Firstly, my laptop is toast... I left it innocently downloading updates on Wednesday night, got up on Thursday morning, restarted it (that was probably the mistake) and lo - it worked no longer. Well, strictly speaking it did, it's just that forty error messages a minute make it actually impossible to do anything. After despairing volubly, and looking up the error messages on the big computer in the playroom study, I sent an emergency email to BFP, and then remembered that he was away on business...
Mouse came home and expressed general grumpiness that I was on his computer in the playroom study - I snarled at him.
BFP (maybe I should call him OB?) got back to me this morning with the wonderful news that it may not be toast after all, just slightly warm bread, and that he would take my laptop away and make it all better. There is hope! And I'm feeling much happier, although I still haven't let Mouse back on the big computer... I need something to take away the angst, and annoying him works well for me. Especially as he's just borrowed my ipod (to play while he clears up the kitchen) and informed me that there's no good music on it. Well, why borrow it then?
Secondly, Handsome took me climbing tonight (Friday after work is when we go without Mouse, so that we can attempt to feel good about it without watching him spider up walls effortlessly) and I got all the way to the top of the high slab wall on one colour! When I got to the top I actually wanted to shout and jump about, but then I remembered that a) I was suspended quite a long way above the quarry floor on a bit of rope and a caribiner, and that it would be extremely stupid to do that and b) everyone else in the place including the three-year-olds could already do it. But I still feel really good about it, only in a quiet way.
My own, Mouse and Hairy's passports all need to be renewed this year (Handsome's is on a different time shift) before we go on holiday in the summer. So, allowing plenty of time, I dutifully filled in the forms online, waited for the pre-printed forms to arrive (it's a very strange system), got the photos taken (no smiling), and then sent Handsome into the Post Office today to use their 'Check and Send' service. Despite having followed all instructions to the letter, two of the three were rejected.
Mine was almost rejected, apparently, Handsome said that the clerk spent an inordinate amount of time checking that my eyes lined up. Let's be honest, it's lucky it passed in the end, there's no way he could have come home and told me that my eyes were squint...
Hairy's failed because his mouth was open in his photograph. Not, you understand, an ear to ear grin, just lips slightly parted. Possibly he was breathing... The annoying thing is that I now have to persuade an absent-at-university eighteen-year-old to organise himself enough to go and get more photos taken and then to post them to me. I'm not sure that my son has ever posted anything in his life - he's a technological child, if he can't email it, it doesn't happen. I may have to go over and take him to a photobooth in person. When I'm safe to drive.
However, that, I can just about take. What I'm really annoyed about is that Mouse's failed because the text was outside the boxes on the form. The pre-printed form, because I filled it in on line. What this means is that the Passport Office cannot fill in their own forms to their own satisfaction. What chance do us mere mortals have? Perhaps it's a government plot to make us all take our holidays in the UK.
Ear infections are fun; they help you see the world in a totally new and occasionally revolving way. I'm fine whilst sitting down and not moving my head suddenly, but a moment ago the postman dropped the mail through the letter-box and I stood up to go and get it... On the plus side, I now know for a fact that the carpet in here needs to be cleaned.
Finally - it's been a long winter.
Depend upon it, it is possible for a person to have too much of a good thing...
I've been re-reading a lot of Jane Austen recently, and I mean a lot. I find myself beginning to think in Austenisms, and occasionally to talk in them. Regrettably, it is not noticeably improving my writing, either the content or the physical legibility. An Austen addiction, however, is not necessarily a bad thing, both the story and the language run at a gentler pace, which makes for such a calming read, and I have found myself actually taking lunch breaks this week so that I can read, whereas usually I have a tendency to eat whilst doing something 'useful' like checking emails or reading through reports. I only have Northanger Abbey to go, and then I will have to put them all back onto the metaphorical* bookshelf for several more years before I can read them again without finding the words too familiar.
* metaphorical because I'm reading them on my ebook
...I now own my very own harness - in lilac.
I'm officially a happy bunny - even with a skinned elbow.
I've gone off men - all of them, husbands and sons included.They are all, without exception, too loud; too unromantic; too obsessive; far, far too messy; totally unsympathetic and nothing like the heroes of books. I think I may read more and live in the real world less. Or at least until my husband has got himself out of the garage and cleared up the mess he dumped in my clean and tidy kitchen when he got back from his self-indulgent walking trip. And possibly done some ironing as well. I've taken his Valentine's card away - he left it unopened on the bed, so he doesn't deserve it.
In the meantime, my youngest (who I love dearly, but that doesn't stop me from being annoyed at him) is too busy playing x-box whilst simultaneously watching tv and talking to Best Friend on some kind of cyber-creepy link which means I can hear him clearly in the room, even although he's thirty miles away to tidy his bedroom which is a skanky, smelly boy mess. In his case I'm probably just going to stop his pocket-money.
And I have to go back to work tomorrow, whilst the two of them can continue to be selfish all alone (because they won't be together) and I'll probably get home to find the beds unmade and the dishes unwashed.
Handsome made a choice to spend Valentine's day (and night) with a group of blokes... he's away walking. When he told me about it, he sneakily didn't mention the date, although to be fair, he did say it was the second weekend in February, I just didn't work it out.
He left me a card in the kitchen this morning.
However, I did expect him to wake me and say 'Goodbye' this morning before he left. He didn't, so I was unable to give him the love letter I'd written for him and hidden under my pillow to give him before he left. He'll just have to be unloved tonight. Like me.
Last night was the night Hairy took Mouse to his first real grown up concert - they bought each other the tickets for Christmas. It was a really good big-brother little-brother occasion - Hairy was very grown up about being responsible for him and Mouse was delighted to be out with only his big brother. They came out several hours later hot, sweaty, deaf and having had a really good time.
And Mouse got the t-shirt (although he still has to pay me back for it) so he's really chuffed.
It was lovely to see them getting on so well; brotherly for my boys normally means bickering, and sometimes I get worried about just how much arguing is healthy. When they walked towards the car last night they were actually talking to each other. They looked like friends.
Perhaps sometimes they can be friends?
Handsome is unwell today (and the way it looks, probably tomorrow as well), so he stayed at home to nurse his putrid sore throat. Just now he's dozing in front of car programmes on Dive Dave, Mouse is playing Lego Indiana Jones on the Xbox (I found it hard to believe that such a game existed), and I have been roaming the house trying to find somewhere quiet to read. It looks like I'm left with either the kitchen or the bedroom - the kitchen has uncomfortable chairs and the bedroom has an unmade bed, because Handsome's been in it most of the day, and piles of clothes to put away which will make me feel guilty if I don't do it. Perhaps I won't read tonight.
