Weekending

We appear to have suddenly developed a social life again lately which is nice, I’ve felt a bit sad, old and married this year! 😉

Yesterday morning I worked. I quite like Saturday mornings, as I work with two of my favourite colleagues and the two Saturday assistants. One, James, is really funny and nice to work with. The main topic of conversation at work was Emilie’s funeral and we all said we’d been very glad we’d gone.

I made a start on the Christmas display in the junior library – a 3D Christmas tree with a 3D star on top. I’m planning some 3D presents to go round the bottom, some decorations to go it and maybe some snowflakes to go round it. I’ll take some photos when it’s finished.

Back at home Ady and the children had spent some time in the garden. The four chicks have been having some daytime outside time as they are now almost fully feathered and we’re keen to get them aclimatised so they can go outside sooner rather than later, not least because they need daily cleaning out or they get smelly kept indoors. Davies spent some time with the cockerel who although a bit noisy is very tame and friendly. Ady had been chopping some firewood and come across some enormous larvae eating at the wood

They came in and googled and discovered they were stag beetle larvae, learnt all about them (as reported to me when I got home) and then went back out and discovered a couple of stag beetles out there too

Ady and Davies carried on outside chopping wood and rearranging the chickens area, Scarlett spent ages playing Viva Pinata on her DS and I threaded up my pegloom and made a start on a present ragrug. Then Scarlett went outside for a bit while Davies came in and played on the DS so I put some music on for us to listen to and we had a very nice couple of hours doing our own things and singing along to The Beatles, The Carpenters and Nina Simone. Scarlett and Ady came back in and Scarlett did some ragrugging too, she’s getting pretty good at it.

Ady and I then got ready, my parents arrived and we headed off for our evening out. Mike and Rose are a couple I met at Reading Group when I started going nearly 3 years ago. They are both around 50 and both have sons in their 20s (this is a second marriage for them both, they’ve been together for about 5 or 6 years). They extended a dinner invitation to us a couple of months ago but either they or us have been busy every weekend since. Ady was really nervous having not met them before and convinved himself they were either from a weird religious sect or swingers and either way were out to recruit us! 😆

We walked to their house, which isn’t far but is at the top of a steep hill. This means they have a fab view, almost directly north of our house but up into the downs and with a panoramic view from Brighton to Worthing. It also means I was wheezing and panting by the time we arrived – very attractive! 😉 Another couple joined us shortly after we arrived and we did meeting new people small talk and all got stuck into the wine. Liz, the other woman and I both felt we’d met before and that we each looked very familiar but we never did work out why or where from. They were not any sort of mad religious types although Mike’s son is a Jehovahs Witness he promised that he didn’t even try to convert Mike himself, let alone expect him to be recruiting on his behalf! 😆

Conversation was easy, we touched on Home Education but fairly briefly, which was a relief – I so didn’t want to spent the whole evening justifying what we do. We talked lots about how we’d all met resepective partners and as the wine flowed more we got sillier and laughed more. All very grown up and enjoyable :). The only downside was the food. Mike is a real Deliah devotee, which in my experience makes for slightly bland cooking by numbers food at the best of times, even worse he is a vegetarian! I’d already prepared myself for having to eat things I don’t like as when Rose asked if there was anything I didn’t eat I could hardly give the truthful reply of ‘yes, vegetables!’. I knew I was safe on the mushroom front as I’d mentioned that and just expected lots of vegetables to try and face. But no it was worse, far, far, far, far, FAR WORSE!

The main course was okay – stuffed aubergines with mozzarella and breadcrumb crust served with cherry tomtoes. Dinner party (ie tiny) portions meant it was only a few mouthfuls and was quite tasty. But the main course was (wait for it) wild rice with warm LENTIL salad. Yep, lentils. There was rocket, goats cheese and walnuts to disguise some of the taste and texture but short of being incredibly rude there was no way of not eating the lentils really. It was probably only a couple of tablespoons so I swigged a large mouthful of wine with every forkful and focussed on the cheese and walnuts all the while pretending they were not lentils at all and singing Rick Astley to myself 😆 Ady said he was very proud of me for how brave I was and that he’d been trying to work out if he could cause enough of a distraction to scrape them off my plate and onto his 😆 But I did it, I ate lentils. I do feel dirty and ashamed and I can now say with utter honesty that I don’t like them. I shall be eating copious amounts of animal produce all of next week to try and make amends to my inner carnivore ;).

After the other couple had gone home Rose made us go and admire her garden and the bedsit she had converted for her son when he still lived at home and I confided Ady’s fear to her to try and persuade her to wind him up. She had a go at suggested he call round on Tuesday with some poinsettias he’d promised to get for her ‘because Mike won’t be around then’ but we couldn’t keep it up and started laughing straight away. Shame though, it would have been very funny to wind him up for a while 😆

We could easily have stayed for longer but were aware of my parents back at home and how late back we were last time they babysat we left about 1230am to get back before 1am. The walk home was a lot easier by virtue of being all downhill :). My parents were in a chatty mood so we all had a drink and did some planning for our upcomming day trip to France in a couple of weeks which we’re all looking forward to. I think they left and we got to bed around 3am.

This morning was understandably slow and lazy. Ady got up and fed the kids and then came back to bed again bringing me tea. We finally got up about 1030am in the end. I was keen to go to the allotment having not been this week so we eventually headed up there for a couple of hours before coming home via Tescos. I had a long bath which the children got in after me and then we all watched Fly Away Home which was on tv. I was amazed at home many lines from it Davies remembered, we’ve only watched it once before, earlier this year and I was hazy on the plot line but he was quoting lines before they were being said and getting them spot on.

Ady cooked a lovely roast dinner, we watched yesterdays X factor and then gradually everyone else has gone to bed. And for once I think I might be there myself before midnight too.