Once you have lost your voice it becomes quite hard to find it again.
Due to one thing and another I haven’t been quite as active online as I usually am.
You can blame a legal case, bronchitis and financial uncertainty for that. I am.
Thing is after the first couple of days had passed, writing anything became harder and harder until the flashing cursor seemed to taunt instead of inspire.
I don’t want to wallow in self pity either as screaming into the virtual ether is probably about as useful as a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
Only one person can help me and sadly, that is me.
I deeply wish it wasn’t and that someone else could step in as a sort of in locus Victoria.
What I need is Calvin’s Transmogrifier. Everyone does.
A little box that will make clones of me to handle everything while I go surfing.
Maybe not surfing. Maybe something a little less active.
Like napping.
As for what I have achieved in my silence?
I have finally got around to making a vegetable garden.
In fact, the whole family did. It was very soothing and a fun, if exhausting, undertaking for us all. Making a veggie garden was a lot more work than I had anticipated.
I thought we could just plant some seeds and that would be that.
Only it wasn’t. We had to get on our hands and knees and clear a veritable avalanche of rocks from God knows where, dig and dig and dig the soil and unearth compost from our scary compost heap – along with assorted wildlife.
Then build a wall to protect said vegetables from my beloved hounds who saw a new place to dig and responded with fervour.
In fact it was a week before we could plant anything.
Now my vegetable patch, which seemed tiny to start with and now seems like half of Southern Africa, is sown with seeds of assorted roots, fruits and herbs.
Some practicality raised its head as I remembered my mother and I planting an entire packet of spinach seeds and then being faced with enough green leaves to feed an army. So, we’ve decided to plant a row each week to spread out the harvest.
My daughter’s brilliant sowing device came to life too. She thought we could use empty egg cartons to hold the seeds.
This is brilliant, because the cardboard holds the seed and is filled with compost.
When you water the ground, the egg carton soaks up the water holding it in for the seed to do its thing.
Now twice daily I venture out into the backyard to water the earth and speak sternly to the dormant seeds that I expect them to bloody grow and to do it soon.
Sometimes I just beg.
Waiting for seeds to grow is worse than watching paint dry. It is an exercise in extreme patience.
Also, I have an extreme fear of my antithesis green thumb effect.
Part of me believes plants see me coming and say, “Bugger, here comes Victoria, I’d rather commit suicide than leave my wellbeing in her hands.”
Maybe they sense my fear, so I am trying to be terribly over confident when I go to the patch in the hope this will spur them to bloom.
Growing vegetables is my last resort on a number of fronts.
First off, I hope my children will at least deign to try and eat food they have grown themselves.
Secondly, I have been told I have to start a low carbohydrate diet that entails more vegetables.
Thirdly, organic vegetables cost the earth and I have fallen prey to the fear that is Monsanto.
Finally, if Armageddon comes better late than never, if I am a survivor I will have plenty of carrots and spinach to keep me from starvation. That and the goldfish. Yum.
In the meantime I have to cut down my sugar intake, which I have managed. I am now wincing my way through a mug of tea with only 2 spoons of sugar. Bear in mind last week I was on 5 or 6 depending on my mood.
I even made chicken soup from scratch for its high protein zero carb factor. I am not a soup fan, so this was an immense achievement for me.
I can only eat smooth soup, so I liquidised all 5 litres of it. The Husband was unimpressed to say the least. He says it looks like baby vomit and he has to eat it with his eyes closed.
I fail miserably at being a 1950s wife. Someone should give lessons. I am thinking about signing up for a domestic worker’s training course in the hope I may learn something my expensive academic private school education missed.
Like how to grow vegetables and make soup while doing housework and ironing shirts.
Excuse me while I go load the dishwasher.
The Blurred Line 