The (Sort Of) Humdrum Life Of A 40-Something ...

Sometimes I yearn for a bit of excitement in my life. Wouldn't it be great if I had lots of really interesting things to relate for my blog readers on a daily basis (disclaimer: I am not kidding myself in the slightest that I have ANY blog readers, or at least not more than one or two). But I suppose it's inevitable that this blog is about ME and MY life, and I have come to the conclusion that it can't be all exciting and wonderful.

That said, since I last visited blogdom there has been lots happening. None of it especially exciting, but did you really expect it to be?

Okay ... so Sean and his friend Heather, with some help from Ethan and me, sorted out the front garden. We now have a flower bed that has weed cover (to stop the weeds from growing) and a nice thick covering of plum coloured slate chippings, with the addition of four big(ish) lavender plants, six hyacinths (the pink ones have started to flower, but not the blue or lilac ones yet) and 24 pansies. However, according to Harold who lives down the road, I should have got winter pansies as they last forever and ever and keep flowering. Hey ho, you live and learn. Nonetheless, I now have a front garden that looks respectable. Apart from the big hole covered with a big slab of chipboard and the huge pile of dirt sat next to it. This is, of course, courtesy of the insurance company, who ordered the hole dug back in October (actually they dug it on Sean's birthday, 15th October - I remember particularly as that was the day we came back from Germany) for some reason or other to do with the flooding of the cellar at the end of 2007. Yep, almost six months on and it's still there. *makes mental note - must get Colin to ring them tomorrow to demand it be filled in immediately*

So, apart from the fact that it is a good idea to have a nice, neat front garden, there was an ulterior motive. Ethan's birthday is next Saturday, and he is having a party. We have booked The Big Red Party Bus, a bus (red, funnily enough) which has been converted into a playbus with ball pits and rope ladders and all sorts of things exciting to kids, which will come and park outside the house. We load the kids on, they shut the doors and let the kids run riot all over the bus for a couple of hours, eat party food, play party games etc etc etc. Naturally this means that the parents dropping their kids off will see my house, from the outside at least. So having a tidy garden was a must. It's not that I'm a snob or anything, but I know how easy it is to judge people by appearances, and I'm sure as it is that I am viewed as a fat, lazy Mum who doesn't look after her kids properly. Ooh, that good ol' persecution complex!

So at least the garden looks nice. The front door is in great need of replacement, but there's no hope of that happening in the next week (besides which I am having Mum's old (and expensive) front door which I am still waiting for Colin to collect from London). My major problem though, is the concept of letting anyone inside my house. Look, I freely admit it, I AM lazy. I can always find far better things to occupy my time with than housework (like blogging, for example). But this is a big house, and there are four of us here, two of whom (me and Colin) hoard stuff like it's going out of fashion. There has been that much crap and clutter shoved into the dining room that I honestly have not been able to pass the threshold of the room for a year. Honestly.

Okay, so I know that a lot of Mums are reticent to leave their precious littlies in the care of other parents, even at a party for two hours, so no doubt some (if not all) of them will be expecting to come and sit in my house for a couple of hours. I can make the living room shiny and clean, and the hall, and the kitchen and stairs and landing (all the bedroom doors will be FIRMLY shut though to hide the mess within) ... but the major problem is the bathroom. These days the crack in the bath (actually there are two) is literally right across the middle. To have a shower you have to get in and make sure that you only stand on the bits that have the metal supports underneath, so basically only right at the very end (both ends). Sean very helpfully 'sealed' the cracks with parcel tape and it looks a right eyesore. I live in a shithole.

It's not that we're not doing anything about the bathroom - we are, or at least, we are planning it. But the bathroom is tiny - just 2.2 x 1.5 metres, and there's not a lot that you can really do without knocking down walls. We were considering knocking back through into the back bedroom (it was all originally one room which was partitioned to make the bathroom), but we've been told it will affect the value of the house considerably if we lose a bedroom. I THINK we can just about get a walk-in shower in there, where the bath is now, but everything will be a very tight squeeze. And of course we need to find the money to pay for it all to be done/work out the logistics etc (logistics seems to take lots of time).

So, I can clean the bathroom to within an inch of its life in case we have any visitors (and I shall then hope and pray that they don't want to use the loo) ... but my plan is to get an empty washing basket and chuck it in the bath so that it covers the parcel-taped-up cracks, and then hopefully no-one will notice.

And I don't really know any of the other Mums that well. Okay, maybe two or three I know to say hello to and pass the time of day, but that's it really. I think this is where we need the confident Kate to come out to play. We will see.

Apart from planning birthday parties for little monkeys (and sorting out little monkey birthday presents), we have been on a health kick. Believe it or not, Colin and I have been out at 6.30 am every morning since Sunday (apart from yesterday cos I wasn't well) for a bike ride. Okay, we've not gone particularly far (the furthest was 1.5 miles), but it all helps, and it has been making me feel so much better during the day. We didn't go yesterday because I felt rather delicate - I'd woken at 2.00 am feeling that I was going to be sick, and had a very heavy, queasy, bloated feeling to my stomach (I am blaming it on the bratwurst I had for dinner) - I still felt awful at 6.00 am so we had a lie-in. But in an effort to be good, we went to the gym last night instead, where I had a go on the Power Plates that they have now. Most interesting, and I can't wait to have another go.

Cycling a mile or so each morning isn't going to do a lot, but every little helps. Along with the Paul McKenna CD (I Can Make You Thin - I thought I'd try it and see if it works, as I am a sceptic about these sorts of things - however, my GP seems to think that there is something to this neurolinguistic programming, and I have to admit that I think it does seem to be working) I seem to be making some headway. I can feel that I have lost some weight (probably no more than a few pounds, but still) and am managing to eat relatively healthily and not stuff my face to distraction in my usual manner.

One upside of this health kick is that I've had to adjust my Insulin levels cos I'm finding that I hit a low sometime around 5.00 - 6.00 pm most nights. I've cut my nighttime Insulin twice now (the second time was tonight), so I am now taking eight units less (it might not sound a lot, but it represents 10% of my usual dose) and hopefully I'll be able to cut it more as time goes on. Fingers crossed.

Aside from all that, there's not been much progress on the knitting of Monkey socks front - I am finding it hard going. I have come to the conclusion that I really am not a sock knitter. Hopefully next time I feel the urge to knit socks I will remember this and then not bother. But I probably won't.

Work has been hectic as usual, but at least today I have managed to be very productive indeed. A lot of our team are away next week, which will hopefully give me the chance to get more up to date with things.

Okay, now I'm starting to bore myself with my incessant rambling, so it's time to shut up now. In the future we have Mother's Day on Sunday to look forward to, then the Easter holidays (which includes a little trip away for us ...), but then just after the kids go back to school Ethan is scheduled for some surgery, my poor little man - definitely not looking forward to that!

A few rows of my Monkey socks before sleep, methinks!