I had a moment of insanity on the afternoon of 30 November, where I suddenly thought what fun (fun!) it would be to make the small girl an advent calendar. Not for us those cruddy chocolate nonsenses available at supermarkets the world over; oh no – we – we – we would have a nice, homemade, felt-and-wooden-button confection, with pockets suitable for hiding all manner of festive delights.

Fun.

FUN.

And, of course, the fact that this epiphany struck only at three o’clock on the afternoon of the day before advent begins – well, a minor detail. Ple-e-e-nty of time for creativity to whip its way through a little diversion like this.

And, of course, the fact that the sewing machine decided to bugger about and start snapping the thread right left and centre, well, that just added spice to an otherwise doddle of a project.

Ahem.

Let us not speak of the fact that the sewing machine appears to need another service, after having sewn three layers of felt together. I fear that perhaps three layers was just asking too much of it, though it is rather strange that it worked fine as I sewed the back and front together, and when I sewed on the first five of the twenty-five pockets. And let us also not speak of the fact that its needing attention will probably necessitate a round-trip of some sixty miles, as I take it to the magic-weaver who brought it back to life for me last summer, when I thought it was my own ineptitude which made every project take ten times as long as I’d thought. (Well, of course, my ineptitude accounted for at least three-quarters of that time, but the sewing machine was buggering about too, I learned.)

That said, it was worth it when the small girl got the hang of it, and she was very nice about the concept, and said just the right things about the tree itself being pretty. She is a very rewarding audience, and every time I make something for her, or for us, I feel remarkably fortunate to be able to do these things, and to have her to introduce these things to. I think I’ve written before about the genuine delight I feel in creating family traditions of our own – ditching the Christmas Eve hunt for the inevitably dog-eared tree in which the aged parent used to indulge was a revelation, for example, in lowering stress levels – and bringing her along, showing her the world and the joy which it can hold, is just the bestest of the best.

God.

How twee am I?

(And yes, that is a very obvious join in the wallpaper you can see. Technically, this is known as ‘papering over the cracks’, because the plaster is actually falling off the wall here. So, another layer of paper, just to get us through until the summer of next year, when hopefully we will replaster.)

This weekend the aged parent came to visit. Oh, it wasn’t great. No. Wait. In lots of ways, it was fine. We talked, and he bought take-away, and came armed with wine. He cleaned the sink, and put some wallpaper up for us in the sitting room, where the dust is quite bad because the plaster is falling off the walls (we’re hoping to fix it this coming summer, by replastering the whole of the inside of the old bit of the house, so there’s just no point in doing much beyond papering over the cracks – literally! – for now).

But…

When will I learn that I won’t get what I want from him? That showing him things I have made, or written, or cooked, or tiled, or built, even, just won’t elicit the response I appear to crave, despite my outward nonchalance? And why do I crave it? I despise myself for so doing; I feel like a small dog, yip-yip-yipping as I jump up at his leg, desperate for attention. Yet time and again, I produce the quilt I have sewn (a sort of mildly bored ‘right you are’ acknowledgement being the best result here), I show the tiles I have fixed (which he hadn’t actually noticed, despite being in the room minus said tiles only a couple of months ago – regular readers will have noted that they are not exactly subtle…), I volunteer information about things I am writing or have had published only to realise that the conversation has miraculously moved on to his wife’s proofreading work, or his stepdaughter’s eating problems. Time after time after time.

Also, when will I learn that I must make my plans so that they may coincide with his, but are not dependent on them? To wit: this weekend, there was an advent fair on at a local-ish Steiner school. I had wanted to go for weeks, and had planned accordingly; I knew what time I needed to leave, and what I would do afterwards, and where we could get some lunch, and how I’d manage some sleep for the small girl, who sleeps most afternoons shortly after lunch. I had thought about the possible Chrimbly presents I might manage to buy for her, and how best to hide them from her notice if I ended up going alone with her. I told him about this fair before he said he was coming, and we agreed, when he’d arranged to visit then too, on a time at which we would need to leave. It wasn’t prohibitively early, really – 9.00. Yet 9.00 came and went. As did 9.15. And 9.30. And at 9.45, when he arrived, he strolled through the door in a leisurely manner, appearing somewhat wrong-footed by my bags-ready-let’s-go response. We got to the fair about forty minutes after it started, as a result, and, as I had feared, it was utterly beseiged. Being reasonably out of town, there was nowhere left to park, and no easy alternative. I abandoned the attempt, bit down my disappointment because I didn’t want the small girl to see it, and moved on to the rest of the day.

But when we got home and I heard him saying airily that we’d decided to give it a miss, I did feel sad, to be honest.

And when he shot off home on Monday, having spent a weekend looking rather bemusedly at the small girl as she attempted to engage him in conversation, or telling me how she ought to wash her hands before she comes to eat, I couldn’t help but feel that he rather misses the point with her. He says she is lovely, but he won’t play with her. She asks him to play with her – ‘Grandad come an’ play wiv me? Have a look a’ my toys? P’raps read a book?’ – but he’s not even interested enough to sit on the floor, preferring to sit on the sofa, not at her level, and read the paper. He couldn’t even read a book to her the one night that he did try it – he just sort of flicked through the pages while she clearly felt confused by his lack of animation. This, from the man who thinks he is good with small children.

It’s stupid, really. It hurts. It still hurts. I can predict how he will behave; I can see the hurt coming; I can warn Quercus that it’s not going to work, asking him to look after the small girl, because if she comes to expect anything from him, she will be disappointed, and I am not willing to have that happen if it is at all within my control to avoid it. I can predict the inappropriate presents – more soft toys which she doesn’t need and won’t really play with, and a cardigan both ugly and strangely-sized – despite the fact that there are, of course, lots of things I could have suggested, and which she needs.

I have learned to predict the hurtful or thoughtless things he can and will do. But still I can’t stop it hurting. I have learned the lesson, so why can’t I act on it?

A gratuitous small girl photograph. Yesterday we went out to tea in Exeter. We looked at the lights; we walked; we talked; we pootled; we ate massive quantities of cake. Life is good.

The fleece stars which took approximately four lifetimes to sew; the new quilt project has finally come to fruition, and just in time for the cold weather. Because I already had the white fleece in my stash (let us not speak of those cloth napyp days), this feels almost like it was free. Almost. (Well, it was only about £12, I think, which isn’t bad, really. I’m going to draw a tactful veil over the years it has added to my Dorian Gray-style attic painting, of course.)

Quilts = hiding. Fact.

I think she likes it.

Damn grouting. Damn handmade tiles. So, brown? White? Grey? I am all agog for your grouting suggestions. (And there is a phrase which one does not find springing from one’s lips particularly often.)

Yes, they are random, and yes, we love them. Better pics to follow when I have finally pissed or got off the grouting pot.

My first piece of flat felting.

And it is possible that I have something of a felted pumpkin addiction. I just can’t stop. And the more there are, the better they all look. It’s compulsive.

If only these leaves were likewise. I had in mind this fantastic autumnal banner with heaps of the blighters, only to find I’d used up a lifetime’s quota of blanket stitch tolerance in, well, about six leaves.

Though I did enjoy doing the oak leaf, in particular.

Not quite as abundant as I’d hoped, but hey, it’s a work in progress, right?

Monday morning:

- Bright sunshine and hard frost.

- Small girl’s starry quilt finished in time for the first proper cold weather (pics to follow when I finish changing cameras; have I ranted recently about how much technology has pissed me off lately? Broken or useless in the last few months: microwave, kettle, toothbrush, two digital cameras, external harddrive; it’s just not funny!).

- Several new recipes to add to the stash (sweet potato and lentil burritos, butternut squash and rainbow chard lasagne, stuffed pumpkin).

- House full of clothes needing either washing, drying or putting away (why oh why have we no decent line outside? Winter sun may not be either frequent or particularly warm but it beats the hell out of dank indoor set-ups, with the exception of the wonderful Victorian airer we have on a pulley system…).

- Hair cut on Saturday and now the mirror shows me someone else; can’t do the things I normally do with it very successfully, and yet don’t like it just down… Time, I guess, will solve that one!

- Small girl has been quite cross for about a month now, and Quercus and I are definitely noticing. Teeth? Virus? Chickenpox? All considered, but nothing conclusive.

- Gingerbread forest baked on Friday; eaten by Saturday evening.

- First pieces of flat felt made, one with stripes and one with spots. Again, pictures to follow once I sort the camera issue.

- For some reason, I appear to be savagely bad-tempered lately. Not sure why; maybe I’m catching it from the small girl (or maybe she’s catching it from me). The house is really getting me down, and I long to have the spare time together that ‘normal’ people seem to get at weekends, rather than the ships-that-pass-at-mealtimes experience that our weekends normally seem to be. I know that the things we each do are valuable, in some cases vital, but that doesn’t make it easier when you get to Monday and just feel flat because the weekend was… blah. Quercus is working to finish the workshop at the moment – the cladding is nearly done, and then he’s got a door and two windows to make before he can move our vast collection of tools in – and I’ve been tidying up things like gate-painting, crack-filling, kitchen tiling and whatnot. I can see progress, and yet the rest of the house is so dusty, so cobwebby, so mouldy (in places), so chaotically full of STUFF that just won’t fit anywhere else because our storage is virtually non-existent, and all I seem to do is half-finish a job while the small girl sleeps only to break off and do something else when she wakes, because otherwise we spend ALL DAY doing housework, which doesn’t seem particularly fair on her, despite her relative patience in such scenarios. (I find she tolerates me doing things like that for a long time, but we often end up with a period of relative meltdown later in the day; it makes more sense, thus, to go for a walk together at some point, even though the laundry mountain will only mock me for such weakness.) What I need is four hands, a forty-eight-hour day, and professional help. I just never seem to be able to keep up with all the things I’m supposed to be doing, and our house is the dustiest, mouldiest place I have ever lived, so here, more than anywhere, I really want to keep things clean. (Insert mild rant about possible reasons for developing asthma here.)

So where are you this Monday morning?

Isn’t it funny the days that turn out to be successes? Today, I have mostly been accustoming myself to a new (steroid) inhaler, courtesy of my doctor, who is now firmly persuaded that my recurring cough and general tight-chested shitery is caused by an asthmatic reaction to either a virus or an infection. So, I now find myself the proud owner of a grey-blue inhaler, a brown inhaler, and the excitingly-named Aero Dynamic Device, which, somewhat disappointingly, turns out to be a spacer designed to improve the inhalation part of the inhalers. Ho hum.

On top of this, it’s been wet and windy here today – proper persistent rain, too, not the sort of shall-I-shan’t-I misty business that you can largely ignore as you go about your daily. It’s going to stay like this until Monday, apparently, too. Getting colder, as well, and last night there were high winds; this morning showed lanes with a snow-like dusting of autumnal leaves, together with some small branches which were dislodged as we slept by the clever north wind.

Oh, and over last weekend the washing machine, not in its first flush of youth, decided that door-opening is really not included in its job description, clamping its poisonous self shut with a fervour normally associated with some sort of religious order. So, it’s now in the middle of the kitchen floor, still plumbed in but about four feet in front of its normal cupboard hidey-hole; Quercus cunningly hid our dishwasher, the microwave, the dustbin and the washer in the oak cabinets he built, because we both find kitchen Stuff irritating, visually, for the most part, and this is great, except for when you need to retrieve said item for some reason. In fact, in the case of the washer, it’s more than normally troublesome to retrieve the damn thing because the slate flooring doesn’t go right to the edge of the room, while the cupboards do, meaning that the sodding washer slips down a bit as it goes back, and is a complete bastard to get out, thus.

So, the house is chaotic and untidy – kitchen surfaces covered in quinces (still about a hundred to go, I should say; I am trying to put off making quince cheese until I am feeling resilient enough to cope with the sodding chopping of the blighters, and, worse, the passing through a sieve bit, which just makes me want to run for the hills when I think of it after my rosehip encounters earlier this year) and bread-making detritus, to say nothing of the kitchen table, which is currently home to my gargantuan sewing machine (which is a pig to move, as it’s cast iron and thus weighs something akin to a battleship, fully laden), a host of paperwork, the latest edition of Permaculture (which has a really good recipe for HOT SOUP in it), some random wax crayons, two large pieces of fleece acquired for a small girl’s winter quilt and at least half a ton of general crappery besides this shaming list.

Yet, despite this, I feel happy. It seems that ‘happy mess is better than miserable tidiness’. This week has been quite a challenge; I have struggled to adjust to medications which make me a bit shaky* and a bit worried;** the small girl has been a bit under the weather and consequently rather inclined to a whinginess which is not her norm; I’ve been worried about taking more time off work after the disastrous winter of last year; as ever, we are not quite where I’d hoped in terms of finishing off things in the garden/on the house Before The Weather Closes In.

But set against this, I have made a gallon each of quince wine (and I used our German steamer to get the juice, letting it cook out all day long on top of the stove – thus, smug-makingly eco-friendly), pear, elderflower and lemon wine and grape, apple and sage win; I have sewn two pairs of toddler trousers without swearing once; I have made three loaves of bread; there are two sets of saltdough decorations drying by the stove (including some fantastic pigs, made using the spotty rolling pin I mentioned in my clay dough post – they look just like those Gloucester Old Spot chaps – because obviously, nothing says ‘festive’ like, er, saltdough pigs); there is a newly-finished autumn farrago (felt leaves, blanket-stitched, hanging on embroidery thread with wooden beads separating them; pics to follow at some point, as I quite like the overall effect while suspecting that I ought to do more than six or seven leaves; my enthusiasm waned after what felt like the five-zillionth blanket stitch) hanging up in the book room.***

Not a bad week, then, on balance. And balance is what’s needed, I think.

Oh, and a quick aside: if you’d like to take part in the postal parcel paraphernalia which came about in my post on doughs and whatnot, please drop me an email: earthenwitch [at] gmail [dot] com. I’m thinking of one or two bits, possibly crafty, possibly edible, possibly local to wherever you happen to be, but nothing valuable or seriously time-consuming.

*The Ventolin inhaler seems to cause slight trembling for me. I don’t think that I can just not use it, though, realistically, at the moment.

**The steroid inhaler has a list of side-effects which scares me, frankly, as it includes things about bone density and stunted adolescent growth; I have a longer-term plan to ditch this thing when I’m over the hump of this infection, and try improving my general health with more swimming, more garlic and much more chilli and ginger consumption, because anything involving ginger gets my vote, obviously. I have a friend who runs a healthfood shop who has suggested a variety of things including Holy Basil, salt pipes (?!) and elderberry syrup; she attributes my wheezy tendencies to our mould-ridden, dust-festering cob house, and thinks that when we’ve finished the internal plasterwork, thus stopping (hopefully) both dust and mould, things will improve. I really, really hope she’s right; her dire comments about the steroids and breastfeeding did not fill me with optimism.

***I know, I know – it sounds deeply pretentious, but I am trying to get away from calling it the dining room, given that we, er, don’t dine there anymore; I dislike ‘play room’, and there are more books in there than toys… so… Does that let me off? (No. I know. It doesn’t.) And if it doesn’t, then have you a suggestion which covers a room used for storage (understairs cupboard), piano, crafty things (knackered old chest of drawers), books, toys, and general walky-throughness?

Last week the small girl and I started experimenting with what I am ambitiously terming biodegradable Chrimbly decorations. For ‘biodegradable’, read ‘they will probably disintegrate long before they get within spitting distance of midwinter’. This, dear reader, is because they are made of dough. Squidgy, squashy dough. The first batch we made from cornflour clay, which goes like this:

1 c bicarbonate of soda;
2 c cornflour;
1c water;
essential oils to scent if you fancy it.

It has a pleasantly porcelain-like effect, courtesy of the cornflour; the ‘clay’ is very white, and slightly sparkly because of the bicarb, and it’s very smooth to roll out. Somehow that pristine whiteness is rather appealing, and it’s tough enough to withstand toddler poking without just falling apart.

We used cedarwood atlas oil to make it smell nice, and we had a good old bash at it with the rolling pins that La Que Sabe bought for the small girl, together with some Ikea cookie cutters.

After baking them (using up the heat after cooking dinner; took a couple of goes this way, but I didn’t fancy turning on the oven specifically to cook these little blighters, and hey, patience is a virtue [which I do not possess], OK?), we then had at them with some watercolour paints. You can see the basic white colour in the picture there, on the right; I almost wish now that I’d kept some of them white, because they do look rather pretty in a sort of pared-down way. Of course, pared-down is not, perhaps the most obvious watch-word for my, er, style, if you can call it that. Ahem. (That probably explains the explosion-in-firework-factory end result.)

Turns out that the little blocks of watercolour work very well for this sort of thing, though I’d thought they wouldn’t give a dense enough colour. Certainly, some of the ones that the small girl did on her own were quite wash-like, colour-wise, but variety is the spice of life, right? Plus, I have been genuinely alarmed previously by sessions involving tubes of paint – the paint! it goes so fast! you can virtually hear the coins chinking! This is how they turned out:

As they’re still only flour, really, and water, I think we’ll probably dip them in some sort of varnish or hard oil soon, to try to keep them for as long as possible, though I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how hardy they are, at least for now – we dropped several during the painting session, on to our slate kitchen floor, and not a one broke, despite being (I would have thought) a reasonably fragile shape.

We’ve made up some saltdough since then; the resulting stars are drying out as I speak. The dough is a creamy colour with small flecks in (courtesy of having used up part of a rather damp bag of wholewheat flour), and I’ve added lemon juice and sunflower oil to make it (apparently) more malleable when being worked and harder when dry. The basic recipe I used was this:

2 c plain flour;
1 c salt;
1 c water;
1 tbsp oil;
a good squeeze of lemon juice.

Again, the stars are getting a quick cooking here and there after dinner, and other than that, I’m leaving them to dry out by the woodburner. (Talking of which, we had our second frost of the year last night – everything was glittering with a dusting of powdery ice this morning, and very pretty it was too.) I think we’ll probably try the watercolours again afterwards, though I have also got some acrylic gold paint, which I wondered about just rubbing on by hand around the edges or somesuch arty-farty nonsense.

In other news, it’s Quercus’s birthday on Saturday. (‘Daddy’s burfday! Candles! Cake! Sing ‘happy buuuuuuurfday!’) Predictably, I have left sorting out his presents until the eleventh-and-a-halfth hour, partly because I am horribly disorganised of late, and partly because he hasn’t been going to his sodding rehearsals (he plays in two local orchestras, which should – note should – mean he’s out for two evenings a week, leaving me free reign of craftiness galore, but they’ve had a lot of sectional sessions, and as he plays a stupid instrument brass instrument which isn’t always needed, that’s meant a lot of missed crafty time, dagnammit).  This means that the last week or so has found me beggaring about in a feverish frenzy of I-can’t-say-because-he-reads-this-blog, and tonight, when he departs – finally! – for a rehearsal, will be no exception. Let us just say that there may be baking involved. Recipes and whatnot to follow shortly.

And in still other news, I am rather excited to be doing a parcel swap of goodies with the lovely Nadine, who lives in Prague and thus, it seems, has access to all sorts of striped delights of a tightly-sock nature. I really love finding out about people who come here and read the blathering idiocy that I inflict on the webly waves; it tickles me all sorts of puce to learn that someone reads this blog while eating breakfast as I am going to bed at night (hello, Nettles!), or that they too are interested in a cob hot tub run off wood (hello Canadian person whose name escapes me but which may have been – nope – sorry – it’s gone; please remind me if you’re still out there).

So. In the manner of the Spanish inquisition, who are you, where are you reading from, and what pearls of wisdom, crafty* or otherwise, have you to share on this bright frosty morning (here)? And would anyone else fancy doing a small parcel swap, goodies from deepest darkest Devon to… well, anywhere, really? I do love sending and receiving things in the post. There is something about unwrapping actual, physical parcels which makes me think of The Box of Delights and steam trains. Scrum-diddly-umptious. (Sorry. I don’t know what came over me there. Blame it on the brown wrapping paper.)

*After the stars fest, we are now looking for something else to do, craft-wise, which suits small fingers but gives big fingers something to do too. Recent hits have included wax rubbings of leaves and various baking bits. Any suggestions welcome.

That slump I mentioned has hit me again. I feel a bit pissed off, truth be told. Last night, I even ranted about a situation at work, when I was at home – that may not sound particularly unusual, but it’s a near-golden rule for me that work stays at work, and when I close that door as I leave the office, everything to do with it gets locked in, in a sort of academicky Pandora’s box manner. Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that I have just realised yet again the importance of encouraging one’s life in the directions which matter to one, rather than spending time worrying about why other people’s directions don’t seem to matter to one, and whether or not they ought to, and whether, in fact, one’s own direction is actually a lack of direction and so on. In short, I had a moment of wondering if I’m not a bit sort of lacklustre because I don’t seem to be splendidly career-motivated; my conclusion was that for some reason, I don’t and never have judged success by income, and that I think I’d rather I stayed that way.

I sometimes feel that I’m not really pushing myself. That I ought to try harder at work, and make myself a likely candidate for promotion, or for another job, or for leading a project of some sort. I look around at the people I work with, most of whom are very lovely, and I see a new generation of colleagues now in their mid-twenties who are super-keen to use that language, to ‘move things forward’, even, gods forbid, to ‘blue-sky’ something. I just can’t do this. I couldn’t, even when I too was a twenty-something just-started-and-look-at-my-shiny-suit-type person, insofar as I ever was. For me, the compromises feel too great. You can think your own thoughts, but don’t share them. You can see things are ridiculous, but don’t admit it. You can all know the open secret – that the system sucks in lots of ways, and creates extra work in others – but don’t mention it. It’s maddening, and so is the expectation that you’ll want to do this forever, that when people answer ‘I am a so-and-so’ when asked what they do, that answer really does explain what they are, that their job is who and what they are, and hope to be, and have become. My job is none of those things. It is a thing I do to earn the money which pays our bills, for now. Surely it’s better to be happy and hard-up than it is to be rolling in money and miserable; I look at people I know who work sixty-hour weeks and never see their children and just wonder why they do it, given that it appears (at least to me) to do little more than funding a new car and lots of trips overseas.

Is it something missing in me? Did I just not make the queue when it came to the doling out of ambition? I don’t know. I do have ambitions, but mine just don’t seem to be particularly in line with what you might expect of a university graduate who went to private school and has mysteriously managed to accrue three degrees in the decade since leaving. When I was a teenager, I sort of thought I might try working in London, living somewhere predictable like Turnham Green while commuting into the city and reading the Guardian. I do read the Guardian sometimes, but that’s where the similarities end. I think I always knew, really, that I’d be happier living in the middle of nowhere, with a large and chaotic number of pumpkins growing in a small and ridiculously over-planted garden. But sometimes I see myself through my father’s eyes, and it seems to me that the path I’ve chosen is perhaps not what he’d expected or wanted for me; married to a man he thinks only serves to exaggerate my tendency to vegetarian* shoes and mad hair and strange houses in insane locations, my job is a very small part of my life, really, where his was, for some three decades, a defining part of Who He Was, and I think that puzzles him. He thinks I should try for a proper academic career; publish some articles, if possible, and try to write the book which might follow on from my PhD thesis, while I, I struggle to motivate myself to do things other than making bread and ogling quinces while working out what knitting abbreviations mean and wondering whether that circle that the small girl has drawn might constitute her first drawn thing. And because, while I am aware that it is perfectly acceptable to do these things and to feel this way, I cannot utterly divorce myself from the expectations I have experienced first- and second-hand since it became clear that I wasn’t actually as daft as I look, I sometimes find myself measuring my progress thus far, and thinking that there ought to be more. More purpose, more reason, more progress.

It spirals around, it does, this cycle of slightly beligerant – defiant – assertion of Self as Mother, Creatrix, and, er, general cook-and-bottle-washer, and Happy That Way, thankyouverymuch, versus the rather shame-faced version of Self which admits to not having pursued its career as zealously as it might have done, and which perhaps ought to feel more motivation when offered encouragement for academic writing, and which ought to have plans which include pensions and all those other things which, well, aren’t bright, colourful bags of stardust which possibly involve bells, and which I thus can’t actually identify. The latter is not Who I Am. The former is much closer, I think, embodying as it does the things which I genuinely believe to be important. Yet I continue to judge myself by the standards to which – I think – others feel I ought to aspire. It’s madness, really, because I don’t even know that people think these things which I am so sure they must; well, apart from the bit about the mad hair, because my dad did recently spend an entire day with me having double-pointed wooden knitting needles poking out of my hair without passing comment because, he later confessed, he thought it was some sort of statement.

Perhaps the time has come to paint a spiral on the wall in the kitchen. The last time I felt a bit at sea, painting a spiral was just the ticket.  It reminded me of what’s important, every time I looked at it; those things are still important – our house, our babe, our shared life of colour, of tinkling bells, of valerian in the oil-burner and bread rising all over the sheets in the airing cupboard. In short: bugger the rest of it – inner whatsit is the way forward. ‘Only connect’, said E. M. Forster, and I think he was on to something.

Ahem.

In other news, I’ve been back on the bread-baking bandwagon. This time, tomato and herb spirals, which went like this:

Tomato and Herb Spirals
Get…
2 mugs of strong flour
About ¾mug of warm water
1 tbsp runny honey
1 tsp Marmite
1 tsp yeast
Large fistful of herbs
About 3 tbsp tomato purée
More flour as needed to stop oneself sticking to the wall courtesy of the resulting dough

Then…
Whack the lot in a large bowl, and knead it all together until it forms a nice elasticky sort of glob. At this point, sling in more flour until you can actually manage to remove your hands from said dough without needing either the assistance of a passer-by or surgical tools, and continue kneading until the extra flour is worked in. You’ll notice the dough is a rather pleasant shade of sunrise – pinks and yellows – but don’t get distracted by this for too long, or you’ll find that stickiness returns. When you’ve managed to get a nice workable dough, pop the bowl in a warm place to rise for about forty minutes.

Retire, armed with a cup of Lapsang Souchong.

Some time later, retrieve dough from its resting place (the airing cupboard, in my case). Rootle it out of the bowl, and give it another good knead before dividing it into small lumps the size of half a fist, roughly. Technical, non? I like using scissors to divide it, because, well, they are so very snippy.

Take each little fisty whatsit and roll it into a sausage, then curl it around to form a spiral, and pop it on an oiled tray. When you’ve got a smug-making tray of these little delights, it’s back to the airing cupboard. This time, I left them to rise for about an hour and a half, after which into the oven, at about 180°c, for about twenty minutes, or until they’re getting to sunset shades rather than sunrise. Whip ‘em out, and eat them warm with a spot of butter and a handy ‘here’s one I prepared earlier’ bowl of soup.

Bits:
Knitting my first pair of socks, veeerrryyy slowwwwwlyyyyy. Realising now that I really shouldn’t have just ignored the ribbing at the top, as they are clearly going to fall down ALL THE TIME, and also, the difference between 3.25mm and 2.5mm needles is far more substantial than those measurements might lead one to suppose is possible.

I have fallen off the wagon, cooking-wise – attempting to eat supper earlier has meant cooking things which are quicker to prepare, and thus inventiveness has been overturned by ease. I have plans, though – next week will see at least two new things being tried, methinks, as otherwise, boredom will set in.

I appear to have started me a set of dreadlocks. It’s astonishing what not washing your hair with commercial shampoo for about, er, two months will do for you. That, and the twist-and-rip method I came across online a few days ago. It’s not a complete birds’ nest, but it’s close. Ahem. There will be more order when I finish this twisting malarky, but my poor little arms get tired quite easily so I am taking it at a Methuselah pace. The big plus, though, is that I found a bead with a spiral on it and I now have it in my hair. Spirals. Beads. Hair. A combination that makes me squeak.

I have lots of projects in mind for the next few weeks: felted dress for the small girl courtesy of another old wool jumper discovered abandoned at the back of the wardrobe; fleece dress from sweater which had received similar treatment; trousers, with cord on one side and brushed cotton on t’other; autumn leaves made of felt for hanging-about-the-place-dustilyartistically purposes; pear wine, courtesy of two enormous bags donated by a friend.

In amongst this, the house is coming along – we now have a patio, paths around the house, drains, drainpipes, a water butt and a retaining wall, and this weekend we’re hoping to fill in the French drains with pea shingle while merrily stacking the woodstore (only a month later than planned, which is nearly a victory).

Bats:
The small girl appears to be losing the need to sleep in the day. Part of me thinks yay! about this, as it increases flexibility for what we can do when, but the other part of me is horrified – I had decided not to take on any more freelance copy-editing until the spring so that I could help Quercus by finishing off small jobs on the house (skirting boards, why must you torment me?) while the girl slept; sadly, that appears to be unlikely now. I think I’m just going to have find a new groove, frankly, so that I can manage to do things with her, but also to get some things finished in order to maintain our collective sanity. Yesterday she occupied herself quite happily for an hour on the patio, pouring water from a washing-up bowl into various pots and pans; I cleaned up and cooked dinner, talking to her through the open back door, and thought that actually, perhaps tiling with her around isn’t quite as crazy as I’d thought.

I’m also feeling more positive about the idea of having another baby, probably because my current baby is so clearly not a baby any more. She has a leanness to her, physically, which speaks of action, of activity, of movement, and of development; these are not the soft rolls of baby fat I see as I undress her for our bath each day, but the muscles of a small child whose constant zing and enthusiasm keep her moving nearly all the time these days. Also, of course, EVERYONE I KNOW IS PREGNANT, or so it seems, which does quite a bit to make me nostalgic. Not enough of a reason to have another baby, of course, but certainly I’m feeling more that adding to our numbers would be a Good Thing for lots of reasons, whereas before I couldn’t help adding ‘in theory’ in there somewhere.

I’ve been meaning to write here more frequently, but the stupidest thing has been stopping me – my camera, replaced about a month ago, is still stupid. It turns out that Kodak cameras have a problem with the operating system I use, and that there is no easy fix. Thus, getting pictures off the damn thing is a bit of an uphill struggle, and to be honest, the quality of the camera seems to be a bit of a bore too – where my old one was genuinely point-and-shoot, this one has focusing requirements bordering on the insane, and its most frequently displayed icon when on ‘auto focus’ is the one which means GET THE SODDING TRIPOD OUT – YOU HAVE AN ADVANCED CASE OF THE DTs. Not being a photographery person, of course, I have no tripod, and even if I had, using one would sort of miss the point of that sodding point-and-shoot approach I mentioned earlier. So, thinking of returning it. Anyone got any suggestions for a reasonably cheap alternative?

Right. I go, to ponder five pages of legal editing while thinking about what to have for dinner. And you? What are you up to this week?

Current preoccupations:

These shoes are fabulous, and I have been lusting after them, in one incarnation or another, for some time.

Equally, where does one go to find decent stripy tights or long socks? I had some lovely German tights the year before last, one striped like liquorice all-sorts and the other different shades of reddish-brown, yet this year, they are curiously absent from the interwebs in a manner which speaketh of bankruptcy. So, where next, I ask? What I want is long striped things, possibly black with a sage green or a nice plum-coloured pink. Is that too much to ask?

The small girl and I are going to make this tree thingy this afternoon, all being well. It looks like fun, and her glee at anything involving paper and sticking knows no bounds, so who am I to argue.

Before we do that, though, we’re going to check out a local farm which has recently started a self-service stall in its yard; driving past, I’ve seen beetroot, carrots, potatoes, free-range eggs and honey advertised recently, the latter prompting me to think of trying mead again. We made mead a few years back, and it turned out really well, but took an absolute age to get there… I’ve since read cheaty-quick-skivy methods (some involving cider, which sounds promising though highly cheaty…), and, frankly, being a cheaty-quick-skivy sort of person, that sounds about right.

I’m also gearing up to make the small girl a scarlet hooded cloak, for Chrimbol.* I have some sort of cranberry-coloured cotton velvet thanks to the wonders of Etsy, and the sewing machine and I have reached an accord recently, which has meant less of the throwing-things-in-frustration, and more of the actually-finishing-things-without-either-despair-or-murder-taking-place… So, hopefully I’ll have a bash at this quite soon.

How is it that despite owning lots of very nice strings of bells, I continue to covet more?

And why am I so obssessed with pumpkins?

See? This – this list of utterly lightweight and irritatingly delicous tangents is the reason why I never seem to get on with writing that book, or submitting that paper, or writing an article for a journal. Ahem. It is also the reason why I am continually afraid that someone, somewhere will realise, shortly, that I am in fact an idiot, and revoke my doctorate forthwith.

That said, I have an idea for a novel, and after a conversation with Quercus the other night, I think I might actually try to write it down. Its main character has had a comfortable little space in the corner of my mind for the last decade or so, and I think he is beginning to find that his legs need stretching, and actually, he could quite do with a cup of tea. So, we’ll see. Maybe my current feeling that I should be writing something academic based on my thesis can actually be sublimated into a more useful project of a fictitious nature. Maybe it’s nostalgia, this academic stuff, anyway, given that I lived and breathed it for so long, and maybe fiction would actually give me the brainwork that I seem to crave (and fear) while letting me do something that’s always been on The List.

And you? What are your current preoccupations?

* Yes, this is yet another barbarous modification of the English language of the sort which is prolofic in the Earthenhouse.

So, there you are, full of good intentions and just about to write something constructive and informative and jolly and otherwise uplifiting and whatnot, when a bout of the east wind strikes, and you feel hacked off, and you retreat into your cave, where you stay, hacked-offedly, for a few weeks.

And then, the wind starts to shift. You can smell new things on the breeze, and you can hear new tales in the whispering of the leaves. The sky is changing with each passing day, and the nights are drawing in; already, twilight appears not long after supper, and a cobweb of stars which covers the sky is plain for all to see not long thereafter. All around, you see the fields, the hedges, the trees overburdened with fruits and fecundity (and what a delish word that is), and you immerse yourself in transforming the hedges which surround you into small crystaline pots of goodness, which you then eat, smugly, as the year progresses, and as those lazy sunshine afternoons become brisk with the quickening east wind.

There are vests to be knitted, and shoes to be made, of nut-brown leather and sunflower flashes of bright yellow. There are slabs to be laid, and pumpkins to be felted; nappies to hang in the late summer sun; hats to be discovered, and chairs to be waxed; first pairs of socks to be undertaken, with much trepidation, and peacock brilliance to be found in woollen form. Dragons take form on leftover wood, and rainbows appear next to them. There is action, movement, progress. And more jam than you can shake a big, gnarled stick at.

I’ve been struggling this summer with feelings that I ought to be doing more, being more, making more, creating more. Always the pressure to somehow exceed expectations, to juggle efficiently, to find time where none makes itself known. This pressure comes from me, from inside myself, and it’s something I think I’ve always known. Indeed, I think it’s the thing which has got me, in many ways, to where I find myself now. And the thing about that pressure is that it’s very hard to turn off. Near-impossible, for me.

Sometimes this is useful – finishing a PhD while pregnant and renovating a house? No problem – I’ll knock that off by next Sunday, and still have time to make cheese scones… – but at other times, it’s exhausting, and self-defeating, and just a downright pain in the arse. This summer, it’s mostly the latter, though I think I haven’t really noticed it until the last, say, two months.

So, I’ve been struggling to find the right words for this space, to explain myself without sounding either hideously repetitive or boringly downbeat. And I’ve failed at that, too, really, in that I’ve just taken the alternative option: don’t say anything at all, and just hope it’ll all go away. It’s coming to something when your own blog becomes a bit of a whatsit around the neck – a duty overlooked, a task ignored.

I think back to when we decided to stop having a television in the house, and the sudden ingress of time with which I found myself flooded.

What has helped me to dig my way out of this lovely little hole I’ve been burrowing away at for the summer months of this year has been cutting back on the time I spend online. It’s very easy for me to simply procrastinate away an entire hour or two online, without achieving anything beyond looking at some lovely things which other – less procrastinatey – peope have created, and thinking to myself a repeated loop of ‘that’s very cool – I must make one of them’, or ‘shite – I really should have done something other than this in the time I’ve spent online’, or ‘arses – I am utterly crap at management of time, and thus have nothing to show for today.’

So, cutting right back, spending a week with no time online at all, has really helped. It’s reminded me of all the things I can do, and do do, when I’m not time-hogging on blogs, or Facebook, or email, or somesuch nonsense. It’s also left me with a feeling of wanting only to dip a toe in, of avoiding previous bad habits, which seems to be helping longer-term.

Whinge, whinge, whinge. No more. (At least for now.) (Ahem.) Let us think only happy thoughts, with cheerful productivity thrown in, while I try to work out what it is that drives me like this, and why I feel that there are ‘right’ words, and ‘right’ things to spend time on, and, oh, so many other ways in which I drive myself (and others) insane.

Struggling to find time at the moment – camera not talking to iPhoto (tiresome), copy-editing (tiresome), lots of jams and pickled fruits and wine and frozen things (not tiresome at all), less time overall on the internet (tick; v. g.), knitting hats, scarves, legwarmers and cardigans for the small girl’s doll (also v. g.) = not much time spare. This should change later this week, I think; in the meantime, a few questions for the universe (and you, if you know the answer):

1. Why won’t my MacBook’s installation of iPhoto recognise JPGs as a valid format?

2. Where have I come across a reference to apple and sage jelly, and did it include a recipe?

3. Would Picassa circumnavigate the iPhoto problem?

4. Should I be attempting to be more proactive about nappies?

5. Why do I always find myself making jam when I haven’t got enough jars saved? And why do the jars I have saved always have labels affixed with the stickiest substance known to man?

6. Just what has taken place in that gallon of plum wine from the year before last which has made it taste so unholy?

7. Will I be less tired if I pull my finger out and go to be half an hour earlier?

Right-oh. Back shortly.

It’s no good – I’m still feeling a bit down in the dumps. Last night I ended up ranting about lost dungarees (two pairs thereof), a lost hat (which I knitted, last winter, and which I’m very attached to, not least as it’s the first hat I managed which really worked, and it involved Noro yarn), general housework dudgeon, and the overwhelming feeling of never managing to finish anything.

To wit:
- housework;
- hunts for something-or-other I’ve misplaced;
- sorting out what the hell to do about my mother’s piano (currently being ‘rented’, where ‘rented’ = the rentee isn’t paying the money, and nor is she returning my calls, and I’m worried that when I do finally manage to contact her, she’ll tell me she doesn’t want the piano any more, which leaves me scrabbling around trying to re-home it, which is, frankly, a daunting prospect);
- the copy-editing I’ve got to do;
- the tax return I need to complete;
- the huuuuge list of crafty things which my brain tells me must be done if I am to attain the status of A Good One (mother, wife, general human being);
- the tiling I started weeks ago, which I’ve yet to finish because the next bit involves a tile cutter and I feel as if I need a longer stint at it than the small person’s snooze allows.

ARGH.

I just want to clear the decks, start again, have some energy, and I’m not really sure where to start, or why I’m feeling this so aggressively at the moment. The small girl is sleeping more consistently than she ever has, and generally life is good, if rather disorganised. We even came up with a solution to me ending up doing the grocery shopping every week (which gets a bit dull after a while); it involves Quercus going once every other week, and us getting a delivery of shopping in the off weeks. The irony? I haven’t sat down and done the ordering part, which means it’s not going to happen this week. It’s partly lack of time, but I’m aware that it’s also partly lack of enthusiasm – the time I do have free is very short, and largely in the evenings, when all I seem capable of is sitting, lump-like, on the sofa. I was going to say ‘all I want to do’ there, but the truth of it is that that’s really not the case; what I want to do is spring, gazelle-like, into action, a flurry of knitting, baking, creative, productive energy.

The small girl’s bedtime routine is fairly settled, but I am struggling to keep on top of it, to keep things on track, and she is going to bed probably a half-hour later than is ideal for her; we are not routine people in that this is a pattern which has been largely developed by her, and which we merely facilitate because it seems to suit her (and us, normally), but a half-hour is a big deal when you’re only twenty-six months old, and I feel shifty that her teatime often seems to be a scrabbling of frantic realisation that I have yet to start our dinner off, which means an even later meal than normal, and I just seem to be disorganised all the time. I want to sit down with her, and talk to her, perhaps while knitting, while she eats; I feel very strongly that it’s important that mealtimes are convivial, relaxed and communal. Don’t get me wrong: I am always in the room with her, and I do talk to her (and she to me, increasingly), but I am not able to give her my full attention because I’m normally surveying the three hundred things which still need doing, or which I’ve overlooked earlier in favour of a short stint online.

Our evening meal has slipped backwards so that we rarely sit down before eight o’clock, which, for me, means a very short evening afterwards, and a going to bed which feels hasty and anti-climax-like because I feel cheated of a Proper Evening, one in which Things Were Achieved. Also, increasingly, we’ve been sitting there, watching some load of rubbish on the Beeb’s iPlayer rather than eating at the table, and that normally means that we don’t clear up the kitchen after eating, and a daisy-cutter effect is thus encountered first thing in the morning, which doesn’t exactly set one up for the day, shall we say.

So, my plan is that today, when the small girl sleeps, rather than either sleeping myself (which, tempting though it is, doesn’t actually help my mood, really, and is so short as to be almost worse than not sleeping, sometimes), I will devise a cunning and rapid dinner for adult consumption, and I will have a tidy-up around the house as well as thinking of something creative to do with the small girl when she gets up (it’s very wet here today, so our default of going for a walk in the fields is probably not on the cards). Once that’s done, I will sit and cast on something knitting-wise; perhaps having started a project, it will seem easier to pick it up and get on with it in the evenings.

I am also declaring a fatwa on both Facebook (which in lots of ways I abhor) and shitty televisual programmes; after all, we got rid of our TV for just this reason, and both felt much happier in its absence. It’s so easy to waste your sodding life away while sitting there, watching some bloater cooking something you’re not remotely interested in, for someone you’ve never heard of, in a restaurant the prices of which you find morally offensive, or to read the profile of some friend-of-a-friend you’ve either never met or can’t actually recall either way while pondering their intense love of poodle crochet classes and upscale wheelbarrow decorating. In short, why am I doing this? This is not what life should be about. It’s not a lesson I want to teach the small girl, and it’s certainly not helping me or Quercus. It’s procrastination on a scale I’ve not encountered since my PhD days, when whole days passed with only a sense of increased desperation to show for them, and when I came to realise that if I don’t do things, I only feel worse for it. And if I’m not happy, our whole house suffers for it: the cooking gets crapper (with attendant guilt), the washing mounts up, the bedtimes get later, and poor Quercus gets that slightly hunted look which speaks of ‘she cannae take nae more, Cap’n – she’s goin’ee blow!’.

So, today, I will rip that sodding plaster off instead of picking nervously at the edges, and by god, I will take control of things, and get the fuck on with them. No pissing about online (and no, blogging, which has a tangible and cathartic result, does not count), and no sitting there feeling sorry for myself, and no despairing over The State Of This Fucking Place. Just progress, and creativity, and thus Ordnung.

And you? What are your frustrations in life at the moment, and how are you going about overcoming them (or procrastinating your way around them)?

This morning finds Devon drizzling and grey; predictable, of course, given that we are hoping to go off adventuring tomorrow. Having had three weeks or so of hard work, something involving a pootle, tea and a scone and a walk somewhere other than the fields or woods on our doorstep is called for. Deluge notwithstanding.

Truth be told, I’m feeling a little bit flat. I’ve lost my oomph, and I just can’t quite recall where I saw it last. (Though I think it might have been somewhere in Cornwall.) It’s not terminal, and it’s not disastrous; I just need some time off, and a spot of fun, and probably to finish a few of the projects that I’ve got on the go. Do you ever find that you start a nice list of things To Do, feeling all goody-McTwo-Shoes about it, only to find that where the list once relieved all anxiety about its contents simply in the writing of it, it has now become something of an albatross, swinging around your neck and gently poking you in the backside with its long and angular beak? Yes, well: that.

I have a list of crafty things that I want to do – and yes, I do want to do them – but very little is actually happening on them. This is partly because I’ve chosen things that I don’t really know how to do (a cabled jumper, for example, is probably not quite the best way to ease myself back into knitting after a summer-long break), partly because I’ve been doing quite a bit of freelance work recently (and that normally happens when the small girl is asleep, a precious hour which I could otherwise devote to such fun activities as, you know, cleaning, or making dinner [which, actually, is a fun activity for me, not least as it encourages me to get through those 52 Recipes in 2010, but still... Sometimes I just want to do something selfishly crafty, even if said selfishness is eventually destined for, say, Quercus or the small girl]), and partly because I’m a little lacking in the old organisation/motivation department at the moment.

I’m trying to avoid procrastinating, which means I’m spending less time online – I know that one of my worst habits as a PhD student was the pissing away of hours reading blogs in which I felt only limited interest, purely because my A-list had yet to update, so at least having experienced the crappitude that comes from having wasted a day, I know that I feel rather better – despite short-term crabbiness – if I just get on with things, rather than putting them off while glumly reading t’inter. So, I have started knitting a rather exciting hat for the small girl, with prompting from Ally, who donated wool and a kick-off, and I have drafted a new list (because obviously lists are my thing… ahem…) which is radically shorter, changing the original list to a list intended to cover autumn, rather than, well, now. I’ve also added some easy wins – lengthening the small girl’s felted dress of last winter, making some more felt acorns for her, getting up to thirty on the recipes challenge – which should spur me on a bit.

I’ve come to realise since finishing my PhD that I do seem to need Things To Do, to work towards, to achieve, rather than just being able to pootle through the days in a blithe and carefree manner. I think Coffeeslut‘s comment that I might be ‘unsuited to being / perceiving [myself] to be stationary while the world moves / seems to be moving on around [me]‘ is probably quite apt; I need activity, and organisation. Here’s to autumn coming, and with it, a new sense of vigour.

Happy Friday, interwebs: it is nearly time for a lie-in.

I’m thinking of switching to having the date for my post titles; you know how it is – some mornings, you just can’t assemble your random thoughts into the sort of order which a single title would cover, this being just one of those. Maybe I could add subtitles. Or is that too complicated?

Anyway.

Firstly, I’ve managed to whack my way through another ten or so new recipes in recent weeks, meaning I’ve got the smallest glimmer of a hope of completing 52 recipes in 2010. This weekend, we tried a lemon and lentil soup (v. g.), killer peanut butter fudge cookies (so good I am lusting after them now, at a distance of ten miles), and a mushroom and nut loaf which was really rather excellent. All keepers, definitely.

Secondly, our workshop now has a roof. Well, it has a protective layer of stuff fastened down with battening; the stuff can be a roof in its own right for three months, but within that time it will gain its fircone-like shingling, meaning it just becomes a part of the belt-and-braces approach to weatherproofing which Quercus has opted for with this project. The waney-edged boards arrive soon, so the walls will be clad, and before we know it, we’ll be reclaiming our stuff from a neighbour’s garage and there’ll be one less element of chaos to cope with. (At the moment, Quercus’s car forms a mobile shed – the boot is full of circular saws, chainsaws and brushcutters. As you do.)

Thirdly, Quercus’s mother departs the province today, after a stay of ten days. It’s been OK-ish – we had several near-misses in terms of open warfare when she wouldn’t leave something alone (to wit: ambitions for life, jobs, babies, childcare, living without money, What The Neighbours Think Of Us and The Situation With My Father), but it could have been worse, and by my standard measure of success (no-one died) we passed with flying colours. That said, the sheer quantity of time we’ve spent with her this year has made me think a bit. We’ve all found it really difficult having her about for so long – probably eight weeks this year – in part because we are ungrateful fuckpigs, but mostly because she is genuinely the most difficult person to get on with that I have ever met, which, coupled with extremely irritating personal habits (‘Morning Has Broken’, out of tune, ad nauseum, at six-thirty in the morning would be hard to take for anyone, I think, as would the continual use of ‘spend a penny’ when you go near a bathroom – woman, you are GOING FOR A WEE, like anyone normal), bring us close to the brink every time we’re together, and, what’s more, our normal tolerance levels haven’t really recovered from her first visit, back in March, letalone the recent and prolonged blows-upon-a-bruise visitations.

We have fallen into the habit of asking her to visit at Christmas, preferring to take our medecine at the start of the time off we get rather than for the New Year. We have yet to actually articulate this invitation this year, and she will shortly be off to Canada for about three weeks, meaning we’re going to have a longer break than we’ve so far enjoyed from each others’ company (because I’m sure we piss her off as much as she does us), so I wondered if we ought to get it in before she goes. But then… At the moment, the idea of her coming here at Christmas fills me with dread.

The thing is, while I can tolerate her, and manage her, and, with the odd flash of white rage, bite back the things I’d like to say (while restraining my arm from its murderous fumbling for the nearest heavy object) and so on, Quercus finds it much, much harder. She makes him so cross that he sometimes physically removes himself and goes for a very irritable walk, just to wear off the anger. He rants, nightly, about the many ways in which she is impossible. Worse than that, his relationship with her makes him feel immensely guilty: that he doesn’t get on with her better, than he isn’t more forthcoming when she’s around, that he can’t be himself with her, that he knows that NOT being himself probably makes it worse, that he can’t bring himself to be the person to whom he thinks she would react better, that he longs for her departure as soon as she arrives, that she tries very hard to help us, both physically and financially, that she can be very thoughtful yet still he feels as he does.

I feel a few of these guilts myself – she does a lot to help us, and she’s the only member of our joint families who does (though lordy me, when someone reminds you of this and actively asks you for thanks or praise, it doesn’t help, does it?). But the thing I feel mostly is that I worry that every time she comes to see us for a significant event, that significant event gets rained on slightly. The small girl’s second birthday was a good case in point – she was vile about something-or-other, and we had a very tense few hours while she got over whatever it was that had caused the vileness. Last Christmas she was so rude the very first evening she arrived that Quercus determined to ask her to leave if she hadn’t cheered the fuck up by the following morning. Does it always have to be like this? Apparently so. I’ve taken to challenging her head-on about the things she does, sometimes, i.e. ‘we seem to be at loggerheads here; have I said something to upset you?’ Sometimes this works, sometimes it causes only teenage flouncing.

It’s been better, though not unfailingly so, since the small girl arrived. Prior to her appearance, most visits included at least two threats to go home, while we are now down to a batting average of one or so, with only moderate use of guilt thrown in. So far, she has only taken her irritation with us out on the small girl once or twice, and she has only done something which we felt was openly not a good idea once, when she was trailing a small child, howling, up and down the lane to the car, to pack her things, rather than waiting ten minutes so that one of us could take over and she could just get on. The small girl didn’t understand what she’d done to warrant being pulled about, chided and ignored in equal parts; the simple answer was that we had asked her grandma to look after her when her grandma hadn’t wanted to, and it would have been rather easier if said grandma had just said no – the resulting child meltdown took far longer to sort out than we’d gained in child-free time.

It’s a difficult thing, letting the dynamic between the small girl and her grandma evolve without stepping in too often. I don’t want the small girl to pick up the habits of her grandma’s which drive us to distraction, and nor do I want her to see how annoying we find the woman. I had no relationship with my grandparents – two dead, two uninterested – and I do want my daughter to have a better sense of where she comes from, of her wider family, than I had; two people did not form a big enough support network when my mother died, and I have never felt more keenly the lack of siblings near my own age, or grandparents, or uncles and aunts, than I did at that time. But are irritating people better than no people at all? Sometimes, I am not sure. It’s a sort of ‘if you can’t be with the one you love…’ scenario, really. And the small girl does love her grandma, despite her quixotic nature. I suppose I just hope that she comes to see how irritating she can be (thus maintaining our sanity!) but loves her nonetheless, with the distance of a generation, with more ease than we have managed.

And in the meantime, here I am, busily contemplating pregnancy and babies and how that would alter our family as it stands, and what role Quercus’s mother would have in that shift. It’s a bit sticky, frankly. I still long for the huge family dinners, with ten people crammed around a ridiculously small table, or Sunday mornings with fourteen children of varying ages destroying the counters while assembling a very sugary breakfast, or midweek evenings with the stove lit and lots of people watching something entertaining on DVD, or winter walks with several dogs, a few antiquated relatives trailing sticks about the place and a riot of children poking streams, chasing cats and generally being beastly. Fun. Friendship. Respect. Laughter.

I don’t know that there is an answer to The Problem of Families, and Relatives In General, is there? Except one involving wood alcohol, anyway.

Anyway. On to less sticky things. Or not, as the case may be.

Lemon and Lentil Soup
Get hold of…
3 potatoes, diced
2 carrots, chopped
2 chopped onions
A goodly wodge of garlic, chopped
A slug of olive oil
A generous handful of herbs (parsley, sage, oregano, basil – whatever comes to hand)
A large mug of lentils
About a pint and a half of water
A stockcube
3 mugs of spinach/chard/sorrel/greens of some sort you can’t quite identify, which probably won’t kill you
The juice of two lemons, squished rather inefficiently with your hands
A spot of salt and pepper

Then…
Into the pan with the onions, garlic, carrots and taters, and fry them in the oil for a bit, until they start to capitulate. Whop in the lentils, water, herbs and stockcube, stick on a lid and boil it all up until the potatoes soften, at which point, in go spinach and lemon juice for another ten minutes or so. Make sure it’s all cooked through; take off the heat; blend to avoid wierdly stringy bits of spinach in soup context, which would be Just Wrong.

Cookies and nut loaf to follow.

So. After that depressing little wander through the familial labyrinth, tell me nice happy things (including the recipe for healing such maternal discord) this instant, gentle reader, in the box of commentage below.

How is it that for about four years, we lived with one functioning cupboard and the driftwood larder (Quercus’s first attempt at cupboard-making) and we seemed to have everything stored, if not sensibly, then at least accessibly, without any particularly noticeable oversights, yet now, we have acres – no, hectares of storage, of glorious oak cupboards, and we’re filling them up within six months of their completion? Where has all this stuff come from, I ask? Do I really need six mince-pie trays, given that I normally only use two of them? And how do I come by EIGHT round cake tins of approximately the same size and style? One, two or even three I could understand, but EIGHT? That speaks of more than a momentary lapse of concentration, doesn’t it?

Anyway.

One of my favourite things is cupboard reorganisation. I’ve been rejigging things about a bit ever since Quercus finished our cupboards, and I think I’m just about happy with where everything lives, despite my intense puzzlement about the quantity of detritus we appear to have had stored in the sheds. I knew there were more cups and plates and things, but I hadn’t realised just how much baking crap I have. It’s… interesting. I suppose it’s the result of inheriting lots of bits as the aged parent prepared to move house; he doesn’t bake, and thus handed all the things that were my mother’s over to me, and then, as they came in dribs and drabs, I shoved them somewhere convenient and forgot about them, not noticing the very plural nature of those dribs and drabs. Well, at least if it turns out that the answer to the universe is, in fact, a pie of mince, I will be well prepared.

Part of all this unearthing has been rediscovering old recipes that I love, and baking things I remember making with my mother when I was small. Just as I can recall sitting on our counters and handing her things from the cupboards while performing minor physical miracles in avoiding bashing my head on the wall-mounted storage, now I see the small girl sitting in front of me, swiping dried fruit from the various bags and boxes which live in the larger Dried Fruits storage box (fortunately without the physical miracles, as our kitchen is large enough to avoid wall units, a personal loathing of mine), and covered in various quantities of flour, sugar and sunflower oil.

All this baking requires the right clothing, clearly…

So last night, I made her her first apron. A very kind friend recently donated various swathes of fabric to our cause, and in amongst them was a rather nice upholstery-weight brown, which now has a few buttons added, and some red thread, and a wooden heart. I think it’s probably going to be EEEEnormous on her because I sized it by gawping at some dungarees of hers which were kicking about after she’d gone to bed, but hey – room to grow, or something.

And now the bit where I have to wait to give it to her, because we’re out with friends this afternoon, so I must learn me some patience. Remind me how that works…? I’ve never learned thus far… I do love making things for her, and I also love the feeling of surprise that I get every time something actually works out – after years of being utterly crap at sewing, it constantly amazes me that I can do this, and it may even work. Long may it last, both the feeling, and the making.

And you? Any works-in-progress at the moment?