Bravissimo

My replacement bra from Bravissimo has arrived at last , exactly on the day predicted . I manage to squeeze into it and it makes a strange groaning creaking noise which is slightly alarming , though I speculate that when buying from the shop its probable that any bra has been tried on a couple of times at least and rejected and thus has been slightly stretched in the process. This one however has been delivered straight from the factory or the warehouse or wherever Bravissimo bras begin their lives and is pristine . It feels enormously tight but I know now that this is the key to successful bra fitting so I take the plunge and strap myself in for the day .
Things are coming together . The bathroom is looking good , though I have no evidence that Roofing Man actually climbed up to the roof on Monday morning as there was no one here to witness the event .
Meanwhile Insurance Claim Assessor has arranged to come out next week to survey the scene . The rain continues but less forcefully and there is less water entering via the window . I have almost chosen the colour for the walls . The toilet roll stack is intact and Jessie has taken up temporary residence on the cream bathmat .
And its the weekend , almost , as well as the start of the Summer Holidays . Bliss.

I go to meet people after work to plan a conference and so pick up an e mail from D , back from Sheffield . He likes the bathroom cabinet but suggests its wrongly placed and makes some suggestions about moving the laundry basket into N's room which leaves her filling that one ( she could fill it daily with her stuff ) , and meaning I will not be able to use that one thus will have to share his which is in our room . As he points out , I wear very few clothes , so this shouldn't present a problem . He has re re sited the bin back to its original place as it matches the new cabinet . A point I had failed to note .
He is clearly not happy with the downstairs cabinet , stating in the e mail that the colour of the wood had surprised him . His comments surprise me , as it seemed fine to me , my only concern being the missing screwdriver and my inability to fix the castors which I had built myself up to . I return home at nine and look again at the wood which looks a very fine colour to me . He points out that it is nothing like the other wood in the room , despite the fact that he had ordered it on the basis that it would match . I see that he is right , and find it hard to see how I could have failed to notice this myself .
The bathroom looks great. We bring his laundry suggestions to fruition and I notice how he has stacked the thirty seven toilet rolls in a perfect three deep tower .
Really , its great to have him back . And as he always says , men can be so useful .

Marketing -his -novel -Neil notes blogging as the perfect displacement activity and really I think he is right . But there's also the life-as-blog syndrome .
I'm almost tempted to photograph the bog rolls .

Systems

Wonderfully satisfying 10 pm onwards allocating drawers in the new cabinet and clearing off the windowsill which was where toiletries were formerly stored . Some difficulties over fitting the cabinet against the right wall , necessitating some re jigging of the 37 toilet rolls which were lurking behind the door and completely re siting the bin . N favours the sytem in one of her friend's houses where the bathroom is kept clear and family members carry their own toiletries into the bathroom on a need only basis , from their bedrooms . In fact we had quite a companionable chat about all this and some other matters . I know this system would never work for me . Shower would be on , I would be happily under the water , hair dripping , reaching for the shower gel and .... it would be like camping all over again . Queing for half an hour for a hot shower and reaching front of queue only to discover the shampoo was back at the ranch .

The pointy screwdriver ?

Stepped out to get coffee and get caught in a thunderstorm .

Later , the storm catches me unawares at home just as a delivery van brings two large boxes of cabinets ( bathroom and laptop area ) which I had forgotten ( temporarily ) we had ordered .

Thus I find myself composing and typing in a text for D which says " where do we keep the pointy screwdriver " . Im being polite of course , I know exactly where I used to keep two screwdrivers , one of each type if you know what I mean . One with a flat end and one with a pointy end so that no job would defeat me . I go to the drawer and someone has moved the pointy one , and the flat one , which I attempt the job with , has to be rejected as I know in two minutes I will be stripping the screws and the whole job will go t**s up , as all the teenagers round here say , with great regularity and very seriously , as if not appreciating that for me, and perhaps others of my generation , there is a very real image attached to this little phrase.

I don't send the text in the end . I can predict that D in Sheffield will not know what I mean by a pointy screwdriver , and I haven't the stomach after a day report writing and attending meetings and driving round Walker lost ( until I manage to work out that the reason the satnav isn't working , this time , is due to remote control battery failure . ) I am so used to the satnav not working , and trying to figure routes out without it first , that its only when its clear I am not going to find my destination that I make a last ditch attempt to solve the satnav- not- working- thing with the simplest solution , two new batteries .

I then try to add the castors to the new cabinet myself by hand , without benefit of screwdriver and abandon that fairly quickly too .

Now I'm resigned to waiting for the return of the man who won't know where my screwdriver has gone , but will have a boxed set of his own all present and correct . Tense ? Who Me ?

hatemail

Just read the dooce blog today about hate mail and wondering , again , who it is who is reading my blog ? The records show a startling increase in the daily numbers , even yesterday , a Monday, being higher than the weekend figures . People seem to be coming back . Heather B Armstrong , who makes a living from blogging , seems according to today's blog to attract a high level of hate mail and I have to confess to finding the few samples she had posted highly amusing . Reminiscent of the ungrammatical text sent to D after he refused to trade his MR2 for a very un ok other-type-of-car , the name of which escapes me . ( everything seems to escape me these past days ) . I guess hate mail when directed personally could be deeply upsetting , but for myself I'd be delighted to get some feedback or some idea of who is reading the blog , why , and well Im not sure what else . Any comments gratefully received .

A long and complex dream about cotton wool and puffalumps and woke , finally with a dry mouth and a big fluffed out Toby cat tucked under my arm . The door opening had been done without me and cats were positioned all about the room waiting for me to emerge . 6 30 am and the shower runing already . I squint about trying to make sense of things and see Jessie climbing carefully into D 's overnight bag and everything falls into place . Someone has dropped my glasses onto the floor and there is an odd crunch underfoot as I stand on them . Great start to the day .

I wonder if Windermere is still there .

Books

I hate finishing books . It was hard to get started with Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans though I had loved her Short history of tractors in the Ukraine , and in fact it took me two attempts in between which I switched to something else , the name and details of which escape me it being at least two weeks ago . Something by Nina Bawden I think , who writes brilliantly and whose husband was killed in a train crash not long ago . Again I should know where that took place , but again , Ive forgotten . Paddington maybe . I remember at the time being shocked that bad things happen unexpectedly and just as tragically to well known people too . I digress. I hate it when books end . Having found Two Caravans hard going for about five minutes ( when I tried starting at around midnight probably at the end of a Day Job day ) , I then re tried soon after and found it incredibly poignant , tragic and very very funny all at once . Its definitely not a good idea though if you want to continue eating chickens and conversely could be very useful indeed of you are contemplating the vegetarian lifetstyle.
I see the last few pages approaching and feel myself slowing down . It makes the long nights bearable if I know there are people there by the side of the bed whose lives I am part of in some small measure , to share them with . A friend of mine , who clearly hit the insomnia thing before I did , talked once of treasuring the extra time for reading and I am eternally grateful to her ( thanks Barbara , though I expect she will have forgotten she said it by now ) for providing this take on something which I know many people find troubling , exhausting and indeed a source of anxiety all of its own .
A point is reached as the little pile of pages decreases when it becomes inevitable and my only way to cope is to start foraging for new material , either re reading something old ( with my memory this can be very rewarding ) , ordering something from e bay or Barter Books .
So now that Two Caravnans is done , its over to Fay Weldon .( She may not leave )