I'd swear by it

I have a vague glow of achievement in Having Got Things Done this weekend, tempered by the looming presence of A List, very little of which has been accomplished.

On the credit side...

I cooked roast lamb and it was delicious, and LittleBear tried a (microscopic) piece of it.

I have done the ironing! This is a bi-annual event and liberates infrequently-worn sections of my wardrobe.

I have arranged to have two people come and inspect the back garden to quote for a new patio and purchased and laid an interim slate-chip area with stepping stones for bare feet. So now I can actually invite friends with small children round without fearing for them playing in a large gravel patch that the cat was using as a litter tray, or playing on the (sodden, muddy) tarpaulin covering the "litter tray" and held down with a rusty garden fork. I probably won't maim or injure any small children now. Yay me!

I've finally made a start on digitising the family's communal diary from our holiday cottage. I currently estimate I'm 13% of the way through volume 1. Of 9.

I've managed to fill, drill and re-thread the aluminium frame of the shower screen so that I can re-hang it, but not actually managed to re-hang it. That requires two people, ideally one of them not being LittleBear. In fact, ideally, I'd rather LittleBear wasn't present at all. Because I have an unfortunate tendency to swear, creatively and volubly, when attempting to insert screws into recalcitrant objects, in tight spaces, when the object is held by a second pair of arms that don't seem to understand simple instructions like "Move it that way a bit, no a bit more over there, not there, there". It would be much easier if I had two pairs of arms. Or had married someone with better telepathic skills, and then I wouldn't have to resort to swearing*.

I've been for a run. And I didn't have to stop for a breather part way. And, inspired by this success, I have signed up for a 10k in September. In Rochdale. Those with a passing familiarity with English geography may be aware that Rochdale is in a part of the country known for its hills. I do not live in a hilly area. I live in an area that's barely not under water. I fear I may have just agreed to something very, very foolish.

And on the debit side...

Oh, sod it, I can't be bothered to list the thousand and one things I haven't done, because there are too many of them, and they're too tedious and depressing and the more I get done, the more gets added to the list and it never bloody ends. I'll ignore the list of crap I haven't done and carry on feeling good that I've managed to get anything  done.



*I have, so far, mostly, more or less, managed to avoid swearing in front of LittleBear. There was the occasion that we went to visit my cousins in Brighton, and BigBear instead went to watch his beloved football team play. Since they were playing in Brighton, this was a Cunning Plan. Except the fact that they were playing meant what felt like 90% of the roads in Brighton were closed, especially the ones that would take me to my cousins' house. So, after depositing BigBear somewhere near a football ground, I asked GrannyBear to map read. And when she failed to tell me which way to go after having been given at least three and half seconds' warning, I yelled "Oh, for fuck's sake!" And shortly afterwards, a little voice piped up from the back seat, "fuck's sake!" LittleBear was approximately 18 months old at the time, and, despite apparently having the memory of an elephant, has not managed to retain this gem. But I have no desire to tempt fate by allowing him to witness me undertaking tricky and rage-inducing DIY.

Incidentally, I feel I'm in fine company with the swearing - my cousin maintains that she first heard the word "fuck" from our grandmother (perhaps when older than 4 however. Or eighteen months). And I fondly recall, in my teenage years, rather rashly saying to my mother, "you must be fucking joking". To which she responded, utterly dead-pan, "I'm not fucking joking. I don't fucking joke." Which stopped me in my tracks. I'd still rather wait a decade or two before hearing that from my son.