Friday, April 29, 2011

Scratch Those Last

In the past couple of weeks both of the items in the posts below have come undone.

First, the people we tried to palm our old car off onto found out how much it was actually going to cost them to get it properly roadworthy again (answer - $3000. So not really a free car for them after all) and they've returned it to us. It's back now, clogging up our driveway and sucking away all that good karma we thought we'd earned.

Second, Timmy has fallen out of his sleep routine and that means way less sleep for us. He used to have such a great routine, especially for someone so young. Until we help him find a new rhythm, there's no brain-power left for tackling Moby-Dick.

But on the plus side, the weather round here has turned a rather sharp corner into autumn. It's one of my favourite times, when the look and feel of winter - bleak skies, rainy days - inspires me to get the old hot water bottle out, and the teapot, and even, as every year, my knitting (yes, it's the same knitting project; I work on it in a couple of bursts at the start of the cooler weather every year. I even have the same thought: Oh, I'll get some really nice wooden needles, and some lovely fluffy grey wool, and with these two lovely things knitting will be a dream! And then I go to my knitting bag, and pull out my knitting needles - oh! they are wooden! and I notice that the piece of knitting on them, which has been sitting there for a year, is made of lovely fluffy grey wool. I do a couple of rows, and then I get crampy hands and tense shoulders and I put it down, just for a moment, just until tomorrow because I'm going to do a couple of rows every day, and I'll have that scarf ready before it really gets cold.)

Friday, April 8, 2011

Car Bartering

We got one ("new to us") car for the handsome price of a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and we got rid of our old one in return for an authentic butter chicken curry (plus recipe!).

This, I think, is the way the whole world should work.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Unexpected

One of the best surprises of new motherhood is how much time there is for reading. Reading books! I'd heard that once you've got a little one, you get so busy that it's hard to find time to even go to the toilet, and that reading is constricted to the odd short magazine article at best. But I hadn't factored in the many, many hours spent just holding or lying with the baby while he feeds. This time is so good, I'm finding, for any kind of mental activity - not just watching tv - and I make the most of it with daydreaming, scheming, drafting letters in my head and reading. I've just poked my nose into Moby-Dick, and I'm relishing every page.

(Luckily we've already given Timmy a perfectly serviceable name, or else I'd be arguing strongly for 'Ishmael'.)