Time To Be Wonder Woman (Again)

 OK, I have just looked around me and seen the following state of slovenly mess.

Be quietly appalled:

Look, more activity-avoidance blogging. And ice cream eating.

And generally living like a pig.

Rough pile of paperwork on the left is the Important Stuff I Should Get Done.

Such as, get school uniform sorted, cancel a magazine subscription, get the unused Tesco tokens exchanged for a day out AT A WELL KNOWN CHOCOLATE FACTORY, book the 12 year old in for the filling the dentist told us a fortnight ago he needed, plus various nonsense to do with utility people, pension schemes, etc....

(I'd be lying if I was ever to put on my CV that I'm good at prioritising)

The pile on the right is a diagram to work out, in my mathmatically-dyslexic way, how many floor tiles I need for the dining room/kitchen, a map of Brighton (the boyfriend was trying to show me the Wrong Way To His Hotel he once took when Very, Very Drunk), a fan letter from Domino's Pizza addressed to  "Valued Customer" (aka Slutty And Undomesticated), more random bits of paper loosely relating to the first pile, and a load of floor tiles.

To the right of the laptop is some random carrier bag that seems to always be in my handbag - apart from today - and a London A-Z. Oh, and the EXTRA SUNBLOCK I had to buy last week when I forgot to put it on everyone one day. This stuff's brill - Solait, factor 50, it rolls on green and smells like melon. Can't get better than that...

The wooden cd box at the back of the table is from an idea I had while watching Cars 2 yesterday - I'm going to put it on the wall and put my tacky 60s Blackpool metal ashtrays and some vintage seaside postcards in it. I tend to get idle ideas like that while watching colourful films... you know how the mind just drifts.

These are my excuses for The Mess:

 I've made a start on the flooring - it will be slate-effect vinyl all the way through the dining room into the kitchen. You can see the ancient, chipped, mish-mash of the 2 floorings I'm replacing. More upheaval, and more things in the wrong place for a while.

The printer is dumped on the table as I was copying stuff for the school bus pass malarkey. The ink was too low to do more than 2 sheets. So,off  to the old-school photocopying shop I went. And then came back with ink and another fan for this humid-beyond-living-memory weather.... assembled the fan, decided we all needed late afternoon ice cream... browsed some blogs, and realised that I was going to have to get a move on to get us down to Kent to see my dad tomorrow. No packing done yet! A bit of Wonder Woman magic needed here....

Bushed!

Hope that's not a phrase that nowadays has any unsavoury connotations - back in the day it meant Pretty Bl**dy Tired. Which is what I am. Lead Balloon coming up, then I can't wait to get some sleep.

This time last night the 13 year old proved to me that he did indeed have something wrong with his stomach. Luckily he had the presence of mind to get a bucket in time. Upchuck number 2 followed at 6.30 this morning - again, bucket, but bleach, cold flannels, soothing manner and all manner of mum-heavy doings all the same.

Which seemed an excellent morning to have decided to defrost the fridge. Lollies were to blame. The fridge was fine, but the attached freezer had at some point earlier in the Summer gone into overdrive when Someone Unknown (aka the 12 year old) left the freezer door Not Quite Shut after another lolly raid. It had been tolerable until having to remove the middle drawer, the top drawer already jammed shut in permafrost, and only being able to sling a few things into the bottom tray. Seemed a bit of a waste having a freezer when it got to that.... started at 9, fully expecting to be done and up to tesco by 2 to restock.

Nope. 9 hours later, large obstinate icebergs refusing to melt on command, the water that was melting out refusing to play ball by landing in the desired location of washing up bowl, several lakes beneath both appliance and sideboard, multiple changes of sodden newspaper, nearly all the backlog of guardian's used up, and nearly the worst thing of all - black finger and foot prints all over the shop from the defrost massacre.
I'd probably left it a bit too long before getting round to it.

The only casualty seems to have been the lightbulb. Its not quite a fridge experience if that little light doesn't go on - especially at Nigella-fridge-raiding-times. But having spent the first hour post-switch-on thinking I'd broken the fridge yet oddly not the freezer, and mentally spending a few 00's on a replacement - ooh, could be smaller, what colour...but definitely self-defrosting - it is nonetheless good to have the silver ex-display model from Barkers of High St Kensington, bought 12 years ago with naughty mortgage shares as the closest I could afford to a Smeg, back with us again.

Happily, the 13 year old is doing a good impression of being recovered.

Sand(paper), Bucket And Trowel

I'm being super-duper focussed at the moment (can't exactly say this week in case I jinx myself) spending some hard-core time fixing up the house. The house that is perpetually unfinished. Well, the annual long summer holiday has now started and I have 2 AND A HALF MONTHS OFF WORK!! Am I in the right job or what! Obviously the pay for only working 9.5 months a year is a bit of a drawback, but I prefer the time over the cash... Have been working my way round the kitchen since yesterday - tacking an extension lead along one wall (for the dishwasher; having paid an electrician 2 years ago to put in sockets, only to decide to change the layout el cheapo-style), putting up a rail for the tea-towel & oven gloves, and this morning I've sanded the long wall above the sideboard and cooker so I can finally finish painting that wall. Dull stuff, but its high-time it got done. Then all the vintagey bits will come out of storage and go back on the shelves to get greasy and dusty  to look magnificent again ;)

Ah well, tea-break in the garden over - better fix another shelf, wipe the dust off myself and go buy the paint. Far too messy in there to cook tonight - it'll be 2-for-1 pizza delivery!

Chicago Town Cheating Tuesday...

...so tonight we did not resort to dinner-by-delivery; but it was still pizza. not at all marvellous, but quick and hassle-free. coming soon - a chart depicting my consumption of good pizzas and those which are, erm, not at all marvellous...

What's making my life shit at the moment:
1. Back ache
2. Work being too busy
3. Zilch in way of domestic excitement
4. Zilch in way of non-domestic excitement
5. Having a kid who refuses to go to school - yes, that would be the emo
6. Having to deal with the authorities re KWRTGTS
7. Getting zero moral support
8. Having a dark, unfinished, house
9. Dark, unfinished house technically still half-belonging to ex
10. Having crap trousers instead of lovely sleek ones

What makes life a teensier bit better:
1. Buying (my own!!!) flowers on the way home
2. Having healthy(ish) kids
2. Having a roof over our heads
3. Not living somewhere where there are floods, mudslides or red toxic sludge
4. joebrowns.co.uk catalogue in new magazine - need a clothes splurge
5. The imminent rescue of the Chilean miners
6. Other peoples' blogs!

Paint, Pizza and Mr Pringle-Head

Tonight at 6.30 we were clutching lovely warm pizza boxes in readiness for some more Claudia-ness. A food-delivery-necessity situation had occurred -  another Slutty Tuesday. Couldn't cook, even though I obviously, desperately, really did want to, as there was not an inch of space on the worktops.

Today's mini post-work siesta, this time right at the tail end of 60 Minute Makeover, left me with option a) snooze some more, or b) Get On With Something. So, resuming the kitchen painting I'd started on Sunday it was. This time I was winging it - still in work clothes. The fact the trousers I wore today are my favourite 5 years old ones, with my charity-shop biba-esque swirly print top, was treading dangerously. But they, and I, escaped unsplattered and unscathed.

Anyhow, there we were, non-functioning kitchen, oven hidden under newspaper, worktops covered in all the 60's coffeepots and jugs I'd moved from the tops of the cupboards. So, v-e-r-y, v-e-r-y dusty...

And then pizza. The Pringle-quiffed one was not on there tonight - obviously only available on Mondays. There were glimpses of eyebrows, and did you see those white shoes - the kind to wear to dance round your handbag? And... at last... a hint of hair-misbehaviour, when there was a strand-lipstick collision situation.

And now we really must go and google Felicity Kendal for some pre-botox'n'lift pics. Or is that really how good that liquid yoghurt is?

Slutty Tuesday

Another week when it would seem I only have a kitchen because it came with the house. Or it exists as somewhere to put the dirty pots and pans from the, erm, nights before...

Enter me, into full-blown post-school toast massacre. We have acquired an extra 11 year old. The one who comes from the home that my 11 year old says smells of "clean". The surplus boy has no socks on. Trampolining - in the wet garden. Again. Normally I lend dry socks for the journey home, but feel disinclined in this instance as our sock drawer remains unreplenished.

Later, I am still ignoring the kitchen, and am practising activity deference so I don't have to work out what to cook. I am pretending to watch the Simpsons. Eventually Marge's voice annoys the hell out of me, so have to heave myself off the sofa.

Get online and check bank account - still in double figures. And its Tuesday. Domino's do two-for-one on Tuesdays. Slutty Tuesdays. For mums who (sometimes) only have kitchens because they came with the house.