New Year passed very quietly for me, all the gang were out at parties or playing in bands, and I stayed in feeling reflective and cozy with two fluffed up cats, flat eared at midnight due to local fireworks. I was not fit enough to spy on village or town antics, but nevertheless enjoyed myself anyway, my reporters were out and about, phoning in things
they saw and did themselves. I have rarely been stone cold sober on such an evening unless with bun in oven, however due to the current and delicate fine tuning of my LDN dosage currently, I have given up the three nights a week where I allow myself red wine. As soon as the titration is complete it will be back on the menu!
He rolled in at 2 am in the morning and engulfed me in huge swashbuckling beer hugs and wished me a Happy Birthday, before remembering that it was New Year and he had dispensed the wrong greeting. Then he became confused and realized that it was our youngest son's birthday and so had to say it again anyway, but not to me. I heard his arrival back to the house from some distance away. The arrival of a man with excess baggage, (not me). dropped off in the drive, then the back door bursting open followed by a series of deafening thuds and crashes. This being various instruments landing back inside, assorted percussion, accordions, electric pianos, guitars and mandolins and a heavily dented tin whistle flying in. He then squashed me flat and snored until dawn in a room heavily laced with alcohol fumes.
In the morning during tea in bed with cats, (a daily ritual which if disrupted for any reason, causes intense huffs from myself), I was treated to a delightful debrief of the previous evening. My youngest told me tales of a village character notorious for his decades of drinking in the wrong places, who had made some sort of lethal punch which he proudly announced as being local village fermented fruits, but which had been secretly overlaid with other things, The end result - ladies draped over chairs effect alongside men with very red faces. This was a scene repeated apparently for many miles around with little gatherings taking place.
One friend rang in to announce that she had ruined a village tablecloth by leaving the tap of her wine box open, she had though of lying under the table with her mouth open, but it was the wrong sort of party. Having paddled the wine and cloth with her feet, it was all confiscated to be laundered on an industrial scale by a more militant member of the local WI. The band that had been scrabbled together had been out the night before on a mission to locate unexploded WW2 bombs churned up in recent high tides, so nobody was properly awake. My husband according to my youngest, did apparently what I call beer bellowing and was heard at the dead of night performing a raunchy version of Delilah alongside his fun mates - I could envisage that perfectly, as for years when well enough I do play in various bands.. and we did and do have a late night repertoire especially for tiddled audiences... people always like that one.
Now he too is on a cleanse and after Christmas detox, and even the secret drinks in the garage that he thinks I don't know about have been tidied away. His pretext for I have a number of things that need doing out there, have changed to some grim faced shut in office behaviour associated with tax returns. I myself have started making those concerned parenty noises about revision with the children and their various school projects, all this combined with the Christmas decorations being yanked down by my daughter has made things feel very very January!
youtube.com/watch?v=iW0C_zS...
On the New Year's Day... as usual we celebrated our youngest's birthday. When he was small this would consist of hyperactive and over exhausted children full of Christmas sweets being dropped round in large numbers, by diabolically hung over parents, to have some sort of party, which was always hilarious. However my cakes during these former years did leave a little to be desired, I remember one year my son aged five, saying 'what is it mum'?
This time around a very civilized meal in an Indian Restaurant with careful gluten free choices for me and really nice staff there, who produced a nice pudding at the end. So a brief blip in my transformation back to supermodel. The next day we ate the leftovers with salad, and one of those things I try not to do, which is to make the leftovers even bigger than they were before you eat them!
As January makes it's mark, gales and all, a real tidy on going up today with the back drop of deafening practice, and some ridiculous procrastination from myself in the form of playing one of my cats YouTube clips when resting with me. She hates the Peacocks squawking I showed her but reacts best to the twittering birds, but has now got wise to what I am doing to her and ignores me if I play any clips..even the squeaking rats were not noticed. Also he announced early on that this was a working day for him and his office with all work projects to be complete. I notice at this very moment that several people have arrived to play live music and he is currently playing his accordion and singing for some reason in falsetto!
Yesterday to make sure I realized it was properly January, to compliment the foul weather outside and also my need to rest half of each day currently I embarked on project fridge clean... so frightful after Christmas and the amount of people using it. A lake. of milk had formed in the bottom of the door, which over flowed onto the floor every time anybody opened it. Of course it would not occur to anybody else to sort this. Apparently nobody had noticed, not even my husband who had stood in a puddle of milk telling me he could not see it yesterday! This after I had taken 11 pairs of his shoes and boots and piled them up on top of his lap top and in tray in the office, as a reminder that only 6 feet away lies a rack which I had built just for his shoes! He competes with Imelda Marcos when it comes to shoe collections, as did his late parents.
I spend two hours muttering and spitting venom until the fridge was perfect and all offending articles buried in the compost heap. Just as I finished the bottom shelf dropped causing the door to shut badly and squeeze a carton of goats milk until it burst it;s contents in the same place as the last one. I let out a lions roar and kicked the fridge hard. This brought him in, and he redid that last bit, explaining that there was no need to be cross! Previously I had been told there was no need to clean the fridge..Perhaps there is no need for PMT either etc.
Before I became too infuriated with fuss, and end to a very long and drawn out hilarious saga presented itself. My cats have been subjected to the most awful catering arrangements ever known in feline history regarding my husband. A while back he swapped their specially formulated scientific diet which was exceptionally economical and suited them perfectly, for what could only be described as cardboard munchies for cats, purchased in bulk from a farm shop, to save a few pennies.
They reacted in horror by pissing in his office and also by losing weight on purpose. For a number of months I secretly purchased the right food and mixed it in with the 'nasty nibbles for cats with high profit margin biscuits' He got wise to this... and then went to a nameless German supermarket and having not listened to the family debate based on detailed observations, including I might add the vet - purchased some more cat food this time in a bag resembling almost identically a market leader in scientjfically prepared and balanced cat food. He slid this into the cupboard and announced how good it was. Being fair. I offered this to the cats for a week, not only would they eat it, they actually physically recoiled from it, and refused to eat at all.
We are now back on the original diet for elderly cats which suits them very well and has appeared to have had a rejuvenating effect on the eldest slightly disabled one. She has gone from creaking up the stairs in an ancient and elderly manner to running at great speed and climbing the furniture. So it was with great amusement that he announced yesterday that the chickens would very much enjoy the much maligned and sniggered over German cat biscuits. Chickens do rather like cat biscuits, and I had one a few years back who's entire mission with it's best friend was to escape from the run, and come in through the cat flap in order to get at the cats bowls. With fanfare of hand claps the chickens were treated to a special biscuit treat yesterday afternoon... unfortunately they too recoiled and used their wings to fly up and away on top of their coop, normally reserved for when they are deeply worried about something. I could hardly stand up after this! This has kept me amused for hours and I awoke laughing about it.
We all had a lie in this morning to catch up a little. In the middle of this he arrived to have a pot of coffee with me. He has ants in his pants and can't just sit and talk, he has to be doing several things at once. When he arrives with breakneck and bodged household jobs in mind, clutching unsuitable tools in both hands, it projects me from a typical autoimmune hypo thryoid brain fog into a state of fevered teeth on edge hypervigilance.
So for the last half an hour he has stood on my bed doing things with the overhead electrics and new lampshades that warrant an inspection of some sort, and I might add, he did this wearing wellingtons.
Our last giant lampshade had been battered and torn due to the amount of things thrown at it if anything buzzed inside it at night. Due to it's shape, and it being made of brilliant white paper, anything within a five mile radius was likely to come in through the night and fly around in circles with various hideous winged mates and drive me nuts. Once it started to hand down in paper tatters complete with brown stain underneath from a hair dying accident involving gale force winds and open windows, it; number was up.
More soon,
MaryF x
Happy new year and keep us up to date on all your antics. xxx
- are pedigree cats as tough as old (puss in) boots?. x
Just need to share what I'm feeling right now
