my weekend in pictures 2

My house: 2.15pm








My Dad is having a nap.
HP is catching up on reading some blogs.
My Mum is playing spider solitaire.
I am going round the house taking photos.

my car

I've been meaning to take a photo of my car to post on here, but I never seem to remember at the right time (so that's when it's not dark, and I'm actually in the same place as the camera and the car at the same moment). I still haven't done that, but while putting the photo on my last post I found this one (taken by my Dad) and worked out how to trim it so you couldn't see my registration plate (hence the funny shape of the photo).

This was taken on the very first day that I brought the car home. I am sitting in the passenger seat reading the manual (the first and last time I ever did, maybe I will again someday) and the lady standing next to the car is my Mum. Oh, and if you've read the previous post you may have noticed that it was her face that you can see a bit of at the side of the photo of our dining table.

My weekend in pictures

Every Saturday we get The Times and The Guardian newspapers. This started back when Bekki was still at home and she wanted The Guardian and my Mum wanted The Times. I think that although Bekki is now up in Cambridge my Mum got used to reading bits from the The Guardian and that's why we still get both.

Over breakfast (sometimes quite literally, in that there's no where to put your plate without someone plonking a bit of paper on top on it) these two papers get opened and spread around as people have developed their own preferences as to which bits they read first.

My Dad is in charge of buying the papers from the handy newsagents just up the road. Actually, from where we live there are newsagents in pretty much every direction, but he always buys them at the 'ding-dong' shop (so called by HP many moons ago. Something to do with the electric ping that sounds whenever someone opens the door of the shop. To be honest I don't even know if they have that still, but the nickname lives on in our house).

My mum usually starts with the actual news bit of the Times, although this photo was taken a bit later in the day when she's moved on to the magazines. It somehow takes my Mum more than a week to read all the different bits from both papers, which is unfortunate as we continue to buy them each week. The problem of building up papers is either solved by one of the rest of us sneaking bits into the recycling bin, or special catching up sessions in the holidays. (I found out later what she's reading in the picture was actually a magazine from last week, that just proves my point really)

Today HP started with the 60 page puzzle special - an Easter holiday special from The Guardian.

I always go for the Times magazine first, usually followed by Weekend from The Guardian and Body & Soul from the Times. After that I might read some news bits, but since we have Radio 4 on in our house a lot of the time, I am usually fairly up to date with the main news (like knowing about the swan found in Scotland a couple of days ago that died from bird flu).

spring cleaning

This evening after dinner HP and I are heading to my house in GC for a few days. Hopefully we'll get some sring cleaning done, and also have time for a bit of fun. I'm going to be working each morning, but HP says she might get some cleaning done while I'm out, and we'll have to get some done during the afternoons as well.

I've written a list of things that could be done. Mostly because I like writing lists, but also so that we don't sit around and wonder what to do next. Also, since the list breaks it down into small chunks we get to have lots of "yay it's done" moments as we go along.

Hopefully we will manage to get away from London in time to pick up Imogen from the station (she's been up in Scotland for the weekend, and will be in GC only for a couple of hours before her dad comes and takes her back to her home for rest of the holiday). I'm not sure why that all got to be in brackets, but never mind.

I'd better get back to putting things in the car. Will try to write more as soon as I can :-)

Oh, congratulations to Kathleen on reaching her 100th post. (and to me on (hopefully) creating my first successful link within a post) (It works, it works!)

I've got a few more posts to go, perhaps I'd better celebrate my 50th which will be arriving shortly.

If the day had 25 hours

I've been thinking about this lately, if a day had an extra hour what would I do with it? The most obvious answers seem either to spend it being awake or asleep. The past few days I would definitely have gone for the sleep option.

Although it's not all that pleasant waking up and finding your eyes are stuck together. The doctor gave me drops for my eyes (which there was no way I was gonna be able to put them in for myself, but HP and my Mum have been ever so kind and helping!) and they are getting better. I need to keep up with the drops for a while yet till they're totally clear and then a bit longer.

Anyway, back to the extra hour. I'm not talking about just a one off, like in the Autumn when we get our hour back again. I usually seem to end up being awake for that one and then regretting it afterwards. But what if every day was a bit longer? Why stop at one hour, if it was two hours you could be awake for an extra hour and sleep for an extra hour. If it were only one extra hour and you wanted to split it equally then you'd have only half an hour extra for sleeping and being awake. And that's not much, because after all, when you talk about how much sleep you've had you only ever count full hours slept.

After all that I think I'm ready for a nap, but might make do with a shower instead.

conjunctivitis and cracked ribs

I've got conjunctivitis, at least I'm fairly sure that's what it is, I'm going to the doctor at 4pm to confirm it and hopefully get something to treat it with. I don't have cracked ribs though, that's the boy that I work with at school. Let me explain.

At playtime he fell from the climbing frame and landed on his left side. Because he is French it was a little tricky for us to work out exactly was hurt, but luckily we have two fairly fluent French speakers who were able to come and help (I can generally understand more than I can actually say, and we get on ok till things go wrong and he starts saying more technical stuff and speaking more quickly). To cut a long story short, he was complaining of pain when he spoke and when he walked, and said it felt like the bones were rubbing (sorry to any screamish people reading this). He loves school and although he was in pain we persuaded him it might be as well for him to go home as the afternoon lessons were going to be PE and then clearing up the classroom and moving things round - neither of which he would be able to do very easily. So we rang his parents and his dad came and picked him up. So we don't actually know if he has cracked a rib or not, but they will take him to be checked out by a doctor.

After he had gone, the class teacher told me I might as well have the rest of the day off as my eye looked really nasty. After she had said that we actually discovered that anyone with conjunctivitis shouldn't really be at school because it's quick highly contagious, so that was double reason for me to come home.

I'm in GC at the moment, but after I see the doctor I'm heading back to London for the weekend. We are going to a barn dance this evening and have lots of other stuff planned for the weekend as well. Including an early morning church prayer meeting tomorrow, followed by a women's prayer breakfast. I'll write more about all that later in the weekend (peut-être).

wasp update and other thoughts

I meant to say in my wasp post that the bump was Imogen falling off her chair, but that there hopefully isn't any lasting damage, either to her or the chair.

I love being back in London. It's just so different to the village (GC) where I live in the rest of the time.
London is loud (we live just off a main road).
GC is really quiet (if one car comes up our road in the night it's a lot).

London is bright, even in the night.
GC is pitch black when you wake up in the night and try to feel your way to the bathroom.

London is where my family is.
GC is where Imogen is (not that that's a bad thing, but just different)

Oh, our house in GC has been really hot recently. I reckon all that heat that seemed to disappear for the last few months has finally decided to re-emerge from below the floor boards, and heat up the house. We've turned the heating right off and still it seems to be hot. I'm reluctant to open my window at night at the moment after the wasp incident, so I'm not quite sure what we'll do next. Certain parts of the house remain cool so hopefully this doesn't forecast a horrendous summer with a boiling house, but time will tell.

Is it just me, or are cliches more readily available when you're writing a blog post than at other times. (Blame my trail of thought on recently reading the Thursday Next seris by Jasper Fforde, see Bekki's blog for more stuff about him. The books are a bit odd, but fantastic even when reading them for the fifth or so time).

Right, enough random thoughts for this post. I may be back later with some more :-)

and all that jazz

I'm at home in London for the evening. I came to meet HP's boyfriend who is staying for a few days. I'm not sure he quite knows what to make of HP and me when we get together. Somehow all my silliness is unleashed, and we set each other off into giggles! He seems alright though, and he needs to know what he's letting himself in for by associating with this family :-)

I sometimes wonder who is the real me. I'm so different in every situation that I'm in. Whether it's at school, at home with my family, in my house with Imogen (that's my housemate, I got tired of referring to her as my housemate, and thought it was time she had a name!), or when I'm on my own. I suppose most people probably feel similar in that everyone recats to different situations in their life in different ways. If I do ever get married I would want it to be to someone that I can be silly and serious with. That may seem obvious, but I'm sure there is a side of me that normally only my family might see.

The title of this blog refers to my 'having a song for everything'. Particularly when I'm with HP and Bekki any word in conversation can spark me off to sing a song either with that word in, or that the word reminds me of. It's great fun, especially like when we take a word and try to come up with as many songs as we can with that word in. We're quite a singy family. When we were younger and went on long journeys (like to visit Grandparents) we would play games like the song alphabet game, where you think of a song beginning with each letter of the alphabet.

wasps

We've had another wasp situation in our study the last couple of days. My housemate was on the phone in there late Sunday evening and I was in bed when I heard a loud scream, a bump and a slammed door. It transpired that a huge wasp had suddenly flown out and scared her.
And before anyone starts commenting on 'girls and how they're wimps' I'll jump ahead to say that when I looked at it I saw that it was huge.

We couldn't really do anything about it at the time - I was too sleepy and she was too hyped and stressed out about it. So Monday evening when we got home from work we asked our neighbour (the one with a gun that shot the rat) to come and help us. Basically neither of us is keen on wasps and we knew that if we tried to go in (we'd had the door shut) it would take us forever. The problem was that it wasn't anywhere to be found. So we had to do what we needed to in the room as quickly as we could and then shut the door and leave it.

This morning my housemate had to come in here to get some papers to take to school (she's a teacher) and the wasp was sitting on the pile! She went to ask our neighbour to come and help us, and his wife told us he'd be over when he was out of the bath (this was 8 in the morning, so fair enough!). In due time he came over and we waited outside while he did it - we heard a few thwacks and then it was done. Hurrah!

Hopefully that will be the end of the wasps (although he did have to rescue us from two queen wasps on one day back in October). Oh, and he said this one was a queen wasp as well. He's offered to come back and fill in several holes in the airing cupboard for us, which might be the way that they are getting in.

this is post number 38

I've not been doing well with writing on here lately. I seem to have time to catch up on a few favourite blogs, but never to write on my own. I'm off to work in about 5 minutes, so this may have terrible typos becasue I don't have enough time to read back through what I've written.

It's really wet here - rain, rather than any plumbing accidents, but still a bit dark and miserable looking. Hopefully the kids at school will get a chance to have a break outside rather than having 'wet play' and being in under our feet and getting all hyper.

Gotta go. More soon I hope. Oh, I've having a 'performance management meeting' with the headteacher today. Which sounds scary, but it's really jsut a chat with the head to see how things are going (or so I get the impression that's what it will be, and what I'm hoping it will be..)

I was here, now I'm gone

I so meant to take advantage of being back with the braodband, but somehow time slipped away, and now I'm off back up the M11. It's been a lovely weekend, babysitting, being silly with my sisters, church all together, and the chance to cuddle a couple of beautiful babies. One of them was a tiny 6 day old girl, and the other a 6(+?) month old boy (can't remember how old exactly).

And now I must be on my way so that I get back before I fall asleep!

Oh, and I really will try harder at blogging over the next couple of weeks.

defenestration

is a word that I just learnt. It means 'act of ejecting through a window'. So obviously a word that you'd need every day! We were doing the crossword, and that was a clue. My little sister and I hadn't got a clue, but everyone else in the house seemed to know.

BTW I'm at home in London - HP was back from uni this weekend and Bekki came down yesterday as well, so we've had fun being all the family together.

today

I had a bit of a lie-in.
I dusted and tidied my bedroom - doing lots of filing I've been meaning to do for ages.
I hoovered the whole house (although I didn't do the dining room, so that's not strictly the whole house, but it didn't need doing because it doesn't get used so much as the rest of the house because we've been eating in the other room lately)
We are having homemade pizza for tea. Yummy :-)

cough still here

I spoke to my mum on the phone yesterday and one of the things I told her was that I had a cough. A bit later in the conversation I coughed and that prompted her to say "yes, you have got a nasty cough". It makes me smile when I hear that. It doesn't make the cough better, but it's one of those mummy phrases that I hear once in a while, and it shows that she loves me.

Talking, in a way, about noises (well, a cough is a noise) does anyone else have noises or sounds that you really like? For example, the sound of metal scissors cutting fabric on a wooden table definitely reminds me of when I was younger, listening to my mum making things, like clothes for us. I think I come from quite a creative family, as anyone who has read my sister's blogs or seen our living room wall will realise(explanation of that to follow at some point). I love cooking, even if it's just making the dinner day in day out (I tend to do the cooking in our house and my housemate washes up!).

Hmmm, the last paragragh seemed to have evolved from one thought to another totally different. Too tired to go back and sort it out. (yes, it's only 9.30 in the morning, but I haven't had breakfast yet, so I'm not properly awake). Please let me know if you have any favourite sounds.

cough cough

is the sound of our house at the moment. I still can't seem to shake off my cough, and my housemate is poorly and has a nasty cough. She's just gone off to bed, which is a place that I would love to be right now. I've just a couple of things to do before I do though, and I really wanted to get a post on my blog before people started thinking I was dead or something.
Not that many people do seem to read my blog. Right, that's a challenge. Who are you? And why haven't you recommended my blog to others (Ok, so Bekki and Kathleen have both made links to my blog, so they are forgiven). HP make your uni friends read it or something. Mummy, you haven't commented for ages, are you not reading*?Anyone else, it's lovely to have you reading about the generally mundane moments of my life.

* I do realise that if she's not reading then she can't comment, but she should be reading.

evening all

We've had a fairly busy day today - Doing lots of things like tidying, dusting, hoovering, washing (both clothes and people - I had a bath!) I'm feeling quite tired now, but my housemate is playing the keyboard, practising for tomorrow because she is playing at church, and then we've got to to finish cleaning the kitchen and mop the floor.

I can never remember which practice\practise is which. Does anyone have any useful suggestions?

I love supermarket shopping

To some people it may sound strange, but I love to go to the supermarket. Whether it's with my mum when I'm at home, or our regular trip on a Friday when my housemate and I tend to go a bit mad because it's finally the end of the week. When I say mad, it's not that we spend a lot, it's more just having fun, singing silly songs and generally not behaving like the sensible adults that we've been having to be all week. In fact, I don't even have to buy all that much, it's somehow just the excitement of going. I can't put my finger on the precise reason, I just love it.

One of the things I'm going to buying a lot in the next few weeks is tissues. Yes the hayfever season has officially begun. This I know because I have started sneezing just about all of the time. Some people, like my sister Bekki, have the luck to only be affected by one type of pollen, but for me it's all of them. And dust, and animal hair, and dust mites, and about a million other things. Oh well, I guess I'll just keep taking the tablets...

back to broadband

ok, ok, so I said I was going back to my other home, and I did for the a whole 36 hours or something, but I came back to London this afternoon. But for a good reason, and in fact I'm totally shattered now. Bed is calling, but I'm just making the most of the boradband before I go again.

Right, let me explain. As I said, our friend G is back in hospital, and J, his wife,has been feeling poorly, so as of yesterday morning they came over to my parents house to stay for a while (they being J and her 4 lovely kids). Today J was visiting G because he was seeing a consultant, and because my mum works afternoons she couldn't look after the kids (J home schools, so it was all of them that needed to be looked after). So J took them to a friends for the morning, and I drove back down the M11 after work (I was only working till 1 today) and went and picked them up and brought them back to my parents house. And looked after them all afternoon, including helping A to make a birthday cake (she is 8 today), and sorting out a few arguments and tired children (C didn't have a nap this afternoon which she usually does, so she was getting a bit cranky and tearful by the end of it.).

This evening we had a lovely birthday tea, and I've just been helping J to put the kids to bed and tidy up the tea stuff. It may not sound like a lot, but 4 kids can be quite a handful. They're fantastic and all know me really well and listen to what I tell them to do, but still.... I'm quite glad that they're all just about past the nappy stage (well, C is 90% potty trained now), although have got quite a dab hand at doing it having spent lots of time with them, especially since the youngest two were born. I don't think a lot of people my age would have a clue about looking after small children, but I'm really thankful to J&G who've given me lots of experience practising on their kids :-)

debs loves peas

I realised while eating my lunch that is most remiss of me to have not mentioned my love of peas before now. We had peas for lunch, and I love them. They are green and round and roll (unlike sweetcorn, which some might classify in the same category, which do not roll and are clearly of a lower standard).

I don't really remember when I started liking peas. I've always been the one out of the three of us (my 2 sisters and I) most likely to eat vegetables, and love tucking into things like roast root vegetables (I'll tell you about them sometime), but somehow peas are the best.
In my first year at university we had fridges in our hall or residence, but no freezers, and one day I decided I really wanted to eat peas. Now I don't know about you, but the smallest bags of frozen peas that I can ever find (the tinned ones just don't cut it) are 250 gram bags. I got one of them, and without a freezer they were gonna go soft quite quickly, so for two days running what I had for dinner was a big bowl of peas. It must have also been sometime during that year that I got a postcard that I stuck up on my door. It was circular, and had a big pea in the middle, and said 'pea brain'. Some people might have been insulted by this comment, but I decided it expressed to people how fond of peas I was, rather than how thick I was.

The last meal I ever had in my college dinner hall was also the time that my own personal tongue-twister was invented. It's very simple, just three words - debs loves peas, but you just try saying it quickly several times in a row and you'll understand. I personally thank Bex for helping it to come into existence. Bex could also tell you of some other interesting moments when it comes to me and food, but I won't go into them right now...
I would probably have to say that peas are definitely one of my favourite savoury food. Please comment and tell me what your favourite foods are :-)

goodbye to broadband

Well this afternoon I'm finally heading back to my other home. I came home to get better when I was feeling rough, and ended up saying with my parents for almost a month. It's been lovely being home, but I'll be glad to see people in Cambridge again. I decided to go to church here in London with my parents, and drive home this afternoon. And in the time between getting home from church and lunch being ready I'd make the most of our broadband conection to post on my blog and catch up with a few favourites. My other home only has dialup internet access, so my posts may not be quite as frequent as in the last couple of weeks.

I love the church we go to here in London. We meet in Cineworld cinema in Enfield, and it's fantastic to be so visible to people going to the cinema. We started off in one of the smalled screens, but as people have been added to our church we've been moving around a bit. This mornnig we were in screen 8 which is one of the really big screens. We by no means fill screen 8, but it's great to see the potential that the room has! This morning Adrian (http://www.adrian.warnock.info/) (I must find out how to make fancy links within a post) was preaching. If I had more time I'd write all about it, but check out his blog for more.

I need to start packing and hunting round my hosue for all my belongings, since having been home for so long things are all over the place.