La Creperie - Home of the Hags!

[QueenLush]

Are you all nursing hangovers or just clearing up the post Christmas mess?

Well, I have had my hair done, Hags. I've had it highlighted and hacked into a choppy bob. It's a bit shorter than I intended, but am Jilly Cooper no more.

Had a pleasant afternoon pottering round the Petit Palais. We wanted to see something in the Grand Palais but the queue was too long, so we went for the freebie option in the Petit Palais. Lovely paintings, icons and glass, well worth it.

ruby, thanks for the recipe - might give it a whirl, and the flatbreads! Also commiserations on the competition fron - we have the joys of DD's gymnastics comp for 4 hours this afternoon (plus nipping out to take DS to his match, thankfully round the corner). She is looking forward to it even less than usual as they present medals in reverse order and she has just moved up a ranking - not good if you are called up first out of 12+ girls!
However, she is being particularly nice to us atm as DH has said he will not pay the deposit for her school trip unless she bucks up

MrsS, your hair sounds great - just trying to visualise it. Your life always sounds so glam in Paris - Kennington's not quite the same, is it

Oh I don't know, BTM. Paris, 10 minutes walk from Champs Elysees. Kennington, 10 minutes walk from Elephant and Castle... I do actually look forward to the day when I can live in my own home and not have to put up with beige carpets, cream walls and curtains...

And the Elephant is being regenerated, you know

Beige carpets, cream walls and curtains sounds very glam too..... Ours just have greasy hand marks all over them!

Fab video MrsS, do they really look so different?
Family dinner with parents and brothers yesterday (mum and sil's birthdays - scarf year for my mother as my dad had bought her one and so did I). Lovely meal - monkfish .... Mummmmm...
Ds has done homework (well, what he remembered to bring home and has plonked through Coldplay).
CV are those skinny jeans really skinny on the calves? (I have big calves - always have had)
Ds and are going to cook later - did carluccio number last weekend (and I have ordered another cookery book - sush, don't tell dp :) )

MrsS, many congrats to your dds for having produced such an excellent trailer. Dd and friend watched last night and were v. v. impressed too.

I had a very looooong day yesterday and have a stinking cold. Ds's party went v. well despite rather complicated arrangements, but the first guest arrived at 9.15am and I got back from taking the last one home at 3.45pm. Then dd phoned and asked if friend could come for sleepover. Cue dash to Tesco for pizza, frantic hoovering and clearing space on floor in dd's room for bed. dd: "but I have tidied up alot. You can even see the floor in some places".

Anyway, at least I got to watch Borgen, but I had to forgo the big glass of I had surely earnt, because I felt too crap. I am just hoping this is not that bastard 3-week cold that is going round as I have already had it for a week and just keeps getting worse.

On a brighter note, the new neck cream makes my neck feel better even if it doesn't make it look any different.

Am now going to drag myself off for a dog-walk/take dd's friend home. And then scoff loads of roast potatoes.

Blackduck - they look nothing alike! To the extent that teachers haven't realised they are sisters. They also have very different personalities - DD1 is quite shy and nerdy - always reading, sewing, knitting or playing her cello, and DD2 is the life and soul of the party, with a very dry sense of humour. We wondered if we had a third whether he/she would have been a redhead as we have one dark and one blonde!

Hello lovely friends. I am in a Bad Patch at the moment. V low. For lots of reasons to do mainly with being knackered and feeling I have Wasted My Life. I think I shall go back to bed again with a gory novel

Having said that, I am madly tempted by these

Oh MI - sorry you're feeling low. You have not wasted your life at all, but I know it's all very well my saying that, it's not the same as feeling it yourself. FWIW, I think you're doing great things - working an interesting job, raising 2 lovely girls, negotiating a much more equal partnership with Mr I than most of us manage. But Jan/Feb are pants and I'm sure seasonal affective wosname is far more than just a vitamin issue - it's a cultural thing too and has the effect of maximising woes.

I'm feeling a bit deja vu here this weekend (and I didn't like the vu much first and second time round) as we have spent the whole weekend tidying in hopes of selling the house, again. Washing finger marks off the wall, cleaning the stupid, stupid kitchen floor that shows every speck. It's pretty life-sapping and I feel like I am missing out on happy family time which I should grab while kids are still young enough to want to spend time with me. So that's my crisis - guilt / regret - plus a desire to change everything massively and get off the treadmill. But then I imagine life on a desert isle with just dh and dcs for company and hyperventilate with fear.

Right, off the clear floor of ds2's room - started sorting in there with great gusto yesterday but slowly lost the will to live under a pile of teeny Playmobil helmets.

And you should definitely get the gold shoes, I believe they cure all illls.

Aww MI - I had a bad day yesterday, made worse by my whole family telling me that I was being grumpy. Thankfully I woke up in a slightly better mood today - hopefully bed and a gory novel will do the trick for you!

And wilbur, I don't envy you the cleaning. Yuk!

Happy Family Time. Isn't that something that you only see on the Waltons? Mind you, DD has had a happy hour - coming 4th out of 8 in the gym comp (ahead of her friend who has been at that ranking for longer) and then stuffing our faces at the local Indian Sunday Buffet, so that = HFT. hHe is, of course, now in a slump, but has revision to do! End of HFT

MI like wilbur I look at you in awe. But she's right when you feel like that it is hard to get out of it. I have been in that place and it isnt pleasant. But life isn't over yet (or so i keep telling myself!)
Come rant on here if it helps.
Not sure about the gold shoes thou'
So MrsS I am guessing dd2 is more you?

MI - what Wilbur says - just exactly that.

Thank you

I think the gold shoes are FAB! definitely buy them, they couldn't but make a person happy. Why don't they make a silver version? Why?

Effin' ell. I'm back home, and I'm emotionally wrung out. My mum came out of hospital a mere day after her op, with a supply of liquid morphine, and was very chipper.

My dad veered between being perfectly normal, like the dad I knew, and being maudlin, or aggressive, or totally forgetful, and even at one point started to cry about how worried he'd been about mum. Then half an hour later was snapping at her again. It turns out that as well as not being able to hear much of what's going on, he's now got a bad cataract in his one remaining good eye so can't read books any more. He won't have it operated on as he's scared if it goes wrong he'll be totally blind.

Juggling this and Sam's requirements - he won't pay attention to anything for more than a nano-second - has been farking exhausting. Then, as soon as I got Sam to bed, DP wanted a bunk-up. I felt I should, but just burst into tears on him. I want to be ON MY FUCKING OWN.

And... breathe.

Mrs S - how do we view your daughters? Am I being a techno-tard?

Herbs, please do reassure your dad that cataract ops are REALLY REALLY safe for a huge percentage of the time (the post-infection rates - which were one of the big risks - have gone down dramatically, because these days the surgeons put a bit of antibiotic at the back of the eye during the op). My dad didn't half carry on about his cataract op (a great aunt lost an eye but this was back in the 1980s) and he is absolutely fine.

I am so sorry about all this piling in on you.

It may amuse and/or distract you to know that DD2 managed to do something to the computer today which wiped a whole new log-on DP had established for me, and I lost two weeks' rather productive work on my Great Book. DP found it on the backup...

BUT NOW IT TURNS OUT SOMEONE - AND I POINT NO FINGERS, OBVIOUSLY BUT MR INFERIOR PUT THE WASHING ON - HAS SHRUNK MY LOVELY WHITE COMPANY WOOL DRESS. It is too small for DD2 now. I am actually quite upset about this as I was very, very fond of that garment and it was a work staple.

Herbs anything we can do, asides from being a cyber shoulder. MI buy the shoes if they make you feel better/different/happy...
Bugger, life is too short...

MI, yesyes to what Wilbur said.
(And sorry to hear about your teeny tiny dress)

Herbs, I hope you are giving yourself sackloads of TLC. You deserve extra care after those few days.

I have seen those gold shoes in the flesh and They Are Good. Sorry about frock MI.

Wilbur what you said was VG and very thought provoking. 'Equal partnership'... so important. . Have no model for this as parents split up when I was 7. Do slightly shudder at thought DH might think his parents' set up will work for us. Although they do make meals together in the evening I think the rest of the time he expects to be waited on and isn't particularly grateful. God knows what it's like when we're not there

Sorry to hear about your lovely dress MI. It is usually me who shrinks my best woolies - at least you can blame it on someone else!

Just had WW1 with DS at teatime, and now WW2 with DD who couldn't find her revision - where was it? In her school bad, found by me

We don't have an equal partnership. I do ALL the cooking, shopping and cleaning....foot needs to be put down I think.

I shrunk a jumper the other day, but FFS it cost 30quid and was DRY CLEAN - I didn't expect such a cheap jumper to be dry clean.
MI hope you feel better today, and Herbs hope you found some space...
I am going to bed with a cookery book.

Hmmm, no, MI, the gold shoes don't do it for me, not with my massive feet, I think I'd look like Krusty the Clown. Although they might be useful for kicking Mr Inferior on account of his laundry shortcomings. I can safely say that wouldn't happen in this house, as DH is only vaguely aware of the task performed by that big white box in the utility room, and certainly wouldn't be able to operate it without direct supervision.

Sorry to hear some of you are feeling a little down at the moment. Look after yourselves, Herbs and MI, and get plenty of sleep - I find it the best way to turn one's thoughts positive.

I'm a bit pooped myself today; got home from the school run and fell asleep on the sofa for two hours. DH left at 4am this morning for Geneva, but is due back any minute, so I'd better mobilise some dinner.