Tea Room the Thirteenth

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Welcome to the newest instalment of the One Parent Families tea room. As it's heading for spring, we're now in a nice warm orangery surrounded by woodland filled with spring flowers. All are very welcome to join in with us parents of one (or indeed more!), the tea room gardener/handyman Mellors, various virtual Bishops (don't ask) and a variety of other characters from previous tea rooms. Grab a cuppa, relax!...

Hi, Can I join in this tea room? I have a 3 yr old ds, and planning to leave it at one. How does the tea room work?

Umm, I'll let someone else explain the tearoom, I just turned up and joined in, and people thought I was someone entirely different .

Just to let you know, the Archbishop of Canterbury has just emerged from the priests hole victorious, having cleaned up at poker. Here's a pic: in the money

Hi AandO, I'm no expert on the tea room, but I've been here for a while and the people here are lovely (both real and fictional). It's handy to have a bit of an active imagination for the setting and the fictional characters, and a silly sense of humour, but not necessary.
Mostly we just chat and offer each other virtual cups of tea/coffee, virtual cake, and a lot of support and friendship.
In other words, you're very welcome, and hello .

I'm Amber and when I'm not in the tea room herding virtual Bishops/leaders of any faith about (that really is a long story...), I'm an autism consultant (amongst other things) and mum of a teenage ds.

In your surroundings, you will find we're currently in an orangery, in which there will be an Aga that is always nice and warm, plenty of tea and cake making equipment, a hidden underground 'priest hole' for those days when people of any faith at all fancy hiding from the world, and a sauna and jacuzzi. There's also Mellors the handsome virtual gardener/handyperson who looks like the man of each person's dreams, various mohawk babies (NMBs) who are always getting up to mischief and are a leftover from a previous tea room, and a whole menagerie of virtual animals of various sorts including horses, camels, the odd Bison, guinepigs, dogs, etc.

Sort of write-your-own-bizarre-novel-as-we-go, combined with a cuppa and chat.

It can be a bit surreal in here at times, but it's a lovely supportive place to chill out, drink virtual bolly, and occasionally moan about people being rude regarding the number of children you have.

I have one DS (3), three cats (with weird scientist names), and a DH. I trail round the world for work, MNetting from airports and hotels.

We had snow this morning. And as DH was leaving the house at 4.15am, he was not a happy bunny

wowee a lovely new tea room this is the smell of the orange blossoms is simply divine

well its 15lb and counting i ahve put a big platter of fat free spicy chicken fajitas, some nice hot ovaltine(the choccie one naturally) and some home baked choc chip cookies warm from the oven

sorry to hear about your FIL daisy i hope he gets better soon.

mary sounds like your day from hell was indeed hellish!! we have had some problems with DD and her behaviour and have taken away some of her toys...hasnt made much of a difference yet but well see

hi to everyone else and welcome to AandO

that should be i have put the treats on the big table in the conservatory area over at the back...

'ello AandO I am teafortwo. Consider yourself at home.

Here we laugh, raise our eye brows, cry and moan and sometimes just sip tea or something stronger knowingly together!!!

I understand 50% of the crazy stuff so don't worry if you don't understand a joke here or there... no-one understands everything but everyone understands everything that is important and that is what is most important of all!

So... what are the top and most bestest brilliantest things about having a supersonic one and only 3yr old boy?

Also - Do you get hounded by the "Aaaaare you going to have another one soon???" question. I got asked this a zillion times a day about a year ago but my dd is heading towards 4 now and I notice this isn't being asked nearly as much anymore.

Everyone else... PLEASE don't think I am trying to be the supernanna of the dog world... Eccles gets LOTS of cuddles and strokes all the time. Infact I am hugging her as I type.... aaaaaaaaawwwww!!!!

I don't understand anything at all most of the time, personally speaking, but that doesn't stop me enjoying myself

Thank you all for the lovely welcome!

I don't actually get the question about having another one that often....but that's probably because I don't get out much!!!

Didn't originally set out to have just one, but its we have just kept on avoiding having another one and recently made it an official decision! It's lovely having just one, we get to sit and read the newspapers and drink coffee while he plays happily, plus he loves cafes, I sit and drink tea and eat cake and he plays with the toys I take everywhere, we usually get two whole hours in a cafe, in fact last week I had to drag him out of a cafe kicking and screaming after 2 hours!! Not sure I want the chaos that goes with multiple dc. Ok, just realised that sounds really really selfish !

I'm loving the random and unexplained priests!

Panda, we are doing the taking away of toys thing at the mo also. Seems to be alot more effective than time out/naughty step.

Hello AndO! Can I ask what your name means (unless, durr, it's your initials in which case don't blow your own cover). And, Panda, did I ever ask about your name? Are you a German Ice?

My name is StillCrazy and I am very old. The sole fruit of my womb is also quite old by tea room standards (although Amber's Fine Lad is considerably older). I spend a lot of time loafing in here.

The priests - who, mostly, are bishops - wandered in several tea rooms ago, when we occupied premises next to a cathedral. They sometimes fall in the ha-ha. Recently, though, Mary seems to have enrolled them in a poker school. Has anyone mentioned yet that Mellors is also an accomplished dancer? His tango has to be seen to be believed.

The naughty step never seemed to work well with us, either.

Hello AandO, it's lovely to see you here. I hope you stay with us.
I'm an overseas (Mexico, to be exact) MNer with 2 DC (2 years and 3 months). A very lucky mum, that's me. At least that's what I tell myself when they are both screaming for their lives.

I am extermely envious of your well behaved DS (my eldest can't sit still to eat his tea, never mind play happily in a cafe) and your access to cafes. There are no real nice ones here; none that make tea or nice coffe anyway. Ditto, pubs. The biggest thing I miss about the UK (as well as sausages, bacon, tea on demand, I could go on...

I find the tearoom fills my need for chat and friends in a cafe/pub like way.

But,,I meant to add, that it's the kind of pub/cafe chat with close friends, not superficial chitchat all the time..... (at least as long as we stay off the fizzy booze )

Another feature of the tea room is that we sometimes have musical interludes (we might have more, but I hesitate to inflict my lack of taste on folks). Anyway, this seems an appropriate tune for the 13th tea room.

Ooo, that takes me back to my days on the stage! I was in a version of that musical!
(amazing what I've got up to in the past...!)

Hello ... have been absent for too long. It's silly, but now that we're in a new tearoom I feel like I can reappear without having to go back and see what's happened recently. I will attempt not to put my foot in it.

After the dog whispering above, I don't suppose we have anyone equally versed in feline psychology? My kittens catlings have fallen out today, over who-knows-what and are driving me crazy. They won't just retreat to opposite ends of the house, they have to be in the same room GLARING at each other (honestly, I think one of them hasn't blinked for 20 minutes), occasionally approaching and either hissing (P) or glaring HARDER (S).

It is causing An Atmosphere in my living room and is most offputting.

stillcrazy my name was happened upon when incognito with another MN group while trying to escape prying eyes of a RL stalker (one of the others not me) so our whole group decided on some sharpish namechanging so we could all still chat happily and confuse/lose the stalker my name usually has Ei in it and our group is based on animals in a zoo so it just fits nicely oh, my RL name is Ei too so thats what i usually call myself obviously

Ello. I found you. Thank you for the BIG SIGN post Amber, very help full.

CAn;'t stop long, got cake to bake, cookies to make and colslaw to chop.... a ham in teh oven and can you tell I'm working up to feeding 4 times as many people as usual for the next 4 days.
I'm so glad I normally have only the 3 of us to cook for.

We appear to have bought a house.
NOT the one I went to look at on friday. another one, that we havn't set foot inside for about a year. Long story.

CMOT do you really go all over the world? How do you do that? Catitain what is it like living in Mexico? I'm going crazy stuck here! Good job in buying a house during low prices UniS, we unfortunately bought at the peak!

Right, no more faffing...have to paint the bathroom. Ceiling fell in then we had to have it reputup and now ceiling and bits of the wall need painting. I'll just go and make a cup of tea first....to take up to the bathroom with me you understand!

Fantastic UniS ! Tell us more about this house ?

DCMB - that is called cat chess. They move around staring at each other and defying the other to do anything. Currently cat1 is under the trampette, giving cat3 the evil eye. If DH was here, cat3 would have been told off for annoying cat1 - but she is actually the one who instigates a lot of the fighting

Congrats on the weightloss Panda - I have lost 4 kg so far, and am pleased with myself as I am not good at dieting

Oops sorry Stillcrazy, forgot to pass you a sherry...must keep up! Half a wall of the bathroom now painted and one cup of tea drank!

My name is my initial and ds initial.

Cat chess is a good description. Also a bit like that Blink episode of Dr Who. But not AS scary. Similar though - I stop paying attention, do something, look up, and there's a motionless cat in front of me, looking pissy.

Sorry, crossed posts before. Yes, I travel all over the place, and it can be anywhere. But mostly europe and the US these days. It all works out OK between me and DH, with the help of careful diary updating, plus an obliging babysitter when DH can't make it back from site meetings for nursery pickup.

Well done on the decorating. We have bathroom planner coming tomorrow to see what can be done as ours are dated and badly laid out

Hi to AO and all lurkers wondering if they should take teh plunge..

That boiler is sure throwing out some heat tonight. tis lovely and cozy in here, even while teh sleet is beating down on teh other side of teh glass.

not sure it's been such a feat of low price buying. seems like a huge amount of money to be oweing .... eek, slightly scared about it . Vendors had turned down our offer a year ago, we decided to wait and see what else came up. meanwhile vendors put the price UP....

So, having seen house B ( unexciting, but OK) over the weekend with a similar asking price, we phoned agent of house A and put in a low offer (again). had a call from agent today to say that vendor A had JUST found a house they wish to buy and were now willing to accept a bit more than our offer, were we interested.
Suffice to say over the course of the day we have negotiated and now appear to have had an offer accepted. Of course, I have to do all this negotiating as DH hated and avoids phone conversations.

speaking of which, I need to go phone SiL, check they are OK for tomorrow.

see you on teh other side.

So there will be more house related angst from Chez uni in teh coming weeks.

Perhaps Mellors could pop over this way when he's free and do me a nice back massage.