I find myself in the fortunate situation of having had my doctor give me a note which tells me to refrain from work until February 22. This, dear reader, is largely because I was approaching Def Con 1 in batshit* terms last week, which is to say that, on top of yet another bout of low-level illness, I’d had very little sleep and quite a few doses of Big Fat Toddler Tears (they being the bit where gentle grumbling turns into ‘wa-ha, wa-ha, wa-haaaaaaaaaaa’, with fully fledged tears rolling down the indignant little face). So, I found myself going out of the room and bellowing ‘why won’t you go to sleeeeeeeeep?’. Not a happy situation, but my own, dear reader, my own, at least in passing. So, the next day, I took myself off to the doctor, because I felt the need to vent at someone other than Quercus, who has had enough venting to install an entire system. And lo! the result was time off, which felt like the most enormous present I’ve had in quite a while.

Quercus’s mother came to visit, bringing stews, casseroles and large bars of chocolate (about which I was relatively abstemious, in line with my “a little bit of everything but less than that, you greedy cow” approach to what I eat), and she babysat for us on Tuesday, so we were able to go out on our own in the evening, for the fourth time since the small girl entered our lives over twenty months ago. So, extra sleep, things to eat which I didn’t cook, and the visible nature of our progress towards a finished! kitchen! AFINISHEDKITCHEN! has meant that I am not feeling batshit any more. So far, we’ve been making the most of this breathing space by focusing our efforts on the construction of the kitchen; as you can see from the pictures, the cupboards are coming along, and shortly there will be that blissful bit where I get to put things in the cupboards, and to organise ingredients into boxes, and to shuffle things around so that the nicest mugs are at the front of the row. I so love organising cupboards; it probably says something worryingly Freudian about the way my brain works, but what can I say: it soothes my soul. And there is going to be plenty of soothing to do – our attic space, which we only gained as part of building the kitchen and bathroom, is stuffed to the gunwales with kitchen paraphernalia which we haven’t actually seen for the best part of five years, given that it was housed in the shed, all in boxes, before its recent promotion to loft living. Ahem. I have a notion that sometime soon there may be a boot sale in our future.

A knock-on effect of the kitchening is that, rather than baking, I’ve been knitting – I’m on the second of the sleeves for the small girl’s cardigan, and have finished the back and the front pieces. It’s chunky wool, so is knitting up disgustingly quickly, which is just as well, given that my patience is never exactly plentiful. I’m also finding the hardwood needles I bought for this pattern rather pleasing to work with; the yarn slides easily, but not too easily, across their gently cool points, and I rather like the twiddly turned bits at the non-business end. I’ve been fortunate with the pattern, too, which I found for free on Ravelry, and not least because some very kind and deeply knowledgeable knitters initiated me further into the bewildering world of abbreviations and slipped stitches passed over, which is to say that they translated some badly-worded pattern bits for me, and hopefully I’ll finish the cardigan over the weekend – my first actual garment which isn’t a hat or a scarf or legwarmers.

I’ve also finally managed to turn an old woollen jumper of my father’s into a felted dress for the witchling – a soft blue-grey, it felted straight off in a hot wash in the machine, and it was just a matter of cutting the bits out and stitching them together (using the antiquated sewing machine, which is going through a relatively amenable phase, the unpredictable length of which only serves to heighten my suspicions regarding its having developed a personality). I tried several times to catch a decent picture of the small girl wearing the result, but so far she’s too quick on her feet; I’m taking her repeated grins and strokes of it as an indication that she likes it, and my maternal heart was so pleased at this that it threatened to beat itself inside out. My favourite bit is the felt stars I added to the front; again, rubbish picture, but that’s what those blurry pink and yellow bits are, honest, guv.

Also a work in progress, though it never feels that way, really, is the development of the small girl’s speech. Words are positively tumbling over themselves in her haste to articulate them – three-word phrases, emphasis, repetition: we have the lot. It is such a delight to converse with her; every month that has passed has found me thinking that this is it – she cannot get any sweeter, and this is the single most sweet age that there could possibly be, in any child, at any point, and then, THEN, I find myself rethinking as the next moon changes, and something new wanders into our lives courtesy of a very determined pair of size 3 feet. Possibly while clutching a percussive instrument of some sort. (And yes, technically, and I shit you not, the ol’ Joanna counts as a percussion instrument.)

Oh, and of course it’s Valentine’s Day on Sunday. So, time for some heart-related craftiness, methinks – our tenth together. To my mind, nothing says ‘I love you’ like a lie-in, and some eggy bread on rising.

* Batshit: a term generally used to indicate maternal insanity, brought on by a combination of Not Getting Out Enough, Not Sleeping Enough, and Generally Beating Oneself Up About Perceived Maternal Failings Brought On By Points One And Two.

This month, we have mostly been trotting about in rather large quantities of snow, at least for this corner of the world. (This has meant more than usually pictureque views, and disproportionate use of the camera, naturally. But have I sorted out my hard-drive space issue? Have I buggery.) The chickens have had vast pots of porridge carried down to them by the small girl, and we have trolled around in wellies and millions of layers of woollen things.

Outside, we have walked and talked our way round dark Devon lanes while hoping not to get clipped by a van, as happened on Boxing Day, and we have watched the various comings and goings of the sheep who live on the hill behind our house – one of my favourite sounds here in Earthenhouse is the noise of many, many sheepy feet approaching as they pass our house en route to (literally) pastures new, in the cider orchards up the lane. Speaking of the orchards, we have also been out to admire the landscape in the snow; I am always entranced by the symmetry of rows upon rows of apple trees, whether cloaked in blossom or snow crystals. We also managed to rescue a poor sheep who had fallen down an open land-drain; it looked as if the cover had simply cracked in the cold, and the sheep, not realising that the ground wasn’t as it is everywhere else, simply dropped down into a challengingly sheep-sized hole, getting him(her?)self firmly wedged.Quercus hauled him(her?) out, and (s)he legged it, bleeting resentfully, though hopefully not at our intervention. The sheep around here seem fortunate in the home they are offered in the orchard fields. (As an aside, I would love to have some sheep. My particular favourites are the dark ones, preferably with big horns and a tail. Also, goats. Oh yes.)

Inside the warmth of the house (thank god for the woodburner; every time I find myself feeling hacked off at the prospect of lighting it, or cleaning it out, I remember the time we spent here with no heating at all, and lo! once more it takes on a wholly reassuring aspect), we have sat ourselves on oak counters and marvelled at the grain and the smooth sheen of newly-waxed wood (let us not speak of the utter shiteness of hard-wax oil), all while eating sultanas. We have also watched as our kitchen began to take shape; after months of planning, Quercus has been hard at work on and off since November, time permitting, and the result is a custom-made oak kitchen, beautifully in tune with the house as a whole, and my utter delight at the moment.

The worktops have holes and rippley feathered sections, and are finished a few tones darker than the cupboards beneath.Working out how best to protect them from daily use has proved something of a challenge; we have ended up with spirit dye for the colour, followed by tung oil, largely because this combination appears to be the only one you can fix up later on without having to sand back whatever finish you’ve gone for so that you can start afresh. The joy of unloading boxes of stuff, stored for months if not years, is just around the corner; today Quercus has fitted two cupboard doors, and he has worked out a cut-list for starting on the large cupboard which will occupy over half of the red (cob) wall.

In a further move towards some degree of civilisation, we acquired a cunning laundry airer whatsit (and yes, that is exactly what they are called), and I am not ashamed to say that it has revolutionised my feelings about laundry. Not tripping over the sodding airer thingy in the sitting room is a huge improvement, as is not finding Wixon eating one’s socks at six forty-five in the morning. Whenever I walk under the airer and find it empty (which is rare at the moment), I feel almost jealous of the drying time that we are missing out on – I mean, things could be up there! Drying! But worry not – I am coping. Just. (We’ll just agree to draw a veil over the maniacal glint in my eye on beholding items needing washing, shall we?)

The images which will stay with me the most are probably those of the small girl taking her first bewellied steps while clutching Quercus’s hand; she has been walking confidently for some time, but there is still something about snow and wellies which gets me every time. I felt the excitement as if I had never before seen snow, simply because she hadn’t. It is a constant source of joy – and amazement – to me, this sense of the new in the familiar. Long may it last.

In amongst some stressful happenings, there are bright patches of warm, glorious sunshine. This afternoon, and indeed its counterpart yesterday, was spent curled up in the warmth of a large feather quilt on a large comfortable bed, watching as the small girl snoozed quietly beside me. There is nothing like sleeping together to smooth away the cares, to brush back the shadows, to bring back the radiance, to strengthen the connection. The small girl sleeps deeply, her breath a constant source of wonder to me as I think of the tiny lungs in her chest working away, almost by magic. She sighs as she sleeps, and I wonder what her dreams show her. Does she think of time spent in the velvet sling, carried on her parents’ willing backs? Does she think of the softness of luscious black fur, proffered on a friendly cat’s paw? Or does she dream of the night sky, the moon which fascinates her and the stars which make her smile? Perhaps one day she will tell me. For now, I am content to lie there beside her, moving in and out of my own dreams as I hold her against me.

Gosh, that sounds a bit academic article titley, doesn’t it? What a worrying start.

Anyway, whatever the inauspicious title, I’ve been thinking a lot about self-image in the last few months. Well, probably the last two years, if we’re honest, since I was pregnant. The thing is, I really hate having my photograph taken, probably because most of the pictures I see of myself are utterly abysmal, and I see, rather than the person I hope I am, outwardly, a knackered-looking woman with dubious hair and a clear love of chocolate which manifests in the physical world as hips the size of Australia and a hint of second or third chins from certain angles, none of which is particularly flattering.

Of course, there are also photos which I consider acceptable (and rest assured that those are both firmly in the minority, and the only ones I post here!); yes, I still look knackered and my hair is obviously in need of urgent attention, but normally these photos don’t, at least to my mind, show the fat bird I am so worried to be the truthful representation. Now, I know, rationally, that the weight I am is not my ideal, in terms of longevity and whatnot. I also know, however, that I am not horribly unfit, and nor am I the size of a house, despite some photographic suggestions that such is the case (we’ll say it was a combination of an unfortunate angle and the deeply unflattering sweaters I used to think made me look slimmer, ironically. Oh, ignorance was bliss!).

But still, when I see myself in the mirror, I am not happy with what I see, mostly. I am happy to have what can only be described as a Junoesque figure – I have always had reasonably large breasts, and hips which look ideally suited to producing broods of small, dungaree-clad infants with blonde hair before carrying said infants about perched on one side or the other – but the stomach? The stomach I am less happy about. I am also less happy about the general… weightiness of myself. Mostly, I am unhappy about the fact that when I see myself in the mirror, I am reminded of the years I spent reassuring my mother that she wasn’t fat, and that she looked nice in such-and-such, and so on. My mother spent most of her adult life worrying that she was too heavy, and, indeed, being too heavy. I don’t know what the risk percentages are, but I do know that extra weight is no good thing when it comes to breast cancer; as fatty tissue may produce extra oestrogen, the less tissue you have which is fatty, the better, it seems. (I don’t know if the breast cancer which killed my mother at 53 is genetic, but I do know that her mother died at 39, and that the two breast cancer genes identified thus far [for which I have tested negative] are not necessarily the only ones, so in the meantime, I’m thinking bet-hedging is the way forward.) Anyway, yes – there she was, worrying that she was overweight, and yes, sometimes, and indeed prior to her initial diagnosis with breast cancer, she was too heavy. And there I was, at the time pretty slim, reassuring her.

(Aside: I look very like my mother. The small girl looks very like me. Genetically, it’s as if our genes didn’t even notice the paternal whatsits floating about, so weak and pathetic were they when compared with our own mighty, er, persistence.)

I suppose it’s at least partly from our parents that we learn our eating habits as adults. Yes, some of it is choice, but it seems reasonable to think that some of it is learned behaviour from our childhoods. I am fortunate in that I like pretty much all sorts of vegetables and fruit; I am less fortunate in that, like many, I seem to equate food with security and happiness. If I am tired, or sad, or depressed, or just a bit low, it is all too easy to reach out my increasingly porky trotter and waffle down some cake. Likewise, one of the best ways to improve my mood is to bake. Both traits inherited, if not learned, from my own mother, and not helpful, see, when combined with a ridiculously sweet tooth and the willpower of… a very unwilled thing indeed. (Although somewhere in there I must have some backbone – I quit smoking when I was nineteen and have never gone back to it, and I did, eventually, finish that sodding PhD.) (Aside: hmm. Maybe I used up all the willpower I had? Maybe that’s my quota gone…?)

And so I find myself, at the age of thirty-one, thinking that this time, I’ve got to stop pissing about and actually drop some weight. I think that a stone would make a big difference. I am a size fourteen, in English sizing (which I think works out at a ten in the US), and I think I weigh about twelve stone.

God.

When I write that, it does not feel good. But see again the point re stopping pissing about. I don’t think I eat terribly; rather, the problem is that I simply eat too much of everything, and I don’t get enough exercise to justify doing so. When I lived on my own as a bid to make myself get over my mother’s death and start actively living, rather than simply existing, again, I joined a gym, controlled what I ate, and lost over a stone relatively easily. I can’t really join a gym these days, partly because I think my arms would take on a life of their own and repeatedly punch me in the face until I realised the extent to which I had betrayed them, and partly because I am skint enough to consider buying coffee a lavish extravagance, and then again partly because I have the perfect accessory for doing bench-presses: a nineteen-month walking talking infant. So, I can’t be completely control-freak about this, in the way that I was when I had only myself to please, and only myself to consider when I went to bed hungry – but quite smug – each night. How, then, to proceed? Well, first up, I think I need to just cut down on everything, a little bit. I don’t drink, really, and I must stop baking, I fear, for the next month, just to see if that helps. (Of course it doesn’t help that Quercus, who isn’t overweight and can eat like a bull, gets very tired in the afternoons and often perks up when presented with cake; neglectful wife charges in the offing, courtesy of none other than my own brain, see?) And after managing a three-mile walk with the small girl in the sling yesterday, I think I must also manage this more than once in a blue moon, because It Is Important, and should not always be put to the bottom of the list.

Oh, if I could only just start with a clean slate, rather than having to slim down the sodding slate I’ve developed, as it were.

All of which brings me to my second point: self-image. Essentially, in emotional terms, what’s made me really think about all this is that I don’t want the small girl to spend her life watching her mother feeling crap about the way she looks. Yes, I embrace the idea of people being different sizes, and different shapes, and just… different. I love having a feminine-shaped figure, and am not interested in losing lots of weight. But I’m not happy, and I don’t want to put that on her, if that makes sense. From a practical point of view, I find myself thinking with increasing frequency that if I really love my girl – and I do; oh, I do! – then I must do everything I can to ensure that she doesn’t become the third generation in my family to lose her mother at an unusually early age. My mother was 15 when it happened to her, and I was 22 when it happened to me. (In amongst all this thinking I’ve been doing, I note also that there are relatively few photographs of my mother; I think this is partly because she experienced the ol’ self-loathing I often feel when faced with photographic representations of ‘oh, one more slice won’t hurt’. I make myself appear in pictures, and in videos, with the small girl partly because I know that, while I may love the pictures of her as a small child, when she is older, she may want to see her parents too, and images of our lives together, rather than isolated snapshots of her sitting on worktops or something similar. Yack, it’s hard, though.)

So, here is to new beginnings. I shall try not to witter on about this to so long and so navel-gazing an extent again, but also, I would appreciate it if any regular readers – or those who lurk and would like an excuse to pick on me – could pop out of the woodwork with chirpy little ‘so, lardarse, lost the excess yet?’-like comments from time to time, just to ensure I stay on the straight and, hopefully, increasingly narrow path to losing that stone, preferably in about twelve weeks.

Let’s see, shall we?

Ooooh, it’s been a long time since I did anything anyone could call actively witchcraft-like, but in the last few days, despite being crabby (yes, more-so than normal) and stupidly tired, I have been Thinking. Perhaps it’s the windy weather, blowing in hints of the year to come. Perhaps it’s the vivid dreams I’ve been having, showing the wheel turning. Perhaps it’s rediscovering pictures of the circle of toadstools which appeared at the end of the garden, suggesting secret midnight activities involving starlight and flames. Perhaps it’s the obscene quantities of chocolate I’ve been eating, turning my blood to cacao. Ahem. Anyway. Whatever it is, I have been remembering the time when I worked in a certain witchcraft-orientated shop, and thinking about all the things I learned while I was sitting behind the counter in a nearly-empty shop for hours at a time. And I have been thinking about all those candles burned, and all that incense wafted, and all those oils accrued (for lo! there are many, many oils in a small set of wooden drawers in the living room), and the general presence of low-level witchcraft that prevailed during that time. Perhaps it’s having a little bit more sleep (last night poor Quercus drew the short straw, and ended up sleeping in the lounge, on a massive pile of cushions, while I took the night-shift with the small girl; in a way, he got the upper hand, as he didn’t have to get up for Teething Duty at three a.m., but of course the whole sleeping-on-cushions bit isn’t ideal, and I think I ended up with more sleep than normal because I had the whole gargantuan bed to myself). Either way, this morning, it feels like things are afoot, and something has shifted, and shifted for the better.

Bell, book and candle, this-a-way.

And in the meantime, I have finished the watercolour pencils drawing I started for the small girl before she even born, and Chrimbly brought me a new set of double-pointed needles and some beautifully variagated Noro yarn to play with. It is time for a new list of projects, methinks; this witching feeling that has crept up on me appears to be taking a creative direction.

1. A cardigan for the small girl. (No. 1 was finished, but it’s on the small side due to my being rubbish at maths, and having to do sums which pushed my brain in ways it just doesn’t enjoy, all because I wanted to use some wool I happened to have in my stash, rather than going out and buying the stuff specified in the pattern.)

2. A Noro hat for me. Myself. All for my very ownses.

3. A sweater for Quercus. I would really love to knit something for him; so often, my creativity is focused on the small girl or the house, but Quercus is the axis on which my world turns, so it seems only fair to clothe said axis in something appropriately woolly. I’d like a jumper with a roll-over neck and no welt, which is relatively easy to do, and which uses double-knitting wool. Anyone come across such a thing? Comment, do.

4. I have it in mind to paint a small but significant set of stars on the small girl’s wall. If things go to plan, we will be re-rending the inside of Earthenhouse this summer, so now is the time to try out such things without having to commit to them forever; we have a very lovely book with illustrations which I could copy quite easily using the aforementioned watercolour pencils, and the small girl does love a star or two.

5. A spiral for the kitchen wall. Longer-term readers may recall the spiral which lived on our wall before we rebuilt the kitchen – hopefully this one will get to stay a little bit longer. When I was little I wanted a house full of music and laughter and bright colours; that spiral said all the right things to me, and it said them in three languages.

6. I must find me a chest of drawers, narrower than a metre, and tall enough to be useful. We have a short wall in the extension, and I would very much like to use it to get Quercus off the hook of making drawers by finding drawers which fit, and doing something to make them fit in. Drawers, though. They tend to be wider than this, damn them. So, the search continues. And then, oh then, if I find some, I’ll get to Put Things In Them. I love doing that. And organising cupboards. Oh, unpacking things. I’m really looking forward to rediscovering the contents of our sheds, most of which belong in a kitchen. (I know – I need to get out more.)

Right. On that note, off to do something productive. And you?

Right. It’s official. I have decided that the best way to rediscover my mojo, currently missing in inaction, is to just pretend it’s here. It’s not quite the same, but levering oneself off the sofa isn’t pleasurable even when one has got more energy than the average sloth, so I figure I’ve got little or nothing to lose, except a few extra minutes of lounging, and that seems to be contributing to the problem rather than alleviating it. So, today, I have ordered an external hard-drive (yay!, largely because taking action in this, er, active manner means that I no longer have to think about such deeply boring things, and can now return to filling my head with more fascinating and useful information, such as, um, recipes for Swedish apple cakes, and, er, knitting patterns), bought a ridiculously reduced pair of shoes on t’inter (that’s reduced in price, I hasten to add; I have not suddenly developed a passion for foot bondage) to solve the stupid lack of shoeage that I have recently developed, sorted two lots of laundry (so much less horrid since we have done away with the laundry airer and replaced it with the cunning hangy-from-ceiling thing – I am almost enjoying laundry, which just might constitute the eighth wonder of the world), and made two batches of biscuits with the tiny daughter. That’s ‘with’ as in ‘she helped’, rather than ‘now available in new daughter flavour!’. It seems that the small girl may well have inherited my love of all things kitchen witchery: she spent an hour stirring the mixture, putting in individual pieces of mixed peel, and shaking in what can only be described as a veritable spronkle of cinnamon. End result: one very sticky daughter, one VERY sticky counter, and something like a metric ton of biscuits. Not bad, eh?

Tomorrow I shall make a bid for freedom by sticking the small girl in the velvet sling and going for a walk with her. At the moment, most of our walks involve her doing the walking, and one or other of her parents sort of idling along, although when she’s on top form, I reckon she’s managing about two miles an hour, which, on legs approximately a quarter the length of ours, is not bad going, by my reckoning. But… it’s not exactly strenuous for adult companions, shall we say, and, as previously mentioned, at this rate, I shall be hiring myself out for use as a traffic island. Unfortunately, I need exercise. Don’t get me wrong: mostly, I loathe the very thought of such a thing. But… in the quiet of my secret mind, I confess (to the entire inter) that I do love that feeling when you’ve walked five miles, and have another two or so to go, and you’re into your stride, and your legs feel as if they’re walking for themselves and you’re not really putting in any effort and you could go on forever.* And perhaps it’s the Sagittarian in me, but I often feel better for getting out, getting fresh air, a change of scene. So, that’s the plan tomorrow – go somewhere, preferably by the sea, and walk for at least forty minutes, at a good quick pace, while carrying about twenty-four pounds of baby. Good for the soul, and not so bad for the ol’ cardiac whatsit either, I hope.

On which note, I shall retire to my chaise-longue. It’s not good to rush one’s recover.

*Or until someone offers you a nice bun and a cup of tea. I’m only human, you know.

So, here we are in 2010 – how very nice it is to see you all, as it were. This evening, Quercus and I went out for a quick walk around the field behind the house – it has been very cold here in Devon, and the frost is thick enough on the ground that there are spikes of ice sticking out at outlandish angles from each blade of grass. We haven’t had snow, but the frost in the rising moonlight was crunchy underfoot, and the stars were bright overhead, and we are told that snow may even appear tomorrow or the day after.

Tomorrow is twelfth night, and this being one of the traditions that appears to have crept into our lives together, we will disband our Chrimbly tree, removing in the process the eighteen felted hearts and, er, one star that I managed to get stitched before giving up for this year; we went for the minimalist approach, using only the felty things, lights and some particularly attractive fircones as decorations. The good thing about losing the Christmas tree, which I am always sorry to see go, is that we will have serious floorspace available to us in the kitchen for the first time in aaaaages. Quercus has fitted oak worktops during the Christmas break, and we spent the days after New Year waxing them and polishing them with hard wax oil, a slightly confusing substance which behaves like neither wax nor oil, and which requires approximately half a decade to dry. Or go off. Or harden. Or whichever term implies best its ultimate, er, setting. Having worktops, together with cupboards underneath them, means the kitchen now resembles an Actual Proper Kitchen In Which Cooking Might Not Be Outlandish, particularly with a fitted oven! and a hob with wanky touch control thingies that neither of us really understands! to complement the cupboardage. Next up is a large oddly-spaced cupboard on the right-angled wall, but that’s sort of the next stage, so let us not get too ahead of ourselves, eh?

Largely, the festive whatsit was quiet and delightful this year. Notable exceptions to this rule went as follows:

- Quercus’s mother told him he needed a haircut as her opening greeting, literally as she walked through the back door (to which she goes automatically, and which she opens without knocking unless we, Lucia-like, thwart her Mapp-inspired progress by locking the door, something we delight in managing), which was particularly irritating as we had actually had a cut booked for him but the hairdresser had cancelled because she wasn’t very well. Also irritatingly, she told him his glasses need changing because they’re scratched; he’d been to the opticians the weekend previously and is awaiting new lenses as we speak.

- One of the presents she very kindly gave us was funds for a wooden hanging airer affair, the sort you suspend with cunning ropes and pulleys, shimmying it up somewhere nice and warm and OUT OF THE WAY whenever clothes have the temerity to need washing. We bought the blighter, and blow me if we didn’t fit it the very same day it arrived, largely in a bid to avoid our usual ‘oh yes – must do that sometime’ procedure, a well-rehearsed number which usually includes a six-month lead-time. So, there we were, congratulating ourselves on a job disgustingly well-done and with more promptness than is perhaps decent, when up pipes Quercus’s dear mother with ‘but of course the washing won’t actually DRY there, will it?’. No, because clearly the effect we were hoping for was not one of drying, but of an INDOOR WATERFALL, carefully crafted with prayers to the gods of wet laundry.

- Eclipsing any irritations offered by my delightful mother-in-law, however, was my experience of van versus elbow, which took place on Boxing Day. We (we being me, Quercus, his mum and the tiny daughter) went for a walk in glorious December sunshine. We followed the Highway Code, walking on the right side for the conditions and taking general note of any traffic around (which was not considerable, it being Boxing Day, and the lanes being tiny and icy) and wearing suitably bright clothing (in my case, because I am naturally colourful; in Quercus’s mother’s case, because other people’s retinas are there to be attacked). Unfortunately, this did not prevent a van driver hitting not one, not two, but three of us, though astonishingly, and hugely thankfully, the tiny daughter was completely unharmed. Quercus had a big bruise and two large grazes to show for it, and I had a partially dislocated elbow and a bruise the size of Calcutta which has yet to disappear. Stiffness, general aches and pains and the continued purpleitude are the ongoing whatsits at this point; for the other party, apparently either a mandatory driving improvement course and accompanying fine or prosecution is likely. We have litigiously engaged a personal injury lawyer.

The delightfulness still outstripped the moments of homicidal mania, however, particularly where the tiny daughter’s recent acquisition (a red rocking moose) was concerned. Other splendid moments were created by the rapid consumption of far too many mince pies (though I still find that the mince pie drawer remains reasonably empty,* in my case, begging the question as to whether or not one might find any more about the place…) and two entire trays of homemade Rocky Road (for which I blame Nigella Lawson, of whose work I had remained blissfully unaware prior to a moment of weakness in the few days before Christmas, and an unfortunate availability of her back catalogue on the Beeb‘s iPlayer dooberry).

Also, and I feel this warrants an entry of its own, really, I found myself the recipient of the very best present I could have wished for, but wouldn’t have, not wanting to tempt fate: the witchling’s sleep has improved. We haven’t done anything horrid, and we didn’t end up night-weaning, but for the last couple of weeks, things have been much better. Of course, now that I’ve written that down and made whichever part of the universe which had until now been looking the other way, busily destroying nations and whatnot, I expect the attention will snap back this way and sleep will once more become but a distant memory, but I just wanted to record for posterity that things have been particularly lovely for a little while. Long may it last.

And you?

* I tend to think my stomach has various drawers, departments and other organisational sectors; sometimes, for example, the savoury drawer can be stuffed to capacity, while the sweet drawer is happy to accept four servings of pudding, a bar of chocolate, and the promise of a ruptured something-or-other still to come. Is this just me? I think not.

The shit:

- The fucking lime render is not taking the recent frosts well. For some unholy reason, the fucking fucking fucking limewash is flaking off, and the north wall of the house is encased in hard frost that looks as if the wall has had buckets of water thrown at it. Most of the limewash on this wall is going to come off, from the looks of it, and patches of it are in trouble across various other walls. I don’t know why. We have worked as hard on this project as we are capable of working, and it’s dominated most of this summer and autumn. I am beyond sick of it. We thought this bit was fixed; there are so many things to fix on this house, and we thought this was one of the things we had  - finally – managed to sort. Not so, it seems. Fuck knows what we’ll have to do. I think at least some of the render beneath the limewash will be compromised, to what extent I am not sure, but I fear we’ll end up having to redo some of it. I can’t even speak about it – I am just so fed up with this fucking house, and the number of fucking things which continue to need work. One thing gets fixed; four things break.

- The car is in for yet another bout of work. We had it back for one day after the fucking ignition switch told us it needed replacing by stopping the lights and wipers working from time to time, and the lever which allows the tilt and rake of the steering wheel to be adjusted snapped off, leaving the steering wheel unlocked and wandering, Wacky Racers-style. This, after suspension work, new tyres, a cambelt, more suspension work, a drive shaft and various other bits and bobs, takes the piss – we’ve only had this fucker for six months, and, bearing in mind we bought it to replace Quercus’s CX, which he loved but which he felt wasn’t reliable enough or affordable enough to maintain, it’s been nothing but trouble since it arrived. Fucker.

- Dad has sold his house, and continues to talk about how hard-up he and his wife are, in sort of ‘we’re all in the same boat’ terms. To clarify, we’re skint. We have a mortgage, and we have a broken house which we are trying to fix ourselves, to save money, and because we want to do things properly. He gets more than my monthly salary in a pension, ignoring the money he has until now received from his tenants. His wife gets well over my salary in maintenance from her ex-husband.

- My stepsister has attempted to kill herself and is now in a psychiatric hospital being evaluated. It looks like she’ll be there for some months. We’re not really sure why, or what’s going on with her, and it seems like she feels the same.

- I’m knackered. The witchling is teething, apparently two nasty teeth at the same time, and has been waking up quite a lot. We’re contemplating night-weaning, when these teeth are through, because, at eighteen months, we’re starting to think that unless we get some sleep pretty soon, we’re going to continue catching all the bastard illnesses that come our way, and the witchling will remain an only child, neither of which is what we’d like, ideally. I feel like a shitty parent for contemplating the weaning (even if it’s only at night), and it doesn’t sit right with me, really, despite the tiredness. But then I also feel like a shitty parent for being knackered, constantly ill (and of course missing lots of time from work, which then in turn makes me feel like a shitty worky-person), and reasonably un-self-starterish and uninspired in terms of doing things other than those things which absolutely must be done to keep us going, i.e. grocery-shopping, housework, and other such fancies. To be the parent I want to be, I need more sleep, I think. I want to be that oasis of zen-like calm who whacks out creativity at the merest whim while dandling a baby on one arm and mowing the lawn with a handknitted yoghurt pot. Instead of this, I’m more like a walking zombie on damage limitation (though not all the time, I should add – we do manage creative things, even though I feel crap about this at the moment).

- I have got to go to a supermarket tomorrow due to a spectacular lack of planning.

- We went for tea and mincepies with some lovely people down the road today. They have been in their house for six months. It only needs a coat of paint. I think I hate them. Predictably, they had bought a Christmas tree, a very pretty Christmas tree, from the farm up the road. We can’t afford said Christmas tree. The tiny daughter loves Christmas lights, but I don’t know if we will manage it this year – £30 upwards is a shitload of money. The aged parent said some time ago that he was sending us a cheque for £100; it has yet to materialise, and experience has taught me not to rely on this sort of thing.

- December 14 marked nine years since my mother died. This time of year always calls on me to walk a very careful path between ‘ooh isn’t it lovely to have winter and cooking and presents and solstices and whatnot’ and ‘I want my mum – I know I’m an adult, but I just want my mum; things would all be better if only I could have my mum back. Now would work’. I’m feeling the latter quite acutely at the moment.

The not-shit:

- We got the new oven and hob wired in. It’s a different world. The oven: it heats up in less than ten minutes.

- I have only got to work three days this week.

- We have the wood for the worktops in the kitchen, and the wax to protect them.

- I have finished Christmas shopping.

- The tiny daughter remains adorable, despite the nightly wakings.

- The cats are actually using the two-tier basket, bought in a bid to regain control of the sofas, which now lives near the stove.

I’m not really writing because of most of the ‘the shit’ list, but I’m still here, and when this lot of shit has passed, I’ll probably get back to writing more regularly. That’s my intention. For now, I think all I’m going to do is whinge, so I’m going to try not to do that, because, while wallowing can help in the short-term, as a naturally optimistic person, I think I need to a) find a practical solution to at least some of these things, and b) concentrate on the positives. So, in the meantime, how about you all distract me with entertaining tales of festive jollity? Or, possibly better still, amusing anecdotes featuring recoverable disasters?

I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this previously, but it occurred to me yet again today how very much I appreciate one aspect – at least! – of being an adult: the ability to create one’s own traditions, and to develop one’s own routines and rhythms to support both those traditions and one’s ordinary, everyday life.  When I was little, my parents were not big on routine, nor on tradition, I realise. We had very few things that happened routinely, and fewer things to which we returned each year, say, or each season; this, perhaps, explains why I find such things so comforting. We never went grocery-shopping routinely (and indeed both parents seemed slightly scornful of such a concept), meaning we often had last-minute dashes out for dinner ingredients;* more routine, if one can call them that, were the spontaneous day-trips of three-hundred-mile roundtrips, which normally started at ten in the morning, meaning late arrivals and even later returns home. My parents spent a lot of my childhood playing for folk dances, which meant I spent many evenings half-asleep behind stage curtains, or curled up in the back of the car, quilt spread between amplifier kit and a stray violin case; Morris men late on summer evenings, chucking those mysterious sticky-things about the place in a vaguely sinister manner, ploughmen’s dinners, drafty tents and midges circling half-empty pints of cider – all things I associate with life before the age of, say, ten. My father enjoyed being centre-stage – he still does, though he does less playing of this variety now, preferring orchestral stuff – and being out preceding one’s reputation doesn’t really sit well with a shopping list and a meal rota. My mother’s part in this chaotic existence was largely determined by the fact that I just don’t think she was very interested in having established patterns of existence. She longed for them, in some ways, I think – the security of knowing what will happen and when – but just couldn’t quite summon up the enthusiasm needed to turn ideas into reality. When she and I lived on our own after the aged parent moved to London to live with his then-girlfriend, my mother was a different woman – much tidier, much more organised. I wonder now who was the chaos-perpetrator, and I think it was probably my father, though to my knowledge she never made a conscious decision to step away from that.

Aaaaanyway, the point is that I think the reason I love order, and rhythm, so much, is that I experienced very little of it as a child. Now, I ground myself through the patterns which shape our lives. Quercus, the witchling and I start each morning curled up in our big bed in a largely dark room, hiding, feeding (in the witchling’s case), and generally waking up as slowly as possible. We finish each day with stories, the quiet dark of lamplight, and a bevy of kisses, as this is the witchling’s current fascination. Our days follow the same pattern, awash with constantly evolving patterns reassuring at once in their adaptability and their reliability. In the ten years we have been together, Quercus and I have evolved seasonal patterns too – Christmas, for example, now includes a cake made with dark chocolate, fruit and spices, a tree which arrives on the solstice, and Pfeffernüsse. We have non-chocolate-related calendars, homemade stockings, and far too many satsumas. Homemade puddings and mincemeat biscuits, this year mashed into submission by the witchling’s tiny fists. A real tree, and fircones, biscuits and felted hearts and stars to go on it.

It’s so, so, so nice to be the person who decides when and how we do these things. Not to have to wait and hope and wonder if things will work out the way you’d like, but to take charge and make it so. (I can never say that without thinking of that chap in Star Trek.) Part of me appreciates the notion that the witchling, as a very small person, seems to thrive on the gentle repetition of our daily lives, but part of me is aware that she is not the only one. At the moment, it seems that the spontaneity I experienced as a child was enough to be going on with; the routines we have evolved seem to support me every bit as much as they do my child. Does this mean she’ll be a thrill-seeking travel addict, I wonder? Is it as simple as a step away from what one experiences in one’s own childhood? Probably not, given that Quercus’s early childhood was pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum – he can’t remember a week where no shopping was planned, nor a journey made without preparation – yet he too thrives on the existence of certain rhythms.

And you? Do you do things differently each day, each week, each year? Do the traditions of your childhood reassure or restrict you? Do tell. I am all agog. (Can one be partially agog, I wonder?)

*Ironically, this lack of routine is now such a well-established thing in relation to the aged parent that one can almost call it a tradition.

The aged parent has just departed after a very pleasant visit which would have been improved only by the absence of my wretched cough, now in its third week and countering attack from a second course of antibiotics and steroids. We are busy on the kitchen – Quercus is machining lengths of oak as I type, and we have the carcasses of the base units in place, together with the floors for them and the side panels which divide them in two and whatnot – and I’m not in a very writerly space as a result; mostly the witchling and I have been going out for lots of little walks (she walked about a mile the other day, and was still faintly protesty when I suggested that she might need carrying for a bit towards the end), doing ridiculously sticky activities involving glue and coloured paper and – in my less sane moments – glitter, and generally enjoying the best bits of winter together. I am also delighted to have found a picture I drew for her when I was pregnant – there was a gap on the page left for the baby’s name, as we didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl when I drew it – and have started to finish it off, using some v. gorgeous watercolour pencils I self-indulgently bought some time ago.

Other than that, it’s knitting (on the second sleeve of her cardigan now, and have done the fronts and the back), blanket-stitching felt hearts and stars to go on the Chrimbly tree (which is assuming we either rob a bank or steal one, frankly, given the prices they’re going for this year – they mostly seem to start at about £30 for six foot, which seems a tad scary…), and the continual dusting involved in woodworky things.

Egad.

Yuck. Still coughing. Still taking nasty doses of steroids to shift uncharacteristic wheeziness. However, in a bid to avoid pathetic self-pity and whingeing beyond the call of duty (or something), I am trying rather to focus on the nice things in life at the moment, which include the following lovelinesses:

-  Stripy tights for my birthday. Today: blue, purple, black, two shades of red and some pale yellow.

- Clipper’s Assam tea with vanilla.

- The knowledge that the tiny daughter’s first pair of wellies will arrive shortly. They are red, and they look like ladybirds. Yes, I have no shame. And no, I don’t care.

- Somehow the house is tidier than it has been for weeks; we reached a down point where, all being in various stages of ill-health, the place was a tip, we were eating far too much pasta, and the washing was getting a bit epic. Then, realising that sometimes one needs to do something other than sleep or feel ill if one is to remain sane, we managed to sort of claw back some organisation, and things have felt much better ever since, despite the persisting coughs and whatnot. The longer I live in a renovation project, the more I value empty spaces and not having to tidy/clean/wipe up around Stuff.

- Along with managing to get organisation back, we’ve also gone back to weekly menu-planning; yes, I am now officially middle-aged, and no, once more, I do not care. We’re eating a more varied diet again, which can only be a good thing, as pasta itself cannot be an entire food-group, now can it?

- I’m also starting to do a few crafty bits and bobs with the tiny daughter, who turned eighteen months on December 1. She likes sticking things on, and colouring things in; anyone got any suggestions for good crafty resources for small people? We’d appreciate suggestions; current projects I’d like to try include the Martinmas lanterns I’ve seen on various Waldorf-influenced blogs, and probably something involving hands and painting. Is that lunacy?

It was my birthday on Friday. Mostly, the day consisted of gloating over the rather dandy selection of presents which, er, presented themselves, together with far more cake-eating than is generally advisable, and a spot of pottering around the shops in Exeter (something I do increasingly rarely, though I’m delighted to find that a small shop to which I’ve been going since I first came to Devon in 1998 remains a dead-cert for me; it probably says it all that its defining feature when you walk through the door is the colourful nature of its goodies) followed by a walk at the sea as it was getting dark. These days, the witchling is a sufficiently confident walker that this means a hand held by each parent, and plenty of swinging over puddles. I couldn’t say for sure, but I suspect our glee probably equals her own.

Yesterday we did my official birthday treat, which consisted of a trip to the Yarner Trust‘s Christmas fair, up in North Devon. There was some lovelies on offer, including a felting kit which may have made its way into my sticky grasp (and with which I am hoping to create some felted dreadlocks to add to my collection; I never have taken the dreadlocked plunge, despite still lusting after my very own head of dreads, and given the witchling’s love of twiddling my hair, I don’t think the time is quite right at the moment, so I settle for felted dreads bound in amongst my hair in a – mostly futile – attempt to contain the follicular chaos), and we had a very nice lunch in Boscastle before walking the witchling down the harbour and back in the increasingly pouring rain.

The only slight downside to all this is that we’re all in varying stages of a rather unpleasant throat/cough/cold thing, for the second time in a month; the witchling felt more and more pathetic as bedtime drew near, and I felt rather shifty for having taken her out – I often find it hard to decide when to just think ‘to hell with it – out we go, and we’ll all be the better for it’, and when to just stay put and fester indoors. I tend to think fresh air and whatnot is no bad thing, and if I’m not well I do find it easiest to occupy ourselves by going out, rather than kicking about the house.

I’m really, really ready to get past this bit where we’re catching everything going, mind you – this autumn has been a bit of a joke, health-wise. We’ve gone from rarely being ill – I think the year before the witchling was born, we were completely cold-free, despite working in large open-plan offices with huge contingents of germs just waiting to pounce on one’s unsuspecting immune system – to barely recovering from one thing before the next one appears. I’ve just purchased a large and intimidating-looking bottle of Floradix, a vitamin-mineral-tonic-thingy which, if the taste is anything to go by, appears frighteningly good for one. I’ve also stocked up on extra fruit and veg – we normally manage veg with every meal, but other than apples, our fruit intake could be better, so it’s satsuma binge time. I suppose it’s the chronic tiredness that makes us easy targets for germs, but it really is getting tedious; I suspect my cough may indicate some sort of bronchial nonsense, which is just utterly loathsome. So, anyone out there got any suggestions for fighting this sort of thing off? My normal weapons – ginger, honey, lemon, garlic, fruit and veg and Eating Properly And None Of That Junk You Think Will Give You Energy – just don’t seem to be keeping things at bay…

Urgle. No idea where the last week went, apart from the bit that I spent in West Sussex, isolated from the pernicious influences of the internet and all that sparkles therein. This made me realise, once again, how much time I spend pratting about online when I should be getting on with the things I constantly moan about not having time for. Gods, what a sentence. I spent evenings reading (three entire books knocked off in the space of five days, which is pretty good going, even by my speed-reading standards) and knitting, with the result that I’ve finished the back and half of the front of a cardigan for the tiny daughter, and I’ve decided to keep up this rather lower-profile internet useage. For one thing, it makes me value the time I do spend online, rather than just obsessively hitting ‘refresh’ on my feed reader, and it also means that we’re back to spending evenings DOING THINGS together, rather than slumped in front of some film or other, courtesy of various websites. It’s funny – when we got rid of our telly, both Quercus and I felt good about it, not least as we’d hardly watched it for months. But then, when I’m tired and not getting much sleep, I seem to gravitate towards the internet in much the same way that I would have used television in days gone by – not activity, as such, but a sort of real-life-is-paused thing that lets you off the hook of living. Well, enough, says I. I reclaim the time I spend reading Go Fug Yourself (which is mostly about people I’ve never heard of, anyway), and I claw back the hours lost to Facebook and Twitter (which has never really caught me in the way it has others, but which is still handy for procrastination purposes), and I brandish knitting needles and crafty bits and bobs, and I depart the parish to prepare bits of card for the tiny daughter and I to attempt to transform into an advent calendar later on. (And no, I have not turned to the church for comfort in my hour of need, but I do like to celebrate seasonal whatsits, and the notion of advent calendars thus appeals to my generally-ridiculously-excited affection for midwinter.)

I hasten to add that I don’t consider this blog, nor my reading of other people’s blogs and the commenting thereon, to be part of my problematic nonsense time online; genuine interaction I value very highly, but pratting about on sites in which I’m not even really interested, simply because I can’t be arsed to get off my backside and get on with things, despite feeling shitty about not doing so, is just not on. So there. Also, I am determined that the tiny daughter shan’t be exposed to the internet to the extent that it becomes part of the background noise that other people experience as the constantly-on television; the last thing I want is for her to feel that she’s not interesting enough to be put before the compulsive checking of email. So, it’s back to basics: no iBook if she’s awake, apart from the odd phone number-checking moment, or things of that ilk.

Right. As you were. And coming soon: oak kitchens, the building thereof; multicoloured tiles, the drooling over thereof; chocolate fudge, the vast consumption thereof; and many more such nonsensical things, as the fancy taketh me.

How are you all?

I’ve seen a new meme floating around the atmos in the last few days, one which focuses on what people are reading, and what their little ones are reading too. I’m not feeling collected enough to join in officially, but I did want to witter on about a couple of books, so this seems an apt time to do so.

The tiny daughter’s favourite thing is a book. She also likes her lighthouse (which, consisting of wooden rings of different colours, is one of my favourites too), and her wooden hedgehog (which is also wooden rings, one each of red, two shades of orange and yellow, but with the added bonus of varying numbers of holes drilled into them so that in order to fit on the hedgehog’s base, the alignment must also be sorted out the right way; this has kept her going back for more when I think other stacking toys might have become dull by now), but still, if she’s ever bored or fractious, a book is the first thing we go for. Recently, her ability to look you in the eye, attempting to keep the tell-tale grin off her face before she beetles off around the corner to run away and hide, has only added to the utter joy I feel when we sit down to read together.

Current favourites are Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper, No Matter What by Debi Gliori, and Keep Love in Your Heart, Little One by Giles Andreae and Clara Vulliamy. Of course, they’re partly my favourites, too – the illustrations for all three are just so scrumptious that I want to climb into the pages and set up house there. I mean, look at these, from Keep Love in Your Heart:*

Big is even wearing striped socks. What’s not to like?

As for reading material of a more adult nature, well, I’m struggling at the moment. I read Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves and really enjoyed it; in fact, I intended to do take part in A Clever and Intelligent Discussion of It in October, but somehow that fell by the wayside. Since then, I’ve read A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly, and enjoyed that too, but now I’m back to re-reading H. Potter (currently, The Deathly Hallows), and I could do with some recommendations. Recent enjoyments have included (and I feel I should feel shame at this, yet I don’t, somehow) the Twilight saga (saga – !), but I could do with something a little meatier to get my teeth into, I think. Suggestions, anyone?

* Yes, I am aware of the slightly cloying nature of this title, and yes, there was a time in my life when I probably would have vomited at the very mention of such a phrase, but hey, such is life – I’m a hypocrite.

I jest, of course. Teeth, in the context of a tiny mouth capable of surprising volume when desired, have never been a particular friend to me, and just lately they have been more than normally hostile. The tiny daughter is teething. Well, to be honest, I don’t think there is ever really a time when I can say that that isn’t the state of affairs; teeth – they loomed on to the horizon when she was about three months old, and mostly, they’ve stayed around since then. Which is a good thing, obviously. I mean, we don’t want them falling out, now, do we? Not when they’ve only just arrived.

Ahem.

Rambling.

Anyway, the point is that the tiny daughter has now got her first big back tooth (top left), and is currently working on its right-side counterpart. This means that sleep is at a bit of a premium in our household; last night I was up four times with her, and as a result I am a bit of a zombie today. This also goes some way to explaining why, despite clearly being hungry, she’s been rejecting lots of otherwise tantalising offers of food – sausages went the way of all things (i.e. down Wixon’s neck), as did sardines on toast and various versions of stews and casseroles. Stewed apple, however, is enjoying a renewed popularity, as are sweet potato and apple, butternut squash, carrot, apple and prune, and apple, sweet potato and blueberry. (Yes – I read the combinations of various posh baby foods in the supermarket, and then I go home and rip them off. And you know what? I am entirely unashamed. Mostly, the tiny daughter eats what we eat (the notable exceptions being the acres of chocolate that I consume in times of tiredness, and the odd pint of rosehip wine which has been known to cross my lips [and yes, I do drink occasionally now - literally not a drop of booze passed my lips while I was pregnant, and it stayed that way until the tiny daughter was about, oooh, nine or ten months, at which point I was getting long enough gaps in her feeds that I felt it was time to fall off the wagon in grand, ginger-wine-flavoured style], but she does like stewed fruit, so stewed fruit is what she gets as afters, normally.)

Anyway, this is largely to say that thank you for the recent comments which I have rudely ignored (except I haven’t, but, oh, you get the idea), and thank you to Mel for the lovely award thingy which I have also consigned to the depths of oblivion (except… etc.), and I will attempt to fill this space with something more interesting than ‘yaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn’ as soon as time and teeth permit. Still to come: cakeage, quince cheese, cob porn pictures and why? oh why? did we decide to build our own kitchen?