Boast

My son is an amazing up and coming artiste.

There you have it - the first post beginning with the words "My son" - a slippery slope you may say - slithering down into the mires of mediocrity, boasting about a child that is no better or worse than any other, chirping proudly as if it's anything to do with me what magic he may or may not possess... ah but there I'll have to stop you, for my son is an amazing up and coming artiste... the "e" on the artiste only proves it.

Here's what he made tonight, a vicious, frankly honest and delicately fragmented look at modern life, told from the innocence of the young with the sharp edges and blistering heat of a 21 month old mind in turmoil, or as he calls it "Obair"  - (Irish for Work).... he has already pointed out to us the multi-facets of the work, how some parts seemed to have gotten hurt "Bupa" (Spanish for little hurt - we keep correcting him and telling him it's VHI), he kept shouting at his father to watch as he stuck on the metallic pieces of paper, and has now pointed out to us the stars, dogs, and boats that we are only beginning to see...  He's asleep now as I type this, obviously drained from the effort...
Anyway - that's the Boast, now that it's out I can calm down and refrain from ringing up Mensa or anything...

Strangers of the day

So today, I tried hard to notice strangers.  They're human beings after all, and they live all over the place, buying things, indeed selling things in the same shops we do, even working in the same places as us.  (And I say us in the comforting sense of we, me and you, my lovely blog readers, who I know individually and treasure dearly - give an aul wink into that Webcam, you never know how clever my blog might be at reaching out... but enough creepiness, and on to creepiness directed at others....)
Here's what I found out -
The delivery man for the company that dropped in three boxes for a colleague of mine, likes to pretend he knows his customers by their first name, "I've a few boxes for (Colleague) here" he said with a knowing wink, ok not really a wink, but he probably did blink, I didn't see his face since I just signed his electronic signing thing with a nostalgic feeling - reminding me as it did of the old etch a sketch.. - see I noticed the thing more than the person there... next challenge puhlease (as I chant to myself, I am a people person, I am a people person)
Lunch time - what better time to make new friends - I sat with one IT person I know, and two other probable IT people.. and they are people - believe me, I saw them eating - well actually I saw them with plates of what looked like an absence of lunch on them... wait a minute!  They advised me on my IT problems, with competing grandeur and fake excitement befitting the glamourous world of IT - it's like OZ, same exact number of vowels and consonents - coincidence?

On my way home I tried to notice strangers in traffic - people coming against me - well lit by an orangey snow ridden low winter sun, that was blinding them all and making them look probably a lot more annoyed than they actually were - one couple were very similar to each other in their "sun grimace" a remarkable show of unibleness (unity in miserableness), while another young lady in a beetle should have looked cool and popular, but she just looked hassled.
Bottom Line: Not one stranger in traffic or anywhere else today looked like someone I wanted to be.  Nor do I think I'll be winning any people person prizes, but then the prizes for those things tend to be rubbish enough and I do not need another goldfish.
What do you notice about the strangers around you?

What can you do in 5 mins?

I have decided to make this blog the no 1 home on the internet for home-makers, domestic gods & goddesses (not wanting to be sexist), and have-it-all-ers... how will I manage this?
Easy Peasy - I will follow up last week's sensational meditation on light bulb changing with another useful house person's story - this time, about a recipe.
No ordinary recipe
A recipe for a magical person.
Anabel Karmel was recommended to me when my young fella was just a sprout, when we were just beginning our journey into food.  "She makes it easy" I was told, by another fellow goddess of  things in homes, "she plans out every day what you should give the baby - you don't have to think at all" Now if you know me, or if you've been reading my blog of late - you may  have noticed that thinking is something I have become particularly averse to since the great adventure of parenthood began... So I was all for it.
I am a freezer filler of a mother.  Making up for the guilt of not being at home all day every day to nourish my child with cuddles and hugs, I, instead choose to shun all processed food (despite it & it's industry providing me with a livelihood for the last however long people have been paying me to show up places and talk seriously with a look of concern) - and cook regularly in the home, for my darling, so I can fill the freezer full of love.
Now, Danger is no fussy eater, and for the first 5 or 6 months of "solids" (which were far from solid on the way in or out i can tell you) he didn't mind getting the same ice cube shapes of butternut squash, parsnip, carrot etc, that Anabel recommended. She did recommend plenty of other stuff too, but they didn't say suitable for freezing on them - ipso facto...
However, of late, he seems to be getting a little, fatigued, with lasagne 5 times a week, interspersed with ckn stew, ckn balls, fish curry, and fish & tomato stuff.
So back to Anabel I went, to open up the chapter on 2 - 3 year olds -  She had a lovely looking recipe for fish balls.
She is a big lying liar though.... or else she is writing for wonder woman, or else there was a typo and a 0 missing... because it was wrote there that in 5 minutes one could - grate some carrot, make breadcrumbs, beat an egg, finely chop some onions, chop up the fish mix, and all  sorts of other things (each of which actually easily take me 10 mins to do), then roll the mixture up into cherry tomato sized pieces.  5 minutes preparation time.  With a straight face she said that - obviously not including the time you need to clean the fishy mess off your hands either.
Either she is trying to make me feel like a loser or I am just not as good a cook as I thought (and yes, a good cook in my book is a fast one)
Danger enjoyed the stupid things in the end anyway - I didn't get to try them, since they had far too much effort gone in for me to waste one on myself!!!

(you could have prepared fish balls in the time taken to read this by the way)