al fresco pet pedicures

Good grief, 3 posts in the last two days - the lass must be serious. Yes indeed, dear readers, I am sallying forth as I mean to go on. After my shockingly disparate blog presence I consider it a matter of duty and pride to up the ante on the ol' literary input. It always takes a little while to get back into blog-mode after being away, but I genuinely love it and want to get back in the habit.

Ok, so today started with my usual awakening - not from the infamous Mickey Mouse - but from my pet cat, Daisy. Every morning she considers it her duty to sandpaper-lick my face/fingers/elbow with her oh-so-cute-but-not-at-4:30-in-the-morning tongue, and maows pathetically (not a misspelling - that is exactly the disgruntled noise that she makes. Every morning...). I then heave myself out of bed, and semi-consciously stumble downstairs to let her out.

A few hours later I got up feeling slightly more human (slightly) and went to the kitchen for my restorative Weetabix. Today I was helping my Mum with the kids at church; one of our planned activities (and I'm now not sure how we came up with this idea) was to make chocolate bugs with the children - in a gesture towards cooking but without having to brave the hazardous e. coli-zone that is the kitchen at my church. My church, I should explain, is held in a local community centre, so we don't actually own the building. It's a nice set-up, but it does mean that we have to share the building with all the youth offender/ASBO kids/behavioural disorder groups that meet there during the week. All great stuff, but inevitably the kitchen has now begun to resemble what I imagine the scene a few minutes after the events at Chernobyl. You get a general feel for the building when you take a moment to more closely examine the posters and notices that adorn its walls - among them the bomb discovery protocol, a how-to-avoid-loan-sharks warning, and a text-this-number-if-you-know-someone-carrying-a-knife police appeal. Mhm, you get the idea.

So, basically, these chocolate bugs that we were preparing were made out of milk chocolate and white chocolate with a few good dollops of golden syrup to make them stick into a kind of chocolate dough. The picture in the Usborne children's recipe book looked pretty and simple enough, but turns out that what is essentially solid glucose turns children not into angelic darlings joyfully forming wings for their confectionary bugs using the helpful cocktail sticks provided for the purpose, but into minions of the apocalypse bent on wreaking havoc and destruction amidst much shrieking and chaos.

The afternoon was decidedly more relaxing, involving little more that sitting out in the sun in the garden and making my way through almost the entirety of hayleyghoover's blog. That's right kids, the girl is a legend. This blissful occupation was interrupted (it just took me about three attempts to spell interuppted interruppted interrupted. Shocking.) momentarily for a brief interlude where I had to help my Mum cut the cats' claws. Straightforward as this may sound, let me tell you - hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? No fury like a cat cajoled, more like.

Needless to say they didn't take kindly to being accosted in their casual promenade around the garden, and were even less impressed when they saw we were wielding a pair of nail clippers. Ye-es. Not impressed. I was the designated cat-restrainer for the proceedings, and I was cooing and chirping in all manner of soothing and encouraging ways, but to little avail. When we'd finished they flounced off disgustedly, appalled that we could ever subject them to such indignity.

Anyway, bedtime now - need to be up early to make my sarnies for work tomorrow. Off to take Mickey's battery out.