executive decision 24 December 2008
In the absence of Himself I decided to concentrate on making downstairs of the site pretty so that a combo of it and many drinks would a party make…still have to make the cooking area hygienic but will deal with that tomorrow. Himself returned (after the unexpected trip to London’s Town) and we put up the tree and got a bit distracted by Sky Sports and the MANY other channels that arrive with Sky but we are back on track now and VERY grateful to the G who added dusty pawprints to the festive table setting tonight – invaluable – and she herself, it must be said, is looking thrilled with them too….
Have a good one, those of you who celebrate The Day, and for all others have a nice big RELAX that everyone else is occupied elsewhere.
Oops, the end of the year is nigh too if we are saying all of this – where has the time gone? It races along these days, for me anyhow (makes note to self – must slow up time in 2009)
long 24 December 2008
Oh, the longest of long days – I saw the builders off (till mid january, it seems, and then there’s still at least 3 weeks to do so I wasn’t far wrong when I predicted Val’s Day as a timepoint when people could come and have a look!) and in the meantime the change in the house is that I will live here (with my Husband, from time to time) on a building site, but without the hairy men who normally come with that. So, today everyone did their bit to make all necessary usable and even tried to de-dust the house and tomorrow I will try to do the rest, including the washing of floors, more dusting, and the vast unpacking of LOADSA boxes…hmm, I feel prioritisation upon me already…in the meantime my hands are like sandpaper from the dust, me large nose is stuffed and the chest is whistling along nicely…Christmas, my arse!
By the by, my new oven is a fan-assisted jobby – any tips re timing and temperature for the turkey????? HEEEELLLLLLPPPPPP
sunny 22 December 2008
I don’t feel at all Christmassy. Well, why would I, I suppose, when the house is still full of builders. Also today was sunny in the way that our Summer was not (I regretted not having sunglasses with me) and it just doesn’t seem like December. In fact, I saw a woman walk into a shop from outdoors and she was wearing a short sleeved teeshirt and she didn’t look like she was a lunatic or anything. Tomorrow I am going to try to clean some vital spaces in the bombsite that is our house. I have bought anti-histamines in expectation of a streaming nose and itchy eyes and I will have to beg a new inhaler from the pharmacist. I can’t believe that ‘The Day’ is upon us and that I am off to Minsk with Himself on Saturday. I am vastly unprepared for EVERYTHING although I have done all the gift getting and wrapping, and am smugly delighted with my bargains and how nice all of the little votives are.
towels 22 December 2008
I was in my home town in the Wesht (sic) of Ireland last nigh. The girlfriend of my beloved eldest nephew – he’s Jay (he blogged on this site last year when I was in Lviv and could not one night) and she is Karen (lovely). Anyhow, as the train got into Galway, although it was dark, I could see the familiar roads of houses leading to where my clan still live (and lots of great illuminated trees therein) and I was reminded of all the times I arrived or left and the Mammy or Dad would hang a towel out the bathroom window and wave it as I passed on the train (only window you could see of our house for any length from the train) or sometimes the Mammy would walk the dogs by said railway and arrange to be in a particular place and I’d hang out the window and yell or wave back. Strikes me now it must have been hard for them to see their eldest out there in the world and always ‘leaving’. Once I was on an Unusual Rural Tour with Druid theatre company around Ireland and we were in the west somewhere and I was making my way home during the day to the hotel from town (which was 2 or 3 miles away) and my Dad pulled up (he was on his rounds of selling parts of cars in the area) and gave me a lift to where I needed to go – TOTALLY unexpected for us both and SUCH an unlikely thing to happen. It was brilliant and SO heart breaking to have that sort of happenstance/happenchance and then we both had to move on. But what synchronicity!
the lights 20 December 2008
An unexpected and fabulous architectural joke has emerged in the house – there are various new lights adorning various rooms but one set is a double spotlight which is called…wait for it…a Go On!!!! YES, the ex Mrs Doyle has go ons in her house and best of all is that in the dining area there are three sets so I can look up and point and say ‘go on, go on, go on’ – how BRILLIANT is that?!
Less brilliant is the fact that it won’t all be done by Christmas – we’ll have enough to create an oasis in the building site so it’ll be a bit ‘spirit of the Blitz’ – the meal I cook better be DAMN fine to distract the wandering eye and I have taken the step of ordering enough ‘fine wine’ and fizz to dampen down any curiosity from the visitors too!
a new thing 20 December 2008
I did a thing tonight that was new and something I had never done before (yes, yes, I know – at MY AGE!) I hosted a show called The Panel for Irish television. It’s a weekly programme that looks at current events and life and pokes fun – sometimes unmercifully – and, basically Has A Go. Tonight’s was, and is, a recording that will be broadcast as a ‘round up of the year’ on sat 27th (i THINK!) but for those of you who live beyond the reach of Irish channels be easy in the fact that I will be away then myself and never see it. In the early days of the show I used to be an actual panellist, tonight I was ringmaster. It often went out live and was TERRIFYING. To add to that plain and simply AWFUL terror was (and is) the fact that most of the panellists are actual stand-up comedians – I am not and don’t have that arsenal of material to draw from. Tonight, however, as the show wasn’t live and I was basically there to steer conversations I quite enjoyed it…mind you the SMELL of fear off my clothes when I changed at the end of the recording was UNREAL. As it ain’t live anymore there’s not a lot that can’t be gone over again if needs be so that’s good to know though, in fairness, that never happens in the cut and thrust of the show but only if the guests are inconvenienced/mikes not working etc.
an interesting experience all round and i might get the Mammy to tape it for me so I can check out how kind the edit was…or otherwise… (hey, no matter what, i ain’t gonna whinge – it’s SHOWBIZ*!)
*DOH! – or should that be ‘MEH’ these days? I’m not as ‘hip with the kids’ as I used to be…
mohair 18 December 2008
I had a lovely pic of a friend’s cat sent to me today – nothing too sugary or festive, just a good photo of the creature before she got to work on the Christmas tree that she was posing beside and which had been put up for her delight and, clearly, to take apart (I’m simply guessing from the photo evidence as I haven’t heard any updates yet). Anyhow, I commented on how handsome the lovely puss is and was told her favourite thing is to SHRED the linen covers on her ‘owner’s’ sofa – I had to relate my tale of having a red settee made once and sitting on hard kitchen chairs for 8 weeks waiting for delivery, knowing that I had chosen a fabric that would take c200,000 ‘rubs’ before showing any sign of wear BUT within a fortnight the 2 cats (as they were then = the Snub and The G) had made MOHAIR of the thing. As it happens, we have been living a bit on that couch and its matching armchair in the (extremely) dusty front room recently and both items of furniture are still fuzzy about the edges. I go at them every so often and trim the worst of the excesses off with the scissors I trim my fringe with (bad idea all round) but it’s a futile and indeed SILLY activity (the sofa trimming at least). Herself has decided that all the ‘edges’ need to match now and is hard at work on the upper back edge of both (where a head might rest or a cat might perch). A glance earlier told me her work is going very well, for her and her purposes…nice to know there’s a lot of job satisfaction out there still…
oh dear 17 December 2008
I was all excited about having my dishwasher fixed today – the thought of trying to get the house (or whatever I get of it) back to rights and having to wash every dusty dish therein by hand, not to mention Christmas dinner dishes, was too awful to contemplate. Eddie duly came and fixed said machine and I was over the moon – yup, this is the sort of thing that’s thrilling me at the moment – it was a plastic switch thingy underneath that was clogged up and had to be replaced – but when I put the machine on (empty) later to clear away any stagnant water it began to flood the kitchen = ARGH! That, coupled with an increasingly sinking feeling that this house won’t be even NEAR ready in time for the festives, has broken me a bit. Still, poor Gabriel (the builder) seems to have had a worse day than me and is visibly stressed and he really is the best so I mustn’t add to any horror that is on-going. Oh but I was SO EXCITED about having that dishwasher to load up and set again (I love it perhaps best of all, but don’t tell my washing machine that as the last thing i need is a strike there also).
I saw Christmas described as Creditcrunchmas by a friend today and have decided to roll with that for the season. In the spirit of same I am returning a waistcoat I purchased for a nephew for 22 euro (I was desperate and it was the only gift I went so over budget on) and then saw an exact replica for 9 euro in another shop. Time was when I’d‘ve let that go, but not now. I will return the more expensive item and get the rest of my shopping with the refund/credit note I receive for it. Am feeling most virtuous and thrifty already about that.
home 16 December 2008
Himself is back from his travels, BRIEFLY. I will have seen him for 12 hours by the time he leaves again, 7 of which we’ll have spent sleeping. I’m not telling him this but, as myself and the G have moved into the back bedroom (the only room finished in the house yet still gathering a fine layer of dust each day), there really isn’t room for him and he’d just be getting under our feet/paws if he was here. Anyhow he says Cape Town was a bit HOT at a sunny 30 degrees (my heart WEPT for him, as you can imagine…) and tomorrow he’s off to NYC to see 2 shows on there with his clients in – he’s not sure if it’s Sat or Sun that he’s home (!!) but he knows (now that I have explained it in VERY simple terms) that he is MY CREATURE then and will actually follow me around with a damp rag cleaning surfaces as they are returned to us by the builders and unpacking boxes as I bark orders.
Tonight he said to me, in Russian, that Russian is a very beautiful language. The words for beautiful and red are very similar in Russian and in fact, as far as I know, red meant beautiful c100 years ago and somehow it’s apposite to remember that, for a nation that was Communist for so long – I shall fashion a linguistic joke to that effect some day when my Russian is better (or even passable)
eating 15 December 2008
I had a lovely lunch with my sister-in-law Lisa today in the course of which I mentioned that one of the things about being married to an agent (her brother, as you all know) is that you can sometimes find yourself eating really late if you wait to have dinner a deux. She made the very valid point that I could probably cheat and he wouldn’t notice as men rarely notice whether women are eating what’s on their plates or just pushing their food around. I think that might be true for the most part.
The cat has a VERY villainous look on her face as I type – it’s a ‘play with me so i can RASHER you hands’ kinda face. She’s attacking her tail, now, it’s clearly a very naughty thing tonight. It’s strange how the ‘madness’ overtakes her sometimes yet for the most part she’s content to sleep or purr.
Speaking of sleeping I had the awful event of waking up at 4.30 this morning and not being able to go back to sleep for four long hours – must have been all the boasting and delight about the great Sunday Sleep come back to roost and torture me.
Am having an early night as I have an early Russian lesson in the morning and having done one part of my homework really well, I have come a cropper on the various kinds of consonant and their relationships with one another and various vowels, weak and strong – ARGH! At least I now have a verb in my arsenal – to be…though at the moment it’s not to be, if you know what I mean, language-learning wise…
I got pear juice on this keypad a fortnight ago and the Y is sticking – any thoughts on how I can unstick same??