What a weekend

Surreal and weird weekend.

It all started with sleep deprivation when my mother's mobile decided to deliver a text message to my phone at 1am. (I am implying that the technology was the blame rather than admit that my Mum might have forgotten about the time difference and texted me at midnight on a Friday night...)

Then Pickle had first a bad dream and then a bad case of missing Mummy. I don't mind him cuddling up in my bed so much now he's over the 'let's see if i can stick my toe in Mummy's ear' stage... but now he snores. Loudly. Nobby caved before I did though and more or less threw the little blighter back into his own room.

Next day Poppet ate curry. Yes, curry. Mrs Fussy Knickers herself had some home-made Jalfrezi in a piece of pitta bread and stunned Nobby and me into silence for once. She proceeded to Chinese noodles later on plus she's been eating banana muffins like they're going out of fashion. I'm trying her on chili tonight, watch this space.

Meanwhile Tiggy is in disgrace having been 'caught short' two nights running. Now, imagine you're a dog, you can't get out of the house for a poo, you scratch at the back door and whine a bit but Mummy and Daddy have already been up half the night with their own pups and ignore you. Where are you going to lay that turd? In the basement obviously because you don't want the smell anywhere near your bed. So, on the nice easy-to-clean tiled floor or the tiny solitary piece of carpet that Pickle uses as his 'spot' for playing on the Wii.

The carpet of course. Twice. She's definitely in the doghouse that one.

Never mind, things pepped up when Nobby's team won their game on Saturday - you never heard celebrations like it; trust Man Utd to leave it till the 92nd minute so my husband can take the roof off with his cheering.

Me, I went to town on the garden with a lawnmower, a set of shears and a strimmer. Then I had a bonfire. It was great! Brought back memories of weekends at my Grandad's house playing pyro-maniacs with the weeks collection of cartons and papers in the days before recycling.

During all of this we received several phone calls from Nobby's Dad who stayed with us last week with his wife; they were working their way back home via Vienna and Prague. They only made it as far as Prague before the volcano's ash cloud closed the UK airports and they've been stuck there ever since. Only trouble is that they 'did' Prague in the three days they were expecting to stay and now they're a wee bit bored. And the hotel decided to up its prices to cash in on the stranded holidaymakers so they had to move as well. Nasty.

Could be worse though - my brother-in-law got stuck in Lisbon with a group of people from work after a team building event. After four days of waiting for the ash to fall they decided to try and make it home over-land. On a bus. He's giving us regular updates of their progress on Twitter and Facebook. They've about 1340 miles to go...

... and someone just broke the 'no farting' rule. I think he'd rather be in Prague.

What the..?

Here's an interesting one. Swollen eyeballs.

No, I don't mean puffy eyes like having just woken up after a hard night on the lash (never happened to me of course, I read about that in a magazine), I mean the actual white of my eyeball is swollen. I had to whip out my contact lenses before they pinged out and hurt somebody (you could take someone's eye out with that...!)

Hayfever, innit. As Rose just said, 'somehow we've gone from snow to pollen without even time to pop an antihistamine in between'. Wot's that all about?

Anyway, I only popped in to prove I've not eloped with the Easter Bunny for a lifetime of Cadbury's Cream Eggs, tempting though it might be. I've been up to my (floppy) ears in coursework and campaigning, with a bit of cookery on the side. It's the school holidays and we've had guests over plus I am trying to gather all my evidence to prove I'm certifiable (as a teacher I mean, everyone already knows I'm nuts).

The campaigning has been trying to find a way to prevent our school from going under. It's crisis central round here with little hope of crawling out of the mire which is threatening to suck our adorable little international school down the drain. I won't go into details, but let's just say some people have no business being in business when they got their business degree with 6 Tiger tokens and a couple of quid.

So it looks like Poppet and Pickle will be moving to a new school for all of one year (the time left on Nobby's contract in Hungary) and I'll have to fork out for a uniform for this one. Yikes. No telling what will happen to the piano lessons and chess club and football training, that's all gonna have to change too. BUT... they have interactive whiteboards - as far as Pickle is concerned that's a very large computer screen / TV in every classroom - so I reckon they'll have some fun with those.

That's all for now, apart from a Happy Sapphire Wedding anniversary to my folks.
Forty Five years, cor blimey. Congrats you two.