A Little Pea and Me day out. And a couple of disasters

Posted on December 30, 2015 by thepogblog

Disaster number 1: telling Sister 1 you will be at her house, a good 20 minutes away, by 9.30am and waking up at 9.11am.  Note: just because you’re late and have to put make up on when you get there, don’t let a Little Pea help and get distracted. I may get the blusher out of my right cheek sometime in mid 2016.

Disater number 2: getting a Little Pea very excited about the adventure you’re going on – to climb a mountain, no less. Packing a bag with all the things explorers need, getting coats and hats on and….discovering Sister 1 has gone on her adventure….with your car keys.

It was ok though, we just swapped the day around and Sister 1 brought my car keys back at lunch time by which time we had made the most of the craft box.  I didn’t know this existed and I’m not sure who was more excited.  We pained, glittered, play doh’ed and pipe cleanered:

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Norman cat!

Norman cat!

And with no prompting:

And instead, we climbed that mountain this afternoon.  We were unimpressed that the sheep have been pooing on the moutain rather than in their potty, and it was very, very windy, but we eventually made it to the top:imageimageAnd then we ran down again.

We did a bit of exploring.  We went to the church, where we discovered that Norman may have descended from aristocaty:

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And Little Pea ‘tidied’ the Bibles. The congregation may not thank him for this come Sunday…

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Then we found a new play ground, a digger cutting down trees and some snow drops

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And to finish off we did some baking back at Auntie Pog’s house.

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It was a very exciting day.  Now Auntie Pog is off to sit somewhere very quietly…

:o)

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Posted in Bumpkinsville, Cooking, exercise, Pog Life | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Christmas: done

Posted on December 29, 2015 by thepogblog

So Christmas is over and the next focus is the New Year. Before we get to that though, I just wanted to pop a few Christmassy things on here before it is completely and utterly gone.

I couldn’t put it on here before as Sister 2 would have seen, but as, at the age of 33 and 3/4 her goal in life is still to be a mermaid, I tried to help her out a little. My present to her was this mermaid blanket and a little Sister 2 mermaid that I made for her. I think she was quite pleased :o)

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A few months ago, Sister 1 had asked me what I wanted, adding ‘but not wool’, which is my standard answer. As I wasn’t allowed wool, I requested a sheep. Then had second thoughts and said that I’d have to have a field too, as Pog Towers garden is mostly pebbles rather than grass. Sister 2 informed me that she was ‘on it’ and sure enough, on Christmas day, I got a sheep and a field:

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(The field canvas is a picture she tool with her iPhone that I loved). Not quite the ready supply of wool I had hoped for, but she was true to her word…and it is still making me giggle.

Sister 2 gave me a gorgeous necklace. I cant work out how they got the dandelion wishes in there. I love it.

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And a few months ago, I persuaded Mum to use my sewing machine to get back into making clothes, like she had did when we were little. She made Little Pea a dressing gown, and spurred on by that success, decided to make one each for my Sisters for Christmas. As is often the way, versions 2 and 3 became increasingly complicated, so I asked rather than a dressing gown, if I could have a pair of pyjama bottoms.thinking that would be easier to make. It turned out that they weren’t easier, but Mummy W persevered and made me…two full pairs of PJs…just like I had when Iwas little!

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They are so snuggly that I’ve actually taken two of the blankets off my bed! (I do still have three hot water bottles and a winter duvet though, so sadly I am still very much a toad).

The best part of any Christmas for me, is spending time with the family and the laughts that produces.  We all said the same thing on Boxing Day:  all our friends of Facebook had posted sensible family group shots that were pretty picture perfect. We took 25 in an attempt to get a sensible one and that was accompanied on Facebook by a vidoe of us rounding off Christmas dinner with a rendition of The Twelve Days of Christmas, all waering false teeth.  Obviously. :o)

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and that you had lots of smiles too :o)

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Posted in crochet, Pog Life, sewing | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Christmas preparations, Pog and Norman style

Posted on December 24, 2015 by thepogblog

Not known for my prowess in the kitchen, all Mum asked me to do in preparation for tomorrow was make some canapés. She even gave me the recipe and some of the ingredients to reduce the likelihood of anything going too wrong. I have made the things, but…well they don’t look like the picture. It also turns out that:

  • if you leave the kitchen for 5 minutes while the pastry cools in the fridge and accidentally leave the baking sheets and baking parchment on the hob, which you somehow accidentally turned on, you’ll return to a kitchen filled with smoke and have to finish cooking with the front door open
  • even with the front door open, it’s possible to set the smoke alarm off. Twice.
  • even though the recipe contains just 5 key ingredients, it is possible to forget one entirely

It’s a good job I know my own limitations and had invested in some shop bought nibbles to take with me tomorrow, just in case.

Meanwhile, Norman started his festivities early:

Have a lovely Christmas!

Love,

Me and Norman :o)

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Success!

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Unexpected white knuckle rides

Posted on December 22, 2015 by thepogblog

I don’t think I’ve mentioned on here before that I am not very good at getting on the tube. Crowded places tend to scare the pants off me if I am on my own, so I avoid them at all costs. I have however, found something even more terrifying than a crowded tube train, and this is how it happened:

When my friend, The Lovely Nut, isn’t living in real Bumpkinsville, she lives in north London. I try to visit her there when my Christmas holidays start and we go out for lunch and exchange presents. I usually go on a weekday so I can miss all the busyness, and I know the route well so I just get on the tube, put my head down and that’s that. This year though, I don’t think I engaged my brain. I decided to go the last Saturday before Christmas. The day, as it turned out, that not only does the world and his dog go Christmas shopping, but also the day Southeastern Rail had decided was a ideal time to close four major London stations and instead funnel everyone into the same place. Genius. On top of that, the few trains actually running were delayed. By the time I reached London I had to go outside to calm down and convince myself that I could manage to get on a tube with what seemed to be most of the UK population. Anyway, long story short, I did it. It’s just when I arrived at The Lovely Nut’s house, I was in a bit of a pickle.

Now, my friend knows that for me, that 2.5 hours would have been a nightmare and very kindly said that to save me doing the same on the way home, she would drive me to the station so I could skip the tube entirely. She said that her car needed a run as she’d only been driving it a couple of miles to the supermarket each week since she had come back to London, so I would be doing her a favour.

The Lovely Nut is 79. She has always driven in London, but apparently not to this particular station for a few years. And it turns out the roads have changed quite a bit in that time. That, coupled with the fact that she drives a Volvo that might actually be older than me and likes to look at you when she is talking made for an ‘interesting’ journey, to say the least.

‘Where are we now?’

‘That’s Oxford Street….Marble Arch…..now, you used to be able to go down there to get to the station, maybe if we just <insert possible illegal manoeuvre>….yes, that looks about right…’

That was kind of how it went, with me slamming on imaginary break pedals every few seconds as she claimed she could ‘turn this car on a pin head’.

It did save me the panic of the tube, and for that I am grateful. Perhaps next time I will just grit my teeth and be brave though.  Especially as I called when I got home to make sure she had driven back in one piece to be told ‘yes dear, no problem. But I did realise when I pulled into the drive that I had driven thee and back with no lights on!’

Today’s activities of camp building and cuddling Teddy with Little Pea were certainly involved a lot fewer white knuckles :o)

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Droopy ears?

Posted on December 18, 2015 by thepogblog

In our toilets at work, we have really good mirrors.  I don’t mean those ones that make you look like a 6 foot tall supermodel (that would take a hell of a lot more than a mirror anyway).  I mean ones where you can really clearly see everything.  Actually, I guess it’s not the mirror that makes that good – it’s the lights.  The lights in my bathroom take a good 20 minutes to warm up to any sort of brightness.  This is good: I rarely get to see my reflection properly (and therefore don’t start each day scaring myself).  And this is bad: I rarely get to see my reflection properly (and therefore often don’t realise until I get to work that not only have applied my make up in the semi dark, but it really, really looks like I have).

So anyway, yesterday I spent a few minutes inspecting my face in the well lit, work toilet mirror (I was having email inbox avoidance moment), and I noticed something I have never noticed before.  You know where your ears join your face?  I have wrinkles there.  Who gets wrinkles there?!  It suggest that my ears are very slowly starting to move across my face.  There is a good chance that in 20 years time, my ears will be positioned somewhere between my cheek and my chin as they continue to droop slowly.  This has been at the back of my mind all day, and frankly, my mind is too full up right now to be having anything like that taking up space.

But it’s ok.  Because I have just put my out of office on.  Christmas starts now for me, and I shall empty my mind of everything other than wrapping, friends, smiling, and wondering if there are actually any sweets left to make up the little parcels I intended to make…(yes, I did buy a third box, yes, I did eat all the good ones.  Again).

Hooray! :o)

PS:  On a slightly different note, after swigging a bottle of cough mixture yesterday (we might have good mirrors in the office, but you can’t find a teaspoon for love nor money) and stealing most of a colleagues Strepsils, my cough looked like it would be keeping me awake for another night, so I tried out the thing of putting Vicks vapoRub on my feet and wearing socks to bed.  It works – I got 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep!  And there is the added benefit that you wake up with very soft, minty fresh feet.  It’s a win win situation.  I just thought it worth mentioning with all the sniffles and things going round. x

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’tis the season for…snot

Posted on December 15, 2015 by thepogblog

I’m not sure if it was the lady who sat next to me on the train every morning last week who blew her nose every few minutes and put the tissues in a plastic bag on her lap, or my boss who came in every day with his streaming cold, or if it was just one of the many spluttery people around at the moment, but a stinky cold made itself at home with me yesterday.  My nose ran so much I still think it must be some sort of Christmas miracle that I don’t look like a sultana; wrinkled and dehydrated.  I didn’t really help matters when I bought these and started taking them like sweeties:

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Can you spot the mistake?  Yes, while my nose was running like a tap, I was taking stuff for blocked noses.

So the moral of the story:

  • Always check the label
  • Don’t breathe in public until it starts getting warmer

(Unless, of course, you want to be mistaken for Rudolph… ):o)

 

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Ooops. Big oops.

Posted on December 11, 2015 by thepogblog

Last night was the company Christmas party.  I am quite proud that nothing utterly disastrous happened.  I don’t have that nagging feeling that I should curl up under my duvet and never see any colleagues ever again – I can remember most of the night and I didn’t do anything too terrible.  In fact, I even managed to stay upright at the roller disco – those evenings blading round Lake Geneva a decade ago finally came in useful.

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So that’s the good news. The bad news is that I had the most toe curling, mortifying moments of the day week month ok, possibly of the year, while I was in the office, stone cold sober.

We had a big event yesterday.  We live streamed video of the big, big boss being interviewed about big changes that are coming up for us.  It was a big deal; over 3000 people were watching.  A few minutes into the interview it was clear that technical gremlins had got involved – the film was buffering so much that it was almost unwatchable.  I thought I knew what the problem might be so I ran to the room where the filming was taking place and indicated to my manager that he needed to come out as we had a problem.  He didn’t come out (he was operating the cameras and sound) so I resorted to sign language.  He didn’t understand my variation of sign language so it took a while…

Anyway, having done what I could, I went back to my desk to see if the situation had improved.   All the people that I sit with were laughing.  A lot.  It turned out that what I couldn’t see through the glass door of the room where the filming was being done, was that the camera had the door in clear shot.  I had just made an unintentional 30 second cameo appearance.

I didn’t think it could be that bad, although I did go rather hot and panicky when I was told.  But it was a busy day, I still had a lot to do and I had a Christmas party to get to.  I kind of forgot about it.

Until I got to the party that is, and, as I walked around I was stopped repeatedly by colleagues I did and didn’t know, thanking me for brightening up what was actually a really long interview…

I only looked at the footage today.  To show you the level of toe curling-ness involved I’ve had to cut out the sound and most of the picture (which is why it is so pixelated – it’s very clear on the original), but see what you think of what happened in the top left corner.  And see if you think I should curl up under my duvet for the rest of the year after all :o)

 

 

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Chocolate shaped badness

Posted on December 8, 2015 by thepogblog

I am a bad person.  I have done a bad thing.

I almost finished the last parts of my Christmas shopping at the weekend, but not before getting my head in a total tangle.  I have quite a few friends with children and I thought I’d been organised in my plan to buy one ‘group’ gift for each family a few months back, but for one reason or another those presents don’t seem quite right anymore.  So I needed to think of a little extra for all the kids to go with the family gift, but frankly, I don’t know what to buy for children of varying ages and sexes.  The only thing I could think of that all smaller people like is sweets.  But then I thought their parents wouldn’t thank me – more sugar to add to the adrenalin of Christmas.  But then I thought that’s what Christmas is about when you’re small.  And providing that sugar high is what single, childless cat ladies are for :o)

My plan became to make a little parcel of sweets for each child to make it slightly more interesting than a Selection Box (which I remember from my childhood always looked big, but once you unwrapped them they were slightly disappointing).  So I bought lots of sweets.

These sweets included a tin of Heroes and a tin of Celebrations.  I rarely buy either as I discovered a few years ago that I ended up eating about half the tin, realising I didn’t like the rest and donating them to various family members (along with any evil yellow sweets that may be floating around the house).  It’s cheaper just to buy a bar of chocolate.

I did intend on making up the packs as soon as I got home, but instead I started wrapping up presents  – I needed to get the family presents to my parents as bags and boxes were starting to overtake Pog Towers, and there wasn’t much room for me and Norman to actually move around.

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Wrapping takes ages.  And I mean ages. And I am rubbish at it. I needed something to get me through, so I opened one of the boxes of sweets and just had a couple.

To cut a long story short, I have now eaten all the good ones. I have pretty much stolen sweets from children.  I am not proud.

But now I have two choices.  Do I just make packages out of what’s left (there’s more than just the two tins – I’ve hidden the rest from myself), and possibly stay slightly more popular with the parents? (Fewer sweets = shorter sugar high) Or do I buy another box at the weekend and risk repeating the whole process all over again?  I think it might have to be the second option.  And quality checking is slightly different to stealing, isn’t it? :o)

oops

oops

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The Christmas food got me again…

Posted on December 4, 2015 by thepogblog

…but in a different way to that soup / Ribena experience.

If you’ve been with me a while you’ll know my cooking skills stretch to little more than toast for my dinner.  This time of year is great though – all that party food that’s around is much more interesting than toast.  I went to the supermarket to buy some bananas the other day and came out with these:

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You see, these can be cooked in 10 minutes from the freezer, in whatever quantities required.  And if I want to pretend it’s a real dinner,I can add a bit of salad or an avocado to make it look a little more impressive.

This week I rushed to the shops on my way home for some bananas (I’d forgotten them in my excitement before) and I was stopped in my tracks.  There were two tables full of cooked party food, ready for tasting.  I was in need of a snackeral or two, so I studied the packaging with great interest while attempting to subtly try at least one of everything.  Forget the snackeral…this was dinner!

I left the tables comfortably full and determined not to forget the bananas or anything else.  I finished my shopping, went to pay and….spotted that new party food had been added to the table!  I wasn’t going to miss out so I paid  then stealthily manoeuvred my trolley back into the shop and started on pudding.  Finest shortbread with chocolate chips, mince pies and I was about to leave when I spotted the profiteroles.  Oh God.  Profiteroles are my favourite.  But the lady watching over the food was starting to give me ‘I know you are eating a meals worth of food here’ looks, so there was only one thing for it.  I turned the trolley to the door, blocked her view and sneaked the biggest one I could see with the most chocolate sauce.

I got my comeuppance. As I bit into it, I discovered that either it was filled with ice cream or possibly it was cream that hadn’t yet defrosted (and I have quite sensitive teeth).  I stifled a bit of a squeal and attempted to nonchalantly walk my trolley back to the car, through quite a few other shoppers.

I felt smug when I got in the car.  No need to cook tonight – I was stuffed.  I glanced in the rear view mirror as I reversed out my space and… discovered that most of the chocolate sauce on that profiterole has dripped down each side of my mouth, turning me into some sort of chocolate vampire.

That’ll teach me to be so greedy.  Actually, it probably won’t. :o)

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The Secret Baker retires

Posted on December 1, 2015 by thepogblog

After a year of baking for the office every month, I’ve now retired as the Secret Baker.  There are a number of reasons for this:

  1. My original plan last December was to get people smiling and talking to each other.  I’m sure it would have happened anyway, but I’m definitely having more conversations with people, and I know there were discussions about who was behind the cakes going on, so it did work to some degree :o)
  2. It takes ages to make 3-4 cakes at the same time when your oven has a mind of its own.  And it makes a lot of mess, especially when you are as chaotic in the kitchen as I am.
  3. 3-4 cakes are really hard to juggle on a 2 hour commute.  Yesterdays offering was so heavy and in danger of entirely collapsing that I had to take a taxi rather than walk the last 30 minutes, and I never take taxis in London.  (Although perhaps I should, I had a great conversation with the diver, discussing whether his plan B of being a gigolo would be a more lucrative career, and when I got out he thanked me for being so much fun – that much laughing at 7am is a pretty good way to start a Monday :o) )

So I retired from this:

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But that wasn’t the only baking I did this weekend; I made a cake to take to friends on Saturday night and one for the family pudding on Sunday (these both had a secret ingredient that you’d never guess).  And I made some biscuits for a school Christmas fair.  And I made a bit of a mess, because I tried to combine too many things to save time:

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Everything kind of got everywhere.  And when Sister 1 came to Pog Towers yesterday for Big House Day, I received this on Facebook:

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Maybe I should retire from baking full stop.  But all the cake did go down quite well, and it took everyone a lot of clues to work out that secret ingredient…which, weirdly,  Norman liked too (you’ll have already seen this picture if you’re following the pog blog facebook page):

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Yes, really :o)

Posted in cats, Cooking, work | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments