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Mud & Mischief at Blogsome

Bloody template is going to take some getting used to - urgh

Lo, the wind changeth

Strange sort of day - one of those odd periods when the mood starts out like a full-on north-easterly, spins the weathervane 360 degrees, goes dead calm and finishes with a gentle, albeit uncertain, southerly breeze.

Lots of talk about where we're going, both metaphorically and physically speaking. Welsh smallholdings & Lincolnshire bungalows; do we stay at the shop, up sticks and go to France/Wales/travelling for a year or more, stay here and enjoy our new extension (when they finally finish building the damn thing), can I plan my garden for next year etc etc... Deep searching questions about Myf's education, where we're heading with that, what we've achieved over the past year, what we want for the next 12 months; public school, curriculums, my inability to get her to understand basic mathematics.

I'm switching over to Blogsense shortly, however. Afraid I need to be able to password my blogs now. Which kind of sucks, in some ways; but then, the people I want to read them will still be able to.

And I've got a waterproof(ish) roof on my extension! It's not tiled, but it's felted and latted. Electrician comes tomorrow, plumber on Friday. Roll on Saturday when we should have tiles, and plastered walls. Hooray!

Oh - and for those of you who got the wrong end of the stick - this was our dirty weekend!

Still here

Life's been taking over from blogging, again. Doing too much nano'ing and not enough anything else.

Have managed to get white truck fixed - the noise was expensive, but not as bad as originally thought. Rear wheel bearing, which was quite gratifying seeing as how that's wot I thought it was. lol

Feel crap today though, generally ill and run down and in need of a little R&R. Eaten something that's disagreed with me, bad time of the month anyway for belly ache and just about had it with state of house, garden, builders etc etc.

Nice having James at home though - he sent me to bed for a couple of hours which was very nice. Being woken up by Piglet was maybe not so nice, but she was most concerned - "Mommy poorly, Mommy not well!" at full volume, in my left ear.

However, have nano'ing to do. Off for the weekend on Sat (taking James away for a dirty weekend for his birthday) so need to get ahead on my word count. ;)

How sad am I?

Found this yummy looking recipe whilst trawling for info for my Nanowrimo thingie... and for some reason felt compelled to blog it instead of losing it in the depths of my Recipe folder. If anyone else tried it, let me know. ;)

Cawl

Ingredients:

• 2lb Best end of neck Welsh Lamb
• 1/2 lb Carrots
• 2 large Leeks
• 1/2 oz Flour
• 1 small Swede or Turnip
• 1 lb Potatoes
• 1 oz parsley
• Salt and Pepper

Method:

1. Put the meat into the saucepan, cover with cold water, add salt and pepper, bring slowly to the boil and skin carefully. (This can be done the night before and the fat allowed to set on the surface. This makes it easier to skim off)
2. Then add the carrots (cut in half), the swede (sliced) and the white of the leeks, and simmer gently for two to two-and-a-half hours.
3. Add the potatoes (cut in flour) and continue to simmer for another 30 minutes.
4. When the potatoes are almost cooked, thicken with flour and a little water.
5. Lastly add the green of the leeks and parsley (chopped) and simmer for another 10 minutes and serve in basins while hot

Catching up - crap mice and all that

Seems I've been absent for a while. Had a briliant time at the festival of the lights thing near Bridgewater. The kids just loved it - very loud, very bright and very late.

Also extrememly wet weekend, but fortunately it stayed dry for the two hours of the carnival so that was special. Go back and had to pour several gallons of water off my Mom's awning and pondered the need for heavy lifting equipment to get the vans out of the mud...

Am going to have to watch my language though. I was making lunch earlier, talking to JAmes in the kitchen, and this voice fromthe dining room demands to know what's for lunch.

Pasta, I says.
Don't like pasta, says Myf. I want sausages.
Where doesn't she like the decent stuff? I ask James. Why is it always the crap stuff?
Are sausages crap then Mom? comes the voice from the dining room.

At least they weren't bloody crap, I suppose.

And we've got mice in the garage. Clearing out boxes, moving things around to put the chest freezer in there, and we're finding little holes and mouse droppings in all the boxes. The got into my craft box and made nests in the 2 kilos of angora goat wool I had in there ready to spin one day. Had to bin the lot. :( At one point, I pulled out a round hat box tpe thing full of wool, lifted the lid and there was one sat in there looking up at me. Not sure who was the more surprised! lol. It scarpered and I just stood there laughing. It was quite cute, actually. But very smelly.

So James went out to buy mousetraps at the local hardware store. They only had the snap'em kind, the quick-release-without-touching plastic ones, so he bought a twin pack.

And we've already caught two of the little buggers!

Sloping off for the weekend

Well, 10484 words and I'm off for the weekend.

Going to Bridgewater for the Festival of Lights carnival - should be fun so cross your collective fingers that it doesn't rain on us! That's on Saturday night, and Friday we should be off to Glastonbury for a browse.

See you all later.

Where did yesterday go?

I know where it went - by in a blur of NaNoWriMo activity.

I knew it was a bad idea when Jax blogged it. I had a sinking feeling when I perused the website. And then last night I abandoned my children, forgot the dog and disappeared into a hole with a blank Word doc and a mug of tea.

Several hours later, I emerged, sorted out the various two and four legged livestock and refreshed the cold cup of tea.

And in the early hours of this morning I sloped off to bed having written well over 6000 words.

I'm sure Myf did some maths workbooks at some point. And we had friends over for lunch. But don't ask for any more detail than that.

This morning, I've only written a few hundred words, Myf and Tea have both done some of their new Explode the Code books - straight into number 2 for Myf and the pre-code book Get Ready for Tea. And now they've eaten lunch and me, the bad mother that I am, have put the tv on for them so they can veg for an hour and I can write more! hahahaha... wanders off into the kitchen cackling madly

Where do you find them Tim?

Raistlin Majere

An intensely private individual that chooses actions with care, you strive to further your own skills and powers.

This happens because I choose it to happen!

Raistlin is a character in the Dragonlance universe. He has a short biography at Wikipedia.

Very impressed & pumpkins too!

My Sonlight order just arrived. Am very impressed, especially as it was dispatched from the company on Thursday morning. Good ol' FedEx.

We've had a productive day, in spite of being wheel-less. I still feel like some has amputated a limb, but we're coping better than I expected. Did just under an hour of 'bookwork' this morning. We've got a couple of the 'Gold Stars' workbooks (think we picked them up in the supermarket way back last year sometime), and Myf did a dozen pages of the 5-7 one and Tea happily scribbled and coloured all over the 3-5 one. Hey, don't care what they're doing at the mo. As long as we're working towards the routine of spending an hour or so doing 'normals' every day, I'm content.

After that we whizzed down into the village to do library (taking back over due books), chemist (Piglet's excema stuff) and the veg stall (pumpkin!). Didn't have time to go to the post office as we had to be back for the Tesco shop arriving. It was late, but that didn't matter. We started carving our pumpkins. :)

Before:

I grew the white one on the lottie this year, and the little diddy orange one was all the veg stall had.

During:

And finally, after.


Although I like this one best, even if it is sightly blurry.


Fingers crossed Blogger doesn't blow a fuse, or fuse a circuit, trying to upload all of those! :)