New Year Review and Resolutions

Ok, now I’ve been reading last year’s resolutions and as I wrote them down I can be a bit more critical about whether I actually made them. This is what I wrote last year on writing.

 

Writing

I’ve been following Susan Hill’s creative writing course on her blog and her last post on the matter for the year was a kind of put up or shut up ultimatum, basically a ‘are you a writer or just somebody who says they want to be a writer?’ and the ultimate thing, what writers do, it submit to be published and that in 2008 has to be my goal. So far in my ‘writing career’ I have submitted unsuccessfully three short stories and three chapters which I’m still waiting to hear on. I am currently working on a children’s picture book idea which needs more research but if I actually got down to doing it wouldn’t actually take that long (it requires some trips to the British Library, so it’s more of a trying to find the time issue), I am also still trying to finish my Egypt project. So those two projects have to take priority in my writing time, no more attempts at short story writing (although I’ll finish my current one that I’ve posted the first half of), I’m not very good at short stories, short stories require a different discipline to writing novels and I prefer writing longer stories. I am also a pragmatist, although I know my chance of making money at this is slim, there is very little money in short stories and alot more money in the commercial fiction I am attracted to. I’m sorry, typing this sounds like I’m trying to ‘debase my art’ or something poncy like that, but I need to make a living, I have a slim hope that I could do it writing but to make a living writing means having to think about money.

I need to plan my time more carefully concerning writing, researching and the all important reading. My experience doing NaNoWriMo this year made me realise that although I may long for all day to write, if I allow myself vast amounts of time I can’t actually write for that long anyway! So I need to stop feeling resentful at the other domestic chores that take my time away, as there is time to do both, I just have to be (and I hate this phrase) more organised about it. Last Autumn I was lucky, Girl Lacer was at nursery and Boy Lacer napped, so I had two hours free each day and what did I do with it? I faffed, that’s what I did. Ok I did use that time to complete a 40 000 word novella during NaNoWriMo, so I guess I did something but I then spent the whole of December recovering! Once Girl Lacer goes back to nursery I will not have the luxury of Boy Lacer napping anymore, as he appears to have grown out of them, so I need to find my time elsewhere and unfortunately I am not an evening person but all I think I need for the moment is an hour each day to read, write or research and that will be progress and my resolution.

 

Ah RIP Susan Hill’s blog, I still miss that, although I have since learnt that she was probably in the minority of writers who don’t feel monumental self doubt about their work and that there’s nothing wrong with monumental self doubt, it doesn’t necessarily mean your work is cr*p.

Well, I didn’t write any more short stories (hooray – I suppose) but I never did find time for the research on the picture book story, the Egypt story is still stuck in research hell and I’ve got myself bogged down on research for my Charles story, see a common theme there?

It was interesting about what I wrote about how given all the time in the world I wouldn’t be able to write all day, I’d forgotten that and the fact that that means technically I have time to do everything else and write. I still fall into the trap of thinking I don’t have hours and hours to spare and therefore I shouldn’t write at all. I need to remember that’s not true.

New Year Resolution 2009: Boy Lacer starts nursery (so five mornings or five afternoons) in September, so that will give me a lot more time, until then I need to stop searching fruitlessly for big chunks of time and concentrate on the smaller gaps. The other writing resolutions is to start carrying round a writers notebook for ideas and to get that first draft done!

On the subject of housework I wrote;

As referenced in my previous resolution I do need to spend more time doing housework and to stop resenting it. I tried Flylady twice last year and it was successful, which annoys me even more know as I know there’s a method out there that works, so I’m annoyed at myself for not doing it. However it is soregimented and that is just not me. I think I need to find my own plan, something that works for me, using some of the tools from Flylady (some of which I still try and do even though I’m officially off the Flywagon). I spend too much time using the fact that we live in a tiny flat as an excuse, we could, in all likelihood will be, here for years, I can not wait until I get that big house I lust after. It is not just me who lives here, my children do to.

At least I didn’t go back on the Flywagon but I do still need to make more of an effort, yes living in this tiny flat is a nightmare but the only possible way we’re moving over the next few years (and years and years) is if the bank forced us out and may that not happen. So no more thinking ‘oh it’ll be better when we’re in a bigger place’ because it ain’t going to happen, so I need to make it better here, so that’s the housework resolution, same year in, year out.

I wrote on the subject of the internet

I need to spend less time on it. I am already fairly controlled with it, I know that there are some sites like Facebook, that if I got into that I’d never be off the computer and I have my messenger off most the time as well but I need to be more controlled, use my time more constructively. However on the other side of the resolution I do resolve to continue blogging! But less time on the internet means more time for housework, writing and the kids, which can only be a good thing.

Ooh, at first glance I did not do well with that as in 2008 I got onto Facebook, however I’m pretty much off that now, the novelty wore off very quickly. I still need to remember not to spend too much time on the internet though.

On money and cooking I wrote;

Money

I’m still learning but I need to be in better control of it.

Cooking

I need to use my vast collection of cookbooks a little more often and to stop relaying on Captain Birds Eye and pasta!

 

Money will be a big issue next year, I have to control it now on an even tighter leash and decide whether my book selling is economically viable. I could do with getting more tuition clients but I’m not sure how easily that will happen with the recession. 

Cooking is a fine line, I need to make sure I plan for recipes that aren’t going to be too expensive and aren’t going to leave unfinished jars etc. that won’t be used. I think in 2009 I need to make my cooking simpler.

And finally on crafting I wrote:

I’ve been getting ’sewing urges’ for a few years now and so far it has totalled up to a nearly completed doodle embroidery, a toy dog for Girl Lacer, a scarf for Boy Lacer and a sewing machine I brought 3 years ago and have so far been too chicken to use. I buy books on how to make your own clothes from a vintage handkerchief or how to make a quilt and I have a collection of baby knitting books which are useless now as both my children are too big, although at the rate it takes me to knit something and with the fact that I would in three years or so like another baby, that maybe I need to start knitting now. So my resolution for next year is to be more crafty, I have the urge to knit my own socks (?!?) and Imust get out that sewing machine

Looking at the things I had made up to the beginning of 2008 is a good feeling because I’ve added so much to that list now. I feel that I’m now reasonably ok at embroidery and I’m starting to develop my own style. My soft toys are much better (not hard when compared to my 2007 efforts). I never did get round to knitting again but that will be this year. Oh and as for the sewing machine, I did get it out, managed to thread it up and it does work but I’m sorely in need of someone showing me how to do it properly, instead of a book, so I’m strongly contemplating lessons in January, as in 2009 I would like to start making my own clothes and furnishings.

Finally one last resolution, which didn’t feature last year, I must start running again, my waistline says so!

Leon’s Lemon and Ginger Coldbuster

I’m still feeling bleurgh, but on the mend (I think, I hope?), I managed to stagger into town again yesterday to stock up on more cold busting pharmaceuticals and I thought I’d try a spot of something more natural to, so I brought myself a great big knob of ginger, some rosemary (my rosemary bush is a glorified slightly spiky twig) and some New Zealand honey from bees that feed on stringy bark trees (I had some lemons at home). I only got round to making it in the evening, discovered that Leon’s definition of stringy bark honey is different from the stringy bark honey I had (their stringy bark honey has the bees living in the stringy bark but feeding of eucalyptus flowers), but hey it was still honey. I quickly came to the conclusion that the ideal home made cold cure would be made by someone else, as just the act of trying to grate the ginger was giving me a literal headache but I managed it eventually and the result? Well one of the horrible things about this bug is that I’m off my food as I can’t taste anything, so although there was a lot of ginger in the drink, I didn’t actually taste any! All I could taste was quite a nice smooth lemony, honey hit, bit like lemsip but nicer. I couldn’t taste the rosemary either. It sort of worked whilst I was drinking it but it’s effect was short lived, that’s not to say I’m not going to drink the rest of it though!

Recipe can be found here (top recipe).

Gods Behaving Badly

Ok, I’ll admit I wasn’t very complimentary towards Marie Phillips Gods Behaving Badly in last week’s Sunday Salon but I’d only read the first 50 pages or so and all I had got so far was boring mortals and over-sexed and over-here gods. But it turns out that by the middle of this (shortish) book, things do improve and it explores some quite interesting scenarios, with a race through the Underworld to save the (mortal) girl and the world, and the ending was quite nice to.

Highlights of 2008

I’ve just been reading my highlights of 2007 post and thought I’d do the same this year, I’ve also noticed that one of the things that I was most looking forward to this year (2008) never happened, I wrote back on 31 December 2007 under the category of ‘family highlight’;

Boy Lacer learning to walk at 26 months old after 10 months of physiotherapy. He’s still at this point tottering around and hasn’t caught up with the walking skills of an ‘average’ two year old yet but I’m looking forward to watching him progress even further next year. I can already tell you a highlight of next year, the moment me and Boy Lacer first walk together to pick up Girl Lacer from nursery. Girl Lacer’s nursery / school is literally 5 minutes walk from our house, a two year old should be able to do it (it’s literally at the end of our road) so the day I do the school run without a push chair will be momentous.

That unfortunately has not happened yet (and pushchair number 3 is starting to show signs of breaking gulp, we may have to move up to one of those buggies that are more like little wheelchairs, which I’d quite like not to do), but trying to be positive here, here are my highlights of 2008 (and I’ve added a few more categories).

Family Highlight

Girl Lacer starting school. We are incredibly lucky to be living literally down the road from the perfect school for our little family; with an excellent academic, pastoral and special needs reputation, I try and remind myself that’s why we’re living in our tiny, poky, very expensive flat, when the living in the tiny, poky, very expensive flat gets to me. I can’t believe that Girl Lacer has been in school only a term and she can already read and sound out so many words, we’re really pleased with her progress.

Personal highlight of the year

Managing to make most my gifts this Christmas (excluding the kids and Mr. Lacer) hand made / hand adapted, will definitely be doing that again, although may be starting in June next year! Oh and running my first 10K race in August, me? Run?

Book Highlight(s)

Thanks to 2008 being the first full year of my blog, I can fill you in with the incredibly nerdy fact that I read 49 books in 2008 (34 adult fiction, 8 children’s / young adult fiction and 7 non-fiction), nowhere near as much as some book blogs I read but in my ‘defence’ some of the books I’ve read this year have been real door stoppers, such as finally finishing Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell or somehow managing to get through the  endless running up and down country lanes / train tracks of The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters.

Adult fiction favourite

Looking through the reviews of books I’ve read in 2008 has made me realise how quick reading time goes, I read my first Shardlake in January and have felt like I’ve wanted to read more since, but have yet to do so. One of my favourites this year (it turns out) was Suite Francaise, but I was convinced until checking, that I’d read it in 2007. There are whole lists of books that I feel like I read them just yesterday, yet looking at the dates of the reviews, they were read in the summer. Anyway, honourable mentions include Suite Francaise, The Meaning of Night, The Gargoyle, We Need to Talk about Kevin, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell,  but my favourite book that I read this year (and yes I know it’s been published for ages) is Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, I loved that book!

Children’s book highlight

Considering I’ve only read eight children’s / young adult books this year (for myself, not for my kids), I really need to read more, but anyway, my honourable mention goes to The Battle for Gullywith by Susan Hill, which is hopefully making a lot of kids in the library of Girl Lacer’s school, very happy (I ‘won’ the book on condition I donated it to a school afterwards) but this year’s Children’s book highlight for me, goes to The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, which is completely magical and lovely.

Non-fiction highlight

Up until very recently it would have been Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, pretty heavy going, it goes into Western capitalist theory and although the book was written before the credit crunch (I’d love to see an updated version / new book by Klein on the subject now), I now have a little bit more of an idea what the journalists on Newsnight are going on about when they start waffling on about Keynesian theory. I would also give honourable mentions to Blood River, a journey down the Congo, which is as exciting as any novel and the highly brilliant and useful Stephen King’s On Writing. But definitely my best non-fiction read of the year was Russell T. Davies and Benjamin Cook’s Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale, one very good book indeed! I really must read more non-ficition next year to.

Cook book highlight

None of the books joining my groaning collection this year have really made their mark like my cook book highlight of the year has and this book has been in my collection for years; Tessa Kiros’ Apples for Jam, is the ultimate good food, family cookbook for the credit crunch; simple healthy recipes, that don’t require too many ingredients, I’ve cooked from this frequently this year.

Film / DVD highlight  (criteria – I have had to of watched it first in 2008, it doesn’t necessarily have had to be released in 2008)

Actually one of the first movies I saw this year, it’s stayed stuck in my mind, the very good and very original Cloverfield, watch out New York!

TV highlight

Spooks – it was good even though Rupert Penry Jones was barely in it!

So onto 2009, it wasn’t the best of years this year, our already tight budget getting tighter, just like everyone elses and to top it all off (ok not as serious as the credit crunch) we didn’t even have a proper summer, feels like something was missing there! Looking forward 2009 feels fragile, that is the overwhelming sensation I’m getting, hopefully Mr. Lacer’s job will be ok, his industry has undergone rafts of redundencies since the Millennium and he’s survived them all so far, it’s more that the world doesn’t feel an increasingly very pleasant place. Ok, off to think cheery thoughts now!

Is it storytime followed by a spot of higher mathematics?

I always love surprising conversations with Girl Lacer. I was on the bed flaked out, so she came and sat on me to ‘make me feel better’, whilst she was on my back I asked her;

“Do you know what day it is tomorrow?”

“No?”

“It’s the last day of the year. The last day of 2008 and then it’ll be 2009,”

“What number will it be when it’s the end of the world?”

“Oh a very big number . . .”

“Oh I know! It’ll be infinity!”

“Yes . . . you’re right, infinity. Do you know what infinity means?”

“It’s when the numbers get really big and then they run out of numbers.”

“That’s right. Who told you that?”

“Daddy did.”

Conversation with Mr. Lacer shortly afterwards,

“So, you told her what infinity is?”

“Nooo, she came up to me and said ‘is infinity when they run out of numbers?’ and I said yes.”

What do they teach her at that school? I’d heard they had a good academic reputation but still! She’s come out with gems on evolutionary theory previously as well, although now thinks because I was little in the ‘olden days’ I was a monkey! When do they fit all that in and the endless making of junk models ?

Leon: Ingredients & Recipes

Thanks to just the merest of mentions over on Appetite for Cake for Leon: Ingredients and Recipes by Allegra McEvedy, I was hot footing it over to Amazon to buy myself a copy. It arrived today and it’s a lovely book, sorry for no pictures, all is not obviously happy in downloading pictures onto WordPress land right now. I know it ‘shouldn’t matter’ and it’s the words that describe the recipe that should count but a nicely designed and photographed recipe book makes the whole thing just a whole lot more pleasurable and this one certainly is unique; half descriptions of ingredients and their health benefits (and more); half recipe book, this book is complete with pull out cheese maps, fold out larders and stickers! I can really see the ingredients section being consulted, specially by Girl Lacer on her endless school projects about food (they have a Healthy Living Day once a term, with at least a week of activities leading up to it, last term Girl Lacer was choosing healthy ingredients to put on pizza). My kids in general like looking at a good cookbook (Annabel Karmel being their favourite chef though), I better make sure I use those stickers before they get plastered over everything by Girl Lacer!

As usual, my list of recipes that look very doable -

• Breakfast power smoothie – the first of many recipes though that use stringy-bark honey, which seems only to be from Australia, so I’ll be substituting a nice English honey for that.
• Leon Ketchup – I seem disturbingly fond of making my own ketchup and this looks a nice recipe.
• George’s Breast-feeding bread looks delicious anyway but may be very useful if I ever have a hungry number 3
• Hummus
• Roasted garlic & pumpkin hummus
• and of course the Flatbread to go with it
• Leon Biyaldi
• Sicilian Grilled Vegetables
• Lentil, pancetta & Italian Herb soup
• Indian Parsnip soup
• Butternut & Bacon chowder
• Leon’s Spaghetti Milanese
• Chocolate milkshake
• Hot Apple Mull
• Lemon & Ginger Coldbuster (need to make that NOW!!!!)

Rhetorical question alert: Am I getting too sensible in my old age?

The mother-in-law gave us a bit of a blinder on me and Mr. Lacer this Christmas by being surprisingly generous with the money in the Christmas cards, to such an extent we’ve both been wondering what to do with it, having gotten used to not having much spare cash to spend. So, much of my Christmas has been internet window shopping, with a rather depressing and knackering (ugh shouldn’t have gone out yet) trip to do real life shopping today.  I almost hated having this money burning a hole in my pocket because I knew I had to spend it ‘sensibly’, so what was it going to be? Me and Mr. Lacer had already brought two duvet sets as we needed some new ones with our money but there was some left over. Clothes, books, running stuff, garden stuff? The number of times I’ve filled an online shopping basket and then clicked the x button. But I’ve just done it, I’ve just spent most of my share and I was very sensible, it does rule out the Garmin Forerunner 305 though, which I have been very very close to buying but I was so scared that even spending all that money I would find another excuse not to run, I’ve gone rather hurriedly to the Rocket Gardens site, if anything just to stop me buying the Garmin because we need another season’s worth of vegetables more than I need a portable GPS receiver, there are such free (online) things as maps Mrs. Lacer! So, thanks to the mother-in-law, the next growing season (as long as I and/or the snails don’t kill it all) will be a BIG one. I’ll be (patio) gardening on a much bigger scale (I’ve previously gone for their ‘window box’ garden, except I don’t have window boxes and I think with the size of Rocket’s window box garden, you’d need some very big window boxes, so I’ve already used patio containers), this time I’m going for their Instant Patio Garden with tomatoes, courgettes, two different types of beans, peas, strawberries, spinach and lots and lots and lots of salad plants. It’s meant to be the equivalent of saving almost £300 in the supermarket (that would be two Garmin 305s then plus some change, but I doubt Mr. Lacer would see it that way), I know I won’t be having to buy any food for me, as the only person in this house who eats salad, I’m going to have a lot to get through before it all bolts! Plus on top of the patio garden, I’ve also ordered (and this does feel like cheating a little, because although I don’t have enough space to raise from seed a whole patio vegetable garden, I do have space to raise herbs) an instant herb garden to because last year I really missed having herbs (other than the ones that came in the window box garden before the green fly got them) because I knew I could grow them and therefore I point blank refused to buy them from the supermarket, yet that didn’t actually prompt me enough to start sowing!