Must try harder

I just looked at this blog and it seems it's over a week since I posted. Huh. That's a bit rubbish. It would seem I am at risk of not blogging as well as not talking to people, and since neither of those situations are desirable, I will at least try to blog a bit more. Who knows, maybe forcing myself to chat in the abstract will have positive benefits elsewhere.

Anyway, what have I been up to? Well, went to work for most of last week. Not the most positively productive week in terms of output, but I was there. I managed to attend a consultation with counsel and to do the follow up work arising out of it too. I'm counting that as progress.

At home Husband and I ensured our nominations as Parents of the Year by setting up a DVD player and monitor in our spare bedroom for the boys. We bought a shelf unit and a shedload of storage boxes and filled them with the boys' vast collection of Dr Who and Star Wars DVDs. The kids are ecstatic. They are under no illusions that I will ever allow them a TV in their bedroom (I really don't believe in younger kids having TV in their rooms) so this is the next best thing. The TV doesn't receive a broadcast TV signal so they can only watch DVDs on it, therefore we know what they are watching.

Even better, Husband and I don't have to sit through all 6 episodes of Star Wars back-to-back. Well, it felt like all 6. And we don't have to get all middle-aged and irritated by the fact that children these days (I aged 5 years just using that phrase!) use TV like radio. In other words they put a DVD on and then do other stuff - read, play Nintendo, build Lego - while it's on. They never lived through the days when if a good programme was on you had to sit down and WATCH IT - you couldn't record it, assume it would be repeated on BBC3 tomorrow or pause it while you go to the toilet/get a drink/fight with your brother. This explains why First Born gets so exasperated with us when we can't remember the fine detail of Dr Who plots from the early 70s - he does not comprehend that we saw those episodes once and once only, on a Saturday evening 30 years ago. I can't remember where I left my car keys this morning, never mind what precise colour the Zygons were in 1975. Come to think of it, I am not sure we even had colour TV in 1975.....

Where was I? Oh yes, so the weekend went well with the boys enjoying their "den" and Husband and I enjoying the peace. I made home-made pizza for everyone on Saturday and the boys went off with Husband's sister to the Edinburgh Festival Cavalcade on Sunday. Husband and I went to Homebase to look for wasp killer, as we have a wasp byke in our loft space. Glamourous, I know.

Oh, and Husband managed to get several hundred pounds back from the airline for our flights to Canada next year. He spotted a "children go free" promotion in an e-mail from them which, as it turns out, applies to 2009 flights as well as 2008 ones. We had already booked and paid for the boys' flights, but the airline happily (yes, honestly HAPPILY) agreed to refund us the cost of the child flights! So brownie points to Zoom for once. Then I got organised and booked us all a cottage for a week on the Northumberland shore of Nova Scotia, about 20 minutes from Tatamagouche. It is right on the beach. The boys are ecstatic. I can't wait.

And now it is Monday. Back to work, or as close to it as I get these days! I am also going to try to start running again as I have let the exercise and the healthy eating slide and that probably doesn't help the way I feel either. So I will go to the gym at lunchtime today and you can all gang up on me and give me a telling off if I don't. Especially you, Isabelle.

PS: For the benefit of April who asked, and anyone else who is interested, the best B&B in Canada is Carwarden. You're welcome.