I am trying to work but the technology is stymying me

So instead I will update the blog - it is a far more relaxing thing to do than what David is doing, i.e. watching the US election results ... I am metaphorically burying my head under the blankets and pillows about that...

Firstly I wanted to post a couple of photos of us in Business Class, otherwise I will never see them again. Not sure about you, but we have so many photos (in the thousands) in electronic format that the blog is my best hope of seeing at least some of them in the future.

Now don't I look relaxed? And David is engrossed in the iPad.

And here he is sound asleep, lying down, flat, on a mattress, with a proper pillow and a duvet. How lovely is that?

So there you have it. I am planning on spending even more of the kids' inheritance by always flying BC to and from the UK - but, never again through LAX. In spite of how much he enjoyed BC, David is happy to do Economy, and while I would rather travel sitting together, the lie flat bed is a bigger draw card for me. So it isn't both parents who will be depriving their kids in the future, just the maternal one.

And now to being at home. It is lovely. Jetlag has been conquered again - always takes us about a week. and we are back in the groove of our Waikanae lives.

The weather has been mixed - some rain (it's spring) and some lovely warm sunshine (it's spring). And the garden is looking pretty good.

While David managed to mow the lawns the other day, I pulled out the forget me nots that had gone to seed. Evolution is a wonderful thing, folks - the FMNs seed prolifically and have a couple of  extremely effective seed distribution systems. One is by wind, if the primary method doesn't work, i.e. distribution by animals/mammals/foolish people.

I made the mistake of wearing a fleecy top while I was pulling the plants out and look at the result:

It took me 3 minutes to brush them off my jeans. But getting them off the fleecy was a different story. I tried to brush them off with my hands but the little b*ggers are the precursor to velcro and they stuck just as hard.

I was losing steam by that stage so I hung the fleecy on the washing line and left it out overnight while I considered the options.

In the morning I decided to try the tweezers. Well, they worked sort of, but were painfully slow - one seed pod at a  time. Do I look or sound like a woman with that much patience?

So options were:

• throw fleecy out - a bit of a wasteful option, so discarded
• see if they came off in the wash - could be bad for the washing machine and incur repair costs, so discarded
• attack them with something as harsh as me - mmm, an option worth further thought
• so what do we have?
• aha! a hard scrubbing brush.

In fact we have two, so they both came out to be tried.

Success! However, it still took 20 minutes to get them all off.

Note to Self: Next year:

• leave pulling the FMNs to Rob, or
•  do it before they seed, or
• don't wear a fleecy!

OK, back to work, Marilyn