Domestic Goddesque » DG Manor

Death, Nutella and the best way to kill a mouse.

Domestic Goddesque — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:07:28 +0000

As I stepped bleary eyed into the Wet Room this morning, I checked the floor carefully. Walking barefoot in a house with potties stationed at every door and a recalcitrant dog who refuses to crap outside is always a risk so it pays to look where you are going. In this instance though, I wasn’t scouting for crap as I let the dog out into the garden. I was on the hunt.

One of the disadvantages of living in an old house, particularly an old house that needs work, is that it is prone to attack from all sorts of things. The bathroom installation was held up by not one but five large wasp nests earlier in the year, for example. And around that time I had a close encounter that I have no intention of repeating. Whilst sitting at traffic lights on the school run, both girls secure in their car seats, I noticed movement in the passenger footwell. A second glance revealed the movement to be a mouse.

I am so deeply impressed with myself for not a) swearing like a fishwife or b) abandoning the car where it waited for a green light with the engine running. I carried calmly on with the school run so as not to alarm the girls and, having dropped them both off, marched into the nearest hardware store, begged to buy half a dozen of the best traps they had. Thus followed the question that has haunted me since:

“Do you want to catch them alive or dead?”

I am a hardened townie. I am not terribly good with the notion of livestock, whether they supply milk or meat. I am quite happy to enjoy Foie Gras and other such delicacies without knowing the manner in which they came to be on the plate in front of me. I sometimes even believe that milk does come from a supermarket. The idea of killing an innocent little mouse was awful. But the idea of having to carry a live rodent somewhere to release it totally made up my mind and twenty minutes later I had three traps in the passenger footwell of the car. For good measure I put a couple on the Wet Room (aka the laundry/pantry that has a leaky roof) as the dog had been sniffing the corners interestedly for a couple of days. On the advice of the man in the hardware store, I avoided cheese as bait (good, because we are a cheese-free house) and went with Nutella and Peanut Butter.

12 hours later and there was a dead mouse in the pantry and one in the car. 24 hours after that another two, one of which had been caught by the tip of his nose and was thus alive, so I did what any Retro-Housewife would do and got Bathroom Guy to deal with it. I found it in a trap the following morning, definitely dead this time. In all, I was responsible (with a little help from Ferrero and Sunpat) for the deaths of nine mice.

It was only later that we discovered that the car-based rodents had gnawed through our ‘Emergency Raincoats’ which were stored inside the spare tyre, turning them into lace. In addition they had obviously nibbled the front casing of the engine since when it rained the passenger footwell would have made an excellent Mouse Swimming Pool: a great tale if you are Beatrix Potter but not so useful if you are planning on driving eight hours through the French Countryside some time soon.

Shortly after that particular discovery we ‘upgraded’ our car to a rodent-free one.

The temperatures have fallen somewhat in the past few days, which has had an inversely proportional effect on the Domestic Goddesque Death Toll. Yesterday I deposited three, presumable still-warm, carcasses in the bin. The Wonder Hound has very helpfully dragged their little bodies from the corner where I had secreted the trap onto the back door mat to make them easier to find. Little Big Girl found them first, which lead to a very interesting discussion, the result of which was a shudder and a “I think I don’t like rats, Mamma. Don’t do it again.”

I have a feeling however, that there will be more bodies to come as winter sets in. I find I no longer flinch picking up the trap and springing the dead mouse free. I calmly fill the bait hole with tempting treats and then thrust the knife used in the dishwasher to be boiled clean. It’s becoming part of my routine. I am now a serial killer. Eeek.

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Wonderful, wonderful Bromley, and why I live there.

Domestic Goddesque — Tue, 10 May 2011 21:16:22 +0000

Where we live has nothing to do with me. Actually, that’s not true: I found the house, but the reason we have a house in Bromley is down to a random conversation DH had with one of the boys at work one day way back when we were first dating. He had just finished doing up a flat he bought in Blackheath and we had been together for a couple of months, enjoying weekends together having breakfast on the balcony and lunches in the pub. He casually mentioned one weekend (I lived and worked in Surrey during the week) that he’d heard Bromley was a good place to live.

A bus journey from Lewisham to the largest London borough and we were looking in Estate Agents’ windows for somewhere for him to live. At least I assumed it was him. A few weeks into our search and he started calling it ‘our house’, which was when I realised he must have had the conversation in his head so many times that he forgot to ask me to move in with him.

And that was it- nine months after first meeting in person (we met online) we moved into our first home together. And we still stand by our decision, moving only a few minutes from our first house to DG Manor just after PD was born. DH sometimes talks hypothetically about moving out to the Beach House, but I stand firm. Living in Bromley works so well for us. We are a few minutes’ walk from the station (Zone 5 for those of you who care about London Transport Zones- which means no season ticket) which offers frequent trains into City Thameslink (25 minutes) and London Victoria (13 minutes). DH’s journey to work can be done on foot at the other end, and it’s easy for me to get into London for dinner with friends after The Girls are in bed, or to see one of the many shows and exhibitions that London has to offer.

Closer to home we have an excellent shopping centre, replete with standard high street stores, plenty of eateries to suit every budget, from Nando’s to Chapter One. I can walk to Waitrose, a local Post Office and every child-centred event you could want. Our local primary school is a five-minute stroll, though we have chosen to go down the Private route. There are an excellent number of good schools, State or Private in the area, though that certainly wasn’t a concern when we moved. I am 10 minutes from our local hospital, which has proved more useful than I would like. And I can drive to half-a-dozen local areas to trawl their charity shops in ten minutes.

The transport links are excellent- trains go into London but also out, to Sevenoaks, Dover and Ramsgate. We are 15 minutes drive from the M25, M2 and M20, so getting out of London to visit relatives is simple, as is getting to the coast which is about an hour away. We can be in the countryside in 10 minutes, enjoying one of dozens of picturesque pubs, beautiful views and country walks.

We genuinely believe we have the best of everything here. We got so much more space for our money that we would have done had we stayed in Blackheath. We have built up a circle of local friends for playdates, and parties and there are lots of after-school clubs that our children can join in when they are older (DH has already scoped out the Hockey Clubs) and we look forward to filling our weekends with matches and parties and the other stuff that comes with growing children. Bromley is a wonderful place to raise them and I can’t imagine living anywere else.

I’m hoping this helps Ella at Notes from Home who is considering finding a new place to live.

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Togetherness at The Gallery

Domestic Goddesque — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:29:58 +0000

Week nights at DG Manor are often tough, and by this hour I am usually counting the minutes until DH walks through the door by this point in the day. Being self-employed, he doesn’t have conventional 9-5 working hours (who does these days?) so there is no guarantee that he will see The Girls before they go to bed. Sometimes, despite his best efforts, a few minutes of delay for South Eastern rail is the difference between being able to read bedtime stories and having to kiss sleeping babies.

He has made an extraordinary effort since we started our family to be home and help with bath time, particularly when I was heavily pregnant and afflicted with SPD, then trying to juggle a newborn and a two-year-old. But as his business gets busier and our babies get bigger, togetherness at bedtime is not a definite anymore.

Ladies who lunch

Which is why weekends are so special. We spend a lot of them on the Kent Coast, separated from The Great Commute by physical and mental distance, and able to really focus on our children, our love, our relationship. We each get a lie-in, we have all our meals together, we share the nappies and the tantrums. And we give our attention to Threeva and Dimples. It’s not big showy stuff, but walks on the beach, or making cakes, or dancing in the sitting room. We relish our chance to eat out as a family which continues, despite our recent experience, and were proud as anything when a diner went out of their way to tell us how wonderfully behaved The Girls were this weekend. Because they are: Threeva chats with us about all sorts of things and Dimples smiles and babbles, happily joining in. We Girls regularly fall asleep together on the sofa whilst watching Hairy Cats (Aristocats) after a long walk. Then, once they are bathed and in bed, there is a chance for DH and I to have supper together and watch a movie, or read books silently, side by side on the same sofa.

What I especially love at the moment is the journey home: listening, at Threeva’s request, to audio books in the car. Our current favourite is My Naughty Little Sister, which has lessons which carry over into our life quite well. But when she’s had enough, and is getting tetchy, on come the songs, and a voice orders from the cheap seats: “Join in Dad!”. I’ve no idea what others would think, looking into the car at us all singing madly to Old MacDonald, but it never fails to make us smile. So the weekends really are a special time for us all to enjoy being together, a time which I often have to hold onto throughout the Witching Hours during the week.

Now go over to The Gallery and see what others have posted for this weeks’s theme of Togetherness.

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Seven ways you can use your baby weight to lose your baby weight

Domestic Goddesque — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 09:25:00 +0000

It’s a common desire, albeit after you’ve given birth and spent a few months adjusting to what it means to be responsible for a small crying baby 24 hours a day, to want to do something about your appearance. There are some lucky people who seem to effortlessly be back in their pre-pregnancy Jeans six weeks after having a baby, but for most of us, it’s hard work shedding the few extra pounds. It is, however, effort that pays off, whether you are planning on having more children or are all done with the procreation phase of your life. As this is my Better year, I am keen to get in better shape, particularly as I don’t plan to have any more children. Because I have yet to fully recover from the SPD that plagued both my pregnancies, I am taking it slowly, no bad thing since it’s not always easy to get a designated chunk of exercise time when you respond to the whims of the Threeva and her Dimpled Sidekick. No doubt in the Perfect-Housewife-World of the 1950′s I’d fit in Calisthenics before the sun had risen then whip up a batch of wholesome pancakes and bacon before sending my husband off to work with a kiss and the promise of a lamb chop on his return. At DG Manor, it’s a case of grabbing five minutes whilst the Dimpled One is otherwise amused.

As she has not been easily amused of late, a combination of teething and constipation, I’ve had to adapt and thus offer you seven exercises that you can do easily at home, whilst simultaneously entertaining your small child and using their weight to your advantage. Hence using your baby’s weight to lose your baby weight:

Squats: stand with your feet just more than shoulder width apart and facing forwards, holding your baby in front of you. Squat slowly down until your legs are at 90 degrees, then stand up again, raising your arms, and baby above your head until fully extended. Depending on the age of the infant and your fitness levels, you can either hold the baby to your chest or at arms length. A good one for arms and legs.
Sit-stand: sit on a dining chair, or firm arm chair, ideally at a height so that your legs are roughly bent at 90 degrees. Holding your baby to your chest, simply stand up and sit down. it doesn’t sound that hard, but this will tone your bum and thighs very well.
Step-twist: holding the baby in your hands, lunge to the left, bringing baby across your chest and out to the left, then step back to centre. Repeat in the other direction. The twist will work your waist and tummy, as well as your legs.
Aeroplane: lying down, with your knees bent so that your back is firmly flat against the floor, hold the baby in the air above your chest then lift them up and over your head as if they were flying, then bring them back to your chest. Dimples finds this hilarious. Ensure that this is a slow controlled move and that your back is pressed firmly to the floor whilst you move the baby. Don’t stretch further than you feel comfortable.
Press a: lie the baby on the floor then, on your hands and knees, place your hands either side of the baby’s head, slowly dipping forward to touch your nose to the baby’s. This is essentially a push-up but a short one, so that your weight is supported on your knees rather than your toes. Or Press b: lay on the floor on your back, knees bent and feet firmly on the floor and, holding the baby in front of you, raise and lower your arms in a bench press.
Steps: Holding the baby in your arms (or a sling if you have one) and march up and down your bottom step for two minutes. This will tone your legs and get your heart rate going so if you are doing a concerted ‘routine’ this is the best one to start with.
Extend: Lying once more on the floor, bring your legs up in the air and bend so that your thighs are at 90 degrees to your body and your shins are parallel. Lay the baby on their tummy on your shins and, holding their hands, slowly extend your legs directly out as far as they can go then bring them back in. This is known as flying in our house, and is done with The Threeva as well as Dimples.

You can do one of these exercises at a time when you have five minutes in front of the television or with a non-sleeping child, or all of them together in a designated work-out. Start with ten repetitions of each and build the numbers up. when they start to feel a bit easy. They are all designed to tone the bits of your body that tend to bulk out during pregnancy and feeding. And no, I’m not a professional, but these exercises were given to me by the trainer who is working with me to conquer my SPD. If you are in any doubt about your fitness post-baby, check with your GP before commencing any strenuous form of exercise.

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Dear 2011: a letter to the year ahead

Domestic Goddesque — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 15:26:00 +0000

With apologies to Kat at 3 Bedroom Bungalow.…

Dear 2011,

I don’t know how well you know 2010. Frankly, I’m hoping that you two weren’t that close, since I have very little to say about her that isn’t unpleasant. 2010 was not the nicest of years as far as I could tell. It’s been a jolly long 365 days in her company. I’ve had plenty of sleepless nights, some caused of course by the new addition to our family, but many others caused by worry, depression and illness.

I though that 2010 and I were rubbing along quite well to begin with: there was some difficulty to start with, given my pregnancy-related SPD and the general difficulties of having a newborn, particularly when juggling said newborn with a toddler who already owns the universe and everything in it. I confess I thought that, given my circumstances, I’d get a bit of sympathy, so was disappointed to find that 2010 just got on with things, not even slowing to give me a chance to find my feet. When I thought I might be getting somewhere, I’d find that there was a sneaky event I hadn’t seen coming. I missed birthdays and other important events. I found myself packing for holidays a few hours before departure, which is totally not me. I have been constantly fighting things from the back foot, which has always made me very uncomfortable.

As if that isn’t enough, I’ve had such a rough few months, getting used to looking after a newborn, yet instead of offering a helping hand, 2010 has thrown rotten weather at me. The kind of weather that keeps you stuck inside slowly going mad trying to keep your children entertained. It has given me the kind of weather in which presents get mislaid and gifts arrive late. The kind of weather that leaves in it’s wake a plethora of germs and maladies that have all struck with their full force, meaning that my poor girls have been ill for months whilst I have spent half of our Christmas break in bed.

The DH and I were talking earlier today about how incredibly hard it has been this year to juggle life and love and children. We’ve barely had any time together: I’ve been tied up with children almost 24 hours a day and DH with work, trying to keep us all afloat. When either of us has a moment free we are too tired to want to spend it doing anything other than sleeping. Those wits we have left at the end of the day are spent negotiating with the Pocket Dictator who, now here vocabulary is exploding by the hour, is rapidly becoming a Three-va (Three-year-old-Diva). And the Dimpled One seems to lurch from one clingy spell to the next, so rapidly is she following in her older sister’s footsteps. 2010 hasn’t given us much of a chance to stop and enjoy them growing, since it went by so quickly we’ve been under pressure just trying to keep up.

DH and I have managed to successfully pack and ship our girls overseas on not one but two trips, and our marriage has remained intact, though perhaps a little dented. We have repeatedly packed up car, girls and dog to go to weddings and friends and family events, all without complaint. We have screened them in sun and clothed them in rain. We have repeatedly cleaned kitchen floors of half-eaten meals, changed endless nappies, mopped up seemingly “accidents” and tried to stay cheerful. We have chosen schools and put money in their savings accounts. We have innoculated them and bought them new clothes. Yet every day we are faced with a new challenge: the two-year-old who wants to pick her own clothes, who will not wear a coat, evevn in the rain, so that strangers think of calling Social Services because no parent would let a child out in the rain/snow/wind without a coat. The baby who has a death wish and sees every set of stairs as a slalom course. The dog who just loves to go psycho at the neighbours whilst you are tryint to bring two children four shopping bags and a pushchair in the front door.

To top it all, 2010 gave me a family death two days before Christmas, so that I find one of my first duties of 2011, the very first time I have left my children overnight, will be to head up to Yorkshire for my dear Gran’s funeral. Clearly this is not something I will hold against you. But you can understand why I have little that is good to say about 2010. In fact that is what I would like from you, 2011, if you can manage it. I would like you to do a better job than 2010. I’m not asking for massive allowances, I would just like a better year.

A year in which I actually begin to feel better about myself, perhaps even stop taking anti-depressants.
A year in which my hips begin to do their job fully so that I stop feeling like a rickety chair the whole time. The only permanent reminder of pregnancy should be the children I’m raising, not the old-lady bones I have.
A year in which I find some purposeful work I can do when not raising The Girls, so I feel that I can contribute something to our family.
A year in which I become a better blogger, a better writer.
A year in which I am a better, more attentive wife, a nicer, less shouty mother and a more reasonable friend and human being.

If you don’t mind helping out, I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance,

DG x

PS. I do hope that 2010 isn’t your best friend since childhood now that I’ve said all those things about her. It would be awful for me to be spouting all this vitriol about 2010 only hours before you do the Big Handover to find that the two of you have the same philosophy on food, love and life in general. If that’s the case, I can only apologise for hurting your feelings and wait for the pain to rain down for the next 365 days.

This post was written for Friday Club at Notes from Home. Click on the link to take you to the other posts.

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Banana Bread and the ongoing pink bathroom saga.

Domestic Goddesque — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 21:09:00 +0000

Banana Bread is a very good place to start if you are new to baking. It’s also a good way to use up over-ripe bananas that have been thrown around a bit by your lovely almost-nine-month-old. The Pocket Dictator and I rolled up our sleeves and put on our aprons this afternoon to get busy and keep warm whilst Bathroom Guy caught up on his work. We are now into Week 3, though this is nothing to do with their inadequacies, but more to do with the fact that every time they get up into the attic, they discover a new wasps nest. I’m beginning to think that the teenage wasp population like nothing more than hanging around in the DG loft drinking 20/20 (or whatever The Youth drink these days) listening to Nirvana (or whatever The Youth listen to) and smoking something (or whatever, you get the idea.) All of which means that instead of the sound of running water, DG Manor is alive with the sound of Bathroom Guy downing tools whilst we await the arrival of Wasp Man to, ahem, sort the situation (apparently humanely, in case you were worried that actual wasps were hurt in the writing of this blog.)

And I’m back in the room…..

Of course because Bathroom Guy is in the house, there is no hot water and frequently no cold water. The Wonder Hound is getting used to drinking Evian: she may have to go to rehab once the bathroom is finally finished. The Girls and I decided to make Banana Bread as a means of keeping warm (and also the aforementioned baby-induced damage). PD had great fun mashing the bananas with a fork a la Katy from I Can Cook, pressing the buttons on the Magimix and general commanding proceedings from the Funpod. Dimples focused, as ever, on eating dogfood and causing as much chaos as possible. That said, we all sat down to Banana Bread for our tea, swaddled in blankets on the sofa. We’ll have hot water by Wednesday apparently, wasps notwithstanding. I have Wasp Man on speed dial just in case.

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The Good Wife Guide #1

Domestic Goddesque — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:37:00 +0000

Picture credit

The last time I wrote about a Wife-guide, I got into the kind of trouble you never expect, but that has the potential to divide a family until the end of time. In making a point, I didn’t choose my words carefully enough and almost had to stop blogging altogether. So I have been reticent about this post.

DH bought me this book for Christmas. Not, I hasten to add, as an insult or a pointer, but more because he thought it would be good material for the blog. Not to mention funny. I figure I should run with it and see where it goes. It has a lot in common with the ‘witty’ piece that I was given in the run-up to my wedding to the lovely DH:

Anyway, for the next few weeks, I’m going to take one rule at a time and see if a) it’s relevant b) I can do it and c) whether DH notices my attempts at 1950′s wifedom.

Rule #1: A Wife’s Duty
A man’s home is his castle and as such, he ought to be treated like a king. When he returns home from a demanding eight hours on the job (or more!), he rightfully deserves a bit of pampering. It’s every wife’s responsibility to dote upon her hard-working spouse, to show that he is truly appreciated.

Current state of affairs at DG Manor
DH returns home after a demanding more-than-eight-hours at work. (If this miraculously occurs before PD goes to bed, he throws off his coat, says hello to the dog and goes off to deal with PD.) He empties the dishwasher, cooks supper, deals with the laundry and puts the fire on then remembers to say hello to me, at which point I burst into tears of pain and frustration. To be fair this is abnormal: he takes on much more than his fair share when I suffer from SPD. Thank the Lord for Wedding Vows.

Conclusion
I am fully aware that being a stay-at-home-parent is NOT a cop-out, or an easy life. I know that if I wasn’t at home to run the house, look after PD and WH and make sure that DH is fed, clothed and the house runs ‘smoothly’ that he would not be able to concentrate fully on his job, which is demnading of time and brain cells. Still, I am very aware (sometimes I feel quite uncomfortable about this) that he is responsible for earning the cash that I spend making all the above happen. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to recognise this and give him the credit. I do pamper him: I tell him I love him, probably far more than he can really bear and, at the moment particularly, in a slightly clingy fashion. But I do tell him. I do make efforts to give him a lie-in at the weekend and I do get him ‘little somethings’ when I am out and about, to show that I have been thinking about him. That said, when the weekend comes, after 5 days of looking after the PD for 12 hours a day, he gets all the smelly nappies. It’s the 2010′s after all!

Score
Not bad. Obvious disability aside, I’d give myself a solid 7/10 (can’t you just hear Len Goodman?!) for my efforts.

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