Boxing Day 2010

I've just had three chocolate biscuits in a row, and I'm on my second mug of mulled wine. Oh yes, it is still Christmas.

Today Twin 1 said wistfully, "Have we already had Christmas, Mummy?" and I had to tell her that yes, we had, and she'd have to wait a whole 365 sleeps for another one (I don't think they make advent calendars that big). She was a bit sad. And I thought that sums up Boxing Day really, that anti-climatic deflated feeling you get when you wake up with a gasp and realise that all the fun happened yesterday.

Luckily, however, there are a few biscuits left in the Victoria selection tin and mulled wine in the jug. This is a good thing because by 8.30 Hubby was already in bed and asleep. So any thoughts of cuddling up in front of a DVD have been dashed (and anything else too, which is a shame, what with me being the foxiest wife this side of the Gurkha camp - oh, alright then, everyone else is away on holiday, so there is no competiton).

Not sure if this is a sad indictment on the state of our marriage, or just evidence that we are in semi-hibernation at the moment. For twenty one hours in the day we are holed up in the house, scurrying between gas fires, closing doors, curtains and adding layers of cashmere. Then, between 11.30 and 2.30 we go out, the sun is high and it's like a good British summer's day. However, once the sun gets down beyond a certain point, all of a sudden it's blooming freezing again and we have to race indoors to find pashminas and sources of heat. It's a bit wierd. Nepal is on the same latitude as Florida, so it should be pretty balmy all year round, but I think because we're up in the clouds, it's really not.

It takes such a huge amount of effort to get out of bed into the freezing cold in the morning - reminds me of being back at boarding school (the difference is that I no longer spend my evenings planning to shimmy down the fire escape with my dorm mates for a midnight walk - minus H, who was risk averse when it came to possible conflicts with authority - or eating drinking chocolate granules from my tuck box. Perhaps these are things I should think about, to spice up my otherwise not-very-interesting mid-life existence? Wonder what Hubby would say if I suggested raiding the tuck box and legging it out of the window? It probably wouldn't meet with much enthusiasm as we have a) no fire escape, and b) no chocolate granules.)

Next Great Novel is totally stalled, due to endless Christmas hols. However, at least it has stopped at a good point, as my heroine is just about to go to Pokhara in search of her estranged father (will she find him? Of course she will! But will that be a good thing or will he turn out to be a big fat life altering disappointment? Hmmm....). She has ended up going with this man she's only just met, and guess what, he's just split up from his cheating wife (do they secretly fancy each other? Course they do! Will I make them wait until halfway through the book before realising this? You betcha! But can both of them overcome their emotional baggage to make it work? Oh, give me a chance, I'm only on chapter five!).

Right, well, I'm going on Amazon now to buy a cheese slicer. Yes, really. Because that's what I do when Hubby is asleep and I'm not, I shop for tedious things online.

Merry Christmas! xxx

the night before xmas

Just watched the Christmas Grinch (Hubby says he's no relation, but I'm not so sure) whilst drinking mulled wine. Then we watched Santa deliver presents in Kyoto on Santa Tracker. Can't get much more christmassy than that, can it? Kids are upstairs doing something very secret with Daddy and wrapping paper now. Twin 2 managed a very festive head trauma when we went out for lunch today, and now has a nice (no longer gaping) wound at the back of her head, and one of those net things over the top, so she looks like a bit of oven ready ham. It meant we didn't want to risk the Christmas Eve drinks party (drunk grown ups + over excited kids + my disabled daughter with a head injury=...hmm, think not, this year), but we had a festive pizza at the pizza house instead. Looking forward to the pre-dawn start in the morning... Merry Christmas xxx

a touch of Grinch

I'm waiting for photos from the partners' club xmas function to upload onto Picasa. Watching paint dry would be more interesting. I hope all the partners are grateful and I get profuse thanks for several hours of my life that I will never get back. It's 8pm and Hubby is in bed already. Might join him and continue nightmarish uploading task from warmth and comfort of my bed, instead of alone down here in the cavernous (and always mildly stained and biscuit-crumbed) living room.

It's quite hard to feel Christmassy there at the moment. Chilly evenings help, but I do miss xmas telly, and all the festive nonsense. There is one shop selling tinsel and stars at the Jawalakhel roundabout, but everywhere else is the same old dusty honking morass it is the rest of the year. If we hadn't spent far too much money already this year on holidays, then I'd consider skedaddling off somewhere hot, like we did last year, but the truth is, that the prohibitive-bought-at-the-height-of-the-housing-boom little matchbox of a house we own, won't pay its own mortgage, which is a jolly shame.

The other thing that's a bit un-festive is that we spent most of this morning in the medical centre with various minor and un-christmassy ailments. I think Santa will be bringing Ventolin, Hydrocortisone and Amoxycillin in his sack this year. I felt a bit left out, being the only member of the family without some gripe to whinge to the doctor about. Think I'll have to make one up and get myself med-evaced somewhere either hot or with snow (don't really mind which, just somewhere without unlicensed motorbikes driven by pre-pubescant boys, and with pavements, would be nice).

Right, I'm off to make a hot toddy, with extra whisky, because that is Christmassy. xxx

feeling festive

Finally managed to wrest laptop from kids by booting them out into the garden, hurrah.

Well, the school hols are here and we're all christmassy, sort of. Yesterday went to kids' carol concert at school - I think if I am forced to listen to 'Little Donkey' one more time I shall top myself. Also interesting spectacle of the whole school waving their arms in the air to 'Do they know it's Christmas?' (better known by my kids as 'Feed the world'). I couldn't work out whether it was bizarre or really quite lovely. I think I have a constant inner battle between cynicsm and sentimentalism. After that we had the exciting Gurkha camp kids' xmas party, which I organised this year. Now, I'm probably the laziest woman in BGN, so I organised something whereby I had to put in as little effort as possible by booking a bouncy castle, face painter, and getting a lovely dad to be Santa. My plan was pretty much to turn up and just let it all happen around me. However, the bouncy castle kept deflating, and at one point the bouncy castle man disappeared. I finally located him in a taxi outside camp, bringing in a new air pump thingy. We ended up with bouncy castle for about half an hour, boo, but I don't think any of the kids cared because Santa threw loads of sweets at them from the balcony (only a couple ended up with minor head traumas as a result). Then in the evening it was the BGN xmas function (with a very festive dahl baht buffet - luckily the chef managed to do a proper roast as well, if he hadn't there would have been mutiny from the Brits, who are forced to have a dahl baht buffet at every single other Gurkha function throughout the year). Hubby had said in his usual Grinch-ish way that he wanted to go home straight after the meal, but by his third double whisky somehow changed his mind, and we ended the evening dancing to the techno version of Munni Badman (the track I failed to master at Bollywood - although for some reason, after a whisky toddy, two glasses of wine and a glass of port, I managed rather well. Perhaps that was where I went wrong with the Bollywood lessons?).

I felt quite cheery this morning as Hubby had to rush off to work at 7.45, but I could lounge around having extra cups of tea and painkillers. The extent of my holiday childcare this morning has been to put on some Christmas tunes and let the Twins wear dressing up clothes to prance about in.

We're not doing anything this xmas, or going away anywhere, so I now have until 10th January to spend mornings listening to Wizard, Slade and telling small children how beautiful they look in their torn polyester frilly things. I felt a bit guilty at one point and tried to engage Son in conversation, but he said he was busy thinking and didn't want to talk. Okay then!

Right, I could blather on indefinitely, but I think it's time for another cuppa.

Take care xxxx

extreme baking

So, I'm sat up late (well, twenty past ten on a Saturday night counts as late for me), huddled next to the gas heater with my forbidden toffees (forbidden because I was supposed to be saving them for Santa to throw at the kids next week), waiting for my cinnamon rolls to cook. It's a new thing called extreme baking, I've discovered. Some people call it baking to the max, or others call it late bake with the yeast master and it's a really cool new way of cooking...oh, alright then, I just put my dough on a bit late and now it's past my bed time.

I've been re-watching 'Spaced' (do you remember it? sitcom from late 90s with Simon Pegg?) and trying to remember what it was like in the days before married quarters and kids, when we used to spend Saturday nights going to the pub and getting drunk, and Sundays watching Hollyoaks omnibus and having fry-ups. Remember those days? Barely. These days, ten thirty is a late one, and only justified on the basis of fresh rolls for breakfast.

Today I took the kids to a Christmas get-together at one of their classmate's house. Santa arrived on a tinsel covered tractor-type thing (hard to describe unless you've been here, but if you have, it's one of those open tractor engines attached to a seat, a bit like a go-cart. Hmm, a go-tractor, if you will.) and threw sweets at the kids (luckily not heavy ones). He then took selected children off for a spin in his go-tractor trailer. Twin 1, wisely suspicious of bearded old men bearing sweets, ran off to hide on the trampoline. Son endured it whilst protesting that he thought the Santa was fake. Twin 2, on the other hand, was last seen sitting on Santa's lap, whilst he stroked her cheeks, telling him that she wanted make up in her stocking.

Think I have just eaten the last toffee, dagnabbitt! Perhaps I should move onto the 'dense milk coffee candy' or the 'yake sweet with jam centre'? Not sure about the others as the writing is in chinese, so I'll leave those for the kids next week.

Off to check on the rolls now...

Done to perfection. Can't wait for breakfast.

Night x

cold shoulder

I'm so incredibly tired that I feel a bit drunk, which is kind of good. However, I'm also so tired that I lack the energy to get off the sofa and go to bed, or even go to the loo (not so good). I wonder if it's also the horse pills I'm on for my frozen shoulder? Calling it a frozen shoulder makes it feel like I'm some bit of lamb that's been hacked off and flash frozen and shipped from New Zealand. I feel a bit like that, too (hacked off and cold*). Last night I woke up at three with my frozen shoulder, and even though I quickly quaffed some paracetamol (at least I think that's what they were - it was quite dark at 3am), I still couldn't get back to sleep. Anyway, today I went to see the nice doctor and now I'm taking a super-dooper pain killer and a muscle relaxant too. (Worryingly, the pain killer has some sort of warning that it's not suitable for pre-menopausal women, but I don't know why? I wonder if I fit into that category yet?). Not sure if anything I'm writing will make sense, so I think I'll stop and try again when I'm not tired and drugged. Night then x

* yes, it may have something to do with Hubby, but no, I can't tell you as that would be disloyal, and I'm still trying to be nice to him.

no time!

Sorry, it has been ages, and my only excuse is that my fingers are so cold that it makes it hard to type. Also I have been using the laptop (when I can wrest it from the kids) in lengthy emails to the online shop that sold me my 'water resistant' watch, which wasn't. The MD of the company says the watch was clearly marked as not being water resistant, but in fact the site said "...you can rest assured your watch will keep ticking underwater." So I think we might end up going to court about it. Which will be tedious and time-consuming (not that I will notice the time passing, as I have nothing to tell the time with, at the moment. Actually, I've been wearing Hubby's old sports watch. It's huge, about the size of a small apple, and does all kinds of exciting things like telling you the altitude and the time in Sydney, etc., which is all very exciting, but not really what I want).

End of term stuff cranking up now. I have been helping kids make boxes with which to fill with homemade fudge for their teachers. They have painted boxes red (you can hardly see the Tetley Tea logo underneath), and covered with bits of old xmas cards and sparkling jewels. This weekend we shall make the fudge. However, when I spoke to the kids about it, Twin 2 says she doesn't want to give any to Miss P (her teaching assistant), Twin 1 says she doesn't want to give any to Miss M (her teaching assistant) either, because she's 'horrible'. Son says he doesn't really like his teaching assistant, either. So I think we may end up eating a lot of the fudge ourselves (shame!).

Good news on the masters application, they have said they'll accept my application without seeing a copy of my very old 2:2 certificate. This is good because I think it's lost in storage somewhere, and really doesn't certify much, except that I managed to last three years at Uni without being chucked out for non-attendance. Who would have thought, when I question-spotted my way through my finals, that the only time I'd end up using my Law degree would be twenty years later, in an online battle about a watch?

I have to go now, because I'm going to school to do face painting for the nativity play. I'm doing the stars and camels, which is dead easy, and my friend M will be doing the far more challenging Landlord's cat (she is a much better painter than me).

Take care xxx

only 24 sleeps...

Wild excitement of advent calendars! Twins wore Santa and Rudolph hats to school today, and cajoled Son into being a reluctant elf. After school we started making xmas cards. There are lots and lots to make. In the end I had to bribe kids with chocolate Santas in order to get their creative juices flowing. We made four, I think, before Son rebelled and insisted it was time for Dr Who. So, depending on when the chocolate Santas run out, not everyone will get an xmas card this year.

Hubby back from Pokhara, with a hangover, for which I have only the teeniest bit of sympathy, but I am on a mission to be nice to him, so I'll stop there.