Out of the Mouths of Babes......

Two days ago the 5yo needed to see the doctor for a minor repair, he ate his lunch extra slowly not wanting to go.

'That's it,' said I; a phrase I'm fond of. '......your lunch (tuna mayo and toast) is going into the fridge and you can have it later.

..... But lunch was forgotten, for a very good reason: In a little town nearby there is the most evil shop, an olde fashioned sweet shop with tall glass jars filled with smells and promises and things to rot your teeth. After a well behaved doctor visit, we visited the den of sin and I purchased two traffic-light gobstoppers the size of the sproglet's heads! We almost had to return to the doctor after the 7yo put hers in her mouth but struggled to get it back out again. We three had a deal; they would only lick the candy (.... hopefully for the entire 9 weeks of the holidays! A bargain at 50p each.)

Later that night, long after the babies were scraped off the ceiling from their sugar-high and put to bed, I rediscovered boy's lunch and fed it to the cats.

Mid-day yesterday, as he munched a sandwich, the 5yo turned to me and said,

'Mummy, don't forget, I need the lunch I had yesterday tomorrow.'

!

I'm off now to shake the cats.

Picture courtesy of The Pink Sweet Shop

A Pod A Day Keeps the Boredom at Bay

One of the best pressies I ever did get from hubby was an iPod, a Classic I think it's called. It matters not, the important thing is how you use it.

I use it for podcasts mostly, free ones!

I use iTunes to download a library then I synchronise to the iPod. The BBC website is filled with pods for casting... great fun. I personally love Gardener's Question Time, Books and Authors and the Friday Night Comedy which is always topical.

On other sites you can also subscribe and download mini episodes of children's programmes: The Sesame Street podcast still amuses my two when bored shopping or the like and they are 5 and 7yo! Lately it has been my pod of choice as the cuddly characters have shared the screen with David Beckham, Jack Black, Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal to name but a few... Check it out, it may save you for a fractious time during the long summer holidays....

Night-Mare!

.....Previously on the east wing of the house..(sorry I shamefully love The West Wing)..... dusk was fast approaching and the two white hens were being a pain, acting like a couple of bulldog Bri'ish doormen standing in the doorway of the coop!

'Sorry, if yer not on the list, yer not comin' in!'

Clearly the 6 new girls, looking a bit shabby rather than top totty, weren't on the 'A' list! Bit of a cheek really as all my hens looked shabby at one time, all having been rescued from battery farms. I viewed the scene from the office. Furious, I grabbed the torch and headed off to the little stone cottage's attic to search out the cat carrier.




Back to the coop with the carrier, I snatched up the two beastly hens and shoved them in the carrier for a 'time out.' Life suddenly got calmer.

Back in the office I watched to see if the new hens would enter the coop unaided. No bloody chance! Why, oh why did husband decide to visit Poland today!!! Deep breath...

I went back outside and herded, chased, cajoled chickens into bed alongside their adversaries. By now it was pitch dark. Four of the six were shoved through the door, the fifth was spied in the Rhododendron tree. I'm scratched to buggery, but I got her and popped her into safety too. Phew!

But, one girl is missing. I've searched everywhere. I know she's secreted herself in a bush or tree but I can't find her and at almost 11:30pm, having searched for almost 2 hours, I have to go to bed!

Next episode tomorrow, when we see if she has survived the night. Poor girl, I'm going to worry now, fingers crossed for her.

Night, night, speed the morning please.

Toilet Brush Mystery ......

For some weeks, some would say years I have been somewhat preoccupied. (yes hubby, I am taking to you..) Lots of things in my brain jiggling about, planning, renovating, writing, tutoring, befriending, entrepreneuring ...Not a real word you say? Then how come I've been doing it?

When my brain gets overloaded, new information and ideas still arrive, pushing into my noggin through my eyes and ears, unfortunately other older more useless stuff gets pushed out to make room for the new stuff. I can only presume there is a tiny hole at the back of my head, but I'm too busy to look.

Trivial things seem to filter straight through, never remaining in my head for more than a few seconds. Tonight hubby phoned to say he'd be late;

'Could you record the football please?' he asked.

'Sure.' said I.

I put the phone down and 'ting,' the request fell out of my brain and I got on with the immediately important stuff; dinner for the kids, their home work and lots of walking around the trashed house and gardens saying 'Right,' as if that would magically sort out the devastation. Only when the 7yo read her book for school - a book about a daddy - did my back-up brain kick in, and I shot off to press R on the remote!

.....This inability to function properly is the reason I haven't been able to solve the toilet brush mystery before today....

Our downstairs loo is rather frugal, fairly roomy, but frugal, (and that's being kind.) Beside the toilet, I've placed a huge flowerpot housing Finn McCool's (Fionn mac Cumhail's) loo brush. It's not that we do excessively large number twos in this family, its just that when we first arrived to the house, the cleaning jobs required industrial strength tools. I bought a massive cleaning brush that looks like a fat hedgehog on a pole; length and girth. Impressive eh?

Now for weeks, every.single.darn.time I go into that loo, the toilet brush is out of the flower pot and lying on the floor. It first started when we had guests, I'd assumed one of them had forgotten to replace it, but after the third and forth time of finding it on the floor I was wondering what the heck was going on.

Sadly, every time I left the loo, the info pertaining to the loo brush incident fell out of my brain, a consequence of being hounded as a mummy....

'Can you push me on the swing?'

'Can I have a drink?'

'Can you help me catch the neighbours sheep that are in our field?' (that was tonight!!)

'They' loiter outside the loo, waiting to acost me. I can't even have two minutes to wee....

After our guests left and the bog brush still kept escaping its pot, I assumed the children, bored during protracted movements, were messing with it. I never remembered to ask them about it: Brainless!

Anyhoo, mystery solved, euwwww, yuck, disgusting. Tabby attacks the brush, claws out, viscious, clearly he thinks it looks like a hedgehog too...




This is NOT a good week for the cats; pigeon murdering and now this!
[Update 2014: 5 years on and our new website is launched here come visit us online.]

Springwatch back on 31st.......

Obviously, I only watch it for the nature stuff........cough, cough.

Picture courtesy of http://www.wildlifeextra.com. Where Mr Packham talks about invasive species...sigh....