Frustration

Posted on September 2, 2014 by nicdempsey

You know now I said at the weekend that the key to surviving this week was going to be organisation and that meant a busy weekend. Well I didn’t get things done on the weekend, there was an incident with a bottle of leaking weedkiller, that lead to a massive coughing fit that required my inhaler and then a while later me being very sick.

So Sunday’s to do list was cancelled and I feel pretty awful back to feeling like someone is stepping on my chest. Work is still too busy and I know that I have lots to do but I’m slowed down because I can’t think straight. So yesterday, I was in at 8.20am and I left at 6.40pm, came home, ate dinner, did the ironing that didn’t get done on the weekend and went to bed. I have three more days in the office and I’m not really expecting to enjoy them but it’s only three days.

I am frustrated, I was beginning to feel in control and now with a head full of things to do, limited time and a cough, control seems like a distant dream.

So good things, it’s only three more days, then I’ll be here or at least on the way to here and I won’t care….

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Food this week

Posted on September 1, 2014 by nicdempsey

It’s the 1st of September. Which means a couple of things, schools go back this week, summer is over and I’m going on holiday in 5 days! Food planning goes until Thursday and will be largely dedicated to using things up.

Breakfast

Monday to Thursday will be smoothies because I notice there were a couple of freezer packs left from the summer. Friday will be pain au raisin and coffee.

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Lunch

I’m counting on leftovers and soup!

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Dinners

I’m out on Thursday night for Kathy’s birthday dinner and I’m on pudding duties which I’m thinking will probably be Lime Mascarpone Cheesecake, which is good to eat and easy to make and is due a post here. That’s three nights to plan so dahl, frittata and the rice thing I had last week.

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I will probably end up making frittata and ‘chuck it all in soup’ and maybe quick pickled carrots to use up any vegetables left hanging around the fridge before I go away, the frittata comes with us (to supplement the jelly babies, which are essential to any long car trip with Ma), the carrots stay in the fridge and soup goes in the freezer for the week I’m back!

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Sunday Music

Posted on August 31, 2014 by nicdempsey

Work has been stressy over the last couple of weeks and the only reason I didn’t commit some of the violence I’ve been wishing on certain people in the office is fear of prison! So this seemed apt!

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Return of the lists…

Posted on August 30, 2014 by nicdempsey

I really don’t know how I do this to myself. Work has been fairly non stop since my birthday. There’s a really fine line between being busy enough to keep me occupied and being too busy and feeling scattered and out of control. At some point in the last two weeks, I crossed from the former to the latter because right now, I just feel like everything is going wrong and I can’t get anything right and I’m running on a mix of panic and coffee.

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I know that this is a distortion, things are not going horribly wrong all the time but it has been a week of things not going entirely right. There were no actually disasters, no-one died, no-one is homeless or jobless and everybody still has all their wits and limbs. It’s just annoying and magnified because I’m feeling hassled.

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The cure to this feeling is to be as organised as I can be and to take a deep breath. So this weekend needs to be about making sure I am. I started the process on Friday night opting not to go for a drink but to go home and do some housework and have an early night. This morning, I got up early and did yoga before I left the house. I’m having my haircut this morning and babysitting for Kathy and Adam this evening. It’s also time for the return of the housework list!

Kitchen

  • General clean (sort out the recycling and rubbish, mopping the floor and general cleaning)

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Cooking

  • Food prep for next week.
  • Make bread
  • Make pizza dough
  • Cook chickpeas

Bathroom

  • General clean (mop floor, change towels, empty bin, clean bath, sink and toilet)

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Bedroom

  • General clean (sweep floor, change bed, dust, general tidy)

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Living Room

  • General clean (sweep floor, dust, tidy sofa, put things away etc)

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Hall

  • Hoover

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General things

  • Menu plan
  • Shopping
    • Food
    • Monthly toiletries shop
    • Buy stamps and birthday cards
    • Return top that was bought weeks ago and that I will never wear
  • Washing (clothes wash, white wash, towel wash)
  • Ironing
  • Wash make up brushes
  • Wash hair brushes
  • Water plants
  • Back up laptop
  • Charge kindle, ipad and camera batteries
  • Handwashing
  • Put tent in the loft
  • Get out suitcase, make a packing list
  • Small clear out of the cupboard
  • Sort out some new music for holiday!
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Friday Links

Posted on August 29, 2014 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday, it’s been a very stressy four day week and I’m so pleased I’ve got to Friday with my sanity more or less intact!

1) This profile of Robert Lustig and his war on sugar, was really interesting.

2) Why Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s lawyer is leaving the defense team—and the Army. Really you need to think hard when your own people are telling you it’s wrong. I don’t think this is just a US problem though, the UK system is probably full of similar examples.

3) 40-somethings and house sharing. All I have to say is no. Not because you should have your shit together at 40 but because the idea of sharing a house with a bunch of people gives me hives. Yes this is probably why I’m still single…

4) Suzanne Moore on the Rotherham scandal and all the other abuse scandals. One of the things I found hardest to understand about this (and Rochdale) is where the parents were. I know about the parents who went to police and were turned away and the parents who went to get their girls out of the abuser’s home and were arrested. I just can’t imagine a world were my mother didn’t know where I was when I was 13, where it wasn’t clear to me that grown men having any sort of sexual relationship with me at 13 was wrong, where if I had been raped and threatened my entire bloody family wouldn’t have raised merry hell. I think it’s a failure in me that because I don’t understand how this could have happened and because of that, I do understand how it could have been ignored. It’s really difficult to help children who’ve been abused. They are not meek and easy to help, they may have started off like that but by the time they are drinking and taking drugs and acting up and being mouthy, it’s difficult to help them change their behaviour and opinion of themselves. So it’s easier to blame them. And when it all comes out, it’s easier to blame the families for not doing enough or the social workers for not protecting them. Here’s the hard, cold truth, protecting children in these circumstances is really hard and very expensive. This is a problem with society and our inability to face hard things and pay to make them right and until we are prepared to do it, without screaming about racism or family breakdown or finding anyone to blame but ourselves, abuse like this will keep happening.

5) British embassy sparks angry tweets. I thought it was funny, they just don’t like it that they lost! (having to sue for peace = losing, especially as they started it!). And they killed Ned Pakenham, Harry Smith survived though, that man was lucky and he was horrified by the burning of Washington!

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Darkness is not my friend

Posted on August 28, 2014 by nicdempsey

This morning, when my alarm went off at 5:45, the sun was not beaming through my window. Ok, so that could be because the weather recently has been rain with a side of dull and cloudy but it’s because sunrise isn’t until 6.08am. The longest day was 21 June and gradually sunrise and sunset are getting later and earlier and today as I considered whether to put the lamp on, it struck me that it’s not going to get better until it gets worse.

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Winter is coming and it’s bringing the dark.

If you’ve been round these parts for any amount of time, you’ll know that I have issues with winter. In fact a quick flick around former posts proves that this happens every year about this time and every year I forget.

I find that the real trick to surviving winter is to be ruthlessly organised, and this is the time to start planning for it. I noticed this week that I’m naturally starting the process, I’ve started to get ready for bed at 9.30pm, so I’m ready to sleep at 10pm. I’ve enforced the no drinking on a school night rule for a couple of weeks now, the house is tidy (apart from the camping kit in the living room!) and I’m not letting things like washing up and ironing slide.

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I didn’t realise what I was doing until this morning, when it was dark, and I was underslept and more than a bit grumpy about it being morning already, and I walked into a tiny kitchen, make a cup of mint tea and put my already made lunch in my bag. I left the house early even though I had to wash and dry my hair. I’m getting ready for winter.

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Food this week

Posted on August 26, 2014 by nicdempsey

After the joys of an extra day off, it’s back to the everyday world of work.

I have 8 more days of work until I’m on holiday and I’m trying to run down stocks, so I’m keeping the menu plan loose.

Breakfasts are apricot crisp, which is lovely and almost reconciles me to having to be awake in the morning, I have it with yogurt, which I doctor by adding some vanilla bean paste.

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Lunches will be leftovers and or lentil soup

Dinners are:

this farro one pot which is becoming a staple, the only major changes I make to this recipe are to use a whole onion, I don’t measure the tomatoes, I just use two packets of baby plum tomatoes (500g) and add four blocks of frozen spinach.

I’m going to try this recipe this week,but using brown rice because that’s what I have and with added feta.

Carrot and black bean tacos, because it’s been a while and I really like it.

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Friday Night Pizza

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On Saturday I’m possibly babysitting so I’ll probably just grab whatever is left in the fridge before I leave or eat soup!

 

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Weekend

Posted on August 25, 2014 by nicdempsey

Technically it’s still the weekend for me, yay for bank holidays!

The only thing I did thing weekend was go to Apsley House and watch regency dancing

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We went up the Wellington Arch too

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Friday Links

Posted on August 22, 2014 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! Has it felt like I’ve been missing in action this week? That would be because I have. Work was supposed to be easier this week, however, the sick has descented on my team this week (no, not me, I’m the one in the corner looking martyred) so I’ve been trying to make it all work and that means that I just don’t have any brain space left that isn’t for sleeping or reading fluffy books. As I get older, I realise that my coping method is
retreat into sleep or books. It could be worse, it could be gin!

Here are this weeks links…

1) Roz Chast on my working style. Ok, so exactly mine but it could be. (Link via DALS)

2) The NHS is a marvellous thing. Why yes it is, which of course is why the govt is selling it down the river.

3) Giles Fraser talking sense again. The only way to stop this is for both sides to sit down and talk. Northern Ireland isn’t perfect but it’s a lot better than it used to be, because both sides sat down and compromised. This is how you build peace.

4) Cocktails and science.

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Friday Links

Posted on August 15, 2014 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday. It’s been a busy week, so much to do and so little time to do it and that’s just work, I’m so very glad to get to the end of this week and into the arms of a quiet weekend. There are no major plans, clean the house, buy food. Entertain and/or be entertained by my mother on Saturday night, watch Sharpe and go for a practice walk on Sunday, to start to get accustomed to the idea of walking on our holiday in 3 weeks time. And all of a sudden I’m on a deadline, which makes the next three weeks the most productive since the three weeks before the last holiday!

1) How to help fix the housing market.

2) Don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Or don’t be a book snob.

3) 62 things that Londoners will never say. Truth!

4) Grieving and social media. I don’t use social media to remember my dead or comment on others. Partly it comes from my horror or the easy sentimentality I see on Facebook and partly because it seems totally inappropriate. Sometimes the death of a celebrity will hit me where I live, as Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death did and I’ll write about those feelings. For me, the thing to remember is that the death of someone I never met, although sad, isn’t my loss. It’s wrong and insulting that person’s family and friends to act as though it is.

5) A level results won’t determine the rest of your life. Actually they will but the world continues and it’s not the end of your life if you don’t get the results you hoped for. Life will just different from the way you imagined it. Which is the moral of every story. You end up living the life you were meant to.

6) I had no idea that Vicky Beeching was a Christian music star. Given that this is brave, really brave. I wish the Church had a better attitude to gay people. I’ll say it again, ‘Being the person that God made you, cannot separate you from His love’.

7) Things you know in your 40’s. “• When you’re wondering whether she’s his daughter or his girlfriend, she’s his girlfriend.”

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