Week of Cakes

SUNDAY- Ayesha and I went to Lidl today. There was a poor old woman who needed help and so we became good samaritans and dropped her back home (she had an extremely bad back- she was bent over with pain and had two HUGE and heavy bags of shopping which she had no idea how to get back to her home) We also stopped at Pets At Home and got Poppet an engraved, pink heart shaped tag for her collar with her name and our home number on it. We played with the newest addition to our family once we got home. She's lovely.

MONDAY- I dressed up nice and fancy to go meet my next employers… I came downstairs and received a few raised eyebrows and many nice comments and questions as to where I was going. The meeting went well and I am going to be working on a stop-motion project with a P6 class from a local primary school. I'll be going in every Wed/Thu 1-3pm to mould minds :)

I came back from from my successful meeting to find the Nur house busy as ever. Since Poppet the puppy has arrived I've been thinking of Fibonacci's sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8 etc.) I've just been going over the numbers of people/animals in our home now and have come up with a Nur's sequence.
1 puppy- Poppet, 2 rabbits- Charlie and Rani, 2 roosters- Abishek (a.k.a Humph) and Dumbeldore (a.k.a Frizzly), 6 chickens- Mrs Nesbit, Bunty, Bubbly, Sheila, Munni and Pinky, 6 Nurs- Nasser, Gul, Meher, Ameena, Khodeja (Jeju) and Ayesha, 7 carers for Jeju, two of which come every day except Sunday -Jackie, Sheila, Lynette, Mary, Louise, Heather, Violet and … INFINITY/NUMBER UNKNOWN/TOO LARGE TO BE CALCULATED of people to come fix our never-ending crumbling home including joiners, electricians, plumbers, gardner etc.
So, here's the Nur sequence- 1,2,2,6,6,7, ∞

I apologise, I digress :P Let me get back to telling you about Monday...

Since it was a bank holiday, the schools are off and so Ayesha has free run of the house. She spent most of the day playing with Poppet. Who is the most docile/ playful/ intelligent puppy ever. She'll soon settle in :)

Mother dear was baking more than a thousand cakes today. She's promised cakes to half of the people of Scotland and so the cake producing line was flowing today. She's going to decorate them as and when she needs them. What an amazing mother.

TUESDAY- It's Dad's first day back at work today after 3 months- He had an operation on his shoulder and was recovering from it the past few months. It was lovely to have him at home. When we were growing up we would see him two maybe three times a week since he would always be working/on call. It was a nice change to have him at home. I think he may be looking forward to his retirement…

I went into Gardenrose Primary to introduce myself to the P6's and prepare them for tomorrow. They seem like a good bunch. As always, it'll take me a session with them to find out what the class dynamic is like. But all in all, it was good. They seemed very enthusiastic about starting the project and have some fun ideas. Let's see what they come up with over the next few weeks.
Tonight I'm driving to Edinburgh where I'm going to see Clutch with Kathryn. I got to Edinburgh just after 5 and enjoyed walking around Kathryn's parent's swanky flat. It's to die for :) We then went for dinner at this Thai restaurant (brilliant food) before heading to The Liquid Rooms for the gig. The support in band- which were called something like "Lion Heads"- were pretty good. Though, as I pointed out to Kathryn; they didn't look like they were in a rock band at all. They need to change/hire a stylist fo' sho!! Clutch were awesome. All in all a good crowd, good music, and definitely a good night. It was great seeing Kathryn. Hadn't seen her since I left Dundee- felt like ages! Also, walking through Edinburgh at night was lovely- I really want a job there :D

WEDNESDAY- I drove home quite early today- pretty exhausted from all the excitements of last night. I got home around 11.30 and mentally/physically prepared myself to start my new job at 1pm (remember, moulding minds :P ? )
The session with P6's went well. Not to brag or anything but I pretty much had them eating out of my hands. *smug face*

*CAKE UPDATES* Ammi delivered 2 cakes over the last 40 hours and has two more to go. She also made brownies for a review meeting which was supposed to happen today with us and Jeju's carers.

Later that evening, the electrician came with his two daughters (aged 8 and 4) and with a whopping bill. For the kids, coming to the Nur house was like Christmas come early. They stayed for a couple of hours and played with our growing petting zoo (rabbits, dog, chickens) and then moved on to the various musical instruments in the study (piano, ukes, guitar, boucle bass, box, bongos) You name it, we got it. They were the most nicely behaved girls- what a pleasure to entertain them.

THURSDAY- The morning began with some general cleaning of the Nur Manor and helping Mother Dear decorate yet more cakes. Then I went to Gardenrose Primary to do my job. I surprised the kids by taking them out of their classroom and herding them into the Gym Hall where we proceeded to warm up to Glen Miller's "In The Mood" I made them stand in a circle and asked them to copy the movements I did. I even made their teacher join in. It began in a quite whimsical manner- some bobbly head, spirit fingers, shaky knees… but I think they began taking me seriously when I started making them doing press-ups… By the end of the song they were all out of breath. I made a mental note to work them harder next time :P I set them a creative task to come up with a short skit based on the stories they wrote out for me yesterday. Their topic is the Commonwealth Games and they were asked to come up with a premise for the stop-motion they want to make. I wanted them to be able to act out their story so they could understand the importance of body-language and how to use expressions/ dialogue/ movement etc to convey a message. Each group showcased their mini-plays and were recorded and we finalised the story/characters etc. All in all a very production session, indeed.
Later in the evening, I went to Zumba- YES! feeling rejuvenated, came back home to find that World War 3 had broken out at the Nur household. I swear to God, I leave the house for 90mins and people start arguing. I played Switzerland yet again, trying to neutralise the opposing teams (Mum and Meher). They are too similar and sometimes find it difficult to listen to each other…
I went to sleep at an ungodly hour after watching too much T.V and had horrible dreams where Meher, Jeju and I fled Scotland because some war had broken out. In this dream we walked to America, and got a ship to Pakistan (?????) and found ourselves in 100-B Model Town (our house in Lahore, Pakistan) we waited there for a couple of days and were joined by Mum who informed us that Dad had stayed back to fight in the afore mentioned war. No one mentioned Ayesha - and I never thought about her missing….

When I mentioned this to Ayesha in the morning- she replied, "Maybe I was not born at that time" At least someone understands my dreams…even if I don't.

The last of the cakes were collected today. I hope there are no more cakes for a long time. Because I'll eat all the leftovers and won't be able to fit into any of my clothes by the time August is here.


FRIDAY- This morning I took Ayesha to her dentist appointment before dropping her off at school. She's been off all week- with a terrible cold/fever/ear infection. Poor little chicken. But last night since she felt much better she decided to go learn things at school. When I got back home, Mum, Meher and I decided to give the garage a quick clean. What started out as a hoover and mop job turned into a three hour excavation session. The day we moved in last June, the people we bought the house from were still moving out. They were still not fully packed and were moving things one by one into a tiny van as our massive moving vans emptied our lives onto the drive. These people also left A LOT of their stuff in the garage, taking the next 5 months to move those things out. And then they stopped coming around and left a SHED LOAD OF CRAP in the garage which is of use to NO ONE. (Please note the use of capitals here are to highlight my annoyance and therefore not to be taken lightly) There is an entire back wall cluttered with a giant, rusted, metal scaffolding frame which is harbouring about 800 (no exaggeration) bits of assorted bits of wood including skirting panels, rails, cornices, sleeves, countertops etc. We never had the man power/ time/ engery/ brain to move all this into a skip- and to be honest, we had more pressing matter at hand. Now, to make it a more usable/ safe area, we placed two giant wood board in front of the scaffolding to stop and of the wood avalanching onto people. I used to have a studio space set up in the garage a while ago and used these boards as a wall to tack things onto. It was pretty stable and never really gave us trouble. Plus it covered up all the rubbish. Out of sight, out of mind. And so today, when we were moving a cupboard up against the boards, they fell. I caught them just in time before an avalanche of heavy wood flattened anyone. And this is when Meher cracked.

She declared that we must get rid of all this rubbish. And so we did. With the help of Douglas (our gardener) we loaded his jeep up multiple times and got about 80% of it cleaned up before he had to go. Poppet was in her enclosure in the garage as we worked. She'd been running around most of the morning and was hyper as only a puppy can be. As we were cleaning, we were making an immense amount of noise and so we were surprised to find that Poppet had fallen asleep! She was oblivious to what was going on. Probably exhausted form all the excitement...We'll finish the job next week when Douglas is back. It feels amazing to get all that junk out of our home. Meher and I set the garage once more. It looks like a million dollahs. Well, if i million dollahs look like a nicely set garage. For all I know, it could. I've never seen a million dollahs. Anyway, after that, we took Jeju to get her prescription (she's got an ear infection too D: ) and then did mini-groceries.

We got back home to find out that our dear friend Nadia Khala (Khala means "aunt/aunty") was coming over. Also, our family friends Ann, Katie and Mhairi had booked to see Poppet after dinner as well. Kaite is getting married in a few weeks and so as usual, the conversation turned to weddings, weddings, weddings. Katie's wedding is going to be in St. Andrews and everything I've seen/ heard about it is lovely. Meher is going to be doing Katie's bridal make-up and Mum and Dad will be going as well. I may be able to go if we get respite for Jeju. It'll be too long a distance for her to travel in one day. Later on, Meher, Katie, Ann and Mum even shared their stories about how to were proposed to. Great fun. So, once again, it was a full house as everyone gathered around copious cups of tea, making jokes, eating kebabs and samosas and carrot cake till 11pm.

It's now 1.35 pm and I'm exhausted.  It's surprising how time consuming writing a blog can be. Especially when you have an awful memory like me and have trouble remembering what happened five hours ago left alone five days ago. Good night. Here's hoping I don't dream of any wars tonight.


(89, 88, 87, 86, 85, 84)

EIGHTY-FOUR!!!????? Oh dear god, where is the time going?