In no particular order:

1. Had a meeting today about going back to work. It went well, though nothing is finalised. I want to work five mornings a week so that the witchling has a settled pattern, while my manager would prefer me to group my hours into a larger block. We are attempting to hash this out; I’m in hopes that sticking to my guns will allow me to prevail, though, because I’m genuinely not doing this out of awkwardness but because I think it’d work well both for them and for us. (More on jobs anon, incidentally, and the whole What To Do With One’s Life thing, doubtless.)

2. We have found a nursery for the witchling to go to while I carry out my contractual obligations – yes folks: I have to work full-time for three months, or part-time for six, in order to avoid owing the university six thousand pounds of maternity pay. Can’t afford to buy myself out, and we needed the money, really, so I couldn’t have declined it to start with, so this is what I’m left with. It could be worse; the witchling will be one by the time I go back, and, as a genuinely sociable little body, I hope she will manage well, spending a half-day with other babies of her age in a place on the edge of a National Trust park, with woodland walks in easy reach and an emphasis on heuristic play, organic fruit and veg, and baby-led weaning. (They are also happy to take cloth nappies, which, apparently, is not often the case, and to hand over expressed breast-milk rather than formula feed, so that bodes well.)

3. We have kitchen lights!

4. And a back door!

5. I didn’t kill Quercus’s mother.

6. But it was a close-run thing.

7. I need to decide if writing for the Ecologist will be done in my own name, or as Earthenwitch, or somewhere between the two. I could never quite decide on a policy when I wrote as Kitchen Witch; this means you end up not sure what to put on a CV, and can be a tad irritating, generally. But am I ready for anyone who knows me to find this blog again? Last time didn’t work out too well…

8. I also need to decide if I can really make money out of proof-reading, academic or otherwise. There seem to be three zillion people already doing this. What means I’d succeed where they perhaps aren’t? I’d thought about registering a domain and having a bash at it before Easter; my PhD being finished means I can link to my very own British Library entry (smug much?), and I have a lot of experience of this sort of work, combined with the sort of job I do and a very academic background – these things seem like positives, but I just don’t know if I’m being wildly optimistic about the work being out there, really. Guess you never know until you try.

9. I also need to get on with the etsy shop thingy I was thinking of doing. Which means pulling the proverbial finger out.

10. But would it make more sense to use the time when the witchling is asleep (like now) to do stuff on the extension? We’re within spitting distance of finishing; it would be very nice to have it done by the time I have to go back to work (currently, mid-May, though possibly a little later than that, as I am going to do some gruesome ‘keeping in touch’ days, partly to ingratiate myself out of my innate desire to help, and partly because I can’t remember which end of online learning one blows down at present, which, given that I develop online learning materials, is probably not quite the best situation I could be in).

11. It seems that we are thinking of having another baby. Is this lunacy? Very probably. Will we do it anyway? Very probably. (Not now, I hasten to add. Just… at some point.)

12. The Aged Parent has now moved to the frozen north permanently. So far, he seems pretty happy with it. It is strange to find one has no idea what the pattern of one’s father’s life is, these days; I don’t know where he lives, what he is doing, with whom, why, or for how long. But that’s OK, I think. It’s odd to say it, but I feel almost like I’ve had some experience of parenting: the strings which were once so short have lengthened almost to the extent of non-existence as the seasons of his grief passed, but I think this is how it had to be, after my mother died. He needed me so very much, initially – more, I think, than I needed him, perhaps – but that need has now passed, and he has come back to the person he once was, almost. That, for him, means being part of a family in a way that grown-up, relocated children can’t offer, so he has found a new family, and it seems to be working for him. Seeing the witchling with Quercus’s mother, though, I feel sad that he is missing so much of her little life; he has seen her once since I was with him in the summer, and shows no sign of even wanting to make more frequent contact. I regret this, without having a clue what to do about it. I also regret feeling that I can’t just talk to him these days – I watch what I say, conscious of a feeling that any revelations or genuine feeling will be stored for future use.

13. My head feels very full of Things at the moment. Some good, some not so. I’m not sure why, but it feels as if something is about to happen all the time; can’t decide if a good thing or a bad, but something’s in the wind, I think.