Busy

Sometimes life is crazy busy.  This has been one of those weeks.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't have a living-life-at-one-hundred-miles-an-hour kind of life.  Generally, I think I'm quite well balanced. I'm busy, but there is me-time, my-husband-and-me-time, me-and-friends time and all kinds of other time built in.

But this week - well.  School has been busy, though not so much more than normal. In spite of reports, sports days and preparation for going away on activities next week.  Oh, and planting up a new part of the garden at school with the help of Floral Guernsey.  I've been out in the garden every single lunchtime, as eager children ask to weed, or water, or harvest... wonderful.

So not too much extra - but Jonny and Cat have come home and Richard has worked late shifts.  So I've seen him briefly in the morning, then not until after 7 or 8.
By which time Cat and Jonny have gone out.  Jonny has been in during the day, but evenings have been full.
So we haven't had any time together as a family this week unless we have all been asleep!

I think that was between midnight and five am.

Sometimes life is crazy busy.

Random doings

Nearly half way through June.  Hmmm.  What have I done?

I've spent a LOT of time watching ducks.  A pair at the back door this morning, asking for food.  They didn't like leftover pastry but gobbled up leftover barbecue rolls.  (Just a little - it's not good to give bread to ducks at all, really, but that was all I had.)

Last week, TWO mama ducks.  With ducklings.  5 and 8 each.  13 all together.

Then there were the rabbits...  they make free of the garden now that Mpira is no longer around to chase them. These two inhabit the back: the tiny one on the front lawn is now almost their size.  A few days ago, one was almost at the back doorstep, along with four visiting mallards.

And this afternoon we saw goldfinches...and a moth crawling along the patio, scurrying like an ant...

I've been watching nature a LOT.

Then there have been more evening beach visits:

Port Grat, our 'local' beach - just a few minutes walk from our house. So beautiful.

And Cat came home from uni...even more so.

Bliss.

(And I haven't even mentioned school...so I won't.)

An evening at the beach

It was unseasonably hot on Monday - 24th May, for the record. I was sitting in the garden, marking exam papers, when the phone rang. Would we like to meet at the beach?

Would we?  That was a no-brainer.  We jumped on the bikes with a bottle of wine and some crisps, and headed off to meet friends.

It stayed warm - bare arm warm - until well after 9pm.  Bliss.

Richard's birthday a few weeks ago, on the second day of the New Wine Guernsey weekend. We celebrated with a few friends and a good sing song in a local school - over 700 people.

And afternoon tea with a dozen or more of us - scones and lashings of birthday cake.

A few days later Cat and Jonny's present arrived.

Marzipan. Perfect.

Death of a mouse

After the shenanigans of a few weeks' ago, when I finally discovered that there had been a mouse UNDER MY BED, chewing at my door, I decided I needed to put poison down.  I'd tried a trap for weeks and weeks, baited with peanut butter or chocolate, but it was obviously an abnormal mouse as it didn't go for either.  (Friends have been catching a mouse a day for the last three weeks using Cadbury's chocolate fingers.  I feel there should be an advertising link in here, though I'm not sure it would be a useful one for Cadbury's.) And I stepped on it one morning, too - luckily it was facing the other way so my toes escaped harm.

So there's poison under the bed - where the mouse no longer goes, judging by the absence of droppings - and poison near the back door, under the bird seed.  We suspect the bird seed is the major attraction.

I walked in the back door last Saturday to see this:

One very poorly mouse.

I did feel bad. He is really sweet. (It must be a he or we would have been overrun by now.) Then I reminded myself about the sleepless nights and the mouse droppings in the cupboards.

So I covered him - after adjuring him to stand still so I could take a photo - with an empty ice cream container. And left him for Richard to find.

When Richard arrived home, the mouse looked at him hopefully for a second, twitching its whiskers, before relapsing into the doldrums.

I will gloss over what happened next, save only to say that the mouse is now in Mouse Heaven.  I hope. Because he was, really, quite sweet.

Keeping romance alive in unobtrusive ways.

I read, occasionally, a blog called The Generous Wife.  Sometimes there are just a few little reminders of how not to take my husband for granted. 

Life offers those reminders too.  Conversations in the staff room when people complain about having to do a 'blue' job.  ('Blue' means jobs that the man is supposed to do: like cleaning out gutters.  'Pink' is for ladies' jobs - like cooking. Self-explanatory once you know. I think.)

We share our jobs out pretty much. I don't like it if Richard has emptied the dishwasher more times than I have, or has hung washing out twice in a row.  It doesn't seem fair, even though he tends to have more 'at home' time than I do.  He still does an awful lot for our marriage which I don't touch - accounts, car maintenance, gardening...Occasionally I forget myself and start complaining...ungrateful.

But Richard often does little things which pass me by - I take them for granted. The cup of coffee he brings me every morning (I was so tired today I slept through it - cold by the time I woke, but I was warmed by the thought). Getting my bike out of the garage for me so it is ready just to hop on to when I am running late. Meeting up at lunchtime on his day off.

Last week was just the best, though. I was on a school trip and had mentioned we might be stopping at a particular cafe/public toilets for the children. In the end, we didn't have to, but he cycled up there for a solitary cup of coffee, sitting outside in the sun in the hope he might see me.

That is just so romantic, it just melts me. I'm still smiling at the thought.

And, although his trip was in vain, at least he had a lovely half hour at a beach cafe. Some compensation.

(Updating this to link in with The Time-Warp Wife)

facebook

Much has been written about internet networking: facebook, twitter and the like.  I'm just going to add my bit.

Facebook is like one big gossipfest. Useful, but also designed to make those not 'in' feel 'out'.  It's particularly bad for teenagers - facebook promotes the one-upmanship and putdowns which so many suffer from.

That makes me angry. Life is difficult enough in adolescence. Why can't people just be NICE, REAL and HONEST?

There we are. I've said my bit.