I should be...

• tidying up before my mum comes to clean this afternoon.
• phoning BT to check their incorrect demand for money has really been sorted out.
• phoning B's prospective nursery to find out why I have still had no information in the post, supposedly the third time they have sent it.
• on my way to check the chickens so I can then get to my tai chi class on time.
• checking little man's pyjamas are out and bed is ready for him to get into when daddy brings him home while I'm at work later.
• putting the recycling in the blue bin.
• pumping my car tyres up.
• making salad to take to work.

In the moment? Not really.

Monster to-do list

I've been feeling a little hassled of late. Too much to do, not enough time. Not enough time to spend pottering about at toddler pace. My bank account likes the fact that I'm working four days a week, but the rest of my life doesn't. I'm tired and stressed and I keep getting colds. Here's this week's to-do list, much of which probably won't get done and not much of which is much fun:

Get some adhesive stuck in my tyres to stop them going down all the time.
Stick my rear view mirror back on.
Top up my screen wash.
Find the right payslip to complete my holiday pay form.
Find the bits of paper I need to do my tax return.
Order some pix from when the photographer came to Jo Jingles.
Change my bedsheets. And little man's.
Check how I'm getting to Manchester for a Biffy Clyro concert on Friday.
Return my library books.
Make a Christmas card list.
Find the slip of paper that tells me when in December my dental check-up is.
Get little man's hair trimmed.
Put some more of little man's old baby sleeping bags and a couple of under-used slings on eBay.
Buy some kind of packaging for the ones I've already put on.
Rearrange a missed delivery of a component of little man's Christmas present.
Persuade the ex to come round with a long ladder and investigate why there are damp patches on my ceilings and walls.
Get the picture I bought on holiday framed.
Get a quote for the removal of my gas fire monstrosity.

Edited to add: Chase up the nursery that was supposed to send me an inquiry form.
Collect another missed delivery from the sorting office.

Edited again to add: Find a new telly as mine is refusing to stay switched on.
Work out how to empty the vacuum cleaner as I accidentally vacuumed up a pair of knickers! (I must add that I have done it before, I can just never remember how.)
Swap plants round in my pots.
Buy an external hard-drive before my overloading laptop seizes up and also back up all my photos.

And again to add: Remember to re-read the book Timeless Simplicity by John Lane (highly recommended), go outside, hug a tree and stop letting all this shit get on top of me.

Doing (housework) or being

On Thursday, I intended to get some housework done. I was definitely going to tidy away some of the toys littering the living and dining room floors. Perhaps even sweep said floors. Then there was that big pile of clean washing waiting to be put away. The junk that has accumulated at one end of the dining room to be sorted out. And the loo in desperate need of a scrub.

So what did we actually do? We nipped off to the garden centre to buy some more plants for the fish tank. On the way, incidentally, I had some confirmation that it does sink in when I tell little man where we're going and what we're doing. As we parked up, he said: 'More plants, fish.' Of course, we had to look at all the fish, and the turtles, and anenomes, and guinea pigs, and rabbits, and finches. Then we were joined by grandma and grandad for tea and scones in the cafe. Then we found a playhouse to try out and we all ended up sitting inside it being ordered around by the two-year-old. Then mummy decided she needed an evergreen plant, what with winter approaching and all (a Pieris japonica 'Little Heath' in case you were wondering.)

Then it was home for a nice long nap, before throwing together some pizza dough and heading off to play in grandma and grandad's garden so grandad could pot up my new plant as I'd run out of compost. After going to the shop to buy the pizza toppings and calling in on a friend for instructions on checking her chooks while they're away, we'd run out of time.

Oh well. Most of the housework tasks actually got done on Friday instead. In between going swimming and popping to the park in between rain showers and playing trains and reading books and pretending to be aeroplanes and making duvets into tents and climbing into the washing basket (him, not me!). Just don't look too closely if you ever visit my house.

Little helper

My little man would like to say hello to Franklen and his DS, who likes to help around the house. Well, this little man does too. He likes brushing up and vacuuming, putting things in the bin, putting wet washing on the airing rack, peeling and chopping veg, mixing cakes, whisking eggs, kneading dough and carrying the reusable bags into the supermarket. But we're still working on the idea of putting toys away when we've finished with them!

I think it's only natural that young children will want to join in with what they see their grown-ups doing. Everything they see is fascinating to them. Everything they do, they become completely absorbed in. They're not daydreaming about the weekend whilst peeling carrots. Or planning their evening's television schedule whilst scrubbing the bath. And if us grown-ups are doing all this stuff around the house, it must be important. Right? Otherwise why would be doing it?

Pottering

It's what we tend to do on Thursdays. Work is over for the week, usually, little man is always with me and not daddy and we have no commitments.

We cook. Cauliflower and cheese soup for lunch to use up the cauli from last week's veg box and the slightly over-ripe smoked Cheshire cheese. Little man even ate some. We do those household chores that can't wait any longer like vacuuming up all the bits of crushed cereal from underneath the sofa. We stroll into town to pick up milk and bread and pop to the library. Today he fell asleep in the Yamo on the way there so I actually got to look at 'grown-up' books. (I was going to say 'adult' books but that might give the wrong impression.) I've borrowed some of the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell because I like a bit of action (suppose that might give the wrong impression too...).

Little man even stayed asleep when we got home long enough for me to have a cuppa and start a book, albeit perched on the edge of a dining chair so as not to squash him. After lunch we went to a play group, although it seemed wrong to go to an indoor group on such a beautiful spring day. To make up for it we called in to see the chooks at the allotment, where we found grandad digging and stopped for a cuppa. At home, we planted up some pots for the back yard with narcissi (those tete a tete mini daffs), little purple irises, drumstick primulas and a couple of evergreen ferns. Well, I planted and he rammed my legs with his ride-on car and demanded a succession of oatcakes so I had to keep washing my hands.

We had sausages and lentil thing for tea. Lentil thing contains all sorts of good stuff like carrots, celery and dried mushrooms. He ate the sausages and then ate about a dozen lentils, one at a time. Slowly. And then grandma and grandad arrived to put him to bed while I went off to a yoga class. Ohm.

Now my telly box seems to be playing up, so I guess I'll even be rounding off this day of simple homely joys with an early night. Time for camomile and spearmint tea. I could do with more days like this.

The virtue continues

I have finally mopped the downstairs floors! Believe me, they definitely needed it. Little man tends to drop his food overboard when he is fed up with it. And although I wipe round the highchair after each meal, the floor really needed a proper clean. The weather hasn't helped, with lots of wet and muddy comings and goings from both front and back doors. So armed with my new Magic Mop and rediscovered bucket I set to.

Then of course I had to go and lounge in a hot bath for an hour or so while the floors dried so I didn't mess them up again.

I have got other tedious stuff done today too: new front tyres, brakes checked, wheels balanced, library books returned (such a good job they don't charge fines on children's tickets), top with hole in returned to Debenhams, broached subject of wanting to move house with STBE husband...

And the not so tedious: used Yamo for first time, chased little man around library as he pulled books and DVDs from all the carousels, read the Tractor book (ok, that is starting to come under tedious), found the old computer keyboard in the garage for little man to bang on, found some very nice blackcurrant tea in Somerfield.

Life, and all that.

Pottering

No, not pottery, although rustic handmade pottery is nice too. But I mean a rare afternoon of pottering about the house, interspersed with twenty minutes at the nice playground on the way home from Tiny Talk and a half-hour walk with the Yamo when he needed a snooze before I made dinner.

My house was getting a bit unbearable. I am not a tidy person, but ironically I don't like living in a messy environment; it affects me emotionally. At least when I do get round to tidying up, wiping down and vacuuming it makes a big difference and I feel much better for it. There's still a bit left to do in the morning but I have put away lots of clothes, rounded up stray bits of washing, disinfected worktops, cleaned the washbasin, binned a million dirty tissues and plucked Mr Frog from the dusty gap between the bedhead and the window.

And all at my own pace. Not rushed. So if little man got a bit grizzly I could stop to read a book with him, give him cuddles or bounce on the bed. I like getting out to see people (tea and cake, yum), but it's nice to potter about at home too sometimes.

As for the pottery, it's bugging me that I can't remember where the dozy chicken jug and matching mugs came from.

Packing

Clothes, nappies, teddy, wipes, toys, books, slings, snacks, milk, woolly hat, sunhat. Check. Chickens' feed and water topped up. Check. Bin emptied. Check. Dishes done. Check. Garage locked. Check. Me: clothes, books, knitting, tweezers, E45 cream, antidepressants, relaxing CDs. Check.

All for two nights away in a cottage near Kendal. Which is about an hour up the M6. And I have to come back early to go to work on Sunday afternoon.

Have a good weekend folks. I've given you a pretty pic to set the tone.

Baby nomad

Here are The Trousers. Now moving on....







Little man likes to be on the move. Especially when it is time for a daytime nap. Which means mummy has to be on the move. Not having a nap beside him. This afternoon I spent half an hour sitting quiety reading books with him hoping he might start to doze off. Then I put him in the ring sling and pottered about the house for half an hour, hoping he might start to doze off. All he did was stop me drinking my cup of tea because he wanted to stick his fist in it. I had things to do, things I could do much more easily if he was peacefully asleep. But no, he wasn't having any of it.

I put him in the Yamo, a soft-structured carrier borrowed from Preston sling group. http://www.slingmeet.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=3276 I grabbed my keys and left the house. Walking up the road at school run time was not so pleasant so I turned down a track that cuts through fields/wasteground behind my house. Ben dozed off on my back. I looked at the hawthorn blossom in the overgrown hedges and the petals sprinkled over the path. And I thought, hmm, this is nice. And those things I had to do will get done. Eventually.

Extreme knitting

It's exciting stuff. I have been knitting for only a few months. It's very therapeutic when you're coming to terms with the end of your marriage and you're at a loose end in the evening after little one has gone to bed. (Ignoring the floors that need disinfecting, the loo that needs scrubbing, the fridge that needs cleaning...) And already I am throwing caution to the wind. I have a pattern for a tank top from a website http://knitty.com/ISSUEspring04/PATTboogie.html. I have some Aran-weight yarn. Which is not what the pattern specifies. I think it looks nice in 2x2 rib. Which is not what the pattern specifies. I am doing a line of cable. For the first time. Without a cable needle. I have no idea if the resulting garment will fit me. I even have a cunning plan to cut the arms and neck area off an old blouse that doesn't fit any more and sew it into the tank top so it will look like a trendy ensemble.

I am starting to think I may be better at the ideas than the execution. Or maybe it's the doing rather than the end result. I have a head bursting full of ideas and I love beginnings. Beginnings are full of potential. I am at a new beginning in my life as I work out how I'm going to live as a single mother. I can imagine all sorts of wonderful things that might happen. But probably not while I'm sitting at home knitting.