Katyboo1’s Weblog

As that nerdy bloke said about football, today has been a day of two halves (this is the entire total of my vast knowledge of the world of football, so let us never talk of it again).  This morning Oscar went to nursery and the girls were content to watch television.  This mainly meant that Tilly watched television and Tallulah watched some telly, annoyed Tilly and built some citadels out of bricks.  This is one of her new hobbies.  She finds it very frustrating because just as she has built herself something spectacular Oscar usually comes moseying through town on his giant nappy and wipes out three streets.  He’s also quite keen on seeing how many bricks he can stuff into his mouth in one go (one so far, but I think he’s hoping that repetition will stretch it sufficiently).  Thankfully this morning she got to build in peace and made many fine towns which she was then happy to knock down herself.

While the kids were doing this I was lounging about in the bath getting wrinkly toes (a luxury, a veritable luxury I tell you) and finishing my Ian Rankin book.  It was wonderful.  I didn’t have anything too pressing to do and I spent about two hours being semi amphibian and thinking: ‘I’ll just read another chapter…’  I’m now going to have to try and talk myself out of buying the last one.  I don’t think it will work, mainly because I’m taking the kids into town tomorrow to get some things to keep them amused on the flight, and I can’t really see us avoiding a trip to Waterstones in which I will be clinically unable to walk past the book without buying it.

Most of the day I have been indulging in another little habit of mine.  As those of you who read my blog around Christmas may remember, I am slightly addicted to Terry’s chocolate oranges.  I try to only buy them at Christmas time as I don’t really enjoy paying for dental treatment and don’t want blackened stumps for teeth.  Luckily, or unluckily, depending on which way you play it, I managed to persuade the Easter bunny to buy me a box of the Chocolate Orange Segsations.  I was quite good with them up until today, and today my chocolate thermostat went on the fritz and I have finished half a box.  I now feel quite sick, but am glad that I have managed to put temptation behind me, one way or the other.  Even though my way technically involved me eating the temptation, which is probably not recommended, but did feel good while it lasted, particularly the ones with bits of crunchie in them.

My friend Nicole was supposed to be coming over after work, and my friend Nicki was supposed to be coming over this afternoon, followed by a late evening visit by Jason’s friends Guy and Andy.  I was prepared for this, and then just as I was finishing the last five pages of my book got a text from Nicole saying that nothing was happening at work and could she come and take a long lunch break with us instead.  This was fine apart from me having to mentally rejiggle tea and lunch time. Nicole bought her crazy Basset Hound, Autumn, who is the size of a small caravan and about as speedy.  Oscar, who was by now back from nursery was over the moon.  He had never managed to get so close to a dog before and gave her a huge honk on the nose and shrieked excitedly before I pulled him away.  Luckily Autumn is not known for her vicious tendencies.  She might drool you to death or roll on you accidentally as she’s coming in for a tummy rub, but that’s as violent as it gets.  We made sure they stayed fairly aloof from each other though.  I really didn’t want to compensate Nicole for Autumn losing an eye thanks to Oscar’s ability to spit bricks.

Just as Nicole left, Nicki rang to say her car had mysteriously been clamped by the DVLA even though she was fully paid up with all the relevant bits of paper etc, and she would be held up while she went and chewed their ear off and got her car back.  Luckily a client lent her a car in which to go and do this.  Unluckily it was a Fiesta.  She was very sad that it was the car of Beelzebub, but needs must and all that, so off she went.  She promised she would come round for a farewell cup of tea if she could get her car back before Monday.

So, the afternoon was spent cleaning and polishing and doing laundry, stripping beds, cleaning windows, scrubbing floors etc.  It’s the final push before our holidays and I really don’t want to do anything else now except the odd bit of light dusting.  This is just not going to happen, I know it, you know it, and the kids certainly know it (especially after Tallulah sat on a load of spaghetti hoops at tea time.  Why? I just don’t know.  They were there.) but it’s nice to fool myself for a while.

I’ll tell you how diligent I was.  I have even taken the Christmas tree down.  Call me crazy, I know it’s not Whitsun yet, but what can you do? It’s been getting me down for months, despite the kids and Jason mounting a campaign to keep it up perpetually to add cheer and colour to the place.  It lives/lived right by my desk, and there were times recently where I felt rather Hansel and Gretelish, and that if I groped about long enough I would be sure to find a gingerbread cottage, or possibly Narnia.  It’s wonderful to have it down.  I did a little dance in the space, after I’d hoovered up all the fake needles.  I did scratch my arms to ribbons forcing the bloody thing into its box, (it clearly didn’t want to go back in the loft either.  Tough, say I.  Tough on the causes of Christmas. Tough on Christmas.  That’s my new motto), but it was well worth the effort.

I spent about four hours cleaning and finished just as Nicki pulled up in the Fiesta.  She had given up all hope of getting her car back within a reasonable time and had decided to come and see us anyway.  We just had time for a cup of tea before I had to make tea.  I was really thrown by now, because the tea I had planned for visitors was the lunch we had for unexpectedly early visitors (who it turned out didn’t want feeding anyway, but by then it was too late to back out).  This meant that tea was really desperation tea and consisted of beans, spaghetti hoops or cheese on toast.  This was greeted with great enthusiasm by the kids and Jason who had arrived back from work by this point, but with not so much eager anticipation by Nicki, who very wisely decided to get back into her devil car and go home for something sensible and nutritious for tea.  Thank God Guy and Andy arrived on time and with full bellies. I really didn’t want to be launching into midnight snacks after all this.