knot, you are special

i've been moving furniture, toy vehicles and boxes without proper homes in order to properly clean the floor of the living room. on previous quests for a clean floor, there have always been one spot somewhere that i didn't get, which spoils everything. today, however, thoroughnesss reigned.

unfortunately, it also rained. the dog ran in on muddy paws... twice. oh well, fresh paw prints are easy to wipe. then little boo peep spilled her milk. and had a "wee" accident. and ate porridge all over the place. oh... well. at least porridge is easier to get off floors than fleece sweaters.

my herculanean* task uncovered three dog toys, and one bone, which is more like a friend to sam, under the sofa. excellent! he was particularly happy about his pink squeaky ball, which he unfortunately chased under the sofa again straight away.

which leads me to think that floors follow the rules of nature, too -- chaos persists, and nature abhors empty space under the sofa.

* erm... i was thinking of Hercules... but likening it to digging out an ancient lava-infested city doesn't sound too far from the truth.

a million -- well, about five -- little things have been stressing us up (or down?) lately. there are vaccinations due for both child and dog. there are parental interviews at the nursery. there are holiday plans which involve finding a good place to place the dog, who, unfortunately, doesn't fly.

all of these things require some degree of organising, calling, planning and tinkering which neither twiggy nor i feel up to. he has a sore throat, i have a loathing of the phone. our swine colds are getting us seriously down. so we procrastinate.

unfortunately, doing this isn't always a good idea. twiggy's email about a kennel place was answered a week later, saying sorry, they were full. he should have called! my email conversation with the nursery teacher also went woefully slow, so that two days before the interview, i still didn't know if shared childcare had been sorted out or not, and if i was supposed to have done it or not.

however! yesterday, another recommended kennel replied that they had a place. also, the nursery teacher told me another parent had a problem with childcare, so in all we'd be three people looking after each other's children. everything sorted itself out! because we waited!

(i guess expecting the same thing for the vaccinations isn't such a good idea)

so it's halloween, and some of us have been running scared. fancy-dress people in the city centre? no problem. however, there also seemed to be a lot of trolls there!

walking the wolf-dog should make me feel tough. unfortunately, i know what a wuss he is. when two kids came running behind us on the path, who curled his tail inwards and tried to flee? some wolf!

for some reason -- well, remembering how dog acts when kids ring doors asking for things may be an indication -- i also felt nervous about trick-or-treaters. so as darkness fell, we fled the house, leaving a marginally scared dog behind, and went to a chinese restaurant.

my step father, who's visiting, and believes in hot food, ordered the spiciest item on the menu, super spicy hot poached fish. "are you sure you want it?" the waiter asked. "it's really hot, and made with oil, so it seems even spicier." stepfather looked doubtful, but persisted, ordering another beer. when the food arrived, the waiter spooned off a layer of minuscule red chilies and cautioned, once again, that it was hot.

how fortunate this particular fear was conquered, because it turned out it was one of the best meals he'd had! twiggy, too, was very happy with the spicy hot beancurd (the second most spicy item on the menu), while little boo peep loved the rest, which was totally unspicy. and me? i liked everything!

it's funny how confident a full belly makes you feel. in fact, even the dog is content and relaxed, gnawing on a bone which has been vaguely spiced with mint.

to quote carol, "Whoa!t has been three weeks since my last confession." but i'm turning a new leaf now. i'm posting from bed -- and from a computer which, for the moment at least, has less distractions than the stationary one.

we have been on holiday! staying in berwick-upon-tweed, the northernmost town in england,
our first and second attempts at invading scotland went miserably wrong as 1) the wind of the tweed was too strong and 2) the norwegians of the party had failed to dress for rain. history repeating? the indian and indina halfling were, naturally, waterproofed.

on our final attempt, we took the train, and although the halfling's teddy was nearly kilt, we did make it to scotland in the end, and didn't get to see or do nearly enough. but we did see the new scottish parliament, two demonstrations, and the parliamentary tartan.

the highlight of the trip, though, was a visit to holy island, or lindisfarne as we northerners like to call it. this time, we managed to manage the seriously short supply of buses to get there and back again, and only had half a day of rain. well. that really is a beautiful place to experience -- thanks, pradera, for giving the inspiration!

when we returned, it was autumn, both in the air and in the treetios. we got our delayed summer holiday just on time, it seems.

they're all coughing. twiggy succumbed to stress and viruses with a cold to rival the porcine flu. little boo peep, who's been entertaining herself by climbing all over his sick form, seems to have caught it in her nose. she sneezed in her sleep last night. and sam, who has just been vaccinated against kennel cough, has demonstrated how he would sound if he actually caught kennel cough.

i think i need coffee.

finally finsihed, formatted, printed and bound (harder than it sounds) my masters dissertation. twiggy (who proofread*, reread the fiendish formatting rules and sent me off to by a heavy-duty hole punch while he set the printing press in motion) got the final duty of sending off the heavy envelope to the open university. i performed the rather smaller, but still satisfying task of shutting down the documents full of quotations, notes, stray notes, half-baked ideas and the last draft (affectionately known as "fumbles") on my computer. now it's time for a well-earned rest!

* not this psot, boviously!

(obviously, i don't want to step much closer)

i wonder if there are any lol-orcs around? lol-ents? lol-Rings?

i saw this beautiful photo and immediately wanted to say something "profound" (read: idiotic) about africans. then i read the comments, and realised i didn't have to. the power of the interent!

still, it's a wonderful photo.
african people are so...
NO! I SHALL NOT SUCCUMB!

photo from pura.vida2009 on flickr,
shared under creative commons by-sa-nc.

as i'm struggling to attack my dissertation from a new angle, i'm getting up as late as little boo peep will let me and spending inordinate amounts of time surfing flickr and other such nice time-wasters. today, i found the resources to come up with another way of procrastinating -- taking little boo peep into town and letting her have her fill. we browsed in shops, watched people and dogs, bought green hippopotami* buttons and a shiny red tea pot, and little boo peep finally got a replacement for her little plastic bucket, which had cracked from too much tossing and finally expired, mauled by a dog. little boo peep spotted the necessary goods by herself, a perfect metal bucket painted pink, complete with shovel, rake and sunflower seeds. as soon as we came home, she ran out and started moving water.

we walked (she ran) on the city wall until she started running into pepople, and was actually thankful to sit down (up) on a bus. it felt a bit like a holiday. now i'm back, i guess. but who can dissert on a friday evening?

* it's a japanese word, wright?

"bomb explosion at Alta airport" (or something like that in norwegian), i read in the headline. wot? eviol terrorists in the land of fjords and midnught sin?

of curse not. they'd simply found a forgotten bomb from world war two, which they had removed in the safest way possible. the planes are expected to start taking off in he afternoon.

i don't know if the quality of life and similar surveys where the country ranks oh so high, but norway does have the coolest bombs!

as we all know, cats are skilled typists, using the internets to achieve world domination by distracting oblivious humans with "funny" lolcats. i thought dogs were above this. but no, today sam came up and put his heavy paw on mine as i sat typing. the result was scary...

  324\Y 6\MHA88.	–	–	–

is it some sikrit code? is it his file in the dogmatrix? is it MY file? is my time up? i'm so curious i simply have to post it, which was probably his intention all along.

i'm behind on blogs and sundry other interesting net things again, and what happens? i stub my toe, painfully, on a misplaced pram. this clearly means i must pay more attention, and blog a bit, to avoid the evil eye. or at least the trasked foot.

spring has warmed up and quickened everything, including me, so i've started digging up the garden -- it's small, thankfully -- in preparation for some plants. we have ordered a bunch of trees and bushes to make it a little less of a brown desert.

i'm also picking up speed on my master's dissertation, which will be about ayahs, that is nannies of the indian variety, in literature. particularly in rushdie's "midnight's children", which i'm becoming a bit of an expert on, to my great surprise.

there. will that do, evil ankle-biting universe?