Which would be more important? Making a dent in the bomb site that is this house.. or playing around with the layout of your blog? "Playing around" being the operative word(s).

Like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Actually.. when I think about it, it's very similar to the approach I take with the housework!

A bit here, a bit there. Don't do a proper job, because you're bogged down with the idea of the time commitment it will involve. A 'lick and a spit'... "Next time I'll do a full on clean... just not today.. I don't have the time.. because...." (Because....?) .... "Got to get round to taking those curtains down and hemming them." (They've only been hanging, pins going rusty, hems sagging, for.. oh... nearly 2 years now....) "Only.. not today. Before I do something that major, I need to clear my sewing table... and really, before I do that, I should do a spring clean of the linen closet so I can fit stuff in that's hanging round in the way of the sewing table.. but, before I do that, the place really needs a full on, proper vacuum from top to bottom, and the windows need cleaning, but before I do that I should get on top of the kitchen mess... and... and....."

So.. today I was doing just a quick fiddle with the layout, and playing around with what I really want the blog to be called.. (and reading other blogs and deciding I'm a piddly fish in a big sea of very clever bloggers.. so it's barely worth it.. but... anyway..)

I am putting off the bigger job of going to a better template, or even biting the bullet and learning about something like Wordpress... Because I feel guilty about the household jobs I'm not doing you see. (And stuff like the netball committee minutes and some letters I should write for that..)

So I spend an hour on the name/header, and exchanging a pic of me for one of my ironing basket (?!).. (and nearly forget to pick Zoe up from ballet..) And then another hour tonight tearing my hair out over why IE and Firefox handle the sizing of the sidebar and main column differently. What in god's name possessed me to go changing the picture to a wider one? And I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS BLOGGY HTML CODE STUFF when it behaves differently in different browsers!

So, whatever... I'm leaving it. It's clunky.. But it's .. adequate.

Meanwhile. Back in the real world:

I am missing my husband. Who is working his butt off on this project in KL. Must try not to start counting days, as the ETD so often gets put back, but I tend to ignore the little voice in my head reminding me not to count my chickens till he's on the plane and instead fix the date (weekend after this) in my head that he's made the tentative return booking for.. and set myself up for disappointment. Every. Single. Time. Not saying it's been put back yet. It's early days. But I already want him back.

The weather is insane. Yesterday it was 32 degrees. Today it maxed at 17. (And that was warm compared to places south of us - *Reminder.. we are a couple of weeks off the official start of summer!* ) But, relatively speaking, it still felt COLD. This morning I was Thinking About going for a walk... (or mowing the yard) and by the time I Really Really Thought about it, I heard thunder.. and then it rained.

I did sort clean laundry. Gold star please. See, I'm the type that has an ironing pile and a sorting pile that erupts in a shield volcano manner - like Mt Kilauea in Hawaii - with a lava flow of clothes bubbling over and spreading out all over the floor (we have a large bedroom area) - and converging with each other until you can't see the floorboards for clothes; the ones that were in the ironing basket, and the undies and socks etc that were in anothe pile. They get mixed up, you can't find a damn thing you need, and you can't get to the verandah door without jumping over it all. I am trying to get on top of this.. And if I manage to have the clean laundry sorted within a day of it coming off the line, then that's major league pat-yourself-on-the-back material. See.. it's not so hard, Tracey. You could make a habit of this... like normal people do....

And I did go into town to pick up the sketches for the possible house extensions. And I brought forward my chiropractic appointment (in the hope that he could do something about the weird nagging pain I'm getting in my thigh.. sort of lateral quadriceps.. and normal quad stretches don't do anything...) I had hoped the tyre place would ring and I could have had the new tyres put on, but of course they didn't call till after I left home. Typical. That will have to happen next week now.

No major kid dramas today. One got up early off her own bat to prepare palm cards for some talk she was supposed to give in library class about bushrangers. A talk she "forgot" about till about 9.45 last night (an hour after she'd been sent to bed..).. and got the Unsympathetic Mother treatment despite tearing up about it. (She got up early... did her research on the internet (so I figured - the computers were on).. wrote out stuff on little palm cards.. and then left them at home!!! I don't know whether there were tears at school about it.. but she just casually told me tonight. "So what did you do?" ..."I wrote them out again at school."..."Good oh." (Category: Tough Love - "Learning to take responsibility" and "Mum is sick to death of this 'forgetting about stuff until one hour after bedtime" shenanigans."

Youngest had tears the night before last over school stuff. This week's "News" segment involved "entertaining" the class with something. (The things they do! - glad i'm not a Year 2 student these days.) She had decided to do some sort of card trick - but hadn't thought it through - and got a panic attack over it. After much sobbing well past her bedtime (theme of the week it seems), I advised that the best course of action was to ask the teacher if she could do it the next day. So she did. And last night Alison taught her a trick she'd read about in a book. And Caitlin helped her set it up .. and they both helped her work out the best way to present it... and we all lived happily ever after till the next crisis.

Her class is preparing for the Infants Dept musical, and year 2 is doing some version the teacher has written of A Partridge in a Pear Tree. They auditioned last week for the speaking roles.. and she had high expectations of getting one of those parts. And she has apparently been tentatively cast as "Me" (playing opposite "My True Love") She told me this afternoon (on our way back from ballet) that she was pretty sure she'd get one of the parts.. ".. because I'm one of the .. talented ones."

*Mum splutters....*

I casually mentioned that saying about not going out in the wind.. (because of the tickets blowing off..).. but the reality is that she's not got a big head about it. Just matter of fact. "There was only about 10 of us who read with EXPRESSION, Mum... so I figured we'd all get those parts."

Fair enough. My gorgeous girl. Who you wouldn't now recognise from the 4 year old who used to be so shy she hid from her own grandparents.

Labels: daily, introspection, missing Marc, parenting