inside, outside, round and around

It's such a lovely late autumn day here that I'm going to go out for a stroll down to the market for a browse. If nothing else, I'll stock up on some fruit and vegetables and crunch over some large mounds of dried leaves. It's been very windy here the last couple of days so the deciduous trees have suddenly lost most of their leaves.

Then I'm going to come back and have scrambled eggs and toasts for lunch. After that I'll sort my vegetable rack, if I find one at the shops on the way back from the market, and finish tidying the kitchen.

Must not be hideously grumpy.

Am not grumpy. No, really, I am not grumpy. If I tell myself so frequently enough, it will be true.

I don't know why my mood is so irritable; I was fine earlier. Roisin had a snooze this afternoon, David had a snooze, I read my book. It's not as good a book as the last couple by the author but it's far from bad.

Maybe I am hungry. The pasta bake (fusilli, tuna, tomato, onion, pepper, courgette, sweetcorn, garlic, herbs) should be ready in about 5 minutes. With a bit of luck, food will restore my good humour!

For the last two days, I have been intending to update the journal of whirlywitchette upon the auspicious occasion of her reaching her third year of life, but I have forgotten the password to her LJ account. Oh, what a bad mother am I! In truth, all I need to do is swop to the other machine because I think it's saved on that version of Semagic. This is the pc that we tend to use most and I keep gettng the urge to update when I'm on this one.

So on her birthday Roisin had her two year check at the Health Visitors. As usual, she was her charming and sociable self. She is doing well, still about 50th percentile for weight, appropriate motor skills, ahead developmentally in her verbal skills. She played away happily, pretend drinking tea from a cup with me and throwing a ball about the room, kicking it. Refused to stand on the scales, had to be carted across to the clinic to the sit-in scales. Ha!

Friday she woke up with a cold which she has generously shared with her parents. Because she's feeling rubbish, she has come back into our bed.

I am back to work tomorrow and dreading it. Nothing new there. I rarely dreaded work up to a few months ago, and I used to really enjoy it. Hopefully I will soon, one day. I will miss dealing with customers and the bibliographic side of it whenever I start my new post.

This afternoon I sat down to watch the second last episode of ER season 2. The DVD player refused to work, so I ended up watching it on the computer. Possibly too many episodes of Kipper: The Classic Collection have killed it. It seemed like it would be a good idea to take out my knitting, which last saw daylight when I was 9 months pregnant, with which to potter while watching but somewhere along the line I lost the needles. As I hadn't progressed very far with the project, I ripped it all out and walked to the shop for new needles after the season finale.

Today I got my day off. As a normal example, I work Monday 9 - 7, Tuesday 9 - 5.40, either Wednesday off then Saturday in/full Wednesday then half-day Friday, Thursday 9 - 7/ 9 - 5, Friday 9 - 1 or 9 - 7, Saturday 9 - 1. I'm working this Saturday but the only day off I could manage to give myself was today, which was a bit of a pain. What I really wanted to do was to have Wednesday off and go to Dublin, but there was no way that was happening. Originally I was supposed to be going to a meeting Wednesday, then that was cancelled but I still worked to cover another gap. The upshot was that I had loads of things to do today. Of course, I got very few of them done!

First on the list was going to the tip, never got there. Would have had to collect all the rubbish up first and that's David's job because I'd chuck things he wants. David was finishing the plastering in whirlywitchette's room. Rubbish builders who did the house had done a seriously bad job on the walls. When we went to redecorate huge chunks of the wall were coming off. Made for an unusual look ;-)

Didn't do any of the boring things like washing the floor and cleaning the cooker that I intended to do. Instead whirlywitchette and I went to Borders, to get a magazine for David, Vintage Guitar magazine. Roisin and had a good time playing with the blocks they have in the kiddies' section, then she played with the bead runners and I looked at some children's books. We chose three for her, but when I went to pay for them I thought better of it. She really isn't much into reading, she likes to look at books and play with them, but she won't let me read to her at all, and she hadn't much interest when we were choosing the books. So I started to second guess whether I was really buying the books for her or for me, and whether I could justify buying them in a lean month. I put them back and waited to see if she's get upset, no, she clapped. Bye bye Daisy and the Moon, The Gruffalo's Child and Sharing a Shell!

We went next to Mothercare where whirlywitchette discovered something she really wanted, a wooden abacus. I bought that for her instead. Returned home with David's magazine, then decided to go out again, this time to the MetroCentre. Had to get new shoes for Roisin. Her not-very-old at all shoes had an unfortunate ducking, didn't dry properly, and were mouldy. It was very embarrassing in Clarks when we took the shoes off, I hadn't realised quite how bad they smelled! But we got new boots, and I will try washing the old ones so she will have two pairs. She had no change in shoe size - typical! They had a much better selection for her this time.

Tonight I fancied having boeuf stroganoff but D doesn't like it much, so we're having pizza from Domino's instead. Now to decide on the type.

It's the last day of September, and I hoped I would finish my current book in time to put it on September's list, but I don't see that happening without 3 hours of solid reading tonight. And that's not going to happen! Yet again I haven't read as much as I'd like, but I have enjoyed everything I did read. No non fiction though, I don't think the Cultural Development Plan, Neighbourhood Strategies or the cookbooks I browse at lunchtime count! [No, I don't read the council plans at lunchtime, that's the cookery books]

Further to my comments above about Roisin not being too keen on books - she is sitting on the sofa at the moment, reading a book. The book is Keeping Watch by Laurie R King, my current read. Despite reading it backwards, she seems to be impressed with it. She is telling me her interpretation with great excitement. Said book was originally published in 2003, in the US, but has only been published in a large print edition here, as her publishers believed that there would be no market for a book with a Vietnam theme here.