The Naked Crepe

[MrsSchadenfreude]

Psst, over here!

Hello! And what a nice name.

Hello everyone

Sorry to have been AWOL. Had a dreadful week with too much work, childcare ishoos, DD1 kicking off, DH not having enough work, my sister and I at loggerheads over sorting out my dad's ashes blah blah blah. All very boring and tedious. Everyone is out at the park, my favourite bit of Brahms is on the radio and I have 5 mins for a quick post.

First of all, welcome to all the new people. I loved how everyone said that they were one of the older crepes - ha ha ha, we can't all be! It is always lovely to meet new people and I do hope you will stick around so we can get to know you all. The crepes are a hugely wise, humorous and compassionate bunch of wimmin and my life is enriched greatly by having them in it. Do stay

BD - how are you feeling? Has cold abated? I hope you have had a restful weekend.

Welcome home, lovely Crem. Sorry you have come straight back into sorting mode. NU, when are you back?

Stropps - good on you for holding firm. Long may it continue to go well for DD. Thinking of you.

Rose - sorry you are feeling low. Coffee? Would love to see you.

Molly - hope yesterday went as well as possible. Looking forward to our lunch.

WAF - hope work is going swimmingly. Loved the jamming story. I still owe you £££ so hope I can get to see you to give it back in Oct.

Rudy - how is DS2 liking the new abode? And how is DS3 doing now? Thinking of you.

MrsS - hope your hols go well. Your celebratory lunch looks fab on FB.

Hello lovely everyone else - sorry to rush off but laptop is on 2%....

Quickly - I am meeting Molly for lunch on Fri 14th for BP and lunch. Anyone free most welcome though please let me know in advance as I will need to book a table in the pub.

Christmas do - am on it . Will sort tomorrow. Herbs, I know you are a tentative yes, what with it being your birthday, innit. I am sure once we book a space the numbers can go up and down by a bit.

Right, I hope to be back later. Love to you all.

Hello Cocoa - I'm delighted to say you've passed the interview and are permitted henceforth to call yourself a crepey.

Crem - Iceland sounds sooo fascinating. I can't believe you forgot to take a coat, though - what were you thinking?! I'm seriously debating asking for an Iceland/Northern Lights trip for my 50th in February. Sod a party - who wants one of those in mid winter? I'll wait for DH's.

Herbs - that's brilliant about being head hunted....sounds like an amazing opportunity if you can make it work with DS and, as others have said, you can always keep teaching up your sleeve.

Another fairly chilled weekend here. Yesterday I did drag DH around a nearby newly-opened heritage walk. I had intended to go to the opening day, but it was bucketing rain, so didn't bother. It was quite interesting to see bits of one's town previously hidden away, but they need to sort out the route marking, as we managed to get lost in the undergrowth twice.

DS is a lot better, although not 100%, and has gone off to see his GF.

DD1 off to a party. Quite a decorous affair but she is wearing a clingy black frock - essentially an elongated T-shirt - which has caused her father to sink his head in his hands if I looked like that in a clingy frock you'd never get me out of one.

Thank you for your lovely welcome to the CC (Crepey Club)

Well I never - Cointreau - thats not very far from where I grew up!

The DPs are still in the area...

Hello, Cocoa!

CV, we leave Phoenix on Tuesday morning and arrive in Newcastle Wednesday lunchtime: time for a brief sleep then the Toon are playing in the evening so we have to go to that (sez DH). We have had a lovely time: nice to see our American friends again in Santa Rosa, and we had a great time with our friends from Whitley Bay in Tahoe, but plenty of just 'us' time, too. I really could get used to the life in Arizona. What have I missed: the DC and the DGC, and my Braun electric toothbrush which doesn't work here.

Crem, your trip to Iceland sounds great - but no coat? Sorry that you have come home to problems with DDad and DM.

Mi, about DH and DD: they do get very protective (and, yes, I would never be out of the dress, too). Have you been sleeping any better? DH has a perfect remedy (according to him) for getting back to sleep in the middle of the night!

I think my only sleeping remedy is to get to the point where I am beside myself with exhaustion, unfortunately.

Apparently hot flushes can go on for fourteen (14, xiv) years

Crem (and cocoa) Iceland sounds wonderful - definitely on the list. My friend who is just back said it was really warm in museums etc so she ended up stripped to her vest, carrying her sweater and down coat!

Busy day here preparing for decorators tomorrow who are doing all the bedrooms, so a good opportunity for a clear out and organise.

Hope all the new uni students are settling in well and their parents aren't too bereft. Be glad you've raised such lovely independent people.

Oh yes MI hot flushes can indeed continue way past the menopause. I have one at about 10 o'clock every night!

Welcome Cocoa, Bluebell and all! Hope you all stick around!

I am only in the office on Monday and Tuesday and already worrying about how I am going to get everything done. Will go in early tomorrow and see if I can shift some of the shit, and delegate the rest! Aargh. Why is that when people realise you're going on leave they suddenly wake up and decide you need to do x, y and z before you go?

I am groaning from lunch. Even DD2 ate everything that was put in front of her and made some mildly adventurous choices.

MI 14 Years!!!! Thanks for that!!

Dd says "staying in with eco books. The course is so interesting, I love it." And she has a meeting on Wed about a possible internship with a bank. And she's feeling better, although still flu-ish.
Doin' ma happy dance. (even though it could all go wrong by tomorrow)

MrsS, so glad you all had a good time today.

Crem, sounds like you had a very otherworldly time. And Iceland is clearly currently the stylish person's destination of choice!

I still have a hot water bottle every night, Al year round. I have the circulation of a nearly dead person. No hot flush has yet kept me warm enough for long enough to ditch the hot water bottle.

AI??? all

Welcome newbies

Wow Stropps! Doing a happy dance for you too!

Have been pottering today - garden and roast, but not much else. Now ready for bed
DS is finally back to school tomorrow after 10 weeks

AI Stropps.

I did have a coat , You loons! Just it wasn't the ski style/Squall jacket I would have needed. The temps were indeed pleasant in the city, for a day, when the sun was out Bluebell, ( approaching 16 degrees) but up on the higher ground with the wind coming down from Greenland, and it was bitter. Even the Icelanders said the weather had changed very suddenly, and were heading en masse for the public swimming pools ( outdoors, but geothermally heated and steamy) to warm up. it's bonkers, as it seems to be the thing to do en famille. The adults sit round the hot pot chatting and the kids tear about the main pool on the slides. This, at 10pm after dinner. We had a very suburban b&b, which was cool. Such lovely cafes to hang out in. Rent a car or acquire a dishy guide ( friend of a friend of a friend) to drive you about and tell you fascinating facts and buy you lunch, and do eye flirting in the rear view mirror.
Ahem.
Welcome To The Crêperie!

I have wrestled a chunk of narrative into shape and it's time for Poldark.

Hi newbies.

Crem - Iceland sounds brill, especially with dishy guide. Love the description of the Blue Lagoon hair.

MI - not happy about the 14 years of flushes either - I'm already sleeping naked - something I've never really done as I really feel the cold (although not quite as much as Stropps).

Stropps - brill news on DD - maybe she's more capable than you think and she's going to really surprise you.

I video talked to DD2 who seems quite happy - apparently the girls in her house are really nice and out of the 6 boys only two are really creepy!

Have caught a rotten cold plus stiff limbs from gym yesterday - feel like an old lady.

Our best friends are leaving for London for a year - everybody's heading for Blighty.

Ah, my perennial frustration with dd is that she has the potential to be extremely capable, but when she is here, she chooses not to be capable. Which is why it is imperative that she stays somewhere she has to make more sensible choices. Even if the situation is sometimes tough for her and she has to face her anxiety rather than running away from it.

Iceland sounds fab

But it's so encouraging for you, Stropps, re DD. And so good that she seems to be enjoying it.

My menopause wasn't too bad; I wonder if it makes a difference what age you finish? I was 57ish when AF called for the last time, and my feeling rubbish was hypothyroidism, so I was only on HRT for about 18 months. I am not saying that I don't get hot overnight, because I do, but it's all cope-able with and always has been.

Sat watching family dynamics around the pool: one woman was here with her two DC for about an hour and a half and didn't interact with them at all. She spent the whole time on her phone and the kids, maybe 6 and 8 caused chaos in the jacuzzi (under 14s not allowed unsupervised). Then another family arrived and there was mum in the pool, helping and encouraging the 5 yo. Then there was the woman yesterday who insisted her quite dark skinned teenager was slathered in sun cream, but the blonde haired boy with them was ignored. I mean, even if he didn't belong to you, you would make sure he was protected, wouldn't you? Nowt so queer as folk.

Good news about DD, Strops. And if it's any consolation, I also used to have the circulation of a dead person (including dead white fingers every time I touched something cold), and never went to bed without bedsocks and a hotty, but since the menopause - I'm back at an ambient temperature! I can't even blame it on the hot flushes, because I never had any.

Small world, Cocoa!

NU - snap. DH and I couldn't charge our toothbrushes at all in California, and had to dash to Walmart to buy manual ones. Which I had pretty much forgotten how to use.

Meanwhile, we are having Domestic Appliance Issues. Last year's electrical fault in our ("reliable, German-engineered" ) Bosch dishwasher has reoccurred, so it trips the RCD half way through a cycle. That's it - third time's a charm - it's going to the tip. However, on this occasion when we switched the power back on, our freezer decided to come out in solidarity, and stayed off. We watched the digital temperature moving steadily up to zero, and upwards; we were just about to start unloading stuff to take to next door's freezer....when there was a groan, a shudder, and a ghastly rattling noise, and it burst back into life. Phew. For now.....

Hello all. For those of you who have contributed so far and/or are interested here's an update on the grad employment research currently being carried out in the Wobble house. Dd1 (3rd year uni but had gap year) met up with friends from school and apart from the two trainee actuaries (both Cambridge maths so not at all representative of a wider grad population I think) none of them had secured a job they wanted. The only other with confirmed employment is still to complete their final year and only has the job as a result of an internship that they didn't want to do in the first place. The others are either still working out want they want to do - and applying to civil service and accountancy while they do this - or trying to pursue an interest that has all the elements of a job (taking up all your time doing what someone else tells you) other than an income you can survive on. This is so different from my grad experience centuries ago when we all got jobs in the milk round. I've tried to work out why this difference in behaviour - we spend hours of angst trying to understand the 'millennials' at work and this is another facet I think. I have come up with two main causal factors so far. 1 - they all went to an expensive school so presumably have plenty of parental bankrolling so no immediate cash flow pressure to get a job; and 2 - the cost of housing is so high in London that the prospect of moving out and being independent is a pipe dream. I know this was a major driver for me and most of my friends.

What I'm not sure about is whether I should be pleased that they can be choosy and tell them to take as long as they like - there will always be a home for them with me, or whether I should be encouraging a desire for independence by becoming a mega grumpy landlady when they graduate next summer. I have a few months to decide.

Am currently in a hotel off the A1 en route to delivering dd1 back to uni. We stopped off on the way to attend my dad's 81st birthday party - a lovely day with all my siblings and most of their offspring. And most importantly it was exactly what dad wanted. Everyone was on good form so an enjoyable day all round.

Sorry to those of you with less settled families - hope it gets better, there does seem to be real improvement for many of you.

Oh and welcome to the newbies. I take great pride in no longer being the New Girl and am thinking of pinching dd3s 'Helping the new girls settle in' monitor badge.

Crem, Iceland sounds splendiferous. We loved the slides in the pools and did the Blue Lagoon on the way to the airport so the plane was full of Crap Hair . Sounds like you saw and did masses. I know what you mean about the sense. Did you do the glacier walk? Hope dps settle.

Stropps, blimey were you tempted to ask if she had been taken by aliens ? That is excellent news, good on her - change is not easy but what grit your girl has, amongst everything else.

Rudy and Molly and anyone else who deposited a fresher this weekend, hope you feeling OK (sorry, I still have half a internet). I am going to see dd next weekend.

Nice chilled weekend here. ds overdid it last night and so mooncup uni discussions didn't get that far BUT he is enjoying his studies atm so that's the main thing I reckon.