Just Jo!

And three dessert forks?
And one dinner fork?
Teaspoons I can understand, sort of, they’re little….actually, no I can’t. You wash ‘em up, you put ‘em in the drawer….What? There’s some kind of black hole in the four foot space between sink and drawer that sucks in stray cutlery??
But forks???? Wha….????
Yes, I’m ever so slightly perplexed. Ever so slightly. The cutlery drawer had broken it’s back (No idea how, so don’t even ask!), the cupboard it’s in has a false back. Again, don’t ask. Oh, go on then, it’ll give me another reason to moan about the council. It’s their fault entirely. Why, oh why, would any sane person put a false back in an already very shallow cupboard? Why?? And let’s ignore the fact that the kitchen was so obviously designed by a man in the first place. And a council man at that. Not that I’m grumbling. Much.

(Deep breath….calm down….)

Anyway, this morning I decided to do something about the drawer, instead of instructing various children to gently close the drawer, not slam it shut as hard as possible (which probably explains the broken back now I come to think of it) and then screaming at them like a banshee when they completely ignore me (no change there then).
I emptied the cupboard completely, with Olivia’s help, supposedly, but she took over an hour to change from pyjamas to jeans and a T-shirt. Not that I’m grumbling. Much.
I took out the shelf, took out the false back and anticipated locating all the lost and abandoned cutlery that had fallen down behind the false back. Because the false back doesn’t go all the way to the top.
And what did I find?
One soup spoon (Which I didn’t realise I’d lost so it made me go “Ooh!”).
A mezzaluna (Which prompted the dismantling exercise in the first place because I can’t live without my mezzaluna. Well, I can, but life’s less interesting without it).
And spiders.
Teaspoons? Nope!
Dessert forks? Nope!
Dinner fork? Nope!

So where do they go??? I really wanna know!!!

The cupboard has been cleaned out, the spiders ‘encouraged’ (ahem) to relocate, the false back propped up against the back door, and ooh, who’d have thought? The cupboard can now house lots more than before!
The drawer has a new back, a bodged (and that spelling doesn’t look right for some reason) up one made with cardboard and parcel tape. Yes, I know I could have cut the ex-false back to size and nailed it on, but I was seriously lacking motivation by that point. Shoot me.

Soooo…. the rest of this week?

Monday. Monday? Um….er….must have done a bit of shopping. And the stand out moment was undoubtedly getting accosted by a member of staff (waving a photo of me taken by a security camera) in the corner shop. I thought I was going to be accused of shoplifting and I was getting all set to be righteously indignant, but it turned out that another member of staff had forgotten to charge me for credit on my mobile. Would I kindly pay it? Please? Or the staff member in question would have to pay it herself. I was very, very, very tempted to say “Well if she’s daft enough not to have noticed it, let her pay then!” Which means I’m daft as well because I didn’t notice it either. We’d been in town, the schools had broken up so it was extra busy (’Nuff said!), and I was paying gas and electric and buying more stuff in the shop, so I was frazzled. What’s her excuse? Eh?

Tuesday. Tuesday? Um….er….we didn’t go to Di’s. I was wafting around the house and suddenly it was half past two. Wha? So that made it a bit late to be going over there. So we didn’t. We stayed home, cut back the russian vine, because it keeps ‘russian’ to block the alley. Boom boom!! Sorry.
We both got a sudden urge for some Ancient Greek studies, so we hunted down all things Greek, looked at them, Olivia decided what she wanted to make and then…. um….we sort of got distracted. By what exactly I have no recollection.
So now we have a Greek corner in the sitting room that keeps winking at us pathetically.

Wednesday. Now Wednesday’s memories aren’t nearly so vague.
We did go to Di’s. We met at her allotment via a trip to Poundland and Poundstretcher, because Olivia has managed to lose her gardening gloves. Poundland didn’t have any (but they did have some arty bits and pieces that Olivia fell in love with), so we got a double dose of cheap tat when we ventured into Poundstretcher too (who did have gloves).
Olivia spent ages picking and eating blackberries….found some raspberries…. “NO!!” we both yelled at her, “they’re on someone else’s allotment!!”

Handed over a card for Di’s son’s birthday….

And made the weekly trip to the library.
Once home, we hit the ‘puter. Not literally. I’m quite fond of my ‘puter and I’d never abuse it in such a manner.
Olivia wants to have a Victorian high tea at some point and invite some friends over. What’s that got to do with the ‘puter? We were looking at suitably Victorian cake stands on Ebay and Amazon. See? Educational! Ish. And I set herself up with a Flickr thingy. So she’ll be all set to go when she’s saved enough for her digital camera.

So that brings us up to yesterday. Which was damp in the extreme.
Such fun. ‘Specially as it was another one of the group activity thingys, wall climbing in the rain. But first we had to walk there (still haven’t sorted out my flat tyre). In the rain along the river. Olivia took a pic of crazy kayakers going over the weir.
Some pics from the wall….

And my personal favourite from the day….

Such an attractive look….seem to remember her saying something about not really wanting her photo taken…. “Shut up and smile!”
Olivia updated her blog (Go have a look!) once we got home, with a ‘few’ of my photos and the only two she’s uploaded to her Flickr. There’s four really, but I uploaded the other two to show her how to do it.
You can imagine how long it took her to put all those photos on….
But she’s very pleased with herself and keeps wanting to read it. And she’s got herself a new email account, so she sent out a few emails to friends (Lisa! Check the girls’!) and family. So I didn’t really get much of a chance to do my thing on the ‘puter at all yesterday.
And she’s nagging me to get off it now, because she wants to upload her photo prompt pics. She’s taking over those particular duties, which leaves me free to do all sorts of wondrous things like….um….er….wash my hair….read….nag Olivia for my turn on the ‘puter….

Oh, and Adam’s gone up to London for the weekend….his nephew’s christening….ahhh….