Little wat ye wha’s comin’

[urocyon]

Oh no--I have turned into my great-grandmother, compulsively cleaning and turning out mincemeat! (The real stuff, with meat.) She's the only person my mom knew who actually made a huge batch of the stuff every year, and now I've gone and ordered in a bunch of dried fruit and nuts I didn't want to lug home, and canned a couple of jars for my parents. At least one GF fruitcake--with any luck, not the doorstop kind--is in the works, as well, with some apple brandy for it (with allowance for the cook, naturally!), which only arrived today. That probably comes closest to the sort I'm accustomed to, of what I've run across here, though I haven't tasted it yet. I used "regular" brandy in the mincemeat. The apple is probably more regionally traditional, but I have no point of comparison for homemade mincemeat, unlike the cakes. Guess I'll just have to make do with plastic tubs, since we don't have tins at hand for aging and sousing the cakes. I don't think it's too late to start on this type of thing, but it's pushing things a tad if we want to eat the cake before New Year's.

The fit of cleaning is more readily explicable, besides as an occasional side-effect of being simultaneously a perfectionist and someone who makes messes without even realising it. A’ the wild MacRas are comin'.* My uncle and his family are coming to visit, arriving at Gatwick the 15th, and staying here the obligatory several days. I look forward to seeing them, but it's taking more work than I expected to get the place such that I'd want houseguests seeing it. And I'm afraid that the, "We don't have company, we have Tim," principle applies better when he drops by after work than when the whole crew takes a transatlantic flight to get here! It would be easier if his wife weren't one to notice a single particle of dust. Ah well. Out of self-preservation (sleep is nice), I'm settling for a lived-in but reasonably hygienic look, which is what I actually prefer most of the time (but things just start accumulating...). At least they will have clean duvets and pillows.

I am taking a break right now, having spent all day yesterday on my feet, and having hiked this morning to the nearest B&Q to try to find something which might work as improvised filters for the vacuum cleaner--the knees are grumbling. It's a slightly older model (as are the knees, come to think of it *g*), and nobody seems to be stocking replacements. I did a silly thing and put the original filters in a "safe" place after washing them, rather than sticking them straight back into the machine. If worse comes to worse, I guess I could use the Dustbuster knockoff I also picked up for £10. (Hey, that just barely worked for a former roommate.) Sometimes a brush and dustpan won't do it, with cats around the place; glad I finally got one. I also ran by Lidl on the way home, and wound up needing to call a minicab to get home with all the booty. The set of dishes I'd been meaning to find anyway--nice to have enough real plates to feed guests on, and I keep breaking them--was the last straw, making a hike to the bus stop daunting. The huge poinsettia from B&Q wound up far less crushed than expected.

Plumbers seem constitutionally disinclined to answer their e-mail; we're up to two, so far. We need to get the new power shower installed, and the water inlet on this one is on the opposite side of the existing one's. Water above lukewarm--getting colder by the day--would be nice anyway, but houseguests probably shouldn't be flash frozen in the shower, if only for hospitality's sake. I gave in and started calling plumbers, and it seems that things are about as I expected: it will be cheaper to get a new one with the water inlet and wiring on the same side than to have the necessary work done to fit this one. I appreciated the honest assessment there, when I sounded like a potential customer ripe for bilking, though it is probably aggravating work. vatine and I are supposed to meet up after he gets off work, and probably wind up going to the same B&Q I trekked through earlier today--too bad I wasn't sure then. *sigh* It should be a reasonable DIY job if the pipes do line up.

Speaking of DIY, it may be just as well that vatine's passport wound up missing when we were planning the trip to Sweden. I was looking forward to going, but that holiday time (not to mention some of the funds) may be more profitably spent doing some work around here. On top of a bathroom floor in need of replacement--ours may well be the only bathroom in Greater London sporting hazard tape around the couple of really spongy spots--I noticed that the countertop behind the kitchen sink is looking worse. Water has repeatedly gotten in an unsealed joint in the counter back there, and a lot of the caulking at the bottom of the backsplash has come loose, so that the counter definitely has escalating rot and needs replacing. Which probably means lots of countertop needs replaced. The joys of home ownership! Neither of those jobs should be too bad, though.

These entries keep turning out so horribly mundane. I intend to write about other things that occur to me, but don't seem able to sit down long enough to do it when those particles of inspiration are whizzing through. *wry smile*

* My mom may have had a point, half-joking that this may be a drastic cure for homesickness.