Starbucks the boy

The latest outfit which envoked a 'Good Boy' comment from the shop assistant when handing Starbucks the massive loaf of bread she wanted to carry home.

I thought now days the bunches might be a give away?

Perhaps only boys get snotty noses?

Green Tomato Chutney

I am very good at growing green tomatos, infact i've never managed to grow a red one in our garden in London. It got me thinking, and in the grand scheme of life- how do you know you have done well?? For me one of those things is being a 'homemaker' - is that a word already? I like baking, and i want to be a domestic goddess. When i knew i was having a baby i pledged to have at least one homebaked biscuit/cake/sweet permenantly in the house. I tried for a while but the time, and the fact that i then continually eat such things mean i gave up.

However, i think you must have made it in this world, as a woman, if you've made chutney. yep. i stand by that. So i made green tomato chutney. It was of limited success. I'd like to make the disclaimer that perhaps it was the green tomatos- as since they dont taste like tomatos do, add no merit to a product, and therefore any pickle with green tomato in the title seems like it could be relabeled simply, 'pickle'. My green tomato chutney filled the room with fumes as i boiled off the 2 pints of vinigar the recipe called for. The resulting spread is suitably brown, but tastes like maple syrup drizzled over 'stuff'. chewy pasta?

Ah well, here is a picture of Denzil the dog showing it off.

Anyone any other suggestions of how you can know if you;ve made it in the world. I recon a home made bedspread might count, but i dont have the effort for that!

20/52 Happy? i dont have to eat this chutney i made!

October Womenhood - Gentleness

My principle aim when i went on maternity leave was to spend some time each week with other Christian women learning from the bible. I began looking when i was pregnant and failed at the first hurdle when the leader from a very academic church in the city, politely met me for coffee (I paid) in a posh cafe, and went on to say i was not welcome to attend her group until i was well established at their church. hmph. i'm not moving churches.

My quest improved and i attended several different groups, until eventually Lorax and I started our own group at our church. This was brilliant and i learnt a lot from her, our babies seemed to become friends, as much as a baby can like anyone else who doesn't recognise their ultimate authority. Lorax left last week :( but before she went she gave me a book. 'A Year of Biblical Womanhood' by Rachel Held Evans. I am so excited to read it. In this book Rachel details her attempts to live a year according to biblical rules about being a women. What a challenge, and what is the point?

 Starbucks struggling to engage with Hope who would not recognise her authority on what part of the blanket to sit on.

It seems ridiculous to obey some parts of the bible, but not the bits you don't want to. So I'm encouraged to think about rising to the challenge. She tried to obey some commandments for the whole year, but others she just did for a month (thank God, one of the rules is living in a tent when you have your period) The first month she focused on 'Gentleness'. In specific, a good wife should:

Cultivate a gentle and quiet spirit (1 Peter 3:3-4)

Immediately challenging. Does kick boxing, arguing for the oppressed and shouting along to rock music constitute a 'gentle and quiet spirit?' Are all these behaviours inconsistent with being a Christian? God made us unique. I used to worry that I shouldn't kickbox, that perhaps it wasn't right to a) hit people in the face (even with gloves on) or b) practice the best ways to hurt people quickest on a weekly basis. But for numerous reasons I think God wants me to kickbox. what a statement!

However, i do believe that it is ever so powerful and self-fulfilling to be at one with yourself. To be quiet inside your soul. I think this comes from knowing who you are and resting assured in that. Not constantly spending your life defining yourself by comparing yourself to other people, or doing things that prove your worth. I think this is most peoples biggest problem (mine included- although it's easier to analyse others). The sexiest person i know sleeps with lots of boys to prove that she is sexy, when she could just walk outside with unbrushed hair in tracksuit bottoms and her sexiness would show through.

So i think there is truth and meaning in this verse, but i'm not convinced that it means that all women should not shout. I think it means all women should believe in themselves and their unique value. There are some great role models of women in the bible, and they did not sit around knitting and making dinner.

19/52 Happy?  Knowing who i am. Today i drove home from Kickboxing in a tiny yellow car, singing along to Guns 'n' Roses (Use your illusion 2) really loud. I don't care if all the business people in suits saw me and thought i haven't made it in this world as i wasn't driving an Audi TT and listening to Noah and the Whale. If i could, i wouldn't. This is who i am. Also i like pigeons and wearing shoes with big tongues! This is my quiet spirit.

This tongues are not big enough, but i had to compromise as we were travelling.

Is that my skinny grande caramel machaito?

Is there anything more embarrassing than ordering a drink at Starbucks, collecting it at the other end of the til, then finding out that it is not quite correct, taking it back to the cashier who confirms that it is not what you ordered, and as you debate this, your actual drink arrives at the collection point, and you have face the person who's drink you've wandered around the shop with?

18/52 Happy? That this only happens once a month or so. :)

I want a cupboard

This week I went to True's new house and discovered a new jealousy of mine. Cupboard envy. Oh how glorious it seems to be to have storage, lots and lots of storage. Spaces with doors and shutters (what's a shutter inside a house?) where you can put things somewhere and close them away from sight! This to me seems like the biggest freedom in the world right now. Forget prisons (if they have cupboards with doors they are as free as me) or those agoraphobics stuck inside ( if they had unlimited cupboard space they could spend their time inside organising and re-organising these spaces.)

True has a shoe cupboard big enough to hang a family of 4's coats in, a playroom to hide her boys toys in, a cupboard to cover her washing machine, an outside shed to hide bikes, another to hide other shed type things in, a garage to hide the car, a very random cupboard outside the back door to hide the 'overflow fridge' in. Her bedroom has no less than 6 built in wardrobes, allowing her separate spaces to hang tops, bottoms and items not in season. She even has some empty cupboards she doesn't know what to do with. Today I really wish I had a built in cupboard, I really do.

I live in a silly new build with no storage. if you visit my house you can take an itinerary of everything we own as you walk through to our lounge. If you can't see it, we don't have it. I want one big enough for my ironing board. I want one to hide the Hoover, I want one so that I can buy a broom or a mop and bucket.

Xss and I discuss this sometimes as he has a perhaps rational fear, due to my comment above, that when you get storage you fill it. Like it's a law. He's worried that if I get a cupboard by the time we move to bigger house I will have accumulated enough stuff to so densely populate the new place 1the merit of moving will have been nullified.

I still want a cupboard, even if it's true.

17/52 Happy? The possibility that my future has a built in cupboard in it.

Blackpool - trip of the year

Myself, Honestly, Princess and Lovely went on our 'annual girls trip away' (we dont often go). It was AMAZING. I'd like to say I love Blackpool, but i don't. I love being away from everything (including Starbucks) and spending time with my girlfriends talking about everything, drinking, sleeping, talking about everything again, etc.

We did so many fun things in one day it was immense. Unlimited by a baby and set meal times (my main grumble about having a small person in our family) we walked from out hotel to Blackpool pleasure beach doing EVERYTHING fun along the way. We played pirate crazy golf, i had fresh made doughnuts for lunch, drank pitchers of mojito, ate chips with every meal, went on the pier and realised that once you win big on the 2p machine the joke is on you and your pockets for the rest of the day. We sat at the end of the pier and drank tea and listened to an waltzer- and in Blackpool you can officially share a pot of tea (i'm sure in London they make up rules about having to have only 1 cup per pot or frowning on you if you dare suggest sharing- like it's stealing because if you ask for more hot water, or more milk, you technically are getting something for free?). At midnight we went on the feris wheel whilst eating ice-cream. Some people were so scared that there was a volume of melted ice-cream dripping over cluched metal handles at the end and very little eaten.

Blackpool was fun, but it is obviously struggling with poverty. Behind the front beach lined road it very quickly gets poor and dischevled, and the locals seem to have fallen out of love with it, perhaps guilted by years of promise with no regeneration. Watching their town decay around them. Luckily we only stayed 2 days and left them to it, to enjoy the luxury of London. It was odd to be pretty low earning girls in London, living plain, simple lives but to feel relatively affluent and free to spend  unrestrained up there. There are various issues with this north south divide, but i as i often do, (often wrongly) ignored it with the thought that i'm helping my own poor teenagers in Peckham. Thats a kind of get out of jail free card on any other caring issue isnt it?

 Princess on the beach at sunset.

 Princess (pretending not to be scared of the donkeys), Honestly and Lovely

P

Tea on the pier: Lovely, Princess and Honestly.

We got ID'd everywhere we went, but i think it was because they were illequiped to judge how old people not wearing make-up, revealing clothing nor caring that they were all dressed in sensible walking shoes and coats, were. 31.

16/52 Happy? having the choice and resources to do new things

Joys of our childhoods

I like making dens. I innately try to encourage Starbucks into everything I like, therefore she has begun loving den's too. Our latest one is made of sheets spread over the clothes horse. She has spent the last few days decanting our cupboard into the tent den and then arranging and rearranging. It's so cute to see.

Stocking up on the festival necessities.

 Other things i like to encourage her to do - climbing into the duvet in between the cover and the actual duvet (a mysterious twilight world), jumping on anything she can (sofa, bed, table-opps), splashing in the bath, making things out of cardboard boxes, listening to Guns 'n' Roses, patting people on the head when they have done well (a great air of condescension when done by a baby), being held upside down, swinging her around while holding her hands, going down the biggest slides that we can find! [Its annoying that your default line for parenting comes from your own experience, even if you think that much of your own childhood wasn't great. If i continue to recreate my own childhood for Starbucks it's not going to be pretty later on. ]

15/52 Happy? Squashed in a tiny den with my daughter while she rearranged her bottles of beer and onions.