The last week or so.

Monday we tried to avoid drowning and did stuff with Max in and around the house.

Tuesday we escaped to the Beans house to get out of the house before we all killed each other. As everyone was back to work it was, naturally, sunny.

Wednesday Hannah, Linzi and the girls and small boys came over. Much roleplay, mayhem and chat, as ever. Lovely to see them of course 🙂 In the afternoon we read the SOTW chapters on the Crusades, several of them on the go. Plan to read around it a bit more and do all the activities in a lump next.

Thursday  we went over to Claire and Charlie’s and spent the night there; more mayhem, lots of bouncing and small quantities of screaming. Amelie is really in prize wind up mode at the moment, it is very wearing. Friday we weren’t home till late and the weekend we’ve spent with me trying to do a million things to the house and business to get it straight while Max and the girls played. I’ve been in an extraordinarily bad mode, hormones, general upsurge in sadness, stroppy customers and the underlying message of Dr Who all combining with Tescos being full of happy pregnant people to make me rage at the world in all sorts of fashions, some selfish, some not so selfish. Really, i could cheerfully swing for anyone this weekend, even people who just talk to me. Had to buy a new printer too, which then spent all day being workshy, i’ve still strung between a network that doesn’t, a dying computer with all my software and a spanking new computer with nothing on it that i actually need. Have cried persistantly at everything, even Disneyt tunes (8 times on the way home from Claire’s) and made the worst driving mistake i have made in probably 8 years on the way home, narrowly avoiding mangling about 4 cars.

Yesterday some stupid little girl in the close chose to squeeze between my reversing car and the one i was carefully reversing round (bah to people who park across the back of my drive) after i’d seen her stop and wait for me on the pavement. What possessed her, i have no idea, but i nearly squashed her because she must have squeezed through a rapidly narrowing gap of about a foot.  I went round to rant ar her parents about it, and they clearly didn’t give a f*ck. In fact, they hadn’t seen her for a few hours. Fine, whatever.

Nevermind.

Josie has had a haircut and now has a chiun length bob.

Amelie can read the word “no” and reads it EVERYWHERE.

Fran has her nose in a book, constantly, currently an assortment of Stardust books and North Child.  She is very interested in germs and diseases and we’ve been talking a lot about TB, treatments for TB, causes of TB, globalisation, bacteria and viruses and penicillin v the relative lack of use of anti-virals. She has also been doing a lot of one handed cartwheels. She is obsessed with a set of Usborne books covering famous people and inventions so knows all about toilets, telephones, the history of fashion and Marie Antoinette.
Maddy has been drawing and making lots and lots and lots.  She can also now do cartwheels. She has been doing far more than that, but she does it so quietly, i can’t remember. She did do an amazing picture the other day, which she thought of in the car, making Cruella De Ville out of a tracing around her hand and arm. Very clever 🙂

I’ve been working very hard on training MF up so that when i’m away she doesn’t need my back up. She wants more hours, so the work balance should swing back to home even more for me and Lucy wants to come back too, so once i can rely on MF to answer email queries, my time away will be less fraught and my time here will be mainly ordering and planning and website stuff. I’d say i could see light at the end of the tunnel, only Christmas is coming! However, BM now takes proper card payments, so one stress has been removed. No more Nochex. Hurrah.

And now, having been nagged even in the Tesco carpark to blog, i’ve fulfilled my duties i think 😉