Author: comfortablymum6

A full time working, menopausal, mother of two living with my family in bucolic splendour amongst a menagerie of creatures, overgrown shrubs and hormonal tsunamis.

Just seen Mum via FaceTime for the first time in ages. Living so far away means travelling there cannot be done on a whim and over the duration of this pandemic, has been impossible. Haven’t seen her in the flesh for nearly a year. Big brother went to see her today at her care home and despite testing negative for COVID and having full PPE available, was not permitted to be in the same space as her. As she was escorted down to the Perspex partition behind which he was waiting, her face lit up with a big grin. She waved back at us as we shouted and gesticulated our greetings via his iPad. Couldn’t quite get the intercom coordinated to pick up what we or she said but I could see her mouthing our names as we alternately hove into her view. She looked happy, well fed and well dressed with her trademark glamour of earrings and lots of pearls and beads around her neck, but, due to lack of hairdressing availability, her (admittedly neatly brushed) hair was long and straight, devoid of her normal soft and carefully tended curls. We were not able to have any form of conversation due to the multiple interfaces that got in our way, and her limited attention span, but seeing the recognition and delight in her face was lovely. Now feeling unexpectedly emotional with the realisation of the distance between us – physical, technological and metaphorical. I know if I flew down there I wouldn’t be able to get any closer than I did tonight, and our visit would really only last a few minutes but despite knowing that, I want to go more.

Over the summer we had a huge problem with a burgeoning population of enormous rats nesting in the banks of ivy in our garden. They’d scurry in and out of the hen run at night, stashing little piles of food under the hen houses and scaring the bejesus out of me when, startled, they darted past me from their hiding places. We spent a significant proportion of lockdown trapping and poisoning the little blighters until I thought they had all gone. The little food caches have now started to reappear and there are frequent deposits of rat poo around and in the feeders. Have started on another campaign of annihilation and thought I was winning as sightings of rapidly moving brown blurs and trailing, twitching tails had reduced. Tonight as I shut up the hens, I looked inside to check for eggs and my head torch illuminated a perfect tableau of “Guilty Rat Caught in the Act”. I found the sneaky (pretty hefty) creature poised on its hind legs with its front paws around an egg, head turned towards me in astonishment, eyes wide and tail and whiskers twitching. There was a brief stand off as we stared at each other in surprise and then it whisked round and disappeared under the straw to emerge out the bottom of the shed through the hole it had chewed in the floor.

Cheeky bugger.

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Happy memories of the days when both daughters were living at home, were busy with school work/friends and I (obviously) ended up being the one who exercised and cleaned out the animals that they pestered us to have as pets, promising they would do all the upkeep……Nov 2013: Lost half hours of one’s life that one will never regain: attempting return four lively ferrets to a shed that they have absolutely no intention of going back into. Think trying to put unwilling cat out from/into a room and shutting the door. Multiply that by four and add trouser leg climbing, multi pronged, synchronised and startling attacks from inside/under the dog kennel, finger nipping, mad ninja leaping and ferret on ferret stealth attacks. Think I could now take on and win against any nationality of insurgents single handed.

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Middle aged Dad (aka Victor Meldrew): “What was it I asked you to remind me to do?”

Senior daughter, who was (at the point of communicating said fact) likely not listening as had been fielding multiple requests/commands from her Dad most of the morning: “Err, can’t remember”

Dad: “Bloody Hell! I can’t trust you to do anything! I depend on you to remind me of these important things! What was it?”

Daughter: “Soz, dunno.”

Dad (Now very irritated): “Come on! …..Think! …..I know what it was but I want you to remember!”

Daughter: “Well if you know what it was, why do you need me to remember??”

Dad: “That’s hardly the point!

Daughter…..Perplexed silence….

🙄🙄

Has irritating neighbour syndrome.

Lived here for 17 years and (because we live about 1/4 mile down a farm track) have always left our bins in the lay-by at the top of the farm track.
Never an issue with neighbours.
New neighbours moved in at top of track 3 years ago and immediately started leaving passive aggressive notes on bins informing us they shouldn’t be left out.
I took round some of our eggs and a cake, introduced myself, apologised and explained to this retired and po-faced busybody the difficulty of lugging up to four bins (necessitating multiple journeys) up and down the potholed track every week when I’m working full time and often on call
Notes continued, together with tutting and gesticulating from her window when I passed.
Being a good neighbour, I therefore have bust a gut to ensure bins are not out for the time in between collections.
Was away last week so bins remained out for about 4 days until we got back.
Brought them in on Sunday and then put out all the recycling bins as my (complex and very confusing) bin calendar suggested it was recycling day today.
Drove out to work today to find this at the end of the lane.
I would have brought the bins in today as soon as I had noticed I’d made a mistake and they hadn’t been emptied but now I am going to leave them all week just to piss her off.
😈😈

I’ve never given the ridiculous proffered rules of “age appropriate” dressing the time of day (I immediately started wearing mini skirts more often the day I turned 50), however was brought up with the concept that at work one should appear professional, sensible and smart. As a medical student in the 80s, I was once sent home from a ward round by a crusty old consultant for wearing trousers, with the instructions to return in a skirt, and a female relative was looked at aghast when she arrived at her job as a junior lawyer wearing a checked shirt (“Good grief! Are you going to a BARBECUE or something?”) rather than the standard plain white one.

Things have moved on, and now juniors (and young consultants) come to work in casual clothes or scrubs, which I suppose makes sense. I still have a “work wardrobe” of smart dresses, skirts and trousers with “proper” shoes and save my more whimsical and relaxed stuff for home/socialising.

Over lockdown and the current restrictions, everything has changed and I’ve started to wear more relaxed clothes and occasionally smart trainers to work. Today, I looked in my wardrobe and decided that there is a whole array of stuff that I save for going out that I normally would never wear to work.

As I never go out anywhere at present and am only going to get older and fatter, I’ve decided I might as well bin the division between work/non-work wardrobe and I am heading out in a fetching leopard print number.

Things that have made me smile today:

A family of tiny wrens who have taken up winter residence in the swallow’s nest under our porch and who peer over the rim and chatter at me when I go in and out of the front door.

Big Stupid Spaniel turning his front end round to catch the ball that rolled past him and snapping it up in his jaws, together with the end of his feathery tail, then spending the next few minutes (unable to compute letting go of the ball and therefore his tail) going round, trapped in a rotating circle of doom, whilst I collapsed into a hedge, helpless with mirth.

The incessant rain stopping, and taking an afternoon stroll in the autumn sunshine with ‘im outdoors and the dogs

Knocking my bottle of Corona off the kitchen surface onto the stone floor as I was cooking dinner where it bounced, span wildly without smashing, fizzing up the contents and wedging the lime into the neck, preventing most of the beer from escaping. I picked up the bottle, poked the lime back in and carried on drinking