One of those weeks...

Blogging seems to be hard this week.  There are so many things going on around me and in the wider sense, around the country, that my mind is pretty frazzled.

This is one of the consequences of having Fibromyalgia and ‘information overload’ – the brain just turns tail and hides somewhere out of reach till it all dies down a bit!  I wish I knew where it hides, then I could go hide with it cos at the moment, the rest of me is still trying to deal with four kids on summer break, interviews for the two men in the house, middle daughter in a flap, teen daughter’s hair dye issues, coughs – the sort that bark all through the house all night, Lego and oh soooo much more!

I have four gallons of wine waiting to be bottled and another seven waiting to be racked, none of which I have the energy for, and in the grand scheme of things, it’s probably not that important.

On Monday, I baked – all day.  We filled eight tins with various muffins, cookies and flapjacks and when I say tins – I mean the tins that your Roses come in for Christmas.

Tuesday, spent trying to recover from Monday, did too much, felt like poo.  Middle son had a call to say that he had an interview on Thursday, so it was all hands on decks to find his certificates and show him how to press his suit.

Wednesday was to be a study day – the morning in the library and then the afternoon with Middle Daughter before hitting the home run to be back in time to host my weekly Healing Circle online.

Thursday – recovering from Wednesday.  Had a migraine and felt sick all day, read nothing, wrote nothing, did nothing – period!

And today, well today I am trying to get to grips with some software but my head is still all muzzy from the week and the weather.  Perhaps I’ll go lie down for a while... but I have to make a shopping list for the weekly shop. 

Dear Husband will be hot footing it home from work tonight to do the regular supermarket run.  Two trolleys, one man, one woman and a list!  We will fight them in the aisles, we will fight them at the checkouts, we will do battle with carrier bags and boxes.  When we reach the hallowed peace of home again, we will do battle with cupboards, fridge and freezers.  We’ll get it all put away just in time to flake out in front of the TV for an hour with luck, before one or both of us fall asleep.

And so we come to the weekend...  is there any wonder this is my first blog post this week?

Bring on the Summer Holidays!!

For many of us Mums, today or perhaps tomorrow marks the start of the Summer Holidays, that 6 week epic break from school that we either love or hate.

I fall into the first of those categories.  I love having our kids at home; being able to do things with them, even if that means that on a rainy day we spend the day huddled in the living room with a pile of goodies and a stack of DVDs. 

When your kids are tiny, you just don’t realise how bereft you will feel when they go to school, so I cherish every day of that six weeks as the most time I get to spend with them, uninterrupted by school bells and uniforms.  I only have four of my ‘little ones’ left at home, ranging from 10 years old to 17 (but add dear daughter and darling grandson into the mix too, for good measure on some days).

image from interiordesignarchitects.net
I'd love to be able to reproduce this design

This summer, we are going to decorate one of the bedrooms – ‘teen daughter’ has been waiting patiently for her turn of the paint roller to come around.  That should take us roughly one week of the hols.  We work as a gang – some will be stripping whilst others are sanding or washing and so on.  Last summer we did both of the boys’ bedrooms and I think we all had fun along the way.  Not sure how the lads are going to feel about being spattered with bubblegum pink paint, but it should make for some hilarity when we hit the beach, if we hit the beach but that of course needs some reasonable weather.

Other plans for the holidays are trips on the train to London perhaps or to visit one of the Uncles in the midlands.  Family Railcards are an amazing piece of kit – we get to travel all over the place for a fraction of what it would ordinarily cost.  When you are trooping at least four of your little darlings around with you (up to a few years ago it was up to seven of them), every penny counts, especially on trips to London.

To be fair, my tribe are great kids, they don’t make demands, unreasonable or otherwise and are happy to mostly do whatever comes along.  The museums in the capital make for a good day out on a shoestring budget – as long as you take a picnic of course.

More soon on our plans for the summer, but right now, it’s time to collect some banana boxes so that ‘teen daughter’ can start to pack away all of her worldly belongings.  The strippers move in on Monday morning – 8am sharp!