The Mezzanine

Stuff that is happening this week:

I got my second vaccine dose! Woo!
...seriously, after months of watching all my overseas peeps get vaccinated, I can finally stop being green with envy! (Now I just need the under-12s vaccines to figure themselves out, and I can relax.)



My husband turned 47. He is OLD, guys.



And about two hours from now, we should be getting our puppy. I'm thoroughly excited, even though it's going to complicate my life even more!

Growing up, my family's Christmas traditions were:
- decorate the tree
- Advent calendar
- special breakfast together
- present exchange
- lunch/dinner with extended family



Nowadays, I've added a couple more things. We have:
- decorate the tree
- Advent calendar
- Advent candles
- watching A Muppet Christmas Carol (all of us)
- watching Die Hard (no kidlets for at least the next decade)
- Christmas stockings (filled with help from the kidlets)
- supper left out for Santa
- carrots left out for reindeer
- special breakfast together
- present exchange
- lunch/dinner with extended family


This year, our whole household has a cold, so we won't be visiting anyone. But we'll still have plenty of fun at home.

One day I will have my female cat called Minerva, dammit.

But for now, he's very cute, very purry, and his name is Felix because I am a total Latin nerd.

Fascinating stuff, I know...

I have seen quite a number of conversations on the internet in the last couple of years, all about people wearing shoes indoors. Inevitably, the conversation is split between two groups. Let's call them:
1) Sockpuppets (aka people who take off their shoes when they enter a dwelling)
2) Ruffians (aka people who wear shoes indoors, the barbarians)

( my observations )

I am learning how to make bread and it is AWESOME.


For many years now, I have bought supermarket bread, occasionally been indulgent and bought bakery bread, and every few weeks made a loaf in my bread maker. The bread maker is awesome, mainly because I hate kneading.

However, last year, I got sick of the bread maker taking up space on my kitchen bench, and sick of wistfully glancing at my KitchenAid dough hook, and decided to find out how to make bread in the KitchenAid. A year in, and I can produce a fairly reliable white loaf. (And, once again, awesome, because the Kitchen Aid did the kneading, which I hate.)

Then came my birthday (two weeks ago, for those of you playing at home). For which I was given the book Flour Water Salt Yeast (Google is your friend) and the requisite supplies.

I am now MAKING BREAD BY HAND. Huzzah!

...and I am still not kneading. Because kneading sucks, and because my new book doesn't want me to knead anything. I am very thrilled about this.


My first loaf was made last Saturday, while my husband was available for kid watching. My current loaf is being made during the day, while he's at work, because I am a crazy person and enjoy making my life chaotic.

In a few hours, I will have either newly baked whole-wheat loaves baked to perfection in a dutch oven, or some hilarious photos.

Wish me luck!

Seriously considering sending my kids to the school with no easy transport options.


Because I'd like to send my kids to a school where we can walk together (when they're young), and then they can ride their bikes (when they're older), and on wet days they can catch the bus (from literally across the road), and when I'm not home I can tell them to walk to Grandma's house instead, because it's on the way.

But...

There's this school which is none of those things. They couldn't walk there. They couldn't ride there. They couldn't catch a bus there. It would involve me driving them every single day until they turned 12.

...and it's a bilingual school. A bilingual English/German school, where all the grade 6 kids are legitimately fluent in German, and they have maths classes in German, and art classes in German, and science lessons in German, and literally half their schooling is in German.


Today I learned that the two bits of schooling that matter to me most are the independent transport options and the languages. And that I can't have both at once.

My husband has never lived with a dog before.


We're dogsitting for my parents, and I said that, since I can't feed the cat (long story), I should be in charge of feeding the dog. One animal each. The husband agreed.

One day in...

I was in the shower, and the husband came in and asked "What does the dog have for breakfast?" Didn't know why he was asking, so I explained - at which point he turned to the kidlet and said "Okay, let's go feed the dog."

...um.

"Darling! The dog's already eaten."
"What? He can't have."
"He definitely has."
"But he's following me around, looking hungry."
"Yes. Because he's a dog."

I'm not entirely sure what he was expecting.

Back from holiday with my family, and I'm starting to settle into our new house. (Pics to come.)

Elf has also moved in – as of yesterday – and has now moved from huddling in a corner to wandering around exploring and occasionally meowing indignantly about its failure to be the previous house. I'm having to keep him inside at the moment, which is a bit of a pain, but at least he's got plenty of new stuff to keep him interested.

We're having friends over to dinner tonight, which is nice. So far, I have failed horribly at baking, so my kitchen is currently full of smokey smells and charred ruins of cake. Hmmph. Back-up dessert is in the oven – where I can't see it, and can hence believe it to be perfect for at least another hour.




Travel update:

Still not totally finalised, but...
As of mid-February, we're going to be in Stuttgart for a year. Which will involve lots of seeing different bits of Europe. Yay!

The husband and I are currently dealing with the early stages of moving. Mainly, cleaning and gardening at our old address, so we don't look like horrible slobs and vagabonds to the landlords. And then, in a few days, we'll switch to cleaning and gardening at our new address.



Still not certain, by any means, but I said you'd know when I did, so...

Most likely? Next year we will be living in Germany.