yonmei

09:57 pm: A good sort of day...
Last night I finally got the last of my Billies put together, and very very carefully marked the place on the top where I figured the extensions ought to plug in. This morning I cautiously picked up Polly, fitted her with the right size drill, and had at the first short fat Billy. Then the second. Thanks to much measuring, green ink, and skilled drilling *gets cramp in arm from patting own back so hard* I now have two bookcases with extensions, asnd, furthermore, have all but four of my boxes of books unpacked.

Then I had a happy hour piling flat empty boxes in the shed, and stacking empty flatpack boxes behind the wheely-bin, and moving the gardening equipment bought Saturday morning (yes, I now have a spade, a fork, two trowels, and a 10l bag of compost, all of which cost less than £10 from Poundstretchers) from the cupboard under the stairs, where I stowed it in a hurry because it was raining and I couldn't find the key to the shed and I now have a door and a padlock for the cupboard under the stairs, to the shed. Multi-claused sentences with lots of punctuation are fun. For me, if not for you. I'm just sayin'.

Then I made scones. My mum rang to let me know she was on the 11 and had just passed St Andrew's Square. I went out to buy semi-skimmed milk. The miniMid on Ferry Road didn't have any left in any size smaller than 2 litres, which seemed a trifle wasteful since I'm leaving at midnight tomorrow and I don't know how Erin feels about dairy. (If cows went online, would they keep livediary?) So I bought a small tub of single cream instead, in case my mum felt like filter coffee instead of espresso (or fancied espresso with cream, which now I think of it is a beautfully decadent thought). It was on sale for 20p, anyway. Nearly bought a copy of the Observer, except it was missing all its bits.

Walked back to the largerMid just round the corner from me, and bought semi-skimmed milk, a toilet duck, paper towel, and a roll of black plastic rubbish bags. I was just on my way out when I glanced over and did a Sam Gerard.

You remember that scene in The Fugitive, where Gerard is going up the stairs at one side of the landing, and Kimble is going down? Sure you do if you're a slash fan, it's one of the best bits. Not only is this the closest Gerard and Kimble come to actually touching through all but the last five minutes of the movie, but Gerard plainly has Richard Kimble memorised. He can't have seen more than about ten seconds of Kimble's back as Kimble went briskly down the stairs. But he stops as he's going up the flight, turns back, goes briskly across the landing, and looks down at the dark-haired figure going down the stairs. He says, sharply, "Richard!" and Kimble looks up. *sigh*

Anyway. So I saw a woman wearing an enveloping green coat, bending over a shopping basket, her back to me, and did the Gerard thing. Momentarily it crossed my mind to just go back to the flat and be able to start setting the table and putting the kettle on, but that would be mean. And I'd decided not to be mean.

So I greeted my mum, who told me she was about to buy me a packet of biscuits as a guestgift, and when I assured her I really had all the biscuits I wanted, she said I should walk round with her and she would buy me something I wanted. (Yes, I was tempted to ask her for a bottle of Famous Grouse. But I refrained. It would have worked as a freak-my-mum-out gift, but it would have meant at least half an hour of none-too-subtle "So how much are you drinking these days?" questioning. And it would have been mean. My mum doesn't drink, and finds it easy to be disapproving of her children doing so.)

I ended up getting her to buy me two packs of Sensations, the lamb'n'mint and the cracked-pepper sort, because I'd been vaguely meaning to try minty crisps for ages, and I already know I like cracked-pepper crackers, so I'd probably like crisps.

My mum was suitably admiring of the sitting-room, which honestly does look really nice now: the blue sofa goes with the green walls, and the bonsai Atropos gave me is the perfect finishing touch. Well, not finishing touch: I want an art deco mirror over the fireplace, and a CounterClock on the opposite wall, and I want to paint the cornices and the door and the ceiling rose, and put glass shelves in the cupboard... and so on. But, you know.

And we had a nice tea: and once my mum was suitably fortified with a homemade scone and a latte, I told her I was leaving at midnight tomorrow for Arizona. Which means, hopefully, that I have got away without the painful pre-holiday discussions that my mum likes to have. I showed her where Arizona is in my copy of USA By Rail (which she borrowed, along with a couple of other books...) Not necessarily, of course, because she might well ring tomorrow evening. But perhaps I can not be in.

But we talked quite a bit: my mum has already visited my sister's new house in Sheffield, and says it's very nice.

And then I wandered up and down doing washing-up, and packing, and putting potatoes and garlic on to bake for my tea, and eating them with green salad, and finally thinking, just in time for the second episode of M*A*S*H, of a recipe that Atropos suggested for rough skin.

So I threw it together: about a couple of ounces of white granulated sugar, a couple of drops each of essential oil of rosemary and lavender, and enough carrier oil to make the sugar moist, but not sloppy. Then I sat down in front of the TV and watched M*A*S*H (the one where Radar admits to Hawkeye that he never did), and rubbed the sugar into my hands. For about half an hour. Well, slightly less. M*A*S*H ended. Radar/Hawkeye! So cute! No, no... Hawkeye is in love with Trapper... and lusting after Father Mulcahy... and he wouldn't seduce Radar anyway because it would be mean, because Radar wouldn't know how to deal with it and would probably fall in love with Hawkeye and Hawkeye wouldn't be in love with him and it would be a horrible emotional mess, so, anyway, Hawkeye wouldn't. No matter how cute it would be.

I rinsed the homemade sugar scrub off my hands... and realised that I had (probably not for decades) felt my hands feel this smooth. Really and seriously: that sugar paste, costing maybe 50p, worked very effectively. Sugar grains are powerfully abrasive (Elizabeth David says that back when sugar was bought by the loaf, when making lemon curd, they just broke off a jaggy-edged lump of sugar and used it to grate the lemon rind, then used that sugar to sweeten the curd), the apricot oil prevented my fingers from becoming too sticky, and the lavender and rosemary made it smell nice and are, in theory, good for dry skin. Should you be troubled with rough, dry skin, use Ajay's Inexpensive Sugar Scrub. Brilliant. [Edit: Important Safety Notice. Do not use this sugar scrub on your knuckles, or you will wake up the next morning feeling as if you had barked all your knuckles on an exceedingly abrasive surface.]

I used it on my feet while half-watching Minder. Arthur does get jealous whenever Terry does anything for a woman, doesn't he? Hmmm. *bleaches brain* No, um, I'm still going hmmm, but believe you me, for once I wish I wasn't.

Then I loved up my hiking boots with Sno-Seal wax. Then tisme rang to sort out about tomorrow night. Then I decided to procrastinate on livejournal some more to avoid packing. And so here I am. Procrastinating. *sigh*