn’t heard of them before but came across the idea at the cottage small holder blog. I gather it’s a Norweigan and German tradition. Find yourself some budding twigs, bring the little bit of spring into your house and decorate with easter fancies. Putting them in water makes the shoots open up. I remembered we had some ideal twigs hanging around after felling one of our lilacs so am pleased to be able to give these branches another lease of life. Didn’t get round to blowing and painting the eggs with natural food dyes (beetroot, onion skins, oh and bright blue food colouring from morrisons!) but there’s only so many hours in the day to be an earth mother.

Feels especially good to see the lilac leaves unfurling this morning as I’m still wracked with guilt about frying one of our fish to death in the tank last night. (Don’t worry I don’t have a dead fish picture - the dead pig was enough). We have a great tank but the in-built thermostat is rubbish and I’ve taken to setting the heating to go on and off via a timer plug. Normally works fine but I thought the fish looked a bit chilly so did a manual over-ride and then i THOUGHT I turned the heater off. Several hours later at the tea table and we’re wondering “why are all the fish being weird and looking funny and kind of erm, HOT, OHMYGOD!!”. Cue collecting every iceblock in the house and dangling them in the tank in plastic bags. Sadly too late for our one lovely orange male guppy. Sorry fella. RIP.

 

Rainbows and Flying Almonds

Mr P’s gone to the office today. Doesn’t go very often as we’re all lucky that he works from home 99.9% of the time. I expect he’ll ask “what have you two been up to?” when he finishes the 4 hour trek back home later. Of course I think we’ve done nothing as usual. Nothing in terms of big significant events but it seems like we’ve been doing stuff non-stop so how to translate what’s been happening?

Not sure what order any of this happened in but it’s a fairly typical run of events: