Thursday, May 24, 2012

Mrs Accident is at home

Sometimes an at-home day comes at exactly the right time.

I know we are due for one when I start to feel overwhelmed by the clutter on the kitchen table, the floor is pretending to belong to a mud hut, and we are scraping the bottom of both the biscuit barrel and my patience.

Not my house
{source}
Then it's time for a reset. A morning to clean and clear the house and bake, an afternoon to sit quietly with a well earned cup of tea and a fresh, warm biscuit.

Peanut is feeling off colour today. She had a fabulous day yesterday with swimming lessons in the morning then a long play at an adventure playground. (She can do the swinging chain bridge and the flying fox by herself now! Today the swing bridge, tomorrow uni... she's growing up so damn fast.)

But today Peanut woke up cross, picked at her breakfast, and then retired to the couch with a book on tigers. She didn't want her favourite snack, she didn't want to watch tv, and eventually, three hours early, she decided that she should probably take her feverish head back to bed for a nap. Poor kid.

(For the record, Bug seems totally fine. She spent all morning pretending to be a pirate on the dog couch, with Archie as her loyal and sleepy sidekick. He may have known where the treasure was, but he certainly wasn't telling.)

So, without the girls underfoot I have been a cleaning whirlwind. The floors are back to shiny; the clutter banished; the courtyard is swept; and the pot plants, previously considering turning into cactii due to neglect, have been watered. And I won't even begin to gloat about the laundry. Suffice to say it has been well and truly beaten into submission. Of course, I outsourced the beating to the washing machine, for I am a thoroughly modern woman.

I didn't feel modern yesterday, though. Yesterday my neighbour turned up at my door with a bucket of pears that she had just picked. She tipped them into my held-out apron skirt, and in return I gave her six fresh eggs from the Accidental hens. Which she carried home in her apron. A regular 1950's street, we are.

In other news, our bath toys have been secretly breeding. They multiply overnight, then perch around the rim of the tub like lepers at Lourdes, slopping in their own damp puddles. We have many bath toy holders from bath toy sets, but they are all specifically designed to hold exactly two fewer toys than they came with. Frustrating.

But mix an old mandarin bag with a scrap of ugly orange bias and voila: solution.


I should have washed the bias first, though. It came from my grandmother's stash and probably originated sometime before sliced bread. The first time it was wet, orange dye ran into the bath and made the water look like someone had had a not-so-little accident. I jokingly blamed Peanut and she blamed me right back... and I wasn't even in the bath. What did she think I had done? Thankfully the dye is easy to rinse off, so no harm done.

Finally, in this meandering post about nothing in particular, it's time to award comment of the week. 

And our winner?  Sarah from Stitching and Needling. Check out the sidebar to see what made me chuckle. And a big thank you to everyone who comments. I blog for comments, (they are cheaper than peanuts) and get excited every single time I get a new one... so feel free to leave another today! 

15 comments:

  1. An at home day is always well deserved I think. I'm having one tomorrow and heaven help anyone who thinks otherwise...lol. Good luck on keeping the bath toys managed. Despite youngest being 13 there are still bath toys lurking in the kids bathroom. Who knows who they belong to....no one is claiming them. They haven't multiplied - just not disappearing either...sigh.

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    1. Enjoy your at home day!

      I'm a ruthless bath toy chucker, but somehow they just keep on coming...

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  2. love at home days. Problem is I'm at home, but unable to do anything about the timber floor pretending to be shagpile carpet because we have a dog and I don't vacuum. 8 sleeps till sanity.

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    1. I used to "not vacuume". I liked not vacuuming. I MISS not vacuuming. But going more than a week without not vacuuming is no longer feasible. Damn puppies! Damn absent husbands! *sigh*

      How's the word count coming?

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    2. Counting all the extra words that I'll have to reduce later? *sigh*

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  3. Another fantastic, clever idea from Mrs A! It's a pity we don't have bath toys in our home. Actually, we don't even have a bathtub, but that's an entirely different complaint that I'll leave another day.
    ~S.

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    1. I distinctly remember, as as child, having a bath in a sheep trough lined with a tarpaulin. Please don't try that at home, no matter how desperate you become! It's not as relaxing as you may imagine. (Although, there was plenty of leg room...)

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  4. Love the 1950s swap thing you have happening...we just don't do that enough these days! My last swap with my neighbour was fish sauce for aluminium foil...not nearly so old fashioned. On another note, I would love to hear about your daily/weekly housekeeping / cleaning schedule...you seem to have things so together, which is extra impressive with an absent husband.

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    1. Oh no, don't make me chortle. Have it all together? Barely. But ask and you shall receive. Stand by for the longest and most boring post in the history of this blog... coming tomorrow :)

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  5. Poor wee Peanut - hope she's back to her normal exuberant self soon - but what an opportunity for whirlwind clean up! I've noticed a couple of other bloggers call their daughters 'Peanut'; perhaps it has something to do with computers... and THEN I remembered my mum used to call me 'Lovey Dovey SKIN of a peanut' so maybe it's firmly embedded in the Australian psyche!

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    1. I think you might be right about the Australian "Peanut" link.

      I was always called "small fry"... but I think that was because Dad couldn't actually remember my name. ;)

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  6. Big get well wishes to Peanut - sounds like she's a very smart girl though (mine pretends to be sick because she only gets to watch TV all day if she is but then when I suggest I need to nick into town for something and she'd better stay in her jammies as she is ill...well mortified!). Love the toy holder - and if the toys keep multiplying you can also knit/crochet and stitch a big net from thin nylon rope stuff...one of the things on my to-do list. Glad you got a home day - and I can completely connect with needing to just have a day where you aren't just chasing your tail...or the dog's....or the naked baby butt tail of a two year old....lol

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    1. Peanut would jump at a trip to town in her PJs! We caught a late flight once, and gave her a bath and put her in her pyjamas before we left home. She LOVED it. But then, she's only three, and still willing to run down the street in the nickynoo on a hot day...

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  7. Poor Peanut sorry to hear she's not well. Bless you Bug sounds like quite an adventure (am envious of kids imaginations and to be aloud to escape reality when ever they please). I love days like the one you described they are few and far between. Although today was bissy with school run, running an errand, washing, changing beds, cleaning up the kitchen, folding, making biscuits, taking the boys back to school for a disco, cooking tea (which wasn't a success as I tried something new, hate that and so much wasted food:( ). But I hate it when I'm soooo tired (after working till 3am) and I wanted to make some muslie bars. My neighbor and I are like that when I or she bakes something we usually share. We've got one of those toy bags ours came with ducks I think, anyway they are very handy but I know what you mean about them breading though. I was just saying to my eldest tonight it was time for a clean out they have way too many. Wow that was a long comment sorry. Very tired Jodie.

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  8. "Bug sounds like quite an adventure"

    Perfect way to put it! She is! Right now she's squatting carefully on the coffee table, singing row row row your boat... Never a dull moment here ;)

    Sounds like you had an epic day! Sorry your cooking didn't work out, but good on you for trying something new!

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