The missing "S"...and the missing posts

Well, it turns out I'm not good at New Year or new quarter resolutions and I've been a very bad blogger. But, in my defence it's been a very busy 11 months. After finally settling my Beautiful Girl into the creche it turned out I wasn't very happy at work. Nothing interesting - just fed up of a job I'd done for too long with few prospects for going much further. So I decided the skills I'd developed wrangling supposed professionals in the previous 5 years could be put to better use in one of two ways: 1) herding cats or 2) setting up my own business and having more time at home with a munchkin. Thus I became my own boss and more at home Mum.

We've been incredibly lucky and I feel like I've the best of all worlds. I work (usually) 3 days a week, when Beautiful Girl is off having fun in the creche, and I get to be at home or out having fun with her the other days. We've started baking and making and had our first make and do on Valentine's Day to make a card for her Daddy. The older she gets though, the more glad I am of the bit of work, bit of home balance - and I feel an increasing awe for all those women and men who have the patience for planning dinners for a week, endless animal noises, all day energy balls and tantrums.

But, there will be a decision to be made in a few months when (pg) Junior 2 arrives. He'll (we're not finding out whether he's a he or a she, but I'm sure he's a he!) be here in July I hope, although BG's timekeeping wasn't spectacular so I'm banking on another 42 week pregnancy.

So, until he arrives and I have constant nappy changing to use as an excuse, I will do my best to be a more frequent blogger and brain dump on a more regular basis.

Oh, and my "s" key keeps sticking on my keyboard, so excuse the typos!

Right brain-y-ness

I love to think of myself as a creative person. My current facination is making a meditation stool. I have managed to break my sewing maching, twice, turning a pair of jeans into a skirt. I buy clothes purely so I can move buttons, add ribbons and change their shape and colour. I invest in lovely pieces of fabric and have a collection of buttons that any rag doll would covet. I take notions about colours and painting - rooms, furniture and things that stay still long enough. I have become very enthusiastic about baking, and the weekend was an elasticated waistband of butter, sugar and eggs. I have an idea that I'd like to make curtins for Beautiful Girl's bedroom, but I was on the losing side of an argument with buckram not long enough ago. I love photography and did manage to take one spectacular picture, but in all honesty, it was an accident (I was trying to figure out the settings and I got it wrong). Hell, I started this blog as a way of encouraging the untapped writer buried in my soul. Some days I think I should have left her there, company for the skinny girl who has accepted her fate.

Along with the bed linen addiction, I get Mary-make-and-do tendencies from my mother. She knits and sews, paints silk and made nearly all of the clothes I wore until I was about 5. I don't know much about things biological, but I presume it's a recessive gene that expresses itself indiscriminatingly because none of my siblings seem to be afflicted as I am. They are all actually creative. My brother can make almost anything you can imagine and fix the things others didn't realise were broken. My sister is brilliant with child's play and carves pumpkins, makes collages and decorates Easter eggs with panache. The youngest of the clan is an artist with a Byron-esque sensibility in his soul. He also makes films.

So I'm the sensible one, the one who knows how to organise things, where to get things, aranges someone to be there to let the plumber in and, most importantly, knows how to make the gravy for the dinner that she's remembered to put in on time so that we'll eat this evening. I guess that's why I'll be cooking Christmas dinner this year in a freshly painted kitchen and served alongside a home made table centre and Christmas crackers. But at least it'll be on time.

And while I'm doing that, I'll be thinking about how I can make a new angel for the top of the tree, and what I'll need to make a better Advent wreath, and wouldn't that wall actually look better lilac...

Isn't it nice that we all have our place in the circle of family...