ducking for apples

ringing the changes

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:18:48 PDT

We are all still here and still paddling along. Things have been quite busy - B has been working away a lot and I have been coping okay with the children; but have been very tired.

I have decided that I am going to move my blog to a different location, in order to try to regain some of the anonymity that I have lost over the last couple of years. I've been giving it a lot of thought and I don't want to make it private, or lose my content - but for various reasons I won't go in to at the moment, I do need to have a bit more of an idea about which people I know in real life are reading. It's not that I don't want people who know us to read - but I need to know who you are.

With that in mind, over the next couple of weeks, if you would like to continue to follow the blog at it's new, improved location, please email me.

validation please

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:24:37 PDT

I seem to be either a whirlwind of efficency or a bit of a blob at the moment. I'm finding some stuff really hard to do - keeping on top of the washing is still a big thing, despite taking Z's advice and downgrading my standards slightly!

But in chicken and garden world we have two broodies who are fostering fifteen chicks between them; we have sorted out the chicken pen so that fewer hens manage to escape and come round and sit on the doorstep - it's charming, but it means that one needs to navigate an ocean of chicken poo before getting in through the front door - and I seem to be forever chasing them off the sofa when the door is open in warm weather.

We have repaired the chicken house window, finally - it got broken in the move and has had an old plastic feed bag tacked over it all winter. Now they have two lovely clean windows to look out of; and some guttering to keep the rain off the house. We have laid out and started digging over a couple of veg beds and I have started peas, courgettes, squash and french beans in some pots.

Our planning meeting in Somerset went relatively well - the feeling from the planning officer was that a strawbale extension to the existing house would be perfectly acceptable. However, Ma isn't comfortable with us taking down the barn and being so close to her - she would rather we were a separate unit away from the main house. And Sister Natalie seems to have some issues about us being there at all which I just can't cope with at the moment. So we have decided to let things lie for a bit. We like it here very much and have space to do all the things that we want to do for now. So provided our landlady is happy, we will go for a longer lease when it comes up for renewal at the end of the summer.

On the down side, although the anti-depressants being doubled has helped me a lot, I am still prone to getting very stressed about things. I think this is partly due to lack of sleep. We had a dreadful week last week, with both children waking up alternately for about five nights in a row. Last Friday we ran the red flag up the flag pole to Ma and Leo went to stay with her on Saturday. We are picking him up again tomorrow and it sounds like they have all been having a really nice time. So have we - we've seen a few friends and put some sleep back in the sleep-bank.

B's mother, Kate, has been looming on the horizon again. This time I have tried to nip things in the bud before they spiralled out of control. When we met Ma on Saturday to hand Leo over, she presented me with a card from Kate that wished her a happy Easter and asked Ma to phone her as 'No-one else ever tells me anything!'. Ma said "What should I do about this?" and spent quite a lot of time agonising over it to us. It made me very, very angry and also raised the spectre of last year, when Kate was hassling Ma about what a bitch I was, whilst we were all trying to take care of Dad as he was dying. So, yesterday morning, I wrote her an email, with B's consent, telling her to leave my mother alone and not to try to bully us in to getting in touch with her. It was very straightforward and didn't pull any punches. Yesterday night we got a phone call from a friend, saying that B's father had just phoned, to ask if they could pass on a message to B to phone him. B did - and they have arranged to meet next week for a cup of coffee to talk things over.

I think this is a good thing. But I also feel dreadful about it - as if Kate and Vic are going to be telling B what a horrible person I am. They seem to think that I am lazy - that getting depressed and not being able to do stuff equates with laziness. I just want a quiet life and not be bullied. But hey ho ... we'll see what happens.

In other news, both children are fine, apart from the expected 'poking pencils up each other's noses' behaviour, which whilst hair-raising is completely normal. Eleanor can sit up by herself now, more or less. And if you help her balance, can stand. I suspect she is going to be mobile a lot earlier than Leo was.

Right, I need to get on and attend to babies and chickens. More soon. I am going to get back in to the habit of blogging more often now I am feeling better and we are doing more interesting things again - I don't want to be simply a mommy-blog.

For today, that is all.

briefly

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:00:46 PDT

I am still here. Just a bit preoccupied with mildly sick babies, hatching and non-hatching eggs, washing, cleaning, all the usual stuff.

I'm feeling much better, though - the medication is working I think - so I am hoping to rev up to talk about something other than babies and depression as I'm boring even me, now!

ten

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:13:13 PDT

Not coping terribly well at the moment - upping the escitalopram has given me an expected wobble whilst my brain chemistry rebalances. Some rocking, some sobbing, blah blah blah ... all boring stuff. I am spending as much time outside as possible; luckily it's been very sunny.

In summary:

1. Chickens shagging - check! (Yay!)
2. Eggs hatching in borrowed incubator two days earlier than expected - 8 (Yay!)
3. Eggs doing something peculiar in my own, thermostatically incompetent, incubator - 42 (Boo! Hiss!)
4. Wonderful husbands - 1 (Yay!)
5. Barking Mother's In Law - 1 (Round Two The Sequel has taken place in the last forty eight hours - Boo! Hiss!)
6. Broody boxes constructed - .999 (Yay!)
7. Toddler tantrums - infinite (Boo! Hiss! Screech!)
8. Cats having thyroid gland removed tomorrow - 1 (Both Boo! Hiss! AND Yay! as we have finally worked out what is making her poorly and it's quite easy to fix by taking the over-active gland out of her neck)
9. Exhausts that have dropped off car during past week - 1 (Boo! Hiss!)
10. Visits to Ma's in coming week to talk to planners - 1 (Yay! On all counts)

Early nights are where it's at at the moment ... I go a bit bonkers in the evenings otherwise. So for now, that is all.

apace

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:38:55 PDT

I've spoken to our GP today - she has advised that I double the dose of escitalopram that I am taking, which will effectively take me from a 'maintenance dose' to a more regular dose.

I am pretty miserable about it - but I'm starting to struggle to deal with everyday things like the laundry and paying the bills and feeding the children, so I guess it's one of the things to tweak and see what happens. In the however-many-years I've been taking it, I've lost all my previous hang-ups about antidepressants, so I don't have the feelings of failure that I did when I first went on it. I suppose that that is progress of a sort.

It's been a beautiful day and I've been watching my cockerels shagging. Not for pleasure, I hasten to add, although there is something very uplifting about the idea that the sap is rising and spring is coming. But to monitor their effectiveness.

I have nine hens and three cockerels. Until last week I had nine hens and ONE cockerel. But he's simply not interested in the laydees. He will find them bits of corn and beetles and what-not and call them all over and court them assiduously. The all come running and bustle around him like an obedient harem.

But when it comes actually giving them a good seeing-to, he is simply not interested.

So, I have put him in a pen with three young hens, in the hope that if the girls don't get a head-start when they come out of the house in the morning he might be able to keep up and jump their bones. And I have bought two young cockerels who are hopefully going to either stir him on to greater endeavours; or, in a worst-case scenario, take his place.

Young Cockerel One is too young. So he is hanging round like someone's son at an Anne Summer's party and running away when any of the hens look at him.

Young Cockerel Two is slightly older and knows what it's all about. However, he clearly has had no *actual* practice at it - rather like a chap from an all-boys boarding school in his first term at university. He waits until the hens are all eating or drinking ... and then he circles round behind them, takes a running leap, grabs them by their neck feathers and jumps on board.

Rather like some of the chaps I dated in my late teens and early twenties, to be frank. It's like watching the last half hour before kicking-out time in a particularly seedy club in Fresher's Week. If the hens see him coming they turn round to face him in unison, like a group of middle-aged women on a works outing and face him down. You can almost see them saying "Do you MIND, young man!"

However, I am hoping that a few weeks will see the young boys get the hang of it all and learn to court the ladies and my breeding programme can continue apace. If 'apace' isn't a particularly up-itself word to use, particularly in relation to chicken sex. In the meantime, I have four two-week old chicks that are feathering up nicely, ten eggs due to hatch this time next week and (ahem) forty-two due to hatch the week after.

I am investigating additional chicken accommodation for full-sized birds as well as for chicks.

For today, that is all.

brooding

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:15:07 PDT

We have been fiddle-faddling around trying to make an outside brooder box for chicks today. They need some kind of heat until they are about six weeks old and it's also good for them to be able to run outside on grass rather than be shut in all the time.

In the absence of a broody to foster them, I have found some plans for a wartime brooder that is basically an insulated box with a hot water bottle on the top, that you change twice a day. The chicks cuddle under when they are cold and then pop out again when they've warmed up. I think it will be a) healthier for them and b) cheaper to run than a 250 watt bulb on for six weeks - which works out at about thirty pounds.

My plan is to keep them inside until they are partially feathered - at two or three weeks - and then transfer them outside.

I have various orders for pullets and growing cockerels from people; so some planning at this stage will save us stress later on. Forty eight week old chickens take up soooooo much more space than forty day olds :).

Leo has been helping. It slowed us down considerably.

dig for victory

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:15:18 PDT

Are YOU digging for victory?

I've come across this website in the .sig of a friend of mine - and it looks like a good grassroots movement to join. Put the icon on your website or blog if you grow some of your own food; or eat seasonally or locally where you can; or buy from small local shops to support your local economy.

Spread the word - this way of life is a choice for us. To keep it as a choice for our children and not as the only way they can survive, we need to change the way we think and behave about our food NOW.

For today, that is all.

when we were very young

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 04:47:25 PDT

Oh. My. Goodness.

The Terrible Twos are F-ING TERRIBLE, aren't they? How long do they last? Given that we are starting them six months early? And can I put my head in a bag for the next x number of years until he leaves home?

DO children leave home these days? Because if they don't, I am.

doomy doom doom

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:23:56 PST

Today a friend came over and helped me to tackle The Room Of Doom. We went through various Boxes And Bags Of Doom and have consolidated, thrown away, tidied and generally gone through everything like a dose of salts. I reckon that there is about twice as much still to do as we did today. I am very, very excited about starting to be able to see the floor - and also very conscious that we need some storage space for things like curtains. I am thinking of some kind of old-fashioned clothes press type thing.

On my to-do list for the weekend is to put all the stuff that we decided could be ditched on to Freecycle ...

B is back and also went through loads of old business files that can be chucked out.

We rock SO MUCH.

No laundry got done, obviously ... but who cares!

I'm off to bed.

aims, method ...

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:24:27 PST

Things I have concluded today:

1. Pint tankards do not bounce when thrown down the stairs
2. It is probably impossible for a toddler to remove a baby's eye with a tea-spoon, however hard they try
3. Removing the last bits of meat from the chicken carcass for stock is a yukky job
4. Having a cupboard full of chutney you are too scared to eat is a waste of space
5. Bread can rise too much
6. Actively disliking ones mother in law is not a cardinal sin
7. You don't have to enjoy coping, so long as you ARE coping
8. A dyson can suck up more than 100 raisins before conking out
9. It cannot suck up sheets of lighting gel or whole oak leaves
10. Going to bed early doesn't make getting up in the night any less awful

B's gone to Daventry, did I say? Like Coventry, only slightly further and less full of naked ladies on horses.

it's not that

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:25:29 PST

Sometimes I still feel as if I'm stuck in the headlights of a car, in the middle of the road on a dark, wet night. And although I can see the car coming and am blinded and dazzled by the beams and their reflection on the wet road, the driver of the car has no idea that I'm there and is going to drive right through me.

I am having a really difficult week. I think it's depression - I wake up each morning and instantly want to burst in to tears. The feeling stays with me all day. Putting one foot in front of the other, dressing the children, feeding them, putting them down to sleep, making sure they have some relatively clean clothes to wear; some days it's really hard. I just want to sleep. Sleep sleep sleep.

B has got three days work this week - two nights away. He went this morning. It's the first time he's been away since Nenna went in to hospital at the beginning of December. Things are very different with the two children now - it's much easier to manage the two of them by myself.

So it's not that.

We are settled here in the house. I like it. B likes it. We are gradually getting ourselves sorted out.

So it's not that.

Money is okay.

So it's not that.

We are enjoying being a family and enjoying being together with less stress to deal with.

So it's not that.

The most ridiculous things leave me overwhelmed. For example, in a minute I need to put my shoes on and go and feed the chickens. And then I need to take the dry washing down from the rack and put the wet washing up. And then I need to sort out the two chicken carcasses I've got boiling for stock in the pressure cooker. And make Leo some tea. Feed Nenna a bottle. And put them to bed.

Just routine stuff. But looking at that list, I get stuck at the bit about the washing. I just can't imagine making myself do it. Washing is my Bete Noire anyway - I just about manage to put the dirty stuff in the machine; but putting it on the dryer is hard to motivate myself to do; and putting it away mostly never happens. Ironing I don't do - it's against nature. It's like the washing is a great, mountainous hill in every single day of my life that reduces me to a gibbering wreck.

Isn't it peculiar what makes you realise that you're not really coping?

The Health Visitor is trying to get us some extra help to come and look after the children or help with the house. I went to see someone on the Mental Health team a couple of weeks ago to try to see what practical and emotional support might be forthcoming from them - and got treated so poorly that I am making a complaint; more of which later once it's sorted out. Suffice to say that I don't think that that is going to be any good to us practically.

I just want to weep. And then can't do that because I feel hollow inside and there's nothing there. I've got a GP appointment next week to talk about hormones ... I think I probably need to discuss post-natal depression as well.

On a cheery note, we had four chicks hatch from the incubator on Saturday. It was a very poor percentage - there were thirty six eggs in there. I am giving the cockerel a repreive for now, as it's early in the season and he's young ... but if he doesn't buck his ideas up, there'll be pot-roast for tea one night soon.

We are weaning Nenna. Photos soon.

conversations with my mother #090301

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:23:38 PST

Ma: Hello dear! How many holes should there be in a cat's bottom?
Me: [speechless]

it is

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:40:02 PST

We got a phone call from nursery as we were about to collect the children yesterday - Eleanor wasn't feeding and was very chesty. Cue B accelerating towards the nursery rather more speedily than we had been.

We took her straight to the Out Of Hours clinic in Welshpool, as it was ten minutes after our own doctor's surgery would have shut. They gave her oxygen and called the ambulance. And so we all went to Shrewsbury again, in convoy. In the ambulance she had a real coughing fit and brought up loads and loads of gunk; apparently oxygen can do that, all power to it. So by the time we got to A&E, she was breathing much better.

They kept her in overnight, because sometimes the lungs can gunk up again - but we went up this morning and brought her home later afternoon. She has bronchiolitis again - she's all bubbly with clear secretiony-stuff and is finding feeding tiring. But her colour is good and she is very smiley. They've given us twenty four hour open access to the Paediatric Ward and we are much more relaxed about the whole thing. I'm not sure whether that's good, or bad.

But it is, anyway.

Leo is shattered. We took him with us last night on the 'all stay together in a crisis' principle; but the hospital was FAR TOO EXCITING for him to want to have a nap. And again, this morning when we went back up to collect her. He finally dropped like a falling tree at four o'clock, just as we were about to leave - I'm going to have to go and wake him up and give him something to eat in a minute, which isn't going to be fun.

Then, I need to sort out my hatching eggs (Saturday! Yay!) in to two incubators so I know which chicks are pure-bred and which are crosses.

Beef curry for tea.

If I sound blase, it's because I'm exhausted.

oh

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:21:36 PST

I am feeling a bit better, due to cranio-osteopathy, dicolfenic and writing a letter of complaint to the NHS about something I haven't yet blogged about because I thought I'd better wait and see what happened first. Not wearing a bra is providing me with some lessening of pain in my back and therefore my head.

However, my nipples are waving at my belly button.

As in so many things in life, there doesn't seem to be a middle ground.

drum-roll

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:34:46 PST

The crescendo migraine I have had for three weeks appears to be finally crescendo-ing.

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

booked

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:55:44 PST

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

How many have you read?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x
2 The Lord of the Rings x
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x
6 The Bible - x
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x+
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy x
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller x
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (about half) x+*
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks x
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger x+
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x+
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams x+
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh x
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck +
29 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x+
34 Emma - Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x+
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x+
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres x
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x+
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x+
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert x
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons x+
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x+
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x+
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon x+
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold x+
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x+
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath x
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome x+
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray x
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x+
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton x
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute x+
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x+
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Fifty-seven. Life seems to short to read stuff that doesn't immediately grab me these days*. If you'd like a go, cut and paste, follow the instructions and link back to here in comments so that we can all come and look.

* Currently reading Iain M Banks 'Matter', which is brilliant.

visualisation

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:55:23 PST

The sky is a perfect shade of blue overhead. The sun is warm and feels as if it is wrapping me in in it's arms. I am lying in the long grass. I can smell the fresh-crushed-grass smell from the broken stems around me and see the wide, furry stems with their tassled plumes rising above me. There are ladybirds and ants wandering up and down the tangles.

I can see nothing but the grass and the sky. A little way away I can hear Pa and some helpers stacking glass and moving the wires for the chrysanthemums and stocks around on the concrete pad by the old stoke hole. The concrete is quite old. There are cracks in it and moss growing on it and I know it's very hot under the sun. They are talking as they are working; I don't know about what and I'm not interested enough to listen any harder. I am relishing in being hidden from them - I am sure that they know I am there; but I am completely private. No-one can see me, hidden in my nest as I am, like a leveret or a plover.

I must be about eight.

I can conjure the memory up from thirty years ago as if it was yesterday - the smells, the sounds, everything.

That's the place I want to build my house. Down by the old stoke hole at the bottom of greenhouse Number Five. There's a long strip there covering the place where the stoke hole was and the patch of concrete is, now mostly grown over. It faces south. It won't impinge on agricultural ground, it's tucked down there below the blackcurrant patch and beside the brambly trees.

I hope the planners feel the same way.

impossibilities

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 12:19:13 PST

I am surrounded by cats. Both times I've been pregnant they have been obsessively in trying to get close. If I was pregnant I would a) be horrified and b) be very surprised. We have been very, very careful to make that a null possibility. However. The cat thing.

Me: These cats are really irritating me now. I wonder if I'm pregnant.
B: [pales] That IS JUST NOT POSSIBLE.
B: [pauses] NOT POSSIBLE.
Me: Have you been wanking in the bath?
B: No. Have you been bathing in the toilet?

I expect they just want a cuddle because it's cold. Only it's NOT cold now. It's lovely and warm in here, despite the light covering of snow outside. I am curled up on the sofa fiddling with a rough plan of our ideal strawbale house. B is Stumbling and is hopefully going to start speccing a twelve volt power system in a minute.

Tomorrow we are thinking we might have a baking day - lots of bread, cake and biscuits to go in the freezer.

pregnant person's offer ...

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:55:56 PST

I have a partly used 'Helios Homeopathy for Childbirth' kit to give away. If you would like it for yourself or for someone you know, email me your address and I will post it to you. There are some of all the remedies - I found it very helpful. It was given to me by a friend whilst I was pregnant and I would like to pass it on to someone else who might find a use for it.

fat

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:24:00 PST

One of the things about living in a really cold house is the layers of clothes that one has to wear EVEN IN BED preclude any kind of romantic activity whatsoever. Sometimes because of laughing.

Last night.

Imagine the scene:

Me: in a thermal t-shirt, pyjamas and bed socks, all smelling slightly of baby-sick, sitting up in bed reading 'How To Build Your Own Strawbale House'. The bed is covered in a duvet, a blanket, a double sleeping bag and three cats, all of whom are wearing woolly hats.
B: hopping round the bedroom in two t-shirts whilst attempting to pull on a pair of thermal long-johns two sizes too big and cut in a VERY peculiar fashion around the calves so that they are so tight that you can hardly get your foot through.
Me: I suppose sex is off, then?
Both: Collapse giggling, B with one foot still lodged in the funny calf-bit.

I can quite understand why people used to rub themselves all over with goose fat and sew themselves in to their rabbits skins or whatever for the winter; if goose fat wasn't so bloody expensive I'd be doing it myself.

On the plus side, though, we came home from Ma's on Monday with five sacks of logs small enough to fit in to the ridiculously inefficient and possibly lethally badly connected woodburner in the lounge. We have been burning a mixture of coal and HUGE logs left by some previous tenant that the landlady very kindly said we could use up. The logs are nice; but about 70% of them are too big to go in the fire and cutting them has been pretty difficult. The coal is very basic stuff, and very wet. Once you get it going it's okay; but it takes a while and involves shovelling it up off the floor where it's bags have degraded. It also doesn't burn very efficiently and leaves us with loads of cinders. We are gradually using these to fill in the wrong-way-round-trench across the middle of the orchard that is draining a small waterfall down the steps in to the back door. Why don't people THINK before they dig things like that? It's draining very efficiently - just in the opposite direction to the ideal.

We have also bitten the bullet since we came back on Monday and put the heating on all the time. We ordered half a tank of oil a couple of weeks ago and we have resigned ourselves to it only lasting two or three months. It's just not fair on the kids to have the house so cold that it's misty when you breath out. I now need to find four hundred quid to pay for it ... but we can just about manage that and it means that I'm not checking the kids for hypothermia four times a night.

We also came home from Ma's with a large rabbit, which has made a fantastic casserole with mushrooms, potatoes and spinach and some of the ham that we made from the half a pig we got last year. I've got some pictures of the salting process to post at some point, when I can get Ubuntu to talk to my phone.

We have made some decisions regarding moving to Somerset. We are going to try to do it. The next move is to make an appointment to talk to the planners about whether an independent dwelling or an annexe is a more realistic way to go.

On that note, I go in to the Room Of Doom to try and sort out some boxes.

where the heart is

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:20:22 PST

I want, so very much, to come home.

I am tired. I feel beaten. I feel drained. I feel overwhelmed. I have run and run and run; I have tried and tried to put down roots away and make a life for myself.

I left home when I was eighteen. In twenty years I have never thought that I wanted to come back to live. I have been so afraid that if I admitted that I wanted to, not doing so would be too much to bear. Coming back was impossible - Sister Natalie and I have never really got on. There was no-where to actually live that didn't involve sharing a house with either her or with Ma. Ma and I love each other dearly; but we cannot live under the same roof permanently.

Now, things have changed. Pa is dead. Ma is struggling. Sister Natalie and I have declared a truce that may, if we are lucky, evolve in to a non-dysfunctional relationship.

This last year, B and I have truly been through things that are too much to deal with. We are both exhausted. Neither of us is coping with day to day things very well. We are arguing and sniping at each other because we are so tired and have been so stressed. We know why - it's reaction to the last twelve months. But that isn't helping. Since this time last year, we have been through the death of family and friends; we have lost our business; we have lost our house; we have gone in to bankruptcy; we have nearly lost our new daughter. We have done all of this whilst I was pregnant and whilst B's mother was feuding with us, even to the extent of phoning Ma three times in the fortnight before Pa died to bitch about me. During the pregnancy and all of the other things, whilst I was suffering from post-natal depression and debilitating SPD, B was holding the family together. And now he is tired too.

Now, right now, I just want to come home. I miss the air here. I miss the smell of the hills. I miss the red soil that sticks on my boots in the winter and puffs up in fine dust under my feet in the greenhouses in the summer. I miss the 'clunk-roar' of the boilers coming on in the night; and the way the flax-blooms in the field opposite the gate ripple like water under the wind when they are in flower. I miss the oak tree half way up the lane where the owl sleeps. I miss the swallows zipping in and out of the back door to roost in the coal cellar and the hum of the Little Pump when someone is watering.

I want to rest. I want to recharge my batteries. I want to plant things and know that I won't have to move on and either uproot them or leave them behind in a few months. I want to be near my mother and my sister. I want help with the children. I want B to be able to rest as well. I want to have time to spend together, relaxing.

I feel rootless; aimless; purposeless; lacking in any kind of goals.

All I want, for me, for B, for the children, is to be happy and secure.

I want, so badly, to come home.

briefly

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:52:48 PST

Things that are making me grumpy today:

1. People who use my face flannel to wash the babies' bottoms

Tomorrow: Expenses Claims: Why running your own business can cause a divorce.

moany sunday

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 13:00:57 PST

The children and I have been to visit B's parents this afternoon, whilst B has been working. It was okay. I feel a bit odd about it - she had bought toys and books for them to play with up there, which made me feel guilty for not having more contact with them. I know it's not my issue to feel guilty about - it's just the situation, and if anything, *she* feels guilty and is trying to propitiate them with gifts. But still - I feel sad and lonely inside on Kate and Vic's behalf, somehow.

It's probably because I'm knackered. Eleanor has another cold and hasn't slept at all well the last two nights, whilst I've been on my own. I have been trying to sleep and rest as much as possible; but sometimes it's just seemed as if they are waking up alternately just to taunt me.

Gah.

Also, the rain has been blowing in to the coal cellar and all the coal is wet - so the fire is never getting up to the point where it could be described as 'roaring'. My feet are cold.

On the bright side, B is due back in an hour or so. I am going to wash the baby bottles, make up the fire and go to bed and read for a bit I think.

Tomorrow: Do you need to be a little pig to build a house out of straw?

horse with shouting

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:21:13 PST

This evening I drove the children home from Welshpool screaming simultaneously for forty minutes. Them screaming, not me. Although I was inside.

Children are such a joy, aren't they?

They were tired and hungry rather than any more serious issues, but isn't it amazing how much noise a tired and hungry baby can produce? Talking to them didn't have any effect at all, so in the end I turned on the radio and started singing, which seemed to stun them in to silence. But when I stopped and started talking to them again, the yelling restarted. Instead of just buying milk at the Spar, I bought a bottle of wine and three giant bars of chocolate; I managed to get them in to bed and have merciful silence descend before I cracked the merlot, but only just.

I have had a lovely day, though, all alone. I went back to bed after B left with the children at 7am and didn't wake up until gone mid-day. I woke up in a lovely, snoozy, warm, slow way, instead of jettisoning myself upright in to the cold and the dark to the sound of baby-screaming. As I lay there, I realised that the scratching noise I could hear was the cat using the carpet in the spare room as a toilet in a dirty protest at me not leaving the kitchen window open; so that idyll didn't last long.

Tomorrow; me, two babies and a whole day to fill without going mad. I may do some putting things in to folders. Leo likes putting things in to things and I reckon with a bit of encouragement I can get him to be fully conversant with my filing system by the age of two. And I might try to clean out the chickens if there is simultaneous sleeping. I am very grumpy about the chickens - the *bloody* horse is back, having now completely flattened the fence in a number of places. Our landlady is not very keen (or, I suspect, financially equipped) to repair it. And when I spoke to Mr Horse to ask him to come and reclaim his animals, he was very rude to me. So they don't give a damn about them, either.

I've spoken to the RSPCA who can't do anything unless there is 'clear evidence of neglect'. Which chasing my chickens and putting them off lay isn't. That's the bit I'm grumpy about. It took me a while to get there, sorry.

I go, to fill the coal bucket with wet coal and find some kindling to dry out in case I need to relight the stove tomorrow morning. Oh, and to wash baby-bottles.

Goodnight.

home alone

duckingforapples@yahoo.co.uk (Ally) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:29:41 PST

Today B went off to work just before lunch, leaving me on my own with both children for the first time, er, ever. It went quite well ... partly because a friend dropped in on the off chance and we spent a few hours drinking tea and chatting, whilst the babies alternately slept, cried and tried to eat the cat food.

I've just done bedtime - they have both gone down. I couldn't face a bath; but never the less, I feel quite pleased with myself. Tomorrow they both go to nursery all day; and then on Saturday and Sunday I am flying solo again and B is away overnight. I'm can't say I'm looking forward to it, really, but I think I'll cope now. Six weeks ago I definitely wouldn't have.

I have a dozen jars of marmalade that look lovely. I am not entirely sure about the taste. 'Bitter' would be one word you could use to describe it, possibly because I chucked the lemon and grapefruit peel in as well as the orange peel. I didn't use Sevilles, just ordinary oranges, so that should make up for it a bit. I'd just had a cup of sweet tea when I was tasting it, so perhaps that was the problem. I'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to have another go.

I'm trying to get back in to the habit of blogging each day. Some of it is going to be more tedious than usual until I get my hand back in, for which I apologise. And I definitely want to steer away from the 'mommy blog' which this seems to have become over the last few months. Tomorrow, I am having a lie-in, because B is taking the children to nursery on his way to work ... and then I am going to go and help a friend clip her dog's toenails.

That is all.