Thursday Photo #83

I’ve sat down to write this post about what we’ve all been up to over the past week and I genuinely have no idea. I’ve reached that extra special kind of tired the likes of which I haven’t seen for a long time.

Quite a while ago, I wrote about how my husband thought I was constantly battling an overwhelming urge to do nothing. And now, all these months later and fully aware that I am breaking the habit of a lifetime, I agree with him.

But it’s not an urge to do nothing for an extended period of time – I wouldn’t want to allow myself the luxury of doing nothing for a whole hour. I’m thinking more thirty seconds, perhaps a minute. I wouldn’t want to over-indulge and sit down for long enough to drink a whole cup of tea without working, being whined at by a child, instructed by a husband or licked by a dog.

I wouldn’t be happy if I could go a whole night without a child throwing up, having a nightmare about a frog or falling out of bed. Particularly if on the same night no dogs barged into the bedroom, knocked on the door, barked at me or dropped the severed head of a doll on my pillow.

I wouldn’t want to concentrate on my work for longer than it took my arse to touch the chair without anyone texting me to bring them a drink and bribing me with mince pies.  And why on earth would I have the unnatural desire to read the news on my phone without anybody hanging off my arm asking to take a photograph?

Dinner time wouldn’t be dinner time if I didn’t walk between the dining room and the kitchen at least 47 times refilling drinks, rinsing forks, fetching more wipes, mopping up spills, telling off naughty dogs or picking play dough out of hair and clothing.

Today, we saw a friend of mine who has recently started her own business called Made by a Geek. I’d put in an order for some mittens on a string that I can sew into the girls’ coats so they stop losing their gloves (we go through at least six pairs a week in winter). Libby is wearing the finished article in the photo below, they are fabulous.

Anyway, I digress. Tracey is incredibly talented and sensibly, she doesn’t have children. Over the past few months, she has been an absolute saviour to us, helping us out with days out when my husband was unable to come along and making us beautiful handmade items like the girls’ mittens and their advent calendar.

Understandably, Libby has taken a bit of a shine to Tracey and this afternoon after we’d been to meet her for coffee, Libby made an announcement in the car. The conversation went something like this:

Libby: Mum, how do you know Tracey?

Me: We used to go to school together.

Libby: Oh did you, and then afterwards you and Tracey were grown ups?

Me: Yes that’s right.

Libby: When I grow up, I want to be Tracey.

This seems to me to be a very sensible aspiration.

Our Thursday photo #83 is from this afternoon. The girls enjoyed sitting together to have their photo taken and Libby was delighted to show off her gorgeous mittens.