Letters from Wetville

You can take multi-tasking too far.  Maybe you can't.  I did.  I cooked dinner and organised the laundry and considered the news on Syria and tried to organise the smallest child to make herself useful and mostly laid the table myself and we all ate dinner and I dropped Favourite Handyman off at kung fu and the children and I collected Mary K (86) from the rest home and we were unfazed by the potential meltdown over unmatching stocking-socks (anyone looks, Mary, you poke them with your stick and tell them off) and we got to the local high school hall and I put the kids in the queue to pay to get us in to the Talent Show and skipped the queue to get Mary safely inside and sitting down and the kids joined us soon enough and with programmes to boot and all was going pretty well. Then I noticed red checked fabric on my knees. I was still wearing the apron I'd put on to cook dinner. I was grateful indeed for the coat I  was wearing over the apron.  In other news, I went to

They are for absolutely anyone who fancies one.  Or two.  I finished this last weekend.  Yesterday, thinking that I might look in the posh shop with the 50% off sale at black skirts as my usual funeral skirt has a torn (beyond repair) hem.  I can't find a picture online, but it's a David Pond black skirt with red side panels and some lovely detailing back and front, and I bought it. I also juggled work and two sick children successfully this week and made all the commitments I had at work and got the children better and got to a funeral of the father of a good friend today and tonight I have made the most enormous shepherd's pie for Fionn to take on his hockey tournament trip to Blenheim and I think that a) medals are in order, though some for my bereaved friend long before me of course. b) my lovely childminder R is the most wonderful and special and helpful person and I'm so lucky that our respective part time work commitments dovetailed so well yesterday and to

More kale, less hair.  Yesterday's gardening: After weeding various places, I sowed beetroot, oriental mesclun and rocket, 'cos that's what I found in the shed which would work right now.  I also bought yellow primroses and yellow poppies and (Brighid's choice) pansies.  I'd not seen punnets of exclusively eye-popping colour splotches of yellow poppy before, and they were irresistible.  The children and I spent ages debating the merits of different colours of gladioli, but ultimately left them at the shop while I think about where to plant them so we can see them really easily and they won't be blown over by the wind.  Today I had a present at my front door from a friend: two bags of perennial leek plants which needed a new home.  Yahoo!  Must magic some gardening time tomorrow to plant them.  Gardening by torchlight could work.  I'm sure I've done it before.  A flowering succulent in the cactus garden.  First crocus of the season!  You c

Just like pharmaceutical drugs, vitamin supplements are never guaranteed miracle cures.  I've a documented propensity for developing immune dysfunction symptoms which doctors have no idea what to do about, and I've spent a lot of time successfully dealing with these symptoms by alternative means.  I've no longer got arthritis and or bells palsy.  I've reduced my hyperthyroid symptoms significantly, but there is still a big bulge of a goiter on/in my neck.  This year, taking a multivitamin with no iodine (generally counterindicated for hyperthyroid persons) and no iron (no good for haemochromatosis persons) twice a day, every day, has made a HUGE positive difference to my general health.  I've had only one mild cold this year! Tonight I thought I'd document what hasn't worked for me.  Mostly because I've trawled the net many a night looking for information which isn't there.  Here's one story.  Vitamin C is supposed to be bad for haemochromatosi

Still blogging ... just.  I've compiled a few posts in my head about fundraising and the school gala.  I won't relive the buildup to the gala here after all, but the actual day turned out really well, we made $14 000 which is fantastic for a school of only 170 pupils in a town hard hit by recent economic changes.  I learnt that I still don't mind working hard on the day, and that making candy floss the night before is kind of fun, but that I should not volunteer to make cakes, buy the ingredients and then discover I cannot find the time to bake. The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater is hilarious, even for me the kale afficcionado. In the absence of a local butcher, and given my dissatisfaction with supermarket meat, I decided to try Gourmet Direct , on the recommendation of a foodie friend's stepmother.  Of course.  How else do you find a butcher?  All very Hansel and Gretel so far.  Armed with a free delivery code, I made a selection of meats I couldn't fi