Tag Archives: housework

Third Attempt

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A couple of days ago I started to write a post about not posting regularly. Then I got sidetracked. Yesterday I rewrote it and guess what? Then, just after midnight I caught sight of an envelope on my desk. It was from the DVLC reminding me about car tax. It struck me that though I remembered having the letter in my hand as I sat by the computer I didn’t actually remember taxing the car. Checking the appropriate website I found out I wasn’t taxed and, because it was now 1 October, this was highlighted in red. Obviously I’d been distracted part way through the process. I’m taxed and legal now, though clearly need to stop letting my mind wander.

Anyway, some good news – I finished my monthly submissions about half an hour before the midnight deadline last night. This is mixed. It’s good to get it done, it’s bad that I left it until the last day to do it. What was definitely good was the first acceptance – which was here when I came back from my blood test. That had been good too – full syringe first time. `

I just had a text. Julia is in the taxi on the last leg of her journey home and I have to get the kettle on ready for her arrival. This is good too. Even though it counts as being sidetracked.

I will be back later, and may actually get this one posted before it is superseded.

12 hours later

We have maple syrup, maple syrup candles, maple syrup biscuits and mugs with raccoon heads poking out of rubbish bins. I need to start looking for maple syrup recipes.

We have also discussed housekeeping standards. Generally – the tea loaf was good, the vegetable soup was good, but in most other areas I have been found lacking.

It’s nice to get back to normal.

First Post of the Day – Rambling and Whingeing

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I have two posts planned for today. One is about sport (again) and this is the other. So far I have taken Julia to work, checked emails and comments and wasted twenty minutes playing a browser game. I have then sorted out a pile of books (mainly in the pile I want to keep), added 19 poems to the list of published poems which I am trying to update. It doesn’t seem like it should be hard work, but it feels like it. I’m ready for a cup of tea and a break. Instead, I thought I’d have a cup of tea and a change of pace. They say a change is as good as a a rest, but I’m not convinced.

Blackberries are doing well again this year.

Soon I will have to do some form filling and official letter writing. Now that we are moving there is a growing list of things that need to be done. I have had to admit defeat on the old printer. I don’t know how Julia manages to wreck printers but, like my good kitchen knives, she has a malign influence on the things. Let her use a perfectly good knife, and she can blunt it in one use. I never seem to get the edge back properly. Same goes for printers. She hardly uses them, partly because she always asks me to print stuff off for her, but when she does print, trouble ensues.

 

In the meantime I will walk round a bit, have a cup of tea and wash up. It’s a bit like painting the Forth Bridge – no sooner have you washed up than you start cooking and make more washing up.  Sometimes I wonder if it would just be easier to buy more plates.

Greengages have cropped well to say we have one tree in a pot. Plums are looking promising too.

Ten Steps to a Better Life

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I’ve decided to make some changes to my life. That way, slowly but surely, it will improve.

One, do some housework every day. I belong to the Quentin Crisp school of housework (“There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.”) but if we are going to retire to a bungalow I need to sort things out. I just did some shredding. I’m now up to 2008. No need to overdo it.

Two, exercise every day. Even a little bit. Including my hands. Make it into a habit. I’m going to find my weights and residence bands and start leaving them around too. As long as I remember to rearrange them every day Julia will never know I’m not actually using them.

Three, make a good nutritional decision every day. Today’s decision is not to eat biscuits. My willpower on this matter is boosted by the fact that we finished the biscuits on Monday. Tomorrow’s decision to avoid fizzy drinks should be quite easy too.

Four – stop pressing those internet buttons which promise to show you something amazing some American found buried in his back garden. It takes a long time and the only amazing thing is that I fall for it every time.

Five. Go out and walk every day. To the car and back should be about right.

Six – write a retirement plan – that way it won’t creep up and surprise me.

Seven –  start using shopping lists. It will make online ordering less of an adventure but will be better for us nutritionally.

Eight – plan my writing for the year. I have  a few things I want to do but unless I write them down with dates and everything, they won’t get done. This, Julia reminds me is a SMART Plan –  Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. I’ve done it before and it’s worked, I really should do it again. That should also help me stop pressing those alluring internet buttons – it’s nose to the grindstone for 2021.

Nine – employ psychology in my struggle with weight loss. Repeating the mantra “Stop eating or you’re going to die, you fat bastard” will be a start. I don’t see any point paying Noom to do that when I can do it myself.

Ten – stop promising Ten Point Lists when you can’t actually think of ten things.

 

Study Number 1 - The Idiot

In Trouble Again

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As I dropped Julia off at work this morning she asked what my plans were for the rest of the day. I told her that I intended doing mainly housework and perhaps a little light writing. So I did some shopping, went to the pharmacy and did the washing up. Then went to the pharmacy again. I could tell you why but I imagine you can fill in  most of the details from previous posts.

It’s fair to say that, on account of the lack of decluttering, I’m not her favourite husband at the moment.

She does not seem to be impressed by my reorganised haibun storage, or that I have my submissions planned until next Spring. Some people are never satisfied.

Then I remembered her birthday is approaching. Fast. And I have not bought anything yet. That’s my next job as soon as I finish this. It’s going to be jewellery again. I don’t think boooks would be appreciated at the moment and she has enough painting supplies for some time to come.

I offered to buy her a nice new chimney stack (the builder says he is coming “soon”) but she didn’t fall for it.

I’m fairly sure that jeweller’s shops are classed as non-essential, even though they are vitally important to people like me at the moment. I’m told that stationery shops are now essential, as students need places to buy paper, and presents for a wife’s birthday are at least as important as that.  Well, they are to me.

The Plans Slot into Place

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The plans were –

  • Publish the post I meant to do last night
  • Sleep
  • Write
  • Shop
  • Pick Julia up from work

It’s actually difficult for that to go wrong.

Tonight I will do some decluttering and some cooking.Not much, just enough to say I have carried out the last two elements on my list.

Nobody needs to know I intended to clear the dining room table or cook four meals in advance. A carrier bag of books will suffice, as will a simple beef stew. It was going to be venison (it’s healthier and everybody likes Bambi) but they didn’t have any in the supermarket. They had some last week, which is what gave me the idea. Typical.

Cookery isn’t so bad when you think of the alternative – watching the depressing news on TV, watching equally depressing non-news or watching poor quality repeats.

Ah well, where are those onions…

Snowdrops at Ruddington
Crocus at Nottingham

Some Spring photos, hopefully the first of many.

A Grey Day

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It’s a drizzly grey morning and the traffic is slow. That sentence reminds me of something, though there are no jumping fish and a distinct lack of cotton.

As usual, the drizzle seemed to bring out more traffic and the journey became more of a trial than usual.

I can’t help thinking the whole blues thing would have developed differently in a colder climate, or if the musicians were often clogged up in traffic following a cement mixer and a skip lorry.

That’s what happened to me this morning. There was also a woman on a Moulton bicycle, and an idiot on a moped.

The site of the incident was, as usual, the three lanes of traffic leading up from the Goose Fair roundabout to the site of the old gallows. It always seems so appropriate when you see how people behave there.

First the Moulton mounted woman had to skip up onto the pavement to avoid being killed by a bus. Then, as she returned to the road and stopped at the pedestrian crossing, the mentally challenged moped rider swept through and nearly hit a pedestrian on the crossing. There’s something about a bus lane that seems to suspend the normal rules of traffic. And there’s something about this stretch of road that, one way and another, that brings out the worst in a number of drivers.

The rest of the day is likely to be similarly grey in aspect as I have a list of domestic tasks to get through, some paperwork to do for Julia and more internet research to do for the jerk seasoning.  It’s not a thrilling list, but it needs doing.

 

 

Falling behind…

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I’m days behind with the washing up, weeks behind with the blog (both reading and writing) and months behind with my reading. If you want to complete the sequence I’m also years behind with the housework (though Quentin Crisp did say” There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.”), a generation behind in my thinking, and a lifetime behind with diet, dreams and ambitions.

The trouble is that you can’t wash up before you’ve dirtied the plates, can’t read until you’ve bought the books and can’t clean until the house is dirty.

I admit that you can write posts ahead of time, but I find it’s a struggle. Currently I have a few part-completed posts but nothing ready to go. Once I started researching The Kings We Never Had I found myself doing too much research and not enough writing.

The idea behind the book reviews was to give me something to do in advance, but it hasn’t worked like that. I’m behind with book reviews too. Badly behind, because when I photographed the last lot I optimistically included some books I haven’t finished. In truth, I hadn’t started them all when I took the picture.

The book on the Normans seems like easy reading but you will be waiting a while for the review of Some Desperate Glory as it’s heavy going. As there are plenty of copies available for a penny plus p&p, it’s clear that supply exceeds demand.

Poppies

Poppies

 

I’m already working on some more books, one of which will be Some Desperate Glory. Confusing isn’t it? I really can’t thing why Max Egremont used the title for his poetry book when there was already a perfectly good book of memoirs using it. I’ll cover that more fully when I write the review.

Meanwhile it’s time for tea –  belly pork with vegetables roasted with turmeric and cumin. It’s an old favourite and it’s easy.