a touch of domesticity

What a day. Indulge me while I give you nine things, from two perspectives...

The bad

1. There were so many battles with those two boys. Silly fights over silly things. Winding each other up on purpose. I ended up doing some shouting. Mostly I held on to my patience but it was at the expense of my joy.
2. I indulged in a cake. It was a huge lemon Viennese fancy. I discovered lemon should not be in a Viennese fancy. Bit of a waste of a cake treat.
3. I also indulged in a pizza. Beyond the point of full. Possibly even beyond the point of stuffed. Because I plan to treat my body like a temple for the next month so perversely needed to eat rubbish today.
4. I meant to finish working on my CVs. I got time for none of that.
5. I meant to have a nice chat with my parents this morning. Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum ruined that. The current state of play is: mummy tells them what to do. They don't do it. I tell them again. Ditto. By time four or five I get really shirty and even then I am often ignored. What's the point of speaking at all?
6. I meant to do some selfish sewing. No time for that either.
7. I woke up at 5am for no apparent reason.
8. I really do usually love spending time with the boys, and I have been so looking forward to half term. It's a bit of a shame when you build it up and then have a day that probably managed only about an hour total of relaxing, probably only an hour total of enjoying their company, and again an hour of lightness and happiness.
9. It was my birthday today. Which is why all the above was... let's be diplomatic and say disappointing.

The good

1. It was my birthday after all. And that's always nice to mark; nice to remember. Plus I'm a year younger than I thought I was going to be. It's the little things.
2. I got Anna Jones' new book. My body really is going to be a temple. Her first book is one of my favourites. And I have about forty so that's saying something.
3. Just look at that tree! It was a glorious autumn day. The light was amazing and the leaves around here are just every colour of autumnal loveliness right now.
4. That tree was in a park, and while the playground was too busy, the crazy golf was open but almost empty and the boys spent a good half hour running around it sans golf equipment, pretending to be spies or Ninjagos, using up lots of their energy (at last), and I got that same half hour sat on a bench reading a couple of blogs on the phone, actually enjoying them, and relaxing.
5. I had a bath. That can never be bad.
6. The middle son, instigator of many of today's troubles, who is going through a stage of being a bit selfish, a bit whiney, a bit 'that's not fair' was actually really quite lovely for about half an hour this morning in bed snuggling with me.
7. The lovely husband let me faff on the computer after the blow-out pizza dinner. He put the kids to bed by himself. He tidied the kitchen.
8. ... And he's taking me down the road for a couple of drinks now, where there will hopefully be a nice fire or two, and some lovely conversation.
9. And I wrote this. I vented and then I counted my blessings. I checked in on the blog. And tomorrow is, as someone rather glamourous once said, another day.