These Days

A snail keeps getting into my house. There are often snail trails by the front door first thing in the morning. Since our letterbox is the finger-eating-evil kind and the door has a tight seal around it, I have no idea how this little visitor is getting in. Unless the cat brought it in?

I doubt this, since our cat has given up all killer tendancies apart from occasionally biting our hands when we're petting her. She prefers broccoli to chicken. I have no idea why. I keep telling her that cats CAN'T be vegetarian, and feeding her raw scraps of whatever meat I cook, but really the thing that makes her happiest is cooked broccoli.

Jenna gets really fed up with her siblings at the moment. She's excited about the baby on the way, and she often says how glad she is not to be away from them all day every day, but she resents the way the current pair follow her around when she wants time alone. We make sure she gets chance to read in her room, or build with her lego spread out over the bed in our room - we're trying to teach the littles that if the door is closed that means they're not invited.

Remember all the nesting and the tidy clean house? Well there are more of us living here and there are just random huge piles of things. We have a lack of storage, and a lack of anywhere to put any more storage. I keep telling myself that this will get better when we can move the children's bedrooms around (when we know whether to decorate the bigger room for Jenna and Morgan's tastes, or the smaller, depending on the gender of the new sibling - they have been promised a paint job either way once we know where they're likely to sleep).

Honestly, I just *cannot* be bothered to pick up all the shoes again. I wish it were possible to persuade the girls that they live neatly on the shoe rack, but they don't believe me - they think shoes *like* to live in a big heap by the door. And when the slings or the cardigans fall down on top of the pile, there seems little point fighting it, even if the front door no longer opens properly. This, I reckon, officially makes me a terrible house keeper.

There is always something baking around here right now. I don't seem at all drawn to sweet stuff, it's just that baking feels really good at this point. I'm trying to use the urge to stock the freezer with actual practical meals for December. :)

The veg garden isn't growing anything much currently. I can't bring myself to count the failed leeks, which aren't even spring onion sized. I planted some winter veg, but the cat and the four year old conspired to dig them up - the former thinking that my veg bed would make a great litter tray now it's denuded of huge vegetable plants, and the four year old wanting to see if the optimistically planted radishes were ready yet (they weren't)!

Rowan wakes up with this halo of blonde fuzz. And she wakes up talking. A little unsquashable bubble. Half of the time I'm either too tired or she is just babbling nonsense, but it sounds to me like pure craziness that comes out of her mouth in the morning. She chatters away about what she dreamed last night, and randow questions like, "what's a bug?" Followed by "why?" Utterly irresistable.

Martin is working lots of shifts this week. I'm being eased in gently in a way because lots of friends are around. :)

I think this post sounds like a whine. I don't *feel* whiney. Just kind of distracted, and tired, and with that urge to record some of those strange little things so soon forgotten as normal moved on - and on again - and something passes completely before I even get around to putting words to it.

(Except for the car, I AM whiney about the car. It just cost us half of our food money for the week, bloody thing. It seems to be broken as often as it's working! *sigh* Ah well, at least there's a chance there will be some savings to fall back on by the end of the year, now that there is actual pay coming in!)