Pleasures Shared: GRR Martin Dances with Dragons

I used to do this on my livejournal blog but it’s fallen into almost total disuse and this is the only blog I really use (on the rare occasions that I have time to blog) so what the hell, I’ll do it here instead.

Pleasure’s Shared is my regular list of great, happy, interesting, fun things I’ve come across from television programmes to books to crochet to music and everything in betweeen.

My primary pleasure to share this week is GRR Martin’s Dances with Dragons. Now I’m not going to review the book yet for the simple reason that I have not managed to crack it open yet. I have a 9 month old teething baby folks, it may be this time next year before I get to read it. But the pleasure to share is the mere fact of it finally, existing.

I had the great pleasure of meeting the great GRR Martin himself when he travelled to Ireland. I actually had a cup of coffee with him and his lovely wife, Parris. They were both extremely charming and kind and George RR was a wonderful exception to the old rule ”don’t meet your heroes“. Far from being disillusioned, I came away thinking even more highly of the author for having met the man (and I had started off thinking pretty highly of him as an author as it was!)

Waiting for DWD has been a long auld haul. It was enlivened in recent years by the filming of the Game of Thrones series on HBO, shown recently on Sky Atlantic. But much as I enjoyed watching one of my favourite works brought to life on screen nothing really compares to the excitement of a new book, the smell of freshly printed pages and the dizzying prospect of all those words, woven together into something that will remain in your heart and mind forever.

So while it might be a long time before I can open it up and devote myself to reading it, for now I am content to know it exists and see it on my bookshelves. It promises hours of enjoyment, someday. Pure Pleasure.

Longer out than in!

The other day it occured to me that Baby has almost been longer out in the big bad world now than he was inside! What a weird thought. It took a long time to grow him and now he’s a 9 and a half month old sturdy litle tyke. For 41.5 weeks he grew from a split cell into a rolling kicking baby tucked up in my womb. For 38 weeks now he’s grown from a long skinny baby into a little being who can ask for what he wants, stand up, sit upright, kneel, play games, shout and clap hands.

He has grown from a little bundle of legs and arms and skinny ribbed torso into a sturdy baby man; our problems with feeding him are (mainly) in the past and while he still resists sleep for fear of missing something interesting….we are surviving quite well now.

I still cook all his food; with the exception of his morning porridge and the occasional Organix finger food snacks he eats no commercial premade or processed food. At the moment his favourites are Salmon and Broccoli in a 3 Cheese Sauce, Cottage pie with mash, and chicken and apple stew with pasta and carrot. Lunch tends to be a rice or pasta dish with veg and cheese, and yogurts. He has recently mastered the pincer grip so he has lots of grated cheese and carrot or squash bits as finger food. I puree fruit for him, everything from apples to a mix of berries.

I spend far more time cooking for him than I ever have or will do for myself