I keep meaning to post here, but frankly I’m just not getting enough sleep to manage more than short stupid things which betray my lack of capacity. So, hello: here is a short stupid thing (i.e. myself).

Remind me that these nights of five, six, seven wakings will pass, would you, internets? And that being awake for two hours with one of those sessions is not de rigeur forever?

Oh oh oh – I should be writing approximately eight hundred words on the notion of radical homemaking; instead, I find myself tucked up on the sofa with my old friend Procrastination (who has been with us right over Chrimbly, not having anywhere else to go; oddly, he tells me that some people are childish enough to wish him elsewhere at such times, and that not a few of them were quite rude in their manner of telling him so!), tappetty-tap-tapping here, there, and everywhere except that very document which should be commanding my attention. Gosh. Quite like ol’ times, eh? Ah, the happy days of my thesis – what fun that was, and how we laughed.

Ahhh.

January. January. Time of resolution (or lack thereof). Of dark days, and short evening. Of lengthening days, and, if you are us, so far, cars which break down. Lots of times. Twice, with a small baby with bronchiolitis (a horrible closey-uppy breathing-tubesy thing which affects small babies rather nastily) on motorways. And then again, just for the fun of it.

So, tell me nice things which cheer me up. Tell me things which aren’t about asthma, or bronchiolitis, or middle-of-the-night wake-up calls. Go on. Do.

Dark evenings, darker mornings, and we inch closer to midwinter proper. Devon has yet to feel the real bite of winter cold this year – it’s been incredibly mild, such that while we’ve had the stove lit, we’ve also had the stairs door open, letting the heat drift upwards to the (unheated) bedrooms. The lime upstairs is still going off, we think, taking its time since it was put up on the new lath work in August, and creating strange patterns of damp-looking limewash from time to time as the warm air from downstairs makes its way into the eaves.

Things to make, things to eat (peppermint bark, in this case). Most of the shopping done (we’re going easy financially, so no huge trips, really, anyway), and the house reasonably ordered as we look forward to Quercus’s mother visiting soon. Oh, we are genuinely looking forward to another pair of hands. The small girl, who will forthwith be known as Hero because it’s getting confusing remembering to differentiate between ‘small’ and ‘smaller’, has been quite challenging of late, and while Quercus and I know that it’s a question of adjusting to new family dynamics while at the same time being three, and also being born of two parents who are, shall we say, determined, that knowledge is not making the day-to-day battles any easier, frankly. There is a lot of willpower in this household, and although we are sure that it’s the adults who are in charge, sometimes getting that message across takes quite a wee while, and no small measure of self-control and anger management. Hey ho – we shouldn’t have joined etc. etc. I am trying not to take the constant struggles for power and attempts to stage minor coups personally; I think it is just that Hero has reached that age when she is aware of possibilities, and the limitations to what she perceives is very frustrating, so she exerts control over the things she can control, i.e. the time it takes her to put shoes on, whether or not she is hungry/thirsty/tired, whether or not she can stand up/do her coat up/find something… The list is endless, and super-annoying in the short-term, but ultimately, I keep telling myself that she will not be doing such things when she’s five, and wow, how quickly that time will come around, if the first three and a half years are anything to go by. I am not always quite the parent I want to be (that calm oasis of maternal love), but I am trying my best, and hopefully the result will not be too too awful. I do wish that it wasn’t such an uphill struggle at the moment, that said; I feel myself to be constantly – though I know, rationally, that this is an exaggeration – at war with Hero, and I hate that, but I also feel equally strongly that I am her parent, not her friend, and that this means sometimes I have to be the Person Who Says, albeit kindly and respectfully and patiently, and she has to be the Person Who Does, albeit in a few minutes, in her own way. But oh, for it to happen just once in a while without the back-and-forth negotiating, or the wailing, or the howls of despair. This Too Shall Pass.

In amidst the challenges we are managing some organised chaos festive buggering-about. We have made stained glass windows à la Claire, and confections à la Orangette. We have baked saltdough stars for a wreath (our front door is getting to look positively civilised these days, as Quercus limewashed the house again this year, and repainted the sticky molasses-like stuff on the bottom of the house, and we have even now got a door which shuts properly and which you can only see daylight through in tiny cracks…), and used red paint and wooden stamps on brown paper for festive wrappings. I have replaced my obsession with needle-felted pumpkins with felt lantern-making; I made thirty-two of the little blighters for autumn, and have taken down those only to put up a miniature cream version for winter. (And no. No. We have not got a season table. No. For some reason, they make my toes curl. Instead, we have the rather ancient twiglet shelves. They are so-called because genuinely, the uprights look like giant twiglets. And on the twiglets lurk toys and something to indicate the passing of the seasons. That is as twee as it gets, frankly, without my need for a sick bucket becoming overwhelming. I know: a part of me is missing, and I am a horrible, awful person. Meh.)

I also realise that I haven’t put up any pictures of the upstairs of the house since Mirth, the name by which the smallest of our number will now be appearing here, arrived in August. I must remedy this, for lo! we hath walls, and ceilings, and even limewash! Quercus has been working quite hard lately to get the stairs finished off before Chrimbly; as a result, there are now bastard little cat paw-prints in white gloss on the carpet here and there (animals are such a joy), and hopefully we will have a completely-done-bar-the-stairs-carpet-because-flat-surfaces-are-hard-enough-let-alone-things-which-go-up-and-down first floor, at which point there will definitely be a picturethon (and yes, of course that is a word). Gratuitous baby pictures follows:

(How? How? How is she FOUR MONTHS OLD? It is not possible, I tell you: the laws of Physics – they be brokeded.)

For the meantime, I go, to make a fourth stocking, to mix up a Dark Solstice Cake, to sort out two more rolls of wrapping paper, to make yet more peppermint bark as presents, and to contemplate the genuinely horrific prospect of a grocery shop at some point this week. And you, dear reader? Full of festive spirit, or bah-humbugging in the corner?

… I will acknowledge the winter sunshine, and try to breathe deeply.

… I will look at all the things I have to be happy about, and try not to wallow, on this, the anniversary of your death, in thoughts that can do nobody any good.

… I will remember that you would want me to get on with the happy things, and to hold it all together, and to do more than muddle through life simply because you had to leave earlier than we’d planned.

… I will take my beautiful girls out for a walk in the windy brightness of a December day, and think only of trees, and snow, and smiles.

Well, blow me down: it’s been rather a while since I did one of these, but somehow with the urge to make things appearing once more (nothing at all to do with Chrimbly, oh no – perish the proverbial! – or with having a small baby, oh goodness me no), I think a list is called for. Not least because there are also things which must happen which aren’t remotely interesting, and they should not be allowed to just peter quietly out until they drop off the list completely…

So here, in no particular order, is the list for December.

• Wrapping paper: we have stamps, we have a recipe for edible paint, we have brown wrapping paper, we have a small girl. ‘Nuff said.

• Chrimbly baking: so far, the list includes the dark solstice cake to which Antoinette introduced us, Lebkuchen, mincemeat, mince pies, jewel biscuits (those ones with broken boiled sweets which form windows when baked), possibly a gingerbread house (bastard roof collapsed, though), some (more) peppermint bark, the Aztec (?!) variant I read about t’other day while trying to work out just why it’s called bark in the first place, and probably a few things I have already forgotten.

• Two stockings. Quercus has one; the small girl has one. The smallest girl will have one, even though it won’t get much use this year, and you know what? I demand my own stocking. Thus, I shall make myself one. Yes. Indeed. And hope some blighter fills it.

• Submitting my tax return. Infamy, infamy; they’ve all got it inferme… Yes, it works better when spoken, that one, doesn’t it?

• Cream felt bunting, based on the autumnal variety in the last issue of Rhythm of the Home. We have thirty-two autumnal-coloured lanterns after a little, er, episode of craftiness which struck in November, and I’m now working on some half-sized cream ones for a more wintry feel.

• Going to see the reindeer. The farmer up the road has two reindeer which live on their farm year-round, Cinnamon and Spice. This year they are probably even big enough to look as if they could pull a, well, some sort of vehicle, even if not a sleigh.

• Mittens for the small girl. Nearly one down, one to go.

• Cast on the purple cardigan. I leave it at that.

• Window stars, as shown by the lovely Claire.

• Apple nut brittle. Oh, so very yes. We have already done a few versions of this, with the best being a honey, cranberry and spiced-berry-cordial number which was devoured in twenty-four hours.

• Boiled wool jumper for the small girl. I have four wool jumpers in the crafty cupboard begging to be made into something; two years ago, I made the small girl a pinafore dress out of a cast-off from the aged parent, and I’m itching to do likewise with a rather fetching brown job handed over by Quercus, who always roasts in wool. I’d also quite like to make a pixie bonnet for the small girl, as I made one for the smallest last night and am so tickled by how sweet she looks in it that I must inflict further examples of said confection on the world forthwith.

• Open sodding bank accounts for the girruls. (I can’t say ‘girls’ without thinking of that story about the Scottish teacher – played by Maggie Smith in the film, I think? – whose name escapes me, but whose accent does not.) Child Trust Funds. What a bag of shite. Also, Junior ISAs and the fact that you can’t transfer CTFs into them: a bigger bag of shite. Also, while I’m on a roll, banks who won’t let you open accounts without making half-hour appointments, and are then surprised that you can’t leave the children for whom you are opening said sodding accounts elsewhere for the duration of the bloody appointment. Grr. And also, bah.

• 200 words on green cleaning products as the intro to a magazine article. A page of writing on Radical Homemaking, UK-style, ditto.

I should probably leave it at that, methinks. Quite probably I won’t get even half of these things done. And you, gentle reader? What are you plotting and planning this month?

:: Racking wine into clean demijohns, ready to store for the winter

:: Oiling the oak counters, as they’re looking a little battered after some rather hard use…

:: Hunting for the sod-bagging bloody Advent tree which I made last year, so far fruitlessly. Cursed thing must be in (insert music of doom here) the attic… (Echoey voice-over: ‘And they were never seen again…’)

:: Lusting after lots of things online and in person (went to the market at Totnes, which I always enjoy), as, for once, I have some money burning a hole in my pocket after my birthday, and Quercus’s mother being super-generous (as she always is)

:: Celebrating the arrival of a new (to us; it’s a 1970-odd Roberts radio, with woody bits and red leather) radio after ours died about a month ago

:: Eating far too much crystallised ginger

:: Marvelling at the number of people driving around the lanes hereabouts with Chrimbly trees on their cars, already…

:: Gloating about the boots we’re having made for the small girl – foxglove and violet leathers, with good solid soles and velcro fasteny bits, ready, we hope, on December 20

:: Wondering if our counters will ever be this clear again…

(Also, pondering the fact that things which last cost so much; I want to buy a waffle iron (the stove-top variety) with some of the money I was given for the ol’ annual event – a crap-looking electric one can be had for £20, but a cast-iron number? More like £60 from what I can see so far, and pretty hard to find outside Scandinavia. Bastard UK. Bastard prices. Bastard disposable electricky nonsense. Bah, er, waffle.)

So, I finally finished brushing out my dreads. The resulting haircut is quite short, but not too bad, I’m thinking. It’s taking some getting used to after having hair which I just tied up ALL THE TIME for about, oooh, eighteen months, but I’m getting there, and gosh, it’s nice not to have an enormous mass of tangled roots to fret about!

Talking of tangled roots, the small girl and I made a sort of autumnal randomly-festive-feeling wreath thing for the door, using the (I think…?) wild clematis that Quercus and I hauled back from the woods the year that we moved here. We added lots of leaves, dipped in beeswax, and there you go. The small girl greatly enjoyed the dipping; man, there was wax EVERYWHERE, but sometimes I think it’s worth it. Of course, it is entirely possible that I was singing a rather different song when cleaning the spots off the hob and the counters the next day… Though the leftovers did make two rather nice-smelling pots of balm, with rosemary, thyme and marjoram.

The days are moving so quickly here that, although I often intend to post bits and bats, somehow I don’t seem to get around to it. I’ve made some felt bunting, for example, and wanted to post pictures, but haven’t even got around to taking them off the camera yet…. And I’ve also smugly made Chrimbly puddings, courtesy of a good friend’s excellent decision that we should meet once a week for what has become known as a Crafternoon (heh – see what I did there? A wit without parallel, moi), foisting our children upon one another in the hope that sufficient exposure will foster friendship, or, at least, tolerance, while we embark on crafting adventures which will keep our maternal sanity in the darkness of the winter months, where summer’s outdoor answer to so many problems has the nerve to keep such very short hours, and to cover itself in mud and rain.

The smallest of our number continues to ensnare me. I worried when pregnant that, while I knew I would love this child, I might not feel as strongly as I had the first time. Of course, completely ridiculous – her conquest of us has been every bit as absolute, and just as unwitting. She seems to have developed a lovely rhythm – sleeping for a couple of hours morning and afternoon, and then a short cat-nap at about 4.30 before we all pile into the bath and thence the usual bedtime palava.

Of course, all bets are off at night, but then she is only three months old, and I think it’s a little early to be worrying overly about how many times she wakes. I’m in the fortunate position of having Quercus to hand her over to for a half-hour or so in the morning, which really helps the sanity stakes, and of having a four-day weekend every week since Quercus moved to working three longer days as opposed to the four afternoons he’d previously worked. (On a financial note, having only one part-time wage is not ideal while I’m on maternity leave, but this is the bit where I keep reminding myself that we made these choices for a reason: we want to be able to spend time together, all of us, in one big sticky heap, and not being at work for forty hours a week may mean we’re a bit hard-up when we do so, but at least we’re all here; we also get much more flexibility in terms of getting major work done on the house, which is very necessary if we are to finish it before we are old and grey.) (Insert radical home-making-style rant here.) (No, really.)

I appear also to be knitting three hundred things. Well, at least mentally. I have mittens on the go courtesy of Claire; dark pink and purple stripes, as the small girl has just chosen these colours for the boots she is having made as a Chrimbol present from her grandma. (We appear to be moving to the end of her Red Years, where All Must Be Red, Or There Will Be Trouble; I am now so accustomed to looking for red things that I don’t quite know how to get out of the habit… Purple and pink? Surprisingly girly, though the pink is a very good shade, and she is super-picky about it not being pale and wussish, so I guess I will adapt.) (Just as well, come to think of it; have you tried finding a coat for a small girl which is red and not horribly shiny? Ye gods, they’re hens’ teeth. Which is why a purple candidate and a khaki alternative are on route, on approval, as it’s getting a little more seasonally appropriate here in the last day or two, and already there have been complaints of frostbite from a certain young lady.)

Also, we have been off adventuring about the place, enjoying not doing work on the house in every spare minute. Of course, this means that we have yet to touch the landing and stairs since the smallest joined us in August, but hey, sanity is more important, right? Quercus took this picture when we on a jaunt to Dartmoor, where, I have decided, we do not go often enough. There is something so uplifting about the space, the huge views across the landscape, that we always seem to come back feeling renewed and refreshed, as if we’d had a whole holiday, rather than just a day away from the usual views and the rhythm of our everyday existence. So, perhaps a monthly visit is in order, methinks. I leave you with some tors. Impressive, aren’t they? The small girl certainly thought so. The smallest? Well, she mostly slept in a striped sling, snuggled up inside Quercus’s fleece against the wind.

It’s a funny thing, but every time I find myself with time on my hands, I end up doing sweet fuck-all with it. This weekend is no exception: Quercus and the small girl have gone to visit his mother, so it is just me and a certain smaller girl in the house (well, if you don’t count the cats), and I am at liberty, really, to do anything, given the portability of the smallest of our number, and her current pattern of snoozing in the day.

Yet… Largely, I have done nothing. I have, mind you, finished brushing out my dreadlocks (all hail!), and I’ve been to a friend’s house for a haircut (all hail twice!), and I’ve come back and done the usual faffing and oh-good-lording that goes with haircuts. And I’ve done boring things like laundry, and grocery-shopping, and house-tidying, and small-local-town-sauntering, and nappy-changing and baby-feeding. But other than that, nothing. The plans I have all fall to one side; the ideas remain nothing but that. Why is this, I wonder? I do feel motivated to do things, but somehow when given the opportunity to do all the things that I normally lust after (uninterrupted knitting time! undisturbed felt-bunting-making time! baking! serious cleaning of a once-a-season type!), all I do is just sit here, with the odd potter on the inter thrown in for good measure.

I have until Tuesday afternoon, when the small girl and Quercus will come back.

So. Here are the things I could do.

:: Knitting. Slightly dispiriting, as I’m about halfway through knitting the small girl a rather nice berry-coloured cardigan, and have just discovered that I’ve fucked up the ribbing at the bottom of one half of the front. The half that I’ve just finished, of course. And I discovered this by not fucking up the other half, and then realising the difference. Arse.

:: Bitumen-painting the bottom of the house, so that Quercus doesn’t have to. Well, the appeal of that… is, er, tremendous, obviously.

:: Felt bunting. I’ve made 32 little lanterns of felt, all hanging in the room between (which is my new name for our old dining room; it speaks of pleasant trips between the worlds, does it not, while drawing a pleasant veil over the mould to which said room is prone), and have plans to make some smaller ones in cream felt for hanging on the Christmas tree.

:: Bleaching the downstairs of the original house. Yay. Such fun. Can’t wait. But… if I don’t do it, it won’t get done, and the alternative is to live with encroaching mould until next spring, when we’re hoping to gut the two rooms involved.

:: Making a boiled wool dress for the small girl. I have two rather nice charity shop-find wool jumpers, just itching (ha!) to be made into something delectable…

:: Knitting the smallest girl a winter hat. Which is slightly otiose, given that she’s already got a very nice Noro Kochoran number which I knitted for her sister; I just don’t want everything to be a hand-me-down for her.

So, gentle reader, what should I do? Some of these things, or something completely different? Suggest-me-do.

:: A very large jar of crystallised ginger

:: 62 dreadlocks brushed out, 18 to go

:: A quiet house

:: The small girl asking if it’s playschool today and being happy that it is

:: The smaller girl beginning to show some rhythm to her days (though let us not speak of the nights…)

:: The gradual clearing of sloe wine, revealing the gorgeous ruby colour when the sun shines through the demijohn

:: Ogling beautiful things on Etsy and finding it’s enough just to look at lots of bright colourful things
all together, without actually buying them (which is just as well, given how little money we’ve got right now!)

:: An ‘Escargot’ begonia, with spiral leaves

:: The smell of valerian oil in the steam of the bathroom

:: The small girl’s new sheepskin boots, bought in a sale for £6…

:: Felt lanterns à la Rhthm of the Home

:: Apple, vanilla and spice loaf (complete with flax and linseed)

:: The smell of woodsmoke as I open the back door

:: A pair of bright green peering out from the back of a deep shelf in the sitting room, as Hecate, our new puss, settles in (and yes, the flipside of that is that Pyewacket has yet to reappear, a fact which continues to sadden me, but which I’m having to accept as part of life in the busyness of our days)

:: The fresian-patterned coffee pot which I gave Quercus for his birthday, popping away on the stove

:: A certain babe’s bright smile, readily and often given.

And you?

I am utterly defeated – by my own hair! First, there was the ongoing dreadlocks dilemma: to dread, or not to dread. There were many and varied thoughts about that whole area, I can tell you. The knots. The washing issue (can you? should you? how do you? how often do you? what with?). The cutting-them-out issue (do you have to? is there any alternative? how long before you have to do that to get them out?). The would-I-get-bored issue (which is of course probably the most irritatingly navel-gazey of the lot). But fundamentally, I really like the way dreads look, and having toyed with the notion since I was about eighteen, I thought what the hell, and pretty much let my hair go its own way.

That is not to say that I stopped washing it, I hasten to add. This whole ‘you can’t wash dreads’ thing is a myth. No. I just stopped using conventional shampoo, switching instead to either a combination of apple cider vinegar and bicarbonate of soda or Dr. Bronner’s, very dliute.

Anyway. Fast forward quite some time, and just by dint of not having very much time to spend faffing about with hair, I had developed quite a set of dreads. Mostly, I looked like Medusa, but in a rather good way (though your mileage may vary on that one). I still had loose ends, but the dreads themselves seemed to form fairly easily in my hair, and I liked the way it looked. I kept them uniform by pulling them apart to avoid the dreaded (ha!) monodread look favoured by, well, drunk tramps, but other than that and the odd spot of twiddling, all was well in dreadlock world.

Then.

Oh, then.

Then I decided to blunt the ends.

Which I did.

When heavily pregnant.

With a felting needle.

Over several weeks.

And suddenly, all was not well in dreadlock world. Well, not that suddenly – I suppose it sort of crept up on me over the next, say, month or two, until lo! the hair! it was fucked! beyond all recognition! And all that patience I had celebrated when putting the damn dreads in in the first place seemed rather to have been outpaced by the urgent need to comb! to comb like buggery! Loops, bumps, twists, tangles, knots, and did I mention the loops? I looked like a severe hedgecutter incident had taken place.

The problem is, I still do. Only rather more-so now, given that I’ve brushed out about fifty of the eighty-odd dreads I had. From the front, all is well. When tied up, all is well. But down. Oh, down. Down is another story. Down is a chaos of loose hair, no-longer-pregnant-thus-losing-shedloads-of-hair-anyway chaos. With roughly the crown of my head still dreaded, even the significant portion which I have combed out is still showing an unnerving tendency to lock up with monotonous dedication.

So, I’m having to face the fact that I’m probably going to have to cut the little fuckers out. There are too many of them to just chop the odd one out and get away with still having long hair, and it’s not patience which is the problem in terms of detangling the remaining ones – nope: I just haven’t got the time to myself in which to do it without the rest of the hair having turned into a bird’s nest in the meantime, I think.

But you know, I’m trying to see the bigger picture. One of my closest friend’s little girl has been having open-heart surgery today. She is doing well, and hopefully the worst is over, but it serves as a timely reminder that hair is just hair, for the love of all that’s holy. I’ve been feeling pretty frumpy lately – not enough sleep, constantly covered in some sort of liquid, leaking milk everywhere, clothes both ancient and ill-fitting – and have been thinking again about the two stone in weight that I would like to lose. Maybe this is the time for me to actually take the bull by the horns, chop the sodding hair off (at least it would end the oh-so-boring chore of attempting to brush it all through) and lose the damn weight. Or at least try to. This could be a good thing. I used to have short hair, and I loved it. Now I feel like I would be a huuuuuge fat troll with a little short-haired head, but perhaps I need to get over that and just move on to the next bit. Or something more zen-like and self-accepting.

So, I think I’m going to give it until the other side of the weekend. If I’ve made significant progress by then, then I’ll stick with the brushing. If not, I’m going to give my hairdressing friend a large challenge in the not-too-distant.

As for the weight, well, it’s goodbye pies for the foreseeable, I fear. And you, chocolate: that means you too.

Remind me: there is life without cake, right?

Right now…

:: twelve gallons of wine – twelve! – made, of course, when I’m not drinking…

:: washing drying on the line in a short early-October summer

:: limewashing in the early mists of the autumn coolness

:: cobwebs, chard and pumpkins in our garden at the moment

:: sleeping babies on ancient battered sofas

:: a Malabrigo hat cast on for the littlest one as the days grow cooler

:: a berry-coloured cardigan in progress for her sister, and seeming to take aaaaages because I’ve done a lot of chunky knitting lately, so that 4mm needles seem tiny

:: preparations for Quercus’s birthday (Sunday) afoot, slyly, whenever he is out

:: smugness that we’ve stacked the woodshed full to bursting, and that we’ve yet to light the stove this year, and it’s nearly the end of October.

And you?

So, this post is brought to you by the letters ‘v’, ‘o’, ‘m’, ‘i’ and – can you see where I’m going with this? Can you? – yes, that final bundle of joy, ‘t’. The trouble with playschools is that they appear to be hives of infection, veritable stashes of sickness, and yes, we have all been pole-axed by a lovely little sickness bug which is currently doing the rounds of the small girl’s playschool. Fortunately, for me, at least, it’s not been too horrible (and has certainly kick-started my desire to lose some weight, with a mighty seven-pound weight-loss in one day), but the thing that I particularly loathe about illness when you’re a parent is that you just don’t get to crawl into bed and feel sorry for yourself in the way that you want to. Oh no. You just get to do all the things you normally do, but while feeling god-awful! Ain’t life fun?

So, things that I have learned recently:

1. Failing routers are really, really boring.
2. Waiting to speak to your technical support people while they play ten-second blasts of truly terrible music at you loud enough to distort through your phone’s crappy speaker is really, really boring.
3. Second children do not always sleep more easily – and for longer – than the first.
4. Sourdough bread is much nicer than the name suggests.
5. It is possible to brush dreads out after they’ve been in for over six months, but man, it’s tedious, and hugely time-consuming.

So. That’s me. You?

So, with about two days’ notice, the aged parent came to visit. He does this, from time to time – calls up, says he’d really like to come and see us because it’s a long time until our next agreed meet-up (which normally doesn’t come to pass anyway), and are we free tomorrow? Usually we are; we don’t live the sort of life which means lots of time away from home, or with the zillions of social engagements on which he seems to thrive (or at least not the sort which doesn’t involve friends good enough to be shuffled about informally timing-wise). And then he appears, sprinkles take-away food about the place for a bit, stays for something between twelve and thirty-six hours, appears bemused by the small girl (sometimes benignly, sometimes with hints that I need to take a firmer line), before Something Comes Up At Home, and he departs, usually at least four hours before he’d said he’d leave.

Today is no exception; minor irritation is added by the fact that he hadn’t said goodbye to the small girl, and she thinks he might be there to meet her when playschool finishes at lunchtime.

Why do I expect anything from this man? When will I learn that, set against the apparently never-ending demands of his new family, I come a very firm second? (This time, his wife is not well [something which appears, in itself, to be never-ending; the woman is as clear a case of neurasthenia as I have ever seen] and his step-daughter is having yet another attempt at anorexia. I say ‘attempt’ because it seems that this happens each and every time that the light of parental affection swings from her even slightly; both his step-children seem to be utterly set on having the ENTIRE WORLD revolve around them, FOREVER; should this fail to be the case, there will be Dire Consequences.)

Yes, I’m feeling petty and childish about this – hiding it well, non?

Just once, though, it would have been nice if he could have done what he’d said he would, and just be here, just for a bit, just for long enough to get used to him being here, just to get past the bit where I feel I’m on show, and I feel nervous, and I worry what he thinks. I should know by now that it’s genuinely daft to have any expectations of him at all, that all plans are subject to change, that any agreements are superceded by things about which I don’t even know until it’s a done deal. I should also know that the constant ill health of this new family of his seems to mean a constant on-standby approach on his part, despite the fact that I would have been told to get a grip or something similar had I been similarly inclined.

I think he does mean to make an effort; he comes here, after all. But he just falls short every time. It was lovely that he came; it was lovely that he brought a toy for the small girl, and took the time to play with her, showing her how to use it. It was lovely that they went out together yesterday, and she talked to him and showed him around and so on. But it would also have been lovely if he’d waited the 90 minutes needed to say goodbye to her when she finishes at lunchtime, and if his scuttling back home didn’t feel as if it might be tinged with relief at having ticked the ‘visit daughter’ box.

I’m really rubbish at this whole ‘you can’t change other people’ bit, you know.

Bright sunshine here this morning, and the small girl is out for the day with Quercus, meaning it’s just me and the smallest in the house at the moment. Oh, and a large bar of chocolate. (Any guesses how many of those things will still be true by, say, lunchtime?)

This morning’s thoughts:
- Why, oh why, are some woven wraps (which is to say baby slings) so very, very expensive? I have been coveting a Girasol ‘Earthy Rainbow’ wrap for about, well, a year or so now, and I have yet to see one sell – even secondhand – for less than £70. £70! If there was a way to capitalise numbers, I would be doing it, so emphatic is my astonishment.

- I have made seven gallons of wine in the last week. Nothing like displacement activity to galvanise one, eh?

- Why is it only when I have no money that I see lots of things I would love to buy? Here are some of my current lusts:

- This coming weekend, Quercus and the small girl are off to visit Quercus’s mother. This means a weekend sort-of to myself – being with one child feels like walking on air, ease-wise! So, I am trying to plan activities other than, well, vegging on the sofa while streaming Gilmore Girls. So far, I am mainly thinking of attempting to sort out my dreads, which have gone from being pretty much what I wanted to being loopy, bumpy and generally chaotic. Trouble is, I never get the chance to fidget at them as one is supposed to in the early days, really, so there are tangles, and loose hair, and odd ends, and general Stuff Which Requires Maintenance. Ho. I’ve actually been contemplating brushing them out and starting again, it’s that bad, but then I sort of flag a bit when thinking of the work involved. And then I just tie them up and, well, forget all about them. Ahem.

- Pyewacket is still missing. She’s been gone two weeks now. I fear she is not coming back, and I miss her sososo much. She is a most unusual cat; there is something distinctly familiar-like about her, in that she appears and disappears in mildly disturbing ways, and she doesn’t behave like a cat but rather like some sort of aristocrat, possibly of French extraction. I have always thought that she might actually be the current incarnation of either Bast, or of the original Pyewacket, a seventeenth century witch’s familiar. I hope she finds her way home, I really do.

- I have a copy of ‘Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day’ or something similar en route. I am stupidly excited by this (though sceptical about the titular claim). This may mean sourdough attempts again…

- Why does the world apparently not include liquorice shampoo any more? I used to get a solid one from Lush, but – surprise, surprise – as with all the things I actually like there, they’ve stopped making it.

- Did I mention the sunshine here? There is actually a chance that today’s nappy wash might dry. (They are lavender-coloured bamboo numbers, since you ask, and while I am not a coochy-coo sort of person, I must admit that a certain small backside does look rather fetching in them.)

- A commenter asked about my children’s nameless state here, and why it’s OK to post pictures of them but not their name. Quercus answered this in the comments: pictures aren’t easily Googled, while names really, really are, particularly as three out of four of us have unusual names which would be easy to find online if we used them. I am contemplating blog names, though, for ease of identification, as ‘small’ and ‘smallest’ are easy to confuse when you’re half-asleep…

- Why did I only just find out that Super Birkis come in red with cats?

Today is the autumn equinox, and we have spent the afternoon picking blackberries in the warmth of unexpected sunshine, with the drone of tractors ploughing the field behind our house. It never ceases to amaze me, the difference that a bit of sunshine can make, coupled with achieving a few things, albeit small things. Somehow, quietly, this week has turned around: there are now seven gallons of wine fermenting on the back of the counters, their quiet glugging a fascination to the smallest member of the Earthenhousehold, and two pints of crabapple cordial are sitting in the fridge, accompanied by a pint of sloe and apple. Apple crumbles have been baked, and pounds and pounds of apples, crabapples, sloes and blackberries have been picked. Pictures have been drawn on the chalkboard, messages have been left for small people using magnetic letters on the fridge, paintings have been done, play-dough snails have been made. Nappies have been washed, dried in the clever north wind and brought in smelling of woodsmoke. The chimney has been swept in preparation for the colder days to come, and the wood shelter is fully stacked.

I breathe out.

Yesterday evening, Quercus went to a rehearsal of the orchestra he plays for, and really enjoyed it. His orchestra is playing Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’, which he loves.

Yesterday evening, I did very little beyond knitting a few more rows of the small girl’s winter cardigan (a beautiful berry-coloured wool which was part of the stash of wool I inherited from my mother, thus giving me an extra sense of autumnal nostalgia as I use it).

Yesterday evening, my elder girl was asleep at seven o’clock, having been friendly, chatty and helpful all afternoon.

Yesterday evening, my younger girl, stil so very little, was asleep not long after, having slept deeply and restfully three times during the day, in her basket on the counter in the kitchen (she may not have been born in the kitchen, which is where I thought I’d labour, but she is certainly spending most of her time in there!); she stayed fast asleep until just gone midnight, her first stretch of five hours.

The wheel turns, and with it, life moves on.