The Bluestocking: To the moon and back gerbil style.

[Boiledbeetle]

Previous thread of chat and general madness below

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5506124-the-bluestocking-womens-pub-spring-is-sprunging-and-mns-name-generator-can-do-one

Women: from an orderly queue at the bar or take a seat and grab a passing gerbil.

Men: turn left at the end of the road, keep walking until you find the Staunch Ally.

Bar gerbil a full fat coke please and a packet of Scampi Fries please.

I became a bit of a hermit during lockdown and I think I'm only emerging now.

The last week has been very busy,

• Train trip into big town to look at sofas and have lovely lunch, which also involved lots of walking
• Car trip into retail park in big town to buy a sofa
• Walking trip into our town for breakfast, then dinner by the river
• Walking trip into our town for afternoon tea then pub crawl to the local by the river
• Resulted in 23000 steps this week.

My feet are sore so I'm resting today.
Going into big town by train on Tuesday for a volunteer thing I do. So gradually I'm going out more.

Sorry, Dougal. For all those wondering wtf Douglas is. That was autocorrupt but I should have proof read better.

I wrote a poem about pockets for UTDOD vol.2. It wasn't very good. I'm no poet. I wish I'd known about women's pockets with regard to seditious leaflets. I'd have plagiarised the fuck out of it*.

*I wouldn't have, but it would have given me a direction to go that would have given my silly poem an edge. It would still have been rubbish but it would have been saying something.

I once helped a uni friend make Hamantaschen.
Oh my word. Delicious.

I’d never heard of Easter Triduum, although I had observed the stripping of the altar in preparation.

I’m Methodist, previously Anglican. The flavour of Anglicanism depended on the chaplain at the time. There were never services in my chapel* around Easter, though, because it was outside university terms, leaving an important gap in my knowledge.

*There are other chapels. Worth an extra visit just to hear the Allegri Miserere, my favourite ever piece of music which the famous chapel is not singing this year.
Classic FM plays it often.

We were fortunate during lockdown: lively household, garden, access to rural walks, not too far from shops for basics.

It messed up some of the DC at school, though.

A friend of ours died quite suddenly during one of the lockdowns. The funeral was horrible - very limited numbers, socially distanced, and no proper wake.

They are lush, aren't they? It's a peculiar quirk of my upbringing that I got to have a lot of different cultures' celebrations and I embrace the food part of them all.

During lockdown i found a lump on my tongue. I tried to remove it myself but it grew back with a week.
I managed to get an appointment to have it removed at my nearest hospital, 1.5hrs drive away. I had to go on my own, drive myself, have the surgery and drive myself 1.5hrs home again. Fortunately for me, the maxfax surgeon was flipping brilliant, and it turned out all was well.
I couldn't face the return trip later and took my own stitches out.

Since covid, my agoraphobia has worsened.

That sounds horrifying, and puts my own self-suturing with superglue after carelessly putting my finger into the blades of the stick blender pale into insignificance.

Anything except go near a hospital in those first weeks.

I'm glad you were treated well when you did go in.

I understand about the agoraphobia - I don't have it, but am very slow to go any distance from home these days.

Perhaps you don't see it that way but to me that reads as badass. Awful that that was the situation that faced you, undeniably traumatising but also pragmatic and courageous. I'm glad you got a good surgeon.

We had a family trip to a wildlife park today & saw some capybaras. I don’t know if they’re related to the Bluey capybaras though.

It was seriously badass.

Agreed, proper badass.

That one does seem to be destruction testing the trough. No hi-vis but I think I can just see the end of what could be a pencil behind its ear.

They were heftier than I expected.

I encountered a lot of different cultural influences on my plate as a child, and hoovered them all up.

And @FuzzyPuffling very badass.

Unfortunately yes.

BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING BING
...

Gubbins says thanks and please remain in your seat for the encore.

Bless you lovely Bluestockingers...I shall reframe my experience as badass. You really have made me smile! 😀

I'm about to use MB's recipe for Easter biscuits. I hope it works better than this sponge (the guy said he got the measurements wrong!).

As ever...

While I yearn to be as badass as our very own 'Deceptively' Fuzzy Puffling, I did undergo an endometrial cancer op during lockdown - not during the strictest bit, obviously, but I had to go in alone, so I had to be terribly, terribly brave. 😥What with all the scans & the radiotherapy as well, it was a bit pants (& often no pants).

DH, for some unfathomable reason, had to go into work as apparently the country couldn't survive without him. He said all the roads were empty & his normal commute took exactly the same time every day (unheard of normally).

Foodwise we were OK apart from a shortage of cat food early on which was worrying as the boy is fanatical about his food & he would've been eyeing us up after one missed meal. I ordered stuff in from all kinds of odd places & we all three survived.

I remember being desperate for life to get back to normal & the depressed feeling that followed every extension of lockdown.

There's still 3/4 hours of her triangle solo left. I hope you've been wearing your ear defenders throughout.

I had to tap out after the first fifteen minutes, it was painful. That gerbil whilst enthusiastic in her triangle banging is rather out of tune today.

And her sense of rhythm is appalling.

Totally.

Meanwhile Maud is being fed her own body weight in hot cross buns over at K&Ps house.

Lockdown saved us a fortune as fella was able to wfh instead of having to do his long commute. He was burning through petrol (and cars) previously. It was probably bad for me because I'm very happy with my own company and didn't socialise as much as I used to. I'm still more anti-social. My tatty car died from lack of use, which didn't help. We got more disciplined about grocery shopping. Going once a weak, or less. Instead of whenever we decided what we were cooking for tea. I did discover MN. Which, on balance, I think is a plus. I think without somewhere to vent about GI I would have turned quite strange.

Fella is watching a documentary about Thin Lizzy. Which reminded me of the call and response

Tonight there's going to be a jail break. Somewhere in this town. 🎶

Audience: It'll be at the jail, Phil!