On Wednesday Z and I took time off from work and painted our living room mustard yellow.* It was like the paralympics of painting since we both woke up with horrendous sinus headaches and generic dreadfulness. The only thing that convinced us to try lifting our heads from pillows and our arms above our heads was the fact that we had been planning ( Read more... )

Today I realised one of my dreams, which was sewing a dress with my very own hands for my very own daughter, thanks to the patterns and helpful tutorials from KitschyCoo which I would heartily reccomend to all sewing and dress enthusiasts ( Read more... )

Eating cake in bed with Z is bad for the waistline but good for the soul.

Alas, the best thing I can say about Never Let Me Go is that Keira Knightley dies in it.

Oh dear, I faer my posting and comment-replying functions may be disabled until Helena's incisors erupt. My spine may become disabled also from all the rocking and the soothing.

I've been on a Hilary Mantel kick lately following reccomendations from you lot. wolf Hall was brilliant, A Place of Greater Safety became gripping after a slow start and ( Read more... )

When I was 11, I was living in Holland with my mum. Neither of us spoke Dutch and we didn't have any family there, or any social network to speak of except for three friends. My mum was doing a great job of looking after me and helping me to settle in, right up to the point when she badly sprained her ankle and could not walk ( Read more... )

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My mum has arrived to visit us. Matei, who is normally very fond of his grandmother, experiences one of his clannish changes of mood and suggests to her that she ought to leave, listing a number of reasons for this ( Read more... )

Marinka wrote recently about her dilemma regarding whether to allow her 13 year old daughter to ride the subway by herself in NYC, and the comments were fascinating. Strong emergent themes included: “I base my decisions on whether or not I could live with myself if I let child do something and something goes wrong” and “The world is very unsafe, ( Read more... )

It's hard to tell who is more needy in the contest of sick kids vs. sick husband, so I'm phoning it in to NaBloPoMo today ( Read more... )

We are watching Frozen Planet on iplayer.
"Where is that Mummy?"
"It's the North Pole."
"Ah," says my eldest sagely, then points at David Attenborough. "And that must be Santa."