Thursday Early up for one and all as D&S were off to work with Ady for the day. Once they’d all gone I spent some time researching roof bars on the internet and looking into hiring them. Turns out that’s not cost effective :(.
I had a good day at work. I talked to my boss about career breaks and West Sussex County Council does offer career breaks between 3 and 12 months, unpaid but with guaranteed return to work, no loss of benefits or break in service. For employees with 5 years plus service. I will be four years in December :(. She did say it was worth talking to the head librarian to see if they would be prepared to extend that deal to me though particularly as all vacancies are currently being filled with 12 months contracts only anyway. I will talk to her next time I see her. It would certainly not be make or break and I strongly suspect that the last thing I’d want to do is return to 11 hours a week at the library but it would make sense to have it as a back up option and be risking even less with a year out.
Other than that it was a normal day really, perfectly enjoyable but with a feeling of biding time.
Ady and the kids beat me home having had a good day. D&S do have to spent a fair whack of time sitting in the car while Ady nips into shops when they go out with him for the day but they have DSs and get to have lunch out so it’s not all bad.
Ady and I chatted in the garden for a while before Scarlett and I headed up to the allotment for some watering. We had a water fight with the hose pipe which left us both soaked but was very funny, Tarly harvested some peas and we both gathered loads of elderflowers from the tree at the end of out plot – some with me lifting Tarly up while she held loppers to get to high up flowers. Health and Safety is certainly not my forte even if it is Ady’s ;). We got quite a few heads from there and then had a walk up and down the lane leading to the allotments to get more so came home with quite a bagful.
A quick stop at CoOp and then home. It was getting late and an early morning start meant they were both asleep fairly early (for them) so no penguin suits here.
Friday Was far more back to form with the kids and I scrambling out of bed at the last possible moment, shovelling down breakfast, frantically packing lunch and heading out of the door still yelling at each other. We were late but it didn’t seem to matter too much :).
It was the last of the four sessions of Bookclub Crafts for the library display and today was papier mache moon surface with crater making. It was at Mel’s house which is rather like our own garden with plenty of veg growing, chickens and ducks along with added dog and rabbits. I enjoyed catching up with friends and chatting, Scarlett enjoyed the same with added papier mache-ing and once Davies had gotten over himself and his rather annoying shunning of friends asking him to play in favour of hanging round me he did the same too. I had a chat with him on the way home about it. I think he is struggling with Scarlett finding her feet with that group and not needing him and him being slightly lost as an indivdual rather than half of a pair, which is understandable and if he was being ignored then I would understand his quietness but he is being actively asked to play by really nice, same age as him kids he knows and likes and rejecting them. I suspect they have a finite number of asks before they get pissed off and stop bothering and I think he now understands that too.
We left there and headed for home debating what to bake. Davies is loving the idea of being able to sort food out for himself and Scarlett has always liked being in the kitchen but I am really chuffed at their enthusiasm levels for this whole idea.
Friday night is Pizza night in our house so having explained that pizza dough is the *exact* same recipe as a loaf of bread, just dealt with and cooked slightly differently Davies took on pizza dough and Tarly the loaf. I read out the recipe and they did all the weighing, measuring, mixing and kneading. I got them to see what a teaspoon of salt or yeast looked like in their hands and then test themselves to see how accurate they were without measures (similar to the ‘pour a shot’ competition the barmen in my favourite bar did on my 18th (which we had to pretend was my 21st given I’d been a regular for so long :lol:)) – they clearly have their mothers knack of measuring ‘by eye’ and were pretty spot on. I know baking is a science and weighing is important but I do most of my cooking by eye and taste rather than weights and measures and if I can get them thinking that way of instinct and an appreciation of just what 4oz / a teaspoon / 300g of an ingredient looks they are far less likely to mis-read a recipe and get it wrong or be able to memorise recipes and know at each stage whether it looks right or not.
While they did that I made some elderflower cordial which is resting in the pan for 24 hours but I know from dipping and licking a finger is divine :).
Ady arrived home and while we were waiting for proving to happen Davies watched some Harry Potter and Scarlett spent some time with the ducks.
Davies and I tried to make some homemade tomatoe sauce for the pizza but his hand slipped while adding oil which made it too liquid to use for that. He also declared it too garlicky but said he’d like to try making it again for next time. I’ve frozen it to use as a pasta sauce base instead. Davies shaped the 3 pizza bases, spread his with tomato puree and cheese and put it in the oven while Tarly shaped her bread and cooked it doing the relevant checks. Both really proud of themselves and justifiably so. Tarly made a gorgeous loaf of bread with no real help which is something plenty of adults couldn’t manage. While that was cooking we also set off some sourdough starter to see if we can breed our own yeast to try.
The kids had tea, Ady and I syphoned off my home brew wine which is now ready to be bottled and tastes pretty good if just a bit like cheap, supermarket own brand wine. I have plans for more flavourful and less chemically-enhanced recipes next but need to collect some wine bottles to store it.
We read a couple of chapters of ‘Alone on a wide, wide sea’ which we are really enjoying and then it was bedtime for small people. I finished off pizza prep and cooking for Ady and I, have joined WWOOF and should probably be dressed as a penguin by now as I have work in the morning.