Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 December 2005 22:28:21
I am nearly ready to go.
Well, put it this way, there's very little left to do that won't wait patiently until we come back. I've still got to pack my suitcase (and think what on earth I'm going to wear on Christmas Day!) but apart from that the main things are done - i.e. the presents are all wrapped and loaded in the car. And I have extracted from my elder sister a sincere promise that she will not, repeat not, venture beyond the door of the lounge or my bedroom. Hopefully, however, she will venture into the kitchen to a) feed the cat, b) pick up the huge load of ironing that I have, conscience free, left for her to do and c) feel moved to clean the kitchen floor for me. I love my sister! :)
I had the pleasure this afternoon of baking mince pies. I haven't done it for a while and they are, to tell the truth, my speciality. I seem to have a knack for creating very short pastry that just melts in the mouth. Mind you, it has its drawbacks, as it also has a bit of a tendency to just melt in the hand, too! It was nice to make them in the tray I used to use when baking with my mum as a child. After Christmas we plan to make special mince pies, me and the Smudgelets and, because they ran out of time for carol singing last year, they and a friend are going to adopt the Austrian/German tradition of going house-to-house around the close dressed as the three wise men and bringing mincepies to all the neighbours while singing "We Three Kings". I think the neighbours might rather like that....... especially the ones who are deaf.
Needless to say, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong today. My friend who is in a similar situation (apart from having a husband to "help out") always says "I love talking to you, Smudgie, because it reassures me that however bad things are for me, you'll have the same with knobs on". Tiddles helped out by clearing all the rubbish out of the car this morning. He informed me that he'd put a rubbish bag in the back and one in the front for on the journey tomorrow. Little did I know that he'd decided to cut out the middle man and have the bags pre-filled with rubbish!
I've been held up with phone calls (a lovely long chat with an uncle I haven't spoken to for years) and visitors (a lovely long chat with my youngest's godfather who called round for coffee), with Dad needing to check up on things for the holidays, and lastly with Smudgelet parting company with his Chinese Take-away tea. I was worried that he was going down with something, until I realised the cause. Last time we had Chinese, he found he was unable to eat it all. This time he was determined to, so stuffed it in and didn't pause for breath until his plate was absolutely clear to the very last piece of rice. So serves him right!