Festive Fotos
2011-01-04, 9:51 p.m.
I know, I know, I know! I am a slacker. Admonish all you will, dear Diaryland Friends but I have many and several explanations for not updating since Methuselah were a lad.First off, as I was already whining about catching the lurgy from Jooj in my last entry, you may wish to know that it was not the mild case of the sniffles that I was so rash in predicting, but took a downhill turn more rapidly than Franz Klammer and ended up the very epitome of SICK. I manfully (girlfully?) struggled in to school on the Wednesday and Thursday but when I got home Thursday evening my activities chiefly consisted of:
Crying
Filling my nose with snot from all the crying
Retching (from all the snot)
Blowing my nose
Coughing (from all the nose blowing) and occasionally
Possibly peeing a teeny bit (from the coughing)
Crying (from the thought that the coughing was making me pee a tiny bit)
I went �for a little nap� about 5 ish Thursday afternoon and didn�t get up again until Saturday morning. Oh, no, I did get up on Friday lunchtime, in a panicked daze because I was aware that I was four hours late for something but couldn�t quite decide what (it was �work�, obviously) and then restarting the crying cycle as previously detailed in a fairly even mix of terror that I had slept for 18 hours and missed a half a day of work and relief that L had walked round to the school first thing Friday morning and told them that I was sick and wouldn�t be coming in.
Felt a lot better by the weekend, which was just as well, as there was the small matter of Treacle�s birthday to contend with.
As she is a fairly simple soul, she wasn�t all that bothered about expensive parties and had requested lunch at the Toby Carvery (L pushed his around the plate and made �its no patch on yours� type noises), a birthday tea and a sleepover
which was all pretty do-able, even if I did still feel a bit on the deathly side and still didn�t really dare to cough unless I was wearing something dark coloured!
Once we�ve got Treacle�s �Being 11� out of the way it was time to start concentrating on the ickle baby jeebus
as The World and His Wife (well, OK, my family) were about to descend for the festivities. I�d missed a couple of days of preparatory expeditions and stuff like that (�stuff like that� in this context = �hadn�t got my children any Christmas presents�) but L stepped up to the plate and did a giant grocery shop for me (with VERY SPECIFIC shopping list as he can get a bit carried away with the sheer CHOICE, in which case he tends to come home with 40 different types of festively shaped chocolates in fancy gift boxes�and no fruit or vegetables. Now, I like chocolate very much�but not as an accompaniment to a roast dinner). He did pretty well, all things considered, although I think he needs a few cauliflower lessons as I was hacking away leaves like Henry Stanley before I found the tiny white nugget of bobblyness hidden within this particular specimen
Seriously, that�s not a very good leaf-to-cauli ratio, is it?!
Because I�d been ill, and because I�m generally a bit more �together� these days now I�ve stepped off the corporate centrifuge, I�d fairly firmly resolved not to get beat up about anything to do with Christmas. I think I should do that every year as there didn�t seem to be nearly as many hitches as there usually are (or maybe I just didn�t notice them?) and my hors d�ouvres were gorgeous in all their miniature splendour
Dad was full of the lurgy � I don�t think he got it from me, I think it was just a particularly lurgyful time of year � and had fashioned himself a very festive and fetching germ holder-inner
Keep an eye on that, you might see it again later on.
After the hors d�ouvres there was a goose and a gammon and a leg of pork and all the other stuff that 8 very gutty bastards can cram down their gizzards � there are some photos but Ive looked all through them and it just looks like some kind of weird zombie pig-out, with huge piles of food heaped everywhere and lots of open mouths with laden forks travelling towards them in a blur of activity.
Maybe it was because dad was sick that he looked so crestfallen by the enormous amount of desserts at his disposal. There were Mulled Wine Jellies and Satsuma Sorbets
Oh, and a Christmas Pudding. And a trifle (yes, that IS a vase that I�ve made that in. It was bigger than my trifle dish and we dooooooo so like trifle!)
On Boxing Day, the kids went off to Shagnasty�s for a few days. L and I loafed about the house, eating After Eights and generally being the whopping great sloths that we are until we finally couldn�t stand it any longer and had to get our hikey boots on and beetle off to Bramshaw Common, where the snow hadn�t quite melted yet and it was jolly peaceful and wintery and icy and really rather nice. We saw a stag � it ran right past us, only three or four feet away. I was way too slow with the camera but we totally DID see it, so there!
Then there was barely time to re-group before the onslaught that was our New Years Eve party. Huge amounts of fun for pretty much everyone. Just as I was going to bed (around 4am) Jooj emerged from her bedroom. In the manner of a BBC announcer giving the cricket scores, she said,
�I have puked. In my bed.�
I just turned on my heel and went downstairs, returning with a bin bag. With the deftest of moves (you get a lot of practice at this when you are a mum, believe me!) I had stripped the bed, bagged up the puke-covered bedding, dumped it outside the back door, given Jooj a bucket in case of further puking, unfolded the sofa bed and found a spare duvet for it. Nighty night all!
Next morning�ok, lunchtime, Jooj surfaces and faces the music like a man. House rules here at The Palace of Many Sins include �No kids behind the bar at parties�. This is supposed to stop any ill-judged measuring of alcohol by underage drinkers. Big kids ARE allowed alcohol if it�s a party, but the strength and number of such libations are to be determined by a responsible adult. Usually this means a tiny drop of port or vodka or blue Curacao and a whole fuckload of lemonade, Coke or orange juice poured in on top. I have also been known to just pour a big glass of Coke, shove a slice of lemon in it and a couple of curly straws and say its got vodka in it.
I�d made Jooj a vodka and coke early in the evening and I knew she�d had half a glass of champagne at midnight but that really wasn�t enough for her to be drunk. Then she told me one of the guests (I wont name and shame her�although I kind of think I should) had mixed her a �cocktail� and she�d drank it. I later found out it was vodka, blue Curacao and strawberry liqueur �topped up� with orange juice. From the description of the colour of it, I would say it probably had five or six measures of spirits in it.
Jooj got a lecture on not drinking drinks when you don�t know what�s in them, and my feelings have been made known with regard to persons who think its funny to try to get a 15 year old plastered. The friend who mixed the drink for Jooj is now on the list of �people who may not fetch drinks for children�. Luckily, we don�t see her that often.
So. Life lessons, then.
Jooj learns to carefully monitor her own drinking. She also learns that people who puke in their own bed have to make some kind of reparation vis-�-vis the clean up process.
This reparation means donning rubber gloves and granddad�s Germ Mask (See! We knew it�d come in useful) for keeping out the smell. Then you must remove as much as possible of the puke so that the bedding can be laundered.
Once again reinforcing her Gifted and Talented status, her ingenious method of spew-removal involved the deployment of a Super-Soaker to shot-blast away those evil chunks!
Merry New Year one and all!