Sunday’s activities . . .

Girl Lacer had (another) party to attend this morning, this time a football party starting off in the park, so I drop her off and as the park in question was close to the shops, when the mum is child-free, the child-free goes shopping. I did, actually and justifiably, need to go shopping, as I needed some new jeans (after my old jeans developed a hole in an embarrassing place) and there was a new Fat Face store opening today. Now I’m not that familiar with the Fat Face brand but oh when I walked in, Mrs. Lacer’s clothing heaven, I’m going to be basically kidding myself I’m a twenty something until I hit 50. I love relaxed, slightly hippyish clothes. So I found a new pair of jeans in Fat Face (baggy boyfriend fit style) and they were £10 off, yipee. They had some other gorgeous stuff to, I particularly liked this blue linen dress but it was a bit expensive and although Mr. Lacer had sanctioned jean shopping, he wouldn’t have approved expensive dress shopping (oh how I’d love my own money again). They also had some lovely shorts but I thought I could probably get cheaper shorts elsewhere, so I spent the rest of my shopping trip looking for those (shorts had also been sanctioned). I am very specific about my shorts, they’ve got to be beyond a certain length, as although I may dress as if I’m still in my twenties, I am realistic I can’t get away with short shorts anymore (could I ever, beyond the age of 12?). However I looked in Gap (came out with three T-shirts for £12, they’ve got a special offer on), Marks and Spencer and John Lewis and it was all short shorts, shudder. Guess I shouldn’t have thrown out my shorts last summer that made me look like an American tourist (sorry any American readers, I’m sure most of you wear really nice shorts).

I then went and picked up Girl Lacer from the party, which by now had moved onto the birthday boy’s house. I walked into their garden and everyone was naked, well ok, the children were. They had one of those water slides out. Girl Lacer was being relatively modest and had put her shorts back on. But it was a case of “Oh, ok then”.

Now back home and Girl Lacer is being a wee bit over partied (she’s had three parties this holiday) and just generally holidayed out, thank god school starts again tomorrow. We walked in and Mr. Lacer and Boy Lacer were playing Lego Star Wars on the Playstation. Girl Lacer is now playing with Boy Lacer and is not liking playing dual player with him, so she keeps on asking him leading questions like “Do you want to stop playing?”, as although Boy Lacer is getting quite good at moving round the screen, he’s not very good at doing the tasks and he likes making Han Solo jump off tall ledges, repeatedly, and if they walk past a sliding door (of which there are obviously a lot in Star Wars), Boy Lacer thinks it’s a lift and insists of going in it .

Today’s activities . . .

I had planned to sort out the bedroom today, but Mr. Lacer was sorting out the under stairs cupboard (I should point out here that they are not our stairs, they are the stairs belonging to upstairs, but the access to the under stairs is in our flat, so it’s our cupboard and it functions as pretty much the closest thing we have to a loft). Previously our under stairs cupboard, bar a few small shelves to the side, had no shelves, so everything was heaped on the floor, which was unfortunate every time someone came to read our meter, which they do very frequently round here, as the electricity meter is also in our cupboard. So there’d be the knock on the door, I’d open it, there would be the meter reader, my heart sinks and I have to say, everytime, “Can you check our gas meter first, that’s in the kitchen” and then when the meter reader went into the kitchen, I’d have to fling aside the pushchairs in front of the cupboard door and burrow like a demented mole through the pile on the cupboard floor, until I could find a tiny gap for the meter reader to shine his torch through. So after five years of doing that, Mr. Lacer, the love, has finally completely shelved the cupboard, so boxes can be pulled in and out, making it far easier for that meter reader and the bonus, we now actually have somewhere to put our vacuum cleaner. But for Mr. Lacer to do all that, he had to dump the stuff that was in the cupboard, somewhere else, which turned out to be the bedroom I’d just started tidying up, so I had to abandon that idea and let the bedroom get even messier.

 

So to keep myself amused I made some square jam tarts, square because I couldn’t find the right circular cutter for my tart tin. The pastry was shop brought and the jam left over in my fridge from last time I iced a cake. The inspiration was from Fay Ripley’s Family Food book, although she at least in that, knew where her circular cutter was. However I think the square look is quite nice.

 I also made Fay Ripley’s tomato sauce today, a basic sauce made out of passata, onion, garlic and balsamic vinegar. It smelt absolutely amazing when cooking but was a little bland to eat. It would make a great base though for the addition of other ingredients such a chilli, pancetta or a dollop of pesto.

When I wasn’t cooking or pushing Boy Lacer round the park in his tricycle, I was hiding out on the kids’ bunkbed reading Homemade and was inspired to make a cup of homemade peppermint tea, with mint picked straight from the garden and it was delicious. I’ve never made homemade peppermint tea before and was surprised how superior it was from the dried stuff in the tea bags, all you have to do is crush the mint slightly with the back of a spoon. The picture was taken shortly after I added the water, the water shortly afterwards turned into a nicer shade of green.

This evening I had a go at gift bag prototype 3, as Girl Lacer has a party to go to tomorrow. This time I made button holes in the fabric before making it up into a bag. It worked better, but it was a pain trying to get the ribbon round, so next time I may thread in the ribbon before sewing up the bag. The present was more Muji pencils and this time a pack of make your own postcards made with watercolour paper from the Tate.

The White Road and other stories

I’m not sure I’m the best person to review a book of short stories, as historically I’m never that impressed by them, I like short stories by Neil Gaiman, as I like anything he writes and I don’t mind the occasional short story collection with stories written by multiple authors, as I like the differing styles and although I may hate some of the stories there’s always the promise of finding something bright and glittering. So a book of short stories, all by one person and that person isn’t Neil Gaiman? I was taking a risk here but I was intrigued by
The White Road and Other Stories after reading about it on How Publishing Really Works and then when I read about how the book’s publisher Salt was suffering badly in the recession, I thought I’d give the book a go.

What interested me about The White Road and other stories was the idea that the author Tania Hershman had gained a lot of inspiration for her stories from articles in the New Scientist, as I like reading the New Scientist and get story inspiration from there to. Turns out (as I expected really) the sort of stories I imagine from the New Scientist are completely different from the sort of stories Hershman imagines. Although Hershman gained her inspiration from the New Scientist, the stories are not particularly conventionally sci-fi, instead the majority of the stories seem to have a theme of loss, particularly the loss of children, through either death or most of the time through the child having left home.

I liked the stories, they were perfectly readable (something I wouldn’t necessarily say about some other short stories I’ve read) and I got through the book quickly but it didn’t light any fires, although that may in part be due to ‘the last book I read was absolutely brilliant-itis’ as I’m reading a novel at the moment to and that’s not particularly lighting any fires either.

Balancing

I took the kids out to the park today, to get them away from the drug that is the CBeebies, Nick Jr and Sesame Street websites. We walked through the trees and on to one of the smaller playgrounds in the park, which has been recently (and not popularly according to local motherly opinion) updated. Before we even got to the playground we spotted an icecream van, who knew the Royal Parks had their own icecream van? So two tubs of ice cream for the kids (even though Boy Lacer is not a great fan) and a Callipo for me (reliving my childhood there). Then on to the playground, it has now been converted into a sort of assault course climbing frame, which is why it’s not popular as it’s a bit beyond anyone under 3 or 4 (and light years away for Boy Lacer, but that’s by the by), but Boy Lacer managed a few trips round courtesy of me manhauling him over most of it, going “Walk like a crab, walk like a crab”, I was trying to encourage him to walk sideways along a rope. Me and Boy Lacer then took to the log border to the playground, which is used to keep in the bark chip and had a lot of fun trying to balance along its edge, a spot of physio in the park.

Embroidered altered notebook

 I’ve just done an altered notebook swap on swap bot and I do hope my partner is happy with my ‘less is more’ approach. I’m really happy with the flower at the front of the book (which was embroidered using a very heavy duty needle through the rather thick cardboard of the cover) and would have happily have left it as just that. I think the bright colours look good against the black card background but the rules of the swap insisted that the back of the notebook should also be altered, so I embroidered a little sun, which I’m not as happy with.

Jamie’s warm salad of roasted squash, prosciutto and pecorino

In the battle against the marmite sandwich and a packet of crisps, I thought I’d treat myself to a nice salad for lunch today, Jamie Oliver’s warm salad of roasted squash, prosciutto and pecorino, the recipe for which can be found in the book Jamie’s Kitchen or on his website here and it is absolutely delicious. Honestly, if you want to treat yourself (it’s sadly not really credit crunch cooking here) give it a go, who’d have thought that squash takes up the flavours of the salad so beautifully? And as Jamie writes “it even makes you feel a little bit posh”.

*The rocket by the way, is probably the last from my current salad patch, so it was the dish to give my rocket a good send off. It’s been pretty much eaten and the remainder looks like it’s going to bolt any minute. Must plant some more.

Sigh

Ok, first up, this is where Boy Lacer currently is for his speech therapy; he had been seeing the hospital based speech therapist for going on years, Boy Lacer did quite well (his vocabulary is quite good now, it’s more how he uses it / comprehends it now), so he was transferred to the community speech therapist, we waited a long time for an appointment, got one, Boy Lacer was assessed again and it was decided that he needed a place in a social communication group to work on his social communication skills, which I agree with BUT first before he got put on the long waiting list for the social communication group, I (as in me) had to put on the equally long waiting list for a parent workshop, which I wasn’t particularly thrilled about, Boy Lacer has been in the system for a long time now and as the appointment with the community speech therapist showed when every time she suggested I do something a certain way with Boy Lacer, I was there nodding BECAUSE I DO IT ALREADY because unlike a lot of children who probably go straight to the community speech therapist instead of going through the hospital system first, I’ve been taught all that stuff before. So I expected that I’d go to this workshop, hear a lot of stuff I’d already heard at other workshops and appointments I’ve been to over the years and then get Boy Lacer on the waiting list for the social communication group, which he needs. So I get the letter today and to quote it, the workshops (yes they’re in plural, they hadn’t told me that for a start) are designed to give you some information about language difficulties, some strategies you can use to help your child develop their communication and the opportunity to share ideas with other parents, now I think for the first two points, the hospital speech therapist would have been pretty remiss to have missed those out (and she didn’t) and have been to workshops with other parents before. And then there’s the times of these plural workshops, which by the way you can’t bring your child to, 1.30pm – 2.30pm every Monday for five weeks, so what do they expect me to do with said child then? Like I imagine a lot of parents with speech delayed children and their associate difficulties, finding childcare is an issue. If it had been one workshop Mr. Lacer could have possibly taken the day off, even though Mr. Lacer is currently extremely busy at work. And what about other parents of speech delayed children who possibly both work? In today’s economic climate I can imagine it would be oh so popular having to ask for a great big chunk of the middle of the day off for five consectutive weeks, I know my old employers would have had to have let me go but they would not have been impressed. Honestly, would it have been hard for them to either a) provide some sort of childcare b) have the workshops at a more practical time c) maybe think that someone who has been referred from the hospital speech therapy system has covered this before? So, I can’t go and I don’t know what that means for Boy Lacer’s chance of a social communication group place, but you know what I’m not that bothered, the school he’s about to go to does social communication group work, heck it even teaches Makaton, to all their children, mainstream and special needs, so there system.