I got up early this morning intending to achieve many pressing work things - bank holidays are as irrelevant as weekends during term time - and instead got roped into helping to achieve the following.

Keiki's room
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Humuhumu's room
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The two of them have been in the same bedroom (Humuhumu's) since Keiki stopped breastfeeding in the night at around nine months old. It's become increasingly clear from the bickering that they now need their own spaces. We had originally intended to renovate the upstairs of the house before separating them. As this has proved impossible to achieve over the past nine months, we settled for patching up the plaster and paint, and shifting Keiki into the bedroom that had served as the spare room prior to the downstairs extension. 

We need some additional furniture: bookcases and an adequate bedside table for Humuhumu for a start. We will also see how the sleeping tonight goes, but they both seem delighted. 
January 18
What’s your least favourite room in your house?

I don't have a least favourite. I'm enamoured of all of them since the house extension/renovation was completed. My least favourite room to attempt to keep tidy is my office. The surface of my desk and its immediate vicinity are spartan and clean. As long as I'm sitting in my chair facing my screens, I can remain oblivious of the explosion of books, papers, ancient cameras, and half-finished bits of artwork starting immediately behind me. Thank goodness for the "blur your background" function in video calls, is all I'm saying.

♫ ♬Don't turn around... ♫ ♬
Teams

nanila: me (Default)
( Jul. 25th, 2020 10:42 pm)
We've been home since Thursday evening. Apologies it's taken so long to update but as you might imagine it takes quite a while to reassemble the contents of a completely upended house. Spoiler alert: we're nowhere near finished.

You'll be pleased to know, I'm sure, that it has taken less than 48 hours for Telstar to bring home, execute, and consume a member of the local rodentia. On the more expensive of the two sets of new carpet - most of the downstairs is LVT flooring. I'm sure he'll find a window in his busy schedule to christen the other set.

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I wish to reassure readers that His Lordship is not suffering unduly due to the escalation of building works at our house. In fact he is developing a bit of a tum as a result of extra rations/treats being distributed by soft-hearted builders who are wrapped around his noble paws.

Now we’re down to the last four contestants, it’s time to re-run the Great British Sewing Bee poll! I’m also attempting to get over the fact that we’ve dedicated two evenings in a row to staring at light fightings trying to work out the best arrangement for the kitchen and outdoors, and I’ve just dropped over £200 on the ones we selected. I may need a glass of wine or three to be able to cope with the idea that I’m now apparently a person who cares about light fittings.

Anyway.

The poll is behind the cut for those who have not been watching synchronously )

Wittering )
  • My kids watched Castle in the Sky whilst a friend was looking after them for me over half term this week. Apparently, Humuhumu fell in love with the story and was glued to it for the length of the film. She has been watching it again in “episodes” over the past few nights. Keiki adores the robot who looks after all the creatures in Laputa. I am very happy that they’re so fond of it, because it’s rather a slow burn and the animation looks quite dated now, but clearly the story is timeless. I can’t wait to watch more Studio Ghibli films with them.

  • Sweet Christmas, it’s tedious to wash clothes in a bathtub. The automated washing machine has got to be one of the greatest inventions of the modern age. We are two weeks into the (allegedly) ten-week house extension project and I have already cracked and gone to a friend’s house to borrow her washing machine just to do the laundry. There was a paragraph in Bobby Freeman’s First Catch Your Peacock, about the history of Welsh cookery, which resonated powerfully with me when I read it at the cottage last weekend. She said that when she consulted with older Welsh folk on the old methods of cooking, on open fires and hot stones, the men would wax lyrical about the taste and quality of the food produced thereby, which is hard to replicate using a cooker. The women were pointedly silent. Because it took forever to cook stuff properly in the old ways.

  • The one thing that is harshing my enjoyment of Good Omens: Jack Whitehall is in it. Casting directors: one demerit point.

    On the other hand, David Tennant and Michael Sheen are absolute perfection. Casting directors: seven million merit points. I forgive you.


366 questions meme, Feb 9 to Feb 21 )
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