Domesticali

An interruption to our schedule

Lying in bed. Well, on top of partially re-made bed. Minus cover-less duvet. Taking it easy.  Me and the cat, both.

See, I was having a lovely day at home and doing a spot of spring cleaning. But I had to pause for an appointment to donate blood. Off I went and was thoroughly enjoying myself. Enjoying? Oh yes, because fate smiled on me and gave me a venue of the very posh boys' school nearby, where I had the pleasure of secretly watching the sixth formers and reminiscing about youth.  I'm sure boys didn't look that good when I was 17.

Plus you get to lie down and read your book uninterrupted AND drink tea and eat biscuits. What's not to like? Nothing, until I'd finished up and was enjoying my custard creams when one of the nurses looked down and asked 'Is that pen on your jeans?' and when I looked, the alleged pen was suspiciously red and blood was dripping out of my arm and all over my shirt, the chair and the floor. Clearly I was having a more generous blood donation day than I had planned.

It wasn't serious - just dramatic, but I've abandoned the spring cleaning (I'm citing on medical advice - any excuse).  And delegated dinner-preparation. Score one for me! But my gleefulness about having to put down my metaphorical rubber gloves is symptomatic of an on-going ailment. See, I really really don't like housework.

Living in a clean house, I like. The tedium of the ongoing drudgery required to keep it that way, well count me out.

I have a friend, L, who lives in an immaculate house. She is a natural born cleaner - and for her, it's effortless. When she fills her kettle, she wipes the drip off the lip of the water filter. I always used to think this was the height of neurotic cleanliness. Until I spent time this morning, chiseling the limescale off the spout of my own filter jug. Now whose way seems better?

I've been thinking a lot about these things, since I came across Housework Blues - a survival guide. It's a fascinating read - and one that has had me nodding my head in agreement more times than I can count.

It's not a book which tells you how to polish silver or remove stains (though today, that knowledge might have helped my poor shirt). What it does, seems to me to be much more valuable. Very calmly, Danielle Raine presents housework as inevitable. What she does is tackle our attitudes towards it (and our excuses for not doing it). Do any of these ring a bell?

* Overwhelmed (there's too much to do)
* Injustice (why should I do it all?)
* Futility (it'll only get dirty again)
* No energy (I can't be bothered)
* Boredom (it's so monotonous)
* Inferiority (I'm no good at this)
* Superiority (it's a waste of my brain and talents)
* No motivation (I'd rather do something else)

And slowly slowly, I think perhaps I may be moving towards embracing it. Because there are chores which I do regard as a pleasure (hanging the washing on the line springs to mind). And it's a pity to waste so much energy being cranky about the jobs I love less.

Make peace with housework - sounds good, doesn't it? Are you at peace with yours?

Dinner in a box

Something big arrived on my doorstep this Friday. The boys were very excited. "What is it?" they demanded. Dinner in a box, of course. Courtesy of Alice and Laverstoke Park Farm.

Although, that was an understatement, because there was enough for a week of dinners and beyond - a chicken, sausages, mince, lamb steaks, pork loin - I was drooling as I unpacked it from it's insulated nest. Sorry vegetarians, we are an unashamedly carnivorous lot. In fact, I have a fascination with meat - there's nothing I like better than to watch a butcher plying his trade. Perhaps it's the stripy twine they use? But real butchers are becoming a little thin on the ground - three in our area have closed down since we have lived here. Which means I have to keep auditioning new ones further afield.

And to me, one of the best ways to check on the quality of a butcher is to eat his sausages. So that's what we sampled first.

They looked good - and as a bonus, they came wrapped up in Butchers' paper, which for some reason made me extraordinarily happy. Sausages in clingfilm just always seem a little bit sad and sweaty.

Everyone approved - including the cat, who usually declines human food but appeared looking very interested and licking his chops once he'd smelled them grilling.

We've also roasted an extremely athletic chicken. Seriously, the bone density of this beast would have an orthopedic specialist jumping for joy. That bird led a healthy life, for sure. And was yummy.

So, if you are short of a good local butcher, or the time to visit yours, perhaps the thought of a box of organic meat delivered to your door appeals. The kind folks at Laverstoke Park have given me an offer to pass on to you. Now comes the technical bit...

If you order a family feast box before May 31st and enter the discount code LPFFB2 in the Discount Code box on the shopping cart page, you can get one for £39.99 (excluding delivery) rather than the usual price of £48.59. You can use this code as many times as you like, and feel free to pass it on to friends and family too.

And now I am hitting the cookbooks to decide what to do with the pork and lamb. The minced beef is destined for some puff pastry parcels. Possibly to be eaten in samosa style with this.

Yup, guess who's home - hooray!

Change of pace

The beginning of term this week caught me slightly unawares. Don't know if it was the balmy Spring weather, or being the only adult at home, but life had assumed an extremely languid pace. Late breakfasts, no reason to climb out of PJs, plenty of Lego.

Oh, and very little clearing up of the playroom. Yeah. Truth is, that's always pretty relaxed.

But watching them go back to school has left me feeling a little sad and nostalgic for our slow days. Because there is so much work. And so little time to just 'be'.

And at the end of the day everyone is shattered.

But it's almost Friday and we're looking forward to re-capturing that sense of loafing this weekend. The sun is supposed to shine and those lovely boys and I? We're planning on making the most of it.

Volcanic ash?

Did I mention hubby is still away? Oh yes. He's in India. Still.

Evereybody is being terribly sympathetic. 'Is it the volcanic ash which is stopping him from coming home ?', they enquire.

Personally, I think it has something to do with the sock service. I clearly must try harder.

New additions

There's been a bit of domestic remodeling in hubby's absence. Just the odd tweak. Though it might morph into changing the locks, because him being out of the country for 3 weeks of a 4 week school holiday is, quite frankly, pushing the bounds of my sanity.

But I have had some triumphant moments, including a visit to Ikea with two boys in tow. Not really my idea of a fun day out, but needs must. And actually, I was very glad Mark was there, because the flat pack Expedit bookshelf was so heavy, I needed every ounce of his nine year old muscle power along with mine, to heave it to the car. The next challenge was fitting the shelves and two children in for the homeward trek. We had a slightly precarious arrangement and a deal whereby I yelled 'brace, brace, brace' before each  bend and the boys threw themselves against the cardboard boxes to prevent them slipping onto the gearstick.

They thought it was hysterical. I was feeling a bit that way myself by the time we made it home. Our nearest Ikea is a significant journey. But Mark is very pleased with his new book storage. Which I record here, looking tidy. Just for posterity.

Having triumphed over the flat pack furniture, I then got busy with the paintbrush for a spot of chimney-breast tweaking. It took me far longer to decide on a colour than it did to do the painting. But I think I'm happy with it.

And to accessorize? Well, I went reclamation yard shopping and bought an old ladder. It needs a coat of wax, but I have high hopes for it.

And for a resolution of my on-step display dilemmas. They aren't quite there yet.

Corn-henge

I'm not really a fully paid up subscriber to the "don't play with your food" brigade.

Go forth and recreate National Monuments, boys.

A teeny kimono

My sewing machine just about died of fright when I moved it to action stations on the dining room table. It's been so long since I used it for anything remotely serious. In this case, a teeny weeny baby kimono for a friend's bump.

The gender of the bump is still a mystery - so hopefully the Alexander Henry animals are sufficiently gender neutral. I used the Lucy's Kimono pattern from Weekend Sewing, which turned out fine. But boy, that book has a lot of errors and dodgy directions. Luckily, the internet saved me as I googled everyone else's efforts first which saved me from disaster.

I'm sure it is exactly this sort of googling that the founders of My Sewing Circle had in mind, when they set up the stitcher's equivalent of Ravelry. Sure, it's in its early days, but I think it's going to be fab. Soozs tipped me off to it's existance. She also has a really thoughtful post about sewing garments today. Which I am going to read every time I feel disgruntled with my own efforts.

A wordless week

It's been a silent week here on the blog, and in real life too. See, I was home alone this week. Just me, no hubby, no boys. Tomorrow, the children will be back, full of noise and tales and I am hugely excited to see them. But this week has been a good interlude.

Sometimes it takes a whole stretch of quiet for the chatter and bustle of day-to-day life to calm down enough to let you really think. I have soaked up all the silence and feel more alert than I have done in a long while. Focused and energized.

Which is not to say I haven't missed them. Hubby will be gone for a little while longer still, but I sometimes think that not being in the same place makes you appreciate a person more.

It was our sixteenth wedding anniversary on Friday and I was reminded of this poem, one I sent him during the year we spent living an ocean apart.

Words, Wide Night

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us. I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine
the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you and this

is what it is like or what it is like in words.

Carol Ann Duffy

Do you hear it? That's my last few hours of quiet. I am going to make the most of them.

The power of four

It's four years today since I started my blog. And what a  rag bag of miscellanea it now contains. So in celebration of the random nature of life, here are some things, neatly catalogued in fours.

Four books in my half read/waiting to begin pile:

Frankie and Stankie by Barbara Trapido

A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg

Trouble with Lichen by John Wyndham

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Four things I have eaten this week:

Kids leftovers

Fish stew

Black olives

The first poached salmon of spring

Four things on my list of chores for today:

Go to the post office

Bring the bins back in (very smug that I remembered to put them out in plenty of time and was not forced to do a daybreak run in my pyjamas)

Get rid of the giant cobweb I spotted on my bedroom ceiling last night

Attack the laundry mountain so we have some clean clothes for heading off at the weekend

Four questions I am pondering:

What am I going to do with my child free week next week?

Does everyone's house get this dirty or are my family extra good at messing ours up?

What shall I make for dinner?

Something vague about the meaning of life and happiness, but I keep getting distracted and cannot think coherently. A friend once said that with motherhood, you loose the ability to think in a straight line. How very true that is.

Four stray items on my desk:

Packing tape

Mark's Rugby match report for his scrapbook

A Lego money box (why? why?)

A  shopping voucher

How much tidier it all seems, laid out here in regular fours. I wonder sometimes, if one of the attractions of blogging is that it allows you to place a framework around an existence which seems chaotic. Sometimes, my favourite moment in writing a post is the bit where I get to assign it to a category, and thereby assert some control over the flotsam and jetsam of my days.

Here's to the bizarre and random nature of life and my attempts here to pin it down into a coherent existence. Four years. Who'd have thought? Thanks for sharing them with me.