Right. I didn’t post yesterday, which means we are now even further behind in the blogging schedule than before. I had a fantastic excuse though. Really. We were in the ER until around 10:30 with Pudding. Severe teeth to lip/chin/general face area. It turns out he is fine and nothing was needed but it looked pretty extreme to begin with. Suffice it to say I was totally shattered after that little jaunt and did not feel in the mood for blogging. I know, shame on me.

On saturday we got to do an exciting bit of demolition in the back yard. The laundry/shed that had lately become a snake haven was destroyed.

It was some of the best fun I’ve had in a while actually, if a little bit disgusting. A colony of ants had infested the structure, every nook and cranny was crammed with them and, as it turned out, their eggs. Just a tad revoulting I must say. So, without further ado. Here are the pictures, I know you’ve been hanging on the edge of your seats to see them.

The laundry/shed before demolition.

This is what happens when you are married to someone who is actually nine years old. Why bother actually emptying the laundry before demolishing it, simply begin kicking (yes I said kicking) the walls out as soon as you get outside because you can’t contain your boyish glee at being able to wreck something. Moron.

We pulled off some of the corrugated iron wall sheets and then it was time to tackle the jasmine, which I estimate had been growing on the roof for some decades. Apart from the large amounts of living plant matter, there was a layer of dead, then a layer of general detritus (bones, snail shells etc) that was infested with slaters, then a kind of mat of root matter and soil. Lovely. When I finally got down to the roof sheets and managed to lift them I was greeted by thousands of ant eggs laid between the sheets. I didn’t take a photo. You should thank me.  As you can see, while I was up a ladder Pudding was doing important work with secateurs and pliers. Not dangerous at all.

Beefcake about to attack the frame. It was at this point that we became most relieved that neither of us had tried to climb on the roof. You see, the roof timbers were each held to the uprights with a single nail. When you add to that the fact that the upright posts were rotten and simply fell over with a slight push when freed from the structure you have one very unsound structure. It was actually the sheets of corrugated iron that were providing the structural integrity. Without them it began to fall down of it’s own accord straight away. Made us rather glad we had decided to bash it apart.

In honour of Katyboo, here I am “ittin’ it wiv an’ ‘ammer”.

And finally. The tongue and groove wall will be painted, we will attach the new clothesline to it. I have planted herbs in the old laundry trough. It has opened up the whole yard but you know what? Even if it hadn’t looked good once we were finished – I still would have happily done the days work. The satisfaction you get from knocking something like that down is second to none! My pelvis doesn’t think so  but I’ve given up caring.

I have written three or four beginnings to this post and deleted them.

I do not have my creative flow. My blogging mojo is absent.

I shall put a brave face on it, though and bravely push on with a bullet pointy type post that requires very little of my brain to be functional.

To make it interesting, let us divide the bullet points into two categories. “Awesome things that are great and happy and light up my life or are just funny” and “Whingey things that I could spare you but will not because I am selfish like that”

Awesome things that are great and happy and light up my life or are just funny:

• Grub has decided to cut me some small slack. She has cut down her overnight breastfeeding to between 0 and 3 feeds overnight – yes you read that correctly, she had her first ever night without a feed during the night – and she has agreed to sometimes sleep for several hours in her own bed. I will admit that this is a very new trend -  she has only done it twice – but I declare it to be the new norm. I will shortly be  the proud owner of one of those modern, new-fangled sleeping-through-the-night-and-putting-themselves-to-sleep children I have heard about. I can feel it in my waters.
• Spring has sprung. There is sunshine, there are butterflies, there are flowers (unfortunately with sniffle-making pollen to make my eyes water but let us not dwell on that). I feel as though a great grey shroud has been lifted from my person. Sunshine makes me happy.
• Beefcake has been working very hard this month, doing a bunch of very long days in order to haul some projects at work towards their deadlines. This may sound like it is not such an awesome thing but what it does mean is that the slight overspend that we had with the original kitchen renovation, which has been hanging over each month and making me feel stressed and depressed, will be taken care of. We will be back in fine shape. It hasn’t really been a big deal but it would be nice to have a month where I do not have to plan our spending down to the very cent. It will be lovely to be able to purchase one or two things I have been putting off for myself because they were not 100% strictly speaking necessary. I feel much relieved.
• The few extra dollars we might have will mean that I can perhaps paint the bathroom or re-tile the shower recess or re-enamel the very old bath. A bath should not have a rough abrasive surface. It will only be a minor bathroom refresh as opposed to a proper bathroom renovation as we will one day demolish this bathroom and it would be wasteful to replace it now but I am sure I can get it looking quite nice. I should show you what it looks like now – remind me to do that.
• Beefcake and I bought a rare and much appreciated coffee to get us through playgroup on Friday morning. In the cafe where we purchased our take-away beverages, there was a family (two older parents and an adult son) eating fish and chips. It was nine thirty in the morning. We thought maybe they were tourists, they had the look of being not quite local about them. We thought perhaps they had just arrived and it was dinner time where they come from, or maybe fish and chips is a breakfast food in their country. I don’t know but I thought it was a bit odd. Would you go the deep fried seafood and chips for brekkie?
• It is Poss’ birthday in less than two weeks and she has requested a shopping spree to redecorate her room with nice things. New bedding and cushions and such. Beefcake is completely puzzled that someone would want this as a birthday gift but I am excited  because it will actually be quite a fun thing to do. She has already chosen a new quilt cover and is planning a colour scheme she wants to work on – cute! I shouldn’t say that, she’s going to be eleven, that’s practically a teenager.
• Also on the topic of Poss’ burgeoning adolescence. The other day she was excitedly telling me about a school project when, to my delight, she threw in the tweeny term “totally random”. I have been unable to resist taunting her. She hates me. What fun.

Whingey things that I could spare you but will not because I am selfish like that:

• My body is an unpredictable and vile hell-monster with it’s own independent and beastly identity. I was feeling fab on Friday and went to the park with the small kids and the friend that used to come to playgroup (you remember) and her two girls. I had a spring in my step. It was great. I felt as though things were on the up and up. As some sort of cosmic punishment for feeling good (yes, I am melodramatic) I dislocated my wrist when I picked Grub up off of the slide. No odd movements or anything. Just picked her up. I couldn’t bear to tell my friend. I feel like a hyperchondriac so I grabbed my wrist and we walked home – lucky the park is around two minutes away. My wirst was very swollen and purple that night but is beginning to feel better now. My pelvis has arced up again quite badly. I am on a neverending merry-go-round of crap.
• Beefcake is working insane amounts. It will not stop this week. He will not be being paid extra for anything he does now either and he is mostly picking up the slack for other, slackarse people. Very frustating but at the same time I must remember that he is here, at home with us and we are actually extremely luck – so shut up Ali.
• I have been comfort eating. It is a pain/depression thing. I am usually pretty good but I have dropped the ball with my eating and I feel quite grumpy with myself. It is made worse by the fact that I am still carrying the vast majority of my baby weight from Grub and I can not exercise at all really. I feel really guilty about it and sometimes that seems to actually make it worse. It is a whole self-perpetuating cycle of self-loathing. I need to take control of it but some days having to be really careful about what I eat seems like a step too far. Like it will just be the thing to push me over the edge. I need to get a grip.
• Also, my foot hurts.

There you have it people. You’ree lucky I don’t blog more often really, aren’t you?

As promised (but rather later than I had originally intended) I present to you the evidence that we are hardcore DIY ninjas.

This is the before picture. As you can see, it was a well-equipped, luxury kitchen. Note the sleek lines of the stylish appliances and the quality cabinet-making that have been used to create this prince among kitchens. You are all wondering why we needed to replace it, aren’t you? Only a fussy and demanding shrew would not be satisfied with cooking in such a kitchen.

Now, I just want to preface the photos of the kitchen that we have put in with a note that it is not finished. We must tile and there will be  a rangehood (currently in box in Rhubarb’s room), wall cupboards and another large pantry thingemy and a table that Beefcake and I are planning to create that will mould around the fireplace. I will try to update as we get stuff done. This is only the first bit. The bit we absolutely had to have to function as a family in this house. The rest will come bit by bit as we can afford it etc.

So, drumroll please…………………..

The new kitchen.

Oops, it is covered in mess from Grub’s party today. Nevermind, you get the idea.

I love it.

I especially love the dishwasher – and my oven. The oven love is a sort of a muted joy because it is still not wired in. The gas stovetop works but the electrician must come and assist us with the oven part. I had to do the baking for Grub’s party at my sister Patchouli!’s place. Can’t bring myself to be too sad about that though because I have a kitchen! The electrician might want to move his arse though because I imagine I will not be as cheery about it in a couple of weeks time.

I will post about Grub’s party tomorrow as I am knackered.

Must sleep now.

Byee.

Whatever you do, do not attempt to put together an Swedish kitchen with your husband unless everything is going well in the marriage. If we didn’t like each other a lot it could have been all over.

There has been a fair bit of swearing and frustration and bickering about which way something is supposed to go. My hands are swollen and sore from having a screwdriver in them for the past four days straight (let’s not even talk about the pelvis), I haven’t been getting much sleep but I do have a few splinters .

We have been hardcore kitchen building.

But I’m actually pretty impressed with us. For the most part we worked harmoniously as a team. We didn’t fuck anything major up. Beefcake only threw a few tantys and I remained hysterical calm and serene throughout the process.

We did a pretty good job and today I have finally unpacked most of the boxes that go into our kitchen. It is not completely finished. We must tile above the benches, we must finish off a couple of other things but we have a usable kitchen and dishwasher. I can feed my family something other than toast and I do not have to wash their dirty dishes. Such joy.

And it is beautiful. I will post pictures tomorrow hopefully but for now I am just totally exhausted. I deserve some internet time and a cup of tea, I think.