Yep, they’re both very very trying. To be fair this might be more about my state of mind than anything specific they’ve done wrong but they have driven me quietly (well quite noisily actually) insane today 🙁
This morning they played with duplo, Bob the Builder toys, jigsaw puzzles, watched Mary Poppins and joined in with the songs and dances and were generally quite self entertaining.
My Granny (the one who previously always mentioned my weight but now doesn’t do that anymore and is instead a huge champion of my parenting style and the whole HE thing – turnaround or what?!) came over for a couple of hours and the kids cuddled up to her on the sofa while she looked through photos of HESFES, various ones from the last couple of weekends and commented again on how much we do with the children and how great she thinks it all is. Makes me feel quite glowy to get that sort of praise actually 🙂 Then she looked at the photos with our trip to the Dogs over Ady’s birthday which brought on Davies getting out the megablocks and constructing his dog racing track and dogs again. He had remembered all the phrases (‘ladies and gentlemen we have two minutes, two minutes to the off’, ‘the hare is moving’ and his personal favourite ‘it’s a photo finish’ – hilariously when he was running around with one of his mates at TT2 he taught him to say ‘it’s a photo when they drew in their races and the little mate says it every week with everyone wandering what he is on about and me choosing to keep quiet rather than explain my 4 year old is using terminology from a race track!) and even collected money off us as bets which he redistributed according to whose dog won 🙂 As my grandfather (her ex husband) had some pretty big gambling habits at the dogs and indeed my own Dad has been quite a gambler in his day my Mum and Granny are not so keen on the dogs or gambling in general so it could have been icky but she was so impressed with his recall abilities that she let it pass 🙂
She left and we headed out with no particular place to go so ended up spending money on some more scoubidous and some craft bits and pieces before coming home and letting them loose in the garden for a bit.
Ady arrived home fairly early so I escaped to the library and left him to feed them and wind them down a bit. As a teen I spent many many happy hours sitting in the peace and quiet of the library. I relish calm and silence. In my parents house there was always slammed doors, shouty voices and if there was silence it was a heavy angry one. I always swore when I had my own house it would not have that sort of atmosphere and indeed it does not, but I do struggle sometimes with the chatter and general ongoing noise that two children bring. Ady loves music and TV noise (his childhood was the opposite in terms of noise association and he finds comfort in background chatter) so total quiet is a hard thing to find in my house. So I took a pile of books off the shelf on handicrafts and sat upstairs in the reference area totally alone and relaxed for half an hour before returning to the fray!
I fear I am turning into a bit of a Joyce wannabee (trust me that is in a complimentary way!) although there are various others among you who are knitting / crochet / cross stitch queens so maybe it’s just the company I’m keeping 🙂 But I have really enjoyed getting the hand of the various scoubidou knots. I do find it a bit pointless though- my keys have keyrings, mine and Scarlett’s arms are full of bracelets and I have done various little figures for Davies and now my bag and the house is just cluttered with little plaits of various colours and designs. I quite like sitting fiddling with something, it is very theraputic but I sort of feel it would be nice to be doing something a little more constructive with something more usable at the end of it. I don’t think I am a knitter – aside from anything else I quite like that a scoubi can be done and dusted in a short while – and is easily put down and picked up and not too wreckable if Tarly gets hold of it. I have brought home a pile of books on stuff like basket weaving and working with raffia which might be a similar sort of skill so I will have a further look at that. I also have in mind that it might be nice to make something which would be suitable as a gift or even to sell and make a bit of cash from.
Feeling a bit down about Miranda today. She has sold her first ‘how to run a grotto manual’ which is basically a pulling together of all the various documents I wrote over the couple of years I worked for her and we ran two Christmas Grottos. She has been asking me to email across various things which I have done and she rang me today to ask if I would proof read what she’s done and add anything else to it for her. Now I know I could bill her for the couple of hours work it has taken me to find the stuff she wants – and to read it but that’s sort of not the point. I am feeling really wobbly about the fact that if I could make money out of one single thing through choice it would be writing and now it looks like Miranda is going to be doing just that – making money out of my writing. This is not about resenting her or being upset with her more about being upset that I fail to manage it really. I tried to talk it through with Ady but he only made me feel worse by giving me the cruel to be kind speech about how I could have made a lot of money on various skills by now if I could only apply myself and see through what I start. Which is actually fair enough, my road to hell is paved with good intentions. Oh I don’t know, I just feel sad about it in some way. I am a crap self- manager, what I need is someone telling me what to write about and paying me for the finished product but the market just doesn’t work that way 🙁 In much the same way I feel I keep sitting down to blog only to find that another day has passed where I didn’t work with Davies on letters or numbers and I didn’t start challenging Tarly more – I do worry that HE will end up as one of those things I started with all good intentions to do regularly but never quite got round to. D’you know the only thing I have ever managed to keep to is diary writing as a teen and blogging the last couple of years – and that is a totally selfish act as I enjoy doing it and it doesn’t feel like a chore. There is no expectation on me – if I didn’t do it ever again no one would nag me, no one would be chasing my tail over it so there is no pressure… it’s also something I couldn’t do better at really. I sit down, type it out and press send. I don’t edit it or even read it before it goes, I don’t plan it and it very often wanders far away from what I first had in mind when I started the title but it’s hugely theraputic and I do get withdrawal symptoms of needing to tell strangers my innermost thoughts in the supermarket if I can’t get to my computer to do it 🙂
don’t quite know what to say about the writing stuff 😕 wow to the Granny turnaround though, and kwym about the scoubies, although I have stopped buying them, as they are so very useless.
Comment by Sarah — 15 June 2005 @ 8:05 am
Nic, when you worked for Miranda you were paid, weren’t you? If that is the case then you were paid for writing the documents. If you weren’t paid for doing them, then you still own them and are entitled to some of the proceeds? (I think).
BTW, if Davies learns about the maths of probability, he won’t want to be a gambler, he’ll want to be a bookie. 🙂
Comment by Tim — 15 June 2005 @ 9:00 am
Tim, you are of course right that I was being paid while I wrote the docs but hey I’m a woman, being rational and accepting doesn’t suit me 😉 Still feeling wobbly about it for some unknown reason.
Hmm, Davies being a bookie – that I could possibly live with but we need to work on his maths 😉
Comment by Nic — 15 June 2005 @ 9:43 am