Yesterday Marty got a day older and I got to spend the day reassuring him that life is really only beginning…

Marty after Dinner

He didn’t want me to make his birthday into a big event so we went away together for a few days and finished our trip with a great meal at Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant in Tokyo.

After Dinner Relaxation

I was in Holland recently visiting my family.  My Dad has been making his garden pretty and he was very keen to show me his new plants.

“You have to take a picture of me and my wonder bum”, he said.

Well, like the mature adult I am, all I could do was giggle at the thought of a wonder bum.

“A wonder bum?”

“No”, he said, “a wonder bum!”

I don’t know a lot of Dutch, but since I was hearing “bum” I did wonder if the word for tree was going to be something similar to the German word “baum”.  It turns out that the plant, in Dutch, is called “Wonderboom“, and “boom” is the word for tree. But please, don’t ask me to pronounce “boom”.

Dad and the Wonderboom

My sister was chatting to me about my grandmother just the other night.  I live far away from my family and I haven’t found a good way to keep in touch with people who don’t use computers.  I can easily chat to my sisters on Facebook, or my dad on Skype, but my grandmother doesn’t use a computer.  Using a phone also hasn’t worked as conversations usually consist of repeated phrases like, “Is that you Karen…”, “What are you saying…”.  We say words, but we aren’t communicating.

My sister Christine and I spent hours walking with my grandmother when we were children.  We also used to sing silly songs about rainbows, dragons, and puffymelons.  It was only when my mum sang similar songs to my baby sister that I discovered that “puffymelons” are not the gnome-like little men my childhood self imagined should work at a train station but were really a mispronunciation of “pufferbellies”.

Not all the songs were childish as my grandmother also taught me to sing “Acushla Mine”.  I used to think that was a place in Ireland but I now know it’s term of endearment so I recorded it for my grandmother.

Acushla Mine

My great-nephew was born in the early hours of this morning.  He was five weeks early, and weighs 5 pounds 5 ounces.  He’s doing well and my niece is doing well.  But it’s going to take me a while to get used to being called “Great Aunty K”.  Of course it will be a while before he can say anything, but we’ve already begun to use these new titles.  How could I resist calling my sister Christine “granny”?

Marty and I finally got round to celebrating our 15th Wedding Anniversary.  We went to a beautiful Italian restaurant in the Tokyo Bay area. We decided on the 7 course menu as it gave us the option of trying lots of small dishes.  I particularly liked the “deep fried raviolo pasta stuffed with Tomino cheese, served with red onion jam” and the “Gragnano Paccheri pasta tossed with lobster ragout and cannellini beans”.

We had a great evening and after 15 years of marriage don’t get overly concerned if everything doesn’t go exactly to plan.  It wouldn’t be Marty if he didn’t do something crazy and end up getting a train in the wrong direction while I stand around waiting for him at the correct train station wondering if I’d messed up.  The fact that the restaurant was in a tower on the 47th floor overlooking Tokyo Bay unnerved me just a bit, but then both it and I survived the last earthquake.

I’m hoping for many more anniversary celebrations.

My baby sister is 17 today.  Don’t want to think about how old that makes me.  Happy Birthday Sausage!

Sausage & Mum

We celebrated our 14th Wedding Anniversary last week.

Flowery Gift

My little sister is sixteen today.  Happy birthday Sarah!

Birthday Girl

I’m cooking Irish Stew for dinner tonight.  Marty loves this though he has annoyed me before by suggesting that it’s an easy option for dinner.  The problem lies with the word “easy”.  It’s true that there are no advanced cooking techniques required but it just took me an hour and half to get it to the stage where everything is in the stew pot.  In about another hour and a half it will be ready to eat.  That’s not my idea of an easy dinner.

Yesterday evening I got out one of my new knitting books, Victorian Lace Today, as I was keen to try out some of the beautiful patterns it contains.  I decided to start with something marked as an “intermediate” pattern.  After about two hours I decided that it was too difficult and I would start with something marked “easy”.  I have knit expert patterns before and I have also knit lace before so I was surprised that I was having such difficultly.  But then the word easy doesn’t really tell me very much.

The lace I’m knitting, just like the food, doesn’t contain advanced techniques.  It does, however, involve concentration and precision.  If every stitch needs to be perfect is the pattern really easy?  And when I say it doesn’t contain advanced techniques I suppose that depends on who you ask.  I know quite a few knitters who wouldn’t have a clue how to knit the lace as it involves stitches that are not taught to beginners and you have to know how to read a lace chart.

There is a cliche that says that says, “it’s easy when you know how”, but I’m not convinced.  Even a task that is easy can become difficult if you have to repeat many times.  As for the stew maybe it is an easy option for Marty.  All he needs to do is eat it once it’s finished and given how good it smells at the minute that shouldn’t be too difficult.

As always I got some lovely gifts for Christmas.  But this year I also received a gift that really made me laugh.  As part of her Christmas present my sister bought me some novelty wool and a knitting pattern to go with it.   Can you imagine how funny I would look wearing one of these?

Knitting Pattern

Of course, it may be a hint to knit one for someone else…