Adults behaving strangely ..................................

This evening my son informed me that Robbie and I were "weirding him out" by our strange behaviour. No, Robbie wasn't being inappropriately affectionate, he wasn't even talking too much or bouncing about like Tigger. We were both sitting down quietly enjoying the warmth of the fire (it is very cold tonight) and I was reciting poetry to him. I guess that is a bit odd even for us, but while we were out yesterday Robbie pointed out a pub called the Lamplighter and it rekindled a long lost memory for me. When I was a young child I had book of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson called A Child's Garden of Verses and one of my favourite poems from that book was called The  Lamplighter. Once I had started to remember old favourites several more came flooding back to my mind and I wanted to share them with Robbie. Apparently his childhood was devoid of poetry - or to be more accurate he doesn't remember much from his school days! I guess people only remember things that matter to them, Robbie has a very good memory for music, but I don't because most of it passed me by in the first place - I have never really been into music.

Perhaps my son would have been more in his 'comfort zone' if he'd herd us arguing earlier today. It is nice having Robbie working from home or at least it is nice most of the time, but there are times when I wish him many miles away! Today he offered to cook me beans on toast for lunch. I think it was part of his 'cunning plan' because he waited until my food was in front of me and I started eating, then he pounced. He announced that he intended to reorganise the way that we store cutlery. It was difficult for me to respond with my mouth full, but I made my feelings crystal clear. There is no way that he is going to mess with the cutlery, I like things the way they are where I can find them. There is plenty to keep him busy, there are countless things that need changing in this house, but I am not going to let him mess with the kitchen! 

The greatest gift is our own eyes, sense of smell, and abilities to deduce - Patricia Cornwell

I was dreading going home after our holiday, because I knew the house would be a mess, it was, but it was not as bad as it was last year. We had a nice surprise because my daughter had painted the bathroom and it looks very nice. When we opened the front door we were met by a very unpleasant smell and my first hour or so at home was taken up with trying to track it down. It wasn't animal related and it wasn't the bin, amazingly the bin bag in the kitchen was almost empty. I tracked the pong to the kitchen but I couldn't identify it, I checked for rotting vegetables, but there were none, I had a good sniff inside the fridge but the smell wasn't coming from there. 

In the end I had to leave it and get on with tidying the kitchen and doing the laundry. Then Robbie made me a cup of tea and I sat down in the lounge to drink it. I could smell an over-ripe banana in the fruit bowl and I took it out to the food recycling caddy and as I lifted the lid, the pong was revealed in all it's glory. The contents of the caddy which had morphed into a green hairy mass, had been there since before our holiday! When I had escorted the stinking mass to the outside food bin and disinfected the food caddy, the inquest began. My son was adamant that it was not on his list - a typically aspie response! My older daughter who has a poor sense of smell claimed not to have noticed it and her sister announced that she doesn't have anything to do with food recycling because it is gross. So, the combined intellect of two university graduates and an A Level student was not sufficient to cope with the 'complexities' of  emptying the food caddy. Next year I will leave the cat in charge!

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm - Winston Churchill

It is time to admit that I am a failure, I know that because Robbie told me so loud and clear. I picked him up when I finished work yesterday evening so it was passed 9pm when we got home. The cats were not impressed, they are very good at telling the time (thanks to Robbie's efforts) and they knew that their dinner was late. The loudest complaints were coming from Shadow the guinea pig. I am not aware that Robbie has been actively teaching Shadow to tell the time, perhaps guinea pigs have an innate sense of time or perhaps she just loves to eat whatever the time.


Robbie and the cats disappeared into the kitchen; it was hard to work out if he was feeding them or trying to extend their vocabulary! A little later Robbie emerged from the kitchen holding a plastic bag with a few flecks of green in it. The clues were there, the expression, the hand on the hip, not to mention the expletives from the kitchen - he was not a happy chap. The plastic bag had once contained curly kale, but except for tiny traces of green it was now empty. He waved the bag at me and said "now what am I going to do?". It took me a moment to compose my features because there was something vaguely ridiculous about Robbie who is not noted for his love of 'greens' getting so upset about a deficiency in the curly kale department. Before I could say anything he said "what am I going to say to the guinea pig". I took a deep breath and said that we had other greens, carrots and apples as well as her dried food and hay, so it was unlikely that she would starve. Unbelievably he walked over to the guinea pig to show her the empty bag and to apologise on my behalf for running out of curly kale. I don't think she took too much notice, she was too busy tucking into an apple and her dried food. 


As soon as I finished work today I dashed to the supermarket and we now have an ample supply of curly kale. After all I don't want the guinea pig to think that I'm a failure!

Too Many Cooks ................

Robbie has many talents, but don't worry I am not going to tell you about all of them! He is surprisingly useful in the kitchen and on a good day we can work well together. The difficulty is that I think of it as my kitchen while he acts as if it is his. To be fair it is not the best designed kitchen in the world and we could do with a lot more storage space, but for the time being we have to work with what we have - and that is where the problem arises. 


I have written before about him being a control freak when it comes to food shopping, and about the way he controls the fridge. It can be challenging, but most of the time I tend to let him get on with it, he may be totally rigid about the everything having to be the correct size and in exactly the right place, but at least he makes an effort. There are times when he goes a bit too far, such as his phase of leaving post-it notes in the fridge, thankfully that is a thing of the past but we still have bitter disputes about sell by dates. I don't expect him to eat anything that has past its use by date, but I am not as fussy especially with things like horseradish sauce. I am the only one in the house that likes it, so how dare he throw it away without asking me! He was in big trouble when he did that - but he will not do it again!!

Now we have a new problem - recycling. We recycle paper, plastic, metal and glass without any problems, but now our local council collects food waste too. We have an indoor caddy for food scraps and an outdoor food bin. We don't have much food waste, mostly it is used tea bags, egg shells, a few crusts and an occasional potato that has passed it's prime. Logically I want the food caddy on the work top near the kettle so that it is easy to put tea bags straight into the caddy. However Robbie takes a different view, he doesn't like it there and he would rather have it on the opposite worktop near the cooker. So for several weeks it has been a case of 'hunt the caddy' - he moves it and I move it back again. As if that is not irritating enough, on Monday morning it had vanished completely. I rang the 'king of the kitchen' and he admitted that he had hidden it in the cupboard under the crisps to hide it from the cat. It seemed like lame excuse, Dave the cat is the 'Robbie' of the cat world, they share a passion for food of all kinds, but even Dave would turn his nose up at egg shells! The caddy has stayed in 'my place' for two days now, so we will see what happens over the weekend. 

Paddling

I had big plans for Friday, I don't go to work on a Friday so it feels like 'my day'. I always look forward to Fridays but almost every week something happens to spoil it, but this week I really shouldn't have bothered to get out of bed.

Sam was grumpy as he got ready for school (which is nothing unusual) but we managed to leave the house on time. We had only got as far as the drive when Sam 'split his difference' and had to go dashing back into the house in search of more school trousers. Thankfully it didn't take him long to change and he got to school in good time. That is the third pair of trousers he has written off in the same way this year! I don't know how he does it, the trousers are not too small and I haven't noticed Sam waving his legs around like Kenny Everett so I guess it will remain one of life's unsolved mysteries. Oh well at least M&S have a 3 for the price of 2 offer on school uniform.

When I got home after dropping Sam off, I walked in to find that the washing machine pipe had come out and it had flooded the kitchen. I felt like running away. I spent the next couple of hours paddling as I mopped up the water and tried to sort out everything that had got wet. It was like fighting a loosing battle, I thought I would never get back to normal. The water had even got into one of the kitchen cupboards, I had to take a break before dealing with that, but I was still scrubbing late into the evening - it would have been easier to go to work!

"I Just Can't Cope With This"

When I got home after work Robbie appeared in the lounge hands on hips, bottom lip sticking out, with that long suffering expression he reserves for those occasions when someone has failed to do something his way. That thoughtless someone 'someone' usually turns out to be me, but on this occasion the sinner was Laura. Robbie announced that her thoughtlessness had caused him extra work in putting things right. He said "I just can't cope with this". Her crime was that she had washed up and put the plates in the drainer in the wrong order!! According to Robbie she had failed to line up all the plates in height order facing the same way. As far as I am concerned it is a huge advance, at least she washed up!

A Cat Trap

Since Dave found out that he could get on to the top of the fridge freezer we can't keep him off it. Yesterday he was sitting up there on top of a pile of my talking books with his head almost touching the ceiling, looking down at me in a very superior way. I don't want him on the kitchen surfaces and I certainly don't want him up there, but obedience training for a cat is rather like obedience training for Robbie - futile!

I am 5ft and the fridge freezer is 6ft so I can't lift him down, but there are two things that will get him down there from there very quickly, food and the cat carrier. If he sees me opening his food he will be there in an instant and if I get the cat carrier out he will vanish without trace for hours. I have to get up there to disinfect the surface and I plan to sprinkle some cat pepper up there to make the area unattractive to him. Baldric Burgess had a much more fiendish plan to deal with the problem, it involved containers of water among other things. Quite apart from the serious danger of placing water on an electrical appliance, I foresaw other dangers too. I have heard of flying squirrels, but I was not comfortable with the prospect of a damp cat landing on my head closely followed by a pan of water. The plan was vetoed.

This morning I was just in time to see Robbie armed with a tea towel, jousting with the cat; Robbie's language left something to be desired and Dave was swearing back at him. Suddenly Dave lost his footing and tumbled down bringing a shower of cat crunchies and sundry items with him. Robbie scuttled off to work leaving me with a cantankerous cat and a kitchen that looks like a war zone!

When in a Hole ......... 23.10.07

Robbie seems to enjoy living dangerously! He got home slightly earlier yesterday evening and he appeared in the kitchen to help me with the final few minutes of getting our meal ready. First he moaned about the burn mark on the iron (that he caused) because it will not come off. Then he criticised the way I filled the kettle, telling me that I wasn't even capable of filling the kettle properly. Having started to 'dig his hole' he seemed unable to stop and he went on to tell me that I was a liability in the kitchen! I took the hint and left him to it, after all I am a liability! He begged for help serving the food but I refused. Considering my inadequacy in the kitchen we had a very nice roast dinner and everyone cleared their plates, so I must have got something right! I was going to do a beef stew tonight - one of Robbie's favourites, but being a liability in the kitchen perhaps I should play safe and give him cheese on toast instead!! You may have guessed that Robbie didn't enjoy his evening very much - serves him right!

I have told him many times 'when in a hole stop digging' but he seems to do the exact opposite. Just as there was a 'slight thaw' in my attitude he messed it all up again. He had a moan about the quality of the ironing! Realising that he was now out of his depth, he said that he doesn't have enough shirts. I don't know how he could make such a stupid claim, it is like Imelda Markos saying she didn't have enough shoes! He seriously expected me to believe that he only has three, the true figure is nearer to thirty! When challenged he did back track a bit, first it was only three shirts, then it was only three long sleeved shirts and then it became only three white shirts! Oh well, I will do an audit today just to record the true figure, but if he thinks he only has three shirts he will not miss all the others, so I will stuff them into a couple of black sacks and take them to the recycling bank. I could take a few ties too, maybe some railway books as well. He can try being minimalist for a change, we could do with the space! At least I know what he wants for Christmas now.

In the Driving Seat 24.09.2007

The car is in full working order again, that's more than I can say for my bank balance, the car cost nearer to £500 than £400!! It was the power steering and several associated parts. The mechanic saved the old parts to show me, I can't believe such insignificant little bits can cost so much. At least I now have a garage that treats me like a human being and gets the work done quickly so I mustn't moan too much.

We had a lovely day at my mum's yesterday, we had a family day to say goodbye to Emily before she goes off to university. As always my mum thought she was catering for a multitude and there was far too much food. Even Robbie left food on his plate at lunch time and that is very rare indeed. Robbie has been a bit out of sorts over the weekend, he fell over on Friday and as well as hurting himself it made him very cross with himself. Just to make matters worse I have been continuing with the reorganisation of the kitchen cupboards and Robbie hates change - unless it is him doing the changing! My greatest transgression was apparently to buy a new tea towel that cost the huge sum of £1 and is slightly different to our usual ones. He claims not to like it, but it does the job and I suspect his real objection is that he didn't choose it. I guess you have to be a bit obsessive to do the sort of job that Robbie does, but this is ridiculous!

Obsessions 14.09.2007

Robbie has been at it again - getting obsessive. He is struggling to cope because I am re organising the kitchen cupboards and I haven't consulted him, so he is feeling really out of control. He has moaned about every new container or storage box and demanded to know exactly what it was for and why. It came to head when I bought a towel rail and he had a moan about it and demanded to know where I thought I was going to put it - I was so tempted to speak my thoughts! I think he got the message and he has been a bit more cautious about kitchen matters for a day or two. Instead he has directed his attention to socks. He claims that his new 'best' socks have been pilfered. Why is it always his 'best' socks that go missing? He went on and on about them being from M&S as if they should get preferential treatment. I have no interest in his socks, I just wash them, dry them and pair them up and I told him very clearly that if he was suggesting that I lost them in the wash he could do his own laundry in future. There was a sudden backtracking and a hint that Sam could be responsible. Two points cast doubt on this, I bought Sam 30 pairs of school socks for the start of term and if Sam tried to wear Robbie's long socks he would look ridiculous, they would go almost up to his thigh. I don't think they are lost at all just in the wrong place among Robbie's things. I explained all this to him last night and I thought he had dropped the subject, but I was woken at 1am by a searchlight shining directly into my eyes and a lot of movement on Robbie's side of the bed - he was looking for his socks!! I think he worked out that I was not happy and he beat a hasty retreat, by the time he came to bed I was fast asleep. Of all the things in this world to worry about why choose socks!

Time For A Change 02.08.07

Robbie was not too impressed by being called Donald (as in where's your trousers) yesterday, so I am not going to write about him today - he deserves a rest!

I have been giving a lot of thought to work life balance recently as there are a number of changes taking place at work. At present I work a little less than full time hours and I still seem to spend my entire life chasing my tail. In fact I am thinking of naming our house 'Forth Bridge' because the housework and maintenance is always a work in progress! Sometimes I wonder if it is worth working so hard to give the children a decent quality of life when most of our free time is taken up with housework, ironing and fighting a losing battle in the garden.

This morning I walked into the kitchen and felt a howl of anguish welling up inside me. Yet again the 'washing up fairy' had missed us from our rounds and despite everything being washed up after our evening meal a precarious pile of crockery was sprouting from the bowl. Perhaps it was someone's idea of modern art in the style of Tracy Emin. Actually I think that Tracy Emin's 'Dark Bed' is rather eloquent, maybe the full washing up bowl speaks volumes too - about a lack of responsibility, or possibly it suggests that we have hungry intruders every night! No, I am not getting a dish washer, our global footprint needs to shrink, not grow!

It is surprising how we so quickly get used to difficulties within our own home and I am sure I am not the only person who has put up with an inconvenient kitchen for too many years - and on current finances it is likely for a few years longer as well! When I actually had a good look at the kitchen I realised that there are only two items in the right position and at the correct height for me to use easily, thankfully one of those is the kettle! The sink is also at the correct height for easy (and frequent) use, but everything else causes me to bend down, to reach above head height, to use steps or to reach around an obstacle. Clearly it must have been designed (or more likely thrown together) by a man. Perhaps I can't have a new kitchen at this stage but I am going to use my work skills to make some long overdue changes. I am going to risk assess it, create an action plan and reorganise all the storage to meet my needs. Robbie hates change, so I expect he will have quite a bit to say about it but there again he has a lot to say about almost everything. At present I even need to use the steps to alter the volume on my radio because it is perched on top of the fridge freezer! Even worse if I want to open or close a window I have to use steps and scramble onto the worktop - its madness! I am sure with a bit of planning and a lot of effort I can make my life much easier.

On a lighter note I got up yesterday to find that Sam's collection of small superhero figures had escaped from his bedroom and were arranged on top of the hall radiator in what I can only describe as startling poses. Wonder Woman appeared to be having her wicked way with Superman and a different version of Superman was in an extremely compromising position with another male superhero. I will spare you any more details but after briefly thinking that I must be a complete failure as a parent, I saw the funny side and had a bit of a laugh while making myself a nice cup of tea to recover from the shock!