The weather has been grey this week and my mind has gone grey with it (fortunately my hair has not followed suit). Along with the fabulous weather that broke through on Wednesday, here are a few bright sparks from the week that was.
1. Guinea pigs do not like zucchini. At least, the GPs who are currently holidaying with us won't touch the stuff.
2. A pregnant guinea pig looks exactly the same as an unpregnant one. We know this because we started the week babysitting 2 guinea pigs and now we are babysitting 3 guinea pigs.
3. Even a dedicated, super-experienced chocolate devourer like myself found it tough to get through an entire Bill Granger self-saucing chocolate pudding (but don't worry, I punched through to a brilliant ramekin-licking finish). I'll post the recipe on Easy Sunday so you can give it a go yourself... dare you.
4. The brilliant Old Spice - The Man Your Man Could Smell like commercial was shot in one take. Plus that's a CGI fake hand with the Old Spice rising up out of it like a Phoenix... Of course it is! Even the man my man could smell like couldn't produce a can of Old Spice out of thin air. Or could he?
5. My new gardener (I just love saying that!), tells me that the reason most people don't garden is really because they don't like getting their clothes dirty. He reckons if you just had specific gardening clothes to change into, getting into the garden would be a breeze (I'm sure there was no pun intended). He's right, don't you think? To motivate yourself in all things, you just need the right stuff.
6. Draw! Pilgrim taught me how to make a pinwheel, which I think is essential knowledge for any mother of youngsters.
7. If you have bed wetters and you're not acquainted with Brolly Sheets, let me introduce you to your new best friend. Now, technically this isn't something I learned this week as we've been using Brolly Sheets for over a year. BUT, at 3am on Monday this week when the pull-up dam was busted, I learned just how much they truly mean to me.
8. Epstein-Barr virus is the virus responsible for glandular fever, but it’s not the actual virus that causes the symptoms of glandular fever, it’s how the immune system responds that makes people sick. If people are exposed to EBV early in life, their immune system doesn't react. It's those of us (I had GF in 1993-1994) who are exposed later in life that suffer. And you can get reactivations, too.
9. We are all creative beings, but convention often strips us of our ability to think, to feel, to be our true self. So often our instinct is to 'correct' our children, when really we should nurture our instinct to 'respect'. Allow your children the freedom to express themselves in the way that feels right to them. If the sky is green in their world and the grass is blue, then that's a rather marvellous world, don't you think?
10. The chicken is the closest living relative of the Tyrannosaurus-Rex. Really.
Did you learn anything new this week?
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