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.

À la manière de Blue Witch, a Friday Question: if you were a shrub, which one would you want to be?

Myself, I quite fancy being a ceanothus. I ask, you understand, because we’re starting to think about things we’d like to grow next year, and at this point I have to remind myself that there are things besides vegetables which would form a rather nice addition to the ol’ botanical kingdom – I love the mock orange, for example, and the pieris, despite my tendency to incline towards rainbow chard and beets. The idea is that perhaps if we think of various plants we’d like, we could pull our fingers out and grow them from seed, rather than buying them as fully-fledged plants.

So, what would you be?

In other news, stuffed courgettes (from the toe-curling cookbook I mentioned in my last post) are very lovely indeed, particularly with the addition of walnuts and potatoes; having friends round for an afternoon of chatting, eating, and fillling each others’ watering cans (if you are under three, that is) is also pretty good.

Less good?

The impending arrival of Quercus’s mother, who has only been gone for two weeks, and who will be with us for another ten-day stint. Not that I don’t appreciate the help, which is lovely and super-useful for Quercus, who is otherwise almost always single-handed on the house work, but still – ! Ten days. I mean… TEN DAYS. It’s quite a while to have anyone stay, particularly when your house is small and they are, well, a little challenging, personally-speaking. I have a plan, though: provide lots of food. And wine. I know – not the world’s most thrilling idea, but still, if an army marches on its stomach, I feel fairly sure that my mother-in-law does likewise.

It could be worse: at the end of this month, I am due to go and see my father, for the first time since he moved north. He’s been in his current house for nearly eighteen months, and I feel on the one hand a bit shifty about not having been before, and on the other, rather ‘well, what did you expect, given that you bought a house five hours’ drive from us, with no spare room, and filled it full of lunaticly annoying people?’. I will attempt to stick to the former attitude, though the latter keeps popping its head above the parapet when I least expect it. He seems relatively happy, or, I should say, as happy as you can be when your younger step-daughter has tried to kill herself in recent memory and is now seeming oddly compliant and happy following months of therapy regarding gender reassignment, while the elder continues to frustrate with attitude and lassitude. Juuuust the ticket if you’re inclined to the Old School Of Parenting, the one which goes something along the lines of ‘Put Up AND Shut Up’.

As you can imagine, I am not completely at ease with the idea of the impending visit. For one thing, there’s a five-hour drive, probably at night to see if the small girl makes a better traveller when it’s dark. And then there’s the old sod’s wife. Who in lots of ways is lovely, but my, she presses my buttons in terms of annoyingness. She advises, you see, when advice isn’t sought, needed or welcome; she just can’t seem to help herself. And she calls me, and always has done, by a shortening of my not-obviously-shortenable first name which is generally reserved for people I actually love, as opposed to people I am stuck in a liftshaft with, metaphorically. And let us not speak of the constant eulogies to which the small girl and I will be subjected: the wife is brilliant, the wife is artistic and SO PRACTICAL, and look at the tiling she has done, and didn’t she design this well, and have you seen the dress she made for herself when she was only eighteen months while dandling fourteen Romanian orphans on the other knee and speaking fluent French? And that’s before you get on to the daughters, who are both, depending on the time of day, musical geniuses destined for great things, incredibly talented artists, thoughtful, caring and helpful, and probably culinary greats too, come to think of it.

I think the worst of it is that I can stick the wife and the step-daughters, but what I find really hard is the person that my father has become since he’s been part of their family. He’s sentimental, fractious and distant most of the time, interspersed with moments of savage resentment and suppressed anger about the various bits of his new life which haven’t gone quite to plan (and there have been, ahem, quite a few). It’s not quite the happy new start that I’d hoped it would be when I decided to just Not Say All Those Things I Thought, when he announced he was getting married, and sometimes I wonder if I did him no favour in being what I hoped was tactful.

Urgh. This has turned into a bit of a rant. Let us draw a veil over it, and return to plants. Plants. Yes. Them. So, courgettes, then:

Stuffed Courgettes
Ingredients
For the courgettes:
Four large courgettes
Several onions
A big chunk of garlic
Some parmesan
Some ricotta
Herbs
A stockcube
Some ground almonds
Some flaked almonds
Some chopped walnuts
A slug of olive oil

Then…
Top and tail the courgettes, cut them in half lengthwise and scoop out the flesh from each half using a spoon. Sling it in a frying pan with some oil, some chopped onion and a few herbs, and give it a few minutes to cook through before adding the rest of the bits and bats. A handful of each of the nutty bits should do it, for those finding this recipe frustratingly vague; it’s vague only because it departs considerably from the original recipe because I couldn’t find half the things in the right quantities in the cupboard, and of course I hadn’t planned in sufficient detail as to have bought the things I’d need in advance. So, you’ve got a cheesey, nutty sauce with onions, garlic and courgette flesh, basically, with some herbs and a bit of stock thrown in for good measure. When it’s all heated through, pop the courgette shells on to a large tray, and heat the oven up to something suitably diabolic – 200°c or so should do it. Fill the shells with the cheesey mix, and drizzle a bit of oil over the top before cooking them for about twenty minutes. Which just leaves you time to make…

The sauce:
A tin of tomatoes, or about six fresh ones
An onion or two
Some garlic
Some herbs
A stockcube
A spoon of brown sugar
Some herbs
A slug of Tabasco
About five small potatoes, chopped into quarters

Then…
Fry the onion and the garlic up together, and then sling everything else in, basically; the taters take a little while to cook through, for that strange ‘there’s something other than water in this pot! I protest in the strongest terms!’ reason. When the courgettes are done, pour the sauce over the top, et voila: scoffalicious.

I can’t decide whether it’s just nostalgia or if I’m in danger of veering into rather morbid territory, but for some reason, ever since the immediate monumental crappitude of my mother dying had passed, I have found myself playing a small mental game about the ways in which my life, and the person I appear to be, would be recognisable to her.

This morning, I walked up a small Devonian lane, shutting the door of our house and stopping to look at our new door handle (which is of the brass beehive variety, and thus exceedingly pretty, to my mind) and the recently-cleaned foxy door knocker, to a car which is the next-to-current version of a car which Quercus drove when my mother was alive. Would our house be surprising to her? Yes, but only in that we are extraordinarily fortunate to have had it since we were twenty-six. Inside, I think she would be unsurprised, though delighted, by its hobbit-like nature. She would probably be surprised to see how practical we have become; she knew Quercus as a music student, not as wielder of chain, mitre and table saws.

I am wearing jeans (to work! horrors!), a sweater with the neck standing up against the gentle drizzle, and purple leather sandals, based on a pair I owned when she was alive. I am wearing silver spiral earrings given to me by Quercus the summer that my mother was diagnosed. I have a leather keyring which was my mother’s. I call to mind a day spent in Boscastle with her, before illness loomed on the horizon (in fact, just before, given that I’d already started university, so it must been the first time they came to visit; the return trip from that visit brought the road accident which started the process which would end in my mother dying of breast cancer, unrecognised until it was too late because her injuries masked the massing symptoms of her imminent doom. Gosh. That is still hard to write. And is it horribly wrong that even in the midst of this hardness, I note that this is a bit like the psychotic version of The House That Jack Built?), when the sun was shining and life was blissfully simple (though of course Sod’s Law being what it is, I didn’t realise this then, and I’m sure that I was full of teenage angst about something-or-other). We sat on a small wall together, and she said I looked like a pixie, a throw-away remark which I’ve often thought over since then, in moments when I contemplated a mirror which showed me a haggard vision of sleep-deprived bile.

In the car, an MP3 of David Bowie plays. This would definitely come as no surprise, and nor would the Jamiroquai I switch to later on.

My bag, which sports a fair-trade peacock on the outside, was probably not even designed, let alone in existence, when she died, but I don’t think its curly design would have failed to appeal, and nor would the felted purse lurking therein, rich in its bright spiral of colour but disappointingly underprivileged in fiscal terms. That probably wouldn’t surprise her, either.

In the back of the car, a small springy sheep lurches from the top of the window. Fastened to that bit you’re supposed to hang jackets on (who does that, incidentally?), he is there to distract the small girl when she’s imprisoned in her (German, which would also be no surprise to a woman who had a life-long affair with the Teutonic, and nearly married a German when she was eighteen) car-seat. She would not be surprised by the small girl; she it was who foresaw a ‘herd’ of small blonde children clinging to the legs of my dungarees. Not quite a herd, yet, but there’s still time.

As I get to work, a space I have inhabited for ten years in one form or another, I reflect that she’d probably be both surprised and pleased that I eschewed the London move which seemed the likely outcome for most of my sixth-form friends in favour of a life in which elderflower cordial-making goes hand-in-hand with lethal alcohol of unknown origin, rootled out of a hedge by friends, and with knackered cars which are constantly in danger of breaking down, and with a house of which gaffer tape has become an integral part. And with ancient clothes in danger of achieving listed status, and with stupidly uncommercial research projects, and with Quercus, and the small girl.

Strange though it may seem, this game is immensely comforting to me. My mother didn’t get to see my adult life, really, which had only just begun when she left, but she would feel a part of it, easily, inevitably, effortlessly, were she to reappear tomorrow, I think.

Number of new MacBooks gracing our kitchen table: 1

Number of shiny British pounds spent bringing about this happy state: not going to be thought about

Number of shiny British pounds about to be made by shameless flogging of iPod bought for £20 courtesy of Apple deal in shop: probably about £130

Number of hours spent in frustrating discussions about wireless router: mind-numbingly plural

Number of loaves of bread baked this week: 6. Six. SIX.

Number of presents currently scattered about the house in happy toddler disarray: approx. four billion

Number of cats snoozing, complete with muddy paws, on newly-waxed oak bench seat: 2. That’s eight paws, and forty claws. FORTY CLAWS.

Number of mothers-in-law currently entering their third – THIRD – week of residence: 1. Thankfully, they don’t tend to be a plural phenomena.

Number of hair-pulling insane discussions with afore-mentioned legal maternal relative: lost somewhere in the first twenty-four hours

Number of blog posts fermenting in Earthenwitch brain, or remnants thereof: 3, including dolls, cooking, and exterior painting of windows and doors which has greatly reduced the pikey appearance of our house.*

And you?

*Is it horribly anal of me to find it almost hand-clenchingly wrong to write a number, i.e. a numerical character rather than the word, followed by punctuation? Or, indeed, to use numbers rather than words full stop?

Lordy-me, I’m having a blogging slump, it appears. It’s not that I’ve nothing to report, and more that I’m not finding time to do it. I honestly don’t know how so many delightful bloggers find time each day to sit down and post things which not only consist of more than the written equivalent of the twin fingers of derision, but are well-thought-out and eloquent, complete with pictures and illustrations. It’s depressing. Or, rather, it would be, if I didn’t enjoy reading such pourings-forth.

Anyway, recent activities have included the acquisition of a reclaimed pine table for our kitchen, which genuinely feels like a kitchen now, and which has really changed the way we’re living in our tiny house to an extent I hadn’t anticipated. It’s so nice to have space for the small girl to toddle about the place without having to think about table saws and screwdrivers as potential weapons in tiny hands. We’ve even got space for a rug where she can sit and explore some of her recent haul from her grandma; she is loving the extra space, and we are breathing out, collectively.

We’ve also made quite firm plans for what this summer will be. So far, it looks like Quercus will take parental leave from his job in order to spend a concerted block of time on the house – three weeks to finish the outside of the extension, which includes drainage, guttering, painting and various bits and bobs of things like fixing lime render where frost came too soon for us. It’s going to be another busy year, but I’m trying to stay upbeat about this; the loss of the chickens has hit me harder than I’d imagined possible, to be honest, and I am struggling to find the optimism which normally buoys me up on even the greyest of days. Partly, I think that’s why I’ve not been writing here very frequently; it’s not that I have sunk into the slough of despond, but I do feel that it’s very wearisome to read yet another depressing ‘oh shit’ post, and it’s probably only going to hack me off further to write such witterings. So, I’m holding my metaphorical tongue until such time as I have more cheery tidings to impart.

I’m also conscious of being rather very behind in the 52 Recipes in 2010 stakes. I started late – I think it was April – but still, I think I need to be cooking something new every single day from here to 2011 at this rate. I’m going to try to get two new things in this week as a bid to turn things around, mood-wise. I’m reasonably cheery, I suppose, and I just need to remember that, and develop it, all of which is hard when the small girl is teething molars, and waking quite frequently, so we’re knackered, as usual. (It’s all so boring, sleep deprivation, yet utterly overwhelming from time to time, I find.)

Current preoccupations:

Children, the number, timing, and nature thereof;

Cooking, and the need not to repeat oneself ad nauseum;

House work, as in cleaning and painting windows, drainage, fixing gardens et al;

The physical self, and why my body wants either chocolate or sleep ALL THE TIME.

Tell me nice things in my comments box, please. (Inspired by DW, whose “I need to hear nice things” post made me smile.)

In lots of ways, I want to get that last entry further down the page, metaphorically and literally.* This afternoon the small girl and I went to visit our remaining two hens, Nutmeg and Cobweb, who are currently on holiday with e. We had a very nice time, despite the origins of the reason for our visit, and the hens are clearly doing fine; Nutmeg is even laying still. Cobweb, of course, being an Araucana, is completely mad still, but then that’s nothing new. Anyway, the small girl enjoyed feeding them, and talking to them, and a resemblance to various of our other hens didn’t hurt, although we have explained to her that part of the reason for the chickens’ holiday is that we are worried that the fox might come back to visit, and that foxes and chickens can’t be friends. It’s been a tough week, and having the aged parent here didn’t really divert attention from it so much as highlighting another area of life which is far from satisfactory, to wit: the relationship between AP and small girl, or lack thereof. (That’s a whole nother post, but basically he doesn’t seem to know quite what to make of her, and she, as a result, is a little stand-offish, which creates a wholly inaccurate impression of who she is, normally, with people who really know her.)

Anyway, that is a rant for another day, and for now, I’m happy to see our hens still standing, and OK, and alive. Quercus and I are still miserable about what happened, and the garden is horribly quiet without the chooks about the place. We had had them for three years, and seeing the place without them is just wrong. I think we are tentatively agreed that we will have some more hens while we live here, though we have yet to work out which changes we’ll make to make the run more secure (and, of course, how we can make me less forgetful; I feel unspeakably guilty, predictably, and I think I will full-stop, to be honest, when I think about what happened). I think we’re both prepared to go quite some way to try to ensure that this doesn’t happen again, whether that means an automatic chicken gate (which sounds rather like a bizarre political scandal, doesn’t it?) and electric wiring, or just tonnes and tonnes of ordinary chicken wire, or a moat and guard dogs and machine guns on watch-towers or what. But I feel better in my head when I think that this is not the end of the line for us as hen people, so we’ll continue to work out the details while I try to sit on my hands and not push Quercus before he’s ready.

We’re also trying to use what happened with the hens as an incentive to sort out the garden. A few weeks back, we tidied intensively in one half of it, before rotovating and sewing a mixture of grass, clover and camomile; it’s getting quite green out there (though let us not speak of the insanely healthy-looking rhubarb which has survived this ordeal, having played dead for several months prior to our decision to just cut our losses with it…) and it’s made us appreciate how nice it would be to have outdoor space that didn’t involve old nails and rusty bits of ex-roof. A garden, one might call it; I hear these things are catching on these days. So, it looks like our plans are changing from focusing entirely on the inside of the house, to sorting out the rest of the exterior work and creating a garden, not least for the small girl to have somewhere nice this summer. Hopefully, part of this will be creating a secure space for some more hens. And then retrieving our two from e.

In other news, next weekend we are getting a dining table, bringing us dangerously close to civilisation! In the kitchen! There will be pictures! We are going to Quercus’s mother’s for this, and a weekend away seemed like a rather nice idea given that we’ve had a week of horribleness. So, Weald & Downland here we come.

* And thanks for the sympathy on my last post; I really appreciated it, and it did go some way to stopping me feeling a complete and utter arsehole.

This morning I came down to find that five of our seven hens had been attacked by a fox. Quercus had to kill our rooster, whose neck was clearly broken but who had lived anyway, and four of the hens were already dead. We have sent the remaining two to live with e, who has lots of hens and from whom two of ours originally came. I feel just horrible about the whole thing; there are feathers everywhere and I feel physically sick when I think about poor Pepper’s horrible fate. The worst of it is that I forgot to shut the henhouse up last night; I think they came out very early and that was when it happened. I know it’s dramatic-sounding, but I shall never forgive myself for it. And yes, I know it could have happened to either me or Quercus, but it happened to me, and I feel just awful. I don’t know if we’re going to get more hens, and, if we do, when we might do it, but for now, we’ve a lot of clearing up to do and a small girl to lie to.

Thursday is one of sometimes two nights a week when I am an orchestra widow. Quercus has been playing a rather large brass instrument (the tuba, since you ask) since he was small enough that he could probably have fitted inside its bell, had he wished to, and I have always felt strongly that he must continue to do so despite the usual call of the wild, which is to say the outland we laughingly call the extension. (It’s not that wild these days, honestly, yet the habit persists in thinking terms – I still see the things that need doing as much as the things that are already done, apart from during those brief moments when I manage to recall quite how far we’ve come – from hardboard interior walls and perpetually running-wet walls complete with a plywood ceiling and single-skin brick external walls…!) So, tonight he has wended his merry way to a rehearsal, where he will no doubt be tackling all sorts of musical delights. Or at least counting for a very long time. Which is something brass players excel at. (That, and relying on their neighbours to remind them of their cues when they forget to count altogether and doze off instead.)

While he is out, I am reuniting with my sewing machine. It has been off for a service with someone his agent laughingly described as ‘a sewing machine geek’; just as well, given that a bit of internet stalking revealed that it is actually well over a hundred, and thus something of a dying breed. Hopefully, I will now find my way to The Zen Of Sewing, but frankly I’ll settle for not wanting to hurl its not inconsiderable bulk out of the nearest window. I have a bag which is nearly finished – it’s been waiting for the return of the beast for about three weeks – and wants only four straight seams. D’you think I’ll manage it without some form of homicide taking place?

I’ve been thinking of establishing myself a regular crafty slot, and now that I think about it, Thursday evenings seems like a good plan. I don’t get very much time in the house on my own, as it were (the small girl having gone to bed just before seven, as is her wont), and as afternoon snoozes seem to be a bit hit-and-miss these days, I think that evenings are probably a better option, not least as I quite like a bit of time on my own and am thus in a positive frame of mind at the very outset, which is in itself a useful thing when I find myself confronted by a) my own technical ineptitude, and b) that recurrent desire to hurl said machine forth. So, we shall see; now I’ve said the whole regular bit, doubtless Quercus will have a drought of rehearsal time, and I’ll forget all about it until the next time I’m feeling particularly batshit.

In other news, in a moment of spectacular magnanimity the uncharacteristic nature of which those who know me personally will attest in the strongest terms, I have given the caravan’s owner (let us call him Jules, for that is… his name) another week’s grace in the ongoing saga of its removal (or lack thereof) from our garden. His girlfriend, the not-very-lovely one from the phone conversation the other week, has just had their baby, and he was proposing to come here (a five-hour drive for him) in order to, well, generally prat about in an attempt to formulate Plan B for its removal. Plan B is needed because Plan A was to get David to move it, and, as regular readers will know, that doesn’t seem to be on the cards given that he doesn’t reply to our emails or phone calls these days, and seems to wish that a large rock would appear just for the very purpose of our crawling beneath it and remaining there for a goodly period of time. Sadly (for him), said rock is about as keen on making an appearance as he himself is, so we persist. Anyway, I don’t want to be the utter trout who insists that Jules leaves his new baby and his recently-given-birth partner to drive all the way over here and attempt to clear up this situation, so we’ve left it until next weekend, with the solemn vow that then, It Shall Be Moved.

My.

Right. Knitting calls, as does the sewing machine, and, to my shame, an online episode of something terrible. Oh, but just before I go, let me gloat about this year’s foray into seasonal crafty whatsits: coloured eggs. I’ve never done these before, but have often seen them on blogs and thought how lovely they looked, so this was the year. Ye gods, blowing eggs requires some determination. I think it’s the sort of thing I’ll do again, though, as I quite like the idea of building up a collection of eggs over the years. (Assuming they last that long!) Have you tried this, and if so, what did you use for colours? For us, it was leftover food colouring from making L-Q-S‘s pumpkin birthday cake, some white crayon and a rubber band, together with some water and some vinegar. We never managed to get the green colouring to come out green, though – it always ended up bright turquoise.

And how is the internets tonight?

Well, not really unspeakable, as I am about to speak it, metaphorically, er, speaking. But still. Woe. Yes. Woe, for I have spent two days with a not-very-well small girl for company. And lo! there was much lying on the sofa with a small wailing person on top of me, wanting to do nothing except feed and go to sleep. She is most pathetic, and I feel very sorry for her, and have pretty much no idea what’s wrong. She just seems to have picked something up, and is a bit on the warm side, is completely uninterested in eating or going out and doing things, and is rather lethargic. I am taking the drink-lots-of-fluid-and-thank-the-gods-for-continued-breastfeeding dance, while perfecting the skills of doing normal household stuff with a toddler in one hand. Quite different from the same dance conducted to the tune of tiny babe, I find, and rather more demanding on one’s wrists (to the extent that I appear to have acquired a repetitive strain injury in my left wrist, which is currently intimating that physiotherapy might be the only way to persuade it to cease and desist).

Also, it being that time of the month, I have the cramps from hell.

Now, this brings me to a tricky subject.

WHY DOES IT HAVE TO HURT?

No, seriously. WHY?

I mean, I am all in favour of the many and varied attempts that various female writers have made to reclaim the majesty of menstruation, and to work in into some sort of alternative feminine esotericism which rejoices in the power of birth and recreation of the divine spirit through birth and blood, milk and ecstasy and all that. Oh yes. And I read tons of very lentil-eating books about childbirth when I was pregnant, and yes, I ended up very much in favour of home-birth with as few interventions as possible. (And yes, I am off to knit my own placenta into a menstruation veil shortly.) (Kidding.) But the thing that really stops me short of buying into this logic is that every month, my period arrives, and I feel pretty shoddy for the first day or two, to the extent that, today, all I’ve wanted to do is crouch over a hot water bottle, while muttering darkly about hysterectomies.

Traitor to the cause, see. Next thing I’ll be seeking out the interventions of a white male GP with an Oxbridge degree who votes Conservative and lives within an hour of London, not to mention burning my sandals and eating a Big Mac.

I do want to find a way to perceive menstruation as something other than a royal pain in the arse, if you’ll forgive the literal nature of that phrasing, but it’s something with which I struggle. I mean, mentally, I find the idea of a cycle which is in time with the tides of the moon immensely appealing, and I love the idea of women being linked with lunar tides and whatnot. I am also not at all squeamish (I have been using a Mooncup for about five years, for example, and am not at all grossed-out by anything involving blood and guts), so it’s not that that’s the problem. I even like the novel idea of using menstrual blood in composting, for the iron contained therein, and, after a brief deliberation, this month I’ve switched to using washable pads, with which I am so far delighted. Also, given my witchcraft tendencies, I have used a variety of herbal approaches in the past, some of which I continue to use, more out of habit than any particularly overwhelming effect; raspberry leaf tea, scullcap tincture, cramp bark, camomile, valerian, peppermint and many others which I can’t remember have all joined me in the ouch-why-ouch monthly dance, yet none have really trounced the problem. (And that’s before we even start on The Teenage Years: Does Any GP Think That The Pill Doesn’t Cure All Problems, And If So, Give That Doc A Prize.)

So, the eco aspects of menstruation get my vote, as it were. And the whole you-can-make-people-if-you’re-female bit never fails to astonish me, as it did throughout conception, pregnancy and birth, and as I hope it will again, if we ever finish our sodding house (that, dear reader, is another post entirely). I can talk my way around all sorts of phrasing which plays up the importance of positive imagery about menstruation in terms of having daughters and giving them a good feeling about being female, and I have learned to stop thinking of menstruation as ‘the curse’, a phrase my mother used for years (and perhaps unsurprisingly, given that she had a hysterectomy at forty after years of endometriosis) because I don’t want to feel that something which is natural to the female body is in any way something inflicted upon it; no – I prefer to see it as a sign of the great things of which women are capable. But that’s exactly where I flounder: I do believe that it’s a sign of all the extraordinary things that we can handle, as women, yet at the same time, the pain really pisses me off. It’s not like I’m lying in my bed of pain for days at a time, trailing a wan (and suitably Victorian) hand over a lacy cotton nightgown, but it does take the edge off me, for want of a better phrase, for the first couple of days, and my skin is completely crap for a few days before that, just to remind me of the delights which lie before me.

So, in short, how to resolve this dichotomy between the mental resolution with which I can cheerfully face the monthly challenges of being female, and the physical wimp which appears as soon as the bleeding begins? It’s a question I haven’t yet answered, but I’d really like to get my hymn-sheets in order before I start explaining all this to a small girl, one day.

ARGH.

So, that was the frustration just seeping out there. Largely, it’s frustration at being made to feel like the bad person when actually it’s not me (us) who is (are) the evil whatsit, but someone we considered a friend. Yes – it’s the caravan’s latest saga. Now we have its owner’s phone number, and we’ve been trying to get him to fix a date for its removal, having offered him three weekends when we spoke initially nearly a month ago. Two and a half weeks passed, and we’d heard nothing; a phone call revealed he had yet to speak to the person he’s relying on to move it, and, as long-term readers may have already guessed, that person is not normally someone to whom I would go in a tight spot, timing-wise, unless EVERYONE ELSE HAD DIED.

Why yes, since you ask, I am feeling a little irritation about this.

So, I had a twenty-minute conversation with the caravan owner’s very agitated, very pregnant (38 weeks) significant other tonight, during which she strongly implied that we are complete arseholes who’d walked all over the person we once considered a friend, using him for all he was worth and generally being arseholes. Did I mention the arseholery? Oh, and making merry with their caravan for however long we’ve had it, free of charge and without a care in the world, before turning around at very short notice and issuing edicts about its removal.

I can’t even be bothered to get into the many ways in which this isn’t true, but what really gets me is that said thought-to-be-friend allowed this situation to unfold without setting the record straight, and now here we are, with me having to be mildly unpleasant (i.e. persistent in something they would rather we didn’t persist in – getting a date settled for moving this sodding caravan) to a woman who is about to give birth.

I’m so pissed off I could spit.

Much to my astonishment, the last-ditch email I sent David has elicited a response – I still have very little idea what’s happened as he was quite mysterious about it, frankly, but at least we’ve established some form of contact, and he’s emailed back saying he’ll get Jules to get in touch with us. So, that’s a big relief – I really hate conflict, particularly when it involves people I consider friends (albeit in a ‘I may voodoo you soon’ manner), and I’ll be very happy if we can resolve this amicably; it’s never good when you find yourself idly wondering if the police will be able to give you reliable advice on something, is it? So, fingers crossed, this will be sorted soon.

In other news, I am running away from home again. The kitchen is nearing completion, but the dust, grime and hours needed simply aren’t really working with a small girl who isn’t very well and a sleep-deprived mama, so it’s off to Quercus’s mother we go, we go, yo ho ho. Or something. This means no internets for a few days, but probably lots of knitting; I’ve finished that cardigan shown in progress in the last post, and am suitably stunned at my own wondrousness (er… ‘luck’ might be closer to the truth), so I’m now casting around for something new to knit. Current possibilities are, well, largely hat-related, although truth be told I’m a bit bored with hat-knitting; somehow I have accrued lots and lots of small quantities of very pretty wool, which means lots of small projects, really, unless I buy yet more wool, when what I really want is something more substantial. The only candidate for such an enterprise is, at the moment, a huge knot of wool which looks as if the cats had scrumbled at it for at least two weeks prior to its being forgotten in the attic for about six months. Ahem. This is rather dampening my appetite for starting, shall we say.

Hoo-ho.

And you? What’s going on in your neck of the woods?

ARGH.

So.

The letter that we sent recorded delivery to David, he who hath saddled us (apparently) with a caravan we don’t want, don’t own, and want gone, has come back to us – the post office attempted to deliver it, left a card saying they’d tried, and then it waited for two weeks in their depot thingy before wending its way back to us.

ARGH.

Is so annoying.

In the meantime, I’ve tried emailing David again to let him know that if we can’t raise him by post or phone, we will end up going round there, either to tackle him face to face or to find out if his landlord knows where the fuck he’s gone. It’s all so bloody unnecessary. That’s what pisses me off. It’s not like we want anything from him now – that ship sailed bloody months ago – but you’d think someone we once considered a good friend would have the decency to pass on a phone number, at least, wouldn’t you? I mean, obviously we did something to piss him off, but surely it must be clear that we’ve no idea what, and, if he ever does read this blog still, that whatever it was was inadvertent; I just can’t for the life of me work out what has happened here.

Fucking caravan.

Fucking situation.

Fucking prospect of over an hour’s drive each sodding way to see if he’s moved.

Fucking fucking fuck.

Those of you using feed readers may have picked up a post I disappeared a while back, one in which I explained the oddities of the caravan which lives in our garden at the moment. Well, to those of you who didn’t, the brief overview goes thusly: Lovely David, fixer-up of Citroëns and general all-round good chap, helped enormously on our extension self-build, and in the process he found us a caravan to use as a temporary kitchen, bathroom and general living space while chaos enveloped our house. The caravan belonged to a friend of his, J(o?)ules; we did him a favour in giving it a temporary home while he moved house, and he did us a favour in providing us with something which we’d otherwise have had to buy and then resell when the building work was done.

Hmm.

So far, so good.

Fast-forward six months, and it was the summer of last year. David had some odds and ends to finish on the wiring he’d done in our extension, wiring for which he’d been paid (and which he’d been able to do because, during the build, he’d gone on a course to become a certified electrical installer-type person, able to do Part P certification, a necessary part of building regulations in the UK; we paid about a third of the fee for this, which was quite a considerable wodge for us), and we’d arranged a time for him to come and do it. He didn’t appear, and since that last normal conversation back in the summer, we’ve not heard from him at all. Despite calls and emails and texts and messages and forum posts.

I’d just like to say, at this point, how upset I’ve been about it; we both have. We thought this man was our friend, and, while we’re both open to an explanation which contradicts our eventual, reluctant conclusion that not only was he not really our friend, but that he was being a bit of a swine too, we’ve no idea why he’s disappeared off our particular universe. Being me, and naturally prone to a particularly unlovely combination of guilt and incessant curiosity, I feel quite sad about it still, if I’m honest; it’s so rare to meet people with whom you really get on almost from the word ‘go’ that I feel you have to hang on to them wherever possible. Of course, to do so requires, generally, a little reciprocation on their part. That is where this one falters a bit.

And, while Lovely David may have beaten a hasty retreat, sadly, the caravan has stubbornly refused to do likewise. It sits, festering, at the end of the garden. It is eight feet wide and twenty feet long. It occupies the space we have got in mind for a woodshed, and it’s a pain in the arse, not least as it means we’re constantly parking in eight inches of Devon mud. Also, of course, it’s one of those “but it’s not even ours!” things. J(o)ules hasn’t got in touch with us, as, to the best of our knowledge, he hasn’t got our number or address (although my real name and general location on Google brings me up as hits numbers one to ten), and we haven’t got anything beyond his first name, and David doesn’t seem to want to give it to us.

So, yesterday, I finally managed to speak to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, and they tell me that we must write to David, sending it by registered post so that he must sign to show he’s received it, and then wait two weeks. If he doesn’t reply, we’ll be selling the caravan, before hanging on to the proceeds for six years (!), in case J(o)ules should appear, wanting his wagon back. I don’t know if David will reply; to be honest, if you’d told me a year ago that we’d find ourselves in this situation, I simply wouldn’t have believed it, so little would this have fitted in with the image that we had of him at the time. But hey -here we are. I’m quietly depressed about the whole thing.

Two weeks and counting, eh?