Well…have cleaned every window inside and out. I think that some of them haven’t been done for a couple of years!! It’s much nicer now. Weekend of chaos – played a gig on Saturday night, it was such a long day, we hung around for about four hours before we were due to go on, and then the bass amp was quirky and it was all a bit of a debacle. Though two people that I know from where I’ve been working for the past two months turned up! (About two minutes after we’d finished, but still…it was so nice of them to come!) Then we headed back to M & R’s and drank too much to drive home and slept in their spare room…it was like being on holiday! In the morning I got the tour of the house and plants that I am looking after for a month beginning on Boxing Day. I am looking forward to it…subscribing myself to the theory that ‘a change is as good as a holiday’ – got my fingers crossed.

My sister has taken it upon herself not to come to Christmas…a decision that is pretty weird, but she is of the opinion that the family is a dysfunctional farce, and so is driving two hours out of town to have Christmas down the coast. My mum and dad (though recently split) are both coming, so M and I are going to prepare a feast – for such a ‘dysfunctional family’ I think we will have fun – her loss. My brother is living it up in London and writing emails about spying Gwyneth Paltrow across a crowded room…tee hee…now if he sees Clive Owen somewhere, then I’ll be impressed!!

Yesterday I made a cake – ostensibly to take to R’s birthday in Edinburgh Gardens but it wasn’t done in time. It’s double layer chocolate made with wholemeal flour – kind of scary but also comfortable too. I think the number is now up to two (that’s the number of cakes I have made this year…mmmmm, domestic goddess).

OK – I have sent my package to Iowa!! It is now in the hands of the postal service and there is nothing more I can do. Hopefully the response to the package will be recorded on CrunchyFrog – I’ll wait and see…

What else? My car!! Oh. My. God. It cost sooo much money. I can hardly bear to think of it. My Mastercard is quivering under the stress and my overseas plans are being rapidly downscaled to somewhere cheaper….and cheaper still!! At this rate I’ll just stay in the country and see if I can mind someone elses house *sigh*. Apparently there is a card from Glasgow at my mum’s house from Clair (the Tasweigan I used to live with) so maybe she would offer the use of her couch?! The car runs quite beautifully, thought the brakes do this weird thing where they are mostly fine, and then you have to push them to the floor…and at a certain speed when you aren’t accelerating it kind of judders a bit – this is not what I paid a one way ticket to London for, so it will be returning after Christmas to be looked at.

All my Christmas shopping is done. Feeling fairly smug. Had it all giftwrapped when I bought it (rather soulless, but a low-stress decision). Basically the house is like a brothel, but I am hoping I can downscale that tomorrow. I am going to make two salads – one is a pasta salad with red capsicum, sunflower seeds, basil and sundried tomato, and the other I haven’t decided – maybe potato salad (spuds are good) or a bean salad? Eeek.