A nossa empregada, a Augusta, passou a ter que fazer mais horas no seu emprego principal e deixou de poder vir limpar a nossa casa na tarde semanal que fazia há cerca de uns 10 anos. Eu tinha imensa confiança na Augusta que é tà­mida mas honesta, eficiente e com uma ética de trabalho como não se vê muitas vezes e ao fim de tanto tempo quase que fazia parte da famà­lia. As crianças já a conheciam e eu já há muito tinha conseguido ultrapassar aquela sensação desagradável de ter uma pessoa estranha cá em casa. Ao longo dos anos trocámos histórias, ajudei-a a preencher o IRS, ela trazia iogurtes para os miúdos, etc. Tenho pena que não possa continuar connosco e esperava que a despedida fosse emocional mas não ao ponto de chegar à s lágrimas, que foi o que acabou por acontecer. Apesar da escolha de nos deixar não ter sido minha, fiquei, por qualquer razão, cheia de sentimentos de culpa, como se devesse ter conseguido arranjar outra solução.

Hoje foi o primeiro dia da M., uma rapariga mais nova que eu, de origem romena que já trabalha para o meu irmão há algum tempo. Parece muito simpática e acho que nos vamos dar bem. Ontem o Pedro estava a gozar com a situação dizendo que eu devia pedir-lhe logo para lavar as paredes (algo que a minha mãe fez a uma empregada no primeiro dia e a senhora nunca mais voltou). Nem me passaria pela cabeça fazer tal coisa, muito menos no primeiro dia. Tinha pensado mais numa de limpar o pó por cima das estantes, etc, aspirar e pouco mais.

Ela chegou quando estávamos a preparar-nos para levar os miúdos à  escola. Mostrei novamente onde estavam as coisas mas não dei nenhuma instrução particular. Ela ficou e nós fomos. Eu tinha umas voltas para dar –  enviar uma encomenda, fazer umas compras, etc – e quando voltei, adivinhem o que ela estava a fazer? A lavar as paredes com lixà­via. Fartei-me de rir 🙂

In the last two years I’ve read a number of vampire and other paranormal-themed series. It’s hard to explain why I like paranormal romance but I’ll try.

The romance part is easy enough. Life is hard and has enough drama. If I have some time to relax with a book, a cup of tea and a blanket, I don’t want to get stressed out or depressed by what I’m reading. I’d rather have something light, fun and predictable that makes me smile or gives me butterflies. I’m a girl, after all. I do read other stuff when I’m in the right mood for it but romance is the perfect escapist genre for me. I describe it as bubble gum in book form. You chew it, spit it out when the flavor is gone and it requires little brain power.

As for the paranormal element, I don’t know exactly why I like it. Part of it is because it’s not real so anything is possible. I’ve always liked horror movies but can’t stand war movies. War is real and I can’t help thinking about the suffering all those people go through. Monsters are not real and I can detach myself from the violence a lot more. Plus, people with super powers are always cool and it’s fun to be able to see through the eyes of someone with abilities you’ll never have. It’s all about experiencing for a moment something that’s different from me.

OK, so let’s start the list. I’m not reviewing the books, just making a few notes on each series. I’ll go by author rather than theme because that’s how I usually read them.

Stephenie Meyer: Twilight series

As I mentioned in my previous post, I started with the Twilight series. I know everyone hates it because there’s so much hype and the actors are everywhere but I don’t care about that. If you look at the story and even the movies for what they are – teen romance – it’s precisely what it’s supposed to be. You may not like the genre but that’s a whole other issue. The one thing that bothered me was the forth book with Bella getting pregnant right away. I already disliked the preachy aspect of the ‘no sex before marriage’ angle that is way too American Christian for my taste, so the ‘sex leads to pregnancy, even with a vampires, girls beware’ thing gave me a bitter taste. The fact that the girl spends the book dying from the pregnancy may also have tapped into the horrible experience I had with my first pregnancy and I reacted badly.

Charlaine Harris: Sookie Stackhouse, Aurora Teagarden, Harper Connelly, Lily Bard series

Charlaine Harris and the Sookie series came next. I liked the mystery angle of the series and the fact that the characters have a sex life rather than spending their time fighting their natural urges seemed refreshing for a change. I couldn’t relate to Sookie much but the Viking vampire Erik is one of my favorite book characters (I always did have a thing for blonds). It goes from vampires to wherewolves, as all vampire series seem to, and then to fairies, and that I don’t get. Fairies? Seriously? Come on!

Still, the books aren’t bad so I decided to read the other series by the author. The Aurora Teagarden series is a muder mystery series rather than PR. Aurora is a librarian who keeps getting involved in murders. There’s a romantic element at some point but does not end well at all.

The Harper Connelly series has a paranormal element since the woman can speak to the spirit of the dead. The background to both main characters is pretty dark and so is the plot to a lot of the books and the series can get a little depressing at times. The romantic element is also a bit creepy since the characters are adoptive brother and sister, though not related by blood.

The Lily Bard series has no paranormal element but the character does pop up on a couple of Sookie’s books later on. This series is also very dark and brutal. Lily survived a brutal kidnapping and we eventually get to know in full detail exactly what she went though and it’s not pretty. If I hadn’t read American Psycho it might have bothered me a bit more than it did but I guess I’ve toughened up over the years. Once you get past the violence thing, the series has some interesting elements. It’s a mystery series as well but the character is different from other mysteries I’ve read because she’s a cleaning lady with no particular interest in crime except for not wanting to be a victim ever again. She ends up getting mixed up in lots of weird situations that tend to end badly for her, meets a private detective and figures that being a detective might be a good career change and at least does have a happy ending.

Laurell K. Hamilton: Anita Blake, Meredith Gentry series

Anita Blake raises zombies for a living. She lives in a world where vampires werewolves, zombies and other weird creatures are perfectly normal, day to day things. The books also fall under the mystery category and then there’s a romance angle when Anita finds herself interested in a werewolf while a vampire wants her for himself. I hated the werewolf, Richard, with a passion. He was the most arrogant, obnoxious character ever and I really couldn’t figure out why she kept wasting time on the guy. The vampire wasn’t much better but for different reasons – he was to effeminate. Still, the books start out pretty cool despite a tendency to over-describe to annoying detail lots of things that don’t really matter like what each and every single character is wearing in every scene. After a few volumes the tone changes a lot and it becomes about sex all the time to the point where you can’t see the plot anymore. In the second part of the series my favorite character was Nathaniel, who’s the sweetest guy, but I think the main character lost too much of her power. And to go from uptight virgin to ‘I must have sex once an hour or I die’ seems like a weird twist for the series and I lost interest.

The Meredith Gentry series is all about sex and violence from the beginning. It’s a fairy series. Meredith is the fairy princess forced to leave faerie to escape her sadistic aunt. She’s found and brought back and given the task to procreate to insure the next heir to the throne. It’s all very brutal and way over the top and it bored me quickly. There’s some BDSM and she has a harem of men and it’s different from other series because she falls in love not with one but two of them. Still, way too weird for me.

Sherrilyn Kenyon: Dark Hunter series

This was the first typical PNR series I read. Each book is the story of a different couple but they’re all set in the same world and lots of characters show up in each others books. Some stories are darker than others, some are better some are worse. They all end happily and the series leads up to the book about Acheron, the mysterious leader of the Dark Hunters. The series mixes vampires and Greek mythology with lots of sex. It’s not great but it’s actually pretty fun. I like the fact that she doesn’t pull punches when it comes to the darker stuff. Some of the other books I’ve read since seem too sugary by comparison when it comes to tortured characters with a supposed traumatic past.

Mari Mancusi: Blood Coven series

This series is as far from Dark Hunter as you can get. It’s a young teen vampire series, completely high school with sugar on top. The main characters are twins called Shunshine and Rayne and the wrong one gets turned into a vampire by accident. It’s funny at times and kinda sweet but maybe a bit young for me.

Richelle Mead: Vampire Academy, Georgina Kinkaid series

The vampire academy series is the closest I’ve read to the Twilight series, not in the plot but more in the target audience, the way the story has a beginning and end along five or six books, a mild love triangle at one point, a depressing middle and lots of fight scenes. I didn’t like the characters very much and had a hard time feeling enough empathy, but in the young adult PNR genre it’s a good enough series. There are good vampires, bad ones and half-vampires. The good vampires can turn bad and the setting is a school a bit like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts.

The Georgina Kinkaid series is very silly. She’s a succubus who wants to settle down and have a normal relationship. Unfortunately she sucks the life out of any man she sleeps with. It starts out kinda funny but soon enough all the character does is bitch about her life and it gets harder to care about what happens to her.

Ellen Schreiber: Vampire Kisses

Very light and bubbly teen vampire series with a perky goth girl and a teen vampire. I’d pair this with The Princess Diaries, the blood Coven series and other such young teen books.

L.J. Smith: The Vampire Diaries

I started reading this after watching a few episodes of the TV show. The show is far from great but Stefan is an interesting character. The two main leads, however, are not (the bad guys are always more fun, I guess). I got the books before I usually like them better than the screen adaptations – there’s more detail and character development. In this case that was not true. Elena is vain and shallow and Stefan didn’t seem any more likable than he does on TV. The second part of the series, written years after the first, is just plain weird and it makes me wonder what kind of drugs the author was taking at the time.

J.R.Ward: The Black Dagger Brotherhood

Now we’re talking! This is one of the best PNR series I’ve read. In style and theme it’s similar to Dark Hunters. It’s a vampire series, about a group of warrior vampires who protect their race from the Omega, an all-powerful evil. Each book is a couple’s story but there’s more stories developing in the background in all of them. I liked that a lot – not being limited to two main characters and being able to get to know the others bit by bit as the series progressed. The series is interesting also because it breaks some of the norms that romance novels tend to stick to, like the fact that the hero is not supposed to sleep with anyone else after he meets the girl. The names of the characters are kinda stupid (Zadist, Phury, Tohrment, Rhage, Vishous) but it does attempt to explain it at one point so I’m OK with that. What I didn’t like in the first few books was how much time was spent on the evil guys point of view. You know they’re going to die at some point so why waste time with their back-story and feelings? It should add another layer of interest but it just bored me most of the time.

Kresley Cole: Immortals after Dark

Another series in the same style as the BDB and DH. This one has all sorts of paranormal creatures, starting with Valkyries, females who feed on electricity. The relationships in these books are more about predestined couples than free will and the male tend to behave like cavemen with the whole ‘mine’ possessive thing toward the females that I don’t really find particularly attractive, but there are some really funny moments and dialogs that make up for it.

Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments

An adventure series about part-angels called Shadowhunters who protect humans from demons. It is a teen series but more serious and darker than Blood Coven or Vampire Kisses. It fits better alongside the Vampire Diaries but the characters are easier to like, especially the female lead, Clary. It’s a trilogy that ends well but apparently the author felt the need to ruin it by writing a forth book that I’ve heard nothing but bad things about and don’t plan to read.

Jeaniene Frost: Night Huntress series

Cat is a half-vampire vampire slayer. Weird, right? And then she’s imprisoned by a vampire she tries to kill who falls in love with her and teaches her how to be a better fighter before they team up and eventually become a couple. They fight all the time – each other and other vampires, ghouls, ghosts and zombies. The series developed to include romance novels featuring other characters in the same world. I like the series but Cat can be a very annoying character and the main couple has some serious trust issues that are the basis for a lot of angst throughout the series and have a on-again-off-again kind of relationship. It fits alongside the Vamp Academy series but it’s a bit more grown up and has more sex in it.

Larissa Ione: Demonica, Lords of Deliverance series

At this point I had pretty much run out of vampire books but a lot of people who had read the same series I did highly recomended Larissa Ione so I gave her a try. The Demonica series seemed a pretty stupid idea: a demon hospital and a relationship between a slayer and an incubus. It took me a while to get past the ‘yeah, right, that’s not going to suck at all’ vibe and actually start reading. Turns out I really liked it. The characters are interesting, there’s a lot of humour in it and the author manages to draw you in somehow.

The fifth Demonica book introduces the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the main characters in the Lords of Deliverance series. I found it just as enjoyable as the Demonica series and since it’s set in the same world, the characters from Demonica pop up from time to time (especially when someone gets badly hurt and needs medical attention, which happens a lot around these people.

Sydney Croft: ACRO series

This is the series I’m reading at the moment. Sydney Croft is actually a pseudonym for two authors – Larrissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler. The ACRO series is basically The X-Men with lots of sex. The characters all have some kind of special power – controlling storms, fire or ice, making earthquakes, super speed or strength, mind reading, etc. ACRO is a military organization that takes in, trains and protects these special people and then sends them on missions to save the world from ITOR, their evil rival. Apparently the agents seem to have a hard time separating business from pleasure and seem to come back with a mate pretty much all the time. It sounds pretty silly and it kinda is but it’s also funny at times. I don’t necessarily recommend reading them back to back, though, because I started falling asleep during the sex scenes after a while. There’s just so many of them and they’re so similar it gets a bit dull. But the books do have a plot (sometimes more than one) and they’ve made me laugh out loud a few times, so I can’t say they’re too bad.

I like to read books. I’ve only recently realized that’s not something I talk about much on my blog and I found it odd because reading is such a big part of my daily life. Since I try to be honest I felt it was time to give books their own little post (well, maybe not so little).

I read because I have fun doing it. From talking to people over the years I’ve come to realize that reading and fun are not always considered compatible and I don’t understand that. I know a lot of people have to read certain books for school or work, like I did, and reading as an obligation really is an terrible form of punishment, so I get that they’d rather do something else for fun after that – after all, between music, movies, TV and games there’s all sorts of shiny forms of entertainment to choose from, so a book may seem boring by comparison – but after a time, once the trauma is forgotten, to simply dismiss books as entertainment seems limiting, and I think these people may resent reading simply because they never found the right kind of book.

Other people think that if you read a lot you must be an intellectual. Why? Just because you know how to read? It makes no sense to me. There are all kinds of books. Some are classics, acknowledged by all as masterpieces of literature. Some are porn. Then there’s pretty much everything in between – comedy, drama, romance, mystery, horror, biography and anything else you can think of. You just have to find what kind of stuff you like and go with that.

I think the problem is that we’re influenced by each other and our culture and if everyone says something is good we feel we should like it. If we don’t we think maybe we’re stupid and don’t get what all the hype is about. Well, I’ve learned a long time ago that what is good and what I like are often very different things. Good is something that is well made (a book that’s well written, a painting with an amazing technique, a movie that’s visually stunning or has an interesting plot) but it may not reach me on an emotional level and I don’t like it. I can appreciate its quality and praise the work but it leaves me cold otherwise. And then I like things that I know are not that great – a sappy movie, a book with too many clichés – but something clicks into place inside me and it makes me happy, sad, whatever, and I can say that I liked it and possibly want to repeat the experience (a book you read again, a movie you watch over and over). So I think people should stop trying to read something just because everyone else is saying it’s amazing and find something that makes them happy, whatever that may be.

One of the reasons I don’t talk about books much is because I read a lot of crap. I know they’re not great and I don’t care. They make me laugh or tear up and I enjoy that and it’s enough. I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone but I’m not a book reviewer so that’s fine.

I tend to read more during the summer because I like natural light and the days are longer. It’s also something that was left from being a kid because for most of the year I was too busy with school to have much time to read for fun. It was only during the summer months that I would be able to pick what I wanted to read. Like I mentioned on a previous post, I started with Agatha Christie mystery novels. I’ve got an obsessive personality and love to read series with the same characters or set in the same world so I didn’t stop until I read all the Agatha Christie books I could find (my aunt had a huge collection so that was easy enough) and to this day I’m a huge fan of Miss Marple. After that I started reading what was available at home, mostly ScyFi and tried some Jules Verne but didn’t have the patience for it.

I read a couple of Enid Blyton’s famous five but didn’t have many – I need to get the full collection one of these days – and had my first book crush on the character Langelot in a French teen spy series by an author writing under the name of Lieutenant X (Vladimir Volkoff).

During my teen years I got into fantasy thanks to The Lord of the Rings and later into the paranormal with Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. After reading an interview with Tori Amos I tried reading Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics and to this day he remains one of my favorite authors. From reading Good Omens (the funniest book ever) I also became a fan of  Terry Pratchett and read nearly all of his Discworld books plus a few others (did i mention how much I like series?).

During my college years I watched the now famous BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and the wonderful Jennifer Ehle and became a fan of Jane Austen. I’ve read all her books several times and wish she’d written more.

After being mocked by my mother at an early age for reading a teen romance, I had spent years avoiding the genre until I fell in love with Austen’s books, the queen of romantic comedies. I finally admited to myself that I liked romances, especially the kind that ends well, but still felt a bit self-conscious about it to truly embrace it at this point. I read Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Our Mutual Friend, and some other classics (thanks to the cheap edition Penguin books that I started to collect) and I loved them all.

Among the classics I read, the other author that stands out is Oscar Wilde – the man certainly had a way with words and was funny as hell. I don’t particularly like the children’s stories because they’re too depressing but I love most of the plays and was fortunate enough to be able to go see ‘A Woman of no Importance’ starring Rupert Graves during a trip to London.

More recently I’ve come to love another author who is also a fan of Wilde and shares his taste and talent for wit and playful language  – Stephen Fry. His novels are a bit darker and more brutal than I expected but it’s a good kind of kick in the gut and also terribly funny. You can tell how much fun the man has in choosing his words and the end result flows like melted chocolate. I usually care more about the plot and characters than I do about the way a book is written but with Stephen Fry, as with Oscar Wilde, half the fun is in the writing itself.

I still have plans to read other authors I never got to – I hear Virginia Woolf is surprisingly funny, for example – but as life got more complex, thanks to two kids, and time got shorter, I opted for the easy way out and finally gave in to the pull of trashy romance novels. They’re easy to get through, predictable, fun, and there’s thousands to choose from. As I don’t care for stories where the heroes are soldiers, pirates or cowboys – and in the romance novel world you could not throw a pebble into a stadium covered in books without hitting one of those – so I went with what I’ve always liked – vampires, werewolves and other mythical creatures – and dived into the wonderful world of Paranormal Romance, commonly known as PNR.

It started with Twilight. I noticed a lot of people were trashing the first movie, so naturally I decided to watch it. I wanted in on the joke. And yes, vampires that glitter are just giving all vampires a bad name but otherwise I actually got into the story. Yes, it’s kinda creepy and the guy is a dangerous stalker and all that, but it’s fiction and danger is always welcome in romantic fiction. After that I bought the books and I liked them so much I read them twice (OK, the second time I may have jumped a few bits, but still). I couldn’t tell you why I liked it so much because there’s a lot in there that bugs me, like the whole preachy thing about no sex before marriage and so on. Still, the romantic aspects of the book work really well if you like that sort of thing and I seem to for some reason. Some people like soap operas or sports, I like this and I’m done apologizing for it.

Soon after, my brother lent me his collection of Sookie Stackhouse books. I had seen the first season of True Blood and didn’t like it much but I was in a vampire mood so I gave it a shot. I liked the books a lot more than the TV show and consumed them quickly. There’s more sex and violence than Twilight (the main difference between a teen novel and an adult novel is how much sex there is in the book) but once the fairies come into the plot  I started to lose interest. I love the character of Erik, however, and I was glad when Sookie began to agree with me. The book where he loses his memory is my favorite and I spent some time giggling uncontrollably at some of the scenes. I find it interesting that I don’t usually giggle at anything other than funny scenes in books.

Soon enough I started reading any PNR I could get my hands on and I’ve gone through several series in the last year. Some are OK, some are really fun and some are a bit on the dull side but I keep a book with me at all times (the kindle has made it so much easier), even if all I manage is a couple of lines in between changing diapers, getting juice or changing DVDs. Having a nice escapist fantasy world to go back to when I can keeps me sane and prevents resentment toward my kids for not giving me enough free time to even watch a 20 minute episode of a damn sitcom much less a whole movie.

I also read some erotica last year and it was fun for about a week, but the lack of plot and tendency towards threesomes and BDSM (stuff I’m not really into) made me laugh at times but otherwise just made me realize that’s it’s not entirely my cup of tea. I have no problem with sex in books and even find that it can make a relationship in a story more believable, but I’d rather have it in the middle of a story and something more emotionally involved that just plain porn. I did find it interesting to discover that women seem to prefer their porn in book form while men like the visual versions better. I guess women care enough about a guy’s face to want to picture in in their heads rather than have the whole fantasy collapse from the wrong casting 🙂

I may write another post about all the PNR series I’ve read so far even if it’s just to keep track of what I read and whether or not I liked them. Occasionally I write a review for one of the books on Goodreads but for me it makes more sense to talk about a whole series than a single book so I’ll do that here. Feel free to ignore my rants on the subject.

There’s a list of the books I remember reading here. It only goes  up to July 2011 because I started keeping track on Goodreads after that.

Durante a semana entre o natal e o ano novo o Pedro esteve de férias, o que cá por casa quer sempre dizer que esteve doente – não me perguntem porquê mas nunca falha – e os miúdos também.

Depois de ter passado o fim de semana bem, a Joana voltou a ter febre na segunda feira e todos os dias seguintes até quinta, mas só ao fim do dia, mais ou menos de 24 em 24 horas. Go figure. O Pedro também andou de rastos e até eu andei um bocado mais mole que o normal, mas felizmente seja lá que virus for, não me atingiu com a mesma intensidade e consegui aguentar-me.

Depois da confusão do natal passei dias a arrumar a casa e lavar roupa, incluindo uma reorganização completa das caixas de brinquedos do quarto do Tiago e alguma mudança de móveis (não pode passar um ano sem mudarmos qualquer coisa de sí­tio). Pode parecer uma forma de auto-tortura mas é também uma maneira de lidar com o facto de ter as crianças a casa e não saber já o que fazer aos quilos de tralha que eles largam pela casa toda. Achei que fazendo caixas temáticas – carros, aviões, armas, bakugans, etc – também se tornaria mais simples para mim arrumar o que vou apanhando pelos cantos.

Pelo meio fomos vendo uns filmes de desenhos animados, o Pedro foi jogando PS3 com o Tiago e eu fui brincando com ele durante as sestas da Joana porque se nota que ele precisa de atenção exclusiva de vez em quando.

A passagem de ano foi em casa dos meus sogros, como é costume. Tem a vantagem de uma varanda virada para o rio Tejo de onde podemos ver o fogo de artifà­cio sem ser preciso ir gelar para a rua. O Joana aguentou até à s onze e depois teve que ir dormir. O pior foi acordá-la para voltar para casa e depois outra vez para sair do carro. Quando finalmente aterrou na cama esteve longos momentos a expressar o seu descontentamento sob a forma de uma grande gritaria mas lá acabou por adormecer outra vez, coitada. O Tiago esteve acordado até chegar a casa mas assim que entrou foi para o quarto, vestiu o pijama e deitou-se sozinho. Não há cá ir à  casa de banho nem lavar os dentes, queria mesmo era ir dormir.

No dia de ano novo é que as coisas se complicaram. Acordei com o Pedro aos gritos agarrado à  cabeça, com uma dor tão forte que nem conseguia falar comigo de forma coerente. Fiquei um bocado assustada e sem saber o que fazer. Fui buscar-lhe os comprimidos para as dores que ele costuma tomar e liguei aos meus sogros para lhes dizer o que se passava e saber se podia fazer mais alguma coisa. Eles ficaram igualmente preocupados e vieram ver o Pedro que passou o dia na cama a contorcer-se com dores, sem conseguir suportar luz ou sequer virar os olhos. Eu fiz o que pude, tentando manter os miúdos entretidos e alimentados mas o Tiago estava obviamente preocupado.

Ontem as dores continuavam apesar de já ter melhorado um bocadinho mas foi preciso umas doses cavalares de analgésicos, injecções disto e daquilo e o resto é tempo e paciência. Que inà­cio de ano fantástico, de facto. O coitado do Pedro já vai na terceira semana consecutiva com uma doença qualquer. Espero que fique por aqui.

No dia 23 de Dezembro fui comprar ingredientes para fazer os doces de natal, que nesta casa passam mais por um cheesecake diferente do de toda a gente (porque é feito com queijo fundido em vez de requeijão ou queijo creme, e que eu gosto muito mais) e tarte de natas com ananás (fica parecido com bavaroise de ananás mas dá muito menos trabalho) em vez de filhoses e sonhos. Devemos sempre iguais a nós próprios e criar as nossas tradições em vez de seguir as dos outros, especialmente quando não nos dizem nada. Aliás, o próprio natal não me diz grande coisa a não ser pela reunião familiar e pelo gozo de ver os meus filhotes com os olhinhos a brilhar a abrir as prendas. Fora isso devo admitir que é uma grande seca e só dá é trabalho, mas adiante.

Quando cheguei a casa com as compras, fui arrumar o pão na dispensa. Ao abrir a porta, esta bateu na minha bota e o meu cérebro que não se apercebeu a tempo que a passagem não tinha ficado inteiramente desimpedida, deu o OK para avançar e bati com o olho em cheio na esquina da porta. Passada mais de uma semana ainda dói e na altura foi daquelas dores agudas que nos fazem perder completamente a cabeça. Fiquei de tal forma furiosa que dei um bruto pontapé na porta – porque tal como o meu filho de 4 anos, continuo a achar que vale sempre a pena castigar os objectos inanimados quando nos magoam – e atirei com o pacote de pão para a outra ponta da casa. O resultado foi que em vez de ficar só com uma bruta dor de cabeça que acabaria por passar, fiquei também com um dedo do pé todo roxo que me deixou a coxear durante dois dias. E fiquei também a saber que isso de chocar com as portas não é só desculpa para gajas que levam porrada dos maridos. Good to know.

Apesar do pé magoado, passei o resto da manhã na cozinha a fazer cheesecake e massa para biscoitos que o Tiago ajudou a fazer quando voltou da escola.

Quando o cheesecake saiu do forno, o Pedro quis ir almoçar fora. A meio do almoço toca o telefone. Como o dia estava a correr sabia logo que não iam ser boas notà­cias. Era da escola a dizer que a Joana estava com febre. Lá fomos buscar os miúdos logo depois de acabar de comer e voltei para a cozinha onde estive até à  noite a fazer tabuleiro atrás de tabuleiro de biscoitos.

Quem me conhece sabe que odeio cozinhar, mas não consigo resistir à  tentação de fazer biscoitos apesar da trabalheira que dá, especialmente se tiverem formas giras ou forem decorados de alguma maneira. Nunca consegui que ficassem mesmo como eu queria mas os deste ano, com massa de duas cores, ficaram muito giros mesmo sem a cobertura de chocolate colorida que nunca consigo fazer (alguém sabe onde comprar corante em pó? É que os liquidos estragam o chocolate).

A Joana estava de facto com bastante febre mas estranhamente no dia seguinte já não tinha nada. Fomos então jantar a casa dos meus tios Fernando e Isabel. O Tiago integrou-se relativamente bem com os miúdos dos meus primos e a Joana, depois de lhe passar a timidez inicial também já andava para lá a passear toda satisfeita. A certa altura estavam as outras meninas todas (que são mais crescidas) de volta da Joana a por-lhe ganchinhos no cabelo e sei lá mais o quê, como se ela fosse uma boneca. Achei o máximo 🙂

Como os nossos filhotes são os mais novos foi preciso fazer alguma pressão para acelerar a distribuição das prendas porque a tradição familiar é fazer as crianças sofrer até à  meia noite (ou o mais perto possível disso), mas a Joana só tem um ano e não aguenta, e acabávamos por ter que nos ir embora sem prendas, o que seria um grande golpe para o Tiago.

A primeira prenda do Tiago foi livro de histórias infantis escrito pela irmã da minha tia. Eu adorava passar tardes a ouvir as histórias da Clara quando era miúda e acho que o Tiago também vai gostar de as ouvir, mas como não era um brinquedo, o Tiago ficou desapontado e disse logo ‘não gosto nada disto’. Decididamente o meu filho sai à  mãe na honestidade brutal (ao fim destes anos todos acho que comecei finalmente a aprender que ser bem educado é por vezes mais importante do que ser honesto mas devo dizer que ainda me custa. Já estava a fazer beicinho quando recebeu finalmente dois ou três brinquedos e lá acalmou. Queria abrir logo as caixas mas por essa altura a Joana estava mais que pronta para ir para a cama e tivemos que voltar para casa.

A manhã do dia 25 foi passada a limpar a casa e preparar o resto da comida para a tarde. Fomos almoçar a casa da minha sogra e depois veio toda a gente cá para casa, incluindo os meus pais e a famà­lia do meu irmão. A distribuição de prendas só começou já perto das cinco da tarde e durou até à s sete ou oito, com as pessoas a fazer pequenos intervalos para petiscar. Os doces que eu tinha feito ficaram praticamente intactos já que depois das sobremesas do almoço ninguém se queria empanturrar com mais coisas doces – outra boa razão para fazer só docer que eu gosto: sou eu que tenho de fazer o sacrifà­cio de os comer quando sobra 🙂

A maior parte das prendas eram para os miúdos e foi giro vê-los a ocupar o chão da sala com toda a espécie de aviões, dinossauros, robots, bonecas, etc. O Tiago vai andar meses sem se aperceber sequer que tem alguns dos brinquedos até os encontrar novamente um dia destes.