Come and tell me your dull and unexciting news 7: Calmly through the day

[MissConductUS]

I've started a new one. Please join us and share the boring and mundane things happening in your world. It will be calming for all.

I loved the last one of these! Will be eagerly catching up on all the unremarkable news! Thanks, OP!

All this baking talk... my DC have allocated out the weekends between them, so they each get to bake (on their own/without sibling assistance) once every four weeks and we don’t all end up with diabetes! There is No Time for baking midweek. DC3 baked a beautiful marble cake yesterday, we cut it for pudding after lunch today and it was a triumph.

I took two children and a dog on a long muddy woodland walk today. We had bagels with either eggs or smoked salmon and cream cheese for brunch at 11am and then dragged them out. Then made Sunday lunch and served it at 6pm. Worked a treat!

I felt the timing of meals suitably dull for other ladies though it was pleasing for me!

@PersisFord when all else fails Georgette sees me through. The Unknown Ajax or The Grand Sophy can solve most ills.

There is a rogue ‘ladies’ in that post, I don’t know how that happened! It should have said ‘for others’
My iPhone is a misogynist

Helena
I have Sophy on audible and will take her to hospital with me.

@SilkieRabbits the tales of your DS and the amazing floofy rug is too cute for words.
@MissConductUS, I hope your DD is ok - maybe a little worried about going to stay on campus now that she has been accepted for next —term— semester? I’m pleased that your mum and her carer are out of isolation now though.

We are having chicken korma for dinner with rice. I'm having a cup of tea. DH has cleaned the kitchen.

Tomorrow we have house survey by buyers, electricity checks and EPC and 2 rooms and stairs here to clean, the fun just doesn't stop tomorrow. DD and DS will be at school.

DS is 13 but loves anything fluffy and his giant soft toys, fleece blankets fluffy rabbit and silkie (fluffy) chickens but he will never let anyone come round our house incase they see his secret collection of fluffy / fleece things.

@MissConductUS I am always so impressed with your British idioms. For a long time I thought that you were an ex-pat Brit because of the way you write. Your use of bloke has really made me smile, as I think that that's about as British as you get.

In news from EggyTowers, it is Sunday so I have changed all the beds. Well, I've done the DCs, just mine to go.
I have also been doing the jobs that I neglect today (like wiping the windowsills down) as we have a surveyor coming over tomorrow to make sure that the house is worth what it's estimated at, so that we can have the money for the extension.

Silkie
DS has a collection of plush cats, he still adds to.
Fluffy things are important.

My DS once got a plush St. Bernard dog in original size.

Just had a slice of toast. I was good at teatime & had a small portion (wraps with stir-fried veggies, red kidney beans etc). But I was still hungry.
I could bore you all to death with my dull never-ending dieting attempts.
Managed a lie-in then a run this morning .

Day 3 of my new relationship with a squirrel. He's been foraging and burying stuff in our garden, I thought he needed help so bought a bag of posh nuts from Waitrose (no additives in them). We're pretty tight now.

Tonight I ate a third of the cheese. There's still plenty of cheese for other people to eat.

It was plain cheddar

Whenever I buy something nice to eat, I always feel I have to offer some to the kids. Then, if they like it, I am smug because they eat moules marinière/ripe Brie/fresh figs and also disappointed because I then have to share it. My middle class aspirations are at war with my greediness.

Sophy is an excellent choice for hospital @Prokupatuscrakedatus. I have just finished The Corinthian for the millionth time. My favourite is Cotillion though - an unpopular choice! I also really like Friday’s Child and Arabella. I think I like the heros slightly more whimsical. My mum and I have very different feelings about this - she is all for These Old Shades etc which I find very faintly alarming. I don’t know whether this is our personalities or our upbringings.

I am still undecided about whether or not to make a Christmas pudding. Pro: it’s fun to make, can do with kids, fairly straightforward, will make the house smell nice. Cons: only one DC and DH like it and I wonder if it would be better to just buy one. My grandmother would rise from her grave to smack my legs with a wooden spoon for buying a pudding but I could do it v discreetly and hope that communications with the spirit world have been disrupted by COVID.

She died before online supermarket shopping so her vigilance might be lower in that regard.

@PersisFord Buy the pudding. Consider it a public health measure, as more shopping would be required to make one.

@EggyPegg Thank you! I can assure you that I am not an ex-pat but have simply been observing British phrasing and word use in my three or so years here. It's all part of my plan to become the US ambassador to MN under the Biden administration. DH spent almost a year (long before we met) working in London but doesn't speak much about it, other than the fact that he liked the people but not the food. I assume this means that there were --loose- women involved. He was quite the looker back then.

DH has taken DD to urgent care. The pain under her ribs is gone, but she has a headache, so they gave her a covid test. I really doubt she has covid, but if she does I don't know what we'll do about picking up DS on Wednesday. We may not even have the results back by then. There are times when I really want to slap some sense into Dr Google.

Prok Both DD and DS would adore a full-size St Bernard soft toy. DD would love a real one too and I get pestered for a long-haired one.

DS has gone to sleep in a Pudsey Bear onesie.

@MissConductUS it's a bit hit and miss with maple syrup here, you have to check the label carefully to make sure it's 100% and not mixed with anything else

@MissConductUS He didn't like the food? Not even fish and chips or a Sunday roast (though as a veggie, I never eat those things either)? Tell me he liked Yorkshire puddings...

I find that maple syrup over here tends to be labelled Canadian and comes in glass jars. Though I've never checked to see if it's mixed with anything. It is expensive though. I'm always envious of the bear shaped receptacles that honey comes in when I see it on TV. The funkiest we get is one shaped like a beehive.

Sorry to hear that your DD still isn't feeling well. How fast have your results been coming back? Ours seem to come back within 24-30 hours.

@EggyPegg I saw some in Lidl yesterday but didn't get around to checking the label as I wasn't shopping for that. You do have to be careful though as some brands will brazenly say 'maple syrup' until you look at the ingredient list and it isn't. I have one such bottle in my food cupboard

Turnaround time is pretty quick here, 24 hours after posting it back. I was quite interested in a poster on this thread who said in their neck of the woods they only had to do the nose, but more thoroughly. If I have to have it done I'd hope to be able to do it that way as I'm sure I'd bugger it up with a tonsil swab.

Am sure dd will be fine :)

My dull news: after my failure with spray canning my chair yesterday I ordered a super spray metallic gold can which is arriving tomorrow. My humble garden chair is going to put Versailles to shame

@MissConductUS I thought you might enjoy this
www.independent.co.uk/life-style/british-phrases-english-language-sayings-britain-england-uk-different-a8138046.html

@Frownette I admire your aspirations.

Have worked a long shift in a care home with lots of lovely carers and registered nurses .
All so lovely and our residents are really happy despite lockdown 😍

@Frownette - It's buyer beware with maple syrup here too. I wasn't sure if it was even a thing in the UK. We get a lot of Canadian maple syrup here as well, but also loads from Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. If it's not expensive it's not real. I'm sure your chair will be glorious. Please post a picture when you're done.

Test turn around times here depend on the circumstance. If you're symptomatic or in the hospital you'll get results in 24 hours. If you're largely asymptomatic and the test was done in a walk in clinic as DD's was and it can be 3-4 days. DD is feeling much better. She hadn't eaten all day, the silly girl poor thing.

@EggyPegg I have questioned him about the food. He loved the meats, especially the steaks and roasts, but he was living their as a bachelor so didn't cook much for himself. He was there in the late 1980's. He thought that fruits, vegetables and salads were generally better in the US. He had a service flat in Knightsbridge and took many of his meals in a small, family-run Russian restaurant called Luba's he could walk too. He liked the food there. When I asked him flat out if he'd had a British girlfriend his response was that he'd left no children behind that he was aware of.

The link to the article in the Independent is priceless Eggy so thank you. I'm now one step closer to my career in the Foreign Service.

@dottiedaisee Welcome to the thread, I'm so pleased you could join us. I did geriatric nursing for a few years and it was very rewarding.

We had lunch before I went to work and I made a dish with halloumi. My previous experiences with halloumi (one cooked by DH, one by DS) have been merely satisfactory. I could never understand why people raved about it when it was so hard and rubbery.

Anyway it turns out when I cook it, the result is much better

I've also twigged that my much coveted two days off, in the house, alone, with nobody talking to me, have been wrecked by DS's new isolation. I feel terribly selfish about this, but also rather peeved.

@MissConductUS ha, that made me laugh. Dad was apparently a US WW2 baby!

Yes will take pics of chair in its mediocre state as slighly spritzed, then in all its glory in this new improved golden spray can

If it doesn't look magnificent I demand a full refund. This is all my poor little garden chair can aspire to in life, looking golden. I'm rooting for it.