The Bluestocking Boxing Day sale: 1 gerbil for the price of 2

[Boiledbeetle]

Previous thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5457910-the-bluestocking-next-stop-christmas

As the patrons, and gerbils, of The Bluestocking Pub sleep off their Christmas Day food and alcohol intake the capybaras will be getting paid double time to move the pub and contents to the new thread overnight.

All welcome, as long as you are a woman. The men have their own pub The Staunch Ally. It's just down the road, then turn left at the bridge.

You don't have to be mad to drink here but it most definitely helps.

Leave the real world behind and join us in the mayhem and surreal life of a pub staffed by gerbils. Where the food is always exactly what you ordered and the drinks don't give you a hangover the next day!

Fair point. I caught Gladys turning all the toothpicks the right way round in the tub earlier so that the green minty end of each one was facing up. It took her hours.

Does the Bluestocking have gerbils called Gerolama or Girolama and Geronima?

Been reading about the goings-on amongst Renaissance Italians.

We have Germoleen and Gangrene, I'm sure we must have some named after Renaissance Italians!

I'm fairly sure Geronima is in charge of putting the candles in the mateus wine bottles on pizza Thursdays.

I’m behind the thread, as usual, but I used to have some isometric graph paper, the triangle stuff. I can’t remember why: it was probably a topic that appeared on a school Maths syllabus at one time but was quickly and quietly dropped.

You can print isometric graph paper from the internet now. There are places where it’s free to download.

One of my cats does this too. Sometimes she manages to do it while I'm asleep, and I wake up to find a snuggly furry cat next to me.
She never does it to DH. I am the Chosen One.

It's been very welcome the past two nights. God knows how she breathes under the duvet though! I do feel very special!

If you're up for a pricier but long-term solution, you need what we had on a former front door. I didn't describe it well upthread.

On wall or doorframe on hinge side of door, a swivel bracket. The pole went into this, and was attached to a standard bracket on the other side of the door. The door curtain was hefty, so the top stuck up over the top of the door and baffled those draughts, and was full enough to come out at the sides and baffle those.

You could close the door behind you, and the curtain with it.

What about a towel rail? You could screw it into the top of the door frame and thread the curtain onto the rail. If the material isn't too bulky it should slide over to the hinge side so the door can still be opened.

If you want to be a bit extra use velcro or (even better) magnets to seal the curtain material to the sides of the door.

A dachshund is a splendid bed warmer, though mine had to go to their own bed to sleep. The breathing under the covers is a mystery. Once my last old boy was nowhere to be found in the house… until I noticed a lump at the end of my bed. Not on it, right at the end. He’d burrowed down to the end, rolled off into the evidently very well tucked in bottom and was stuck as if in a hammock. When I liberated him he plopped out none the worse; I’d been fearing he’d have suffocated.

Rosy has done that in the past. So far she's been okay with her brother and their hot-water bottle, but a snuggle would be nice. She may be feeling a bit distant since I had WORDS with her earlier about how very very wrong it was it for a cat to remove straw stars, glass baubles, and felt decorations (including Slothy) from the Christmas tree.

I do like that idea @EdithStourton and I’ve found one that is heavy and a reasonable price. Someone else suggested a swing arm, which looks the same sort of thing.

My caution is that it will be a bigger job and I’ll have to get a man in. Then I’ll have to buy a heavy curtain worthy of the beautiful swing arm. I imagine I won’t be able to get one the correct length because of some quirk in the layout that means the man has to place it very high (such as there being little space to the left of the frame). But I do like it and it feels more me.

I’ve also just found a thermal door curtain (although I’d say it was more of a panel) that is padded at the back, out of sight. It has small holes for picture hooks. I could hang this myself and it would be snug to the frame. It could be fiddly to undo a hook to open the door, but doable. Sadly, it doesn’t have a hem to thread a wire through.

So, I’m weighing up immediacy and ease (and snugness) against elegance, permanence (and maybe a gap). But I like having things to work out.

The hound sleeps with me and sleeps closer to me in winter. I’ve come to bed to chill, with my electric blanket on, and he’s settled between my knees.

I have lined most of the curtains in my house by buying stuff called "Bump interlining" ( yes really) and tacking it between existing curtains and their thin, ineffective linings.

It's good thick stuff.

The gerbils dismayed at the lack of snow at the Bluestocking placed an order with Mother Nature Limited. The capybaras have just delivered their order.

Looks like we are going to be snowed in by the morning.

Woo hoo!

Oh look at those happy little snowballing gerbils!

I feel ganged up on. I only nipped out for a quick fag.

I've just found @Hedgehogforshort gaming channel.

https://x.com/i/status/2007815198120562984

have been lying under a blanket on a poof by the fire for several days, feeling ill.

made me sad seeing myself all fit and healthy chomping on my veggie burger 😂

Poor Hedgey! Hope you feel better soon, full of vim and vigour and veggie burgers😄

Grapes for the patient.

I'd watch out for Gandolfina at the back, she's sooooo thinking of sticking grapes on your spikes, Hedgey!

I heared most of the chatter and you all made me laugh. I was worried about the flexi tubs full of water as that is a drown risk for me and me mates but couldn't lift my head up.

Gerbils can i have some grapes that have been fermented and are in a bottle please xx

I put wire mesh over my flexitubs to keep leaves and Hedgey's cousins from falling into the water😇
edited to add🍷🍷🍷

As i lay there i was thinking… well about thinking, and i listened to one of my fave humans, Julie Bindel, podcasts, about the Canadian Vancouver women’s collectives.

I realised i never intellectualised my work with women and developing women's services and how they functioned, or how i interacted outside the agencies i lead.

I had nothing to do with academia.

I rejected “thinking” feminism and just got in to active feminism without “thinking” about it at all.

And for all the years i trudged along, fighting the good fight for individual women and for better funding services etc, the one thing that got lost before i entered the scene was the “collective” the conscience raising.

I also realise now that being universally hated by the outside world was my badge of honour.

And that it was is missing in our services, that have become the victim of “professionalisation” is the collective.

I did my best in the circumstances, moved service users in to activity, volunteering training and all of my staff were internally recruited.

so i was not that far away.

late night rambling…..

I just love those women in vancouver