Jennieworld Today

It’s now only just over one hour away from N-day. I can feel panic rising in my throat and all the ideas which have, for the last week been humming busily in my head are at the moment making a speedy exit out of the nearest ear. It’s not that I am incapable of writing the volume of words needed to reach a daily target - I’ve just spent 15 minutes composing a 1,056 word e-mail to Jo, and during that time I also uploaded the contents of my digital camera onto the computer. It’s just that, whenever I start to write something that matters, be it a message in a greetings card, a personal statement in a CV or (not that I’ve done it before, but it’s a valid choice) a book, my language becomes so stilted and boring so as to be unreadable. Mind you, I’m not kidding myself that I write with the ease and fluency of Shakespeare when composing my e-mails or blog entries, just that these other items of composition are generally so much worse! So that’s really what I’m dreading. I have convinced myself that my book will not be fit even for my nearest and dearest to peruse.

Still, it’s still far too early to really be worrying about whether I’ll be ashamed of my book. I’ve got to achieve my daily word target for a couple of weeks first, then I can start worrying whether it’s actually readable.

Anyway, keep an eye on the widgetty thing in my tool bar, and I’ll do my best to find time to update it fairly regularly. Any wishes of good luck etc would be gratefully received at the usual address.

Yesterday I went to Hobbycraft (one of my favourite shops which don’t sell chocolate!) to stock up on all the craft items I will need to entertain my son through half term. I’m determined that it will not pass in a whirlwind of dvds as so many other holidays have, so we are DOING THINGS! Part of the itinerary involves making Halloween biscuits and decorations tommorrow, then I think there may be playdoh fun on Wednesday. Woohoo!

Anyway, I bought some wool in Hobbycraft (Rowan Cashsoft and Sirdar Snuggly) with which I have made a start on some more Christmas presents (photos in the New Year). I also found star shaped cookie cutters in different sizes with which I plan to create a Christmas tree made out of gingerbread cookies. I found the recipe in a Jane Asher book I bought a little while ago, and it looks so effective. I thought I’d make it and take it to my best friend Maria’s house on Christmas Eve. We go there every year - have done since my eldest was born - and they make us feel so welcome. I like to take something with me to say thank you for inviting us, and edibles always go down well!

We plan on making some Christmas tree decorations out of our playdoh later in the week, and then attach them to cards for my son’s school friends. Hopefully this particular idea can be spread over a few days - first we’ll make the decorations and bake them. Another day we can paint them, then another day make and decorate the cards. Genius planning to keep him occupied on rainy November Sunday afternoons!

What was I thinking? 3 days until mass hysteria, tantrums and panic breaks out in the Powell household! And I’m not even thinking about half term right now. Oh dammit. Just remembered that for most of the first week of NaNoWriMo I’m going to be looking after both boys full time, as it is, indeed, half term. Really don’t know where I got the confidence to sign up for this. I’m definitely out of my brain. 50000 words in a month. If anyone has seen my brain, please let me know and I’ll come and collect it. Distance no object!

I found this at Tim Roll-Pickering’s blog - which I found via Jo’s website! Sorry sweetie, I really do go to other websites now and again, you just have so much stuff in your blog!

But anyway, Yay! I’m not a geek! I plan on making hubby take the test though - sure he’s going to score way higher than me!

Recently, Cardiff Council have been implementing a city-wide initiative to encourage us to recycle - this involves two bins and a green recycling bag - which has met with mixed responses. My local residents association objects most strongly to the wheelie bins (although the strongest objection I can find is that they think them ugly!) and quite a lot of the parents at my son’s school object to the time it will take and the inconvenience of sorting their rubbish into different bins.

We have been recycling as much as we can for some months now (well before the city scheme was introduced in our area) and I’m finding it quite easy. We have two bins in our kitchen, one for recyclable stuff and one for non-recyclable waste. My main problem with the scheme is that, while the normal waste is collected weekly, the recycling bags are only taken every fortnight. As we live in a flat with nowhere to store the bags of rubbish awaiting collection, I very often end up either climbing over bags of ‘clean recyclable’ rubbish in my litchen for a week, or I have to go to the tip myself to clear the space. That isn’t too bad for me, as the tip isn’t too far away.

This isn’t really what this post is about. Sort of related, but I got sidetracked in my mind just as I started, for which I apologise! More specifically, this post is about my efforts to make my flat ‘greener’. I have a water meter, which has made me more aware of the water we use. I don’t waste water, I have an old fabric conditioner bottle filled with water in my cistern to reduce the amount which is used with each flush and I save water that would usually be wasted (e.g. the water that runs through while waiting for hot water to come from the tank) for watering my garden (in summer) or for cleaning the bath after it has been in use. I’ve started making sure (when I remember!) to switch off all non-essential appliances at the socket when not in use, I always have a full load in my washing machine, I try to avoid using the tumble dryer unless it’s desperate and I’ve started to introduce low-wattage bulbs into my light fittings.

Anyway, today I went to look at a few websites to find out more about wind turbines, solar panels and the like for producing your own ‘green’ power. I figured that, as we only have a two-bedroomed flat one of those should provide a fair proportion of our electricity. It turns out, however, that it could prove quite awkward to obtain one of these devices. We aren’t, at the moment, over rich (that’s having two small children for you!), but we aren’t on any of the benefits which dramatically increase the value of grants for these projects. Also, all the government grants I found stipulated that you had to have cavity wall insulation and loft insulation before you became eligible for these grants - not something we have much control over as the owners (leasehold) of a ground floor flat! Anyway, the cost for one wind turbine (installed) would be £1500 or thereabouts, and something I would love to do given the size of our electricity bills at the moment. I think, however, that all this will have to wait until we finally manage to afford a full-size (freehold!) house of our own. In the meantime, we’ll probably manage at least partial double glazing here this side of Christmas, and try not to shiver to much through the winter with our extra layers of jumpers and socks on to keep out the frostbite! 

Now, I know I’m not the most technically aware person in the world, but even so, I seem to have had quite a few teething troubles with WordPress. First off, I had real problems trying to install my bloglines button (as I mentioned before) as the code that I was given over at the Bloglines website didn’t actually neatly fit into the box it was supposed to go in. It had to be split between two boxes, then some of the surplus code had to be removed. Well, if I hadn’t had hubby to tell me which bits to keep and which bits to save I’d still be there now!

Then there seemed to be some problem with my uploading a picture for my avatar. It’s sorted now, but for a while back there all the comments I was leaving were accompanied by a black box - not the personal image I was really going for.

The latest problem I’m having is with creating pages. As you will see, at the top of my blog at the moment I have three categories - Front Page; Crafts; Cookies and Cakes. My original intention was to put ‘Cookies and Cakes’ into a sub-page together with a few other crafty-type pages. Whenever I assigned “Crafts” as the parent page though, the other page would disappear. I tried it every way I could think of, but can’t seem to find a solution, so there will just have to be a row of different categories across the top of my normal front page. Hmmm. Not overjoyed with that, but at the moment it’s the best I can do.

I went to the NaNo meet up last night in Cardiff, and it was good. It was nice to put some faces to names. I feel very much under pressure now though. It is obvious that a few of the people there have written significant amounts of work before, one lady even had a published book! It was quite intimidating to me, as I’m not someone who has said that I’ve wanted to write a book all my life. I don’t plan on letting anyone read this one, the only reason I’m doing this is to make me think, and thereby exercise my brain. If, in so doing, I find out that I’m a fairly competent writer, then maybe I will carry it on as a hobby afterwards. There is no way that I can even imagine that what I produce in November will be good enough to publish. Do many people go into NaNoWriMo with high expectations of having their finished work published, I wonder?

I absolutely love this idea for a present that I found on the Cancer Research UK’s cards and gifts website. It’s a gift set, available by mail order, of a bottle of Gordon’s Gin and a lemon tree! My mother-in-law does enjoy a gin and tonic from time to time, so I’m so tempted by this for her for Christmas! Another thing on the same page is a Wine and Vine present set which is exactly what it sounds like.

My only concern about the lemon tree idea concerns its smell. It is supposed to be a house-tree for at least the first while you have it, and through each winter. This summer, my mother-in law plant-sat an orange tree for a month, and in the confined space it occupied indoors it reeked! It really did smell like really pongy rubber, so I’m a bit worried that this might be a common characteristic of citrus trees, and therefore that this might not be the most welcome present! Does anyone know for sure whether or not lemon trees smell bad?

I know that I don’t actually live in America, but it’s interesting to find out how many people have the exact same name, isn’t it! Now, before I got married I was far more common - there were 765 Jennie Williamses! Hubby still comes off worst in the common stakes though - 4395 of him. My boys have 441 and 109 namesakes - not too bad.

Thanks to Jo for having this on her website, from whence I shamelessly nicked it (again!). I think she probably half-inched it from Antonia though, so shall refer to her too! (Hi!)

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 102 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?