No time!

I do not have time to Blog at the moment. It is a terrible revelation, you'd think that I would be able to get creative and make some time in my day to report all my doings to my news-starved friends and rellies but the truth is I am mired in a confusing mix of business and laziness which means that I am either chasing my tail trying to get through my to-do list or flaking out on the sofa trying to recover from a frantic day. So I am sorry you are having to wait several weeks between episodes of Nobby and Me. It's not actually because we are more boring than watching bowls on TV or a weekend at a librarian's conference, its quite the opposite.

I have even been seen sporting my watch recently which I rebelliously shed several months ago after reaslising that life in a Budapest stylee was proving much easier to handle than the clamour of the French school runs. No longer was I hemmed in by ten minute drop-off and pick-up windows four times a day or the mania of trying to get two kids to two different locations at the same time. I am theoretically free as a bird between 8h30 and 15h now I am here. But then I started looking for stuff to do. Then stuff started finding me for doing. And everything is going a bit Pete Tong.

Rose bought me a fabulous present for my birthday, it's called a To-Don't List, a large pad with 4 sections where you can write things you want to sabotage, shelve, forget about and generally chuck over the fence. In other words the million jobs that are beating down your door that you know you need to do but would rather round up and put in a field with a healthy dollop of semtex - such as your third tax return of the year (don't ask, and don't move country either for that matter), the financial review you promised to get to the financial advisor by end of January, finding english speaking dentists in a foreign land so Nobby can finally get rid of his wisdom teeth or finding a place where you can get the Nintendo DS repaired before the 5-hour drive to Croatia in the summer. The fact that it says To Don't on the pad goes some small way to relieving the tension, but I still have to get it all done somehow!!

And then I hold my hand up for a research project. What was I thinking? I reckoned I could fit it all in around the teaching and the language lessons and the visitors. Mercifully I didn't have to teach today as the poor little mites are in annual testing this week. I was invited to help adjudicate but I decided to get started on this thing instead and I wish I hadn't! There is a tonne of it and I am new at research and I can see this taking me a lot longer than the 20-30 hours I was told, possibly with a quick divorce tacked on at the end. Damn. At least I will be getting paid, though I fear it will be about a penny an hour judging by how long the introdution took me.

So whilst I have a lot to tell you about our recent round of guests from Paris, Pickle's new bike, the Boy Next Door's performance in Jack and the Beanstalk, Poppet's piano recital, Tiggy's relentless digging, and the mail-order sausages I just signed up for (?!) it will all have to wait for next time as I have groceries to buy and kids to collect before we all starve or are handed over to Social Services.

I'll be back.