Cooking thing

Have just experienced a rare burst of food-related domestic activity, triggered by the 2 drawers of wilting Able & Cole veg in the fridge. I might even have enjoyed it had it not taken 3 hours. 

Anyway freezer now contains bolognase sauce, 2 batches pasta sauces and a dozen beetroot & chocolate brownies (4x tomatoes, 6x onions, 6x bits garlic, 4x medium beetroot, 1x fennel and lots of obscure veg which the kids won’t eat in it’s complete form). 

Tea tonight: made up thing (2x onions, potatoes & MASSIVE cabbage covered in cheese sauce) & sausages with the lovely Jennie Whitworth Edwards who was pleasantly surprised with the cabbage experiment.

Birthday crusts and caviar

2011 has become quite unique. Keith and I have actually managed to SEE each other for BOTH our birthdays. I honestly cannot remember the last time this happened. Unfortunately both days were also spent away from the kids, but hey ho- you can’t have everything.

The 2 days in question could not have been more different (aside from the heat, long hours and copious fluids).

Mine: Worked 14 hours together in air conditioned 4-star hotel in Barcelona with tea and coffee on demand (via a magic phone on my desk) finishing off evening with gala dinner meal that was so posh I had to google the menu later back in hotel room as I had not recognised anything I’d eaten. Excellent wine in a strangely self re-filling glass that did not run out. I was careful. (I have been tricked by such self re-filling glasses before).

Keith’s: Worked 14 hours together in hot and sweaty field in Norfolk where we were delivering a youth festival. Tea, coffee and squash on tap in the staff tent (Thank you Bev and Mike), finishing off with birthday cake and lukewarm diet coke in office tent at midnight, having spent most of the evening sweeping the shower and toilet trailers, stocking up the bog roll and hand towels, unblocking 3 toilets and emptying all the bins.

Both days were fun and are connected with 2 very different organisations, who are great to work with. But I am so aware of BEING aware of these different experiences because it makes me a bit shallower than I’d like to be. I want to not even notice the difference between crusts and caviar.

Unsafe sex

Am disturbed that salted peanuts are right next to condoms in mini-bar. Surely this is bad for the latex?

Middle Age

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I am old. I have lots of grey hair. I make an involuntary 'Uhh' noise when rising from a comfy chair if I’ve been there a while, and in the last 18 months I have acquired a part denture and the inability to focus on close up stuff when I’m tired. (For these last 2 I blame Wales) None of these things make me feel old though.

I feel old because of things like this: 
A conversation on way to school other day, scene involves me, 3 kids, assorted baggage and 1x bike which they share on way to school. (Long story, involving class sizes, moving house mid-school year and an overall sovereign plan which I know exists but don’t understand yet).

J: Mum, can you slow down, I can’t carry all my stuff (1x book bag + 1x lunch box) and hold up these at the same time.

Me: What’s ‘these?’

J (incredulously): My trousers!
 
Demonstrates his need to hold ‘these’ up, and they promptly drop to his knees in the street, attracting stares from passing motorists.

Me: Where’s your belt?

J: I don’t have one.

Me: Why not?

J: I dunno. I forgot.

Me: But when you put those trousers on this morning, didn’t you realise they were falling down?

J: Well, yeah… But I was busy.

Me: Doing WHAT?

J: Y’know. Getting breakfast. And playing lego….

Me: Oh I see

And in that moment I DID see. He’s 7 years old. Life’s complicated enough remembering to feed oneself and get in some construction time before the school run (or run/cycle/run) without the added pressure of dressing securely.

I can no longer remember a time in my life when my main source of concern was eating as fast as I could so I could get in more play time.

Last week I actually forfeited a whole night of sleep amending a 280 page book in order to meet a print deadline. At 4am I decided NOT to go to bed before the school run, or I’d never get up for it. So I constructed an interplanetary lego docking station for the many MANY lego spaceships which are in various stages of completion by one of the kids. Or I would have done if I were not old.

Instead I tumble dried a load of washing and folded and ironed the backlog of dry stuff from the weekend. Then I put it all away (quietly). Then I made a massive pot of custard for breakfast. A little unorthodox I know, but we love it and we had loads of milk that morning.

And this is why I am getting old.

Home schooling

A history lesson in Clas Ohlson. Kids were hypnotised by large spinning black disc for 10 whole minutes...

Monday morning

I wake up to much shouting downstairs this morning. From under my duvet I can hear raised voices. The children are having breakfast. Apparently there has been a large cereal spillage. My eldest child is (loudly) attempting to coordinate a clean up operation with assistance from the youngest. She is (loudly) unwilling to give it, and stating their strategy should be to proceed upstairs and inform me. He (loudly) states that they can handle this situation without my help and as she was the spiller, she should contribute to the clean up. They argue (loudly) about their strategy for many minutes, but are unable to reach a consensus.

I do not handle loud noise in the morning. I mutter under my breath as I stumble downstairs and into the kitchen. They stop arguing as they see me appear in the doorway. I walk into the kitchen and give both a 'bad mark' on their pocket money chart before saying good morning.

Eldest child leaves the room in tears of righteous anger. Youngest is also tearful but apologetic. Middle child calmly looks up from his weetabix and asks, 'Mummy- can we have a private chat when I've finished this please?' I perform the clean up while middle child scrapes his bowl clean, before following him into an empty room. He closes the door behind us and whispers loudly 'You're being a weeeeeeeeeeee bit stressey this morning...'

Tadpoles

Since creating a pond in our back garden over 10 years ago, we have been visited annually by some frogs who do their thing, leave their spawn and disappear again, leaving us proud owners of a tadpole-infested pond which has gradually become devoid of fish (probably because they’ve all been eaten…or suffocated under a layer of ice in the Winter as we never remember to float a beach ball to keep an air hole open, as recommended). But I like frogs better, anyway.

However, since the end of last Summer we have had no pond, having filled it in to increase grass space and reduce the likelihood of drowning one of the kids. Accidentally anyway. But we forgot to tell the frogs, who made their annual pilgrimage back to our garden for their weekend of passion. On finding the pond replaced by a mound of gravel (and an assortment of childrens’ digger toys) they used the next best thing- a piece of crumpled up tarpaulin between the back of the hut and the boundary fence, with about 4” of rainwater in.

Who knows how long the embryonic tadpoles floated undiscovered? Only found them when the weather brightened up a bit and we decided we should do something about the sadly neglected back garden and maybe chuck the tarpaulin behind the hut as it isn’t covering any bike anymore since I gave it to a friend 3 months ago.

Such joy in our household to find out that once again the frogs had visited and once again deemed us to be suitable surrogate parents of dozens and dozens of wriggly tadpoles!

It soon became clear however, that the tarpaulin was not going to be a suitable long-term option. Leaves and gunk soon collected in the tiny artificial pond. An interesting blue-tinged oily scum could be seen when the sun came out. And after an unusually warm week, the water started to dry up, making what was left of it more concentrated. Worst of all was the SMELL. Frogs prefer stagnant rather than flowing water, but the therapeutic limit had been breeched. They were in imminent danger of suffocating in their own filth before being able to sprout legs and hop onto something better on the frog property ladder.

I swung into action. I arranged for the school to take some of them. I purchased a tank so we could keep some ourselves. Then I was given an even BETTER tank from an elderly neighbour, so gave the one I’d just bought to another friend who has a little boy who likes frogs. I even bought one of those little nets you get for goldfish. I collected tap water and kept it on the windowsill in direct sunlight for 6 days so I could gradually dilute their filthy living conditions without poisoning them with chlorine (or was it fluoride?)

Sorted.

Unfortunately there was one problem I couldn’t fix. The tadpoles don’t all want to be rescued. The first few net-fulls yield loads of them. Plus a lot of sediment, clumps of undeveloped spawn (genetic flaws?) and a dead snail. Soon, however, the remaining tadpoles begin to elude me.

By this time, my kids have lost interest completely and are off playing on the slide, the tiny amount of water I am operating in has got so murky I can’t decide where next to dip the net, I’m inadvertently inhaling tiny insects with every breath and am rapidly losing sensation from my waist down (the space between hut-to-fence is about a foot and a half and the veins in my lower legs are knackered due to poor genetics and 3 pregnancies).

After 20 minutes of this I’m seriously hacked off, simultaneously thinking ‘Right I’m off- the rest of you are too stupid to live’ and ‘Oh- there’s another one! I’ll just save ONE more…’

And suddenly I realise just how like the tadpoles we are. Evading rescue because we don’t understand what the net’s all about, what will happen to us when we are plucked from our filthy but comfortable environment, and having no IDEA of the lovely gravel-based tank (containing dechlorinated/unfluorided water and stones for resting on) and the box of flaked fish food waiting for us on the ‘other side’.

And equally how un-Godly I am in this theological scenario. I care about the fate of these creatures, yes. But I didn’t MAKE them. From scratch. Or know them by name. I don’t even now how many I’ve saved so far and how many are left in this gunge which used to be water.

I call it a day before developing economy class syndrome in my legs, prompted by the arguing and whinging from 3 kids who are wondering what’s happened to telly/tea/bath time.

We are worth more than many sparrows, many lillies of the field (Mat 6) and by implication many MANY tadpoles. God is sweeping his net backwards and forwards in a relentless effort to rescue us from suffocating in our own mess and sin.

And in actual fact, the tank is pretty cool.