A screw up and a step up

Mistress B has a round up of Screw Ups on a Tuesday, and I have a doozy (must be pronounced a'la the morning presenter on the radio on Groundhog Day).



Today, we are off to spend some quality horse-and-cousin bonding time. Now, one of the few downsides to such jaunts is the completely different programming available on the idiot box, and therefore our access to our mainline shows.

The main downside, of course, is four long and lonely days and nights without V.

Anyhow, last night we decided to have a little bonding time instead of catching up on certain shows - The Big Bang Theory had returned to the box (welcome back!!) and Desperate Housewives was due to play. We are nearing the end of season, but given the way our lives have been on late we are still to watch LAST WEEK'S Desperate, so it was decided that the tape would take care of them and we would have a date night at some point in the future to indulge.

So I set the tape to tape and our evening progressed. At a few points, I will admit that V did enquire whether it was catching DH, but I was blissful in my skills...

My bubble burst when I rewound the tape to find the end of DH (so I could set it for future TV concerns) and found out that there was one assumption made last night that should have been checked.

BBT and DH are on different stations.

Sob.

---

To cheer me up, I finally went on an abbreviated traipse around a few of my favourite blogs, and discovered "The Other Ree" of The Hotfessional had flattered me greatly.



She said (well, okay, she cut and paste per the meme instructions but I am SURE she meant it)

This award is given to the writers of blogs that “are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.”

So, per instructions, I in turn must pass it along to another 8 - given all the great people I do read (okay, very occasionally at the moment), my random (and all antipodean) 8 recipients are (in tab order on my browser right at the moment so I get the links right):

• Mistress B of Dances to the Beet
• Sarah Lulu of Normal is a cycle on a washing machine
• BrissieMum2 of These Days of a Busy Mum
• Tracey of trace elements
• Melody of biglittlesister
• Jen at Semantically driven
• Trish at My Little Drummer Boys
• Jayne at Our Great Southern Land

I could have mentioned far more than 8, but orders is orders...

Anyhow, off to do a little more work, unpeg, fold, pack and await my chariot to the Western Lands.

Foggy Friday Morning

Hello lovelies!!

High on fog here - and hyped up on the fact that

• (a) I have been awake for 2 hours (yes, that was a 3am wake up, doggarn you universe)
• (b) who needs any other reason?

Ah yes, the madness of early mornings.

There is a very thick cloud of fog outside at the moment. One car drove past to the North. Two minutes later a car drove past to the South - but it was speeding. Hmmm... Five minutes later, the first car drove past to the South at a leisurely pace.

Its funny, but I have spent far more mind power on contemplating that scenario than the work conundrums that helped raise me from the dead bed this morning, as I know any work I attempt at this hour will need complete revisions and I am far more likely to be right on my early morning sleuthing than my early morning slaving.

So what do you think, folks?

Was it a jealous partner chasing down a wandering spouse? But no, because then second car may have had a speedier pursuit.

A work colleague awakening the early shift?

When I was a University, I used to do the very early morning drive to collect someone for rowing practice - but the two cars have me stumped...

Hmm, we do live near the coast, could it be smuggling? (Sorry, had a Robert Louis Stevenson moment with the fog just then, could almost hear the tapping of a wooden leg) It was pretty close to full tide.

As you can see, this is far more productive than a little PHP knot I have to unravel!

I'm blogging, so it must be

Sunday.

Or the long list of "things I must do today" is threatening to topple and it is my version of the "la la la la LA" with fingers in my ears movement...

One of the two.

I had a l-o-n-g week, and have not had a chance to visit even my favourite bloggers.

I spent the daylight hours in an office, where the only breaks I had from monotony were phone calls, drop-ins and very occasional data entry. Given that I had managed to accidentally divert the phones on the first day, I didn't even have phones to divert me for a few hours of one!

That would have given me ample opportunity to catch up on all my favourite blogs, of course, except they had managed to block all internet access to blogs.

Oh well, my boxes of paperwork are now more organised and they are HUGELY impressed with my template skills.

I spent the pre-daylight hours trying to deal with my clients "urgent, urgent, urgent!" emails and keep a certain amount of sweetness in my business that will have to susutain me as offers to bore myself in other offices are sporadic at best.

I spent the post-daylight hours sleeping - apparently I need more than 6 hours a night some nights.

And in the vein of "when it rains" V actually got a few days work last week that may extend to beyond the end of the month, so 'Salina got to be one of those pathetic poor children blessed with before AND after school care.

Don't feel too sorry for her - she knows how to milk it, and it has been converted.

Not much else news here - if it were later in the day, I would be able to let you know if last weeks Lemon Squares convert at all as Grapefruit Squares. If it were earlier I would wax lyrical about the plans I had for Sunday that are now apparently at nought. But as it is right now, I leave you with nothing more than promises to "do better".

Lemon Squares

Part of our haul from Granite Glen was a bag of indeterminate citrus fruit (rumoured to be lemonade) courtesy of Pagi's sister, and by yesterday it was TIME to juice them.

'Salina was a trouper, and juiced (with the assistance of the food processor) well over a litre of the only slightly bitter goodness.

As is my wont, I started thinking about food, and Chef Google and I examined the options of indeterminate citrus fruit and sweet snack goodness.

Our final decision rested upon time (because the 1 litre of goodness took a while to achieve) and ease (as I am a big fan).

The winner was Lemon Squares - and I can assure all of you good folk, it truly is a winner. You want to visit us in the next few days (or maybe by tomorrow)!!

I don't know how exact to the original we kept, as we have learned one many lessons in the past year - one of which is "do not buy cheap cup measures" - and were reduced to measuring 1 3/4 cups of plain flour with the 1/4 cup measure (great for testing maths skills of a 9 year old, however) - and for a degree of difficulty I combined that with discussing numbers with 'Salina while she was counting said 7/4 cups out.

The original "dough" they mention is not so much dough as dust - or it was in our example - but I chucked it in the oven anyway. Next time I will ask the bricklayer to chuck a level across it, as there was a few peaks and troughs, but all in all an interesting experiment.

The ease bit certainly came to the fore with the filling, as it was all in the food processor and then poured and prayed for a positive result.

Next time, maybe I would turn the oven down a little, and I completely forgot (as my excessively neat kitchen hand V put it away) the icing sugar dusting over the top, but it doesn't miss it (except in visuals).

The results:

V's review: "Woke up at 12.20 and ate one, then picked a bit of another which was then no longer square so had to tidy that up and thought what the heck and ate another. Pretty good."

'Salina's review: "Really nice - it tastes like sweet custard and cookies. Can I have another one?"

My review: "Instant diabetes, but great joy in achieving this!"

Of course, the camera is not playing nice, so you will have to use your imagination (use the link's picture as a guide - theirs is much prettier than mine, but then mine are edible and right here).

Anyone for a cuppa?

ECHO-echo-cho-o-o

Yes, its been pretty thin on the ground here, postings wise.

Several reasons:

• Too depressed at the beginning of the week due to late payment of invoices by a client;
• Too creative with numbers and codes and little figures running through my brain attempting to keep the red out of my budget and making hard decisions future-wise to make any sense;
• Too stressed by the middle of the week due to late payment of invoices by a client and having to decide between working for the man (or woman) in an office next week for guaranteed dosh over my little clients;
• Too frustrated by government offices not understanding my simple attempts to keep the wolf from the door and thinking I made twice what I can because they were counting it twice; and
• Too freaked by the end of the week by the eventual late payment of invoices by a client, his/her sudden need for EVERYTHING URGENTLY by next Tuesday sweetened with referrals to others he/she is working with AND agreeing to do a little job for an old client resulting in a 10 hour day in my new office space.

My new office space - the high point of my week! As I have to pull some late nights/early mornings on the dinosaur computer I SAID I had passed on to 'Salina (but still require as it has some expensive software I can no longer find the disks for) and as space-wise, a computer in her room wasn't working, I put V and I to work this morning in clearing out the spare room, rearranging the whole house and making "space" a priority.

I am sorry I haven't trundled the blogorama much this week. And probably won't next week.

Shoot - haven't I done this post a few times before?

In more positive news:

• our stove broke down two weeks before warranty expired, so got it fixed in the nick of time!!;
• I got to unexpectedly see friends and their newborn at said government offices while waiting for them to fix my little problem;
• 'Salina got an extra day and a half off school this week because of the tummy issues (I know that isn't good news, but I wanted the positive list to look longer); and
• Baby is still hanging (sideways, it appears!!)

What is up in the outside world?

Not in Paradise

Sorry, haven't updated since that early morning the other morning - I am sure some of you are now wondering if I ever got back to sleep.

Of course I did. In fact, it only takes a few mornings like that and those with a 4 in their wake up number for you to REALLY appreciate the sleep in that 5.30am represents.

This weekend, we are actually not In Paradise - we are at Granite Glen, for a long weekend of droving and playing with cousins (for 'Salina), cooking, computing and catching up (for me) and adapting, laying low and amusing many children (for V).

On Saturday, we had 11 adults around a table for canneloni, salad and garlic bread, while 8 children had a smaller table and two sittings of spaghetti (the 1 baby had brought his own fare).

There was plenty of noise (and not just from the phalanx of children hopped up on garlic bread and pears), chatter and passing the baby around.

And for dessert, we all had fruit platters and the richest 3-layer carrot cake.

Oh three oh six ay em

At about that moment this morning, something stirred - whether it was 'Salina speaking up at her somnambulant playmates, whether it was the cantabile snores of V - heck, perhaps it was Eddie sending through psychic "feed me, entertain me, let me out" chants that snapped me from slumber to ticking my mind over and over and over and - doggarn it!

(I wouldn't put it past that cat)

After my twenty minutes of "by goodness I am lying here and trying to make my mind understand it will not win this battle" (which my mind countered with money, family, futures, work, meals, animal psychology, the meaning of life, laundry lists and motherhood) the cogniscense that today was 03/06/09 (by Aussie calendric reckoning - not so "oooh prescient" in certain sectors of the Northern Hemisphere, no doubt).

This blog has been written in at least seventeen ways since that moment between sleeping and weeping for the need... (oh, and I cleaned the kitchen too)

We must be glad for the escape of at least thirteen of them.

One of them would have been so poignant you would have kept looking at the top of the page to wonder who was guest posting.

I am sure one of them would have had you all nodding and thinking "oh yeah, me too" and then we all would have cried.

There was one that may well have got a lot up in arms and we could have had some warfare in comments - good thing that one cantered into the pre-dawn sky.

Unfortunately for you, this is what we got - another post of nothing, all about me and going nowhere.

Ah well, there is always tomorrow.