I don’t know why this is. I am not thick. While not a terribly confident driver, I am competent (mostly). I also have issues copying techniques as a mirror image during my martial arts class, so potentially there’s maybe a co-ordination issue going on in my brain.

Anyway, since selling the folding camper, there is now a space in front of our garage. The driveway is narrow and involves reversing round from a weird angle and squeezing between the wall of the house and a large hedge.

Last night, I finally managed to park it (okay, I did about a 10 point turn to get it in, but let’s not get picky), so I send Akra a triumphant text in which it appears my typing is as bad as my driving: “YAY! I managed to park the cat!”

WTF?

Of course, said people don’t always warn you that the marshmallows explode…

… and then other people steal your hammock!

But with plenty of good company, sun, and copious alcohol, you can’t really complain too much, can you?

At the same time, I’ve just started an awesome creative writing class called The Discovery Wonkshop led by Lani Diane Rich over at StoryWonk. It’s all geared around the pre-writing discovery process of writing a novel and even after only one class has kicked my brain into creative mode.

Our first assignment is to create a soundtrack for our story, so I have been spending the last couple of evenings with Spotify, Last.fm and a bottle of wine (as Lani says, “Best Homework EVER!”). I have spent a ridiculous amount of money on iTunes and somehow seem to have ended up with 6 hours of music in my soundtrack. I might need to prune a little.

All good, and all very exciting. Except I’ve just realised that it’s my martial arts class tonight so I need to flip back out of ‘daydreamy plot mode’ back into ‘fighting mode’ and in between find my ‘competent parent mojo’. I think my lead character is going to end up with a split-personality disorder.

Send help. Send chocolate.

I have spent the last seven weeks slowed down, but now the kids are back at school and I am going fast. I am not in a hurry, I just rather enjoy the sensation of stretching my legs and walking at speed, rather than having to match my pace to people half my height who like to go the scenic route. I am enjoying grabbing my bike out of the garage and speeding down little pathways where I would normally have to crawl past the holiday pedestrians. I like the feel of the breeze in my face and the sense of freedom. I’m relishing in the chance to busy myself round the house, cleaning and tidying, making the space mine again.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you can get just as much enjoyment taking the time to speed up to smell the roses. Just so long as you take care to not knock anyone over on the way.

A mixture of crappy weather, a variant form of man-flu that had jumped the gender divide, a spontaneously bursting knee vein and running out of witty replies for concerned bruise viewers had left me without much oomph or inclination to do anything much. The week has mostly passed me by in a flurry of “not a lot” and “sort of staring out the window while intending to do something in a minute or two” – any commentary has been strictly of the 140 characters or less variety and I completely messed up my Project 365 by not actually taking any photographs for two days.

Still, it seems to be turning around. Last night, I took and passed my first two martial art grades and this morning the cold seems to have subsided a bit. We’re even due some sunshine tomorrow, remember that?!

Now all I have to do is catch up with all the chores I didn’t do at the beginning of the week. Then again… maybe I’ll stay lazy for a bit longer…

As you were…

I’m not a huge Microsoft fan, but I would totally buy an Xbox for this. It will also be extremely interesting to see how Nintendo and Sony respond with their next generation consoles.

So, I have been chatting to merialc and we have plans afoot for a pre-TAM mini meet on the Friday evening. She apparently knows the area fairly well, and is on recon duty to find us a suitable venue.

Would anyone else with TAM tickets like to join us for a meal before the event? It’d be nice to get to know some people before the start of the conference.

Word deprivation is going … erm… slowly. Okay, I’m going completely insane and it’s not helping my addiction to spider solitaire any. If I get a sudden burst of creativity I’ll probably tell it to go away until I’ve managed to get out all the heart cards or something. I’m sure this wasn’t the point of the exercise.

I did slightly bend the no reading the internet rules to book tickets for TAM London as Google Checkout wasn’t playing nice and I needed to access the message boards to work out what was going wrong. I did eventually manage to register at last, though …. SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Where was I? Oh yes. Akra Jr is 8 years old today. EIGHT YEARS OLD! I don’t feel old enough to have an eight year old son.

Anyway, he’s as had as fun a day as possible with a streaming cold and having to go to school for most of it.

Tea (at his request) was at McDonalds, with just the four of us (his party was at the weekend). He has played on his new DS games (Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones, spot a theme?) and he is actually eager to go to bed so he can try out his new reading light. A 6-speed bike is cluttering up the living room ready for a day that it does not rain.

A perfect day all round then, really.

First, one of our skylights started to leak during the heavy rain yesterday (we think it might have been due to some sort of grit/debris stopping the window closing properly – at least the seal seems intact – we can’t be sure until the next bout of rain) and now today my oven has given up the ghost.

An hour into cooking baked potatoes (normal temp of 180C) the kitchen got very smoky. Looked inside the oven to find the potatoes utterly incinerated and a bit behind the fan glowing red. I switched it off pretty sharpish and have flung open all windows and doors in an attempt to clear the smoke. The fan had been making a clanking noise for a while, but obviously something has gone very wrong – thermostat maybe as well as fan?

Of course it chose to break in May which is our most expensive month of the year excepting Christmas (Akra Jr’s, Li’l Bhaji’s and Akra’s birthdays in quick succession). It wouldn’t wait for time when we actually had money spare would it, oh no.

Only I hadn’t factored in just how terrible our soil is. You see, our house is a newish build (about 10 years old, I think) and the soil appears to be a mix of pure clay and builder’s rubble. What started as a five minute job just digging out some plants, became something that more resembled an archaeological dig. I got my trusty trowel out, and started carefully digging around each clump, freeing their roots and brushing the soil away with my gloved hands, before easing each bulb out individually.

Akra came out and laughed at me. Obviously it was going to take ages – I should have been using a garden fork, it would be much quicker. I gladly offered him centre stage but he couldn’t get the prongs in more than half a centimetre deep. He went off to make lunch instead and I carried on, finally removing the last bulb before lunch was even ready. I tried not to feel too smug.

I thought there’d only be about 5 or 6 bulbs in the bed, in the end I had about 50 of varying sizes – I only lost about 4 or 5 when I got a bit too impatient and split them with my trowel. Akra was coerced volunteered to replant them and I left him to it.

Poor chap, it took him hours and he lost the will to live half way around digging the trench, so the semi-circle looks rather wonky. They’re also miles away from the tree (the tree roots prevented digging in a nice tightly hugging trunk-ring that I’d envisaged). Hopefully it’ll sort itself out and look slightly less regimented and weird in a couple of years (it will, won’t it?)

Either way, I’m not digging them up again. I’ll never think a daffodil is a pretty flower ever again.

Normally some exercise in the afternoon would have helped rally me a little, but given that I’m not supposed to do any, I resorted to a nap instead. Which didn’t really help either.

The kids are now in bed, and technically the evening is mine to do with what I will, but I’ve mostly just sat and stared into space. Eventually told myself to get a grip and started to catch up with Twitter and RSS feeds only to find that just about everyone else seems to be having a lethargy day today as well.

Is there something in the air?!

• Found Li’l Bhaji’s milk order form that I should have handed in to school on Friday.
• Lost another important piece of paperwork that I needed to reply to today.
• Done the second worst parallel park of my life (outside the library with a police car patiently waiting behind me, oh the shame).
• Become a screaming harridan at my children for running inside for the 20th time in 10 minutes and left the door wide open AGAIN.

Still, on the plus side of the ledger, the kids haven’t killed each other yet… but there’s still a couple of weeks to go so it’s a bit early to call that a success.