ZZZZZZZZzzzzzz…

Nobby’s missus: a woman barely awake. But we can revive her, we have the technology…

Yeah, well, I’m not sure we do. Two intravenous coffees and a large bowl of sugary cereal was still not enough to get my eyes sufficiently open to squeeze my contact lenses into them before the school run this morning. Sure we may be able to fuse honey and nuts to dried and flattened pieces of corn but today I needed something more. Luckily nature had the answer, although not in the form I expected. I tried the lavender oil and the half hour yomp round the park with the dog but I was still pretty much a zombie as I trailed back to the car. What did it was the pervading smell of dog-poo throughout the vehicle from the turd I somehow stepped in on the way. I doubt it will catch on but it kept me unavoidably alert the whole way home trying not to breathe through my nose.

So can you tell that Nobby is still away then? My late nights are a combination of taking advantage of having the TV clicker all to myself, being able to surf the web without being chastised for keeping him awake with the tippy-tapping, and the irrational conviction that every sound the house makes after 11pm is a knife wielding murderer sneaking through the kitchen window for a wee stab-athon. Couple that with an early morning visit from Poppet who had had a nightmare about one of her classmates and voila! Zombie Central. The only good thing was that Poppet could just climb in Nobby’s side of the bed instead of me having to get up and take her back to hers, but then I had to suffer the relentless ‘is it time to get up yet?’ ‘how many minutes till we have to get up, Mummy?’ interrogation until she fell back to sleep.

Anyway, here I am back in front of the computer having stopped myself from parking it on the couch by deciding to launder all the loose covers. I may have created another job for myself there because it wasn’t until one load was in and I was stripping off the next batch of cushions that I saw the label saying ‘dry clean only’. Since when did ‘washable covers’ mean dry cleaning them? Does dry cleaning actually count as washing? I can’t wait to see how this one turns out. But after 8 years without a wash other than the occasional ‘spot cleaning’ I think any result will be better than their current look. I didn’t really notice it all that much until we were getting ready for company on Sunday. It’s the first time any new friends had been round to the house and suddenly my couch just seemed really scruffy to me. (Not sure what kind of signals that admission must send to any family members reading this, it never bothered me when you’ve been round!) Oh, incidentally, I have a new strategy for dealing with weekends with small children without the aid of a husband. You arrange a tea party for a bunch of little friends late on the Sunday afternoon. The kids are thus angels all weekend in anticipation as they know you might cancel it if they mess about! Of course you have to put up with the constant ‘are they coming yet?’ from the moment they wake up on Sunday morning but it’s a small price to pay for them actually helping with the shopping, bringing things in from the car, tidying their rooms and spending a blissful hour in the kitchen together making biscuits. Why on earth didn’t I think of this before? And by rights you gain every excuse NOT to clean all weekend because it’ll be a wreck by the time 8 additional skunks have been through there. But of course if it’s the first time some people have been there you may see your furniture in a whole new light. I think I feel a shopping trip coming on…