Take a Deep Breath

I have blogged about mum’s cat before.

She comes from a broken home you know.

Years ago, when I lived with a strange young man in Oxford, we had two kittens.  He didn’t want kittens, but I went out with my friend Rosalind one day, and came home with two kittens.

As you do.

Tess was one of them.

Her sister was killed to death in an argument with a car.  She lost.

Tess has always been rather eccentric, but in recent months she has become increasingly mad.

She is very demanding.  She cries and talks all the time.  She sits on your chest in the bath, she has started to get in the shower with mum.  She is always underfoot because she refuses to be left out of anything, and it is driving my parents bonkers.  It is like having a small, tabby shadow haunting you.

My mum has discussed this with the vet.  The vet has several opinions on this issue. One is that the thyroid medication the cat is on, is sending her a bit loopy.  Then there is the fact that she could just be senile.  Apparently vets are increasingly noticing that old cats are getting properly batty.

They lose their knitting on buses, go for tea at the wrong house and quite often leave the gas on when they go out.

The vet has recommended that mum try a device which is rather like one of those plug in air freshener things, but for cats.  It is supposed to emit an odour undectable to the human nose, but which cats find both alluring and calming.

Yesterday, after having had one too many showers with the cat, mum drove down to the vets and purchased one at vast expense.

She brought it home and plugged it in.  We all stood round and stared at it, even the cat.  She loves a crowd.

Now we wait and see.

This morning when I got there, the cat was nowhere to be seen. This was rather unusual, as she likes to have a second or third breakfast of the morning with the children, depending on how long she has been up.  She has been known to nibble the odd Frostie if the mood takes her.

She finally surfaced at about two this afternoon, after having spread out on Tilly’s bed all morning with her nose glued to the radiator.

We felt that the vapouriser must be working, as she had left us all alone for the best part of the day.

Then she came shrieking across the drive and attempted to get in the car with my brother when he went to work.  Then she went shrieking back the other way to give her opinion on mum’s ebay activities, and has been  being just as big a pain in the arse as ever, ever since.

It could of course be down to the fact that cats are very canny buggers, and she was just lulling us into a false sense of security this morning, all the time laughing down her furry paw at us.

It could also be the case that it takes more than six hours for this vaporiser thing to work.

I have no idea.

If it is any good we are all going to have them strapped to our ankles to stop her winding around us at key moments of the day.

I am also thinking of developing one for children.  Tallulah is being particularly trying again at the moment, and if I could spray her (or me) with something that would stop her being a gigantic pain in the arse, and me shouting at her every three minutes, it would be worth its weight in gold.

In the meantime I shall resort to the old fashioned method of bed for children, wine for mama.

Testing Testing

Yesterday, as promised, I took Andrea to Roody’s cake shop in Hinckley.

I also took Oscar, granny and uncle Robber.

We made quite a party.

It was great.  I know I keep banging on about Roody’s, but honestly, I have lived in and around Hinckley all my life, and in my opinion, Roody’s is the best thing that has ever happened to that town.  I am so willing it to succeed.

If we do get our visa application accepted. I will have to get Mrs. Roody to send me parcels of cake every week.  Either that or get her to write a recipe book so I can copy them.

Mrs. Roody tries to make a new flavour of cake every day.  Yesterday she invented ginger and rhubarb cake.  It may sound iffy, but believe me, it was gorgeous.

It was moist sponge layered with rhubarb butter icing, with a cream cheese frosting lightly dusted with ginger. It wasn’t too rhubarby. It wasn’t too gingery.  It was just right. I love both flavours and rhubarb in particular is for the win.  It was heavenly.

Today I popped in to talk to Mrs. Roody (and Mr. Roody) about them hosting a tea party for my new project. They are all for it, which is brilliant. I will be blogging about all our tea party activity over at the new blog: ‘The Dormouse’s Last Stand’ later.

While we were chatting Mrs. Roody had to keep nipping off to check on her latest creation. She was in the middle of inventing a pina colada cake.

Mmmmm…

Sadly I didn’t have the time to stop and test it today.

I bet it was gorgeous though.

She was telling me that some days she gets a bit stumped for new cake ideas.  I thought we might be able to help her out.

Have a cake you have tasted, and wanted to recreate but didn’t know how? Have a flavour of cake you’ve always wanted to try?

Bung the ideas in the comments box and I will forward them on to her.

I will test them for you, and if they’re any good, I might even fedex you a slice.

Finbar Saunders

I drove past a bed shop today.

It was, most ambiguously and delightfully called:

‘Bonkers Beds’

I think it was referring to the crazy discount they offer.

But I could be wrong.

Hair raising

Oscar is obsessed with cutting things up with scissors at the moment.  Mostly, and this is a blessed relief, it is bits of paper.  Yesterday he wanted to make a fridge full of food, so we used a big plastic box, which I was then instructed to fill with paper, cut into the shapes of vegetables.  It is not easy.  My tomatoes passed muster. My peppers were parlous.  Oscar mostly made bits of bread. I felt cheated.  He had the straight lines. I had the twiddly bits.

He is beginning to get slightly more adventurous with the scissors though.  He wandered into the kitchen in the afternoon, lock of hair in one hand, scissors in the other, and demanded to be held up to the bathroom mirror as he had ‘things to do.’

I enquired as to whether these ‘things to do’ involved cutting his own hair, because if they did, I wouldn’t be best pleased.

He looked rather sly and said: ‘No. Of course not.’

I offered to take him to the bathroom at this point and he scuttled off saying hurriedly. ‘No, no. It’s alright now.’

Hmmmm.

Then this afternoon my mum pointed out that he has a large bald patch on the side of his head.

He had obviously decided to do without the mirror and had just hoped I would put the bald patch down to early onset alopecia.

We had words.

I have threatened that if he tries home hair cutting again, that I will take him to the barbers, get all his hair cut off, and polish his head until it shines.

He was not impressed.

I am still thinking of doing this to Tallulah, who despite my best efforts with leave in conditioner, tea tree oil and plaits so tight they make her look permanently surprised, came home on Monday sporting another nit.

It’s either that or one of those sixties bathing caps.

Bull Shit

I have just got home from dropping the children at karate.  Jason is with them.  It is his first lesson.  I am agog to find out if it will be his last.  I will keep you posted.

I am exhausted today. Properly exhausted.  I got home from the school run this afternoon and quite literally could not keep my eyes open.  Luckily for me, and my poor, neglected children, I was at my mum’s.  She looked after them while I fell asleep on the sofa.  I just went out like a light.

My blood tests come back next week.  I am hoping for mild anaemia at best.  It would explain a lot.

In better news, my son continues to make me laugh a great deal with his naughtiness.

Several toilet related incidents for you:

We are still struggling with him over him wiping his own bottom.  He really feels that it is an infringement of his civil liberties to be expected to wipe his own arse.  Last weekend he was bellowing at Jason to come and wipe his bottom.  Jason shouted:

‘I thought you were supposed to be wiping your own bottom these days?’

To which he shouted back:

‘Dada! It is SUNDAY you know.  I can’t do it then.’

Clearly Sunday is a day of rest in every respect.

Yesterday we were at granny’s house again.  We practically live there at the moment. Despite this, my house in Broughton Astley still manages to become filthy. How does this work?

Anyway, I digress.

There we were, ready to embark on another day, when Oscar called me from the depths of the bathroom.

I reminded him he had to wipe it himself. Not once (I have been caught out like this before) or twice, but many times until it was clean.

After twenty minutes of him groaning and faffing, and singing (I do not know), he blithely announced he was done.

I went to inspect the damage.  He smiled joyously, with his pants round his ankles, and half a ton of toilet roll in the pan.  He said:

‘My bottom is clean, and I’ve only managed to get pooh on my elbow mama!’

Good oh!

Today we went out for lunch with Uncle Robber.  Uncle Robber is off to Las Vegas on his jollies this weekend, and we accompanied him to a farewell luncheon at a rather nice pub called The White Horse in Leire.

Oscar needed the toilet, and as I was escorting him there he said:

‘Mama? When will I be old enough to be allowed to go to the toilet on my own?’

I refrained from saying:

‘When you don’t wipe pooh on your elbow.’

and instead made vague remarks about perhaps being as old as Tallulah, but that we would monitor the situation.

He nodded and said:

‘I want to know, because the first time Tallulah went to the toilet on her own she saw an Indian bull in the toilet with her, and I’d really like to see one of those too.’

I said:

‘Are you sure it was an Indian Bull?’

To which he replied:

‘Not really, but it was something like that.’

I am truly intrigued.

The Times They are a Changin’ – Bloody Good Job Too

I know I said that I had sworn off of fundraising from now on, but Michelle has persuaded me to think again.  FSID are asking for people to help with fundraising tea parties over the summer, and you know how much I like a good tea party.  I have lots of ideas already, and Michelle and I are busily planning things.

Watch this space.  This time there will be things that you can do, no matter where you live.

Oh yes!

In other news, Please take the time to read Bev over at Confuzzledom’s post about her friend Naomi.  Naomi lost her baby daughter, Ellie a few months ago.  Ellie had a rare condition from birth which meant that she spent the short time she was alive in the care of the hospital.

Naomi is doing her bit to help raise funds for the hospital, who run a  charity called Tiny Lives, which helps to keep neonatal units open, a resource which is woefully under threat under our current government.

Hairy Farmer Family has blogged about this several times, and her fundraising efforts for Bliss, another baby charity, are the stuff of legend.

Naomi has opened an online shop selling craft items.  She has made cards, which are already available. She is looking for people to buy them, but she is also looking for people who may want to donate craft items they have made to stock her shop and help raise funds.

I know this blog has taken a very charitable turn of late, but please do bear with me.

I am not a political animal, I have never believed in waiting for the power of government opinion and laws to change things for people.  I have always been a believer in grass roots change.  If you want something to be different, if you want to effect change, then you get off your backside and you make a noise, and you stand up and be counted for what you believe in.

What fills me with admiration for women like Bev and Ellie, and Hairy Farmer Family and Michelle, is that they are living proof that this works.  Their efforts are helping change peoples lives, today, now, and maybe making things a whole lot better for all those tomorrows to come.

The fact that they do these things because of their suffering, their loss, their grief, is even more astonishing. Just because life has thrown them some spectacularly sucky curve balls, doesn’t stop them from hoping, believing and acting as if the world will be different for those coming after them.

I am more than aware that there is a great deal of suffering out there in the world, and there are people with all kinds of problems and conditions and issues who are equally worthy of your time and help and your unstinting kindness.  I also know that the giving is not a bottomless pot, and not everyone can help all of the time.

I am not naive.

I do know however, that for whatever reason, it seems to be my lot in life at the moment to be in a position to help people who have lost children.  I didn’t ask for it to be that way.  It is just what the fates have thrown into my lap.  It also seems to be the case that it is something I am quite good at.

Whether this streak of luck will hold, I do not know, but it would be churlish not to try and use it to help where I can.

I sometimes think of all the years before now when I could have helped people and didn’t.  What if I had done this earlier? What could I have achieved by now?  I can’t be the only person who thinks like this.

I know in the past I have felt paralysed by the sheer amount of neediness out there, I have felt sympathy but have often been stopped dead in my tracks by the feeling that whatever I can do is a drop in the ocean.

But then I realise that everyone has their time.  Everything comes together for a reason, and everyone helps in different ways.  You cannot just measure the help someone offers in monetary terms, or in terms of time or effort.  It makes a mockery of what real change is all about.

Real change for the future, real, positive, lasting change, comes from your heart.  It comes from thinking about and caring about other people, other issues, other lives than your own.  It comes from opening your eyes and ears to what is out there in the world, rather than staying in your own, blinkered, tiny life shouting; ‘la la la, I can’t hear you!’  It comes from opening your mind, rather than just opening your purse.

Every one of you who clicks on those links, who reads about Bev and Naomi and Ellie, and Michelle, and Keelan and Hairy Farmer Family, and all those other people, and spares them a thought and a kindness in your busy day, are effecting change.  You could have chosen not to look, to think, to feel.  After all, it’s much easier and safer not to, isn’t it?  It’s much less messy if your life is going alright, just to assume that everyone else’s is too, and that as long as you’re alright Jack, that’s o.k.

It’s much braver to look and think and feel, and care, and help in whatever way you can, whether it be to pray, to light a candle, to pass on a link, to tweet, to talk, to write a letter to your M.P. or to make space in your heart for another life that deserves a little gentleness.

Or to hold a tea party very soon!

Watch this space.

There’s nowt so queer as folk

Putting out the laundry this morning I walked past the bathroom to see Oscar with his back to me, standing in front of the taps, which were running.  He had his trousers and pants down round his ankles.

He was making no attempt to wash his hands, or to pull his pants up.

I asked him what he was doing.

He said:

‘I’m just standing here watching the taps until I feel really desperate for a wee.’

and gave me an angelic smile.

A little bragging and a lot of thanking

By now you all know Michelle, my lovely friend, whose son, Keelan, we walked a Mile in Memory for on Saturday.

Well, she has started a blog, and on it she has written a post about our event on Saturday and what it meant to her.

You can read it here.

Please read it.  She has a message of thanks for all of you who have helped.

Michelle also rang the co-ordinator at FSID today, to tell her how our walk went on Saturday and how much we had raised for FSID.

It seems that our walk was the best attended in the country, and the most successful walk in terms of raising money too.

FSID are absolutely delighted.

So are we.

I talk enthusiastically about cake, and a mutant lemon

On Friday, when I should have been baking, I took time out from my strenuous activities to be baked for.

I had just finished having my hair cut by Sir Richard of the Flashing Blades when my stomach started rumbling. Fortuitously it turned out to be lunch time.  Even more fortuitously I happened to be within walking distance of Roody’s, the amazing ice cream parlour/cake shop/paradise on earth, I blogged about recently.

I threw myself on Mrs. Roody’s mercy and begged her to feed me voluptuous mouthfuls of cake, not prepared by me.

She obliged.  I had the most fantastic passion cake, moist, delicious and with acres of my absolute favourite cream cheese frosting.  I also managed to scoff down a cheese, onion and mushroom panini and a large coffee.  It was a magnificent lunch.

I love Mrs. Roody.  If Jason ever meets with a terrible combining accident I may go and ask her to take me in, a poor orphan in the storm and all that.

Not only does Mrs. Roody make some of the world’s best cake, but she is also mental, but in a good way.

Here is what was sitting on her counter top on Friday:

It is a mutant lemon.  A lemon so big I actually thought it was a grapefruit.  It was destined to be made into a pie later that day, but as it had gone to all the time and trouble of growing itself into the world’s most appealing mutant lemon, Mrs. Roody decided it deserved a day out before it got squished into a pie.

And a face.

Brilliant.

You can see their facebook page here, remember.

Go and eat there soon. Don’t let the lemon have died in vain.

I’ll be there on Wednesday lunch time.  Andrea couldn’t make our fund raising event on Saturday and we ate all the cake, so I am taking her out for a consolatory slice.

Then I’ll be there the following Friday tea time with all the children, and my friend, and her children, and we will be flinging crumbs about like there’s no tomorrow.

Join us if you’re around.

A Day for Keelan

It is finally over.

All those weeks of begging, pleading, plotting and planning boiled down to one day of frenzied activity.

It was worth it.

I will put you out of your suspense by telling you that yesterday we made £1000! A grand! In cash! In one day!

I do not have enough exclamation marks to show how alarming, amazing and magnificent this is.

Michelle has estimated that when we have collected in all the outstanding sponsor money we will have made about £6000 for FSID! More exclamation marks! SIX GRAND!!!

Never, ever, in our wildest dreams did we think this would happen.  It is insane.  But in a good way.

Everything went our way yesterday, despite ominous rumblings.  I was late getting to Michelle’s.  She was running late anyway.  We were late getting to the pub to set up.  We were late leaving for the walk.  The weather threatened to break about every ten to fifteen minutes through the whole day.

Despite this, it all went swimmingly.  The rain held off.  The bouncy castle arrived.  The man with the food arrived.  All the stalls got set up.  We had cake by the metric tonne, and everyone who was supposed to arrive came.

In the end there were about 150 of us on the walk, and even the smallest and shortest of legged among us did very well.

We had a great time.  We celebrated Keelan’s life, and remembered him with joy.  The prayer board was an especial hit, and by the end of the day all the children had covered it in drawings and messages and stickers, and it was a riot of love and colour.

As well as the big raffle, we had a tombola with lots of child friendly prizes, and all the children won enough plastic tat to fill their hearts with joy and cause their parent’s hearts to sink.

The face painting was excellent, and even the grown ups got into the spirit of things. Granny looked very fetching with a tasteful flower on her cheek. I looked like a member of KISS with a virulent yellow and black butterfly bee theme.

Everyone worked really hard.  Tilly and her best friend Nicole manned the cake stall, and drove a hard bargain with the cakes.  Oscar and Tallulah ran around making like a crowd and throwing themselves into everything with gusto.  All the children helped pull out raffle tickets and contributed to the joie de vivre of the whole event.  It was heartwarming to see.

If I had to do it all again the only thing I would do differently would be to set up a tea and coffee stall. I was absolutely gasping for a hot drink by the end of the day.  I reckon we would have cleared at least another hundred in tea funds if we’d done that.

Otherwise, no regrets.

I was bone weary by the time I got home, emptied the car, scraped all the icing off the kitchen and scraped my bee make up off.  Hence the lack of posting yesterday.

I have taken lots of photos.  I will upload them in the next few days and post some of the finest.  I am also going to open a Flickr account if you want to see every last one in gory detail.

It was magnificent.

I am now retiring from the world of fund raising to clean my house, catch up on my paper work and feed my children non cake based meals.

It’s good to go out on a high.