An Acquired Taste

Well hello there. Welcome. I am on the wine. K has been paid so the cheap plonk is back in my glass and the fizz is back in the wine rack. We can all breathe a sigh of relief.  The fridge, freezer and cupboards are all full of food and life feels an awful lot less tense. Things are so relaxed K is even promising to have the screen on my my ipad fixed - hoorah!! It has been so long since I've been able to use it - I think it must be approaching a year - that it will feel like a brand new toy all over again. I cannot WAIT.

So. Last time we met I was all full of sleep and sun. This time around I am blissfully sunned but sadly not slept. The flipping lurgy has returned and the youngest two are now taking it in turns to wake up and keep me awake throughout the night. Three hours is the most I've managed to get uninterrupted for about five nights now. However I shall not dwell. It is hopefully a passing phase and so I am ignoring it. This week has been lovely due to the sun being out.  We have spent evenings in the park along with most of their school and I have spent many hours sitting outside in my friends' gardens. I spent a fabulous day with Events Organiser in her garden on Thursday. I was only meant to be popping in for a cup of tea and ended up spending all day sitting under her cherry tree as it snowed blossom and we drank tea and ate smoked salmon bagels. Bliss. Some days it is worth getting out of bed.  The sun is so restorative. I feel so much better about almost everything. I am even eating less chocolate. I have lost two important pounds and I am hopeful of even more this week after a sudden burst of energy which has seen me transform the playroom and Cybil's bedroom. I am endeavouring to make the most of what we have and make the house feel less small and cramped and as the house would be almost entirely empty if all the toys were gone, I thought that would be a good place to start making changes. 

The sun even makes the house feel bigger. Being able to get out and stay out means that the four walls don't seem so close together and the light shining in through the windows makes the dirt look less dirty and the walls look whiter.  It is just in time as I was extremely close to giving up on SE23 altogether.  Since half term I have been incredibly keen to sell up and move to the country to live 'the good life'. The long winter has seen my tolerance for city living reach an all time low and I have been hankering after a big house and garden somewhere in sunny Suffolk. Specifically in the peace and tranquillity of my mother's garden. She has a convenient plot of land with planning permission and I have been trying to enforce a compulsory purchase order and make her hand it over to me so that we can build a house big enough to fit us all in and have the added advantage of an on-site babysitter and the use of her garden (and I also wanted to put in an indoor climbing wall, a lego room/study, laundry chutes etc - it would RULE). It would also have the advantage of being possible without having to take out a mortgage or as near as damn it and I have to say this whole prospect was pretty tantalising during the last few months of rain and poverty. I had almost the entire move sewn up in my head - I was even researching schools and leafing through interior magazines trying to decide on the type of kitchen we would install. However, just as my excitement reached fever pitch, the few stumbling blocks I was encountering (both K and mum not being keen) became mountainous. I had assumed K would be far easier to bulldoze - after all he only wanted two children - but it turns out I was wrong. I ignored his protestations and carried on planning regardless. But then Mother became less and less keen about handing over her land until she finally said a definite no, and here is the sting, because I would be too difficult to live next door to.  Hilariously I had been most worried about how I would manage to live in such close proximity to her, but clearly she thought I would be the tricky element in this scenario. So, with both main elements set against the idea I have had to admit defeat for now. All my dreams of a big garden and laundry chutes will have to be on hold until I perfect my bullying techniques.

The garden is a major thing for me. We have an outside space but it isn't really big enough to do much in. It does hold a paddling pool, a shed and a BBQ nicely so I mustn't grumble but it isn't exactly 'a dream' garden. There is no room for a trampoline or a climbing frame which I increasingly find myself hankering after. I have also been trying to afford to have decking put down on the 'crazy paving' part of the garden for around 8 years to spare all of our feet as much as to make it look nicer. It would be particularly helpful right now as Cybs is crawling over everything and putting anything she finds in to her mouth which means I have to be pretty careful about where I put her. She doesn't seem to have a discerning palate and is as happy chowing down on sand or an old crispy leaf as she is shovelling down pasta.  Bea was the same - she was a nightmare at the crawling stage. She ate stones from the beach, sand and most notably she once ate used cat litter. And then screamed when I tried to prevent her going back for seconds. She also, and I am ashamed to say it, chowed down on half a Marlboro light. It was back in the days when I was still socially smoking on occasion and she was going through my bag as I sunbathed, when I suddenly looked up and found her with the pack and half a masticated fag. It was even worse as there was a family nearby who were looking on open mouthed. I hastily retrieved the pack and the fags and tried to fish out as much of the tobacco as I could. I asked Cupcake Sister - who was there and finding the whole thing hilarious - if I should take her to hospital.  We couldn't be arsed and luckily she was fine. But the image still haunts me. Although the used cat litter turns my stomach more. Anyhoo she seems fine even with all the sand, cat litter and tobacco but I am trying to take a more diligent approach with C and prevent her from ingesting anything too revolting. She is to be my masterpiece of child rearing and so I shall try and keep her intestines pure.

And that, I'm afraid, is about that. Due to my new happy outlook I don't have much to chat about. Most of my complaints have to do with the children's bodily functions so I won't share to save you from having to imagine it. Instead I shall look forward to my fabulous bank holiday weekend filled with sun, family and friends. I can literally think of nothing else to tell you.

So I shall leave. Goodnight.

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