A busy day
1) Get up and dressed before the children descend on me.
2) Discover Adam is already dressed, and is even wearing socks. Yay Adam.
3) Discover Ruth is still asleep. Gently wake her up and find that she can be coaxed into getting dressed, but only if I pretend that it’s still midnight.
4) The plumber arrives to fix our leaking toilet cistern.
5) I explain our embarrassing stink. I’ve never been a particularly good housekeeper, but this stink is something else – and it keeps moving round the house. Sometimes it’s definitely in the airing cupboard upstairs, other times it’s just as definitely emanating from the dishwasher. He says he’ll investigate it for us.
6) Take the children to school – it’s c..c..c..cold!
7) Get home to find that the plumber is still here, and the water is still off, so I can’t do the washing up. (Bother 
)
8) I start weighing out the fruit to make this year’s Christmas cake and leave it to macerate in whisky.
9) The plumber leaves, saying he’ll be back some time after 3pm to replumb the kitchen sink (I don’t want to even start on how badly that had been plumbed in originally) and put a trap in the outlet for the dishwasher, to the lack of which he attributes our stench.
10) I start on my big pile of marking.
11) I cook liver and bacon for my lunch at about 11:30am – the liver needed using today, and I needed to be ready to go out for…
12) going into town to meet John at 12:45 to look at bikes.
13) Spend AGES feeling rather bemused by different bikes and panniers and lights and locks and, and, and, but finally settle on a Raleigh Pioneer Metro LX with various accessories.
14) Head towards home, but then have stroke of genius and drop into work to hand in the paperwork for getting them to buy my bike for me. (It should be processed in a week or so and the bike is already on order, so I should get it by Christmas – yay!)
15) Ride home feeling less and less love for the old bike.
16) Mark two more pieces of work.
17) Post DVD back to LoveFilm – I’ve only got Mamma Mia (yes, I know you know the film, but the site is fun) on top priority, so I’m hoping they send that next.
18) Pick up the children and scurry them back home so I can make a start on dinner before the plumber gets back – oh, and clean the sink.
19) Get Ruth to let the plumber in as I finish cleaning the sink. (ahem).
20) Do some piano with Adam.
21) Finish the big pile of marking (there’s still another couple of big piles to do, but I’m in denial about them.)
22) Make Pan Haggerty for dinner, while trying not to get in the plumber’s way – I’d cunningly washed the potatoes before he arrived – and I’d slowly and carefully washed the necessary pan too. (I’m sure I’ve made it in the oven before, and I’m sure that’s how my mother makes it too, but I could only find stovetop recipes.)
23) Remember the chickens and go and give them kitchen scraps.
24) Eat dinner, drink wine (thus scuppering half-made plans to go out knitting tonight).
You may notice that I started something this morning, and yet there is no reference to finishing it – yup – the Christmas cake was still macerating…
25) Line the cake tin, and break the eggs, leaving the rest of the cake-making in John’s capable hands.
26) Take Ruth up to bed (during which process I’m not exactly sure which of us is supposed to be the Mummy and which is the baby – either way, it seems to entail her wearing my specs).
27) Read another 2 chapters of The Picts and the Martyrs to Adam.
28) Choose pattern for baby due on 10th Dec. (How cute are the Drops babies?)
29) Start knitting. (Yes, I know this is a cue for a photo, but it’s too late. I’ll do one when there’s more than 5 cm o to show.)
30) The airing cupboard is still stinky… 
one comment:
We have new wheels too. Four altogether. On one vehicle…xLouise () (link) - 26 November '08 - 14:07
