All Sweetness and Light

today so far I've fed, changed, washed and entertained the bab, planted 6 rows of garlic up the allotment (may have overestimated my garlic needs), prepared dinner for tonight of trout with almonds, lentil and coriander salad and roast sweet potatoes, sewn myself a cute skirt, baked muffins, played scrabble, swept the stairs (discovering a cats worth of fluff), cleaned the toilet (yuck) and cuddled the cat.

phew.

this is what happens when a lovely baby sleep in till 7.00

back to work. poo.

well amazingly they didn't try to mess me around, gave me the days/hours i was after and were generally helpful and nice.

hmmm. i is confused. is this the stinky company i work for?

still don't really want to go back to work tho!

24th of march. bah. it's quite far off and i guess the adult conversation and lack of poo will be good. spose.

toy solider boy is off playing army games tonight. yay to night off. I've planned my work so that my mum will have little cat over tuesday nights and I'll have a whole night all to myself. how good is that?

can't wait.

tonight tho i have a feeling he said he was picking up some pheasants.

oh god.

some pheasants someone at ta had shot and have been hanging for a while.

some pheasants which he will have to take to work with him and then back home from london on the tube and train tomorrow.

some pheasants which I've said I'm not touching with a barge pole but I'm sure I'll have to witness being gutted and plucked.

eek.

game is nice tho.

but i a wee bit scared of the potential for carnage/maggots/bird flu, etc.

at least life isn't dull!

shelves.

are they much more complex than i imagine?

still haven't got any.

we had the whole weekend. all we had to do was paint one wall (well the bit of it that the boy has managed to plaster, the bit where the shelves are gonna go) then saw a few inches off a few bits of wood and screw them to the wall.

two days.

on saturday i managed to drag him out of bed before noon, just. and the wall was painted. woohooo, we on target.

i suggested (rather forcefully) that maybe we should cut the bits of wood to size, or at least measure up, or something else in preparation. you know so we would def get it all done the next day.

he didn't like the idea, something about nagging. i gave up eventually. it would get done on sunday. there wasn't much to do. we had all the bits (i had asked him several times, specifically naming all the components needed and checking we had enough of each.)

if you're wondering why i didn't just do it myself, don't think i wasn't tempted. thing is, i couldn't be up a ladder with power tools in charge of the bab and don't have the strength to cut the big bits of wood (weak girly wrists dontchaknow). more than that tho, if i had done anything at all i would have to put up with mr moany pants picking it to bits and telling how it should have been done. i don't think he can help himself but one day it's going to lead to his bloody death.

anyways sunday came...

after having 6 hours more than me in bed he finally surfaces. work clothes on, tape measure in hand. wooohooo.

he spends a baffling two hours cutting a total of around 7cm off three large bits of wood.

hmmmm.

I'd come down and check occasionally and more often than not find him holding a piece of wood, standing perfectly still staring into the middle distance.

okaaaay.

the three uprights get fitted to the wall in the end. not fixed mind you, just cut so they fit.

the next job is to screw all the batons in place. we have 24 little sticks the same length as the width of the uprights. he decided that they're too long and so wants to saw them all shorter, it will look better apparently.

whatever. there's no point arguing with him. so he cuts them. i don't even want to go into how he did it and why it made me flinch but after a while he told me to stop looking at him while he did it. i was just fearing for all our safety!

now it's time to screw the batons onto the uprights.

i. am. going. to. kill. you. what the fuck do you mean you don't have any screws? how many fucking times did i fucking ask?

it's 3 a fucking clock now and he goes down to B&Q. and is back by 5.00. and wants his tea.

fucking a.

back to it.

he screws in a total of 24 screws. 12 batons.

and by this time it's 8pm and he decides that's all he can do for the day cause i have "worked him like a dog".

lets recap. one wall painted. 3 large and 24 small bits of wood sawn. 24 screws screwed.

in. two. days.

he says when i put it like that it doesn't sound very good.

hmmm.

I've gone oddly cheerful at this point. really no point getting angry or shouting. even when he says that i was probably right and that we should have done the sawing on saturday...

so i have a nice red wall with three bits of wood propped up against it. if i squint i can almost see shelves.

sob.

he's gonna try and have thursday off to get it done cause if i have to spend another weekend trying to get the fucker out of bed I'm gonna leave him.

and relax.

got the meeting with work tomorrow to discuss part time hours. need to save some rage for that i recon

poor little cat. i am a menace with my xmas sewing machine. first it was the cat ear hats for all the family and now the little mite is resplendent in his red furry waistcoat.

it has a black back, bright red furry front and pink lining. he looks a like a snooker player, a drag queen snooker player. v cute tho

as for myself, well i have a very subtle electric blue velour skirt trimmed with the same bright red fake fur around the bottom. mmmm classy

we went up to the allotment today. it's been an age. got two hippy chicks, flatmate and friend of my old upstairs neighbour, to help with it.

oh they good. cleared the whole massive overgrown top bit. yay. i was bigging up how good the soil was up there and it seems to have worked.

well the soil is good, mainly cause it's been fallow for a million years

i got some kale, sorrel and celeriac, really grubby fingernails and a lungful of fresh air. must go up there more often before i'm locked up in an office again.

the stupid washing machine broke, all filled up with water and wouldn't drain.

poop.

can we fix it? yes we can.

yuck.

mmmm i recall sucking the water out of this washing machine before. it didn't taste any better this time.

so i prod all the pipes and stuff and drain the water and remove some fluff. but it still doesn't work.

so i take the back off and pull bits off and look inside.

ohhh 45p and a cats worth of fluff. i recon that's the problem. and lo and behold it was.

yay to miss washing machine repairer 2008.

now i have clean pants

sigh.

that and the fact i got two words both scoring 98 in the same game of scrabble i was playing have been the highlights of my week.

the lovely lady who was supposed to look after little cat a day a week when i went back to work says she might be too busy. boo. and i have to go into work to have a meeting about the hours they want me to do next week.

sigh.

so no one to look after the little man and the distinct possibility of being fucked around by work. i want to stay at home

except i need some monies.

i been making the cutest hats and things for little cat. was thinking of setting up a website and selling them. hats for cats and mittens for kittens is the working title. don't think it would make me my fortune tho.

i can always pimp the baby out by dressing him in the stuff, taking him out round other mums and waiting for them to ask where his clothes come from. i have already had a couple of people asking after his cat hat. when i said i made it i was asked if i sold them.

it does feel a little mercenary tho.

poo poo poo.

back to scrabble and washing pants.

it's a wee bit tragic but the flat pack ikea sofabed, that i put together between scrabble turns, while watching the scrabbling bab, is the best sofa I've ever owned.

it's huge.

okay it's actually too big for the room it's in and has to go at a funny angle so the door closes but never mind.

it's huge!

i can actually lay down on it without my feet hanging off the edge, and it's red, and it's the right height to sit on so we will no longer need the help of a crane to get elderly relatives off the sofa.

ah sofa, i love you.

me and the little cat slept on it last night from about 4am and the little darling wasn't up till 7am. yay.

he's getting more mobile by the day and is as i type climbing up me and trying to dive off the lovely sofa. one downside to having a sofa of a sitonable height is that he's gonna get a shock next time he does manage to launch himself off...

now i have a little chest of drawers for the little cats room to make and a huge cupboard thing intended to house some of toy soldier boys massive shoe collection.

fun fun fun!

stupid ikea were all late so i phoned up to check on them, they asked for my postcode and the line was bad so i had to use the phonetic alphabet thing, like you do. now i know it, twas the only thing apart from how to tie a sheep shank (v useful for shanking sheep) in the sea cadets (don't ask).

but my mind went blank and i found myself saying b for bum... then giggling madly... as she said do you mean b for bravo.

this is still amusing me way too much even now. think i'm coming down with something, all hot and dizzy. and there is a load of flat pack downstairs just calling to me.

but little cat is up and i got to cook dinner and stuff and oh i really feel rubbish.

b for bum. giggle.

little cat has learnt to crawl. yay.

boo.

having to fish things out of his mouth that he's found on the carpet and eaten... yuck. really must hoover more, well actually i guess i don't need to cause he doing it for me!

he was so impressed with himself first time he got forward motion. his toy was just out of he reach, he wobbled up onto hands and knees and wiggled himself forward and grabbed it. then pushed it further away and was off.

no stopping him now which is a bit of a bummer as we still don't have a safe space for him to crawl around.

don't talk to me about bloody plastering. just don't.

so now mr blabber mouth has got me addicted to scrabble on facebook and I'm playing a bunch of games while diving to rescue little cat from new exciting perils and waiting for bloody ikea to deliver blood sofa.

they late.

sofa is new sofa bed to replace the one upstairs that is about a foot too short for me to sleep on. and as little cat is being a pain in the bum about sleeping and i can only guarantee sleep by curling up on sofa with him, it's needed.

but the plastering we don't mention downstairs has filled all available space with crap so the flatpackness is not even gonna fit in the house when it finally does show up.

poo.

back to scrabble.

little cat does his impression of columbo not yet done leaving a room... or maybe he's saying he needs the toilet, whatever it means he's learned to point and very cute it is too.

index finger stiff, arm outstretched and slowly moving focus across the room. ok he doesn't actually point at specific things but he does point. and he waves. and can almost pull himself up to standing only this hasn't properly been tested due to lack of furniture stable enough to support a baby.

genius.

that's what you were thinking, i can tell. little genius. or maybe big woopdedoo a baby can hold his finger straight but i was certainly thinking genius.

oh and he seems to be left handed. poor soul. my dad was and his dad is, a lifetime of looking a bit cack handed awaits the poor critter. on the plus side he can learn to play on his dads left handed guitars and be one step nearer being the rock star i feel he's destined to be... toy soldier bo said his drum kit was also left handed but i have a feeling he was making a funny there.

my brain is a little scatter gun today it seems. given up smoking again again again again, three days down so all good, but also trying to loose a bit of weight at the same time. hmmmm, hungry have a fag works, want a fag eat something works, hungry and want a fag do nothing really really doesn't.

poo.

shall make another silly hat for the little cat instead.

well we got a bit done. one lumpy bit of wall better than none i supposed. sob.

stupid house. i want to move but as we've wrecked the place i don't think that's gonna happen.

bah. back to making the bab silly hats.

cor it's been a while.

first the wi-fi we been stealing off the neighbours finally gave up the ghost. it's been a good run. so we now actually paying for interweb. boo. but it works. yay. and we potentially have tv too. i say potentially cause the box is downstairs and the telly is upstairs... i was being a wee bit hopeful about getting shelves up and a usable room over xmas... more on that later.

so we got interweb but then the boy was off for two weeks over xmas and as this blog is mostly moaning about him i couldn't really write it with him sat there

xmas was lovely. my best ever i fink. little cat loved his presents, he loved the wrapping paper and the boxes and the things that i am slightly regretting buying cause they a wee bit louder than i was hoping... he most of all loved having his mum and his dad and the cat all to play with tho.

the boy had an ace time too, he hasn't really had a lot of time to spend with little cat, he hadn't really got too know him. he spent loads of time, lots of snugs and playing and is very impressed by what a lovely little critter we made. they sickeningly sweet together.

little cat learned how to cluck, clicking his tongue on the top of his mouth, we hadn't done it in front of him so he just discovered he could, little genius, but the best thing is that if you cluck at him he cluck back. how sweet?

the boy cooked xmas dinner, turkey, a huge ham, a million veggies and the pigs in blankets i absolutely demanded. it took about 3 hours longer than expected to cook as the oven was so full but it was done just in time for the doctor who xmas special so perfect.

then champagne and bed.

ace day.

and i got cool pressies too, a sewing machine and a pestle and mortar... hmmm they don't sound so good written down but just what i wanted. i have been crushing things with one and making little cat pixie hats with the other.

the two weeks toy soldier boy took off were supposed to be for sorting the lounge out tho. putting up the bloody shelves. i can't be bothered to go into why it didn't happen but lets just say i now have neither floor or a wall but i do have a kitchen sink which i could have lived without.

sigh.

oh and a few shouty rows pushed me back to smoking as a crutch, then i gave up again, then i brought another pack. double sigh. monday is now pencilled in for quitting again again again.

bored of writing now, back to zelda (another ace xmas gift) while the little cat sleeps. he teething again. all he got for christmas was his two front teeth, la la la la and lots of beepy colourful toys