Who am I and what am I doing?

I seem to have forgotten to blog. Perhaps for longer than I have forgotten to blog so far. Perhaps this is unsurprising, given we've been confronting Starting School, which has been marginally stressful (for me at least). For a start it involved LittleBear being at home for a week between the end of nursery and the start of school. And then he spent four "afternoons" at school, which actually consist of four one and a half hour sessions. And now he's undertaking mornings. And only next week will he actually properly start school in a full-time sense. All of which also coincided with the continuing complete and utter failure to function of everything I'm working on at work. And for reasons best known to myself I have started trying to teach myself HTML and CSS so I can write my own website. And the cat has brought fleas into the house. And my cleaner has been off work with severe morning sickness. And I'm training for a 10km race next weekend. And there's been an unnecessary quantity of hot weather, making sleep a distant memory.

The upshot of the above has been that I've been sleeping badly, ferrying a small boy to and from school by bicycle in nasty sticky weather, and then re-designing circuit boards, writing a website, running, cooking, cleaning, washing carpets, and generally stressing about more or less everything.

On the plus side, LittleBear so far thinks school is wonderful and he loves it. He is full of bounce and joy and excitement. Mostly he is enamoured of playtime. He is also very much his father's son. And he bears striking similarities to his uncle, BrotherBear. BrotherBear has always been noted for working on a "need to know" basis. He does not share unnecessary information, such as interests, hobbies, thoughts, opinions or his whereabouts with his family, unless he deems it necessary. Extracting information from LittleBear beyond the fact that he had a lovely time is proving challenging...

Did you have a story today?
Yes
What was it?
I don't know

Did you do any painting today?
I don't know

Did you play with Tom today?
I can't remember

Meanwhile, when I meet a fellow mother in the playground I am told, "Oh! This is LittleBear! I've heard so much about LittleBear, MyBoy is always talking about him!" Really? I've heard that LittleBear has a new friend, whose name might be MyBoy. And that's it. I had the same experience at nursery with SweetGirl, who apparently talked about LittleBear all the time. I'd never even heard her name until her mother introduced herself. Ah well, I can't be surprised, given the nature of his father, who is distinctly reticent about sharing information, or his uncle. It's just me that shares every passing thought with almost everyone I meet.

So I am still here, and more or less still functioning, but this is the first evening in a long time where writing here hasn't felt like a profligate waste of time in light of the enormous list of Things To Do that was following me around the house.