bribery, works every time

R is away this week at a learned conference, so I am trying to get my masses of work I'm behind with, caught up with, I have deadlines coming out of my ears. It's also the last week of the school holidays and O has remembered I promised to take him to Gulliver's World this holidays. So I promised to take him on Friday if I got all my work done, on condition that he let me get on with my work all this week (ie no friends round playing noisily, no constant 'muuuuuuuuuum'-ing, etc). Well half of the equation worked, he has been really good at letting me get on with stuff and not mithering me too much. If only I had actually got on with work in the mither-free time. But that's not his fault, so we are off to Gulliver's tomorrow. If only I could incentivise myself as well as I can incentivise O.

aww

baby panda

meltdown

So, I have 3 assignments due in the next 3 weeks, on top of which R is going away for a few days next week for work. So this is a really good time to have a big family gathering sprung on us for this weekend. And an even better time for the washing machine to pack up. All in all an ideal time for me to burst into tears and run roudnt the house panicking about stuff and shouting at everyone, which I find is always a good way to handle a crisis.

oh dear

How did it get so long since I last posted? Partly because I have been away for quite a lot of the past month (summer school/holidays/conference) and when not away over night, I've had to travel around quite a bit for work. I think my life is feeling a bit crazy at the moment. Or perhaps it is my head that is going a bit crazy? I am not getting much constructive done. My studying is behind, so is my work, my house is a tip and I am usually found sitting knitting/crocheting. Actually crochet is the worst, I find that gets a bit obsessive sometimes. Goes without saying if my head is in a bad way, my eating is too. Which all reminds me, I must ring up for some more anti-crazy pills.

PS does anyone know if it's possible to stay logged in on two different google accounts on one computer? I have clarrie@ for blogging and realname@ for igoogle, and it's a right pain logging in and out between the two

here today, gone tomorrow

tomorrow morning me and my sock knitting and my HP7 and my waterproofs are off to stand in quarries and look at rocks for a week. I should probably read the course book instead of kntting and Harry Pottering on the train tomorrow, butI've kind of gone off rocks. Studying them has been a bit of a let down after looking forward to it for so long. I think there is a chemistry-shaped hole in my brain and I shall be happy to get back to my lovely molecules next year.

birthday countdown starts here ....

well started last night actually, we went to see the fantabulous Ojos de Brujo, they were amazing, shame about the venue. The Bridgewater Hall is not the best place to experience radical flamenco, you don't just want to watch it you need to dance to it too.

Tomorrow we are not having a party but some people might come round for a drinkette in the afternoon, Sunday I have to catch up on 3 weeks of study and Monday being the nasty day itself my parents are coming up to go out for lunch. Bah to rainy weather and being nearly 40.

a grand day out

We went to London for the Tour, saw the Prologue on Saturday. The weather was fab for once (even got sunburnt) and the crowds were huge & friendly & enthusiastic. We settled on a spot in Hyde Park so we could watch the big screen as well as the individual riders flashing by. It was an amazing event and I’m so glad we went but there is a big but – we couldn’t get to Greenwich / Kent to see the first stage of the race ‘proper’, so we didn’t get the spectacle of the peloton in full flight.

So I am marking this thing as ‘done’ and putting up a new thing – “see the Tour de France live again”. We’ll be looking at next year’s route to see if it co-incides with likely-looking holiday destinations …. ooh lookey lookey it starts in Brittany …

See more progress on: see the Tour de France live

sick of this

I went to buy some new shoes last week but the ones I really wanted were too narrow for me - or to put it more honestly, my feet were too fat for them. I eventually got some Dr Marten sandal-type shoes which I do love but am cross my fat feet stopped me getting the ones I really wanted. And much more cross that I am forced to admit that my great fat stomach is making it hard for me to do up the buckles on my new shoes. I will be 40 in less than a month and I don't want to be this fat person any more but I don't know if I have the strength & energy to do what it takes to change.

strange passions

Socks (sorry sockophobes) - I am developing a dangerous addiction to knitting socks, and an even more dangerous (and expensive) one to buying sock yarn. But it all so lovely and colourful and just a few quid for enough to knit a pair, and socks are such a handy portable knitting project ideal for train journeys, never mind that my stash looks like I am planning to keep the British Army in socks this winter (assuming they like multi-coloured ones) and pandas are going hungry as I buy up all their bamboo in the form of needles. OK so I might have to send O up chimneys to pay my Violet Green bill but that's a small sacrifice compared to the joy of hoarding all those lovely brightly coloured balls of wool, and fondly imagining I will transform them all into lovely socks in time for Christmas.

Thermodynamics - gotta love a discipline that having set up 3 rules, decided there was another more important one so called it the zeroth law. Bless. I am really struggling with one of my courses, so much so that I have actually been happy to see some thermodynamic equations. So much of the course feels like an assemblage of facts describing trends (it's the worst bits of inorganic chemistry magnified), it's nice to have some equations to get ones teeth into. You know where you are with an equation. All together now, heat can't move from a cooler to a hotter.

small miracles

In the interests of 'looking on the bright side' and trying not to drown under all the stuff in my life that remains undone, some small successes in my life:

1. I scored 82% on my last assignment, despite doing it in a mad rush and guessing some of the answers, so I might even pass at least one of this year's courses with a grade 2 pass.
   
2. On ringing the tutor on my other course in despair, I discovered everyone else feels the same way - it really is hard, not (just) me being idle.
   
3. Because 4 needles aren't enough, I have managed to juggle 5 (4 dpns and a cable needle) to start on some cabled footies for bedsocks for Gran.
4. since I took up knitting I have lost half a stone. You can't eat and knit at the same time.

badges, I love lovely badges!

O was officially invested as a Beaver Scout last week - they let him off the bit about promising to love god - so I had a handful of badges to sew onto his uniform. It made me feel like a Proper Mum, sewing on badges.

Not to be outdone, I have been invested into the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique and so far entitled to proudly display the following badges:



the Talking Science badge: yes I talk about science at the slighest provocation, particularly of the chemical or geological variety. Those close to me have learnt never to innocently remark upon some interesting looking rock or building stone, unless they really want an in-depth talk on its geology. This is good tho becuase it deters my mum and my sister (both semi-professional shoppers) from dragging me round shopping centres - vile temples to mamon but often featuring beautiful and interesting decorative stones; also R's whining about being forced to go shopping can be deflect by threats of lectures on depositional environments. R's mother still regrets idly wondering what kind of rock the Giant's Causeway is made of.

the Arts & Crafts badge: I knit nautiloids and will shortly be crocheting a dalek, I think that qualifies me for the arts and crafts it the name of science badge. Also adapting patterns to one's own reuirements invokes fairly high octane maths skills.





the I'm pretty confident around an open flame badge: awarded for proficiency around open flames in laboratory settings. My glass-melting capilliary-tube making bunsen-burner skills were legend at summer school last year.




the Destroyer of Quackery badge: as a devoted follower of The Ben, I spend a lot of time battling quackery, pseudoscience, fuzzy thinking and all forms of whoo-woo. The edge of my logic is rapier sharp (particularly after half a bottle of rioja).




the "will glady kick sexual harasser's ass" badge: well, natch






: the "inordinately fond of invertebrate" badge: oh yes. Yes yes yes. And did I mention the knitted nautiloids?





The “pharma shill” badge: yep, medicine does work.





The “I know what a tadpole is” badge






The “I’m into telescopes astro” badge (LEVEL I): we have a telescope and we look at shiny things in the sky with it. I am hoping to go to Jodrell Bank soon and qualify for Level II




The “I may look like a scientist, but I’m actually also a pirate” badge: aaaaaarh etc





and so O doesn't feel left out ...

the Special Auxiliary Child Member of the Order of the Science Scouts badge: becuase he does like science and maths and enjoys finding out more about how the world works (except the bits with rocks in)

wooly objects of desire

This is Sublime Angora Merino. It is 80% extra fine merino and 20% angora and it is the softest most gorgeous thing in the whole world. I met it in the wool shop when I realised the yarn I orignally bought for my bolero was too bulky. So I returned it to the shop and asked if they had any angora (as suggested by C). The lovely yarn shop ladies took me over to the Sublime and as soon as I touched it I had to have it. I didn't actually have to give them too much of your actual money for it, because I got a refund on the other stuff and also a bolero doesn't take too much yarn anyway. But as I crochet with it, I love it more and more. It is the colour of clotted cream and it feels like working with cream, it's so smooth and rich and decadent. I really really want to knit a jumper or top or cardigan with the clover colour; there are a couple of items in Big Girl Knits that would be perfect. But there is a lot of me which means it takes a lot of wool to cover me. The cost of the wool would be way, way more than I'd pay for a jumper. But then I'd get hours and hours of pleasure from making it, not even counting the joy of wearing it. I need this wool.

Dear Mr Next PrimeMinister

O is very happy that Tony Blair is fecking off at last, but is concerned about the policies of his successor, and so would like to know your position on the following:

• SATs - do you think it is a good thing for a normally happy school loving 7 year old to have tummy- and head-aches because he's so worried about his SATs and seems to think they won't let him go into class 3 if he doesn't get all the answers right?
• car seats - will you end the humiliation caused by forcing self-respecting seven year olds back into sitting in a 'baby seat'
• casinos - they look such great fun on Sonic the Hedgehog games but completely unfairly children are banned from them
• Kids' Day - it is wholly unfair and unjust that there is a Mothers' Day and a Fathers' Day but no Kids' Day
• The War - O has no position on the war as such, but would very much like it to be over so that his parents stop dragging him on demos against it¹

Of all of the above, car seats are his number one policy concern. On being told he would have to go back into one and that it was because The Government said so, he uttered the immortal lines "I wish the government would f*ck off". Whereupon he was sent to his room for as long as it took for us to stop laughing and put our serious swearing-is-very-bad faces back on.


1. Poor kid is unaware that we can and will always find plenty of things to go on demos for/against

robbing Peter to pay the wool shop

Yarn buying is a necessity of life, much like book buying. This month I am skinter even than usual, as I have had to pay Mr Branson several hundred pounds I have not yet got back from work. But I'm not letting that stop me from buying yarn, even if it means shuffling money out of the paying-bills-joint-account before going shopping. Yesterday I got some horribly expensive but gorgeous Rowan aran silk to crochet a little bolero, to wear with my posh frock to a weddin, plus some normal wool to knit the sleevless jumper with vest that O wants. Also I have some recycled sari silk yarn on order, to make a bag for a leaving present for an friend.

My current crochet project is about half way through, and I really wish I'd taken it along to the cinema this afternoon, as I sat through Spiderman3 with O. There was probably just about enough light, and it would've passed the time. O loved every minute of course (except the soppy bits). So yes I am obsessed with crochet. I am behind with my studies and in danger of developing RSI but hey it makes me happy.

Actually I think my mood is lifting a bit, and I've got my 43 things routines going again, having let them slide for a while. I am doing small bursts of studying and am on top of my work. Even better, when work was getting all a bit much a couple of weeks ago, I managed to talk to my new boss about it before things went critical. Baby steps as ever.

Sunday afternoon

It's a lovely sunny day, but I am stuck inside with my microscope while O is outside doing magic tricks for bare chested lesbians.

all by myself

R & O have gone to Ireland for Easter. I elected not to go this year, so I could stay at home and catch up on my knitting studying. 10 days on my own with just two cats, one hamster and the TMS commentary team for company. It is very weird being in the house by myself over night, very weird indeeed.

reality gap

what I should have been doing:

working hard on my coursework and getting my assignments done

what I have actually been doing:

learning to crochet, crocheting coin belt, knitting fossils and socks. Although knitting ammonites and belemnites pretty much counts as doing geology, I think.

Oh and playing with my O's new hamster

a Russian Winter White Sapphire imaginatively named Snowy

Manic Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday ...

Sometimes I wonder if there is a tinge of mania mixed in with my madness; I don't know, is it possible to be a little bit bipolar? I do go through patches full of manic energy, lots of rushing about and always needing to be doing, like now I have taken up knitting again and I have to be knitting all the time, can't sit still can't just do nothing, need to knit and read and watch tv and surf t'internt all at the same time. And I am extremely techy and irritable, so much so that I look at the calendar and am surprised to find it's not 'that time'.

Oh well at least knitting is productive, I have finished O's tank top and he wants another one in red and orange; also I am going to knit something for R and a cardigan for myself but first I am going to teach myself to knit socks while goggling at tonight's tv-fest.

here's one I made earlier

Crafting is the new black, apparantly, all the kewl kids are doing it. I have finally got around to making something with some of the sea glass I pick up on beaches, I mosaiced around a mirror with it. Getting the grout on is far easier than cleaning it off afterwards.

I also want to learn to crochet. I can't quite believe I just said that, but I do, because the cardi I want to knit will need to be edged in crochet if it's going to look how I want. I'm two-thirds of the way up the back of O's tanktop already. Maybe knitting will keep me from eating, who knows?

None of which is getting my course work studied. My bad.

briefly

• Lost a bit last week and got back to my pre-London weight
• I need to give more priority to getting my exercise it, apart from the belly dancing it's slipping already
  
• Have decided to move my GTD weekly review day to Monday, I think it will work better for me
• I am at last doing my 29th thing - at the moment I have a sleeveless jumper (for O, black with white star on front) and a scarf (for me, thick wool in peaty colours) on the go