Last minute home made gift wrapping card making cake baking efforts

I'm a bit of a last-minute person. I like to feel the pressure and the threat of the deadline, it gives me the adrenaline rush that I need to accomplish... anything. If I need to be productive and efficient, I need to be threatened by several deadlines to get it done.

At the weekend, I had nothing to do for the whole of Saturday. I could have done all of the things I needed to do with plenty of time to spare. Instead, I sat in my pyjamas and watched Heartland on Netflix while I knitted (and unravelled and knitted again). Heartland is a guilty pleasure of mine, but I'll happily stand up and say "Hi, I'm Bee and I am addicted to trashy Canadian TV shows about horses and life in the country for a not-so-teenage-any-longer girl. I am a Heartland-aholic."

Anyway. Sunday morning rolled around and I had an extra hour of sleep with the clocks going back, which has done me the power of good, because I don't sleep well at the moment and I was getting a bit behind. Then I had to jump out of bed and achieve things. I needed to be out of the door and on my way to my niece's first birthday party by 11.30am. I woke up at 8.30am. Lounged until about 9am. Ran to the shower to claim it before anybody else could (my days of sharing a house are numbered), and after a swift blowdry of my hair and some clothes thrown on, I sped to the kitchen.

I had to make a cake. It was for my brother, who can't really eat grains, or sugar, so cake made with normal flour is right out. This makes me sad, because he and I share a voracious love of cake. I had searched Wholefoods in Kensington for the wherewithal to make him a friendly chocolate cake, and finally had coconut flour and coconut oil and enough eggs to produce something for him.

As soon as I had got that in the oven, I made myself some apple and sultana porridge (that's oatmeal, Americans) and set about browsing Pinterest for some wrapping paper.

Being a bad aunty, I had not managed to get my niece a birthday card, nor wrapping paper for her presents. I was frankly a bit surprised I had managed to get her a present, but I'd had a burst of activity on Friday and picked up two lovely books - good thing I didn't get the xylophone I saw first, because my mother gave her a xylophone and it would have been awkward. I needed paper to wrap the books in, and I needed it fast. I usually wrap gifts in pages from old magazines, but decided my one year old niece might not appreciate pages from either the Physiotherapy journal Frontline, nor Western Horseman.

I soon found some suitably cheerful and colourful patterns, and put my shiny new laser printer to work producing several pages of a triangles pattern. A Google search gave me a customised "Keep Calm..." image for the front of her card. The only actual card I had in my supplies was a packet of file dividers in lovely colours, so I chopped the holes and the tabs off a couple of those, and stuck it all together. Not bad.

Couldn't find any sellotape, so resorted to the roll of glue dots that I had used for a scrapbook project for Cowboy over the summer, and glued my home made wrapping paper around the books. Lacking an envelope for the card, I found a roll of cooks' string in the kitchen and looped that around the present, and could wedge the card underneath that.

It sounds awful, I know, to have scraped together this thing for my brother's first born child, but I am a student with long distance flights to pay for, and wrapping gifts and buying cards is an expensive pastime these days.

Here's the end result:



I thought it was a fairly respectable effort, given my distinct shortage of resources, and it blended in well with the other presents at the party.

I managed to get the cake out of the oven and cover it in melted chocolate, slap some make up on, brush my hair and get out of the door bang on the dot of 11.30am, which is fairly miraculous. It was a lovely party.

Other things I've done recently include: eating too much cake, cooking a big batch of risotto, and staying in bed because it's cold outside.

Adjusting

I have scurried back to the Oxfordshire countryside for the weekend, trying to stay away from the bright lights of London and get my body clock back on Greenwich Mean Time. I've experienced a double-dip jet lag coming home, where I thought I had it conquered by Tuesday, but overslept until noon on Wednesday, and still struggling to go to sleep at night time and wake up at day time.

Cowboy is doing his best to help. At 7.30am this morning, he spammed my phone with messages:

You awake yet?
Wake up woman ;)
It's morning
Rise and shine
Wake up!!!!!!
Quit sleeping!!!!
Do I need to come pull the covers off you?

It took seven messages to rouse me from my dream, in which I was receiving messages from him telling me to search for something on Youtube but I didn't understand what it was I should be searching for. I was a little confused when I eventually came to.

I'm currently enjoying the wonders of... compression! That is tubigrip from my left ankle all the way up to above my knee. Swelling from my torn knee ligaments (long story) was apparently pooling in my calf and behind my knee, and needs to be encouraged to get out of there. I tend to view it as a nice excuse to put my feet up for a few more days.

I started to sort through my photos from Washington and Montana, and immediately began pining for my trip.


Doesn't seem like that long ago that I was sitting with my feet up, a cup of tea and a good book, with this glorious sight spread before me.

So it's only natural that, upon returning to London and to university, stricken with jet lag and PMT, my first impulse is to hide in my dad's man cave and research preserving jars. The adjustment phase is an interesting journey.

Passing the time

Sixteen days until I fly off to see Cowboy, which means sixteen days of finding ways to pass many hours without losing my mind.

Today, I watched five episodes of The West Wing back to back. That was a good start.

I've also peeled eight pears and three apples, cored and diced them, and I'm currently stewing them with some cinnamon, sugar, sultanas and the juice of a small orange. Look at the golden, bubbly goodness... Mmmm...



Meanwhile, over in Washington (State), Cowboy is spending his days building fence. I don't know the technical details about fence building - no doubt I will very soon learn - but as I understand it, it involves a lot of posts...



It's back-breaking work, so I think he is most excited about getting a massage when I get out there. I don't really blame him.

I'm going to go spend my afternoon rearranging my possessions and pretending to be productive.

One month to go

It's thirty days until I fly out to Washington State to see Cowboy. It doesn't sound like long, but it's astonishing how long a day can be when you are apart from the one person you want to see more than anything.

Cowboy is a Scorpio, I am an Aries. If you buy into this sort of thing, we should be a pretty good match - my parents are the same combination and have been married (mostly happily) for well over thirty years.

It means, in this waiting period, that I am prone to random, ridiculous outbursts of frustration, rage, loneliness and love. Cowboy is prone to be stoic, calm, logical and quiet about his feelings, although he is starting to admit that he might be having trouble sleeping because he's just as impatient as I am for our summer together to get started.

Here are some things I've been doing to try to keep busy now that university is over for the summer, and I still have time to kill before I can pack my bag:

1. Cooking - I love to make food, and I will often spend a day in the kitchen. Last week I spent twenty minutes peeling chickpeas because I'd read that it would make my houmous smoother. I'm not convinced yet. But it passed the time.
2. Moving things around - my room in my shared house isn't huge, but it's ample if you're a normal person who can throw things out. I happen to be a hoarder. I have recently re-jigged my storage options around my room and found homes for things that previously lived "in that pile there". I'm still a chaotic mess, but it passed the time.
3. Xbox - I am a girl who games. Just a little. I'm terrible at shooting and driving, so my game options are limited to things with auto-aim, and things with no vehicles. My games of choice are: Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption, Dragon Age and Fable. Good games for passing the time and questing about, doing good in the world.
4. Pinterest - as if this needs an explanation. Possibly the most efficient time-waster ever invented.
5. Moping - I try not to overindulge in moping, as it loses its edge. Sometimes just lolling about on my bed, wishing I was in America, can kill an hour or two.

Not entirely productive pastimes, but there's a limit to what you can do when you have no income and a lot of time on your hands.

I have also been volunteering at a Riding for the Disabled Centre for the last couple of weeks, and I have one more week with them. I do three days a week, helping out with yard work and leading in lessons. I have discovered my "sweeping" muscles, and I'm feeling pretty sore. Morally, I feel super.

How would you fill thirty days?