Old enough

I have this saying that I sometimes use when asked my age…..

Old enough to know better but young enough to enjoy it.

Now I don’t know if I made that up myself or if I had read/heard it somewhere else first. If you have heard it before can you please let me know.

I am one of those people who refuse to grow old. Unfortunately my body didn’t get the same memo as my mind. I can pretend to be responsible when I have to. But even the most serious situations can’t keep my bad sense of humour locked away totally.

One of the most difficult things I find about being my age is that I still feel 16….not so bad I guess except that I have now reached that time in my life that I had never believed would happen. Every darn one of my 4 sons is now older than I feel. So how does that work then?

Although I do take a small comfort in the theory that girls mature quicker than boys. I remember my parents saying that the ideal age difference for a couple is when the boy/man is 4 years older than the girl/woman. If I think of my boys being mentally 4 years younger than their age it makes my youngest son younger than my imagined age whilst my third son is the same age as I am. Nothing I can do about my older boys though.

Old enough to know better hmmm that implies that I am doing things that I shouldn’t be doing because I am now too old.

I drink lemonade and cola ….but I also drink tea

I like to wear sexy lingerie but I do wear plain cotton if I am going to be in them all day

I like to wear pretty shoes (the higher the heel the better in my book) but I also have a few pairs of comfortable shoes if there is much walking to be done. Grudgingly I have flat shoes for driving.

I like short skirts but wouldn’t wear them in public any more.

I use facebook and now have an iphone but I don’t use twitter.

I may be old now ok not so old really but in the eyes of the youth (I turned 50 in 2012) but I am not yet ready for my slippers and  hot mug of cocoa at night.

 

The day had arrived but ……..

All week Owl and I had been looking forward to today. Friday was the first day we could begin to put our plans into action. Christmas as lovely as it has been has also been in the way of our plans. There are several stages for our secret plan but not many days when we could carry out stage one due to me going back to work next week.

Owl has been poorly for the last week but was getting better. I had been experiencing a sore throat on and off since Christmas Eve. I was worse in the mornings and evenings but not too bad during the day. But last night was not just bad it was very bad. Having spent several hours on the sofa I finally went back to bed around 4am or maybe it was nearer 4.30. Owl had joined me for a while at 3am. He wasn’t sleeping well either.

By 9am I was dosing myself up again in the hope that I would begin to feel better again as in the preceding days. But both Owl and I had such a bad morning that we knew we were going nowhere today. Mid afternoon Statto began to watch a film (or movie as they call it) Owl and I sat with him in the hopes of finding some entertainment to improve our day. Within minutes I heard myself snoring as I drifted in and out of a light dose throughout the entire film…..I didn’t understand the film as I missed so much of it.

We are hoping that tomorrow will now be the day

Peanuts

It’s 1.30am and I am here on the sofa eating jumbo salted peanuts!

Why?

Because my sore throat was keeping me awake. The lump in my throat was so bad that it was making it impossible for me to sleep. I am surprised that my distress wasn’t disturbing Owl’s sleep. I am sure I was whimpering. My sleep problem was not down to my nasal passages being bunged up. It was the severe discomfort of the lump in my throat where one of my glands were still swollen. The other having receded since my last dose of medication.

So here I am on the sofa with a hot drink and peanuts!

Why on earth would I choose peanuts when my throat feels like I have a peanut securely lodged in it anyway.

Why peanuts ? because I desperately wanted chocolate. I find chocolate soothes a sore throat like nothing else can. But although it is only two days after Christmas and there are boxes of chocolate in the lounge and tins of chocolate sweets in the kitchen they are not for me.

Where I am sitting I can see the biggest box of Milk Tray I have ever seen but it has not been opened. I won’t open someone else’s choccy’s even though I know he wouldn’t have minded. Why don’t I eat my own chocolates? Because being diabetic I didn’t get any. 

So here I am on the sofa with a hot drink and peanuts. Actually I am beginning to feel better than I was. Maybe that is the peanuts that I am crunching to death but more likely it is because I am sitting up rather than laying down.

So maybe I shall sit here for a while longer with my hot drink and peanuts and hope I can fall asleep.

Boxing Day

Boxing Day Chez Owl…Just the way I like to wake in the mornings …..a cup of tea being placed beside me. “The Refectory has become a dormitory” he mutters …..ah that will be my boys he is referring to then. Statto and Prodigal had opted to sleep on a sofa and the living room floor respectively rather than bunking down with their brothers in Skater’s room.

Sometime later …..actually several hours later, I am preparing to make breakfast for everyone…..remember all those pigs in blankets? Another ton of potatoes peeled, boiled and mashed, fresh vegetables steamed in my new 3 tier steamer (courtesy of my brother and sister-in-law for Christmas …I think this has been used and where are the instructions then?)

Why are the pigs in blankets still in their packs on the work top? both Owl and I had thought the other had put them in the oven. In the meantime we had gone into crossword zone along with my mother. So while the pigs were cooking I prepared the table and all the side dishes ie pickles and cold meats to go with the pigs and bubble & squeak. As usual time had marched along.

Skater announces that his girlfriend (Elf) and her mother were not now coming to pick him up at 3pm but were already on their way over here. “there’s someone knocking on the door”. Turn the oven down, welcome our visitors, exchange gifts and pleasantries, Skater makes a cup of tea for (Elf’s mother). They were not here for very long but just long enough for the pigs to be salvageable  and within minutes of Skater and Elf leaving (with Elf’s mother naturally) the rest of us were sat down filling our plates with Bubble and pigs, pickles and coleslaw. Lunch was followed by the Christmas pudding that we didn’t manage to eat yesterday,

Brandy, we needed brandy to pour over the pudding. Trying to light it with a lighter didn’t work, neither did the first half dozen matches. Well its obvious isn’t it? You can’t actually light liquid, it has to be the fumes. Ok we poured more brandy onto the pudding ….yes it did light but not for long enough to get from the kitchen to dinning table. After 3 more attempts we take the pudding to the table and light it there…..by now there is about half a bottle of brandy so there are enough fumes to stay alight for much longer now. Of course I had to have brandy sauce with my pudding….good thing I wasn’t driving anywhere today hic!

Blogging again

Hi to all my friends old and new.

I thought it was about time I got back to writing again and as I don’t have the foggiest what I want to write about I decided to go right back to the beginning and Blog.

Since my last blog I have met and got engaged to Owl (so called because we used to chat for half the night in the first few months). In the summer we bought a lovely house which we share with my aged cat and my youngest son. Skater is 17 and attending College in the town where we lived for most of his life.

My other sons are scattered across the southern part of the country, 2 at Uni and the eldest now graduated and trying to find his way in the world. I can’t wait to see which directions their lives will take them.

Any way in our new house we have an office with a desk for me to do my writing. My New Year resolution for 2013 is to start writing again. I had left a comment to this effect on a fellow blogger’s facebook recently. To my surprise on Christmas day I got a message on my facebook from one of her friends who used to read my previous blog. This got me thinking about blogging again so here I am.

Hey I bet you didn’t expect to see me back did you ?

It has been our first Christmas in this house, indeed it has been our first Christmas day together. Not our first Christmas as that was last year but we didn’t spend the day together. Statto, and Pug had arrived last week (that’s another story) Skater being a permanent resident was already here. Mother and Prodigal were due to arrive at midday. Owl and I were both up at 8.30am (several hours before my boys had dragged themselves out of their various pits). Plenty of time for us to get everything organised for the day or so you would think.

So how is it that at midday Owl was chatting to his cousin on the phone when I saw mother’s car arriving. The table still needed clearing, the spare room needed to be cleared of ‘boy’s stuff and made up for mother’s stay. The veg needed to be prepared, a hundred other things still needed to be done.

Now we move on to 4pm (dinner was scheduled for 3.30pm after the Queen had given her annual thoughts to the Nation. Turkey was now cooked and carved, roast potatoes were just perfect, the stuffing balls were slightly over done as were the mini yorkshires…..yorkshires with the christmas dinner never never never but the consensus was that we needed them. If only I had used a tad more oil in the bun tray they might have slipped out as planned instead of being scooped out leaving half the batter behind. Any way the gravy was ready (both jugs!). I wanted to move the furniture a little to make more space around the dining table. That was when I discovered that although the table had been extended it hadn’t been clicked together.

As I grabbed the side of the table the middle section began to dip in the middle….I could just see the jug of iced water and open wine bottles crashing to the floor or at least the centre of the table. Amid cries for help we managed to move all the at risk items before fixing the table securely together. Returning to the kitchen to finish dishing up the dinner I suddenly realised! I had insisted that we had pigs in blankets with our turkey. Owl had never heard of them but I was about to show him the way to a mouth watering tradition. I had cheated and bought ready made packs …..3 of them to boot but all three were still in the fridge.

Guess what we are having for breakfast on Boxing Day!