Home improvement

When we had our house built we couldn't afford an undercover area on the side of the house. In retrospect we should have just bitten the bullet and stopped drinking for a while in order to afford it (joke?).

As an alternative Homer and #1 spent one very hot day laying paving stones on the "patio area". Due to the fact it was very hot and Homer and #1 were not, well, skillful, the patio now has more curves and bumps in it than a roller coaster. But it does stop the mud being tracked into the house, and it gives the chickens somewhere to stand without getting their feet dirty. It acts as a storage area for everything that doesn't make it back into the house, old bikes, woodchippers, a barbecue, my seedling trays and an old bathtub full of dead herbs, you get the picture.

Their plight was not helped by the fact that the largest pavers we could buy are about eight inches square, and the area is a good three hundred square feet. It was a very long, very hot day. I sensibly stayed at the old house rather than watch the degeneration of their relationship in glorious technicolour.

This area floods when it rains, and the rest of the year stores heat and uses it to microwave the house. We need a roof on it.

At the weekend at the DIY store I saw a gazebo. Two of those I thought , end to end, my roof. I am a genius. Homer, picturing himself trying to put them up was less enthusiastic but my enthusiasm knew no bounds. I bought two.

Yesterday I rang home, have you put them up? "No, I was waiting till the week-end". Small oh noise from me. One of the advanatges of a large number of boys is the ability to make grand sweeping architectural demands of them and walk off, leaving them feeling the need to be practical.

I got home and there they were my men, wrapped in flat pack hell. There were poles and nuts and bolts and shade cloth and tears and swear words. "Did you read the instructions?" ( We don't need a vote do we....of course they didn't.) I found the instructions, pinned them to Homer's chest with a meaningful look and stalked off to make dinner. ( I didn't look at the instructions, then I may have been forced to help.)

Several hours later I have one gazebo over my patio. It is beautiful. It shades the area and fits beautifully. None of the boys are talking to each other, but that just gives me peace and quiet to enjoy my purchase. As a bonus, by some random act of chance all the feet are level with each other. The floor between....well....but the feet are level.

Number four has tightened all the bolts and screws, and this morning before school went out and put the pointy bits on the roof. I caught him on the way down.

Now I just have to hope the second one appears alongside the first as if by magic tonight. I have helpfully pointed out that the second will be easier now they know what they are doing. This was not greeted by enthusiasm.

P.S. I have just noted that the first item of furniture installed has been an old tyre.

Me" Who put that old tyre there?"
#4 " It's mine"
Me " Where did you get it...and when."
#4 "I need it"
Me" Where did you get it?"
#4" I'm going to build my motorbike there."

I'll deal with that later.

In the news today...

Two items of news have made me laugh out loud today. Firstly, Gordon Ramsay had a near death experience, which I am sure was terrifying, and I am glad he survived. That is not the funny bit. At the bottom of the news report I read was, " and he got bitten by a Puffin." I'm sorry, I just can't stop laughing at that.

Secondly the Chinese have announced that they have set up a special lab to sex test athletes of suspect gender. We can all think of past competitors of dubious genetic origins and I can see where this has come from. But they have announced that they will test athletes of a suspect gender firstly on appearance. Now if it was me pretending to be a woman to win an olympic medal I'd have the electrolysis, and the implants, and the hormones, and the makeup and the hair and the clothes.... and I'd look a lot more like a woman than I do on a bad morning now.

Following this to its logical conclusion means that the athletes of suspect gender are probably going to be "unfeminine" women....Just how insulted would you be, "Um excuse me um, madam? um could we like you know, well do a genetic test to be sure you are a female?"

Memories..

I just read the DCS's answers to her tag and I'd forgotten that she took over my job as the most bad tempered cafe waitress in Derbyshire.

It was a small cafe, frequented by truckers, bikers and climbers. Our role was to serve the customers and trade insults with all comers. We were good at both.

I think we got quite famous for the poor quality of service, and often got stars dropping in on their way from Manchester to Sheffield. I can remember Human League (from Sheffield), Def Leppard (from Sheffield), Boy George (from another planet at that time). Imagine the horror of going somewhere to get insulted and getting ignored.....

I still have a circle in hell reserved for people who deliberately walk on newly washed floors in muddy boots, and still offer up sugar as a yes or no option, not a how many question.

"Do you want sugar"
"One and a half please."
"Yes or no...do you want sugar?

or there's,

"Three slices of toast."
"No"
"Uh?"
"Say please"
"Three slices of toast, please."
"No."
"Uh?"
"You can only have an even number of slices, the toaster won't do an odd number."

Any way I can't have been that bad or my sister wouldn't have got the job when I left for university. I think she added a new level to the family reputation.

I like to think my customer service skills are better now, I just think the thoughts, sometimes very loudly, rather than vocalise them.

I got tagged

I got tagged by Journeyer for a meme.

Here I go,

What were you doing ten years ago?

I had just started a new job, and found out I was pregnant, on the same day. A bit of a surprise as I had been told three times I couldn't have children and here was number three on the way.... I really must stop people telling me I won't have any more children.

Five things on my to do list

Finish diet articles
Finish Diabetes book
Finish Chicken book
Stop starting things before I finish the last thing
Find out where #4 is, he's just disappeared.

What snacks do you like

I miss sausage and stilton sandwiches...I know...they can't make cheese or decent sausages here. My waist doesn't miss them at all. Now I eat fruit.

What would you do if you were a billionaire

Hire a cleaner and a nanny. Sleep. Travel.

Three bad habits

Procrastination, procrastination, and getting distracted by something else.

Five places you have lived

Isolated Derbyshire
Moss side in Manchester
Wigan
Isolated Devon
Cairns

Five jobs I've had

Very rude cafe attendant
Night body receiver in a morgue
Barmaid in a biker bar
Pharmacist in a prison
Chief cook and bottle washer in an asylum...oh that's here.

How did you name your blog

I keep thinking about changing it, it's not very original. It was late at night and I was tired. My sister kept saying " Do a blog, Do a blog," so I did.

Now I have to tag three other people, For no reason at all I pick.

The traveling midwife......my first regular reader, and a very interesting read.
My sister for getting me into this
Mim, simply because its the most recent blog I've started reading.

BTW anyone....what's a blog award...

Smiley Saturday

I recommend you try out Lightening's Smiley Saturday post today....I definitely got a laugh out of this one.

My smiles this week are because I finally got my freezer. Now I can store the excess vegetables I produce instead of boring the children to death with the same vegetable, again, again, and again. There are only so many ways you can hide green beans in a meal before they get wise to you, and only so much green tomato chutney you can make. ( BTW adding blue food colouring to carrots and calling them something else doesn't work, and looks awful, and the pan's looking a bit ropey.)

The box the freezer came in gave #4 a whole new project in the back yard. He always used to wear red t-shirts. Only red, only ever red. I was quite happy about this. From the corner of my eye I could always be aware of where he was without concentrating too hard on the gory details.

Recently he has taken to wearing camouflage, only camouflage. Now I can't be entirely sure of where he is when he's in the garden. I have considered buying him a red bandanna to overcome this. (It's no problem in the house....he'd have to camouflage himself with dust bunnies and old newspaper.)

Anyway the point of the story. Camouflage boy and his big cardboard box went into the back yard. He set up a trap. The trap is big enough to catch a man, I got a freezer in it. (Lets not picture an eight year old boy manhandling it into the backyard.) #4 and the cat lay in wait in to see what they would catch. I didn't like to spoil his creativity by pointing out that he was in camouflage, but the box wasn't. I might have lost part of the vegetable patch to his renewed efforts on the box.

I thought he had little chance of success, but he was quiet and not damaging anything, always a bonus.

So far he has caught all the chickens, individually and in a group, next doors blind shitzu, several dopey Minah birds (much to the cats joy, I intervened there)and of course his brother. The blind shitzu only fell for it once but his older brother has been trapped several times. I think when #1 comes home from work I'll send him into the garden and see if he falls for it.

Travel problems....

There are some things they don't tell you about in guide books, or phrase books.

Imagine you are in a country where you don't speak the language, maybe enough to order a coffee, but that's all. Any language, Italian, French, Spanish even Chinese.

Now imagine you find something crawling on your body, you have no idea what it is. Go to the chemists and try to explain that you think you have crabs, in the foreign language.

Well, we get all sorts in the shop and today I got an Italian lady trying to explain what she thought she had, in a language she had the barest grasp of. Obviously the language of love is international or she wouldn't have caught them. The initial moments of the conversation complete with sign language are something I shall remember for a long time, I thought maybe she had some mental disorder at first but we got there.

My boss has been taking Italian conversation classes, it crossed my mind to ring him. Then I thought, " Would they really cover this in Italian conversation?" If they do it puts a whole new view on Italy for me.

How to hate your favourite song...

Homer has to get up at an unreasonably early time in the morning to take #1 to work, so early in fact that I am not sure it really exists. Initially he set my alarm to this hour. It went off, I woke him and reset the alarm and theory has it went back to sleep.

Of course lying there for half an hour making sure he had got out of bed, and having to put on the light to reset the alarm was not working well for me. In fact it was working so badly for me that on several occasions I slept through the alarm, or turned it off in my sleep.

I persuaded him to use his phone as an alarm, it does after all have an alarm feature. This works well for me, except for the fact that the tune that he uses was at one point one of my favourites.

It goes like this, " All around my hat I will wear the green willow, and all around my hat for one year and a day, and if anyone should ask me the reason why I'm wearing it, it's all for my....punching noise." The original doesn't have the punching noise, that is my addition.