Time Meme

Stolen from Gary, who says he stole it from everybody, but couldn't be bothered to tell me it existed; because that's marriage for you.

A snapshot of time
Now: 10pm Sunday

48 Hours Ago: Playing Scrabulous on Facebook. I have about 20 games on the go, to minimise the waiting!

36 Hours Ago: Getting daughter ready to go to her Saturday morning drama club

24 Hours Ago: Listening to a rather nifty self-hypnosis tape

18 Hours Ago: Fast asleep

12 Hours Ago: Day two of rearranging the garage - including spider chasing and heavy lifting and pretty much ALL ON MY OWN, no matter what the tea boy says.

6 Hours Ago: Studying Day 6 of Paul McKenna's 'Change Your Life In Seven Days'

3 Hours Ago: School uniform laundry and washing up after dinner

2 Hours Ago: Watching 'Lark Rise To Candleford' - brilliant. I remember Julia Sawhala in Press Gang, aged 20 but playing 16.

1 Hour Ago: Nipped in to Facebook again, it IS rather addictive.

Now: Blogging whilst waiting for the cup of decaff the tea boy promised me twenty minutes ago....

1 Hour from now: Making packed lunches for the kids to take to school in the morning, and probably making my own drink, too....

2 Hours from now: Asleep

3 Hours from now: Asleep

6 Hours from now: Asl..... I should have pretended I played this earlier, huh?

12 Hours from now: Trying to do the last section of that book before I have to leave for work

18 Hours from now: Just in from work in time for kids to come home from school, so, making drinks and snacks, sorting arguments, shouting about where school bags and shoes are not supposed to be, etc.

24 Hours from now: Finishing my library book, Wifework; I hope.

36 Hours from now: In limbo - will be 2 hours since the kids left for school and 1 & 1/2 until I leave for work, plus I'll be in on my own, so, reading or cleaning or going stir crazy - my choice!

48 Hours from now: ? Who plans that far anyway? People who always always always have a toasted teacake at ten on Tuesdays?

Oh, its a heel

A Lull In The Storm

The rain is falling steadily and pretty aggressively, but at least its not hammering at the windows any more.

The trees in the back garden are being whipped around like fat ladies in an aerobics class, reaching first for the sky and then for their toes, but they aren't thrashing malevolently like hefty bullies looking to uproot and do damage, any more.

The guinea pig cages have been blown over. These are solid, heavy, wooden structures not meant for one person to move, not even when the ground is firm. Now our sloping garden is a foamy mudslide and I can't even get them to stand back up, although maybe thats for the best.

There has been a mass exodus - all guinea pigs gone. Mercifully no casualties are in evidence, however both the boys and both the girls have simply disappeared - hopefully to somewhere warm and safe, like round the back of next-door's shed, up against the fence and out of the wind.

We may never get them back; alternatively, taking the longer view, we may eventually get back several more than we bargained for.

We have lost a recycling box - which is annoying (in a very convenient, unemotional, safely diverting way), because I spent ages with expensive sticky backed plastic and a scalpel, decorating them to be personal to this house. If you do them boldly enough, even the coldest, sleepiest recycling man cannot fail to notice - although if one does miss the message, you get somebody else's filthy boxes handed back, while your own end up in the next street.

I'm not afraid of a bit of dirt, its just that some people don't see the point of rinsing a tin, just to throw it in the recycling, and trying to clean out somebody else's two-week-old caked on baked beans, soup and cat food, is, well, pleasant to avoid.

I imagine our box has, indeed, ended up in the next street. I just don't know whether it was taken by the wind or by someone desolate called Bert on his electric recycling milk-float looking thing that doesn't like these hills and lets the rain squall in.

Posting now, before the internet connection or the phone line (same difference) goes on the blink.

Have a nice day!

Where I am

For the longest time events would present themselves (as would ideas, lines of poetry, jokes, observations) and all would shout 'Blog me!' and I would say 'No! Shut-up and go away because I do not blog any more'.

So, here I am, best intentions cast aside; blogging again.

Murphy's Law, of course, demands that I be absolutely unable to think of a single darn thing to write about, now that the outlet exists.

I'm still here, for what its worth.

That is all.

Stevie Smith - Our Bog is Dood

Everyone knows the Stevie Smith line, 'Not waving but drowning', don't they? Even if they don't know the whole poem? Even if they don't realise it is also the title of that piece?

I mentioned it a couple of posts ago, and having found a link to it, had a quick look at what else there was.

There was this.

It got to me, and I can't understand why it isn't just as famous as the other one.

Stevie Smith - Our Bog is Dood

Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood,
They lisped in accents mild,
But when I asked them to explain
They grew a little wild.
How do you know your Bog is dood
My darling little child?

We know because we wish it so
That is enough, they cried,
And straight within each infant eye
Stood up the flame of pride,
And if you do not think it so
You shall be crucified.

Then tell me, darling little ones,
What's dood, suppose Bog is?
Just what we think, the answer came,
Just what we think it is.
They bowed their heads. Our Bog is ours
And we are wholly his.

But when they raised them up again
They had forgotten me
Each one upon each other glared
In pride and misery
For what was dood, and what their Bog
They never could agree.

Oh sweet it was to leave them then,
And sweeter not to see,
And sweetest of all to walk alone
Beside the encroaching sea,
The sea that soon should drown them all,
That never yet drowned me.

Big breath....

So, did I mention Husband's teensy breakdown?

Thought so.

On the one hand he's done lots of CBT and thats fantastic. As he's relaxed he's become a lot more naturally considerate, kind, helpful. In some senses its been like a fairy tale.

On the other hand, having one's life partner at home, constantly, since September, briefly very very angry but then progressively finding ways to take control of his environment and be helpful (particularly when you're not actually there);

well

its like playing a sort of sadomasochistic blind-man's-buff against Dr Jekyll.

Nearly time out, I think.

Avocado

Once upon a time a certain Zilla lady mentioned the joys of growing avocados from seed. Or kernel. Or whatever the thing is called.

Fascinating.

Being a Brit, this is not a pastime that ever encroached upon my own, comparatively unambitious and saucer-based carrot-top and cress growing childhood.

Obviously the only thing to do was to purchase and consume several avocados during the appropriate season, scoop out and save the pits, make a whole slimy, mouldy, disastrous mess of the cocktail sticks suspension method as described by Zilla, and chuck the rest of the collection straight out the back door.*

Where, as luck or sheer perversity would have it, one of them decided to grow.

Its there still, having survived a few frosts and the interest of snails. Barring the fact that its obviously been munched, the remaining leaves /portions of leaves are green and glossy and healthy.

Down a grubby side alley.
Beside a Council kitchen door.
On top of a windy, salty hill by the British seaside.
Mexico it ain't.

Go figure.


*I have a thing against putting seeds, seedlings or even dead plants actually into the bin, 'just in case'.

*Cough, blush*

This is me tiptoeing back in, to the back of the room.

Husband has now mentioned his 'minor breakdown' on his own blog, so if anyone noticed one or both of us looking like Stevie Smith's Dead Man (not waving, but drowning) since September last year, well now you know why.

Sorry about that.

All much better now.


Happy New Year!