Domestic Goddesque

They say that life is what happens while you are making other plans. Welcome to my world. In my head, the move was simple, straight-forward and very carefully orchestrated. I had made lists, cross-referenced things, booked and double-checked bookings and explained to the packers exactly what they needed to do and when. The reality fell way short of the mark and as I sat on the sitting room floor of my new home breastfeeding my 4 week old baby whilst I watched the movers playing Blackjack in the back of their truck through the window, I started to cry. I cried when I discovered all 14 kitchen boxes were labelled ‘China and Glass- Fragile’ and I had to unpack every one just to find a spoon. I cried when I realised that all my baking things had been left behind and subsequently thrown out by the new owner (the burden eased slightly by the discovery that Lakeland is opening a store RIGHT HERE IN BROMLEY in August.) I cried as both the hoover we brought with us and the hoover we bought to replace it broke, because it appears the carpets haven’t been cleaned in the last five years. Then there was the discovery that the ‘Garden Room’ is more a ‘Wet Room’ when it rains, that the light fittings all need replacing, that the heating and hot water system has not been working properly ‘for a good 18 months’ according to the plumber I had to pay a call-out charge to yesterday when it stopped working altogether. And so it goes on.

Although Sky came first thing the day after we moved to get our satellite system working (a girl needs something to watch whilst feeding…) we couldn’t find which box the TV cable had been packed in, and then when we did, the sound didn’t work. Although BT transferred our line the day we moved, we couldn’t find the box the phones were packed in, and when we did, discovered there was a fault on the line. There was the sofa delivery-that DH took the day off work for-that never materialised. Instead a man in a High-Vis vest (and no shirt- all the better to display his tattoos) with a fag in one hand and crumpled delivery sheet in the other rocked up the next day, looked at me cradling my new baby and gave a menacing grunt when informed that there was no-one here to help him unload. When delivering large unwieldy sofas, it seems one delivery man is all it needs, and as he threw (OK- a slight exaggeration) the sofa from the side of his truck and rolled it across the driveway, I prayed it would be in one piece when we opened the box- Scary Driver was hardly going to react well to being made to throw it back on the truck.

I am torn every day between wanting to sit and cuddle my little girl, who is growing so fast, and getting things straight. ‘Call X’ and ‘Get quotes for Y’ have been at the top of my list of ‘to dos’ for days but somehow, by the time I have fed & changed Squeaky, stared at her for a while, done the laundry, thrown the ball for the much-neglected and more wonderful than ever Wonder Hound, the day has gone and I am propping my eyes open with matchsticks and praying that the DH is on the train. The weekends are filled with feeding the baby, catching up on sleep, feeding ourselves and catching up with friends, all of whom want to see Squeaky and/or the new house. But what the heck- with the economic climate and the state of the housing market, we will be living here for a very considerable amount of time. So we don’t have any curtains. What’s the rush?

In addition to the issues I have been having with the wunderkinder at Blueberry, I am adding TalkTalk to my list of Most Wanted. I actually had a Cutomer Representative laugh at me a while ago. And not because I made a joke. I’m thinking of a word and it rhymes with Banker…

To soothe the soul, and feed the many visitors we are enjoying since the arrival of our little Burrito, I have been baking. I can hear the gasps from here. It’s been so long since I was able to really enjoy baking, the SPD I had during my pregnancy made it very hard for me to stand for the periods of time required in the baking process. I am still suffering the after-effects, but not to the same degree, and as I have the luxury of a part-time husband and full-time mother on hand to help run the house, walk the dog and cuddle my baby daughter, I have been able to indulge in almond-cake-making.

Almond & Prune Cake

Ingredients:
200g each butter, sugar, ground almonds
3 tbsp plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
1.5 tsp almond essence
12-14 stoned prunes

Method:
1. Grease a round baking tin (one that you’d use for your christmas cake) and preheat oven to 160C.
2. Cream butter and sugar, then beat eggs in one by one (add some of the flour after each egg to stop splitting.) Add almond essence and beat well.
3. Fold in almonds, baking powder and remaining flour.
4. If mixture is too stiff, then stir in a small amount of milk until mixture is of the ‘thick double cream’ consistency.
5. Arrange prunes on bottom of cake tin, pour over cake mix and bake for about an hour. Check with skewer- if it comes out clean, then the cake is done.
6. Cool, then turn onto a plate so that the pruney side is on top, dust with icing sugar and serve. Should stay moist for several days, though the cake probably won’t last that long!
7. NB: Alternatively bung all the ingredients except prunes into a Magimix and whizz until blended. Again, add a little milk if needed. Follow instructions from item 5.

I think I have a little left over- perfect for my mid-afternoon pre-feed snack. I shall enjoy it in the garden with a glass of cordial and this week’s Hello! magazine, and stare in amazement at my sleeping baby until she wakes! Life doesn’t get much better than this….well, that is if you forget all about the useless Bankers at TalkTalk.

Cecily Jean Olivia (CJ) born Sunday 18th May 2008 at 12:55pm, and weighing 7lbs 1oz and pretty damn perfect.

Technology has always been bloody annoying, breaking down at the worst possible moments, crashing before you’ve saved something really important, lacking a signal when you have an emergency. I’ve been suffering broadband issues of late; a whole thirty seconds of internet activity before it is snatched from me; hours wasted trying to get the wireless back up and running. And technological blight struck again yesterday. I put my Blackberry down on my bedside table whilst I had a nap, and woke to find it wouldn’t work. I assumed the battery had gone dead and plugged it in, but three hours later I still couldn’t get it going. I did all the stuff that people recommend: remove the battery and replace, try another charger and another socket, get your husband to have a look at it. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero.

I called O2 this morning first thing and they told me I’d need to return the phone to them and I’d get it back within 7-10 days. Can you imagine life without your phone for ten days? Especially when your phone is also your email, your address book and your personal organiser? Especially when you are pregnant and a) have a brain like a sieve and b) need your phone with you 24/7 in case you go into labour? I did what I do best at the moment and burst into tears, then shouted, then begged. The voice at the end of the phone suggested as I bought the phone in store, I should go back to the store and see if they could help. So despite the heat and the Hobbit-sized feet and the general difficulty walking, I did as instructed. And was told the same thing. So I did the same thing and was rewarded with a ‘courtesy phone’ so basic I can barely use it. It uses my number, which is good. It didn’t however transfer my numbers, my diary or my email. So I have a method of calling out, but no idea of the number to dial.

In addition to which, I had to call the people who make the Blackberry, as the guy in the O2 store got left on hold for 20 minutes whilst I was there and I got bored of waiting. Then I spent nearly an hour on hold doing the same thing. So I emailed them. They send out freepost packaging in which you send them your useless Blackberry and they return it when fixed. But as they have yet to acknowledge my email, I have no idea if this packaging is in the post. And even when it does arrive, I still have to get back to the Post Office to send it back to them and wait the 7-10 days to get my phone/life back. All of which means I will have a courtesy phone, for which I had to pay a deposit, for the next two weeks. And I will have to learn how to text the old fashioned way. And only check my emails from home. But most significantly, should I go into labour, and therefore hospital, I won’t have the carefully compiled collection of inspiring photos I recently uploaded to motivate me, or the carefully double-checked list of emails so that I can let friends and family know the good news.

I literally feel like I’ve lost my life. I had no idea that I was so attached to technology. Or that technology could not live up to it’s responsibilities. It needs to start.

I have a basket in my bedside table that is filled with a stash of books I am in the process of reading, or planning on reading. It also has a stash of cards given to me by my beloved, together with ticket stubs from flights, cinema trips, theatrical events and the like that DH and I have enjoyed together. These I use as bookmarks. I leave them inside the books, often for months, so that whenever I open the page I am reminded of a lovely moment in my life and it makes me smile, and remember why I fell in love and who I fell in love with.

The books in the basket range from the hardback books the lovely DH buys me for my birthday to something I got free with the Evening Standard. At the moment the proportion of chick lit is slightly higher than average, since my brain cells seem to be diminishing with every day, and there are tomes to do with pregnancy and birth that I have read from cover to cover, found wanting and have yet to move to another bookcase or use as doorstops. It is with gratitude that, when I followed Nunhead Mum’s instructions to pick up the nearest book, I realised I had the abridged version and that it didn’t in fact have the requisite 123 pages. I can’t imagine three sentences from Clare Byam-Cook’s ‘What to Expect When You Are Breastfeeding and What If You Can’t?’ would be entertaining to the varied readership of the DG blog.

To explain a little better, I am required by NM to do the following:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag people to do the same, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Therefore, I came across the following quote from ‘The Short Life & Long Times of Mrs Beeton’ by Kathryn Hughes:

What a contrast is my frigid disposition to your generous, warm-hearted dear
self; it often strikes me, but you know I cannot help it, it is my nature…You
have guessed my weak point, for if there is one thing more than others I detest,
[it] is to be chafed in that quiet manner as you did in the note I received this
morning…Now my darling I must say goodbye, hoping you will freely pardon this
my first offence (at least I hope so), with much love,
Believe me my dearest
boy,
Yours penitently and most lovingly,
Isabella Mayson
Pray don’t
write any more cutting letters as you did yesterday, or I don’t know what will
be the consequence.

I think the book was a Christmas gift from my mother. I also think, on the basis of this extract, it will be a while before I get round to reading it! Now, for the last part, I have just to tag, since the acknowledging has been done. Who would appreciate the challenge?

Wakeup has a lot on her mind right now, but might appreciate the distraction; Gwen likes to read;and CJ likes to write… a short yet distinguished list. I have laid down the gauntlet, but feel free to step over it as you walk on towards more important things.

I am sitting on our bed watching the torrential rain soak the fools who are dressed for summer, and leaning up against a veritable mountain of pillows and duvets. This is not for my benefit, though I am very comfy, but for the WH, who is currently cowering inside the feather fortress, hiding from the thunder. Every so often her nose pokes out from under a pillow to see if the coast is clear, and to check that her bodyguard (me) is still in situ, then disappears back into the dark lair. I feel quite sorry for her, but can’t help laughing. I remember a telephone conversation, once upon a time, in which my Nan described having to bundle her dog in a duvet in the midst of a thunder storm. The dog in question was a border collie called Fantasia, and probably the same size as Nan and we were literally crying with laughter at the thought of this WWF bout as it was described all the way from England over the speakerphone.

I’ve never really been good with thunder which, given that I’ve grown up in places where tropical storms are as frequent as buses, is quite an impediment. Since I’ve had to start burying the dog, my concerns about the noise and drama (something I should ordinarily love, let’s face it!) have lessened. It’s the same with being on my own. DH’s schedule of court appearances varies greatly; sometimes he can go for months without so much as a sniff, and other times, he seems to be on a train to Cardiff or Manchester or Maidstone every day. Oftentimes it makes more sense to ‘stay over’ the night before, rather than set of for the great unknown at 4am. It’s never been something I enjoy, since I don’t sleep as well without him. When you are on your own in a house, you hear noises you never noticed before, you find many more spiders in corners and you begin to wonder if the monster-under-the-bed that used to worry you as a child is in fact still there. BD (Before Dog) I always slept with the hall light on; all the better for seeing the thieves come up the stairs towards me or something. I don’t know, but it gave me comfort. From when we were babies, my mother always left our bedroom doors ajar and the hall light on. She didn’t like the idea of us waking in the dark and being afraid. I suspect she had similar insecurities about thieves and spiders and monsters-under-the-bed (to be fair we lived in countries where mosquitoes buzzed and cockroaches scuttled around in the darkness). DH of course is much manlier and didn’t like me leaving the light on when we first moved in together. Now it’s a moot point since the notorious D-O-G sleeps with us; we keep the bedroom door closed to prevent her nocturnal wanderings. Even when DH is off earning a crust, the door stays closed and the light stays off. WH keeps a watchful eye for monsters and spiders and thieves from her master’s pillow. And, thunderstorms aside, I usually get a reasonable night’s sleep.

Well, I’m thirty years past one, but my little blog is one, or was last week. I was going to have a party- you know, pass-the-parcel, little sandwiches, a cake with candles, a few sugar-crazed kids and a bunch of parents necking Champagne. But then I thought, what’s the point? One-year-olds never appreciate the efforts you go to; they don’t remember their first party and they don’t really get what all the fuss is about. So I decided not to bother.

I did get a delivery of children’s books this weekend- Charlie and Lola stories that were on offer in a pregnancy magazine. As I put them on the shelf in the nursery, I considered all the lovely books that I was given at the Baby Shower. They range from the very contemporary ‘Everybody Poos’ to the more traditional ‘When We Were Very Young’. I took them down and flicked through the pages, even reading a couple to the bump. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t read; when there wasn’t a time that I didn’t see my mum or dad with a book in their hand or by their bed. I remember reading to The Lad when he was, well a Lad. I remember getting home from school with a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, sitting down on the sofa and not budging until I had read the last sentence. I remember getting my Danielle Steel books confiscated at Prep School because they were inappropriate reading material, despite the fact that my mum had sent me off to school with them- there really wasn’t the wealth of teenage reading material that there is now.

All of which got me thinking about some of the children’s books that I have come to love over the years:

1. The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark- such a classic. My friends and I all get a wistful look in our eye when we talk about Plop. Of course the book never made me feel more comfortable about the dark, but I loved reading it

2. Guess How Much I Love You- a modern classic about Big Nut Brown Hare and Little Nut Brown Hare. The last line never fails to make me cry. And the illustrations are so beautiful.

3. The Magic of the Faraway Tree- more awesome illustrations. I was given a beautiful hard-back copy of the Enid Blyton Stories one birthday by an aunt and absolutely loved the idea of a tree that had different worlds stop at the top, and a slide down the inside.

4. I Want My Potty- Tony Ross hit a blinder with this one. The subsequent stories of the little Princess are very good at teaching small people.

5. Each Peach Pear Plum- another classic that weaves all the nursery rhyme characters that we know into a great tale.

6. The Very Hungry Caterpillar- needs no explanation. I have two copies.

7. Moving Molly- beautiful drawings by Shirley Hughes, and such a nice, old-fashioned tale. Plus my mum is called Molly, so I used to tell everyone that the book was written about her! I have a fondness for all Shirley Hughes books in fact.

8. All the Dr Seuss books- silly, irreverent and so much fun watching your parents stumble over the tongue-twisting stories.

9. Dear Zoo- a simple lift-the-flap book about animals, and which one is just right for you. Our house is insanely pro-doggy, so this is always going to be a winner.

10. Please Mrs Butler- A rhyme book that everybody gets to read at some point in school…Timothy Winters anyone?

Of course I could go on for page after page- every day a new kid’s book comes out that I love. It was one of my favourite things about being a nanny (that and keeping abreast of the latest Disney/Pixar releases) getting to read them all…Room on the Broom, Slinky Malinki, The Gruffalo, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Mr Tick the Teacher, Kipper. DH and I have always said that if you want to spoil our kids, buy books. There’s no such thing as too many. I’m really looking forward to having bookshelves that are full to bursting.