r_scribbles: (Laurel & Hardy)
Ugh. Another weird weekend. Firstly, Alex has been sleeping really, really badly for about a week now. Teething issues I think, but very, very tiring and frustrating. Me & Hubs have had very little time or energy for ourselves or each other. Itching for some time away from Mummying, I made last-minute plans to go shopping/lunching at Lakeside with [livejournal.com profile] violetcreme on Saturday. Both children also have colds and were knackered on Friday, so we had pizza, gave the kids an early night and were done with the washing up etc pretty early and looking forward to a chilled couple of hours together on Friday night. Watch QI, maybe an episode of The Wire, maybe even a film.

The power went out at ten to nine, just as we were waiting for QI to start. The day nursery over the road has one of those burglar alarms that automatically goes off when the power goes out, and does not, as we discovered, switch itself off after any less than about an hour and a half... and then erratically continues to go off while the power remains out. Nobody came to switch it off themselves, because nobody was there. I really don't see what the point of something that automatically goes off so often and doesn't stop is - surely an alarm relies on the goodwill of your neighbours - if all it does is go off for no good reason and piss them off, if you are ever broken into, they'll just roll their eyes & curse the alarm again instead of checking it out or calling the rozzers. It is the alarm that cries Wolf.

The power cut, and the resulting loud, whining, persistent alarm continued until about 6 in the morning. We did not get much sleep. By the time I got to Lakeside, I was starting to see everything through a furze of surreality. Tiredness aside, Lakeside was a blast. Miss C made me laugh by calling escalators 'The Moving Stairs'. We loudly discussed Twitter, writing and TV in Starbucks, much to the obvious annoyance of a man in a nearby table who was reading a paper. It's a cafe, not a library, dickwad, we'll talk if we want to! We decided that all Telly People live together in one big house, with a special annexe flat for the Jewish ones. Maureen Lipmann cooks the tea, apparently. Maybe Newspaper Man was just glaring because he didn't understand irony. I did the Mum Thing of going out to get stuff for me and ending up with lots of presents for the kids. Alas, The Disney Store was to much of a temptation. Vi now owns a Little Mermaid Dollie, Alex a Winnie The Pooh Teddy.

Luckily, Mum had also made last-minute plans to come down this weekend, and provided us with childcare help and, possibly even more importantly, an excuse to go and get a Chinese instead of cooking.

I spent all last night paranoid that our power was going to go again. This was largely because, from 6am on Saturday morning until an unspecified time during last night, our power was supplied via an emergency generator. It was a massive thing - as big as a lorry, parked just outside the substation, which isn't far from our house. We could constantly hear the low hum of it as it churned out electricity. Now, I was really impressed about this - when I was little, if you had a power cut then the power stayed off til the problem was fixed, be that hours, days or longer. I hadn't expected the power suppliers to go to the trouble of bringing us an emergency generator for 24 hours. Its steady hum, combined with the memory of a miserable Friday night, however, still made me feel really vulnerable. We rely on electricity for so much - we have no gas oven or hob, and even our boiler won't work without electricity. I don't like being reminded of how much my comfort & that of my family changes is affected by the loss of one utility.

Everything's back to normal again now, except that I'm still brooding over my addiction to electricity. Well, that and my plans to make leaving wailing burglar alarms overnight a criminal offense.
r_scribbles: (Rimmer - not crazy)
Please excuse that voice post - I had mentioned to [livejournal.com profile] ladybracknell that I cannot sing 'I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor' without doing it like The Wurzels for reasons unknown & she asked to hear. I am doing it in hushed tones because a, both kiddles are napping and b, I felt stupid.

And it turns out that's my first post of the year! I have been busy busy busy with more family visitations, Birthday stuff & getting back to the normal routine this week until all the snow fell like a big freezing duvet, bringing everything to a stop today. Hubs has been off work today (yay) but it'll probably be clear enough for him to go in tomorrow (boo) and I hope it'll remain clear over the weekend so I can get Vi to her friends' birthday party on Saturday.

Speaking of which, the lady herself turns three next week - eeee! So excited! Her sudden interest in fairy tales and froofy princesses coincided nicely with a sale of Classic Disney DVDs. (Don't worry, we offset all the frilliness of her birthday presents with a Lego Firestation & Aeroplane for Christmas). Now I just need to buy the party favours & pass-the-parcel present (Early Learning Centre was shut today due to stupid snow), and bake the cakes (chocolate cupcakes this year I think) and prepare another Party Spread.

At some point, I might get chance to breathe.

But it's not right now.
r_scribbles: (Not a happy bunny)
Cor, haven't posted in a whole week! Been busy busy with life stuff, what big chunks of time I've had have been spent very slowly uploading my old fics to [livejournal.com profile] scrib_lit, pecking even more slowly at my writing and Simming.

Plus the whole weekend has been very busy (again), not to mention very awkward as Mum and Stepfather have spent the weekend in Kent for the first time since the incident at Easter. Nobody mentioned my sister's continued exclusion from Mum's house - since the Stepfather reacted so badly to me trying to persuade him to be reasonable last time I was worried something similar would happen and didn't want a scene in front of the kids, plus with me & Hubs still gearing up for my FiL's funeral we really didn't want any more stress... besides, as Hubs noted, neither of us would have put it past the Stepfather just driving off with or without Mum should we 'bully' him by trying to calmly talk about the shitty situation that *he* has created. So the weekend passed without incident, but with me feeling thoroughly guilty at every moment that by visiting them at their resort and welcoming them into our home without mentioning the elephant in the room we were silently condoning the way my sister's been treated. I don't intend to play tit-for-tat and ban the Stepfather from my home over this - I think it's a very childish way to behave that sets a horrible example to my kids on how to deal with problems. But I don't know if I can go up and visit again if no steps are being made to end the stupid situation. Stepfather won't even talk to my sister at the moment - he won't even be *asked* to talk to her without throwing an eppie. I feel uncomfortable as it is socialising with him now - I'm not sure I could accept hospitality from him that's been withdrawn from my sister with no apparent reason.
r_scribbles: (Bollocks!)
Yowza. What a week it's been. Hubs has been working very long hours, Alex is still teething (but the teeth still aren't cutting) and is therefore sleeping terribly, and throughout the whole time we've had the shadow hanging over us of my Father in Law suddenly nosediving in health. As some of you know, he'd had Parkinsons from before I met him and was in a residential home with dementia for many years. He suddenly lost a lot of weight a few weeks ago though, and seemed to have pretty much given up on living. We went to Hastings on Sunday when Hubs visited him in hospital, then Hubs went to see him again on Tuesday, and first thing on Friday morning he found out that his Dad had died in the night.

Hubs is taking it on the chin at the moment - he's not one of life's mopers, and a very practical person - dementia means you slowly lose the person you loved anyway, and I think having been prepared for this for a long time and the element of relief that his Dad's suffering has ended has softened the blow somewhat. We're carrying on with our plans this weekend - seeing friends and all (except me and Alex since he's too little) going to the big bonfire night tonight. I think he'd actually find it much harder just sitting around.

Other big news is that I'm afraid I've decided it's time to let www.randomscribbles.co.uk die. It served me well over the years, but it's so easy to post writing online for free these days it's not worth me shelling out yearly for a fiction website. I'll soon be posting all the content that was on there either on this journal, or more likely I'll set up a second LJ account as a fic depository. The website will go down on the 10th, apparently. So it goes. So it goes.
r_scribbles: (Lost see no evil)
Mum has been down with Sis this weekend. We went on an epic shopping trip yesterday for Sis' birthday presents and the 'non-birthday presents' that Mum still insists on buying for me every year even though I'm nearly 30 - by happy coincidence this coincided with the last day of a Debenhams Sale. Mum ended up getting a coat for sis, jeans for me & her (that's right, I now have exactly the same pair of jeans as my mother, only several sizes larger than hers. I am just so fucking hip) & a jumper for me and didn't even break £80. Bargain! Wearing the jeans now - properly comfy :)

Oh, and this is hilarious. The link I got off the brilliant Emma Kennedy on Twitter advertised it as being a school band's performance of the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme, but it's actually an adult orchestra, though they're all newcomers to the instruments they're playing. It's funnier to picture little kids doing it, though.

r_scribbles: (Lost bunnies)
We've had the InLaws over today and all went out for a day trip to Farming World. Me & Vi went before, with Playgroup, but because there were more people to run around with Vi we were able to stay out much longer today. So. Much. Fun.

The B-i-L is currently obsessed with goats and spent ages cooing over various different breeds. Vi really liked the piglets, the rabbits, the shire horses and the shetland ponies. She's spent most of the rest of the day telling us that she fed the rabbit some grass and that one of the horses was lying down. She also loved the various climbing frames and spent well over an hour on them - much easier for me to sit on the grass and watch someone else scampering after her on them than to try to haul myself up there with her. Oh, and she loved my ice cream too - so much so that I had to abandon it and buy myself another, even though we'd got her a perfectly good Mini Milk.

She now has an adorable pink line over her cheeks and nose where she caught the sun.

It knackered me well out, though. I had to have a nap this afternoon.
r_scribbles: (Bollocks!)
Family Situation that reared its head on Sunday has worsened. After all the trouble trying to get people to talk out their problems like grown-ups, they have now apparently gone back to passing messages of demands, counter-demands, threats and counter-threats back and forth via my poor mother like FUCKING TEENAGERS.

I can definitely see relations going right back to the horrible, hostile, stressful ways they were when Dad died, and it's all over absolutely fucking NOTHING.

So pissed off right now. Pissed off and worried and dreading the years of stress ahead.

Not even F-Locking this bad boy. I'm wearing my anger on my sleeve right now.

Things

Jan. 28th, 2009 01:30 pm
r_scribbles: (Lost bunnies)
1 - Today has been a good day for presents! I received a very late birthday card and pressie (The Orphanage, which I've wanted to see but we didn't get from Bafta) from my friends Kev & Leah, which was a nice surprise. Also, thanks to my mysterious benefactor I have been able to watch the first two episodes of Lost. spoilerish thoughts )

2 - My daughter can now say 'cucumber', 'pitta bread' and, of all the lengthy words to learn, 'gazebo'. She also enjoys repeatedly reminding me that aeroplanes are fast.

3 - Today is DaddyDeath Anniversary mark five, as my mother decided to remind me with an early morning text. Doing my usual trick of keeping too busy to dwell on it.

4 - I still have a cold and a vague, lingering headache. Boo.
r_scribbles: (Penguin)
Yesterday was a very, very Thursdayish sort of a Thursday. Allow me to share my pain with you in list format:

1, Began the day imitating a mid-90s pop song by being rudely awakened by the dustmen, at about 7am. There should really be a law against noisily collecting rubbish before the hours of daylight.

2, Awoke with a vague, annoying headache that stayed with me all day.

3, Remained exhausted all day, for no real reason.

4, Got a phone call at 5.30 (when hubs is usually home) saying he was caught in traffic and would probably be another 45 minutes.

5, 45 minutes later, at 6.15, hubs was very much not home.

6, Was starting to worry by quarter to 7. When hubs finally got in at ten to, I was utterly knackered and randomly furious without actually having anything to vent it on.

7, attempted to make cakes for the party tomorrow once Vi had gone to bed. My hand mixer decided to break half way through doing the cake mix. Planned on buying a new mixer today and doing the icing tonight but hubs declared the mixer fixed, so I attempted the icing. Mixer gave up after approximately half a second of mixing, but since I already had all the ingredients in the bowl I had to carry on. Ended up making the icing by hand - a lot of stirring. The icing may be slightly lumpy tomorrow :(

8, That done, Hubs and I spent 5 minutes turning over the living room to find the TV remote only to find it in the place it always was, only covered with a book. Perfect.

Today is being much more Fridayish, however. Violet has come out with several new sayings today ('Hello', as well as 'very very hot' and 'very very cold') and my Ma and Sis are down tonight.

Plus - don't faint - I've been working on Zombie Dad and it's very nearly finished!

Oh, plus a big weight has been lifted from all of our minds yesterday. I haven't felt comfortable blogging about it (and still don't) since it involved legal shenanigans, but one of my extended family has been going through a really horrible time of it recently but yesterday found out that (legally, it least) it wasn't going any further. I had been very worried about her, and she'd obviously been finding it very upsetting. But it's done with now.

*Facepalm*

Dec. 21st, 2008 06:21 pm
r_scribbles: (Lost Benry - snap!)
Brilliant. 4 days before Christmas, our PS3 has decided it can't read any disks.

The main Christmas prezzie I've asked for is a PS3 Game.

:(

Never mind. Mum and Stepdad are down this weekend on the Santa Run, and Vi's loving it. Me and Ma cooked a massive toad in the hole yesterday and she's treating us all to a chicken dinner tonight. Yum! Plus, I have finally baked all the cakes, with one left over for us.

There has been a slight hitch, however. When I bought the apricot jam for the glaze, Hubs asked if he could have some for his toast. 'Sure', said I, 'but please don't eat too much or get any crumbs in before I do the baking - I need about half a jar for the cakes.'

I get the jam jar out of the fridge today.

There is a tiny, crumby scraping left at the bottom of the jar.

Even though I told Hubs what the jam was for. Even though I have been baking for three days in a row now, and he knew I'd be needing the jam. He could have just bought more, or asked me to buy more, and not just kept schtum about it and let me find out about it when all the shops were shut.

The big, jam-thieving bastard!

Let's just hope that Marmalade works instead.
r_scribbles: (Laurel & Hardy)
I haven't had an LJ comment notification in days now... I know Meg Mog's having the same trouble, I don't know if anyone else is... basically, if I haven't replied to something you've written I'm not necessarily being purposefully rude! I'm waiting for the day when I get a week's worth of comments all in one, inbox-clogging lump.

Anyway. I am feeling increasingly Christmassy at present, with Advent just around the corner. Getting very excited about it this year because it should be fun for Violet. She's got a Christmas party at her Toddler Group in a few weeks, we'll be having Nana Visits, which she'll love, and we intend to take her out to sing Carols with the Archbishy on Chrimble Eve. Touch wood she won't be poorly like she was last year!

Hubs bought The Snowman on a whim earlier this year, and Violet loves it. We watched it, at her request, both yesterday and the day before. As soon as the theme started and those scratchy, pencil crayon lines drew us down to a lonely country house deep in snow, I started to well up. Not necessarily just because I know the film has a sad ending, but because of something else - I feel that the film is deeply connected to my childhood. The images themselves have a faintly faded quality to them because of the way it was animated. I know the whole thing absolutely off by heart, and it really does take me back to childhood Christmases, when my Dad was alive and my parents were happy together, when my Grandparents were still alive and we'd get so excited about the long drive to visit them. Eating chocolate money in our pyjamas... playing Sardines at Nana & Grampy's with my cousins at New Year's Eve... the old plastic Christmas tree with the same baubles and tinsel as every year, and the Angel I'd made at Nursery school as the tree topper... The Snowman is the Ghost of Christmas Past to me. It makes me nostalgic for those simpler days, and it makes me sharply miss those people who I loved back then who are no longer with me, but it doesn't make me sad, watching it on our little sofa with my daughter on my lap, because it also reminds me that she has all the Christmases of childhood yet to come. Hopefully in 30 years or so, she'll be able to think back to being excited about seeing her Grandparents, and to happy, secure times with her mum and dad, and all those other things that I look back on now.

See, this is one of the big reasons that I love Christmas - it's such a Constant in our society. It's a real marker for you to reflect back on your life so far. I love it.

Weekend

Nov. 16th, 2008 07:59 pm
r_scribbles: (Princey)
If you were trying to ring someone and realised that after saying 'hi, it's me' and the person on the other end of the line repeating a confused 'um... hello?' that you had a wrong number, you'd say 'sorry, wrong number' before hanging up, wouldn't you? Instead of just groaning a disappointed 'oh' to yourself and hanging up on the person who you just bothered by ringing them in the first place? Tell me, lovely FList, that you would actually spare the breath to apologise and that the rude bitch who just hung up on me today is in the minority so I can carry on having at least a little faith in modern society. Please...?

In other news, we have had a lovely weekend in the presence of my Ma and Sis. Vi has been really enjoying the attention, and I really enjoyed the lasagne that they cooked for us last night. And the Jelly Babies that Sis bought after I said I fancied some when they were mentioned on QI. I like the black ones and the green ones, Sis likes the pink, yellow and orange ones. We're like the Jack Spratt and his wife of Jelly Babies. We showed them O Brother Where Art Thou and played Trivial Pursuits, which I won! Yayz!

Ma bought me a Starbucks Christmas Toffee Nut Latte, which is all kinds of delicious, and I wondered at Sis' awesome Tea Drinking Skillz. Seriously, she would just about be finishing up one cup when she'd announce she was putting the kettle on again. Her blood must be at least 10% caffeine.

Ooohhh, and we've finally got the start of BSG S4 through from the LoveFilms! Wheee! We get to see what crazy Bob Dylan song the secret Cylons will sing next!

Today

Oct. 11th, 2008 08:07 pm
r_scribbles: (Thistle Whistles)
We have had a lovely day in Hastings today, and Violet wasn't carsick once! Woo! (Admittedly, she napped most of the way there and back).

We went to a Brewer's Fayre pub for lunch - one of those big Family pub grub places - I'm still at a stage of motherhood where I get ridiculously excited at the concept of ordering a restaurant meal for my daughter, and was very pleased that this pub had a special under-5's menu with plenty of options other than chips (which she doesn't like). Ordered her some pasta with tomato sauce and cheese which she seemed to enjoy, along with some of her Nana's popadom and donated mushrooms and sausage from Mummy and Daddy respectively. It was just really lovely to be able to sit at a restaurant with her and for us all to be able to eat our dinners. She was impeccably behaved throughout, and there was a little soft-play bit that she could scamper in while we were waiting for dinner.

We went to see the F-i-L and, because it was a beautiful day, sat out in the garden for a while as Vi-Vi scampered about, and then went to Alexandra Park for icecreams and drinks. Vi drank apple juice from a carton with a straw for the first time and chased the bigger kids' footballs around.

So nice to be able to do a bunch of actually quite involved things pretty far from home and for it not to be stressy for a change :)
r_scribbles: (PG Ping)
So I took Vi back into the living room after her tea only to find that a Duplo Excalibur had appeared in the middle of the carpet.


Either:
a, it was chucked at us by a Moistened Bint,
b, Vi is a Duplo Prodigy
c, Husband kindasorta bought the Duplo as a toy for himself too.

Vi likes the Duplo but prefers the Lego Batman magnets on our fridge. She likes picking them off and swapping their wigs about. This is her latest effort.


The geekery in our house is reaching new levels, I tells 'ee.
r_scribbles: (Goodies mice)
My Ma has been down, so I've been doing fun family stuff. Seaside and Chinese yesterday, pootling (for it was cold and dreary) and a toad in the hole today. Was most impressed with my toad. I did need Mum's help since it's been a long time since I've done it and my batter tends not to rise well, but I was really impressed with the end result. Did it with hot cabbage salad, broccoli, roast sweet potatoes and proper gravy - was anticipating Vi just eating the broc like she did with Sunday Roast a couple of weeks back, but she ate it all - even the potatoes. Very happy with all of that. I do like stodgy Autumnal English dinners.

I also had a flash of creative genius last night while playing Soul Calibur... My ever expanding army of Custom Characters now includes Disco Stu. 'Walk away, not today, Disco Lay-deh!'

He joins: Eric (normal), Nym, Janapurna, LeFroux, Mavis Swift, Inversion-verse Evil Eric, Evil Diana, Evil Sheila, Evil Presto, Cinderella, Snow White, Viola from Twelfth Night and a clutch of Mary-Sues. Fighting Sues - life is sweet.

Oh, and apparently, Jarvis Cocker is the 'wildcard' option in a list of established Panel Show presenters and ISIHAC semi-regulars to fill Chairman Humph's now vacant spot on Samantha's right hand. The more I think about it the more I'm warmed to the idea. I wonder if he'd do it.
r_scribbles: (Family)
Hubs and I spent about ten minutes amusing ourselves this evening by trying to guess classic film quotes that the other had translated into Dog Language.

The best one was 'A Few Good Men'.

"Roo-roo-ra ROOF?
ROO-RA-ROO-ROO RA ROOF!"

Violet gave up on us and went to play with her car.

*Yawn*

Aug. 8th, 2008 09:04 pm
r_scribbles: (false teeth)
Hello, I'm back, had lots of fun although Vi slept really badly all four nights. Not so much of an issue when we were able to lie in, but we had to leave at 10 this morning so after finally nodding off at about 6 I had to be up again at half 8. A nap this afternoon has meant I can at least talk in a straight line but it's still taking me much more effort than it should to type this short greeting so I think I'll leave off attempting anything more coherant until tomorrow.

Hope you all had a good week!

Scribbles
xxx
r_scribbles: (Kuzco)
Today has been a very good day. To be more specific, today Friday put on a fedora and a pair of dark glasses and went out disguised as Saturday!

Hubs is taking a long weekend, the M-i-L and S-i-L came down for the day and now my own Mummy is down for the weekend too. Took a MASSIVE Entourage to playgym, then all had a big lunch together, then drank tea while The Man came round and murdered the wasps (take that, you picnic-pestering, sap-munching bastards!) then I read stuff Mum had brought about Centre Parks and got jolly excited, went out and bought a new swimming costume (a real old-lady affair, with thick straps, tummy control and a low cut bottom... if I were off somewhere hot I'd invest in a jolly, patterned Tankini, but this is just for the swimming pool, and it was the only swimmie that kept my mighty baps in the right place) and now we've all had a lovely Mexican dinner and Mum is doing the washing up for us. Result! And we're seeing our chums again tomorrow. Yay!

And Hubs has bought us Gu Brownies and Tiffin for pudding. Good Husband.

And we watched the TNG eppie 'The Price' last night, which is hilarious for all the wrong reasons. It has a Belgian who looks like a wife-beater from the 1950s and acts like a date-rapist (and therefore clearly should have been a Quantum Leap Villain as well), a lingering close-up of Deanna Troi's greasy foot being manhandled and Beverly Crusher's Camel Toe. Nice. Why is it that whenever one of the TNG women fancies a Guest Star he turns out to be a complete cunt? It happens every single time! That's the writer's way of telling you to only date regular characters, ladies.
r_scribbles: (PG Taffom Alien)
Sweet.



In other news, Mum came back from France with many tasty cheeses, Violet is wearing a stunning pair of purple shorts today and I just spent 20 minutes sewing ribbon onto her new summer hat (another present from Ma) to tie under her chin and keep it on only to discover that she can still pull it off anyway.
r_scribbles: (Goodies mice)
Oooooh, we've had such a lovely day today! Mummy and her husband are staying in Sibden Park - very posh - and we've been spending a sunny afternoon up there with them. Vivi's had a really good run around and knackered herself out, and we're going up again on Monday to use the gym and have a swim! Tomorrow we are going to Leeds Castle. We are very excited. Radio 7 has three hours of Dr G at the moment - bliss!

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