Basically

Kinda keeping on top of things, but mostly feeling like this:

E is sick and I may be getting sick and there is Drama of various sorts and through it all I cook, clean, find time to write and construct wooden train tracks with the kids.

It snowed on Monday (I know, right? It's March.) and is forecast to rain this weekend, so I guess it's okay to lounge around in the house and recuperate.  Hopefully some warmer weather will come sooner rather than later.  In the meantime, I'm off to snuggle under a blanket in a kind of too-tired-to-do-anything-yet-refusing-to-go-to-bed funk.  Happy Friday.

Merry....

Well, the past week has been eventful!  We went off on our long-planned weekend trip to Norfolk, having made reservations to stay at a Centreparcs with friends.  I'm not entirely sure how to describe the place.  It's a lot like a holiday resort.  Self-catering cottages are sprinkled all around (there's also a hotel option).  There's LOTS of things for kids to do - it's designed for a kind of young-middle set, I'd say ages 5-12ish would get the most out of the experience.  Yet both teenagers and babies/toddlers are catered to as well.

The restaraunts, for example, have integrated play areas which is super cool when you have bouncy, explorer children who want to move.  There's a swimming pool with lots of different areas and levels of water slides, there's bowling and other sports, many different outdoor playgrounds and indoor ones as well, children/teenager clubs, and so on.  Sports like archery, clay pigeon shooting, waterskiing, and all that too.

We stayed in a two bedroom place adjacent to friends (4 families in total, plus one who visited for the day and stayed at another local place).  The place is set in the middle of Elveden Forest (there are also a few other Centreparcs around England) and although it's "holiday parky" it does a good job incorporating nature.

There was a loop trail just near our cabin - here the kids are taking turns on E's scooter.  I didn't get many pictures of our time there... mainly because C and I were sick when we arrived.  We spent most of the first day out of commission, recovering enough to swim that afternoon and participate in the Secret Santa our friends arranged.  Fortunately, E and B were well enough to spend the morning Doing Stuff, which included....

E attending a children's club and being Elf-ified.  He was so excited afterward that he temporarily forgot how to give a thumbs up.  He'd made/painted a sled, and "cooked" marshmallow cupcakes.

Meanwhile, C and I....

...yeah, we hung out in pyjamas eating apples and looking at the wildlife through the trees.  It also rained pretty heavily the first day there so it was kind of nice to stay indoors.

Another complicating factor to the whole thing is that our car has been on the fritz for awhile now.  Despite dropping a lot of money on trying to fix it, it still has a propensity to cut out at bad times and then refuse to start.  We thought it might be okay to drive the 70-odd miles north, but it turned out to be... difficult.  Broke down twice, the second time being pretty scary when it malfunctioned at 70mph on the freeway.  Fortunately it maintains steering and brakes, although not acceleration.... when we pulled over, C decided to be carsick.  That was a fun journey.

On the off-chance any SAAB enthusiasts read this blog, could they please let me know what to do to solve an on-board computer problem?  We paid to have the system rebooted but that hasn't fixed the problem.

Anyhow, I'm going to try to forget car stress because it's Christmas Eve.

Our kids went to bed looking like this (sans apples, obv.)....

...and they will wake up to this:

Merry Christmas 2012!  Aren't you glad the world didn't end?

Well...

March is supposed to be the end of the sick season, isn't it? For us, it definitely wasn't. It's been a rough few weeks around here - made worse by illness. Picked E up from school with a vomiting bug, which he then passed to C several days later (fortunately not passed to the adults as well, although I'll admit we have better hand-washing habits etc). Then a bad cold, passed to everyone.

On top of that... it looks certain the landlady is going to raise the rent. OK - we can deal with a rise... but then she had an agent come around to "revalue" the property. I did a bit of research and... well, London private rents have gone up a lot in the past few years. Two bedroom places in this area are renting for prices that, for us, are unaffordable. So God knows what our rent is going to be raised to, but I'm really hoping we can afford it.

If not, I don't know where we'll go. We have a ballpark area - anywhere with good transport links to both Brighton and London. Nothing hums to us. Nothing feels like home. We've been here for just under five years now and the thought of relocating makes me feel sick to my stomach. The thought of telling E, who is so excited about going to "big school" just down the road, that he can't go there, makes me feel awful. I love the school run, I love this area, I love seeing and chatting to the same people - the nice librarian who has known E since he was 4 months old, the friendly childminders in the area, the other mothers.

So, just sitting here waiting for the other shoe to drop. Will the rent increase be affordable? Will she be merciful, wanting to keep known tenants, or take a gamble on the unknown? We've expressed our interest in staying... there's nothing we can do at this point but wait, and hope she doesn't ask for £300 extra per month.

It sucks being a taxpayer in the UK who has to support a family on one income. A worker supporting a wife and two young children is taxed at the same rate as a childless, single taxpayer. There are so many good aspects to this country but this particular point is tough to swallow. It's not the principle of the thing - it's the fact that I love this area, I love this flat, my children have spent their entire (albeit short) lives in this area... and we're on the cusp of being priced out entirely. I knew we'd never be able to afford to buy here (or anywhere, really, at this rate), but I thought we might have a few more years here.

It'd be easier if we had somewhere else in mind. But... we don't. And actually, even areas further out in London are more expensive than I'd expected. Just... ouch. Reality bites, and all.

It'd also be easier if B's job wasn't up in the air. His company is... well, restructuring. He's not in the line of fire, but he will be in a few months, when some department takes a look at his role and decides whether it's essential or not. And his boss has just taken another job, so he's getting a new one. Another unknown... way too many for me.

Well... reality bites.

So let's look at the positives. We're off to Suffolk to stay with friends this weekend. And this Sunday was Mother's Day in the UK. I woke up to chocolates and a balloon....

We all went to Wimbledon Common for a walk.

Note the horses just through the trees in the last pic. We saw lots of people out riding. After our walk we went for lunch and then had a browse in a local independent bookstore. It was a good day.

Now that we're all healthy again, the warmer weather is luring us into the garden. C is too precarious to leave on the large trampoline (especially with E on it) so I've dragged the little one out and she's loving it.

Can't do anything for one these days without the other one wanting it... "Take a picture of me, Mama!"


Ok - am off to attempt to regain my natural optimism. Probably through sleep (if C lets me, she's been awful the last week) and maybe possibly through having a bit of chocolate and reading a trashy romance. Tomorrow is another day, and all that jazz.

EDITED TO ADD: If anyone has emailed me lately and not received a reply... email me again, please (katcoll AT yahoo DOT c.om is the one I check - write it the normal way with the @ and . - am foxing the spambots by not writing it out properly, this is a public blog, after all). I've lost some messages to spam, according to a friend, and may have straight up just not received email. V. annoying. And now off to bed.

Warning: Political Stuff

Look away now if you mind swearing and don't want to get all het up.

If you're still reading - I'll keep it short. I don't think I've ever been so close to such craziness! Local businesses being looted and burned, riot police and vans and dogs just up the hill, our local shops shutting down at 4pm and putting metal grilles over the doors, B's office in Central London being evacuated, train stations being smashed up and closed. This is all a bit nuts.

That being said, I'm pissed off at both sides. The rioters, for opportunistic looting and senseless burning, costing businesses millions of pounds. The government, for not seeing this coming. Colossally so, in fact. I mean, the Home Secretary herself said, back in September 2010: ""The British public don't simply resort to violent unrest in the face of challenging economic circumstances. ... It is ridiculous to suggest that there are not savings that can be made in policing." (source)

You dumb bitch, there weren't enough police on the ground last night to prevent looters from totally destroying multiple parts of the city - including pillaging the hell out of some of our local shops! They were in there for hours, walking out with all sorts of stuff, all because our local cops had to go reinforce other parts of the city due to YOUR budget cuts!

And meanwhile we've got our Prime Minister, who only bothered to return from vacation earlier today, yammering on about how we're all "in this together." Apparently that also means cutting taxes for corporate buddies while putting more pressure on the working and middle classes by screwing with child benefit and shafting low-income working families by cutting child tax credits, which many people depend on to help them get childcare. I'd look for a relevant statement by George Osbourne here, but apparently he's only just curtailing his holiday in California to come back to the UK to deal with the rioting, so he's probably only getting on the plane right about now.

So while Parliament discusses stuff like reintroducing baton rounds, rubber bullets, water hoses, etc, I'm going to sit here and wonder why the fuck democracy is so skewed toward a system that favors slapping temporary bandaids onto a situation over addressing root causes. Because from where I sit, I'm disgusted at both sides. Opportunistic looters - that sums up my feelings. And I don't feel I need to differentiate between either side when I say it.

I'm becoming more libertarian by the day.

"Pow"

Nearly two years ago now... E having tummy-time at a little less than two months old - no current pics are on this computer.

Today, my awesome kid did three awesome things.

1. We were at our usual toddler playgroup and Katie (usual playmate) had to leave early. Very solemnly, she bent down to E, who was sitting on the floor, and pronounced, "Bye-bye, Elijah." E looked up and immediately said, complete with flappy wave, "Bye-bye Katieeee." It was very, very proper and very, very amusing. S (friend) and I were in stitches.

2. E took my hand, then reached over to B's hand, said: "GUP (get up) PEESE." Dragged us both into the nursery. B sat down and I started giving him a head massage, E saw this, marched over and firmly began massaging B's face with a big smile, all the while acting as if he was bestowing a gigantic favor upon his father.

3. While in our bedroom I smashed a huge spider on the wall with a nearby paperback. (I am not good with spiders. Or bees. Or bugs. Snakes I can kinda deal with.) Later, B and E were in the bedroom and E marched up to the wall, armed with paperback, goes "POW!" and smacked it against the spot where the spider once existed. B was very amused. As for me? I'm just glad my kid hasn't handed me any more spider corpses....

Happy Early 4th of July to everyone, including the losing side all the Brits.

Thank You?

A certain young gentleman has been handing me things lately. Lots of things! Things ranging from my shoes to a spoon he's plucked out of a nearby bowl, to bits of fluff that are so tiny they're practically nonexistent.

I say "thank you!" every time. He likes the praise, and it teaches him manners (or so I hope). Recently, however, things took a rather unexpected turn when he handed me a brown furry object which turned out to be the corpse of a very large, very fuzzy brown spider.

I know they say "be prepared for anything" with babies, but really.

And no, the spider hand-in did not get a "thank you" - it got a garbled, dying camel noise of trying-not-to-scream-and-give-my-child-a-phobia-of-creepy-crawlies.