Another Fine Use Of Vintage...

....too quick for me to grab the camera, Wilbur had just been sitting on these old imperial scales. I popped him back on, out of curiosity: he weighs 2 pounds. Don't ask me what that is in funny kg language... I can't/won't do metric, but its the same as a large bag of sugar;)

The gerbera plant next to the scales is Being Very Good and has 2 bee-yoo-ti-ful candy pink flahs now. Strange that, as when I bought it 6 or so weeks ago the flowers were cream'n'purple, the way passion fruit flowers are.  When I get my act together I'll put it in a bigger pot... who knows how big it could get or how many flahs we might get...?

In the Rest Of My Life, chaos reigns; the 14 year old has sort-of dropped out again, after 3 clashes with authority at school, each one sensationally mismanaged.... With that, and the long days off I have now that I'm not at the World of Work til after the summer holidays, I'm regularly dipping into The Bad Place that is inertia far too frequently. I've acquired more hauls of vintage frockery, which remain in bags until I can be arsed to to take photos.... I think I need a Plan Of Action...

***************

And now for the bit where I'm Not A Film Blogger But.... some lovely films I've seen recently:

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958) - when Liz Taylor died I realised to my shame I'd never seen any of her films, like Butterfield 8, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Giant... This is the one with the iconic still of Liz wearing that white slip, great portrayal of family dynamics, especially if you're a daughter-in law...

A Very Long Engagement (2004, Audrey Tautou) - caught this accidentally late the other night and stayed up til stupid o'clock watching it as it was so lovely...

The Graduate (1967) - one I'd somehow never seen, more screamingly funny than I'd expected, and the frocks! The excellent hair! The chairs! The cigarettes! See it if you haven't... And obviously it has a dark undertow of tight morals, jealousies, and why getting married just because you're pregnant, like they had to do back In Them Times was So Wrong...

Moonrise Kingdom (2012, Wes Anderson) - lurved this, very very sweet and beautifully shot. Reminded me of Tim Burton's Big Fish...

Cosmopolis (2012) - I'll say nothing as this is new so don't want to risk a spoiler..... go see it and make your own minds up about this. Will it become seminal? Who can tell...

Happy New Year!

Feeling ridiculously good - happy, lucky, contented good, not hyper, stimulant-fuelled good - this New Year's Eve. No particular reason - it's just feeling more important this year than any other so far to feel lucky that my life's in a good place, with a prickling feeling about those whose life isn't.

We're chez nous tonight, as usual, having a blast of popcorn, great music, probably some Jools Holland, some sparklers, and definitely the London fireworks on tv at midnight. And a splendidly undisturbed lie-in in the morning. 6 Music's been on all afternoon - bah humbug to whichever government, tory or labour, had the daft idea to try to axe it.

To everyone who has put up with my random thoughts this year, inspired me, made me laugh, made me cry - a massive thank you, and I hope next year will be everything it should be, and more.*

Much love xx



* of course, we will ignore the 3 weeks or whatever length of boredom that shall be the olympics ;)

Resolutions 2012

1. Must. Not. Have. Any. More. Pretzels. In. The. House. Ever...
2. Must stop buying vintage Quality Street tins. Its getting silly now...
3. Ditto posters. Even ones that are not massive. I do not have enough walls.
4. Must remember that cleaning CAN be relaxing, de-stressing and CAN involve the whole family.
5. Maybe I should start delegating the cooking too, for the same reasons.
6. Will read more books again, even though magazines are easy visual eye candy.*
7. Will sort my books out so they are grouped properly, instead of bunging new ones into random available spaces.

*Have started John Steinbeck and Robert Capa's 1947 "Russian Journal". Saw some fuss in the press about schools allegedly copping out by setting Steinbeck's mere 6-chapter "Of Mice And Men" to year 10 kids. Michael Gove, Minister for Something To Do With Making Children Cleverer, thinks children should read 50 books a year. That's one a week. Maybe he means short-ish books. I'm not tying either of my kids to chairs to make them "achieve" a novel a week...

A Post With A Ridiculous Amount Of Labels

So, yes, a few random things, that are really just the tip of the iceberg of life this week.

Actually, who knows - its been a week when I dreamt I worked with the mother of 3 men (which, in my dream, made them brothers?? Was I getting confused with the Bee Gees???? Was this anything to do with Lulu getting voted off Strictly?) in Wire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_(band). The mother had a  hairdo like Cousin Isobel out of Downton Abbey, but in a more Debbie Harry way.

  
.... Lulu being Mrs Gibb



 Cousin Isobel. Not Lulu. Nor Debbie Harry

**********************************

Among the recession-inspired and genuine 40's graphics around at the moment, I like this poster, on ebay:

******************************

Watched Rolf "National Treasure" Harris being interviewed by Piers Morgan* at the weekend  and thought  when he was young he was the spit of someone around at the moment. Of course, I've now forgotten who that someone was.... anyone see any resemblance???

*I'd love to write the name that Private Eye call him but you might be eating...

********************************

Yesterday I accidentally invented a new method of Cracking The Admin Laziness Problem. Formerly known as the Cupboard of Doom, or Ignore It Until It Ceases To Be Relevant. Yesterday our internet was down... after 15 minutes of headless chicken behaviour (from me, the kids were fine about it) where I didn't really know What To Do Instead Of Wasting Time Online Stalking Caitlin Moran And Grace Dent On Twitter, I had a brainwave. While the sheets were in the washing machine, I blitzed my stagnant pile of rubbish tossed into a wooden wine box on the shelf my intray. 45 minutes, once a week - its the way forward.

Tolerance...

... managing marvellously to have some for Neighbor Next Door With The Tidy Yard this morning. Yes, the missing "u" in the word, and the tidy yard. Whose fence post I fixed.

This morning all hell was breaking out the other side of the party wall. Lost-the-plot dad screaming at their little boy, boy screaming back.... at first I cranked up the 6Music volume. Then I got a glass to the wall - to check out what exactly was going on. Seems they were trying to get a contact lens in, for his lazy eye. He's 4, for chrissakes, and was getting totally distraught. And the dad was getting horrible.... I nearly went round there. And then I thought, ah, they wouldn't do this if they didn't have to. And they must hear a fair bit from our side when the 14 year old is on one. It all died down soon enough. And I would have felt awful wading in at their doorstep. And all sorts of awkwardness.

And now the tw*t is HAMMERING - aaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh. When I've got the day off, with a silly stomach, with no sleep last night. And thought I could have a snooze now the 12 year old's gone to school...


*breathe*. Its all about the tolerance. In Gok voice.

Small Plans...

... oh I really shouldn't let myself post sometimes; especially not when I'm meant to be getting ready for traipsing off to the World of Work. Must remember; hang out lots of washing in the mornings instead of writing self-pitying drivel!

Anyhows, I'm putting plans to move to the seaside on the back-burner for now for reasons of (im)practicality, but instead looking at cutting down the way money trickles through my fingers so that we can go on far more seaside adventures/travel/blah blah blah. Top idea so far though is to make more money... so I've been faffing about on ebay and typing in random objects that I happen to own and happily finding out people are paying ££ for the same things. A gas heater for VW vans being one of them - a very random car boot treasure from eons ago, purely because it was turquoise and silver, for instance. So later on today, with the glorious sun still out (we hope) photos will be taken and Some Proper Ebaying will get done.

I Need A Change...

... of life. Don't know if this is a mid-life crisis (yeah, if I was a bloke I'd buy a motorbike but that won't cut it for me) but I'm tired of my life. Tired as in fed up with it, and the other evening I couldn't even think of any place I could think of being. Place as in "the last time life was fun"... maybe I should just watch Vicar of Dibley, join a whist drive and order some plant catalogues. Or maybe I should pull my socks up and find some way of getting my life back again. Right now, I would love to move to Scarborough. A house high up on the bay, with amazing daytime and night time views. They've even got an M&S if I fancied posh-people watching in the food aisles... And anyway, I've got one elderly parent in Kent, one in Northamptonshire, and some inlaws on the south coast. None of them would be thrilled with me and the kids being any further north... South coast is sort of out of the price range... and there is the slight issue of schooling-interruption/uprooting of the 12 year old, and the immense network of bureaucracy concerning the 14 year old. I think I need to Make Some Plans.

Thank You...

... to you lovely people, for the really sweet comments on my last post.

Things are heading in the right direction again; the boy has made it into his new school 5 days out of the past 12. Albeit random days, with some digging in of teenage heels along the way. I trotted off for a fabulous head massage at the hairdressers earlier this week, found a jacket and two more cardigans in the charity shops, and have just generally rediscovered life without these silly panic attacks.

Meanwhile, under my job description of Being A Proper Parent And Giving Tesco All My Disposable Income, the new series of Big Brother has been banished from the house on school nights, on the grounds of general tabloidy dodgy morals, as well as being on Far Too Late and so forth. But we have just had a peep at tonight's eviction show and realised there seems to be some confusion*:

                                                                                                                                                                                   

                     Sean from Corrie

  

                Brian Dowling

*or maybe I should have gone to Specsavers.

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.

Mojo Malaise

I've had nowt to write about all week and am feeling a bit dulled. Today there's the usual pile of impossible domestic stuff needing to be done - dirty saucepans, marvellous meals, a hefty dose of outdoorsy exercise, cracking the algebra that the 12 year old's teacher is too useless to teach.... Despite waking up at 6.45 feeling wide awake I opted to snooze instead. Its either time to start drinking or to get a dog... Which way does va va voom lie?

2 cups of tea later Debbie Harry was on desert island discs. I'm no good with radios - short of nail-varnishing marks on the dial next to stations I could no more find radio 4 than I could comprehend latin. So it was weird having the programme through the tv - a bit like the olden days when families sat reverentially around the cumbersome wireless set. See, even there I have nothing to write about, other than it was just cool to listen to her voice.

Grasping for a positive spin to put on the week:
- I've put up a shelf in the kitchen, and its actually straight, unlike last time when a big lump of white tak had to be employed to level it up at one end. For the first time since the kitchen refit  I won't be moving all the saucepans first before being able to use the cooker.
- I sanded and painted the hideous wall under the kitchen window.
- I did a tesco online order, and got all the right things, with none of the usual surprises like 12 packets of tomatoes.
- We finally got the lump of plastic known as the Wii working - the one posted to the boys by their dad, hitherto regarded as Not Working and reeking of fags. The Wii that is, though an apt description of him too.

And what a pile of child-scaring cobblers all that rapture stuff was. Its a bit like a Dr Who episode - they sort of know its made-up but like to be a bit scared at the same time. A friend just summed it up with "oh well, I'll have to do the washing up after all". But there again, the prediction was for 5 months of fire and that big volcano in Iceland's just gone up again...

Alice, Don't Give It Away

Cracking on with the how-disgusted-am-I-at-my-own-laziness angle, I cleared yet another heap of unhomed rubbish off the dining table this evening. The kids were getting confused about being expected to eat there, and seeing as our lifestyle has evidently instilled social deviancy in the one who is no longer going to school, the function of the dining table seems fairly pivotal in lessening the slide into ruin.

There wasn't anything greatly exciting lurking there; 2 weekend's worth of papers, and the latest Telegraph cuttings that my mum sends, after she's cryptically highlighted sections in yellow. This batch were about Brighton, doing up old tat, and the over-prescription of ritalin. There was also last term's unread school newsletter, 3 old brass doorknobs that might get turned into a bag-hanging thing, picture frames left there the last time I thought about framing some fabric, and some broken necklaces that I'll fix if I could find those jewellery pliers.

Getting more unfinished things done, I will return to the Boots perfume counter sometime this week, to sniff the Vivienne Westwood violetty, musky, black rose one. Don't fancy the idea of telling people it's called Naughty Alice though.


At the World of Work I did a grand job of putting my foot down about words being written like what they is spoke. The lady who used to announce Watch With Mother would be spitting teeth if she knew what it's all come to these days, so I hope I'm making her proud...

Prawn In My Side

Well, I've been out twice this weekend. Both times daytime, so no soirees of pickled octopus or owt like that. And, to be frank, the exertion has left me just wanting to lie down and eat cakes in the 7 or so hours left before it will become officially respectable timewise to do more lying down. The cakes may not be a terribly good idea, as they will probably lead to more dreams of misbehaving hamsters and wild and frantic attempts not to be late for work.

Yesterday's experience of exposure to the elements was urban and shiny, hanging out in bijou shoe shops and glorified treasure troves. And man it was blustery gustery, havoc-playing and affirming the need to retouch my roots. We did some art too - although that was a late dash through the gallery - but a dash was enough to see the paltry 6 pieces that comprised the exhibition.

Today was haircut for the 11 year old and running into an acquaintance, plus buying some instant lunch in the form of prawn salads and sandwiches. I know, lazy, lazy. All part of my new rule about only cooking once a day at weekends. The acquaintance tried to gloat about the wonderful pudding her son had made, so I threw back a glowing review of an equally successful cake my 2 had whipped up. I do not like parental one-up-womanship, so I think we left it at 1:1.

Someone asked yesterday why other people blog. The nearest answer I could agree with was its what you do when your facebook statuses start getting over-wieldy. Mine is just letting out the stuff that goes through my brain at random points*. So far it is acting as an appalling record of how little I really do, seeing as most of my posts are about a)avoiding other activities and b)reporting how much activity I have managed to avoid.

This is not good, or life-affirming, or productive. A random point may well be the duration of Take Me Out, aka an over-egged version of Blind Date. Cilla's shoulderpads have been updated into Paddy McGuinness' sharply-angled lapels which emphasise the spock-like nature of his ears. And each week, as all but 5 lights get turned off, we nearly get rid of the lovely, short, but very desperate, welsh girl. But not quite.

Bag of Pixies

Feel very lucky today - have had double-day-off time this week, so all very chilled and trying to be focussed. On sorting my life out a bit more. Bigger. Better. Faster. Go....

Of course, I had to have a few Pixies tracks to start today off, but am playing Frank Black to get more of his vocals, while figuring out a faster way to sell my vintage stuff. I am hopelessly undisciplined at listing stuff, the photos-in-a-good-light and the description malarkey, but its easy-peasy really. But imagine how brilliant it would be to have an app like in the tesco advert, but sort of in reverse. You scan your phone over a mid-century coffeepot, and 3 seconds later, its on eBay, beautifully photographed, accurately described.... Oh, please someone, invent it now.

Have been in to town for coffee and cake and was intending to try out some perfumes, but waylaid by the sale rail of acrylic goodies elsewhere I felt too bag ladyish and lost my nerve. Not sure what scent a bag lady should wear, but the one squirt of O' de Lancome I sneaked before backing out of Boots is not quite it.

Doolittle. Again

Now that we are in February we'll have a bit of colour here. These are the tulips from last week.  

This week's flowers are as kitsch-as-hell. Coasters, in perfect nick. They smell just like they've been at the back of someone's sideboard for 50 years....

I think the parenting skills inspection went well. If that's how you can describe a psychologist clutching at straws. I'd hidden all the Tizer leftover from Christmas, and the empty pot noodle cartons anyway. They basically think he'll go back into a school somewhere, but not the current one, in his own sweet time. So, no problem there then. Apparently.

Last night's online grocery shop was a fail, as I was drawn instead to checking out a blog of old film and tv stills. This meant The Supermarket. Again. So, I put the blinkers on, got myself banned from the jewellery aisle, and managed a well-disciplined haul. Although the super-sized, stubby 720g jar of Branston was chosen for vase-potential so a swift decanting will need to be actioned.

Swift and action are words that are going to have to enter my vocabulary, replacing sofa-time and laissez-faire. Slapdash and slack are not getting me anywhere fast. In fact, I would like my life to be wireless, streamlined, less messy. But in the meantime I can't stop playing the Pixies....

...and uploading the odd photo of glorious buildings.



Sardines?

Monday. My head's all over the place, and my legs don't feel connected to the rest of me anymore. A day of too many people, too many different things. Tomorrow my parenting skills (ie lying on the sofa avoiding domestic mundanities, failing to plan menus, random supermarket raids producing more to wear than to eat, and have we mentioned the magazines?) are being put under scrutiny vis a vis why Boy 1 is no longer on the radar of school. Should be interesting....
Meanwhile, I am going to have to face the cold and joyless world that is online grocery ordering. That's usually 45 minutes of looking at miniscule photographic representations of meaningless stuff, and accidentally buying the vegetables by the packet and not individually. Yeah, I really wanted 12 packets of tomatoes that time. In the meantime I have convinced myself that we do actually have enough to concoct dinner tonight... as long as its sardine risotto.

And today's soundtrack is that of the fishtank gurgling, and a pair of 11 year olds demolishing biscuits whilst spying on their friends' mums' facebook. On second thoughts, I'll get that Interpol cd...

Strange Sunday

By jeez, its a strange morning. Just me and The Pixies (the ones with superb bass, not the ones at the end of the garden). The boys are still asleep. Blogland is quiet too. I'm starting to wonder whether I've slipped into some parallel universe during the night, thinking I'm here all alone at 11.06, when in truth nothing of the sort is actually true. Dreaming that I'd been sacked and had to find somewhere to live in Germany and become a nurse, all by Thursday, was a layer of surrealism too far.

A Day In The Life...

Various things over the past few days have brought me to revisit what I am doing with my life, what did I think It was all going to be like, etc. So far this morning I have come up with 3 "certainties" that my teenage self decided would definitely happen. 1. To be an Amnesty member, 2. To trace my Dad's family, and 3. That I would live in a 3-storey house. Ok, its not a stucco'd Eaton Square des res, but 3 storey it is (Ten Storey Love Song jingling on the cerebral jukebox), four if you count the cellar. Which is at odds with how to hoover a multi-staired abode. Currently, infrequently. Oh to invest in the technology where a vacuum hose can be pulled from the wall at various points of convenience. Until then, I'd better get down to Argos for one of those dinky car cleaning gadgets. When I was at primary school and we were all looking forward to being grown-up in The Year 2000, wearing silver lame and knocking back food pills, I wanted tv that would let you watch whatever was on that day but when you wanted to watch it. And now we have... but instead of food pills they gave us Gordon Ramsay. Can't have everything, as they say.

The family history has been a doddle. Found the cad who abandoned my dad, but he hadn't died in the 1930's, he died in 1965 in South Kensington. I took a photo of the building he lived in, and had a drink in his local this summer. We've decided to bury the past and not to tell my Dad that it wasn't how he'd been led to believe.

Amnesty soothes my conscience at living in such a barbaric, mad, mad, world. I email and write and annoy dignitaries, but its a small drop in the ocean. And then blog a bit more about buying new earrings...

The rest of my life is largely like it was when I was 17, but with less cider, 100% control over my finances, and without the bulimia, and the suicide attempts my mum and stepfather were prone to.

Meanwhile, the 11 year old is dancing round the kitchen to the Stone Roses.

A Random Supermarket Haul

Today I was all a little weary-of-life and abstractly bereft, and also with vague intentions of making a lasagne tonight. So, into the supermarket. For an idle browse/buy session, rather than full-on trolley dash. I love multi-purpose shops - you can go in, pretending you're going to get some cheese, and come out with a fistful of new jewellery and a couple of bags of cushions. Failing that, there's always the Aisle of Interesting Things to peruse, should you fancy a stripey picnic rug, some uber-bright garden candles, or even some snazzy packaging on the boxes of tissues. Visuals, dahling, visuals. Sometimes I rein myself in, and time-and-money-manage myself quite well, with a list. Other times, well, only a random splurge will do.

So, today, me and the empty trolley are loitering around the bargaintastic-plastic-jewellery display. Except there's some daft moo intent on restocking the display. Rather than appear rude, I go off for a bit to see if there's any point considering the black jeans. Only for wearing under dresses, in which case own-brand may be acceptable. Then the school ring, something about forms and the educational psychologist visit next week. Multi-task instinct kicking-in as soon as a phone hits my ear, I find 2 pairs, £8 each. Roaming back to the silly moo still cluttering up my view of the bargaintastic-plastic, I quickly extract a dinky little necklace, multi-coloured and totally tootie frootie in texture. Conscious of the deirdre barlow effect setting in between my chin and my collarbone, I am getting up minutes earlier these days in order to ensure that I wear some sort of necklace arrangement to the World of Work.

And, rolling the trolley s-l-o-w-l-y past the candles, and past the cushions, I hesitate fatally at the kitchen gadgetty bit. NO!!!!! to new things for the kitchen, wait until after the refit... but its 3-for-2, and the 11 year old must be encouraged in his newly-developing foodie interest.... some big fat tongs, brushed aluminium, excellent to have hanging up, even better for heaving slices of cake off plates, a zester just-because-I've-never-had-one and I saw some zest-requiring-recipe the other day, and a y-shaped peeler. Because I want to see if the peel is alphabetty-shaped.

Right then, lasagne. Cheese. Milk? No, enough at home, don't need it, fingers crossed. Extra penne, because I have decided to make my trolley haul look sophisticated, plus lasagne sheets. And oh dear. Then I find all these nice, shiny little rectangular silver tins of spices... and coriander in a jar.... surely having some of these will make me want to cook more? And think how lovely a few of these will look on the shelf...  I get 2, not wanting to be too rash.

And some UK-grown pink-and-white-striped tulips. And, as it turns out, the own-brand jeans don't make my bum look big in this. Although the 11 year-old turned his nose up at the idea of me serving up homemade lasagne...

Good Yawning, Whoops, I Mean Good Morning...

Had a big, big, January slump last week from Tuesday til Sunday and pretty much stopped doing anything sparkly. The post-new-year thing hits a lot of people - starting January full of renewed va-va-voom, then just running a bit empty after a while - but this time it was down to literature!

We were too early for the dentist on Tuesday afternoon, so killed time in Waterstones - the 11 year-old found 2 books, and it was 3-for-2. I went for a really thick novel with lots of orange on the cover - "One Day" by David Nicholls. I got stuck into it that evening, only putting it down to sleep and go to work, and finished it Thursday night. Ok, it was chick-lit stuff, by a man, but very thought-provoking and cleverly woven together. So, that's Trashsparkle's first ever, official, book recommendation...

The book was ace, but the not-doing-anything-else wasn't - hence the slump. I was reading blogs but there was nothing happening in my mind, no comments firing up, I had nothing to post about... I think the only thing I managed to write was a shopping list. I hibernated on the sofa all day Saturday, flicking channels. Zilch. Not even the 2 Carry On films... then Sunday I began perking up, and wolfed handfuls of Christmas rum truffles all afternoon.

I came home from work on Monday, and picked up some blackboard paint to retouch the tv unit. Then I painted the inside of the front door. All that sofa time over the weekend had me looking at that door in despair; I'd stripped it in the summer, hoping to get a waxed, walnutty effect, but it just looked like a paint-stripped door. Very unfinished. I don't do gloss - too much like hard work. So that is now fully blackboard-painted. With new dark plastic letterbox draught-excluder-thing, and all fine and dandy.

Yesterday I had a spare hour after work, and stood at the sink wondering why we've lived here for nearly 10 years with our window looking onto a dreary brown fence. Out with the cream masonry paint, and one panel is now revamped. Which means more painting today....but the day is shiny and sunny, so It Will Get Done.

I function better if I do little things all the time, so that little regular achievements are being made... Sofa-Time is no good. Just remind me to remember that!