First of all, we had the Great Mouse Attack. We live in the country and rodents and other furry creatures are an accepted part of our lives ... outside. However, when they cross the threshold they become THE ENEMY! Firstly they infiltrated the barn where number 4 has her bedroom. She actually had the presence of mind to photograph one with her phone. It looked rather large for a mouse... just saying. Smallest child removes herself back into her old bedroom in the house, thus providing me with two bedrooms where I cannot see the floor, let alone vacuum it. Poison distributed in various places in the barn and now we wait. Then whilst sitting at my desk the following day, another mouse appeared - a tiny one this time - from under the skirting board at my feet. Cue more poison carefully barricaded in so that the dogs could not reach it. Dogs are obviously useless at mousing. Already we have a garden where squirrels/rabbits/mice have eaten most of my tulip (my most favourite flower) bulbs so clearly the dogs are not striking the fear of God into anything out there. And now we have a mouse swanning about the house which the dogs are ignoring.
The mouse then decamped to the conservatory where number 3 attempted to corner it in a saucepan - as if - before summoning help. More poison carefully barricaded in where the dogs can't reach it. And finally after nearly a week I am daring to hope we are mouse-free again. Just waiting for that rotting dead animal smell to confirm my suspicions.
Then on Sunday, number 1 came home from her week in Edinburgh in the play Translations (you probably know all about this if you have been following the blog as I have been posting her blog on here - she writes better than me anyway!). She has been driving my car whilst in Mold (Wales) and Edinburgh and was returning it prior to moving on to her final tour destination, Belfast. Now the car is covered in what can only be described as pterodactyl poo - not the size of normal bird droppings and completely black and very hard to remove. Anyway, my beloved used the relatively new washing up brush to remove them so now we need a new one of those.
On Monday morning, number 1 and I are having some all-important mother-daughter time with a cup of tea and a catch-up - "Botox?" "Yes really, it made her eyes look all piggy..." - when I enquired what time her flight to Belfast was on Tuesday morning. She checked: "It leaves in an hour and a half - today!" So we pack directly from the tumble dryer into her hand luggage and set off at a charge to Leeds Bradford airport where yes, she made the plane. Phew...
And by the time I got home, the phones/internet had crashed. The result of the high winds last week, I believe, which also took down two trees in the garden. Actually, now we have cleared it all away, the garden looks better so perhaps sometimes these things work out for the best. Not, however, the phone and the internet which has made the two of us who work from home very irritable and given children 3 and 4 a lesson in what life was like just a few years ago when we had no internet. If I manage to post this, it will mean that the internet has been restored, for now anyway.
So, there you go. As Rudge says: "It's just one f*****g thing after another" and as we return to what passes for normal here, I am just waiting to see if my mobile phone is going work again - dodgy signal - although at least I didn't drop mine in the bath. But that's another story...
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