Longest Day

It's been a warm and sunny week.  Little Cat has also been lounging around in the garden, and for the odd moment or two, so have I. It's nice to have the deckchair out. We checked out various weather forecasts and to our amusement rain is due from Wednesday lunchtime onwards. And when does the school term end? Wednesday lunchtime of course! Well, we'll wait and see.

I love the marigolds in the garden - most of this year's are yellow but there's also this orange one too, looking as fresh and luscious as an orange ice-lolly (of which we have several in the freezer).

I inflated the paddling pool the other day but the slight slow puncture from last summer had become two punctures and it deflated fairly rapidly. So when I was doing the grocery shopping I got a new paddling pool too. That's warm weather shopping for you - bread, milk, ice-lollies, paddling-pool.. The Boy, though a good swimmer, is not fussed about messing around in water  - too old at 11? (I'm not, at 43..)  Or too much like a cat, like his father? But Miss M adores splashing around in water and was delighted with the new paddling-pool. To be honest I'd have got it anyway!

Today was a slightly cooler day and although there was plenty of outdoor time, we spent some time playing Munchkin Zombies. Oh, and eating leftover pizza from yesterday.  My Beloved had bought the game on a whim last week, but we weren't sure if the kids would enjoy it. Miss M, at seven, proved herself capable of playing it and fine with the adding up involved, but there were tears at the end when her brother won (not because he'd won so much as because she had plans for her next turn and didn't get to play it out), so although there is quite a lot to take in and remember when you first play it, I'd say the 'suitable for age 10 and up' is really more to do with emotional maturity than anything else. The Boy suddenly got the hang of it halfway through and turned into a mini version of his gamer daddy, and trashed us at the end. I'm not very good at games like this and was fairly muddled, though amused by it.

We're gradually finding games we all enjoy - Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert, Get Bit.. Mostly we've found about these by watching Tabletop. I'm not into board games in the traditional sense, but some of these untraditional ones are great, especially Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert which are co-operative. The Tabletop episode for Forbidden Island had me laughing because John Scalzi's rationalisation for why it was a good thing they lost was the same as mine the first time we lost at it.

I think I'll go to bed now. This morning I was woken at 4am by two men walking down the road having a fight, absolutely screaming at each other. It was a bit unnerving. That was technically just before sunrise, though in fact it was pretty light by then, so it really has been the longest day.

Summery/summary

 I've been too hot to blog :-D. Never thought I'd get to say that!  We have had a heatwave, though not as hot as down south (and apparently Scotland doesn't officially get heatwaves, in that we don't get a heatwave warning - 'code red - drink water, stat!' - in the way that England does) but that's probably as well or I'd just melt. And it's all relative anyway - unaccustomed as we are to sunshine and heat, pushing into the mid 20s deg C is a bit of a shocker.  It started, conveniently enough, the week that My Beloved had a week off work and we did 'staycation' things, i.e. what used to be called 'going out for the day'.  Such as Largs (above and below) - it was tremendously sunny and the Boy and I were scuttling from one patch of shade to the next. My Beloved and Miss M cope better with the heat. But we had loads of drinks, went to the playpark (where Miss M scared the living daylights out of me by climbing to the very top of the very high climbing frame), watched the ferries come and go (though not talking of Michelangelo), paddled, looked for sea-glass, ate ice-creams and sorbets and then came home.

 Then a couple of days later we went to Stirling Castle..

 ..which is always fun. Miss M joined in the excellent children's tour and to her delight got to be the queen (had a plastic tiara plonked on her head).  The Boy happily drew plans of the castle and tried to work out if he could build it in Minecraft.

The day after that we went to Edinburgh, parked in a park & ride carpark on the outskirts (nobody in their right mind drives in Edinburgh when they're unfamiliar with it - not more than once anyway), got the bus into the city centre and went to the castle. Now this would have been a tremendous disappointment if we weren't Historic Scotland members and would therefore have had to queue for a while and pay a lot to get in. As it was, we are members and got fast-tracked in so it didn't matter that we didn't really enjoy it. I think the problem is it's such a martial castle, and if you're not into military history, well, it's just a rock on a hill. It's all very well presented and the staff were pleasant and helpful but it just didn't grab us. As my Beloved commented Stirling Castle is all 'come and see how much fun history is' but Edinburgh Castle is more 'come and be impressed by our history'. We had our picnic, admired the views, were there for the one o'clock gun, mooched around for a bit trying to be interested, then gave up and pottered back down the hill. I took the picture above in Ramsay Lane which takes you down from Castlehill to the Mound, purely because I liked the shape of the metal balustrade.

Since that week it has stayed hot, which has been, well, weird. We've been out and about a bit but have been taking it easy. It's the longest hot spell of Miss M's life - I think it was a fairly nice summer the year she was born, but she was born in October so she missed it and I had all the joy of being pregnant in the summer. A winter pregnancy is much more bearable! It's the longest hot spell in the Boy's memory too, though I remember his first summer being pretty hot at times, such as the day he had his 3-month jabs and it was stifling in the health centre.  All the babies were stripped down to their nappies and they were all miserable even before the needles got near them.

Consequently the kids have got fed up with this heat and having been hoping for rain and cooler weather.

 It has cooled a bit now but has been very muggy so we've had some thunderstorms, luckily in the daytime so no sleep has been disturbed. Miss M was a bit nervy about them initially but has relaxed now. We just switch off the computers if they're on and retreat upstairs to read on the big bed, which is quite peaceful.

 It was lovely on Monday though and my mother-in-law took the kids and me to Culzean Castle.  Actually we didn't go to the castle itself (really more a grand house than a castle) but parked at the far end of the park, next to the play area and the Swan Pond, and then headed down through the trees to the beach, where we had a great time eating our picnic, paddling, exploring the rocks, drawing in the sand and so on.

And the really good thing about the warm weather is that our strawberries are doing well this year!

Mmm, delicious.

There's just under three weeks left of the school holidays - it's gone so fast, I suppose partly because we've packed so much into it for once. So much a for a knitting-ish blog though - it's been too warm for much knitting!

Rainbow toes

I'm not much of a nail polish person but Annie of Knitsofacto suggested I have rainbow toes 'in support of everyone fighting breast cancer'- read this to see why as she explains it so much better than I could!

So I had a rummage to see what colours I actually have - it turns out I have two bottles of purple (why?), one red and one pink. Not really a rainbow but a bit of colour at least! Don't look too closely - I'm rubbish at painting nails, finger or toe, and always smudge.

It reminds of when I was heavily pregnant with Miss Mouse and was totally miserable and had a pedicure so at least my toes would look okay. I went into labour later that day so by the time Miss Mouse came along just before midnight my toes still looked great. Hey, it's the little things that give you a boost!

That toe picture was taken yesterday morning in more or less the spot where the paddling-pool stood last week and yes, that's snow I'm standing in there. It snowed for hours yesterday but didn't lie heavily - the grass was covered but the roads and pavements were clear so it was pretty but not inconvenient. I love variety in the weather. It's so great that last week I was pottering round in really unseasonal sunshine and warmth, but it was also great to watch the snow falling again.

Little cat was not impressed with it though.

With a return to cooler weather I've gone back to my razor-shell scarf after a few weeks' break. It's getting quite long now. I'm a bit impatient with scarves and tend to cast-off when it's only just long enough, just out of sheer boredom, but this time I want a properly long scarf, so onto the second skein I go!

There is a mistake you can see if you look carefully but I've decided I'm not going to be bothered about it. Normally I'm quite nit-picky about errors so it takes a bit of effort to be Not Bothered!