I’m back, I think. Haven’t been away doing anything fun, but suffering Maggie’s horrible lurgy – fortunately Mum and Dad were due to visit anyway so they could occupy the children while we felt sorry for ourselves. Hope nobody was terribly worried (huh. As if anybody even noticed.)

Plans for the long weekend include planting spuds, putting up shelves, fun things like that.

And, I think, somewhat mixed feelings about it (M, not me). I sang half of happy birthday to her this morning before she burst into tears – my singing is not that bad – although I think that was more to do with being still quite under-the-weather. Some lovely presents and a phonecall from Grandma cheered her up no end, then we spent the morning at soft play before a dose of Calpol was required to get through the afternoon.

Daddy was home for the day too, which is a treat. Of course he has spent much of it trying to sort out the fridge which for the record is now in place but not working. We have an engineer coming on Friday (insert lots of unprintable words here) and have visited B&Q twice: oh joy.

I am neither mouse nor man, so why do my plans always get scuppered? After a weekend spent being clung to by a poorly Maggie (Saturday: very high temperature and general misery), making cakes and wrapping pass-the-parcels, rushing about cackling maniacally (Sunday: didn’t realise the clocks had changed until I turned the radio on at what I thought was 9.45 to find The Archers already halfway through) and hosting a tots party on Sunday afternoon (went very well: weather glorious so they could run about outside; cake pink; lack of catering uncommented on*), today was supposed to be my day. I am entitled to the odd day, I believe. I would take Maggie to preschool (nursery no longer), come back and wait for our new fridge-freezer, to be delivered “early morning” then get up to the allotment where I would take advantage of the sun to sow shallots, jerusalem artichokes and prepare for spuds and peas.

Huh. And gah. Tamsin is having a growth spurt so feeding and filling nappies constantly while refusing to nap for more than 20 minutes unless strapped to my front. Which is fine, but rather precludes activites like digging and, well, anything allotmenty. (Also ironing, so it’s not all bad.) The fridge-freezer turned up as expected, right on time once we had established that I don’t in fact live in the house over the road. It made it all the way to the patio – it would fit through the front door but not the internal one, and wouldn’t go through the side one at all – only I couldn’t get both patio doors open so there it has had to stay. In the process of fiddling with the doors I managed to lock the other one (that I had managed to open) irretrievably open.

3 pm. A locksmith is fixing the back doors but I ain’t going to get much planted or dug or even visited today. The fridge – enormous – remains outside at present, and I am feeling very cross and frustrated and like the day has been completely wasted. And Tamsin continues to demand a feed every half hour.

*I think – they might all be talking about me behind my back (“and do you know she didn’t even have sausage rolls“). Only C and I had wine, too, everybody else had tea.

A  fit for a

Am I going to be socially shunned if I don’t provide a full-on party tea tomorrow? Do five 3-year-olds really need or want sausage rolls, sandwiches and chocolate fingers at 3 in the afternoon? I am leaning towards just juice* and cake to go with the musical bumps and pass the parcel but will they feel deprived not to have jelly and ice cream?

We have wine for the mummies, which is surely the important thing.

*Apple juice, of course: I tried but just could not bring myself to buy squash yesterday. I know, I know. I did buy chocolate buttons.

Some bright colours to cheer me up. No other reason.

I’m running on about 5 hours’ sleep again but I promise not to rant today – am more inclined to sigh sadly in between bouts of thousand-yard staring. This serenity despite watching a documentary on Gina Ford last night (I know, weeks after everybody else) that had me shouting at the screen – am home alone, this is even more nuts than it normally would be – and one with Louise Redknapp dieting down to a size zero the previous night. At least Cameron is coming home today so, telly-wise, normal service will be resumed.

I do not have the mental acuity today to work out why Maggie is sleeping so badly at the moment. Any suggestions, anybody? Is it really just to wind me up, as I suspect?

Karen, who has clearly been subject to my Observer Woman Magazine rant so many times as to be able to quote it verbatim, kindly sent me this link yesterday. Read the profile to the right – so nice to realise I am not alone in my dislike of this piece of tripe publishing. The Food monthly is OK; Cameron tells me the Sport one is pretty good and he seems to read the Music one, but – leaving aside the irritating implication that we women shouldn’t be bothering our pretty little heads about the news, the review or heaven forbid the business section* – why is the Women one full of inane articles about ex-lovers analysing what went wrong, and shoes? I like a nice shoe as much as the next woman** (assuming she is not Imelda Marcos) but I don’t buy a newspaper to read vapid articles about them. (No, I buy it for a crossword and some recipes, mostly.) And £400 handbags! Does anybody really, seriously, have one? Want one? Need ideas for better things to do with that sort of money? 

If we must have our own special supplement -  and I don’t object to women’s magazines per se, but I do object to getting such a low-quality one with what is supposed to be a sensible and serious newspaper - couldn’t it be filled with something a bit different (and not a poor copy of flippin’ Grazia)? They did have Veronika Robinson down for an interview – she is interesting and has plenty to say (as, I imagine, do many of the other women interviewed for the “female tribes of Britain” piece) – but each woman was reduced to a couple of random questions and answers and a photograph looking glam.

Jo Brand was on Desert Island Discs last week and the fact that I was surprised to hear her say she believes there are women out there who are not interested in spending half an hour putting on their makeup but have better things to do (like, y’know, chat on MSN for hours) says a lot about the society we live in: I thought I was fairly immune to all that. Even the women presented as being super-smart, successful, ambitious, blah blah blah had to be all cleavage and legs on the front of the OWM.

Oh look! I’m ranting incoherently again! (Blame the 4 hours of sleep I got last night, but that’s another story; one that involves sprained ankles, flights to Germany and a child feeling lonely in her bedroom.)

*I admit I do not read the business section. But I reserve the right to read it should I so choose.
**So much so that I admit to being pretty horrified when one of the Badly Dressed Mums*** who hang out at the Methodist Church Hall**** turned up in shoes matching my Nice New Pair.
***All leggings and baggy jumpers – in an it’s comfy-and-it’s-worked-for-20-years way not a wildly trendy way – and woolly socks on the outside.
****Fair-trade coffee and home baking at a fraction of the Costa price and a big area with toys for the kids. But not cool. 

Those of you who dislike “my kids are so cute” blogs might like to skip this one but I need it tonight, to remind me that sometimes she is adorable (unlike this afternoon when she was a horror. But I don’t care to remember that bit.)

M: there’s a monster upstairs!
Me: well, you know what to do – say BOO to it (this is our standard means of dealing with scaries, from the barky-dog-next-door to the troll who lives in the spare bedroom).
M: but it’s not a troll.

The walk with Harvey went rather well although she seems to have got the idea somewhere along the way that he’d been taken to the doggy doctor to have his bark removed (so she was quite surprised when he barked over the fence at her today). She started out extremely nervous, clinging to me and whimpering, progressed through walking quite casually next to him, to holding his lead (How Proud she was) and then when we said goodbye he got a big hug. I suspect only Harvey has new best friend status and that those annoying Westies will still be screeched at, but it’s all progress. I felt like a good mummy that day.

Cameron noticed some spots on Maggie’s back on Wednesday night which, after some research, we decided might well be chickenpox. I heaved a sigh of relief as that might explain this week’s “challenging” behaviour; also, I’d like her to get the pox over and done with. Took her along to the doctor yesterday who after much umming and ahhing decided that it might be chickenpox, a very mild case. Of course I immediately cancelled today’s soft play – although the doctor hadn’t seemed overly concerned about quarantine, content with a vague warning to stay away from pregnant women (and that only when I asked). I hadn’t intended cancelling anything else until Pewari, via the age-old method of not speaking to me until I did what I was told, impressed on me the seriousness of pox infection and persuaded me of my moral duty to cancel the hairdresser today too- I’ve never been sent to coventry on msn before! So we are incubating.

Except today we have reverted to the original diagnosis of bites from a globally-warmed insect (and worried once again that the clinging and crying and being unreasonable is a phase not sickening). Hair is still off, but we are going to go next door and meet Harvey the labrador pup. We are, ahem, “blessed” with barky dogs living on both sides; every time we go out they come and watch us until Maggie screams in terror. I can’t do much about the yappy westies on the right, but Harvey lives on the left with friendly people so we are going to see him – M is hoping very much she will be allowed to hold his lead – in the hope that she will no longer be quite so frightened once she knows him. Fingers crossed he doesn’t jump up and try to lick her or (God forbid) growl.