Plenty

Today was as full as this tea towel.

For a start, TallGirl had yet again forgotten to find out the return time from her afternoon sports club. A phone call from another mum last night at least confirmed that she is not the only one... So this morning I took both forgetful girls to school and sent them in to find out the time so the grown ups could organise their day.

Home then to continue my assault on the mountain of washing that has somehow built up in one lazy weekend... And of course to finally get around to harvesting the peppers/chillis. These are a bit of a middle ground: they are mix of 'piment doux' and 'piment fort' - though I have to say the 'fort' are not very fort. A tingle on my fingers when I was cleaning some of seeds later confirmed there is a little heat, but not enough to make it into the box in my freezer marked 'chillis'. Instead, these will be (after blanching them today) shredded and frozen like that for omelettes, curries, chillies and salads or roasted and frozen/stored under oil depending on whether I remember to buy more oil tomorrow. The fat ones (not in this picture) were blanched, halved and frozen for stuffing whenever I can be bothered. In case you need a sense of scale, most of them are six inches long, so not chillies as you might understand them. Later in the kitchen I spent some happy time thinking about how fudge works, to help a pal understand why hers had done something odd. I think in the long run it may help me in my quest to venture beyond vanilla in the flavouring stakes.

Later a neighbour tried to get me to sign up to be on the 'list' of folk on the local (ie commune - or parish) council who elect the mayor. I said no! Which given yesterday's pathetic performance at saying no to stuff was a major victory. (Must remember to sign up to vote though, so I can at least vote for those who want to stop hunters parading through my garden, grumble grumble.)

In other news, CarbBoy finally learned how to ride a bike today. I would like to put that in capitals and bold at the top of my blip and say nothing else. But I fear if he ever read this it might embarrass him.... His stubborness (we don't know where he gets that from...) means he has resisted fiercely all attempts to teach him to ride. But a chance comment a few days ago about how I wondered if there was time for him to learn before our upcoming trip to Amsterdam... combined with a shabby parenting moment today where he was stuck alone outside our house for 15 minutes* meant that I returned to find him trying to ride his bike on the grass. Within literally one minute of him doing it on the slightly downward sloping dirt track instead... he was off. And that on a bike too small for him and with (pretty much) flat tyres. I tried to appear calm on the outside, but inside I was shrieking with pride (and fear that he would fall off since he was still in his basketball shorts and would have lost his knees....)

A long (too long given his hotel's viber/facetime blocking and the cost of international phone calls) conversation with Mr B has only added to my sense of well-being. I can't remember a day lately when I felt so... delighted with my life.

We had homemade pizza to celebrate.

Tomorrow I will mostly be baking Batenburg.

*Another parent picked them up from basketball. I warned them (other parent and CarbBoy) that I might be a bit late getting home. Turned out due to TallGirl's bus being VERY late that I was home 15 mins after CarbBoy. But the other parent had just left him outside on his own and not even offered that he might want to go into their house. Sigh. Happily we live in a very safe place (it appears) but, you know, still.