pottering

In the meantime, I am once again pottering about here on the ancestral estate by myself and alternately enjoying doing whatever I like without regard to anyone else's wants and needs and missing having Someone Else's wants and needs to take into consideration.

She Doesn't Pay Her Musicians! John 2008

I can conceive of nothing more bitter than an interminable old age spent in pottering about and in ill-natured idleness, and I can't see that we are doing anything to make possible a better use of the boon of longer life.

A Glance At The Future 1951

I recalled pottering around in there several times.

The White Rose Cook, Glen 1985

The urge to want to "get on with it" and paint overwhelms me wanting to spend alot of time fixing up the surface of something, that said, when I'm lazy myself and in a "pottering" mood, I tend to get rid of my anxiety by painting and re-painting canvas surfaces.

ART DIGRESSION: Surfaces to paint on Zillabob 2008

She must not, on any account, force down -- as her female friends or as a "pottering" old nurse may advise -- to "grinding pains"; if sue does, it will rather retard than forward her labor.

Searchlights on Health The Science of Eugenics B. G. Jefferis

It is always best to put animals which are at all likely to pull, through a regular course of cub hunting from the very beginning of the season, so that they may gradually work along from the "pottering" to the galloping stage.

The Horsewoman A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. Alice M. Hayes 1873

Lord Cumnor was a forbearing landlord; putting his steward a little on one side sometimes, and taking the reins into his own hands now and then, much to the annoyance of the agent, who was, in fact, too rich and independent to care greatly for preserving a post where his decisions might any day be overturned by my lord's taking a fancy to go 'pottering' (as the agent irreverently expressed it in the sanctuary of his own home), which, being interpreted, meant that occasionally the earl asked his own questions of his own tenants, and used his own eyes and ears in the management of the smaller details of his property.

Wives and Daughters Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell 1837

She was much too young to be a visitor at the school, so it was not on that account that she was to go; but it had so happened that one day when Lord Cumnor was on a 'pottering' expedition, he had met Mr. Gibson, _the_ doctor of the neighbourhood, coming out of the farm-house my lord was entering; and having some small question to ask the surgeon (Lord Cumnor seldom passed any one of his acquaintance without asking a question of some sort -- not always attending to the answer; it was his mode of conversation), he accompanied Mr. Gibson to the out-building, to a ring in the wall of which the surgeon's horse was fastened.

Wives and Daughters Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell 1837

Alsace is a perfect place for pottering about with its Route de Vin (alsace-route-des-vins.com) easily negotiated by bicycle, so long as you're prepared for the occasional steep hill (you're in the foothills of the Vosges here).

Budget wine trips in France 2011

It's paradoxical that Lovelock, the futurist, lives more like an 18th-century scientist, pottering in a barn that doubles as his lab.

James Lovelock wins Observer lifetime achievement at ethical awards 2011