Snowflakes keep falling on my shed...

"I not eating that acos I am sick"
"No you're not"
"Yes, I sick, I not at school and I am sick"
"No, you're not at school because school is closed because there's too much snow. Now eat your lunch"

Why didn't I listen?
One cleanup later, one small sad floppy girl. Several further cleanups later, one small sad tired floppy and cross girl.

You've heard the expression "Running about like a headless chicken?" I'd like to add a new one: "Sleeping like a headless cat" Little Fish cheered up at the prospect of doing her school homework. School being closed for the last couple of days, the head has issued a challenge to all the pupils - build a snowman, take a photo, email it. Grannie and Grandad were summonsed to helpAnd Little Fish decided it was too cold to do anything active, so sat in a sleeping bag in her sister's buggy and directed operations. Grandad was unimpressed with the quality of the snow. Despite being the deepest we've had here for many years, it was too dry and powdery to be packed into upstanding snowman shapes. So we settled for Snowman Blob instead. I like it! Hope Kitty and the Mancub approve.

Oh, and Gotcha would like you to know he hasn't really lost his head.Excuse the boxes; schools are closed, the milkman and carers and postmen and binmen are all absent, but our chemist still managed to deliver on time. Three boxes, three bags, and I still forgot to order some of the stuff we needed. Ah well.

Meanwhile, anyone seen a stork?

Tia

Our turn

Pathetic compared to other parts of the country, but still enough to close the girls' schools, cancel our carers, lose our milkman and delay our drugs delivery.

That's not really a complaint; it's pretty and I love looking out at it. So do the cats. All three of them decided six o'clock this morning was the perfect time to go and explore it (that'll teach me to open the door to get a closer look). Goway very sensibly dashed out, dashed back in and made full use of the litter tray. The other two bounced out, got wildly bogged down in it (Norwegian Forests not, apparently, being terribly full of snow. Strange; I'd've thought it would be a reasonably common occurence), panicked mightily, and then cowered down together behind our green bin. And cried. So if you're a neighbour, and you saw me outside at silly o'clock in a spotty dressing gown and unzipped boots, clutching a furry waily thing under each arm, now you know why. I blame the neighbour with the cockerel myself; he crows so loudly all three cats hear it through the double glazing (as do the rest of us), and this sends them wild to try to catch and kill. If the cockerel's still here this summer, and crows again at 4AM I might just be fairly wild to let them do it too.

So, despite a stupidly late night courtesy of one child and an insultingly late morning care of the other one, I had many fresh and inspiring plans to go out and make the most of the snow. And then more snow fell, and I realised that walking down our ramp was difficult enough, and any kind of wheeling would be a total impossibility. So plans to meet the school's challenge, make a snowman and email it to the head teacher were shelved in favour of reliving another of my childhood memories, and making a tent in the sitting room.

Mog was in favour of this; her task was simply to lie back in a comfy armchair and anchor the tablecloth. Little Fish was very in favour of this, and used the tent as cover to empty the book shelves, divest her doll of all its clothes, hair, and facial features, and munch her way through chocolate biscuits. I was in favour of this; LF was at least voluntarily limiting her sphere of destruction, and I could reheat lovingly prepare a vat of broccoli and stilton soup for lunch.

I think that moment was probably the high spot of the day and I should probably consign the rest of it into oblivion. I don't want to remember the soup rage, the mustard powder incident, the chaos three housebound cats can cause with two buckets of litter, the projectile vomiting into my hair, the Movicol induced brown dripping all over what bits of floor weren't already covered with cat litter or mustard powder, the long, long hours til bedtime and the further cancelled visits and appointments.

Nope, busy repressing all that. I'll stick with the fact that snow in moonlight is hauntingly beautiful, we don't actually have to go out at all and we do have lots of yummy food to eat, new toys to play with, new DVDs to watch.

And now I think I should remove the 3/4s of a banana I've just spotted sitting on top of a stack of DVDs, go and catproof the remains of the reduced mustard macaroni cheese, and spy on two sleeping girls. Now that's a beautiful sight I get to see every single day and never get tired of watching.

Tia

Pax

It's amazing what a week in a cattery will do for feline friendships. Grolly and Gotcha are forever entwined, but this is the first time Goway has joined them. Long may it last!

Tia

Cold Front in the Kitchen

The front of our house (sitting room, bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom) is beautifully centrally heated to a nice steady spastic muscle relaxing 21 degrees centigrade. The back of our house (playroom, sunroom, cloakroom), due to complex planning laws and cheap building contracts, is unheated. We have an electric radiator and big wide sunny windows, and most of the time, it's liveable in, sometimes downright cosy.

This isn't usually a problem. If we're using the rooms we turn the radiator on, if we aren't, we don't, and I put a sweater on before I dash through to the freezer/dryer/mountain of clothes which really will get put away one day. There is the added complication of our cat hole - in many households this would be a well regulated cat flap; in ours it is a cat flap shaped hole in the kitchen door, created by the previous residents and never really dealt with by yours truly. It's blocked off at the moment with a table top, a cool box, and a sack of mushroom compost (yes, mine is a classy kitchen, why do you ask?), but when the wind is in just the right direction, an icy draught rushes through at ankle height.

The trouble comes when the coolness of the playroom combines with this icy draught, and meets the steam from the washing machine and the dry heat from the oven. No gradual cooling off as you walk through the house; take two steps past the washing machine and you enter an entirely new climate. I wouldn't be surprised to see rain showers, whipped into little mini tornadoes by the ankle cutting wind. Pretty, but not terribly practical.

Drastic action was obviously required, and I'm not ashamed to admit I took it. The cat hole is a hole no longer; it turns out the garlic bread box from our last dominos pizza was just the right shape to stuff it. I'm sure Ideal Homes will be calling to run a feature on us any decade now.

Tia

This morning's dilemma

In addition to, or conceivably caused by, the mind fog which accompanies an earlier start by far with a worrying lack of caffeine, on top of the worries about how to pack an entire flat into our minibus, I am faced with this:

On the way here it was simple; a new circuit and a new bottle, no leakage. This morning I have a half full bottle of water plus a very full humidifier. I can't throw the circuitry until we get home; I need the old pipes to show me how to sort the new ones. So it's got to be packed, but hmmm how? They don't cone with handy corks for transport. Perhaps from now on we need to take even numbers of nights away only?

Tia

Frost on palm trees

This would have been a frostier photo but I drew the line at standing on ice in bare feet and pink pyjamas. There's definitely something unsettling about frosty palm trees though. Like rain in the desert, or sun for August bank holiday, it just feels wrong somehow.

The last day of our holidays today. Possibilities for pootling around the island, walking along a beach, meeting friends for lunch. And instead a day spent mostly horizontal, doing as little as possible. Repacking our belongings, wiping our traces from the flat and returning it to the anonymity of the holiday let. And then repacking our belongings, following Little Fish around in a futile effort to contain her, before giving up and settling for snuggled on the settee.

Mog not quite so hot today; a kinked feed pump possibly contributing to that, but a girl very definitely ready for her own bed again. Both girls sleeping in shifts it seems; last night one woke just as the other dropped off, and they seem to be repeating the cycle tonight. One unsettled simply by the change of bed, the other more by the fear I might disappear. Sympathetic friends, understanding my absence and delivering homemade Baileys icecream as compensation. However unsettled, the girls get no share in that!

And now they really do need to sleep. Somehow we need to be out of here by 10am; this evening's packing may have helped, but finishing the coffee this afternoon was definitely a mistake. Fun times ahead.
Tia

Start as you mean to go on.

A slowish morning, not slow enough considering the lateness of the night before, but no tantrums over the toast, always a good start. Just time for one viewing of just one of the High School Movies before all of us off and out to lunch with our holiday friends. 37 of us, 8 in wheelchairs as well as a handful of ambulant oddities, and we disappeared into a sideroom in the pub with nary a stare. Apart from the inevitable old woman who positioned herself at her table so as to get the best possible view of us all, and discontented herself by counting us all repeatedly with pursed lips. I think there's some kind of law about every pub having one old woman placed to do this. Still, a fair few of us outstared her, and a good meal was had by all.

Home, where a puddingless Little Fish begged for a bowl of custard, made it last until teatime and then settled for two slices of ham before pleading for an early night. Early night duly granted; three hours on she's still awake and complaining alternately that she's tired and that she wants to wake up. That bit's definitely not the greatest start to the new year, but hopefully just a hiccup after last night. Lying in bed, her Nippy taking over the hard work of breathing, she has the energy to wear the rest of herself out registering a subdued but prolonged protest. Having pleaded to sleep elsewhere as Mog's hypothetical noises would keep her awake, she then moved to protesting she couldn't possibly sleep alone. Mog installed in her bed, she then grumbled about the fact Mog might keep her awake, before needing to turn over, swap sleeves (to suck), have a sip of water, tweak her mask, move her legs, check if I was in my pyjamas yet, double check it really wasn't morning, before finally, I hope, settling into some kind of a sleep. Sometimes I think the wrong child gets the sedative.

Still, somewhat later than planned, the girls do seem to be settled. Another gathering next door; I may show my face just to be sociable, but I think I need to take LF's advice, swap my jeans for pjs and snuggle down into what may not be the soft cosy comfort of my own blissful bed, but something which is at least clean, horizontal, and warm.

I could lose the hour long screaming session we had over the necessity for intermittent catheterisation earlier today, and I could lose the rattle Mog seems to be growing in the back of her throat again. But the rest of the day, I could live with this being the pattern for the year ahead.
Tia