6 posts tagged “weasel nest”

Hang fire - I'm not trying to make anyone throw up, here. This isn't even a big, obvious-scale blessings count where I point out that any one of us who has the luxury of time and a place to log on to Vox and chat clearly has the basics (food, shelter, heating) sorted out.

This is a small scale recognition that much of my life is made a great deal easier by other people. I can only hope I ever pay them back, in any small form.

I moderate a dog lovers' forum. Today I saw this thread.

Now, I like a good rant as much as the next person. More so, in fact. I rant so long and so much that my friends actually wait for it because it's entertainment to them. I've made half my career out of ranting on professional blogs. Got a rant going? Count me in.

You get it, right? Rant = AOK.

So I was nodding along with the whingers and whiners and patting them on their ranty backs for the most part. But the domestic ones had me confused. Why were so many women (always women! As if gender roles had never been reappraised) complaining about lazy men who expected praise for a tiny amount of housework while they were tied to endless, thankless domestic duty?

That's when I realised I must live in some kind of weird 50s role reversal world. Here's how the duties stack up in Alex and Ashley's world:

Cooking - Shared equally.
Washing up - Ashley. He can't stand to wait even an hour after eating to do it, so he does it. This is not my fault.
Hoovering - Ashley. Yeah, I just hate it.
Laundry - Ashley. Clearly he runs out of pants first.
Cleaning the kitchen - Ashley. It's part of the washing up, innit?
Watering the plants - Ashley. They were his idea and I DID help pot them and lash the hanging baskets to the railing.
Diary-keeping, reminders and ensuring everyone gets cards / presents on time - Me, usually.
Cleaning the bathroom - Me. I'm obsessed with cleaning myself in a clean place.
Tidying up - Ashley. OCD much?

So, basically, I do very little except cook and scrub the loo (not, needless to say, at the same time). Either I'm the laziest person in humanity or the luckiest.

I like to go with the latter.

(In actual fact, I think it might be both).

This post was brought to you by the letters I, D, L and E.

Sometimes it feels like the treadmill's been turned up to 10 and the incline is increasing and NO ONE'S TELLING YOU WHY.

I am bouncing from such utter, utter joy to such irritating niggly detail-strewn stress that I suspect I am becoming somewhat difficult to live with. Yesterday I growled at my mother for asking one too many wedding questions and there was much grovelling this morning. She forgives me far too easily. Far more easily than I ever forgive myself, for anything at all.

The venue and catering sorted, we're now on the hunt for a band. We found a wonderful jazz band who charge reasonable rates and pack an absolutely brilliant young female singer called Liz Cass (visit her website, it's a rubbish design that doesn't really work but you should be listening, not looking). Sadly, we think her repertoire, while beautiful to us and a handful of the guests with taste, probably won't lead to a rollicking party atmosphere. We need people to dance, otherwise it will all be a bit depressing. So we've switched gears to Funkify (I know, but their performances are more vibrant than their name), provided we can afford them. The quote's on its way.

Meanwhile, I have a staggering quote for hair and make up - a maximum of £275 including a consultation / trial run, travel expenses (to London and Oxford from Gloucestershire). I'm sure that's pretty steep, but on the other hand she looks really, really good. The budget is there for it, if necessary, but I'm going to have to do some digging to find an alternative. I only require a simple up-do for hair - I want it neat, sleek and out of the way where it can't go tangly and unkempt - but I'd like some really good makeup and that's what this lady specialises in. Well, we'll see. I'm dreaming of smoky eyes.

You can see where the details and my scribble bedecked diary are getting on my nerves. But I'm dealing with it, because all that pales into insignificance when you turn over in the morning to be wrapped into a warm snuggle and the love of your life whispering that they adore you.

Plus, I'll be in Greece in one month and one day! For two weeks! In Athens! And Kefalonia! And on a (free!!) cruise around islands I've never visited!

Can't say completely unfair and ridiculously privileged fairer than that.

I have one of these on my finger...

Well, I've certainly eaten enough chocolate to pretend this is my Easter. Once again I've restarted the "diet" - it's more of an attempt to bring my comfort-binge-eating tendencies under control and do more exercise - and it's all going well. Actually, the exercise has been going well since January, not to tempt fate...

The four day break has been great; we shopped (JB got me underwear for my birthday present and I spent vouchers and freebie points for other things), we slept, we ate lots, we frolicked with my downright adorable nephew who charmingly gave everyone kisses and duddles (cuddles) and we bought a Wii. I fear my right elbow is now doomed to a lifetime of RSI, but I have soundly beaten JB at Wii Bowling and Wii Tennis, so that's okay.

Naturally, the nickname for the console is the Wiieasel.

The whole "weasel" thing started as a song lyric.

"This is my country / and these are my reasons" - Fergus Sings The Blues, Deacon Blue

JB pointed out that reasons sounded like 'weasels' and so it stuck. Now we are weasels, stoats, otters (holding hands, of course), ermine, ferrets... You name it, we're Mustelidae. I've even written and published a book for JB on Blurb about "stoatly living". Because, in our universe, stoats steal pants. Knickers pants, not trousers pants. Ferrets dance, otters and romantic, weasels are spies that are everywhere and polecats and pine marten know all the best places to pootle.

How can you tell the difference between a stoat and a weasel? Weasels are weaselly recognised and stoats are stoatally different.

I'm sure that makes perfect sense to you all, right? One day I might even explain the A & JB alternative definition for the Hebrew word "tov".

Well, it's my birthday, but since I'm known as Weasel and got a card covered in Sea Otters, our other Mustelid friends, I thought that would make a good title.

The party was great, part-catered by JB's mum who provided home-baked cookies, smoked salmon and nibbles and part-fuelled by a few bottles of Kefallonian Robola my parents had. I went to a spa with Ma as it's her birthday today as well, and when I came back, facialled to the max with sparkly finger and toenails, JB had cleaned and rearranged the living room, bought all our other supplies, stocked the fridge with beer and white wine and made a dish each of egg and tuna mayo. All I needed to do was spread it on a few bagels!

Enough people came that it was fun, not so many that it was uncomfortable. Some people I hardly knew, others I'd known all my life. The best possible mix. JB had great fun being the stage manager and I flitted from group to group trying to ensure even the shyest got to speak to one person they hadn't spoken to before.

My friend D, who has just been accepted to become a Catholic priest, had his traditional drunken religious conversation in the kitchen with a mutual friend who is about to become a Catholic (having been brought up as nothing), one of JB's relatively devout Jewish friends, a lapsed Catholic, a Hindu and anyone else who happened to be caught in the crossfire. He then proceeded to get so ridiculously drunk that he offended T, the lapsed Catholic, by doing things like wandering off mid-sentence; D has a habit, when he notices he's annoyed someone, of deliberately continuing to gently push their buttons.

It's not malicious at all - he's the kindest person I know - but she was maudlin, drunk and irritable about something unrelated; I ended up irritated with her for being touchy about his drunken silliness when our mutual friends are a bunch of rude, habitually intoxicated, overeducated and frequently obnoxious people with whom it can be impossible to have a conversation unless you break into their insular discussions with a sledgehammer. I say this as someone who loves them just the way they are, but I thought it rich of T to get annoyed with D for being a bit mock-sleazy and incoherent when I've frequently introduced my friends to T and our mutual friends and had them complain that no-one was approachable.

We ended up having a heart to heart after that, then she was sick and went home with a friend so I ended up more concerned than anything else; although it can't be helped, it bothers me when two people I like can't like each other, hence the need to blog about it.

So JB and I scuttled off to bed at 3am, marinated and full, and got up this morning to meet up with my family and have the joint celebration of afternoon tea at the Lanesborough, a smart London hotel. Thanks, Dad. :)

It's been a pretty brilliant birthday, really. I like the age I've become and I'm on the cusp of a new job - with, presumably, new friends - a marriage and, with any luck, a happy life. If only for today, I definitely cannot complain.

I've come to the conclusion it was a really stupid idea to have a house party. Not because the flat, known by me and JB as the "Weasel Nest"*, is small. Not because we've invited far more people than can actually fit into it (we can shove them over the balcony, it's fine. The children downstairs can eat them). I've invited Jews and Greeks. This can only end in tears.

Everyone knows that when you come away from a Greek party or wedding, the memory that remains is the food. Utter social devastation can be caused by one person saying "it was okay, but the food was disappointing". Or worse, that there wasn't enough. My cousin makes jokes that his mother caters for the Israeli armed forces when she's having a couple of people round, but he's not entirely wrong. There has to be enough for leftovers to last at least two days and everyone has to leave threatening to instantly develop a hiatus hernia.

Jews, it turns out, not too much to my surprise, are just as bad. Or good, depending on how you look at it. Which is all find and dandy when you're attending a party hosted by one or t'other, but it's a bloody nightmare when you're hosting your own.

Leaving that aside, I have English guests too. They're pandering to their own stereotypes as well by just being interested in one thing: booze. Which is easier dealt with, if more expensively, but leads to lingering worries about people throwing up in places other than the toilet.

So now I somehow have to find a goodly selection of booze and cater for 20+ people squeezed into a tiny one bedroom nest. We intend to have a birthday cake at some point (I'm on Sunday, JB the next Friday, but it's also a belated housewarming put off since November) so we'll have to serve parev stuff  - things classified neither as milk nor meat - plus milky stuff. It's going to mean a lot of fish, I guess. Or pizza, but I have a fear of pizzas at parties - it harks back to the days I used to be one of what seemed like 4,000 small children all attending a schoolmate's birthday party. I'm thoroughly tempted to go really retro and have pineapple and cheese on cocktail sticks stuck into half a grapefruit, but I'd yack if I actually had to eat that. Especially the grapefruit. *shudder*

This is going to mean a shitload of bagels, and JB is going to have to help. I was supposed to take the day off tomorrow but after I quit, and took two sick days this week, that wasn't possible so he's using the last of his holiday to clean house and buy supplies. I've got a mother-daughter pampering session I promised my Ma on Saturday, so we're going to be very, very short of time. Plus we're out Friday night at his mother's doing the Shabbas thing.

Calm yourself, Alex. It can be done. They're Jews and Greeks, not rabid bagel-devouring monsters.

In a word: oy.

*I'll explain some time.