Ally has tagged me, using the evil Facebook, with an assorted-things-about-you kinda thing. As I am feeling mildly brain-dead today, having used up all my remaining braincells when restraining myself from purchasing every single thing in the Grimm’s Spiel und Holz range, I thought why the hell not. (Although that assumes I can think of twenty-five things; seriously, do you know how much brain power is taken up in physically removing one’s finger from the ‘buy it now’ button when there is so much colour on offer? I thought not. If you are, like me, something of a magpie, I speak from my heart when I say: go ye not to the aforementioned site, and certainly, go ye very not to any retail outlets selling such gorgeous things.)

Anyhoo. I digress.

1. I would quite like to do some research on the relationship between various late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century children’s fiction and magic.
2. Were I to undertake so rash a project, Quercus would almost certainly either divorce me or bury me under our still-to-be-built patio. For lo! he hath endured the woe of a five-year PhD by proxy, and that, ladies and jellyspoons, is more than most men could manage.
3. I would like to be a potter. I have a wheel, sitting in one of our sheds, and when we have space and the clarity offered by not living in a project house, I hope to have a bloody good go with it, with a view to using an evening class as an opportunity to fire things, largely, so that I could try selling a few bits and bobs on t’inter.
4. I like odd numbers, particularly three, nine, and thirteen. Seven is also good.
5. I have quite a large collection of vintage SNCF cards and posters, picked up during jaunts across France. I am particularly fond of the ones I have for Carcassonne, and for various parts of Brittany. To me, these cards et al belong on the wall in our kitchen. As our kitchen has only recently acquired plaster, they are currently living on the stairs wall, where spiders are having a field-day making homes around the various different frames.
6. I really like making wine. I haven’t made any for two years, and it strikes me that this year it’s time to get back to it.
7. If I could drive any car – money, safety, and availability notwithstanding – I would probably have a 2CV.
8. I can’t quite decide who I like better: Gotan Project or Thievery Corporation.
9. My father looks like Cary Grant, aka Archibald Leach.
10. Meanwhile, my mother hated the fact that as a young woman, she quite resembled Doris Day; in later life, she looked like a prettier version of Judi Dench, but thinner. This makes watching the fantabulous Judi’s films a bit of a bittersweet experience for me – in some shots, the likeness is uncanny. Different nose, but really quite similar.
11. My favourite flower is probably the stargazer lily.
12. I like nothing better than a really dark night, with really bright stars. Fortunately, there is no street lighting near the Earthenhouse, which makes for darkness quite frequently.
13. The night after Quercus and I got married, we had a bonfire in the field opposite our newly-acquired house, with a few people who’d stayed on for a day or so. It was very, very cold, with hard frost, and very, very bright. Also, the Leonids were clearly visible as Quercus and I sat by the fire late into the night, drinking hot chocolate and toasting mallows of the marsh. That moment, particularly the bit when Quercus gallantly disappeared into the hedge to get me a longer stick with which to toast, is one of my favourite memories.
14. According to a dubious online testy whatsit, I type eighty words a minute.
15. I am growing ever fonder of knitting, particularly using double-pointed needles.
16. I long to make a patchwork quilt. I have one my mother made when she was pregnant with me – it has holes in, and I am hoping to break myself in gently by plugging the gaps.
17. My mother’s ashes live on top of my wardrobe. I want to make a ceramic urn, sort of ginger-jar-shaped, and transfer them, but, er, haven’t got round to it yet. We always used to joke that when she died, her ashes would be on my mantelpiece, and she would rattle her lid disapprovingly if I did something she didn’t like. I haven’t got a mantelpiece, but it’s close enough.
18. When I was little, I wanted to be an Egyptologist. Either that, or to work in the Radiophonic Workshop.
19. I love the Moomins with a passionate intensity which might explain how it is that I come to own not one, not two, but three copies of Moominland Midwinter.
20. I loathe critical theory with a passionate intensity which might explain why my undergraduate critical theory reader has ‘balls’ inscribed down the outside. This might also go some way towards explaining my tutor’s view that I wasn’t very committed to his module.
21. I can speak French, a bit of Spanish, some German, some Italian, the odd word of Russian (ironically, enough to say ‘I’m Russian’), and various bits and bobs of other languages, including Anglo-Saxon.
22. Talking of which, is it terribly boring of me to have thoroughly enjoyed translating said chronicle as a finalist in my first degree?
23. I have a longstanding interest in magic and witchcraft, and I once saw a man light a candle just by looking at it and raising a hand.
24. Baking makes me feel safe.
25. This year, Quercus and I will have been together for ten years.

In theory, I am now meant to tag twenty-five people, but, being a) lazy, and b) a bit of a Billy-No-Mates, I can’t be arsed; if you fancy a go, then knock yourself out, and leave a comment to let me know. If you don’t, well, er, don’t, then. See if I care.

Bearing in mind a particularly challenging conversation I had with my father last night, it’s perhaps apt that Mon has chosen now for new moodboards. I feel that it’s time I put a few things to rest, and my expectations of my father really ought to be one of them. I mean, I am a grown woman, dagnammit, so why do I let him get to me every single bloody time? And why does it still bug me that he is the way he is? I mean, I should surely have accepted it by this point. Well, I haven’t, but it’s time that I tried a bit harder, I think, as it seems to me that the crusty old git isn’t going to change at this stage, so I may as well work rather harder on my defences. I wondered last night if he feels as I do, from the other end – that I’ve changed, that I’m no longer open with him, that every time he sticks his head above the emotional parapet, some sod fires a tank at him – but no, I don’t think so. Well, he probably thinks I’ve changed, becoming even more entrenched in the reckless behaviour he’s accused me of in the past, but you know what, I think ‘stuff it’ is the considered, emotionally mature response that I’m going for now.

So. The last few weeks have been introspective for me (and yes, I am going to blame it on my PhD finishing, because hey, why miss an opportunity to blame the PhD for something else? It’s always been my ‘go-to’ blamification device thus far, and I see no reason to change that), with lots of thinking about things to which there is no definitive answer. So, inward-looking, sometimes lonely, and sometimes hard, though ultimately important thunking has been done, I hope:

The coming month will, I hope, find a more optimistic Earthenwitch, one who is ready to try once more (and repeat after me, interweb) to find that inner zen-like oasis of calm. It must be in there somewhere. Right? RIGHT? I shall be a child of the universe. Tossed along on its gentle, balm-like waves. Wittering on about a right old load of shite. Thinking karmic thoughts. But seriously, I hope I can hold on to the sense of peace that I have felt in the last few days, and just Not Let Things Piss Me Off:

We’ll see, eh?

The last two nights have been particularly peaceful here in the Earthenhouse. The witchling, despite having two days of nasty toothness, has slept very well, waking only once or twice to feed, and slipping back into the land of nod quietly and quickly once that feed was over. Since we stopped co-sleeping, I confess that I have been finding it difficult to put her down in that situation; she feeds, her breathing slows to a gentle whisper, and I look down at her face, pressed against me, as sleep overtakes her, and wonder how I can ever manage to stand up – to stand up! – and put her in her little nest when she looks so peaceful right there, sleeping on me.

Of course, I have already forgotten, or at least put to one side in a most hypocritical manner, the challenges that sleep deprivation threw my way last year; I am still very grateful that I am getting more sleep, but I do miss having her snuggled up with me in a vast expanse of feather duvet and patchwork quilt. When it worked for us, co-sleeping was the most blissful sensation, and it was one of the first things that made me realise that this parenting malarky isn’t always as straightforward as one might, in one’s pre-parent status, have imagined it to be – casting my mind back to my first visit, pre-labour, from a health visitor (to non-UK readers, health visitors are sort of, kind of, a bit like midwives, but without the birth bit: they poke and prod and check you all out, and then one day they stop coming round, and normal life resumes), who said, earnestly, ‘of course, you wouldn’t ever have the baby in bed with you, would you?’ Quercus and I replied, without a moment’s hesitation, that that would be lunacy, and that we’d want our own space, and that it’s best to get things started as you mean to go on. Ha! Jump forward a few months, and there we were, all tucked up together, and finally getting some sleep.

The sad thing, for me, is that it didn’t last, and once the witchling was past that point of intense need, where everything was new and, potentially, terrifying, it became trickier and trickier to get her to sleep at all; I think co-sleeping answered the question initially, but as she became more sure of us, and of our continued responses to her, she just wanted to go to sleep, dammit, without some giant woman mountain breathing on her, and rolling near her, and generally waking her up, by god! So now she is in a little cot in her own room, which, given the Earthenhouse’s dimensions, still makes her within twenty feet of us at any one time. I suppose that’s the bit of parenting that you can only learn once you’re in the situation – adapting to your child’s needs can also mean backing off a tad. Which isn’t always easy.

We’re still thanking our lucky stars for the sling I bought when I found out I was pregnant. It’s proved an absolute must, and the witchling loves riding around in it. She also likes eating carrot in it. Exhibit A:

(And yes, this is a first: I never posted a picture of myself on my old blog. Somehow, now, I felt the time was right. Or something. No comments about my slightly mad hair-do, OK? Bunchlets, i.e. bunches which are then stuffed unceremoniously into a hairband to make them less grabbable, are practical, and Not That Bad When You Get Used To Them. Oh, and note the hat the witchling is wearing; that is courtesy of Ambermoggie, and is utterly fab.)

The brown swathing you can see around her is the edge of the . Ye gods, how I love it. Let me count the ways: 1. in and out of doorways and shops without pratting about with pram wheels and dubious steering (that has more to do with user error, in my case, than with the pram itself; we’ve hardly used the bloody thing, and thus I remain cack-handed at best); 2. no need for army-movement-like preparations in order to go out – just grab the sling, stick her in, and sod off; 3. hands free! look! no hands! 4. without that sling, at least the first four months of the witchling’s life would have been spent contemplating the disastrous state of our house in terms of constantly accumulating STUFF which I couldn’t put away because I was always carrying her. With it, the stuff somehow managed to get put away. Bargain. Now that she’s getting bigger, I still find the Moby very comfortable, but I am beginning to think about carrying her on my back, and, while there are pictures in the instructions of people doing just that with this sling, the stretchiness of it makes me think not, frankly. So, I am contemplating a mei tai, an Asian-style carrier, which is supposedly pretty good for this sort of thing. I also have a beautiful woven wrap which I should get to grips with properly; I’ve had it for about five months but have only used it a handful of times because the Moby one is just easier on and off, and I’m lazy (sue me). Apparently that works well for carrying babies on backs too, so I must pull my finger out and try it, really.

What else can I think of? Well, the witchling has been saying ‘Mama’, ‘Dada’ and ‘num-num-num’ (particularly when going to sleep and when hungry) for about six weeks, which is utterly delightful. We also had one memorable bathtime when I said ‘can I just take this arm out of that sleeve please?’, and she promptly replied ‘yeth!’ before bursting into fits of laughter. Coincidence we think, but no less amusing for that. She is much more mobile-seeming in the last few weeks too, and able to roll herself about most acrobatically, as well as sitting up and waving her fists about. We have also discovered that she likes to be snortled, which is to say one or the other parent, while holding her, leans into her neck and basically snorts at her while she screams with laughter and grabs fistfuls of hair, face, or whatever she can find of a parental nature. It is hard to say which of us enjoys this more. Food-wise, she is still largely a breastfed baby (no bottles, but now bits and bobs of food as well as milk); we are trying the baby-led weaning route, which involved finger foods rather than purées, and current favourites are pear, wholemeal toast, broccoli, parsnip and plum. It is going pretty well, I think, and she seems to be really enjoying trying new things, including, to my surprise, a tomato soup made with chickpeas, saffron and coconut milk.

I write this as she sleeps, and really I should be finishing the bathroom grouting. Oh, for a life of sensation, eh? But that’s the odd thing: somehow, despite the relative ordinariness of the things life is throwing my way at the moment, it is still a life of sensation AND thought. I am happy. I suppose that’s what it is. Grouting, nappies, clearing up sticky substances from the table, removing dead shrews from under the bath (let us move past that one) – it’s all good.

(Though I’m still caught between a rock and a hard place re going back to work; more of this anon, doubtless, but for now, let’s just enjoy the moment, eh?)

Well, it looks like our new arrivals have now settled in. We’ve had the Araucanas, Cobweb (front) and Nightshade, for about two months, and they seem to be quite happy. Or, rather, they appear to be as happy as mad little creatures of a chicken persuasion ever are – utterly neurotic, they beetle about the place as if the world is about to end, and we, virtually only ever bearers of food and other forms of chicken worship, are harbingers of doom of the nastiest variety. Such is life, when you is a chicken, I suppose. (Though not necessarily, come to think of it – Liquorice, our Barnevelder lady, is distinctly unconcerned by us, and will happily follow one around with a rather hungry look that, in a larger animal, might prove somewhat disconcerting; I tell you, it’s only their diminutive stature that prevents chooks being utterly fucking terrifying – think about it: all those claws, and the beaks! the cruel, cruel beaks! I rest my case.) The other hens don’t really seem to mind them now, and I think they’ve got off pretty lightly, really -there was a bit of ‘oh no you fucking don’t’ when they started up towards the perch for the first few nights, but other than that, and the odd bit of ‘every single morsel of food here is MINE! all MINE!’ from Liquorice (a very greedy little hen, it must be said), it’s been quite straightforward, and better than we’d hoped, really. They’re all going in and out together now, and the pecking order is thus established, I imagine. They are also delighted by the appearance of poultry spice in their diet, and, to be frank, I can see their point – made with such delights as ginger, it smells rather like potted Chrimbly. Though, come to think of it, it’s possibly rather bad taste to mention a festival so closely linked to the demise of certain larger fowl…

We have been getting anywhere between one and four eggs a day, thus far; I now have a full half-dozen little turquoise eggs sitting in the fridge courtesy of the Araucanas (though we have yet to get two blue eggs in one day; until that happy event, I shall always be looking askance at one or other of the blighters, in case they have the temerity to be a rooster, on the sly), and the original hens’ eggs seem larger this year than they were last, in their first year of laying. I’m now thinking that it might be quite nice to have, in addition to the pretty turquoise eggs, white eggs too. Eight chickens. Oh dear. I remember quite clearly the day that I mentioned, with the sort of assumed carelessness which comes only after at least half a dozen preparatory sessions in front of a mirror while on one’s own, that a friend had offered me some chooks, and that I’d, er, sort of said yes, despite Quercus and I having agreed only quite recently that we had far too many things to get on with (in house terms) to start having animals about the place. Ahem. Oops. (Blame it on Ally; she is a chicken-pusher, you know.) Have I become one of those people? You know the sort: the ones with all the animals…? I mean, two cats, six chickens, a baby… what next? A goat? (Tempting.) A sheep? (Only if it has big horns and a curly tail, thank you – I have got some standards.) A llama? (Called Dalai, obviously.) An alpaca? (Al Pacacino. Naturally.) I ask you.

Oooh oooh oooh – this week, we have had our new hob delivered. It’s not fitted yet as it’s one of those clever thingies what involves electricky malarkies, but it’s going to be an utter delight to one who loves cooking – it has touch controls and no knobs, which, as you can imagine, = easy cleaning and thus a world very far removed from our current Baby Belling bliss. This weekend, we have made good progress on the extension work, too – Quercus has finished fitting the reclaimed door, complete with new double-glazed panel where previously there was wood, and I have grouted half the known universe, which is to say approximately a third of the tiny, teensy tiles in our bathroom (they are travertine; they look lovely, but man alive, they take some grouting).

We are now getting about two to three eggs a day from the hens, who started laying again about a week ago, and we’ve had five blue eggs so far from the new arrivals. We have also discovered that not having made any wine in 2008, or indeed for most of 2007, hasn’t made a jot of difference; I wasn’t drinking for most of that year, what with being pregnant and having just had a baby, and now that I’m having the occasional drop-ette, we find we still have vast quantities of alcoholic beverages just waiting to be tried. Tonight, a particularly fine demijohn of sloe wine has made the light of day; Quercus, motivated by some divine genius, remembered to bring it in on one of his many door-fitting-related trips to our sheds (ye gods – the extension drawing to a conclusion must surely mean that The Day When We Must Sort Out The Sheds is moving ever closer; the mere thought of that is utterly terrifying – I mean, there are things in there that we haven’t even seen for three years! Three years!), and lordy me, it is a very fine drop indeed, made by my own fair hand in, I think, 2006, and now clear, bright and sparkling, as well as being super-sloe in flavour. If you’ve ever had sloe gin and found, as many have before you, that it is the thing which your life has lacked up to that point, then really, try making sloe wine – it is all sorts of fantastic, and cheaper per slug than the gin version as, er, you don’t have to put gin in. This year, hopefully, having a larger kitchen (and no building work, pregnancy, or PhD research) should mean more wine, less chaos, and easier storage (the attic space above the bathroom might even mean one could simply keep the demijohns up there, and insert a straw at an opportune moment, leaving gravity to do the rest while one lay on the floor below… Ahem – did I type that out loud?); I have missed making wine as the year ticked past, though even I can see that acquiring more than our current twenty-five demijohns might be taking things a bit far, so somewhere along the line, consuming some of our produce is a bloody good idea, methinks.

I’m feeling more sorted about the nursery situation now, too. Quercus and I have basically decided that unless we can find somewhere we are 100% happy with, we will both go part-time work-wise, and juggle looking after the witchling between us. We are a bit twitchy about committing to this with no end in sight, but the six months or so which, thus far, I think it would take for us to get a place at somewhere we both like (that’s six months past the time I go back to work; the wait appears to be about a year or so), we could manage fine, provided we’re careful. So, a solution, of sorts, albeit slightly unconventional.

On which note, time to go and trough my way through Quercus’s chili offering while finishing a half-glass of said sloe wine.

You know how it is when something seems too good to be true? That bit about how it normally is too good to be true? Yes, well. That.

This morning, I went to see the nursery to which we were proposing to send the witchling come June and my inescapable return to work (well, inescapable unless we stump up the £6k we would thus owe them in university maternity pay). Quercus went last week, liked it, talked to them, asked lots of questions, checked availability, and registered her accordingly. Except they lied to him. They didn’t check the all-powerful ‘forward planner’, known to us mere mortals as ‘diary’. It’s all bollocks: not only can they not take her for our preferred working pattern (five mornings a week), but they can’t even manage our fallback pattern, by quite some distance. Like, three days a week kinda distance. So, effectively we’re back to square one.

On Monday I go to see another nursery, one which Quercus said was happy to take cloth nappies, and to use expressed breast-milk rather than formula feed, and to cope with baby-led weaning chaos. He dismissed it as being more like baby-farming than the first choice, because it’s larger and thus has more babies there, and he just preferred the feeling of the first choice. But we’re getting a bit short on options; I have to find something and get it all sorted out before I can finalise details re my job, and my senior manager is off on leave for a month in February, which would leave things hanging. And no-one likes things hanging. (Except unless things = plants, or Gardens of Babylon, in which case fine – hang away.) I’ve also found another couple which look worth a go; one I have yet to get hold of, but it has at least an outstanding OFSTED report whatsit, and the other is another branch of our first choice (small set-up, but several branches nonetheless).

I admit to having cried when the nursery manager told me about this problem. She apologised profusely, and said the staff will get a bollocking; she was lovely about it, in fact. None of which makes the slightest bit of difference. And of course it reminds me all the more that I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS, ANY OF IT. I just want to stay at home and look after my daughter myself. Because yes, I do believe that I’m the best person to do it, and that she needs me, and I hate the idea of leaving her with anyone. Anyone. I’d psyched myself up to be practical about all this, and to ask the right questions, and to think about the fact that the witchling is a sociable baby, it seems, who enjoys people and places and Things of all sorts. And then this just sort of took the wind out of my sails.

I am off to eat mincemeat slices now, while feeling sorry for myself and slightly pissed that I interrupted the witchling’s deeply peaceful-looking snooze a good hour earlier than I would otherwise have done, for a car-journey which was utterly pointless.

Do you know, I find myself rather adrift since I finished my PhD. I suppose it’s all too predictable, but somehow, having no giant monster lurking in the cupboard, calling alternately seductively and threateningly, and reminding me constantly of its presence in many more subtle ways, is proving quite strange. Given that I’ve been doing something academic in higher-education terms since 1998, I don’t suppose this is particularly odd, but I thought I’d be simply throwing my hat up and shouting ‘thesis? what thesis?’ to all and sundry. Instead, I am… well, I am.

And that’s it. I just am. It’s odd.

I am… not meant to be studying now. I am… not missing a reference and unsure where I read something or other. I am… not worrying that the book I ordered last week, after months spent trying to find a copy, will arrive too late for my latest chapter deadline. I am… not feeling inadequate about something too boring to even think about any more. (There are, of course, new neuroses just waiting to slip, effortlessly, into the shoes of the old ones, but let us not speak of such things.)

But these are all negatives. They’re what’s not. What’s missing. What is no longer going on. And what the devil does that leave, I ask? I am… enjoying being a mama far more than even I thought I would, and I so very much wanted the witchling that I’m quite surprised to find it’s possible to be more excited by the discovery of something which reliably makes her laugh than… well, anything else I can think of at present. I am… managing to get some bits and bobs done on the extension, to relieve Quercus of all the work, and to bring us closer to a real, live kitchen, complete with hobs which work reliably, rather than when there’s an x in the month, or when the moon is full, or, er, just, er, when they sodding-well feel like it. (We have the cooker from hell still – at the moment, both hobs flip the trip switch for the entire extension, so it’s oven-cooked only for now; did I mention that our oven has the capacity of a smallish shoe-box, with one shelf and a fluctuating relationship to both time and temperature?) I am… thinking a lot. About all sorts of things. I am… trying to find out what it’s like to just be, without a deadline looming, without a project on the go, without a constant sense of dread. And it’s strange, is what it is. Most strange. And a bit disquieting, if I’m honest (hiding that well, non?).

What I want to be is calm, collected, a zen-like oasis of inner tranquility capable of random acts of creativity in between an orderly ocean of organisation. I function best with neat surroundings; since finishing the thesis, the house has been getting gradually more organised, though that’s by my standards, and most people would probably still ask who dropped the bomb, and how large it was. I also function best with some aim in mind, I realise. My first aim at the moment is to look after the witchling to the best of my ability, to be fully present with her in this time we have together, to give her the ol’ undivided. And yes, I do realise how wanky that sounds, but I mean it honestly – so much of my pregnancy was divided attention, bits and pieces of my time given over to far too many things, jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none and all that. And I also realise how lucky I am to have this time with her. I just think there are perhaps a few things I need to work out in my own brain, and typically none of them seems to come with instructions. I mean, first off, how did I get to be here, post-PhD, and still have no idea of what I want to do with myself? I mean – ! No idea. Well, not quite no idea, but no immediate prospect of how to do what I’d like. Or something.

Gah.

Enough navel-gazing for now. I have ten zillion tiles which, sadly, aren’t going to grout themselves, you know.

Thanks Mon, for suggesting this – if you too would like to have a pictorial moment, have a look at Mon’s original post about moodboards.

In no particular order:

1. Had a meeting today about going back to work. It went well, though nothing is finalised. I want to work five mornings a week so that the witchling has a settled pattern, while my manager would prefer me to group my hours into a larger block. We are attempting to hash this out; I’m in hopes that sticking to my guns will allow me to prevail, though, because I’m genuinely not doing this out of awkwardness but because I think it’d work well both for them and for us. (More on jobs anon, incidentally, and the whole What To Do With One’s Life thing, doubtless.)

2. We have found a nursery for the witchling to go to while I carry out my contractual obligations – yes folks: I have to work full-time for three months, or part-time for six, in order to avoid owing the university six thousand pounds of maternity pay. Can’t afford to buy myself out, and we needed the money, really, so I couldn’t have declined it to start with, so this is what I’m left with. It could be worse; the witchling will be one by the time I go back, and, as a genuinely sociable little body, I hope she will manage well, spending a half-day with other babies of her age in a place on the edge of a National Trust park, with woodland walks in easy reach and an emphasis on heuristic play, organic fruit and veg, and baby-led weaning. (They are also happy to take cloth nappies, which, apparently, is not often the case, and to hand over expressed breast-milk rather than formula feed, so that bodes well.)

3. We have kitchen lights!

4. And a back door!

5. I didn’t kill Quercus’s mother.

6. But it was a close-run thing.

7. I need to decide if writing for the Ecologist will be done in my own name, or as Earthenwitch, or somewhere between the two. I could never quite decide on a policy when I wrote as Kitchen Witch; this means you end up not sure what to put on a CV, and can be a tad irritating, generally. But am I ready for anyone who knows me to find this blog again? Last time didn’t work out too well…

8. I also need to decide if I can really make money out of proof-reading, academic or otherwise. There seem to be three zillion people already doing this. What means I’d succeed where they perhaps aren’t? I’d thought about registering a domain and having a bash at it before Easter; my PhD being finished means I can link to my very own British Library entry (smug much?), and I have a lot of experience of this sort of work, combined with the sort of job I do and a very academic background – these things seem like positives, but I just don’t know if I’m being wildly optimistic about the work being out there, really. Guess you never know until you try.

9. I also need to get on with the etsy shop thingy I was thinking of doing. Which means pulling the proverbial finger out.

10. But would it make more sense to use the time when the witchling is asleep (like now) to do stuff on the extension? We’re within spitting distance of finishing; it would be very nice to have it done by the time I have to go back to work (currently, mid-May, though possibly a little later than that, as I am going to do some gruesome ‘keeping in touch’ days, partly to ingratiate myself out of my innate desire to help, and partly because I can’t remember which end of online learning one blows down at present, which, given that I develop online learning materials, is probably not quite the best situation I could be in).

11. It seems that we are thinking of having another baby. Is this lunacy? Very probably. Will we do it anyway? Very probably. (Not now, I hasten to add. Just… at some point.)

12. The Aged Parent has now moved to the frozen north permanently. So far, he seems pretty happy with it. It is strange to find one has no idea what the pattern of one’s father’s life is, these days; I don’t know where he lives, what he is doing, with whom, why, or for how long. But that’s OK, I think. It’s odd to say it, but I feel almost like I’ve had some experience of parenting: the strings which were once so short have lengthened almost to the extent of non-existence as the seasons of his grief passed, but I think this is how it had to be, after my mother died. He needed me so very much, initially – more, I think, than I needed him, perhaps – but that need has now passed, and he has come back to the person he once was, almost. That, for him, means being part of a family in a way that grown-up, relocated children can’t offer, so he has found a new family, and it seems to be working for him. Seeing the witchling with Quercus’s mother, though, I feel sad that he is missing so much of her little life; he has seen her once since I was with him in the summer, and shows no sign of even wanting to make more frequent contact. I regret this, without having a clue what to do about it. I also regret feeling that I can’t just talk to him these days – I watch what I say, conscious of a feeling that any revelations or genuine feeling will be stored for future use.

13. My head feels very full of Things at the moment. Some good, some not so. I’m not sure why, but it feels as if something is about to happen all the time; can’t decide if a good thing or a bad, but something’s in the wind, I think.

Hello. Quercus here.

I have comandeered the little white box with tiny keys for the purpose of writing about recent events. Dr. EW and the Witchlet have been in Sussex since Thursday, being looked after by my own dear mother in her house of utter cleanliness and order. I think this was probably a very good idea as the water pipes freezing did seem to be the final straw. Poor Dr. EW – she has has a lot on her plate recently and could do with a bit of centrally-heated care and food not cooked on a Baby Belling.

Things have been moving on a little at this end. The plumbing pipes did eventually defrost, and thankfully there were no leakages due to the fact that all our pipes are plastic. Lovely David (who called him that? I mean, really…) has even got the hot water working again, solving a nasty airlock problem by joining the hot and cold pipes together to use the mains pressure to flood the system again. All very technical, but it works now. The best bit really is that the bit that froze was not where we thought it was – we had thought it must be the bit of plumbing that goes in the ceiling (it is all hidden in the depth of our timber-framed walls, but over the door and windows it hitches itself up into the roof) but actually it was a bit which was left uninsulated where our power cable came in. So that’s all good really.

Lovely David is now finishing off the electrics. We really value this because a) it means we will have lights in our kitchen for the first time (hoorah!), b) we can get it all signed off as legitimate for the kind building regulations gentleman and c) it’ll be one less thing to worry about. Huzzah! We have plumped for those lights you get on a stringy thing, because they look fairly unobtrusive and were very cheap in our local Wickes store. Funny place, Wickes – I never really go there but when I do I always find something I hadn’t expected to see there, or something very cheap, or both.

The piece de resitance though is the fact that we now HAVE A BACK DOOR. Did I mention that we have a back door? A proper one. Let me expand on this a little. When we started building our extension in May 2008 we built the new, larger building up around the outside of the existing one. This enabled us to retain our old kitchen and bathroom while building chaos reigned only feet outside. Holes were dug and foundations laid, walls erected and Quercuses worn down by toil. When we got to a certain point we had to demolish our kitchen to make way for a new wall, and the bathroom hung on like a snail on the edge of a cliff while all around builderly things went on. Then came the day when the bathroom was taken apart brick by brick with a small but serviceable sledgehammer, and the new building outside revealed. Of course this was challenging because only the bare structure was there, and no door or windows were present. The door from the main bit of our house to the old kitchen effectively became our back door, the line between inside and out, even though it had no lock. We lived open to all for a while. Then some clever person who was not me decided to get the old back door and jimmy it into place in the new location, blocking up holes in the sides roughly with wood offcuts. A need for a catflap was identified after our furry companions were seen heading for the local chippy, and shortly after a cat-sized hole was cut in the door, complete with ears. And so it was for some time. Windows were fitted and eventually sealed tight, and render on the outside provided futher protection from the elements. Months elapsed and as winter came an artic gale blew through the kitchen door.

So this is why Dr. EW will be very pleased when she escapes from my maternal relative on Monday and returns home to find her new back door. She does not know anything about it, and as she has no internet access in Sussex, them being very backward there like, you are privileged to hear the news first. The new door was found in a reclamation yard (Toby’s in Newton Abbot, since you ask). It was supposed to be a stable door but there has obviously been a lack of interest from equine consumers in recent years, for out of over 2000 doors in the yard not one was of that sort. I know. I looked at them all. Many of the reclaimed doors were in poor condition with a bit of rot or mildew, and hardly any seemed to fit our short, fat doorway. Many were the wrong size to an extent that could not be fixed; others were just plain hideous. I thought a good second to a stable door would be to have a door with glass in the top, so that we can easily see down the communal tip that is our garden and into the field to the side. I looked at the glazed doors, but what you seem to pay for is the glazing and not the door itself, and mostly the glazing was broken or hideous). Many had only a small pane, and I fancied something with a large bit of glass. Eventually I realised that I was due very shortly to see a nursery which the Witchlet may attend, and that this place was some distance from the charming (not) town of Newton Abbot, so I had better make my mind up pronto and hotfoot it back, seeing how fast the car would go with a trailer on the back (about 120mph officer…) (I jest).

In the end I chose a solid old chunky door. It had obviously been an internal door and had no glazing, but I bought it for £60 and am in the process of making it into a rather nice back door. I have removed the top panel and a nice piece of double glazing is on order, to be installed when it arrives. The rest has been sanded and will get a good dose of wood filler. It has been chopped to size and tomorrow I’m finishing fitting the frame and lock. Frames and the like do take me ages to get right, but I want it done and dusted for when Dr. EW gets back on Monday. It even has a catflap now, so the furry felines won’t have to hitch a lift to the chip shop.

There we go then. Dr. EW reports, wheezily, that life in Sussex would be better without a horrible cough and a very little girl who has been VERY CROSS today.

Cheerio,

Quercus.

Have you noticed how push-fit plumbing bits only give in to six bar mains water pressure in the middle of the night? And that the resulting spray always manages to take out your (electric) well pump at the same time as covering the entire kitchen in water? And that you’re only awake for this because Wixon, your now-old-enough-to-count-as-a-little-bastard cat, brought in a live shrew and, as part of his nature reserve in reverse plan, released it into the wild under the sitting room carpet? And that when you attempt to clean up, at about six in the morning, you then notice that the bathroom lights have stopped working, for no apparent reason? And that this all happens at the same time as you develop full cold symptoms, complete with a streaming nose that knows no resistance?

No?

Just me, then, eh?

Update
Ah. So it appears that our pipes are frozen. We, er, have no water. Other than the rising main, by the back door, we are surmising that everything is solidly blocked – the water tanks up in the attic of the extension aren’t filling, and nothing is coming out of ‘em either. It’s been really cold here in the last few days, but a large part of me is still thinking there must be some other explanation; these pipes are in the middle of the timber-framed walls, surrounded by lagging and insulation, and on the outside the walls are finished in Heraklith, a renderable board with, apparently, superb thermal insulation qualities. Our previous extension, with single-skin bricks, no insulation, no lagging and copper pipes, used regularly to get frost on the inside of the windows, yet this has never happened to our new extension; also, there was a glass of water left out overnight, and it didn’t get even a hint of ice in it, so frozen pipes? really? To be honest, today, I am feeling a bit beaten down by all this. There may even have been tears. The witchlet is teething, Quercus and I are both feeling pretty shocking courtesy of the return of whatever bug we thought we’d kicked into touch after Chrimbly, and we can’t even wash up because there is no water. Also, to add to my woes, I think I may have to go and stay with Quercus’s mother if this isn’t easily resolved. And I’m supposed to have a meeting at work next Tuesday to discuss my application for a new working pattern when I go back at the end of my maternity leave, so going away at the moment isn’t the best of plans. But, er, no water.

Why is it always now?

[In other news, I appear to be about to resume writing for the Ecologist again. I'll probably cross-post for a bit, but if not, I'll name-drop about it like mad, until you're all thoroughly sick of me. Just so we're all clear, OK?]

(‘Bits and bats’ comes from my ex-supervisor. Do you know, it’s been over two weeks and the knowledge that he is now my ex-supervisor still hasn’t quite sunk in. It is just too fantastic to be true.

Anyhoo.)

I’ve started redrafting some of my archives from the ol’ blog, so cunningly back-dated posts will be appearing in the archive list here too, making me feel less fly-by-night here. It’s funny, reading back over things I wrote over four years ago, and I was sorry not to have my back story, as it were, when I moved blogs, so in a way, the demise of Journalspace has resolved one or two things for me, I suppose; I hadn’t wanted to get rid of my presence there after I’d moved because I thought it would make it pretty obvious that I’d moved elsewhere, when what I wanted was for anyone reading to think that I might just have stopped. Or is that just my twisted psychology? Anyway, rhetoric, rhetoric. I’m particularly glad, in a sort of masochistic, pokey-stick-in-eye way, that reposting things is giving me the opportunity to use categories for things like recipes; most of the time, I’m quite happy posting in a completely unstructured chaos of tripe-like witterings free-flowing manner which scorns the restrictions of style and the petty boundaries of organisation, but it has dawned on me from a few questions people kindly left after I moved blogs that it would be handy to be able to lay my hands on certain entries without having to remember which sodding keyword works best in the as-yet-untried search box in the sidebar. (The JS one was surprisingly good, but I haven’t had chance to fiddle with the WordPress one yet.) It also means that you, gentle reader, are in the much improved situation of not needing to know how my tortured soul works when it comes to retrieving something you might have found interesting – you can just click on the ‘Provender’ thingy, and baddabing! there it will be. (Or not. I am not 100% on remembering to add the sodding category, now that I’ve got them there, all shiny and new and organised. See? It’s clearly an EBSAC error. Also known as ‘error between seat and computer’. Just no accounting for it.)

In other bits and bats, the new chooks are settling well. As soon as I complete my highly technical camera repair (i.e. the bit of blu-tack holding the lens cover open needs rewedging), I shall take some pics of them. We have plumped for Nightshade and Cobweb. Did I already tell you that? Possibly.

In still other news, Quercus and I spent about ten days around Chrimbly feeling really grim – we succumbed to a rather unpleasant ‘flu-like thing within twenty-four hours of each other, allowing just enough time for me to endure the hell of pre-Christmas ‘quick! a year-long siege is about to take place! pile your trolley high because NOTHING WILL BE LEFT! and the shops will never re-open!’ supermarket shopping with the witchling in tow – my, how we laughed. The good bit was that the witchling didn’t catch it, despite us both hacking all over the place around her. We washed hands every other second, and generally tried not to breathe on her, but still, my hopes weren’t high, so I was delighted that she managed to remain in rude health. (Did I mention that her current reaction to the sight of her grandmother is to raspberry, before chortling in the manner of Sid James?) The decidedly unfunny part of this tale is that we have now shaken said evil ‘flu-like thing off (and to an extent I can’t really complain: this is the first evil ‘flu-like thing (shall we go to EF-LT now, for ease of typing?) we’ve had for four years, though its timing, which, I think you’ll grant, was rather regrettable, does get it extra points, I feel) only to find that, just as the cough begins to wheeze its last, Quercus has developed a new and just as exciting version for Round II. He is now languishing in bed. Quercus does not do Man ‘Flu, either – he is disgustingly healthy, generally, and laughs in the face of coughs and colds which would floor your average chap. If I wasn’t married to him, I would find this level of health positively affronting; as it is, I merely thank the gods that it means we don’t catch every single thing which makes its way through his colleagues. But if he’s got it, I think, sadly, that we’re in the countdown to me getting it. I am making Desperation Soup now, just in case.

A rather chipper idea, courtesy of Mon at Holistic Mama – monthly reviews which both inspire you to witter on, and offer some restrictions to those witterings. Lord knows if I’ll remember in January, but anyway, start as you mean to go on, or something… Thusly:

December in review, in one sentence:
The chaos of finishing off my PhD was outdone only by the utter bedlam generated by a stream of visitors, DIY tasks, and a teething baby; this did not, however, spoil the fact that I love this time of year, and managed to enjoy myself making mincemeat, Chrimbly puddings, solstice cake (that’s a keeper, incidentally, as far as recipes go) and lots of other deeply-bad-for-you things, as well as two stockings, a pair of knitted leg-warmers and various other odds and sods of a crafty nature.

Fun:
Learning to knit in the round, and discovering that actually, double-pointed needles are not Satan’s tools on earth.

Challenging:
Finding that there is always One Last Hurdle with submitting a thesis, despite the fact that it is now way past being a bad joke. Oh, except… hang on… THERE IS NO LAST HURDLE NOW – I have prevailed! Finally!

Thoughtful:
Despite the fact that there have been times in the last six months when I thought that I would never sleep again, I have found that the witchling sleeping for longer makes me quite thoughtful sometimes – she sleeps in her own little cot now, and I miss having her next to me all night. Of course, I don’t miss getting less than three hours’ sleep a night, but still, I am aware that this time is passing faster than I ever thought possible, and I want to hang on to every moment. Except, of course, the moments involving projectile vomit, nappy explosions and unfortunate timing incidents relating to baths and the aforementioned nappy incidents.

An insight/thought:
I am glad that my father is happy in his new life, and I realise that I can indeed function perfectly well without, effectively, either parent around.

Website/blog find:
I’ve found the advice and accounts of experience on the Baby-Led Weaning Forum very useful in our month of introducing various bits and bobs to the witchling; she has now decided that Pear Is Evidence Of Divinity. Perfect use of the argument from design, I believe.

Words:
‘I assumed it had got into your wardrobe by mistake, sir. Or else that it had been planted there by your enemies.’ – from the second series of Jeeves and Wooster, which we have been watching on DVD since disposing of our televisual earlier this year. It is most excellent.

Note to self:
Cake is not a breakfast substance. Or, rather, it probably shouldn’t be, not for a prolonged period, anyway.

Favourite tip/idea from t’inter:
Next year I think we might have a go at these little Chrimbly trees – they are really quite smug-making, from the looks of them.

Slice of home:

And outside of the monthly review, it appears that Journalspace, home of my previous incarnation online, has died the death, meaning that my archives are no more (well, I have a copy, but the old blog itself no longer works). Thus, lovely reader, if you have a link to me, would you be so kind as to update it to this place now, please? I am no longer worried about being found here – I now feel that if someone I’d rather not read this starts reading, they’ll just have to suck it up, really, won’t they? So, yes, link away, please.

Mother-in-law is here, I fear;
Staying with us since bastard new year.
She’s annoying and dense
And woeful and slow;
And for this the only slight recompense
Is the knowledge that one day soon
She’ll go –
To this I can only say
‘Ho fucking ho’.