Erm?

Winter got frightened, apparently. Although the trees continue to do their autumn thing, the weather is very firmly in summer mode.* This means barbecues, evenings in the garden and trips to the pub. Also, the wearing of summer clothes. As a person whose summer T-shirts have just started to fit her again, this is good news. As a person who, just this morning, re-discovered her favourite jeans, this is of little consequence: jeans work in the cold, too. The re-discovery of the massive goth pants, and the nearly-fittingness of them, is just a bonus to be appreciated in a few weeks.

There's not a lot of point to this blog post. I just wanted to look back in a few years and remember the hot October day when I had lunch with an old friend, then went shopping, then went for a drink outside, then wasted the evening on the Internet.

*I would say that it is back in summer mode, but it didn't really try this summer. I suppose I got a few days at Greenbelt, and probably various other assorted days when I was stuck inside churches or the workshop, but this summer has been a letdown. Again.

It may actually be getting better...

My life, that is, as opposed to my writing. That got worse.

Wow. Where did all of that time go? It's very nearly Christmas. Just in case you hadn't noticed. Although chances are that you won't notice this blog post before Christmas.

Well, this year has been an interesting preparation for the big event. I have made pretty much no handmade gifts for people (although I do have one in the pipeline), including truffles. I did make some fudge, but that is just being shared out between people, as opposed to being handed out to specific people as presents. Actually, my gift list seemed much reduced this year, which has been a relief. I am still not quite up to coping with organising my life so that I get things done (possibly due to the excessive number of activities I still have crammed in, and how precious free time has consequently become), and so this whole "being gentle with myself" thing, such as it is, has been necessary.

Having said that, life is generally good. The house and housemates are good, the organ music I have been playing over Christmas has generally been to an acceptable standard (with one good bit), I am spending time with interesting people, and they keep heating the Motherchurch, so when I do practice I can move my fingers. Quite a novelty!

Right now, I have just finished work for the year. I spent all of today relaxing and getting stuff done slowly. It started off with a lie-in, then lunch with immediate family and an uncle or cousin. We then went shopping and I bought the last two strictly necessary presents (although I daresay there are a few non-necessary ones I should really pick up tomorrow, and there is still that one I'm due to make). I then came home and cooked cottage pie for dinner, then we ate it. It was fine, although I have made better ones. Then I made a few phone calls and felted some more colour samples for my chart (which shows me which colours I have, and what they look like). At some point, wine and fudge were provided. Then tea was provided. Then I talked to all three of my siblings and both of my parents. It was a good day. Apparently it has left me motivated to compose a blog post - oh, the joy of relaxation! I think that I shall read a book when I get into bed.

Oh, and I am making a chocolate bell for someone for Christmas. I couldn't find a suitable mould, so I bought a polystyrene bell and covered it with clay. I have just cut the clay off again, and it seems to be holding its shape and will eventually dry out. Possibly even this decade.

Speaking of which, there's a new decade just around the corner. That makes me feel slightly excited - I am hoping for a whole new start next year (and have some plans to make that happen). It could be a very exciting decade indeed. If that happens, I may even post some interesting blog entries. Can't really say more at the moment (which is a big fat lie - I could tell you so much! But I really oughtn't to, and am pretending to have some self-control), so I shall keep you in suspense. (Ha! I am pretending someone is going to read this! See - I can be funny.)

In the meantime, I should get down to the serious job of enjoying myself and being a useful person to have around the house. Almost like a responsible adult. And also the slightly more painful job of constructing a Thing mostly by the wet felting method. There will be bits attached by sewing, and ripstop nylon in the middle, and closures, but wet felting will be the important bit. It will be unique.* I may even put up a photo when it is done.

Happy Christmas! I wish you health and happiness. Especially happiness. That's very important.


*And it may also be good.

Life continues

I think that perhaps I don't really have the hang of this blogging thing. I hear that it is traditional to update more frequently than once every other month. Actually, openings like this are getting a little tired, aren't they? Alas, I do not predict that they will become a smaller proportion of my blog entry openings, assuming that we take what has happened in the past to be a good predictor of what will happen in the future. Perhaps I should just stop lamenting my lack of updates, and just pretend that any entry I post is, in fact, arriving at an eminently suitable time. So I shall start again.

Things have been getting better, slowly but surely. I am now doing one day per week of work experience at a not very local organ builder firm. This appears to be going well. I have learned that organ pipes are very dirty things (and am about to learn about the power of search engines to lead inappropriate traffic to my site, no doubt), and need to be cleaned very thoroughly via a variety of different methods, including poking with a paintbrush (or bottle brush) to dislodge the dirt, vacuuming the dirt away, blowing the rest of the dirt away (blowing is not the first step, because that would be very messy!), washing with a strong solution of specialist pipe cleaner (aka industrial strength floor cleaner) and wiping dry. Sometimes I even get to use a q-tip in the mouth! Of the pipe, that is, as opposed to my mouth. Not always a good idea to put q-tips in one's mouth in such a manky place; it would probably be very good for the immune system, but it might cause some damage on the way.

I am also settled in a new house. I have a room to myself, of course, and also a share of the rest of the non-bedroom rooms within the house. I am living with two other people and a dog. None of them dribbles, that I can see. I wasn't really worried about the housemates, but dogs can sometimes be slobbery little things. This one is well-behaved and friendly, but not excessively so.

My room is great. It's not very big (I have had to get rid of a lot of my things!), but the bed is comfy, there is room for my chest of drawers and single bed settee, it comes with decent bookcases already (and my colourful wool collection looks great displayed in one of these), and it is well-decorated. Like a student, I have my alcohol collection on my window-sill.* Alas, I now have an alcohol problem: it can sometimes be difficult to close the blind behind the bottles.

There is another disadvantage within my room - I am very kindly storing a bookcase for someone, and the only place for it to go is in front of my radiator. This means that I am not turning on my radiator, and my room is the cold one. Meh. It is going a week on Thursday, so not long to put up with it now!

Serena and Heather have both moved Down South. This means that I am somewhat lacking in local friends. I am dealing with this by talking for far too long on the phone to people who is not Serena, nor Heather, which is great but will probably start to annoy my housemates very soon. Time for a new mobile phone, methinks.

It is very strange having two of my closest friends so far away. When I am in my previous neighbourhood, I expect to be able to go inside a couple of the houses there and I can not. Sunday afternoons between church and more church are not the same without Heather with whom to drink coffee and giggle about silly things. Nobody ever makes me cups of tea nowadays, with the exception of my parents.

Speaking of whom, they have scaffolding up the front of the house at the moment. Anne has grand plans to get herself killed off before her thirteenth birthday by climbing up the aforementioned structure. I am to provide my harness (she has her own) and rope, and shall insist that she wears my helmet. Apparently Father is not impressed with the idea - he thinks that the little fatso** will wobble it and bring it down. Not sure if Anne is perceived to be the victim here, or if it's the scaffolding, the house, or the car parked on the lawn. I think that perhaps the scaffolding will withstand the efforts of a twelve-year-old girl to scale it, especially if she doesn't throw herself about much. It will need to be checked out thoroughly, of course, but I am hopeful. It's a shame to deny little children the chance to climb large structures.***

The next day, assuming Anne survives her trial, will involve me taking her birthday shopping. This is an excellent plan, as it means that I don't have to think of what to get her for her birthday. Also, it should be fun. We will have to have an early start, though, she needs to be returned and fed by 1pm, before being packed off for more birthday fun. At least that's what the parents seem to think it will be: Anne doesn't seem entirely convinced. Well, it's not her birthday until next Tuesday, so she can jolly well just grin and bear it.

In other news, Robert has communicated with Louise, and bought birthday presents for her on behalf of us all. It's her birthday tomorrow. This is the second unprovoked communication I have heard of between the two of them recently - it's almost as though they like each other. Weird. Mother thinks that perhaps they are growing up. I wonder if one of them has been taken over by aliens. Couldn't say which one *coughRobertcough*, but it's a theory.

Organ stuff is really starting to build up now. I am playing at the Motherchurch before the service this Sunday evening, I have a whole service to play for myself on 31st October, I have quite a bit to do in the first Advent service at the end of November, I shall be doing most of a Christmas carol concert on 6th December (ooh - that will be an excessively busy weekend), and I am playing for the wedding of some friends in early January. Plus some other stuff. On the plus side, I do appear to be improving - I played the introit at the Motherchurch a couple of weeks ago, and apparently got all of the notes right. It was pretty much in time, and sounded as though an actual organist was playing. Result!

I do need to step up the amount of practice I am doing, though. It's very hard at the moment, as I appear to be even more busy than I was in June, before I cut down on my commitments. I am excessively relieved that I did cut down on my commitments - I dread to think what life would be like had I not done so.

So yes, life is more or less pootling along nicely now. Well, as far as I am going to discuss it here it is, anyway! Certainly things are more calm and under control. The car has new windscreen wipers, and everything! Not new tyres, but we have to take thing one step at a time so as not to become overwhelmed.




*OK, so this is not really true. The majority of my alcohol collection is in my parents' house, in their top kitchen. I have no idea how quickly those bottles are going down, but as the important ones reside with me that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

**Extreme sarcasm. She's quite skinny.

*** :-p

Erm...

Yeah. So that was, once again, a bit of a break between updates. I am being exactly the sort of blogger I expected to be. Ah well - it's good that I know myself!

I am not entirely sure that I want to say what I have been up to since my last update. I suppose that I shall start and see what comes out...

It would appear that I am not quite so good at coping with life as I would have myself believe. After a rough couple of years (not all that bad, but somewhat wearing - I mean, there was an awful lot of good stuff happening, but the stuff that failed to happen no matter how hard I tried apparently caused me to give up), it was brought to my attention that I was not actually coping very well with life. After a few weeks of trying to get better by positive thinking/additional free time/rest and relaxation/counselling, I came to the conclusion that my brain was not going to play to any suitable timescale. The anxiety just kept being there all the time, even when there was nothing for me to be anxious about. That was wearing, too. That remains wearing, I suppose.

To cut a long, only briefly sketched, story short, I went on anti-depressants a week ago. I think that I am starting to feel a bit better. Certainly, the anxiety feels less important. I have got very good at ignoring a low level of anxiety and carrying on as normal, and as coming across as a well-adjusted person with a sense of humour (sometimes even I believe it!), but that's not really enough; constant anxiety is just stupid, and helps nobody.

So that's the story of just me and my brain. There are other things going on, though. HWSNBN is due to be moving out at the end of August, if not before, in such a way that we will no longer be partners: a break-up will ensue. This has implications for my housing situation; I cannot afford to have a whole house to myself, especially since my hours have been reduced to four days per week. I must either find somebody else to move in with me, or get rid of some of my stuff (!?!?!) and find myself a room elsewhere. I am currently advertising for another housemate (HWSNBN would move out as soon as this person was ready to move in), but I think that I should probably actually just bite the bullet and move in with someone else. It will be good for me to get rid of some of my things, and will leave me better-prepared for moving wherever I need to move when my organ building career finally takes off (2021?).

The parents have been very supportive. Having just that morning discovered that my wing mirror had been removed in the night (£200 of damage!), I drove into my parents' gate post with the back of my car. It was the other side from the missing wing mirror, so there was no way I could pretend it was the same accident! Not that I would do that, you understand. Anyway, I went inside and cried at both of my parents about the car damages, my stupidity, and my boyfriend announcing his departure, and they fed me and gave me whisky. Not much whisky, though - they were being responsible, after all. They looked after me for a very pleasant couple of days (I don't take much looking after, really - just regular cups of tea and whatever food happens to be going). They also said that I am welcome to go and live with them any time, although they did say that if I moved my stuff into my house I was only to fill Robert's bedroom to the extent that he could still get to his bed. What's the point of being the eldest if I have to abide by that sort of rules? Anyway, I was thinking that if I put his bed in the garden, that would remove that problem: I'm hardly going to want to keep my stuff in the garden, as it would get wet. He can have my tarpaulin.

I am mostly trying not to think about HWSNBN's departure. Although it is the right thing to happen, this is the guy with whom I have spent the majority of my twenties. At one point I thought I was going to marry him (OK, so it was only for a couple of months, but even so...). It is going to be very sad. I am also going to be very financially vulnerable. Sadness tinged with fear! What a tasty little combination.

Ah well - hopefully the drugs will help me to deal with the mechanics of the situation, and I can finish processing it when I am in a happier place. I think I have done enough processing of my situation to be going on with, and would like a break from that sort of thing, really. It would be very nice just to be able to cope with life like a normal person again, even when ever so slightly bad things (such as needing to turn the flashy Internet box off and on again) happen. Even when bigger bad things (such as one's boyfriend leaving one) happen.

It's all OK, really. Certainly, things feel better. Not better better, but much less bad. I have demonstrated that I have both enough motivation and enough togetherness (wrong word - do you know what I mean) to publish a blog post. Actually, that isn't technically accurate as I type, but if you have read it, then it is.

So, watch this space. But please don't hold your breath - I would hate to be held liable for your death by accidental asphyxiation. (Note the concern I show for your life. I obviously value it very highly. Hmm - perhaps I should work on empathy.) Although if watching this space doesn't interest you especially, please feel free to miss that out. I mean, it's not as though I have any right, nor any desire, to order you about. And I can be rather annoying. For example, I should have stopped typing before I started this paragraph, but I did not. Clearly, I should not be typing this. Perhaps all of my pent-up motivation (insert hysterical laughter here) has been waiting too long, and is now unstoppable. Perhaps I need more sleep. Perhaps I should now make steps towards getting that sleep. Yes, that is a good conclusion. Night night.

A ramble that is hopefully at least vaguely coherent

Today, I have nothing to say. I expect that it is refreshing for you that I am admitting this at the beginning of the post so that you don't have to wade through to the end only to come to the same conclusion.

I managed to get in twenty minutes of organ practice this lunchtime. It was crap. The organ on campus has a broken note at the moment, which really doesn't help things, but I think that it was my own despondency which was the big issue. So much for my happy weekend! Having said that, work did seem to go quickly today, and I was extra helpful to several of my bosses who were having a technologically inept day. I did all sorts of wonderful things with teaching Excel (in one case) and Ctrl + Alt + Del (in the other two - killed two birds with one stone, although there was a bit of an incident with an unrestrained Del and an Inbox). Ah, the joys of having knowledge.

Now I am in that living room I showed you the other day. Imagine it without the piles of felt; they are upstairs. Don't bother imagining the dark blue martial arts kit bag that is there instead, though, nor the spirit level and the drill which will shortly be helping the key rack and the new kitchen shelf to become attached to their permanent homes. Woo hoo - additional storage options! Does this mean that the house will finally become tidy? Does that sound at all likely? No, it does not. But some of the crap will live at an ever so slightly higher altitude, which will clear a small amount of space down below.

Oh, and in breaking getting rid of crap news, I gave away my old plate set today. It was sad to see it go. They guy made me feel a little guilty that I have so much crap I don't need in the kitchen; he is furnishing an eco house and therefore looking for pretty much everything. I gave him a rolling pin, but he didn't want my coffee table, nor did he want my letter rack. I didn't ask, but I expect that he didn't want any of my old clothes, either. He probably wanted my casserole dish and 40-piece non-matching cutlery "set", with more forks than anything else, which is perfect for parties as it is cheap, environmentally friendly, and I am not going to do anything I might regret if a fork goes missing (lose a fork from my main cutlery set, and there's no knowing what I'll do. Probably send you to Liverpool to acquire a replacement. As I am not convinced they still make my beloved cutlery set, this could be quite an expedition). But I should probably have given it to the guy - at least then I wouldn't have to store it. Having said that, I'm keeping the caddy it lives in; it may as well be full. So perhaps I am justified in not giving my spare cutlery away. You'll thank me for it when you come round for a party and you get to use it. Or perhaps it will be the main set that is being used, and you will start to develop mild feelings of paranoia. You might notice HWSNBN looking at you funny if you use one of the teaspoons in your tea, even though that rule no longer applies now that we have a dishwasher. I prefer not to tell people when one of my weird little rules ceases to apply; they might get complacent. Or perhaps letting them know that it no longer applies would be admitting that it was a silly rule in the first place (which, incidentally, it was not - tea stains do not come off stainless steel without either scrubbing or a dishwasher, and the scrubbing was not going to happen).

On that note, having acquainted you with a little of my unjustifiable weirdness and cemented my unsuitability to be around other people in your mind, I shall take my leave. I shall make a cup of tea. The teaspoon rule does not apply to me, because I extract the tea bag with my fingers. It hurts more when I have a cut.

In which I digress

It has been a restful day today. It's a Bank Holiday today, and so I didn't have to go to work. I feel as though, after today, I am ready to start doing lots of useful things around the house. Alas, tomorrow I shall be back at work and so this tidying will not happen. I have done pretty much all of the washing in the washing basket, though, which is a start. Now all I have to do is dry the stuff - the drying racks are full and there is another load waiting to be extracted from the machine. That is, of course, assuming nobody has taken advantage of the open utility room door (to dissipate the yucky smell which appears to come from the washing machine) and stolen my clean washing and bicycle (UPDATE: they didn't). I think that they won't have been aware of the door's openness, and so will have missed out on this excellent opportunity. Poor things - the washing is almost smelling nice nowadays. It's amazing what a wash at "90 degrees"* with some spirit vinegar will do.

I also made a case out of felt. this case is to hold the anthem book I am borrowing from the Motherchurch, which is not getting on well with the button on the front of my organ music file.** When I started to make it, it looked as though it would be a snug fit. Apparently I have anti-felt - rather than shrinking, as felt is wont to do, this has expanded. My lovely little carry case has therefore gone the way of pretty much all of my fabric creations to date - it is too big. How frustrating. If only stabbing it further would help.*** I would put a photo up, except that I am not sure how to from flickr (could be something to do with re-sizing), and I left my camera at the parents' house. See - the excuses keep coming. This excuse lasts nearly three weeks, I reckon. I also gave HWSNBN's spare camera to the parents on Friday, and would not be so disrespectful as to use HWSNBN's own camera.

I have decided to make a case to carry my chisels, out of felt. I shall use Herdwick wool, as it is hardwearing and cheap. It would be a shame to use pretty wool when I can use manly, local wool, of the sort they used to use to make foundations for roads. Herdwicks are my favourite sheep.****

And now HWSNBN is demanding that I should go to bed. Early bedtimes are the way forward, apparently. I shall endeavour to acquiesce.


*I don't think that it has ever got up to temperature. I suspect it probably managed about 40 on that particular cycle. Come to think of it, I wonder why I don't wash more things at "90 degrees". I should check that one out! Perhaps the element is broken. I mean, I am only speculating that the water ever gets warmer than it is when it comes out of the tap. For all I know, it could stay cold the entire time. Oh, the joys of inadequate washing machines (although rumour has it that this one will tumble dry, also. This is likely to remain untested - the tumble dryer which lives on top of it has been demonstrated to tumble dry. But I don't like to put my clothes in it; only sheets and towels. This is partly to save electricity, and partly in case the tumble dryer goes mad and eats them all. Having said that, I will now go and put the clothes from the washing machine into the tumble dryer on cool for 20 minutes. That should help to ease the strain on the drying racks, insofar as what I put on them will be a bit less wet...)

**The anthem book is not getting on well with the button. The Motherchurch has not complained about it at all.

***Yes, I needle-felted it. Yes, it took approximately a whole day. No, it did not turn out how I anticipated. Do you have a problem with that?

****What's your favourite sort of sheep?

Less opti, more static

As you may have guessed from the utter pointlessness (and sparseness) of my posts recently, there is not a right lot going on in Abi-land. I mean, obviously I am having a great time fashioning small objects out of sheep hair, and my organ playing is slowly but surely improving. I am also getting better at standing on one leg and waving the other one around. My house is finally at a stage where one can get into all of the rooms (although HWSNBN's room remains a challenge - I am itching to re-organise it*), and that is very satisfying. I did lose a night's sleep on the project, but it was worth it to be able to enter and leave rooms at will, without any climbing involved.

What I really want to be doing is starting a career in organ building, but the progress that I am making is painfully slow, to say the least. Some uncharitable people might even say that I am making no progress at all at the moment. They would probably be accurate.

It is so frustrating being in this situation. I expended a lot of energy for a prolonged period of time to move on from where I am, and it came to nothing. Now I don't seem to have enough motivation to do anything constructive. It's a bit of a vicious circle, really: no optimism = no motivation = no movement = no optimism, etc. Well, there is some optimism, and a tiny bit of motivation, but not enough, really.

I sent an e-mail off to another organ builder firm requesting some work experience a few days ago. I am not really in a position to gain much work experience, as I work full-time and organ builders only work during weekdays, during which time I tend to be at work, funnily enough. I do have some holiday left, though, so if this guy replies to my e-mail in the affirmative, I might finally start to feel that I am getting somewhere again. This should lead to improved blogging, which is the important thing.

And yes, I am aware that my "oh no! I can't get started on my perfect job!" complaint is a wonderful complaint to have. I am truly grateful to have such excellent problems. It's just that excellent problems are still frustrating ones, and losing the motivation to improve my situation annoys me an enormous amount.

Now I shall stop complaining for a bit, and hope that the quality of my blogging magically improves. Good luck to me!



*Re-organise? Where did that come from? I don't think that it has been organised since we moved in here. Perhaps organise would be a better word. Re-arrange might work...

Some felt flowers

Yesterday evening I had a cold. I have a cold today, for that matter. Being a charitable sort of person, I decided not to spread it around my martial arts group (especially as two of them work at the hospital - way to let the viruses roam around the community!), and so spent the evening at home. I made flowers out of felt.

I have come to a couple of conclusions. I don't think that I will ever be able to make felt flowers quickly, and should probably just aim to be efficient. I am also not keen on wet felting - you don't get to see the progress you are making, and it takes a lot of effort. I shall try unsuccessfully to see whether wet felting will occur in the dishwasher, and then look at different ways of making needle felting work for me, I think.

Yesterday, I made a cherry blossom and started to make a lily. The cherry blossom is OK - it needs a bit of tidying up. I don't know how good the lily is, as I have only felted half of its petals; I imagine that it will be OK.

Having expected to have a really enjoyable evening doing practically nothing, I actually felt a bit bored. Very frustrating! Perhaps it is because (as evidenced by my recent blog entries) I am a bit boring. I think that perhaps I ought to schedule a few more commitments so that I can miss more things and thus enjoy my free time more. OK, so I was missing martial arts, but I think that perhaps I believed in my excuse a bit too much.

Photos of the felting to follow, assuming I manage to post them. Please do not hold your breath!

Also, more interesting posts to follow. Again, holding of breath would not be advisable.

A little bit of nothing, and not very much

Oh, the tyranny of the blank screen. I am waiting for an e-mail to come in so that I can reply to it, and am trying to do something productive with my time. Here's a list of things that writing this blog post is more productive than:

• Writing "sentences" like the previous one. Seriously - a preposition at the end of a sentence? And that's just the beginning of that sentence's problems.
• Taking the washing out of the washing machine and hanging it up to dry. Washing doesn't need to dry, anyway.
  
• Tidying the front room. I like it so full of stuff; it makes me feel safe.
• Designing a new cabinet for the kitchen, which would both give me an opportunity to practice my joinery skills and provide some extra storage. Who needs joinery skills? And what's wrong with keeping tins in plastic boxes on the kitchen table?
• Cleaning the utility room. Far too dark for that crap.
• Writing snarky e-mails to Daddy about how he should name his files something other than scan0001.bmp. Hang on - I'm multi-tasking and accomplishing this as well! I suggested scan0003.bmp as a viable alternative.
• Organ practice. It's not as though that improves my playing, anyway.
  
• Making a birthday present for Rose - she probably doesn't really want one anyway.
• Going to bed. I am not tired in the slightest. Ho hum.
  

So, as you can see, writing a blog post is clearly the way forward and could not, in any way, be described as procrastination. And, as the writing is superb, it is a treat just to be able to read it. I would never get myself a reputation as a person who writes about nothing from writing like this, would I? Hello? You still there?

Then, of course, comes the question - do I leave it as it is: a finely-crafted essaylet* about how useless this blog actually is,** or do I try to form an awkward segue (is that the right word? I don't think I've ever used it before) and try to introduce some actual content. My instinct tells me that the former is the way forward, so I only have myself to blame when this next bit doesn't work at all.

This evening's plan was to come home from work as soon as was reasonable, eat a quick dinner, and then spend a couple of hours at the Motherchurch practising on the organ. Unfortunately, I was short of dinner ideas and we ended up going for pork chops with mushrooms and creme fraiche. This takes an hour to bake; by the time I had finished eating it was nearly 10pm. Also, I'm tired, and practice has been arduous and unrewarding this week. I know that this means I need to try harder, but it makes it harder to try harder. I think that I shall be winging it this week. I bet it goes well, too, unlike my last lesson, before which I had a practice session in which I sounded something like an organist, and a lesson in which I sounded like an impostor from the days before I played the organ.

Well I have eaten plenty of food, at least. That can be my achievement for the evening: that, and annoying my parents. I have promised to cut out some specific pieces of wood for them, though; they should be pleased with the results, assuming I am suitably accurate. It will be good practice for my upcoming cabinet, though. I can make the mistakes on someone else's wood.*** My cabinet will then be perfect. Naturally.

Nope - I'm broken. It's pretty much all sarcasm from now on. I had better go and reply to that e-mail instead. I am sure this sarcasm will be very well-received.


*It's called poetic licence.

**And also about how ineffectual I tend to be.

***Only kidding - I don't make mistakes!****

****Gigglesnort.

Lovely shoes

Today, we went to a wedding. It was in a very posh old house in Lancashire, and a friend drove so that we were able to enjoy lots of alcohol. Judging by how sober I currently feel, I did not exploit this opportunity to its full potential. I expect that I will be glad of this tomorrow, though.

The big news is that I wore my wonderful pretty black strappy (yet also ballet-shoe-like) shoes today, and they were comfortable! I am paying per byte of data at the moment, and so I cannot post a picture of them (also, I haven't yet gone quite so far as to persuade anyone to take a photograph of my feet). I am also uncomfortable with promising to post a photo of them at some future point in time, as this then means there is another thing I can fail at. Please just imagine black ballet shoes with a little heel, but slightly nicer, and with a strap which wraps round the ankle. If you are imagining them properly, you will probably see why I am so pleased that they are comfortable.

The wedding was fun. We saw birds of prey, which is something we don't get to do every day (although HWSNBN does most Sundays). The food was excellent. I had forgotten to let them know that I shouldn't eat gluten, and had to live with the consequences of this. The starter was a tasty tomato, goats' cheese and pesto tart (I ate the top, and pretty much avoided the base), the main course was chicken, sauce and vegetables (the sauce so had wheat in) and dessert was a roulade (made of meringue - it traditionally doesn't have wheat in, but this tasted a bit funny...). Now my tummy doesn't quite feel happy, but the consequences could have been much worse. They still could be, for that matter!

Afterwards, I was able to fob loads of things off on my friend. She wanted a pestle and mortar (I had one I really didn't need), an magnetic knife holder for a wall (ditto - unused) and probably nothing else, but I was also able to give her a candle holder, some soap that I made and haven't yet used and a load of other random body products. It has obviously hardly made a dent at all in the amount of crap I have around the house, but every little helps. It also means that I don't have to take some of that stuff to the charity shop, thus saving me some effort.

Time off drawing to an end...

Well, my little holiday is very nearly over. I feel like my biggest achievements during the period have been eating approximately a quarter of my bodyweight in chocolate and other sweet things* and making the dent in the settee a little deeper. However, this would be doing myself down. I also knitted a few comparatively neat rows in my current project,** without creating any additional stitches for long enough for them to become incorporated, and decorated the larger part of a room within 24 hours.

Damn - now I've given away the best bits. I may as well stop writing now for all the entertainment it will give. But, you know, I have over a week's worth of bloglapse guilt to assuage, and so I shall jolly well give a better account of how I have used this past week.

The week off started with a visit to the parents' house. They have better Internet than I do at the moment, but I do not blog from their house so that they do not accidentally stumble across this blog due to it being in that little bar thing into which one types web addresses. It would be a disconcerting blow to discover that their dearest darling daughter indulges in such a waste of time as blogging. Given my track record for wasting time, however, it should not surprise them too much, if they think about it.

That visit ended with a successful kidnapping attempt - on the Saturday evening, we left with Anne aboard. She did not put up much of a fight, and I scarcely had to use any force at all. Poor child. On Sunday morning she came to church with me (babysitting facilities are not excellent around here), but sulked significantly less than last time we tried that trick - it was very hard to tell that she was sulking at all. After church, we went to a local seaside resort to visit the supermarket, and I spent nearly all of my money. In a supermarket. Yes, I did feel a little stupid when I realised what I had done. I also felt a little broke - for this past week I have been living on £2.88 and my overdraft. Payday is tomorrow, thank goodness.

Upon leaving the supermarket, I realised that the car park was a pay and display one. Fortunately, nobody had done anything about my lack of a displayed ticket (although I would have been arguing strongly against a parking ticket, having just given the supermarket most of the rest of my money). Then we went home and I proceeded to make lunch, eat lunch, and sit on my bottom in a most unproductive manner. Anne put an end to my sitting, eventually, insisting that we should go to the Motherchurch so that I could get some practice in before my lesson that afternoon. Thank goodness she insisted then - I arrived just as Mr T, the choirmaster (you didn't know Mr T did choirs, did you?) arrived; he was setting up for the Girls' School's evening concert rehearsals, which were due to start as soon as somebody actually turned up. I got in about 10 minutes of particularly essential and productive practice, without which my lesson would have been extremely embarrassing, before rehearsals started and we scarpered. I did another hour of hanging around, dragging the unfortunate and remarkably patient Anne with me, then returned for my organ lesson. This went well, thank goodness; my last-minute practice was not in vain!

This having been achieved, we returned home and started on the serious business of making Easter eggs. I must say, if one is to engage in this tiresome task, a minion is practically essential. I don't know how I managed without one for so many years. We didn't make any, on account of it being quite late in the evening, but it was a start.

The next morning, HWSNBN was at work, and news came that he was off to Slightly Foreign Parts the next day with work, and was to stay there for a couple of days. Anne and I sprang into action: we went to the paint shop and bought carefully-calculated amounts of white and magnolia matte emulsion, some brushes (have just remembered that one still needs cleaning) and some white gloss paint, plus some sugar soap for cleaning the walls, but no rubber gloves, and in the process spent pretty much the rest of my money. Anne carefully stashed these away under the stairs, with the other paints, so that HWSNBN would not notice them upon his return home. Which he did not, as he does not look under the stairs habitually, and also they were with the other paints (the ones that came with the house) - camouflage!

Oh yes, and we also made about 12 full-size Easter eggs, plus a whole load of mini ones. I stayed up until 1am making sure that the last one was ready to set quietly, without causing any trouble. I did some painting while I was waiting - I painted some squares in different shades of pink, purple and blue. My artistic flare knows no bounds.*** I would like to say that I didn't go over the lines (yes, I drew out a grid first) once, but I think that it would be more accurate to say that I stayed within the lines about 20 times (i.e. there were 20 lines that I did not cross - in other words, probably about 15 squares had one or more edges which were as I intended). And some of these times I stayed within the lines, I then went over the line from the other direction, thus negating all of my good work. There is an excellent reason why I do not call myself artistic.

The next day dawned bright and early. We stayed in bed for ages. Well, HWSNBN didn't - he went to work at the usual time, then went to Slightly Foreign Parts at about lunchtime. We started emptying the room as soon as we were suitably conscious, and started to wash the room as soon as we were able. About 1 1/2 walls in, Some Guy, Serena's person, came round for lunch. The poor thing had to wait until we had finished washing the walls before I fed him. This took a while, during which time we discovered that the Mysterious Stains (there were two really mysterious ones, one of which had been hiding behind the curtains) would wash off with a judicious mixture of sugar soap and elbow grease, and also that whoever painted last did a truly shoddy job.

After lunch (to disclose a bit more, I started to prepare lunch at about 2.30, I think. Bad me - terrible hostess), Some Guy helped to rinse the walls. He was much better at it than Anne, possibly because he had more to prove, possibly because he had a longer reach, possibly in order to illustrate the importance of choosing one's minions carefully and not just taking one because she puts up little resistance and hugs one a lot. I think that is a bad way to choose a minion. Anyway, after that had been accomplished, Some Guy left, and we started to paint.

Oh, how I love to paint! The washing of the walls tends to be tedious (although these were less so than usual by virtue of their small size and interesting markings, and because it was so satisfying), the rinsing of the same moreso (same again, but with less motivation), but the painting is great fun! Obviously, I did the ceiling first - if one does this, one can be as messy as one likes at the edges and then tidy up later with the wall paint. Whoever painted last had obviously not bothered with the ceiling (nor with proper edging techniques) as there was a ring of blue paint round the boundary between the wall and ceiling; I was determined to do a better job. Although I would probably have done a better job than them had I painted the room using my hair as a brush, such was the poor effort they made.

Anne did a bit of painting too. I must confess that I didn't let her use the roller nearly so much as I ought, as it is my favourite bit and I am a greedy big sister. Fortunately for me, Anne is very tolerant and adoring. Silly girl. She didn't use the brush much, either, although I do not rate that as a fun job and was mostly just saving her the effort.

After that, I decided that we should have take-away for tea. The one I wanted to visit was shut, but we stopped at a cash machine by it. This is when I discovered I had a bank balance of £2.88. Anne decided that pancakes for tea would make an agreeable change, as she mostly has to eat sensible food. So that is what we had. They were very nice, and we had 1/2 of 1/5 our daily fruit and vegetable allowance each from the lemons we squeezed onto the pancakes. I only had to reprimand Anne once for excessive application of sugar, although I must confess that I only checked it once...

Then we (I) did the gloss paint. That was satisfying. The old gloss was quite horrifying, and this new stuff made a big difference. Once again, we got to bed extremely late. This time, Anne had to share with me as I had packed her bed away and she didn't want to sleep downstairs with the slugs.

The next day was Ikea day! Of course, I was late. We had to put some items back within the newly-decorated room and I had to re-paint the gloss that was visible (some skirting boards, round the window, and all stuff associated with the door), but then we visited the marvellous store itself. Wow. There were lots of items of furniture. The bed frame I want was reduced. I had to not buy it because it was too big for my bedroom. I did get some large lampshades, some waste paper bins, a shelf for the kitchen and some mini-shelf-things for my room. Then I forgot my credit card PIN, and had to use the joint account card instead. Whoops. Still haven't remembered that PIN. That is probably for the best.

Then I de-kidnapped Anne, and returned her to her rightful owners. I stayed for dinner, then went home at night while the traffic was quieter, and drove straight into a massive queue, in which I sat for about 40 minutes.

The next day I tidied up a lot more, then spent a couple of hours wrapping paper boxes in wrapping paper. This made the boxes prettier, and got rid of some excess wrapping paper. Now I only have about 3 years' supply. I also realised that the old paint I had used in my room (there was some left over from a previous decorating attempt. It was the appropriate brand and colour, and I decided not to waste it. Had I not used it, I would have run out of paint; it turns out that my careful calculations were relying too heavily on the truthfulness of the coverage written on the side of the paint tin, which were not entirely accurate), which had smelled a bit funny, was probably a bad idea; the room smelled funny. A bit like eau de cat wee - not the parfum, but a subtle smell designed to repel gently. I opened the windows and burned some fragrance oil. I also discovered that different sections of the wall smell different - it is possible to tell where the old paint was used, and which sections got lucky with new paint. I think that it will get better as the paint stays in situ for longer.

HWSNBN arrived home just as I had to set off for church. This was lucky, as my car had a dishwasher in the back; in a total lack of plot continuity, this appeared on Wednesday evening when my parents relinquished it to my care as they had a new one. I took HWSNBN's car, and thus didn't turn up to church with a dishwasher in tow. I am not sure what sort of a statement that would make.

After the church service I had plans to return home and cook dinner. Alas, these were messed about with my another choir member who asked me if I would accompany them to the pub. I apologised and said that I would not be able to come and then let my guard down. This was a mistake - he said that I should come just for one drink, and I did. We tried to go to the usual haunt, but it was full of people who thought that Maundy Thursday was an excellent excuse to go out drinking, and ended up in a much refurbished and new-ownered pub which had previously been quite dodgy. Somebody bought me a drink (which was good, as I had no money) and some cheese also turned up. Bonus! The choirmaster and organist were there, and there were a few male choir members and a hanger-on. All of the female choir members, with the exception of myself, are under the age of 18 - I don't think that women accompany them to the pub very often. It was a pleasant experience, though.

HWSNBN didn't seem particularly upset by my late return home, although he was not entirely impressed with the dishwasher extraction process with which he then became heavily involved. The dishwasher was moved to the kitchen with only a minor amount of fuss, and is still sitting in a thoroughly inappropriate place, which will not permit any actually washing of dishes to take place within it. I may remedy the situation tomorrow...

The next day, HWSNBN was at The Field, working on getting a large shed-type structure up. I went to church at 2pm, then to the choir practice at 6.30 - it was a big one, in preparation for Easter. I went to the pub again, and I was able to furnish some actual information about the organs that will be installed in the Motherchurch, hopefully starting within the next year or so. That was nice - it is fun having actual information. I did not, however, have enough, and could provide no information whatsoever on the pressure of air that would be used within each organ, nor the pressure within the extra loud trumpet they are having installed. I rushed back from the pub, only to find that HWSNBN was still in the vicinity of The Field. I did see the second half of the first bit of the new Red Dwarf thingy, though.

Saturday was a day of little happening. I was lazy. It was nice. Except that I had realised that I hadn't actually made an Easter egg for Anne. I think that I may have overcompensated a little, by making her the biggest, most Smartie-filled Easter egg I have ever made.

Sunday, of course, was Easter. The service was fine, and people generally didn't seem to notice the obvious deficiencies in my voluntary at the end - same old triumphant thingy, and still full of mistakes. It's not complicated, but requires a level of technical proficiency I obviously do not try hard enough to attain. After church was lunch, followed by visiting HWSNBN's mum, then my parents, followed quickly by dinner at my aunt and uncle' house. There, we went fishing. Uncle McMillan's big goldfish are living in the higher of two ponds, connected by a little overflow. They spawned, and the babies fell into the lower pond, thus deftly avoiding being eaten. Now he has more fish than he knows what to do with, and so gave some to Mother. I managed to catch six at once, and therefore I won (because that is what it's about). I also think that I caught the biggest one, although I didn't see the big one the others caught and therefore have no actual evidence on which to base this. They were all being infuriatingly non-competitive about it, anyway.

We played a board game as a family which did not descend into any type of warfare, open or otherwise. This was a bit weird. I wonder if it is the combination of HWSNBN's calming influence (he plays by the rules, and stuff) and having three teams, none of which was entirely composed of men. Anyway, our team won. It was quite lucky, I suppose. I had to mime "sick as a parrot", and was fortunate enough to be standing next to a parrot in a cage at the time. Most people do not have that advantage. They didn't get my Indiana Jones for ages, and they didn't get Del Boy at all, despite my making it perfectly clear that I was driving a three-wheeled vehicle. HWSNBN's "passion wagon" was hampered by the steam he kept drawing out of it - it really did look like a train. But it is the winning that counts, of course! Actually, I particularly enjoyed the friendly spirit in which it was played, almost as though the losers would not be executed at the end. Which they were not. So that was nice.

The next day, I managed to sleep in until 1pm. Apparently, I was tired. Anne built a "tree" "house", which was more like a stump shelter, but which was nonetheless rather a fun structure. The parents keep some particularly good scaffolding in their garden and basement, which is the basis for many excellent climbing frames. This was no exception. It was good to climb on, and had some planks. I spent much of the afternoon clearing out some of my crap from the landing outside my room in the parents' house. I am glad that task has been started.

Today I have done little. I took the car for an MOT (it failed - needed new windscreen wipers, which it now has) and ate some prawns and chocolate. I knitted a bit, then went to martial arts, then ate some more. And I read a book. Lovely day - wish that I could have similar days all week. Alas, tomorrow is my last day off, then I have 2 days of work before the end of the week. Oh, and HWSNBN is back in Slightly Foreign Parts, but I have no more decorating to do. I may settle for plumbing in the dishwasher, although I shall have to watch its first cycle so that I can get mopping if necessary.

Oh, and I read the Goldfish's post about blogging against disablism day. I really want to participate, but I have no clue what to write about. I suspect that I will fail to come up with anything profound (I will probably come up with something like "be nice to disabled people; they are inspirational" and end up with death threats) and will thus not write anything and pretend it never happened, while reading others' submissions avidly. Does that sound bad? Time to start digging, then! I tend to find that the standard of writing for Blogging Against Disablism Day is very high, and have my own theory as to why this is. It is as follows: disability does not discriminate; it affects really intelligent, eloquent people, and also affects people who are less so. Many of the intelligent, eloquent people who become disabled find themselves with time on their hands that they would not have had without a disability, and so they write blogs. Because these blogs are interesting and well-written, and I know about them, I read them. I then find that I am enlightened, to an extent. Of course, I am still me, and still very clumsy, and therefore most adept at saying thoroughly inappropriate things; enlightenment can only take me so far when I have this nasty little habit of putting my foot in my mouth and leaving it there for long periods of time. Anyway, nobody will ever read this far, so my ravings are safe until somebody types an offending phrase into a search engine and notoriety (in a weak, crappy way) ensues.

And on that note, having attempted to spell "foot" as "fut", I think that it is time for bed.



*OK - I exaggerate - probably about 1/120 of my bodyweight, if that.

**A scarf, of course. I figured it was best not to start too complicated.

***People whose artistic flare knows bounds such as, for example, the lines they are meant to stay within sometimes do better at art than I. Let me tell you, those geography lessons in which we had to colour in maps were a nightmare. I also couldn't seem to colour very evenly. Additionally, my handwriting has always been terrible. Model pupil, me.

A Break :-)

Another week is nearly over. Next, I get some holiday!

I have really been looking forward to this holiday - it would be an excellent chance to catch up on everything in a relaxed fashion if it wasn't for the fact that I am me and will therefore either pack my days so full that I don't get any time off, or sit around watching the television. HWSNBN was due to go to Dublin for the first week, which would have meant that I had the house to myself and could get on with tidying, etc.. I don't know what is wrong with me, but I only really seem to be able to motivate myself to tidy when I am alone in the house; people are very distracting.

Of course, I have Anne coming to stay with me for a few days. I shall be removing her from her home on Saturday evening, and returning her (via Ikea - she's a strange child and likes that sort of thing) on Wednesday afternoon/evening. This will disrupt the tidying, but will facilitate the Easter egg making; she should have the enthusiasm I am so sadly lacking after so many years of chocolate pouring.

If HWSNBN does go away, we will also launch a sneak decorating attack on my room. It has a mysterious stain on one of the walls, which somebody has tried so hard to remove (unsuccessfully) that they have scrubbed though the magnolia paint to the blue paint beneath. There is also blue-tack liberally dotted over the walls. Our contract says that we are not to use blue-tack, but apparently previous tenants have not felt constrained by this. Mother has some special anti-stain paint I can use as an undercoat over the mysterious stain and the blue-tack marks (when the blue-tack has been scraped off, of course), so they shouldn't represent a long-term problem.

HWSNBN does not want to decorate any of the house at all. He doesn't seem to like it very much, and thinks that the best thing to do about this is nothing. I am finding this very hard - I have a very strong decorating instinct. I want to paint all of the dodgy bits so that they are shiny and clean*. He just wants to move out as soon as possible. I suppose that decorating does affect him a bit, as he has to put up with the furniture being moved about while the walls are being washed and the paint is being applied (unless he is in Dublin, in which case he could return home to a shiny** new room. I don't think that this would go down very well). I don't quite understand how he can just live with the peeling window frame and dodgy colour-co-ordination in the bathroom. I suppose he can't, really, which is why he decided that we wouldn't move here. Even so, it's frustrating!

The Ikea trip could well be very productive. I need to buy three bins (one extra for each of the extra rooms we have in this house, and one for joinery) two rails for hanging up pans in the kitchen and a partridge in a pear tree. Or perhaps just a small set of shelves onto which I can put some boxes full of food, in lieu of a suitable number of cupboards. And, of course, I shall end up buying some random crap I don't need. At this exact moment in time, I can't think what else I could possibly want, but I don't think my resolve will be quite so strong when I see some random shiny thing I will suddenly wonder how I ever managed to live without. Oh. It's started already. I need (really, really need!) some large round paper lampshades for the ceiling lights. The previous house was tiny so we had to buy tiny lampshades so that it didn't look stupid, and so that we could get past them. This house has high ceilings, so we can get away with big lampshades. If Ikea doesn't have them (it doesn't have them in the biggest size, which is the one my parents need for their house; hopefully the next size down will be available) I can go to Habitat in Chester. This is always fun. It's a few steps up from Ikea, both design-wise and price-wise, but it is difficult not to buy the pretty things.

The organ playing is coming along slowly. I have managed to get in a few hours this week, although it has been a struggle. The prelude is starting to sound quite good, although I can't even get through the first page without making a mistake (or at least a slip), let alone the other three, but I think that a few more weeks work will fix it. I will then get to play that before or after one of the Sunday services. The Priere a Notre Dame looks really easy, but is actually really hard. It is coming along painfully slowly. At least if it looked a bit hard I would find the mistakes less frustrating. The hymn I am playing is getting there; I get most of the notes right, and am managing not to hit additional keys while pressing the magic buttons that change lots of stops at the same time. Well, most of the time, anyway.

Tomorrow, I hope to convince Dave the Organist to let me have a go on his organ for a few hours. I could really do with the extra practice, and his organ is one of the better ones on which to do this. It's really nice, and quite large; its tone is impressive. I started to learn to play the organ on it, and it is always fun to re-visit it.

I really want to learn some new stuff, but I'm having enough problems with what I have already. It is very frustrating! Some of the stuff I want to learn is reputed to be quite difficult, but I like a challenge! Except for while I am actually working on overcoming the challenge, at least. But when the challenge has been overcome it can be satisfying.

Have a great weekend!




*Well, matt and clean, anyway; I always use matt emulsion, as silk emulsion annoys me. Shiny walls are the devil's work. They show up every imperfection, and although I don't mind a bit of imperfection in my walls, I certainly don't want to advertise it.

**See * (Sorry - couldn't resist. Yes, my life is dull.)

Keys

Apparently, I am to be given keys at the Motherchurch, which will enable me to practice whenever the church is open. I am to receive them this evening, so perhaps this is when the extended practice sessions are to commence...

Actually, now that the prospect of actually doing extended practice sessions is very nearly upon me I am feeling slightly less enthusiastic. I think that this is only natural - I am about to take away the various assorted bits of free time I keep handy in case I want to sit on my bum doing nothing, and put them into a large, possibly cold building in a situation which will involve lots of work.

Also, now if I fail it will be my fault. So far, I have been able to blame my bad playing on lack of access to the instrument, but that will not be an option from now on. If I do not make the effort to turn up frequently and put in good work (I am very prone to putting in some good work, then getting distracted and starting to play any old nonsense) then I shall not improve. I think that this is what the problem is - it's not a problem with being unhappy about devoting time to practice, really

Given that failure is not an option, I am sure that it will all be fine. The MSc worked out in the end, and this has got to be easier than that! I should at least avoid the issue of writer's block - it's never hard for me to find something that needs practising.

This evening, of course, is choir practice. I spent quite a while working on one of the pieces yesterday evening, but when I played through it at the end of the session it was almost as though I hadn't bothered. I hope that it will have consolidated itself overnight (it very frequently does, and I wonder when, exactly, I managed to learn a particular bit of music); I have another 15 minutes to play with this evening and then I must be off to collect my keys, and face the music (as it were) with respect to my lack of practice.

Additionally, I must remember to push the "publish" button, to ensure that I don't end up posting a day later, and getting all sorts of error messages. Duh.

The weekend is here!

Hooray! A chance to drop items off at charity shops, and refill fabric conditioner bottles; to play the organ in a small variety of different contexts; to feel bad about not having the time to visit Mother on Mothers' Day; to get up late on Saturday.

Only two more weeks before the Easter break. I get nearly two weeks off at that point, which will be a relief. I shall kidnap Anne and force her to make Easter eggs for my family, and attempt to achieve large amounts of organ practice while the church is open, thus heartily annoying anyone who wants to actually go to church to sit quietly and peacefully. If one is doing it correctly, the majority of organ practice should probably be quite boring to listen to.

I shall also hopefully get a chance to recharge my batteries, and may be able to write better afterwards. How I wish that I could stop feeling so tired! I might write something less deeply unsatisfactory than this post. That would be a novelty.

Itchy again

Ooh - over a week since my last post. How time flies!

We are making progress on the settling in front - we have a wardrobe in the bedroom, and I have a) realised that I have far more hangers than could be considered to be reasonable, and b) started to hang up some of my clothes. Today, for the first time since moving, I was able to locate and wear a skirt. This is excellent news, as my legs are amazingly itchy at the moment. They woke me up this morning at about 2.30, and are not really playing nicely at the moment. I kind of want to do something drastic and make the itching go away, but mostly I think that I should let it do its thing until I see a doctor on Monday (for something completely different) so that he can perhaps give me some insight into why they are so horrible. When I scratch them, they look like bad teenage boy pimple-face, but without the really nasty bits. But I think I just crossed some sort of boundary there, so I shall return to the subject about which I was trying to talk.

The other bit of progress we have made is that we have the other bed-settee. It is a bit too big for the room in which it is currently residing (the front room), but I don't think that it can go anywhere else, so it will just have to deal with that. It's a bit of a joke, really - as settees go, this one is quite tiny. I am in awe at how much stuff we actually managed to fit into the previous, smaller house. Of course, when everything is settled here it will seem a lot more spacious than the previous house. There will hopefully be an occasional bit of wall without furniture against it (although I shall be honest - so far I have always seen that as an excellent opportunity to acquire more furniture to help to store the crap which invariably covers my house. I aim to stop doing that now, and possibly even look at getting rid of a piece of furniture).

Yesterday evening I gave the bread maker to Serena, who will pass it on to her mother. I am glad to be rid of that! I only used it once, and have never had a space to allocate to it in the kitchen. The next step is to get rid of all of the rest of the crap that is earmarked for disposal. I foresee a couple of arduous charity shop trips this Saturday (arduous because what I shall be carrying will be bloody heavy, and possibly also quite unwieldy), followed by a fresh sense of awe at how much crap remains.

This evening, I shall have the evening off! No places to be, just a house to tidy and dinner to cook. Sounds relaxing, does it not? HWSNBN's mum and sister are coming round tomorrow evening, and so I feel that I should make the effort to make the house look like the sort of place where it might be nice to live. Yes, this will be a challenge, but just think how much fun it would be to have a house with usable rooms! I can't even remember the last time this really happened.

Actually, I can. Yesterday, while I was attempting to make my room look a bit better, I stumbled across a box full of old photos. Flicking through, I found loads of photos of my old student room. Ah - those were the days! It was a very large room, and had to serve a variety of purposes: bedroom, kitchen, dressing room, office, living room and menagerie. It had a load of guinea pig hutches and cages set up in the corner, with the occasional guinea pig allowed to run round the floor. I had forgotten how shiny the guinea pigs used to be! I would make an effort to scan in some photos and post them up except that a) I am too lazy, and b) the floor had a lot of sawdust on it, and I wouldn't want you to know about that. You would be able to see how slack I am capable of being around the house.

There were also photos of my baby sister when she was still tiny - they were very cute indeed. She really did look like my little sister then. Alas, with all of the looking at photos I got distracted and never did manage to finish sorting out the bookcase in my room, so that I could put some actual books on it. I did, however, manage to get some skirts and a dress put into my wardrobe, meaning that I got to wear a skirt today. A full-length one, of course; it's rare that I wear any other sort (if I am being honest, this is because they are all slightly smaller than I am thin at the moment - I'll get to wear them again one day, I am sure). This is great - it hides my hideous, itchy legs. Except when I hitch it up because the fabric is making my legs itch. Thinking about it is making my legs itch at the moment, though, so that's not really much of an achievement.

I am so tired. Apologies if none of this makes sense. Right now, I'd like to sleep for a long time.

Moving, part 4, plus beer and tiredness

The boring non-saga of settling into our new house continues. The settee is in its rightful position and orientation in the living room, and more floorspace has been unearthed. Yesterday evening we moved a desk, a bookcase and a cupboard; a good evening's work. If there had only been five minutes available, anyway. We are slowly getting rid of small amounts of crap (you would be amazed at how popular guinea pig cages are on Freecycle around here!), and HWSNBN has initiated a campaign to get rid of some of the out-of-date food we have lying around. It would be the out-of-date food we have in our cupboards, except that we don't have any cupboards for food. Perhaps we will reduce the scale of this problem over the weekend by putting up a large ugly metal shelf in our shambles of a kitchen, and putting the food on this, within boxes. I imagine that its top shelf would be an excellent place to store HWSNBN's large pasta container, which usually lives far too high-up for me to reach.

Tomorrow evening there will be a beer festival. Of course, as I can't really consume gluten, I shall not be drinking any beer. It's a pity that the day after the beer festival is a Sunday, really; I might be tempted to go for it anyway and justify any illness I end up with as being the price one pays for drinking beer. Nobody gets off scot-free.* As I shall be being a good girl, I can only hope that they have good cider.

It is excessively cruel** taking me to a beer festival and not allowing me to sample the wares. I love good beer, and the beer at a festival should often be better than most, although the cider at the cider festival I attended was not all the best (nor was HWSNBN's feeling of wellness afterwards, for that matter).

Before the beer festival, we are to have dinner at our favourite local Indian restaurant (our favourite Indian restaurant is a Bangladeshi one (did I just contradict myself? Alas, I have the geography knowledge of a successful beauty pageant entrant) near the previous house, but this one does sherbet!). Anyway, it promises to be a tasty meal. There will be severe penalties for those who do a reverse performance of dinner, so I am hoping that everyone is nice and moderate.

Last week, when I opined to HWSNBN that he should be careful not to get too drunk at this beer festival, I was treated to the information that beer festivals are fine; one does not really get drunk at them. Cider festivals, are the problem, apparently. I asked him if he had ever met himself, but he remained steadfast; one does not get drunk at a beer festival. We shall see whether or not this anti-logic is true. I mean, we already know that it is not, but we will be able to see this for ourselves tomorrow. By "we", I do not include you, of course. I will not be blogging on Saturday after the beer festival. I mean me, HWSNBN, Serena, and HWSNBN's friend and his girlfriend, should they decide to come with us.

Now I am tired. I want the house to be set up neatly, and for me to be able to go to sleep for a long time, but instead I must go home, tidy up, then go off to do more organ practice for a couple of hours, return home and re-arrange some more furniture. We may have guests staying on Saturday evening, so we have to have both space in which to put them, and bedding to keep them warm. A challenge indeed!


*Does anybody know the origin of that expression? Would they care to enlighten me? I am too lazy to look in Wikipedia, apparently.

**Crueler, even, than taking me to a chocolate eclair factory.

Moving, part 3, felt and choir practice

That previous post was very dull indeed. Sorry about that. Now it has been said, and hopefully I won't be moving again for a long, long time. I want to be here for a year!

Yesterday evening I managed to excavate my piano. There is also a space in the middle of the living room floor: my re-arranging skills are resulting in a great tessellation of furniture. You would no doubt be amazed (or perhaps bemused) at some of the corners I have created.

Paniceth not.* The landlord will be coming this evening to remove all of the furniture that belongs to him (with the exception of the Lovely Chest of Drawers, which is taking up too much place in our bedroom and may be evicted, should we be unable to find a suitable home for it. This may, however, simply end up in another room within the house), thus leaving space for us to arrange our own furniture in a more advantageous manner. Once this has happened I can move my piano into the front room and move the settee from its precarious position upright next to the bed and into the living room. There might then be space in the bedroom for a wardrobe, and I can then start to unpack my suitcases full of dresses.

On Saturday, I should be going into Town. I am teaching a feltmaking workshop on Monday and need to try to obtain enough foam pads to ensure that people are at a substantially reduced risk of stabbing their own legs repeatedly (although only the really stupid ones** are likely to stab themselves repeatedly, and they probably deserve it. Who doesn't learn from being stabbed and take steps to avoid it in future?) by inserting a big thick thing in between the needle and their legs, and I should also be able to take a load of old clothes to the charity shop which will also help the mess in the bedroom (or perhaps we will have moved the charity shop box to a different room by this point). *** While I am in town I shall, of course, have to obtain more stuff. Other than the foam pads, I also want wire so that people can make frames for their felt creatures. I think that I have enough wool to go round (I just ordered some in varying shades of brown, in case they want to make conventional animals. It has just occurred to me that I have no black and should probably try to get hold of some black wool and also some beads for eyes. Thank you, blog, for making me think), and I have also purchased enough needles for up to 20 people to make their own felt creations. I am a bit low on scissors, but that should be easy enough to sort out.

I am dreading letting the marauding hordes get their hands on my wool selection, though. Although I am generally a very untidy person indeed, I am ever so slightly obsessive about making sure that every single wool is back in the appropriate bag as soon as I have finished my felting session (unless I am working in a single colour - it is acceptable to have one small piece of one colour left out). I think that I will end up with lots of bitty pieces of wool put back in bags containing very similar shades, which just will not do. Having said that, hopefully most people will not be using very many different colours, and will be able to keep track of where their bag goes. I think that I have about 40 different colours now, and there are only about four sets of two colours which are very hard to tell apart from each other. Unless, of course, there are colour-blind people present.

Tonight is the first choir practice in which I am required to play the piano. The pieces I am learning are not ready. One of them cannot be ready in time, but I may be able to force the other one into shape between the end of work and the practice. I do hope so; otherwise it will be very embarrassing.


*Not really a smooth flow from one paragraph to another here. Also, is that the correct form of panic for a plural?

**I include myself in this number.

***Was that the worst and most confusing sentence I ever wrote? I do hope so, insofar as I hope that I have never written anything worse than that.

Moving, part 2

We are installed in our new house. The move went very well, considering. I sort of want to write a big long post containing everything that happened (I know that if this were a blog I read, I would feel cheated if the writer were to fail to do so for me; one day I expect I shall read this, and may be disappointed with the omission) but I am too tired. I shall write and see what comes out. The whole story may well do so... Additionally, I have told the story so many times that it bores me. But you have not heard it yet, and so you might not be bored by it.

So, the move started on Friday evening. Actually, it started on Friday lunchtime. I went round to the house and covered a couple of carpets with Shake & Vac (Neutradol edition) and hoovered (well, dysoned) one of them, before running out of time and getting stuck in the supermarket when somebody with many items beat me to the checkout and didn't offer to let me go first (which I totally would have done for her as I am perfect in every way, of course; my slight indignation is therefore perfectly well justified).

After work I went back to the house and covered all of the remaining carpets with Shake & Vac, and dysoned all but two of them. I then swept the kitchen and was working on finishing dysoning the living room (the penultimate carpet) when the parents, Robert and Anne arrived (HWSNBN was staying at the old house and packing, which was very kind of him). Mother put the dinner on, Anne and I went to Serena's house to acquire some chairs (it's so much fun having neighbours with chairs!), and then we had a tour of the house and started assigning curtains to rooms. Then, having failed to get any curtains up, we ate dinner. This was a beef casserole, with peas, fried new potatoes, peas, peas and peas, and was very tasty. As were the peas. I have learned that one bag of frozen peas is more than sufficient for feeding five people.

After dinner, the work really started. People started cleaning cupboards and walls, Mother did an amazing job of cleaning the grill, and I slunk upstairs to clean the bathroom. The magic vacuum cleaner came out and started vacuuming under the sink, and new and amazing discoveries were made in the kitchen cupboards. One of the back boards has rotted through completely, which is very yummy. HWSNBN has put the pans in that one now.

By 10.30 we were fed up. Robert and Father went back to the old house, and Mother, Anne and I went to pick up the van (I collected the keys for the van at 5.30, but didn't want to drive it any further than necessary, nor to park it on my new street). It was much better than the last van we hired from that place: it liked to go in straight lines.

When we got back HWSNBN and I loaded up boxes from the front room into the van, found bedspace for everyone and went to his mum's house to sleep in our bed settee, which currently resides in her spare room.

Wow. I have no idea whether or not this is boring you, but it is not exciting me. If you give up at this point, you are forgiven. If you gave up earlier you are forgiven, but you may never know without reading this bit...

Saturday morning happened next, as is its wont. We got up really early (for me for a Saturday morning, at least; not early by most non-students' standards), and were ready to start the move by 9. By 10 we had a vanload of stuff ready to go, so HWSNBN and I set off together in the van. We picked up German 1 on the way (although we had to leave behind his wife and baby due to lack of space), and had a quick run round the house to pick up curtains and move the landlord's furniture into one room for easy collection by him, before starting to bring the boxes into the appropriate rooms (we started off so well!). When that was done we returned home and started to load the van again. We were starting to get hungry and Mother was making lunch (bacon and mushroom butties) and cups of tea, so this took a long time. German Wife was wanting to walk to the new house with Baby, so I felt really bad about the time it was taking, especially as I had given an unrealistically optimistic estimate about how long we would be taking. We finally got the van loaded and put German 1, Robert and HWSNBN in it, then I went with Father to HWSNBN's mum's garage to collect a load of boxes in his estate car.

Now it occurs to me that this is getting extremely boring. Suffice to say it carried on a bit like this until 7.30, with Mother doing an excellent job of cleaning the old house and packing the occasional box while I tried to be useful and mostly just managed to be inefficient. At 7.30 we gave up for a bit and all went to the new house. Serena and I went out looking for dinner. The Chinese take-away we both adore was closed, so we had to go to the one we used to frequent the year after I graduated, when I lived in the centre of Town. I think that they eventually understood about making two of the dishes gluten-free (I had no gluten-type repercussions), and dinner was received enthusiastically. Mine was very hot. I don't think that I will have that exact dish again.

After dinner, the parents worked to make the new house ready for the night and HWSNBN, Robert and I went to move heavy things (such as the washing machine) from the old house to HWSNBN's mum's garage. By 11.30 we had finished this and loaded the van with a lot of the rest of the contents of the old house, including the fridge. By 12.30 we had returned the van and got to Serena's house - we stayed there overnight as she has a spare bed and we did not have enough space for beds for six people. Serena's mattress is very nice indeed; I want one like that!

On Sunday I did not have to go to church, so we went round to the old house and cleaned/emptied it. Mother and Father were amazing, and cleaned/moved massive amounts of stuff between them. I could only marvel at their efficiency (really, helping would have been more useful). After a while of ineffective helping, I went outside to get the garden ready. I emptied plant pots and planted bulbs, then sorted plant pots (well, delegated the task to Anne in the form of the "stack the plant pots in size order" game, with which she was not delighted), then swept the path repeatedly.

We also had lunch. Mother was delighted with her discovery that a pan lid makes a great emergency plate. Anne tried to spread butter with a fork. Much merriment was had by all. HWSNBN finished the ice cream, except for the really dodgy-looking bit at the bottom.

When that was mostly over, the parents, Robert and Anne went home. It was sad waving goodbye to them from the last time from that doorway. We loaded the car, then went ourselves; we were due at Serena's for dinner.

(Running out of steam here, you will be glad to hear.)

Serena cooked a lovely diner for us. We only had 30 minutes for dinner, as I had to be at Motherchurch for evensong and an organ lesson; it was very generous of Serena to cook for us under those circumstances.

Evensong was confusing. I didn't know what was going on, I lined up wrong, and I had to sight-sing some pieces during the service. Not really very easy! It will get better, though. One of the men in the choir was saying that he had just been thinking that the choir should get some female altos, so apparently my timing was good.

After that, I had my first organ lesson for nearly a decade. I have picked up some bad habits. The lesson went well, considering, but hopefully next week's will go better. I think that the main thing that I established was that I have to work on using my toes effectively and appropriately (the insides of the toes are fine to use, but the outsides are not), and on being able to find the pedal notes by feel, rather than relying on just knowing where they are. Being able to do that will improve my playing a lot, and should also make it a lot easier.

We started to look at a piece I got close to OK a few months ago. Apparently it is a hard piece. This made me feel a bit better - I thought that it was an easy piece but that I just wasn't very good. It turns out that the hardest bit is yet to come: I have to use the swell pedal!

Let me tell you about the swell pedal. Many organs are built with one section of pipes in a large box. This box is called the swell box, and the pipes are linked to one manual (normally the top one if the organ has three or fewer manuals); this is known as the swell organ. Shutters on the side of the box can be opened and closed to make the music louder or quieter by means of a large pedal in the middle of the piece of wood - it pivots, and when the top is closer to you the box is closed; when the top is away from you, the box is open.

Anyway, I have to be able to use one foot on the pedals, and one on the swell pedal: I have to operate the swell pedal while also moving the other foot around to play different notes. This is hard. Two hands and one foot each doing a unique thing involving much pressing is one thing, but when the second foot (and it varies which the second foot is, according to the music) has to do a different thing in a different place while the first foot carries on as normal that is a whole new matter. My co-ordination is terrible (although it is improving!), and so far I have not been able to do both actions at the same time. I think that I shall have to practise with just the pedals first. I need to be OK at this by Sunday, at which point I have another lesson. Hmm.

After my lesson I went home and worked on getting the house looking better. When I got back I saw that HWSNBN had made an excellent job of tidying the kitchen: some of the equipment had been put away and there was space down the middle of it. I was impressed. I worked on getting the bed ready (and failed at this - I got too cold in the night and nearly pushed HWSNBN out of bed by moving towards him to get the heat. Alas, he moved away from me, repeatedly, and then there was no bed left for him) and some clothes put away.

We got to bed late. I was very tired the next day and am still very tired now. It is hard to think, and I do not know when I will next be capable of doing anything useful other than unpacking. I'm not even doing well at that now - I need the landlord to come and get rid of all of his furniture so that I have an extra half-room with which to play.

So at the moment the house is a complete tip. The main settee frame is leaning against the wall next to the bed, there is no wardrobe to hang things so my dresses are still in suitcases around the bedroom, my room has a clearing, HWSNBN's room has a desk and a computer network (what can I say? He works fast), the living room is slowly being unearthed and the front room is full of unwanted furniture AND wanted furniture, books, DVDs, coats and other as yet unidentified boxes, plus a few plants thrown in for good measure. The curtains are closed today because there is no way I am making my way over that assault course before breakfast.

On the positive side, the bed is good and I have my underwear. I will soon have clean trousers in sizes that fit me, and bits of the kitchen are well-organised. The bathroom is not terrible (depending on where you look), and the bath fills up very quickly. Also, the house feels like home. I think that I will like living here. The bedroom feels like my sort of space, and the kitchen is growing on me (probably in the literal sense). I am happy to be here. Terrified about the playing I must do tomorrow evening (must unearth the piano to practise!), but pleased with how things are going. Yay!

:-(

We are in the painfully messy process of emptying the loft. HWSNBN passed a box down to me and spider poo fell off it into my eye. He made a disgusted noise but offered no sympathy.

Also, my new walls are sticky.

Who needs a point?

I have had a few days of not feeling particularly excellent. I have intended to be very busy, but mostly wasted time and packed little (good use of time is measured in boxes per hour). I have achieved a bit of organ practice, but I am unhappy with the number of wrong notes I am still playing. I will not be ready for this "audition" on Sunday. Damn this "turning up to work every day" thing.

This evening I poked some bits of wood with sharp things and left some marks. I also cut and sellotaped massive amounts of paper together. Truly, I have had a productive day.

I have now arranged to go to London to look around a few organs, though. When I say "arranged", it is more a case of having booked transport and asked a friend nicely if she will let me stay with her, then put my booking form for the event in an envelope with a stamp and address on; the posting of the envelope still has not been achieved. Hopefully this will take place tomorrow.

Oh yes - I started to learn to knit yesterday evening. I am not very good at it. I am going to knit a few more rows then unravel it and start again. My second draft will contain fewer superfluous holes. I may show photographs so you can share in my shame (although there may be no shame in being unable to knit), but then again I may just say that I packed my camera or USB cable and am therefore unable to put photos on the blog. That is entirely plausible, given that I am in the midst of packing, and so you would be none the wiser! What could possibly go wrong?

See? You don't have to have done anything of note to write a blog post. What helps, I would imagine, is being awake enough to string together groups of sentences into coherent paragraphs. I don't know that for sure, though.

As an experiment, I will try getting enough sleep and see if I am more coherent/interesting tomorrow. Naturally, I will have many moments of genius during the day when I am not blogging (snigger) but hopefully I will also retain a few pearls of wisdom with which I can enliven your existence. *

*Yes, that is sarcasm. I am too tired to be able to tell whether that is likely to be taken as patronising or as an example of irony. I am actually not of the opinion that your existence needs enlivening at all; it sounds rather exciting/relaxing/stimulating/terrifying** to me.

**Delete as appropriate.