This blog is neglected, and I miss it. In some semblance of order, I have:

1. Just about kept my shit together for my sister’s wedding.  But I cried afterwards. I miss her. She lives ten minutes away, but I still miss her.

2. Done a spectacularly forgettable job interview. Well, it was all right, but they don’t quite know what to do with me, and I think I slightly over-egged the I’M SO ENTHUSIASTIC! bit.

3. Worked a big lot. My job is pedestrian in the extreme, as my boss has an unusually mundane caseload. But there’s still a lot of it to go around.

4. Done something I haven’t done for about four years, and arranged to go for coffee with some other females. I am not very good with this kind of thing. Next week.

5. Lost five pounds. And not down the back of the sofa. I don’t know where it went, I’ve been eating chocolate every single day.

I bought a new pair of black linen trousers today. I am feeling very summery.

Batman and I went for a two-mile walk, unfortunately interrupted halfway by coffee and a not-very-nice muffin. I did not eat it all, so you know it must have been bad.

My sister is getting married in 2.5 weeks. I am a bit emotional.

The lights are fixed! We can see to pee!

I have applied for a new job (and possibly taken leave of my senses).

I almost fitted into a size 12 skirt earlier. Almost. This is good.

I am very tired, and am on call tomorrow.

We’re in semi-darkness here at Wayne Manor. I was in the powder room the other evening, when there was a POP and some of the lights went out. I say some because:

• One of the three bulbs on the upstairs hall light has fused
• The ceiling lights in the bathroom, the boudoir and the sister’s room have gone out
• The junk room glory hole study ceiling light has also conked out
• All of the plugs upstairs are in working order
• Downstairs all fine (so far)

Bats and I investigated the fuses the following evening. Now, je suis ze Queen of Ze Flatpack, and Ikea is my country. Also, I am liking to be tinkering, and have been known to reseat a tap in my time. However, I have a strict No Electricity rule. It didn’t matter, though, as we couldn’t work out a damned thing.

We have very confusing wiring in Wayne Manor.

There’s one big 30A fuse, several trip switches, and no apparent fuse box like in normal houses. It looks as if the electrics have been jerry-rigged in fits and starts by the good Dr Frankenstein, after several heavy nights on the sloe gin. I am seriously thinking it would be easier to move house than to get to the bottom of this.

So we are persevering in the semi-darkness. Not to put too fine a point on it, in case I stab one of you in the twilight, but the powder room is causing a few problems. We’re using one of Ikea’s finest stick-up battery lights, which doesn’t stick up any more, and only just produces enough light to stop one from peeing on the floor, or on one’s feet. (And yes, it has happened to me at work. It’s so much more revolting when it’s someone else’s pee.) I am in the happy exhibitionist position of not shutting the door at all, whereas Bats and the sister are not enjoying themselves one little bit. I will say this, there’s a lot less clocking in the toilet, presumably ’cause no-one can see their newspaper in there any more. However, the longterm problem of how exactly three people get through quite so much toilet roll is getting worse: now the toothpaste is vanishing. I swear, someone is eating it, and the toilet roll. Mmm. Tasty.

Have just set the alarm for 08.35am. That’s two hours later than usual. Oh, joy.
I am really very tired.

I’m at the bloody rota again. Oh, how I wish people would stop taking holidays (except for me, of course). Speaking of which, my boss is off, so I’ve been having exciting times.

Here’s what I’ve recently removed from unsuspecting members of the public:

• Freckles x 3
• Pimples x 2
• Manky spiky bits of fingernail x 1

A while ago, I was asked to talk to the medical students’ surgical society about growing up to be a surgeon. I told them it was brill. Well, what are you to say? It’s brill in parts, and dead boring in parts, and you spend a lot of time massaging other people’s egos, wow goo. You get a laugh every day. Everyone lies, House is right. The pay is good but the hours are still a bit uncertain, as are the chances of future employment. Anyway, there were fifty or thereabouts at the talk, and now I’ve been asked to speak to a bigger group (about 120) on a particular aspect of my particular thang. Hmm. Many people. I’m distinctly remedial when it comes to teaching, and I waggle my hands around too much.

On the plus side, I do have some super-minging photos to show. It would be a shame to waste them?

There are a number of good points about being married to a superhero:

1. He has just washed my car.

2. He has also just changed a light bulb (after asking him every day for a week). (Yes, I know I can change a light bulb by myself, but it’s one of the footery wee awkward ones in the hall and I couldn’t be annoyed with the performance it takes to change it. Very expensive mistake, those lights.)

3. He has to have a cover story, a job so that folks don’t suspect his true identity. His cover story involves a week off work, so in the interests of marital harmony (and my lazy butt), I joined in celebrating half term. Gosh, it’s brilliant.

Q: So, what did I do with my week (and a bit extra) off work?

A: Almost flipping nothing. Well, the Mammy celebrated her 70th birthday, with a grand tour of almost every shop in the country that sells mother of the bride outfits. I swear, I drove 400 miles in three days. The sister’s wedding approacheth. We remain unsuccessful in our quest. Hmm. Mammy is Hard to Fit. Dress Shop Women are scary.

I made birthday cake for Mammy, and soup for us, and pancakes, twice,  for 1. Batman’s visiting nephew from Ingerland and 2. Shrove Tuesday . I had a first attempt at both risotto and bread pudding  - surprisingly good, given my negligible culinary skills. I puttered around, and braved the butcher’s again – and this time I got him to mince some steak for me. How brave am I?  I watched a lot of My Name is Earl, and  reclined in bed a good bit, and finished reading Geoff Hill’s jolly darned funny book Way to Go. (How can you resist a book by a man who wrote The Road to Gobblers Knob?)

I had one very important plan, one job that Must Be Accomplished. Predictably for such a procrastinating toad, I didn’t go near it until tonight. At 6pm, after 10 days off, and with 14 hours of holiday left, I began to tidy my desk. I am a lazy so-and-so. And already there is a hiatus: for I am blogging. The desk is cleared, and that means six(!) four-inch-high piles of papers and dusty junk are sitting on the bed. I am going for the navigable river tactic, clear the lot and then weed out what’s allowed back onto the desk.  I am a lazy so-and-so.

I also had a birthday, which was happy. It was very quiet, and involved chicken korma, and I had a lovely time.

Back to the desk. Argh.

Isn’t it fun when you mix up the space esbetwe enwords? No? OK. Start again:

Pot Roast

I made it. Batman lurved it. I was grumpy today. Some women apologise; me, I make food in lieu. (D, if you’re reading, Yes, I am now showing affection with food.) I also made him apple crumble (for I was very grumpy, and it is his favourite Afters). We had a pointless grouch because he was wearing his best jumper whilst dusting down a cobweb. I know what you are thinking. It is either:

1. Is she crazy? He voluntarily does housework, and she grouches ’cause of his jumper?

or 2. Cobwebs? What a slatternly housewife.

In answer:

1. Yes, I know. That is why he got Pot Roast and crumble.

2. Yeah. So what. Bite me. It was only a cobweb, not a jar of anthrax.

I bought the pot roast yesterday, in a proper Butcher’s Shop. It’s quite scary. It’s kind of a rite of passage to becoming a grown-up woman, having dealings with the Butcher. The place was packed, and it was all businesslike-city-butchers, not the wayhey-missus-look-at-thighs-on-that-(chicken) small-town butchers, that I’ve visited with Mum. I’ve only ever been to the butcher a couple of times by myself, and usually with a direct instruction about what to get. The woman in front of me was buying noisettes of lamb, and 800 grammes, no make it 900 grammes, of something else. Me, I was figuring if the pink thing was pork (which Bats will eat) or lamb (which he won’t). Grammes don’t mean anything to me, not outside the lab anyway. In a past life, I spent a lot of time weighing out six thousandths of a gramme of this and eleven thousandths of the other, using a very fiddly microbalance. It was fun. But 800 grammes of dead cow? I have no concept of that. I cook in ounces and pounds (although I measure in cm and m, except for height).

So I was feeling intimidated, and a bit sweaty, and trying to figure how much steak to buy and could I ask for a certain amount or did I just have to take a pre-cut piece, when, all at once, I saw the pot roast. Aha! Ah ha ha ha! It said “POT ROAST” on the sign. Then I was home on a boat.

“Next!” said the Butcher. (I know this bit now, I have to pretend to know how much I need.)

“How much is in that pot roast, please?”

“Nearly 2 3/4 pounds.” (Hurrah for Imperial Measurements! Although should I be annoyed that he pegged me for an ounces woman when the grammes lady was clearly much older than me? Well, I thought she was, but…)

“That’ll do lovely, thanks!”

You do know that it wouldn’t have mattered a hoot how much or little it weighed. A few short moments later, it was mine, and I was skipping from the Butcher’s, like a child on the last day of school. I seared it in butter and oil, and cooked it with onions, carrots, celery and stock. It melted in the mouth. I feel one step closer to being a grown-up. And he did deserve it after me being grumpy this afternoon.

(PS: We are going to be eating pot roast for a month. It is far too big. But I survived the Butcher’s.)

10.05pm on Saturday, so what might I be doing? Making out the damned rota for February. What else would you do on a fine Saturday night? The full moon is making me cranky and inappropriate. I banged the table at Batman tonight, but not at him exactly. I was pretending that I was answering someone who really really really bugs the shit out of me. Bats laughed and said he wished I’d say it to them, not him.

What is it about celery? Look at it sideways, and my hands reek of it for days. I made pot roast tonight, and my hands are stinking. The pot roast is pot roasting nicely. However, tonight’s dinner of lasagne was not so successful. Tip: do not replace lasagne with penne if you run out of lasagne halfway through compounding the dish. It just makes teeth-crackingly crunchy bits. I am still not a Domestic Goddess.

I bought a frock today. It is black, with patterned sleeves, and spangles around the bottom.  I am not sure how good an idea this will be, but Batman and I are going to Gotham next weekend and I need to look like I have bought some clothes this century, apart from scrubs (not bought, of course) and cords (rediscovered in back of wardrobe). Batman will be donning academic dress, to sit on the platform and look clever. I will be clapping enthusiastically, in a spangly kind of way.

I have got a big thing for black patent this winter. I have mad sore high black patent shoes (from Clarks) and divinedarling flat black mock-croc boots from Dune. The boots have been glued to my feet for weeks. Comfort and style. Excellent.

Back to the rota. Gosh, but it’s boring. My right leg is asleep from the knee down (and my brain from the chin up).

I was, erm, doing a bit of thinking the other day. I mean, doesn’t everyone do their best thinking in the same place? I was also reading  A Piano in the Pyrenees, by Tony Hawks. It’s quite enjoyable. The door was ajar, and Batman was along the hall in his secret lair the study. I sniggered, and the conversation followed thusly:

B: Are you all right?

FB: Yep…** Outbreak of giggling at a slightly uncouth passage. **

B: Blade? How can what you’re doing be so funny? You’re weird, seriously.

FB: Sweetie, you do know that I’m reading a book in here?

The Mammy hath spoken, and we are all to pray to St. Roch, who apparently does a nifty line in Warding Off Plague. We hope it works for Swinefloo. I have been absent for some time. There are three reasons for this:

1. The hours and hours swallowed up by rota-writing.
2. The hours and hours swallowed up by a footery audit I am doing.
3. The deepest bluest funk for a long time.

I’m always less blue when I blog, so it’s time to blog. I have had an exciting weekend. I got a little chopper thing recently, and whizzed up some rather passable pasta sauce in it on Friday. Mum’s got a big version, and the blade cuts only because it whizzeth so fast, so I must admit to a moment of carelessness when I was washing my own little one. Whoops. Sliced to the bone, dear Readers, I think. Bled all over the place and had to give Batman instructions on how to test if I’d severed a tendon. (Happily, no.) What I will say is that I haven’t been able to wash dishes all weekend. Isn’t that terrible?

(If anyone tells him that I could have worn rubber gloves and kept on trucking, then you’re dead.)