The thing about this time of year, is that it's really, really busy, in the best possible way of course. We've done all the Christmassy things as thoroughly as family tradition demands - pantomime visit with family and friends, stockings at dawn, photograph of us all, including cat on the settee before heading out with gifts to Mama and Papa's via Good Friends en route. It was a quieter than usual Christmas, only one of my brothers could make it this year - family commitments and wives in advanced pregnancy (Cutesock's Mama) claimed the other two. We had goose - it was wonderful.
It has been even more wonderful to have Hairy Maclairy home for all this time, although I have to say, since he's been home it's even more obvious than normal that he's the really messy one of the family. I've got nicely out of the habit of having to pick up his stuff from everywhere, retrieve the (damp) towels from his room, and discovering that the washing basket has suddenly gone from empty to full in a nanosecond. It's a big washing basket, at least two machine loads worth.
We had a visit from the cousins and small-fry (although most of them are quite big fry these days) on Boxing Day, and then we played board games (Carcasonne) with the boys. I lost. Again. In compensation, I went geocaching with my baby brother - the perfect opportunity to wear my new walking boots that I got for Christmas... except I didn't, because I didn't want to get them dirty. At that point they were still very black and matt. I did wear them when I went for a constitutional with Handsome the following day, but only because it was all dry and frozen so I wouldn't get them muddy... they're still virgin boots.
I got a scanner in the sales - it's much easier to scan my old photos in at home than to do what I was doing previously, which was taking them into work and scanning them during my lunch breaks. Also, I have to say, it's a much better scanner than the one I have access to at work - quicker and more versatile. I've put a load more old photos of the boys into my album, and I've made a photo collage for Mama.
We've had freezing fog and very cold temperatures here for the last couple of days, and we've got family over tonight for Hogmanay, so I've got the fire laid all ready to be lit later on. We're burning the old dining room chairs... which have now been replaced with less scruffy dining room chairs. It'll be a quiet New Year for us as well, as a number of people who should have been here are suffering from the dreaded lurgy - including Mouse's Best Friend (causing Mouse to be a bit grumpy since we heard).
PS - As I edited, Good Friends called to say that although they are still full of plague themselves, Mouse's Best Friend is feeling much better, and can come. Mouse is now a happy bunny.
Oh and apparently I was picking up Friend-of-Hairy en route (only requiring a small detour down an unmade road in the dark with a flooded cattle grid) as well, and there's water everywhere and half a tree down on the Greenshields road. And I've got to go back for them later. And Handsome's just phoned to ask how the roads are, and kept saying 'really?' when I told him. Why did he bother to call if he wasn't going to believe me?
It's blowing a gale outside tonight, and I had to drive through some very floody bits on the way home this afternoon. Our road (the one the house is on) was closed when I came back, I had to drive right round through the village to get home. I think it must be open now though, because there appear to be cars going past the house again. I've still got to go out three times tonight - Hairy is going out with some mates in Biggar, and needs a lift there, and then later on a lift back. And Handsome is out in a pub somewhere (I don't know where) and will need to be collected later. I would love to be able to leave them both to walk...
Ah well, this is the downside of living in the middle of nowhere.
We're bound to have a powercut before the end of the evening, I'd better leave Mouse with a torch when I go out.
We finally got around to putting the Christmas tree up tonight. Whilst Handsome was safely out of the way playing cards with old ladies, Mouse and I did the artistic bit with the tree. In my defence, I genuinely think that the tree shouldn't go up until the week before Christmas, or otherwise it's lost all its needles before New Year. And Christmas goes on for far too long these days, no point in having it before now. Nothing whatsoever to do with not getting round to actually buying it...
We don't have one of those sophisticated, gorgeous Christmas trees. We have a family tree, which has all the ornaments that we've collected over the years (including the ones the kids made at primary school), some of which are elegant, some of which are rubbish, and none of which match...
It looks much better than the picture, because the red and white lights don't show up for some (probably obvious to a photographer) reason.
The cat thinks the tree is especially for him. I heard a strange rustling sound earlier on, turned around, and there he was - half way up, clinging by one paw and batting baubles off with the other. He's broken two already. Luckily I've got spares. Baubles, not cats.
I'm feeling all Christmassy and festive now, I think I'll go and wrap some pressies.
Blogging for the sake of blogging - well, I need something to do in the ad breaks between bits of CSI Miami... to which I am shamelessly addicted.
Hairy has finally been pinned down into coming home on Thursday; I'm desperate to see him again, it's been ages, and the last time I did see him he was looking really thin and tired. I haven't even got a Christmas present for him yet, because he keeps on telling me he doesn't need anything, and he'll have a look when he gets home. I don't care even if it means I have to take him shopping on Christmas Eve, I'm just looking forward to having him home for the holidays.
Mouse may struggle with becoming a younger brother again, he's got very used to being the only child at home. Hopefully it'll be enough of a novelty to have his elder brother home, and to have someone to talk to and play games with. Perhaps. I'm not holding my breath. He still needs to tidy up all his horrible little orcs Warhammer models out of Hairy's room, which he has been using as a painting space, largely because it's the tidiest room in the house as no-one is living in it. Also, it airs well - important with the combination of glue, paint and a houseful of asthmatics.
Mouse did well at his concert last week - he was on stage an almost embarrassing number of times. And, as he is really quite distinctive, and taller than a lot of other kids, it's quite obvious that he is. However, I decided quite early on not to be embarrassed, but just to be very proud instead.
He sang, almost danced, swayed a bit... sang some more, played in the senior wind band and did a very jazzy version of 'Satin Doll' with the saxophone ensemble. It's a bit of a sore point with him that he's been playing with the saxophone quartet all through first and second year, and there have never, ever been four of them. In fact, the numbers have varied from three to seven. This year, there are four of them - and the school have stopped calling it a quartet and started calling it an ensemble...
Two and a half days to go... I'm taking unpaid leave this year, so that I can have the same amount of holidays as Handsome and the kids, I don't think I could bear to be working when they're at home this time.
We went for a walk today with the Silver Duke of Edinburgh group and some colleagues. The weather forecast was absolutely diabolical, sleet with 20 mile an hour winds, which basically means sideways in-your-face sleet, so we were all a little reluctant... we can't just cancel without good reason, because basically there aren't enough weekends in the year to fit things in if we do.
However, when we got to the car park where we were meeting the kids it was not even slightly windy, nor was it sleeting. What we did have was a layer of new, soft, grippy snow on the ground, and some gorgeous white mist eddying around the hills we were about to walk up. Obviously a reward from Santa for being good walkers...
We had a lovely walk through from Traquair to the Ettrick Valley, pushing the kids ahead of us and keeping them moving in the cold. The views were stunning, almost in monochrome, with all the field edges outlined in black and occasional patches of mist. At one point we came downhill towards a circular sheep fold, and it looked amazing from above, a white circle with black shadows on a white background... Of course, neither Handsome nor myself had remembered to pick up cameras this morning.
And then we went and sat in the Glen Cafe, in the squashy settees in front of the wood burning stove, and had steak and onion baguettes and masses of coffee while we waited for the kids to do the last (impossible to go wrong on) stretch along the side of St Mary's Loch.
Much better than shopping.
You see I have this habit... I make notes on my blog as I go along - when things happen, or as I remember them, and then I save my post as 'private' until I have time to go in, rewrite stuff, tidy things up, all that kind of thing. I was making notes last night, while I was watching tv (the post's not published yet, I've still got to finish it), and I suppose I wasn't concentrating properly.
Handsome 'mentioned' tonight that I'd made two spelling errors in last night's blog - he does enjoy picking up my mistakes - I've gone in and marked it private for now, but I'm annoyed with myself for posting my rough notes.
Ice ice ice
This weekend's DofE walk was cancelled, because of the snow and ice, but I decided that I would still be absolutely fine to go for my circular walk around the back... even though Handsome had mentioned that the roads were a tad icy on his drive back from Edinburgh.
The roads were fine... which is the first third of my walk, after that there was a stretch of rutted path which was completely covered in five inch deep ice from verge to verge, and as the verges are completely covered in feral rhodedendrans, it's not as if you can walk there. I had to carefully place one foot before I moved the other, and sometimes there was just no-where where you could get grip at all. But I got lots of exercise skiting about along half a mile or so of sheer ice!
Even with all the ice, someone had still managed to get a vehicle up there in order to dump their rubbish - why on earth do people do that? In the middle of a small farm track that goes no-where, amongst the trees at the side, someone had dumped a pile of varicoloured plastic toy-boxes, some paint tins and an old settee... It's not as if we don't have a dump nearby, we do, and it's free. Just laziness.
There is a website and a freephone number where you can report these things, but they're only interested if you've actually seen someone dumping the stuff and can give them a registration number. I have to contact the council to actually get it cleared up, and as the minute they do so someone else will dump something, understandably, they take their time.
Today, however, I saw no-one else at all who was mad enough to be walking and sliding in the cold, but I did enjoy it, despite that.
I love snow, it makes me happy... I like the cold too, as long as I'm allowed to wear warm boots and a fleece or two. It's all about cosiness, and being able to look out at it from the warmth. This works well only as long as my work place is of a reasonable temperature - today it was officially Baltic.
We've got more snow due tonight, I hope there's enough so that I can feel like an adventurous explorer going to work tomorrow!
There are times when I want to blog but I don't want to share.
Sometimes it's too trivial - some stuff is really just drivelling on screen instead of out loud. Sometimes it involves other people and I can't be bothered to change all the names and do the stuff that you need to do to make it non-recognisable and sometimes, it's just something I need to write down, but I don't need anyone else to read.
This is my blog, I don't have to share anything I don't want to, so some of my entries will always be private.
