Monday 28 October 2013

Annual Leave, Soup, Pound Shop Wonders and Patchworking

Now I am aware that it has been a week since I last blogged, this does not mean I have fallen off the writing / blogging bandwagon, it just means that after the last few crazy weeks of being in and out of hospital that I just needed some "normality" time to kick in...

So WOOHOO on the day of the great storm (that hasn't happened here yet despite the preparations I made hubby make just in case) I am officially on annual leave for a whole week, which as previously mentioned feels much needed. So I have planned to legitimately do nothing all week and enjoy it. Apparently I have to spend time with the small people too, but only in small doses since they spend most of their time with their faces in assorted tech, only in the boy child's case coming downstairs in search of food.

Things I have achieved today... mother insisted that she needed taking out for her weekly excursion, meaning that it is payday and we have to do our monthly treat of going to the pound shop. This is a monthly celebration in which me and my mother look forward to in the same way that extreme couponers enjoy climbing into dumpsters and getting things for free. Since we live in the UK we enjoy getting crap we don't need for a £1. Its all regional really! Since it is pay day and therefore pocket money day, the small people insisted in being allowed to come along, which I agreed to on the basis that girl child took boy child around town on their own, so that I could be the pound shop whore that I am in peace. I did realise that this meant that she would ditch boy child in the sweet shop while she shopped for make-up but to be fair the town I live in is small enough that if either of them sneezed I would hear them...

And so mother and I trawled the pound shop, and oohed and ahhhed over all the delectable things that are £1 and got even more excited on the occasional 2 for £1 which causes a good 20 minute debate between us about how many we need. Now we both take the approach that if everything is £1 then we can have as much of stuff as we want.




This beauty is my find of the day, especially since this label states that it contains no sympathy or compassion. I am still unsure as to whether it causes man flu, or fixes it. I shall test it on hubby in an unsuspecting moment and report back.

I also discovered lots of other gems that I needed in my life, including store and pour bags (very good for all the soup making) russian doll nail care set (it's cute everyone should have one) fake pink hair and super hot sauce (I got this for hubby).

After all this shopping me and mum were knackered so we swung past the YMCA. Boy child complained because he couldn't join in the dance since his plaster cast doesn't bend that way and Mum complaining because she is left handed and does the dance backwards... We had a wander to see if there was any good finds, I rescued a trivial pursuit set and mum got a hamper to hide all of her stuff (crap) in. I love that she likes to think that she's going home to Italy some time in the next two years but yet we all know she's staying.

So we got home, and I decided that if I tidied today that therefore means I don't have to do it for the rest of the week. I had a bit of a bicker about the fact that nobody cleans anything any more, and why should I be expected to use my holiday to sort out all this mess?, before resorting to my usual trick of stuffing things in drawers, spraying polish on the radiators and light-bulbs before turning them all on, and making piles of other people's mess. Oh and making lots of humphing and groaning noises to show the effort I was making in all of this.

Then boy child decided to throw his milkshake all over the sofa and rub it in, in an effort to pretend that this isn't in fact what had happened. It was then that I decided that in order to save the sofa, mum should wash it, so I swapped and changed up the sofa for what I think is a pretty nifty patchwork trend setting solution:



Mum said this was foolish since the minute hubby walked through the door he would know that someone had spilled something, so I suggested we made the whole sofa red, but then she made excuses about being women of a certain age and that we were not as strong as we used to be and trying to get the red sofa cover onto the sofa when it took three of us to get the cream one on, just wasn't a possibility. She said all of this while playing chef city and not taking her eyes of the screen.... turns out she was right, hubby walked in the door and said OK who spilled what, while looking at boy child. But I don't care I like it and it's staying like this till the next spillage and then I can put the blue covers on... Patchwork Chic is what I'm branding it.

Now hubby and I got into a bit of a debate this weekend about the photo frames I begged him to buy me nearly two years ago. He says that he's fed up of looking at them and remembering my (supposed) promise to fill them with photos and yet failing to do so for the said two years and that if we have to move again he is not putting them up. I tried to explain my emotional attachment to the family contained with in these frames, and that I like to imagine how Emily and Jordan got on throughout their lives. Hubby said that was frankly ridiculous and showed that I have more attachment to some random photo family than I do my own. I got a little mad and said he should leave the amateur psychology to me and that he had no soul for young or old (depends on which photo frame you are looking at) Emily and Jordan and their family and that just shows what kind of person he is. This debate went on for a good few hours and resulted in my sulking and his well doing whatever it is he does.



Since I had already had to reorganise the front room to accommodate milk spillage, and although it crushed my heart to move Emily and Jordan on I thought I should finally fill the photo frames just to shut him up. In fairness they do look kind of cool and I found wonderful discoveries in the shed that I had forgotten about (it really is like an Aladdin's cave in there)

I then decided it that since I am still veggie, and did not lose or gain weight this week, that it was time to revisit soup... (yes I am a glutton for punishment)



What we are aiming for....



Now I will confess at this point I was getting a leetle worried, because this is exactly how the lettuce soup started looking..only green not orange obviously...


But never fear because I am the ultimate domestic soup making goddess, and although the rest of the family betrayed me and ate pies out of tins with meat... I made this (insert fanfare and cherubs and possibly a shrine for good measure)



And it turns out that this scores a gold plus triple A* with honours... Butternut and Sweet Potato Soup is now my speciality. It was scrum yum yum to the max. Admittedly I may now have enough to eat it every day for the rest of the month (which makes it frugal and money saving) but it is also as an added benefit fat free! Feeling very smug from my soup tower in the sky.

In other news, I may have mentioned this ridiculous skin problem, that I have had for the last 16 months ish, that makes me want to peel off my own skin and wear someone else's and not just because I am a sick individual but because it would feel better. You know the one my GP keeps googling and giving me ridiculous lotions and potions while scratching his beard and saying "well I don't know". Well I am a genius, I have (with a little help) worked out that this is all because of my ridiculous implant. After frightening the living daylights out of myself (via google incidentally) I marched myself down to family planning who said... Yup all of those symptoms (there were many that I am currently experiencing) are your problem and we need to get that implant out of you ASAP, we have an appointment at the end of December. God I love the NHS! Now this is me, so yes I may have thrown a small Tabs of epic proportions, including threats of riots, sandstorms, hexes /poxes and other witchcraft, as well as media reports, a helicopter and crying, which resulted in the implant's removal tomorrow. I did giggle when the nice sexual health lady said well what will you do without an implant? I informed her politely that since I don't want to have sex with it, I probably don't want to have sex without it. Well she was horrified and offered me condoms, which at the grand age of 33 I should be mature about (I failed OK I regressed to teenage-hood, giggling, snorting, going red the works), I asked her to give me a minute to confer with hubby while we averaged out how many condom's we would really need, plus what would be deemed to be the average (it was like a cross between deal or no deal and millionaire drop) and equally how many to ask for so as appear to be sexually active and slightly rampant adults. Hubby did ask if we had time to make a spreadsheet so as to be accurate - I said no, so we asked for 52, on the basis of once a week. It turns out this was the wrong answer as she said "really for a week dear?" but it was too late to back out. I now feel that when I return tomorrow that I should be more conservative in my estimates!!!

Since I now stitch again and have holiday, mum managed to make me feel bad about the pattern I started 10 years ago for a birthday present (I never stated which birthday people) and guilted me into picking this up again. So for inspiration only... it currently looks like this and I may finish it by next year.



I am attending the very cool hobbycrafts show next weekend (very excited) which means I can probably distract her with new goodies, but I stumbled upon the Birmingham Comic Con... which I now also have to go to dressed as a time lord, however so far my companions (see what I did there) are refusing to dress as K9 or in fact anything else, so I may have to go alone!

I shall update you all tomorrow providing I can actually type :)

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