Biting off more than I can chew

The corollary to my post about being either a Goddess or Gormless is that I have now completely and massively bitten off more than I can chew.

Tonight I need to assemble and ice LittleBear's birthday cake, and wrap his birthday presents (how do you wrap a bicycle? I have no idea. I'm just hoping 9m of dinosaur wrapping paper will do the job) and draw a giant dinosaur for playing "pin the tail on the dinosaur". Not to mention the cooking, washing up, laundry, and getting stuff ready to take the whole family to London tomorrow morning.

Last night I sat on the kitchen floor assembling children's party bags while waiting for the timer to tell me that I could take the sponge cake out of the oven. The sponge cake that had required 6 eggs, despite the fact there will only be 5 children at LittleBear's party. I think there may be a cake surplus...

The night before last, I sat sobbing on the sitting room floor, watching Billy Elliot while sewing closed the last seam on a beanie volcano. My tears were many-fold...

... I cried because I'm a complete sap, and tear-jerking overblown nonsense that it is, Billy Elliot makes me cry (Not necessarily for the reasons you might think. Billy's mother has died before the film even begins, and I cried at the thought of my beautiful, precious boy facing growing up without me. I cried at the thought of dying myself and missing every moment that my sweet child's future holds. I cried because I have a beautiful, wonderful, inspiring, adorable boy and he's growing up and he won't be my baby forever).

... I cried because I was desperately disappointed in the volcano beanie. I had had in my mind an image of what I wanted, and I had fallen short. I had spent hours and hours and hours making the stupid thing, and I was suddenly utterly convinced that it had been a waste of time. That LittleBear wouldn't be interested in playing with it with his dinosaurs, that all he really wants is armfuls of cheap plastic rubbish, and that I'm wasting my life, time, energy and love making pointless space-consuming stuff that nobody wants and isn't very good anyway.

... Mostly I cried because I was so very, very, very tired. It was 10 o'clock and my list of Things To Do  didn't seem to be getting any shorter, the days left until LittleBear's birthday and then party were diminshing faster than I could keep up with and I was floundering. I couldn't imagine getting everything done that I wanted to get done and I couldn't see the wood for the trees. I couldn't see what could be dropped as non-important and what was essential. I couldn't prioritise, all I could see was the looming, growing, lurking, threatening LIST that I would never complete.

And then the film finished, everyone lived happily ever after, I poked and prodded my volcano a bit more, and imagined some dinosaurs scrambling up its north face, exploring the cave, hiding in the caldera, and (just like last week) life didn't seem so bad after all. Oh, and I had a glass of wine and some chocolate, but I'm sure that had nothing whatsoever to do with my change in mood...

So here we are:

Volcano with cave for hiding dinosaurs in

Volcano with large caldera, also for hiding dinosaurs in

The geologists among you, or perhaps even those who are more than 30% awake, will have noticed that though there is lava pouring down the outside of the volcano, the caldera is strangely empty. This is because the extra red and orange felt I ordered  on expedited delivery LAST WEEK was only delivered while I wrote this post. Therefore the red and orange beanie balls that were to be hot rocks filling the caldera have not been made. And there is not a chance that they are going to get made between now and Saturday morning. I'm moderately certain LittleBear won't mind. I'm also moderately certain that my little pedant will notice. On the other hand, I'm not planning to wrap this present, I'm planning to set up a little prehistoric scene downstairs for him to discover, so I'm hoping excitement will overwhelm pedantry. Just this once.