A Fishwife`s Garden.

I`ve decided to split off the gardening and allotment blog content to a blog of its own, over here at A Fishwife`s Garden. I want to keep a visual record of the allotment over the coming year with comparison pix from previous years and these of you that come for knitting and spinning content may get bored to tears with too much gardening if I post it here.

I`ll put up the occasional reminder link across, if anything particularly exciting is happening. The first potato of the year? Whooho!!

Spinning is a no-no.

I can`t spin at the moment. My hands are like sandpaper. I just counted up that I`ve spent over fifteen hours on the allotment since last Sunday. Doesn`t sound a lot if you say it quickly, but that`s the equivalent of two full working days. I wear gloves most of the time for gardening but there are some jobs that you can`t wear them for and as a result my hands are rough and dry. Spin? If I even touch roving it gets caught on my finger ends. I couldn`t possibly draft.

Oh well, on with the shea butter, the cocoa butter, the almond oil and the rough skin scrubs. None of them actually make much difference. But I can still knit...except of course, I haven`t got much time except for when I meet up with Gourdongirl when we take the kids to play after school. I am creeping slowly down the final section of my Opal Magic socks.

Hasn`t stopped me from buying yarn though. The cash from my big ebay destash has been burning a hole in my pocket and one of the LYS has recently started stocking Colinette. Bad combination. I resisted for two weeks after Gourdongirl told me about the newly arrived Colinette, then I could resist no more. I bought a sweaters worth of Giotto in the Banwy colourway. The picture does not do it justice because there is also a tinge of green in it...it reminds me of pistachio and chocolate ice cream. I see a very plain V-neck sweater being made from this.

I also bought some Noro Shinano off Ebay. I had five balls of this in Colourway 10 that I bought for an absolute pittance at the end of last year just after Shinano was discontinued. Five balls isn`t enough to make anything more than a shawl or big scarf, so I looked for more. And looked, and looked, but did not find except over the big water. I`m not keen on paying transatlantic postage prices so I had nearly resigned myself to Ebaying the pointless Shinano when I discovered someone selling the exact number of balls I needed, and in the UK to boot. Fortune smiles on the patient!

I am going to make Bettna from the Noro Revisited book by Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton. BUT...big BUT...I must finish these socks first, and at least the front of the Silk Tweed Sweater.

I`ll leave you with some pictures of the allotment, just to show you I`m not totally wasting my time here. It`s still only April so things are only just starting to grow. I`m sowing and planting tons of stuff, but very little to show by way of results.



It`s actually quite a big allotment for one person to run solo...most allotments of this size on our site are run by couples or families. (Hubby is of the concrete and paraquat school of gardening.) All of this is mine...about 80 x 60 feet in all.



As I said, it still looks a bit barren, but have a look at these two pictures. First one was taken in January...



...and this one was taken two days ago.



What do you mean, you can`t see the difference? I have been slaving on that allotment. There is a HUGE difference!

(But yes, I admit, must to weed and mulch these paths. And go to the dump with the rubbish piled along the hedge. But you just wait a couple of months until stuff is really growing...you`ll see then.)

The morning after the night before....

Well, it went fine. It did. In the first half of the evening all the families turned up, lots of kids, lots of the people I know. The food was great. (Anyone want a couple of dirt cheap, inventive, very professional lady caterers?) I survived...well, I was too busy to do anything else. It quietened down a bit once the kids went and that`s when the serious drinking started. Not sure when Hubby rolled home....kids and I were in bed by midnight.

I think the person who most enjoyed themselves was Mairi! She`s very good at going to evening parties...though she`s four and a half and daytime naps are a long gone thing, she`s always willing to go for an afternoon sleep if there`s a party in store. So she was bright as a button and raring to go...she even made me take a second outfit for her so she could change from pretty party princess to disco diva half-way through the evening, lol.

And today is a lovely sunny day, and I`m off to the allotment for my committeee meeting and a planting session. April is a busy month for gardeners in this part of the world. I love it....busy busy busy, things are starting to grow and it`s a pleasure to be outdoors.

I wonder if preferring four hours gardening on a fine sunny day to four hours of party is a sign I`m getting very old? I prefer camping to hotels, gardens to parties, barbecues to dress up functions. At the moment one of my favourite low-key pleasures in life is an afternnoon spent knitting and gossiping with my good pal
Gourdongirl in the outside garden of our local industrial heritage museum, Prestongrange, while the kids run riot in the woods in their best LOTR outfits.

Older or maturity? Who knows? I`m off to plant the potatoes....

Stress bottleneck.

This Sunday is my Hubby`s 50th birthday. So on Saturday we`re having a party.

It`s at the rugby clubhouse and it`s going to be a pretty simple affair...food, disco/country dancing, bar open till twelve-thirty. Lots of families/solos invited, lots of kids coming, should be fun.

Or will it? I have no idea who`s coming or not. Hubby and I drew up a rough list of folk to ask. Mine was smaller and of them, I do know who`s coming. I have no idea of whether some of the folk Hubby has asked are coming or not. He can`t remember some of whom he`s asked and whether they said they were coming. We did have printed invites....but most folk didn`t get them, and certainly there`s been very little use made of the formal RSVP requested.

Not to worry, I thought, and made a rough guess at the catering and bar figure, added on ten percent and worked from that. Catering? Yeah, of course I subcontracted it, to the very highly thought of local ladies who do most of the rugby club catering! The rugby club sure as heck isn`t going to run out of beer, that`s for sure.

But of course I`m still worried, to the point where my underlying anxiety is costing me sleep. Too casual, that`s my thought. What if all these people think it`s only an invite for a quick pint at the club and don`t turn up? I have this vision of about twenty people trying to consume a giant buffet....and then at other times, I have this alternative thought of half of Musselburgh turning up and stripping the plates to crumbs in seconds. Of a few guests rattling around in the vast function room.....or the bar manageress asking half of the guests to leave because they`re contravening the fire regulations.

Stupid? Rationally, yes. But it hits me straight in one of my depression triggers in that I have no control over this thing now. I hate feeling responsible for all these people enjoying themself, y`know? Never mind that I know 80% of them really well, know their children, know their houses, have gone on holidays with some of them. These are friends. This makes it worse....

To add to the general feeing of awfulness, Hubby has now announced he wished we hadn`t bothered and me being stressed out about it is taking away "what little pleasure he was going to get from it". I should have told him no, that I would find it too difficult to have a party. Well, some weeks ago I told him just this. Somehow we are still having a party. Hmmmm.....does this say more about me than him, do you think?

It`s frightening to find out how close recurrent depression is, sometimes. You think you`re doing fine, then something happens and you realise that no, you`re not fine, it`s just that there weren`t any of your stress triggers happening at that point in time. You`re fine when things are fine, you fall apart at the first signs of stress, or so it seems. Yes, I`m a lot better than I was two years ago when I finally stopped struggling and went to the doc for the happy drugs, but I`m not half the woman I was back in the old days before Robbie got ill, I was seven years younger and a lot of other bad things hadn`t happened. I`m just exhausted....no mental reserves at all. And when something as (realistically) minorly stressful like the party comes along, my anxiety rating goes sky high because I just can`t deal with it. But I don`t want to go back on the anti-Ds. Not after the four month horror of coming off them, oh no.

It`s at times like this I`m very glad I don`t drink...or at least, don`t drink more than the odd social glass of wine at a meal. Chocolate though....can you OD on chocolate? Should I buy a chocolate fountain to take with me and sit next to it all night?

Oh well, I`m of the opinion that whatever happens, Sunday morning it will be all over. And I have an allotment committee meeting at 10am Sunday so I`ll have to leave the birthday boy alone with a no doubt monsterous hangover and the kids, hehe.

Oh, and on the knitting front I thought I`d better go and do something other than more chocolate to cheer myself up agsin, so went up to my LYS and pigged out on Colinette instead. I bought six skeins of Giotto in the Banwy colourway, plus a pattern book. Stashalong? Oops...oh well, the rules do say that you get one shopping day a month, the money I used was some of the proceeds of my destash on Ebay last moth....and lets face it, this was an emergency, no?

I`ll let you all know how the party goes. There may even be pictures.....

Ugly.

I just want to further explain a statement I made a couple of posts back when I was talking about Mairi`s hair. I`ve recieved a few emails on it, so might as well clarify what I meant so as to save further offence...

I kept on thinking how my mother had cut my long hair very short when I was four and 43 years later I still haven`t forgiven her for sending me through childhood ugly. I wasn`t going to do that to my girl for the sake of a little effort on my part.

My mum cut my hair short....and I mean short. No4 razor all over short. I had (and have) a big square skull, my hair is very fine and looking back on the photographs it wasn`t a short cut...it looked like I had ringworm. And little girls in the sixties didn`t have their hair cut like that. They had bobs or plaits. I wanted a bob or plaits. I didn`t want to be different but my mother didn`t listen. She just wanted easy care hair. My hair was (and is) fine and tangly and I know from looking after Mairi`s identical hair that it takes time and effort. And we have good conditioners and spray-in detanglers now.
I can see from the pictures of me at three that I had beautiful long ringlets. At four I looked hideous. Why did my mother do that to me?

Anyway, back to Mairi. If I`d cut that hairbrush out it would have meant cutting the hair off at scalp level. And cutting all the rest off at nearly the same length...just like I used to have. I hated my hair clipped , I knew she would hate it. So worth the effort.

I don`t think all short hair is ugly. There are lots of little girls at the nursery with lovely short hair that looks really pretty. If Mairi wanted a short cut like that I`d actually be quite pleased....easy care! But not a "ringworm" crop, nonono!Not for a little girl that wants to be Rapunzel, or a mermaid.

And as an aside, I know people lose their hair from medical treatments and such and feel really sensitive about it. My elder son lost all his hair when he was undergoing chemo. He actually quite suited it, once we got used to it, and his friends thought it was a pretty cool extreme haircut! But he hated the way it made him look different and how people stared, and he wore a hat all the time he was out in public.

Two stitches forwards, one stitch back...

I finished the front of the Silk Tweed Sweater, joined the shoulders with the recommended three needle castoff, picked up and knitted the neckband, cast that off, tacked the sides together and tried it on.

Hmmm....well, the short row shaping I added to the pattern works well for us big-busted girls, I agree. Trouble is it adds quite a lot of extra rows and...well, this leaves the notch neckline a bit high and dry. Nearly up at the top of the breastbone on me, as it happens. Not good. If there`s one thing that doesn`t work on busty girls it`s an apologetic neckline. We need depth, we need drama, we need cleavage...or at least, we need a non-apologetic neckline.

Ripppppp.........it.

So I unpicked all the finishing and ripped the front down to the armhole shaping and I will try again. I did hesitate...but it was just going to be such a non-event of a neckline and I`d never have worn it. And the decision had to be made now, because the sleeves start on stitches picked up round the armholes.

But I`m going to knit something else for the rest of the evening, like a nice soothing and undemanding sock. I`d actually done a few rows of the sock while sitting looking at the unsatisfactory Silk Tweed Sweater so I could mull over what to do. I did know if I just rolled it up and put it into my knitting basket like that there was a fair chance I`d never have taken it out again, so it had to be either frogged and the stitches made ready just to start knitting again, or that I`d have to pick up the first sleeve stitches and knit a few rows. I hate taking disaster areas out the basket a few days later and start by having to fix the disaster, don`t you?

Apart from the Silk Tweed Sweater, very little knitting has been done. April is a busy month for gardeners and that goes double if you have an allotment. The weather has warmed up amazingly over the last two weeks and things are starting to grow. (Weed things...but it shows the soil is warm.) So it is planting and sowing time, and I have been spending every possible daylight moment getting the allotment sown and all the other little jobs that can`t be done when it`s cold. Plus all the little jobs that were overlooked.

We have a new family a couple of allotments down the row from mine. The middle daughter is a friend of Mairi`s from nursery, so I know the mum a little. Every day she chats to me at the nursery gate, immaculate manicure, immaculate hair, beautiful clothes on a great figure. I`d hate her if it wasn`t for the fact that she`s a really, really nice person. Her Hubby (film-star good looks) and three gorgeous daughters are super nice too.
But when it comes to working an allotment they have not got one clue. They`ve had it since last autumn and have been up half a dozen times total. At the moment every allotment patch in the whole place is being worked at frenetic speed, except their`s. I talked to her today, told her she was missing the planting season. She said she didn`t like taking the kids up when it was cold and she didn`t like them getting muddy. She and Hubby would be getting started as soon as it was warmer.
I explained about seed sowing being seasonal, that you needed to sow a seed several weeks if not months before you attempted to harvest the plant, about getting things done at the right time. She was politely incredulous. Seasons? You can buy any veg in the supermarket all year round. Surely this means that they grow all year round too?

They won`t last long...I give them till June.....

Bad Hair Day....

Mairi loves her long hair. She`s four, has fine, fair, floaty hair to just above her waist at the back and wants to grow it "as long as a mermaid".

So good old mummy has been dutifully braiding and combing and oiling her hair and doing all the right things and her hair was looking great...till today.

This afternoon she came through with a hairbrush knotted solid into her hair. Not just any old brush, but a tough, cheapo radial brush that she uses for brushing My Little Pony`s tail. I`d told her never to put it in her hair and she never has in the year she`s owned it.... till today.

She`d started brushing the hair on her left temple, and, being four, when it started to tangle she tried to fix it. She wound the whole front side of her hair onto this brush, pulled it tight....then decided that whatever I said about the forbidden hairbrush, it couldn`t be worse, no? So she crept through and showed me.

I`ll tell you, I was just about in tears. You know these brushes and we`ve all wound our hair round a brush, haven`t we? I looked at this solid mass of tangle round the brush and all I could see was me cutting it off. Most of the entire side of her hair, right up to the scalp. Honestly. About a third of her hair. Nightmare.

So I picked at it a bit, told her I might have to get the scissors, watched the woebegone face as I told her that if I had to cut it then the rest of her precious hair would have to go too. I was serious...it was that bad. What a mess. Her father wouldn`t even have hesitated. I doubt most mothers would have either.

But, y`know I`m a spinner. And knitter, and I crochet and weave as well(well, sometimes!) I can take a grubby matted sheep fleece and turn it into yarn fine enough to knit shawls. I wasn`t going to admit defeat to a £2 hairbrush without a fight. I talked to my unhappy little girl and we agreed to give it a go.

So for the last three hours she has lain sideways in total silence on my lap while I picked at this ghastly knot with a crochet hook. I tried pulling the plastic spikes out the hairbrush (unfortunately it wasn`t that cheap), I tried unwinding it...haha...I eventually settled on snagging one hair at a time with the crochet hook and sliding it (when possible) out of the knot. Fortunately she has fine, slippy hair in good strong condition, so this was a workable plan.

But it still took three hours. My girl has never willingly sat still for three minutes of her life, but she stayed there while I pulled and tugged and the hairs popped and broke and slid and knotted. But we got there in the end. I got that $%^&* brush out, and Mairi carried it over to the dustbin and threw it in. We also had a full handful of broken and tweeked out hairs...argh! Literally hundreds.

Oh well, it`s thin on one side. We combed her out and inspected the damage and though to me it`s very visible she`s happy because she gets to keep her long tail. Better than the 1/4" buzz cut she nearly ended up with anyway. It`s thinner on that side but not ridiculous and it will thicken up again in a few months, unlike the rest that would have taken three years to regrow. I kept on thinking how my mother had cut my long hair very short when I was four and 43 years later I still haven`t forgiven her for sending me through childhood ugly. I wasn`t going to do that to my girl for the sake of a little effort on my part.

Now, a lot of people might call me mad for not just taking her straight to the hairdresser and getting her hair cut free from the brush and a neat pixie cut. But I know all of you will understand, won`t you?

Onwards and upwards.

Well, I`m recovering, but slowly. I`m at that delightful point where my sinuses and lungs are starting to clear out and I am spending my days coughing and blowing my nose. Yuch. Everything I eat tastes foul, even chocolate. And I still find myself totally unable to get through a day without a little nap or two. I feel fine, I start doing something....I have to have a little sit down. Most frustrating, especically as the kids are still on holiday. By the time I`ve done all the necessary stuff for them I have no energy for anything else. The house is hip deep in dust and dirty laundry and I haven`t hoovered or cleaned the bathroom for nearly two weeks. Yes, I`m not Ms Housework at the best of times, but it gets to the point when even I get depressed about the mess. And by the time I summon up the energy to do it, there will be even more to deal with.

Where was I? Aha, knitting....

Made some progress on the Silk Tweed Sweater in that I`m up to the short row bust shaping section. I`ve never tried this before but as Summer Tweed has zero memory, I don`t want to make the sweater big enough to accomodate 50% of my bust and get the rest of the ease from the stretch of the knit which is what I usually do. I`m a bit dubious just looking at it but once I`ve finished the front and grafted the shoulder seams I`ll tack it together and have a look then.

I`ve also started crocheting Mairi a pink mohair shawl as part of my Stashalong efforts. Crochet? well, I bought some gorgeous wooden crochet hooks at Wingham Wool Work on the SkipNorth trip...dirt cheap, lovely to touch...so I thought I would see how much crochet I could remember.



Turned out I could at least recall how to crochet a granny square and Mairi wanted a square shawl, so that`s what I`m making, a giant pink mohair granny square, lol. But it does eat stash yarn in a most satisfactory way.




I also made a Möbius Scarf from this month`s "Simply Knitting". The pattern...especially the Möbius cast on....totally intrigued me and it was made from Summer Tweed to boot. (Have I mentioned I loooove Summer Tweed?





I didn`t understand the cast on method at all so just blindly followed the instructions...and hey presto, it worked! The pattern stated two skeins, but I didn`t want to use the second skein for what was obviously just going to be a few rows, so I used a contrast scrap of Summer Tweed instead. I really like the final effect and intend to try another, but just in garter stitch stripes.
You just wear it draped round your neck like a kerchief or knitted jewelry, and it`s surprisingly warm. I`m not a great scarf fan because I hade fiddly things round my neck, but I do like and will wear this.

Cough, splutter, coughcough..

Yes, the lurgy is still with me. It`s lasted a lot longer with me than it did for Mairi. I keep spiking awsome temperatures of 42`C plus and the only thing that`s keeping these down is the regular intake of ibuprofen. I even had to send Duncan out with a written note to our local shop begging her to sell him more ibuprofen (he`s under 16 of course) because I`m too wobbly to trust myself on the stairs.

Fortunately my female friends are coming through with offers of assistance. (I may yet take you up on tomorrow, Gourdongirl.) How is it that women can take one look at you and deduce exactly what needs done (Laundry? Shopping? Take kids away for an hour?) while men say things like "I hope I don`t get it." After all it`s not just about getting enough rest when you`re ill, there are kids to be looked after and fed, the supply lines to be kept open and all the other chores. You don`t want to have to get up one morning and think "Yes, a bit better...." then spend the rest of the week knocking your pan in trying to catch up with the domestic shit. And if you have kids, there is no option of staying in bed and ignoring small kids for the day. This sort of thing is deamed neglect by the courts. Plus they won`t let you...they want totally unreasonable things like breakfast.

My other fortunate is that the kids are semi-trained in housework. Duncan can do things like basic laundry sorting, basic lunch making and very basic tidying. Poor lad...he`s supposed to be on his holidays, not pandering to the shivering croaking wreck on the sofa.

Still....any offers of food parcels or the loan of a cleaner would be gratefully recieved. Oh, and a functioning immune system would be good. And someone to do some knitting for me. I cast on the front of the Silk Tweed Sweater three times tonight. Counting K5 P1 across the rib was one stitch too complicated for my decaying brain.

I`ll try again tomorrow.

Stashalong update.

Remember
this ? Partially it was in preparation for joining the Stashalong, partially it was to clear some space for SkipNorth purchases and partially it was to raise some cash for both SkipNorth and Woolfest.

The space cleared was almost instantly filled with SkipNorth purchases, of course. However I`ve finally sold the last batch of this lot on Ebay....



I raised about £150 for the lot, which I was pleased about. I was surprised to get so much, actually, but there were a lot of odd Rowan balls in there I suppose and there`s quite a lot of layers of bags in that photo. So the money has gone into the Woolfest account. I`m on a yarn diet at the moment for Stashalong.

Yesterday we took the kids and a couple of their pals to the zoo for a play on the various climbing frames, a picnic and a brief look at their favourite animals. One good thing about having an annual pass for the zoo is that you don`t really care if they don`t want to go round and see everything, like you feel obliged to if it`s your one and only trip that year and the day pass cost mega-money. It`s about £30 for a day pass for four, £100 for an annual pass and we`ve already been four times this year. Duncan is very interested in animals and spends quite a lot of time watching animal documentaries on the TV, so he does like seeing the animals. Well worth the money.

I still have the lurgy, but with a nice dose of ongoing nausea to boot. it was a very bad idea me going for a long walk on a cold day round the zoo trying to run point on a bunch of kids, and by 3pm I was reduced to a pale grey quivering wreck on one of the benches. It`s not possible to disappoint four kids of a promised treat though, is it? We came home after a brief wrangle round the gift shop and I crawled into bed for four hours. Got up for a couple of hours later on when Hubby had got the kids to bed then back for more sleep. Still feel wrung out and grey, but Hubby is at work today so needs must get on with things. I`ll try to take it easy today, not least because Hubby is starting to cough in an ominous fashion.....

Lurgy.

I have caught Mairi`s lurgy...

Last week was not a good week. Mairi caught some sort of virus last weekend and spent most of last Sunday and the start of the week lying on the sofa coughing pathetically and demanding constant refills of Ribena. She did go into nursery on Monday because her little pal Emily was due to come for lunch and a playdate that afternoon....but Emily had to go home, as she had the lurgy too. There were fifteen out of the forty at nursery absent with the lurgy as well. Ain`t minor childhood illnesses wonderful?

Then on Monday one of the bands that hold the fuel tank in place on my Renault snapped. Oh well, Hubby is on a home working week so we can share his car until the Renault can get to the garage to be fixed.

On Tuesday the clutch cable of Hubby`s Citroen snapped.

Also on Tuesday we got the estimate for our share of the communal roof and building repairs. I can`t even bring myself to write it down, it`s so big.

Also on Tuesday the public sector workers in Scotland were on strike so the nursery was shut. Mairi was still coughing and whinging on the sofa, Hubby was working from home and I had no car.

Wednesday was a lovely fine day and I could have gone to the allotment....if I`d had a car. I could have cycled up, I suppose, but my bike is still covered in winter cobwebs.

Thursday the Renault went into the garage to get a new fuel tank band, the trim that Hubby ripped off it in France replaced and the new door. (Remember Hubby dinged the door a few weeks ago?)The new door is green. (The Renault is red.)Do I care? Nope...the car is on the road again....

Friday the Citroen goes in for repair. Life is looking up...apart from the roof bills and the fact that the two week Easter Break starts today.

Saturday. Bright sunny day, Hubby is taking kids to swimming etc etc. Finally I can go to the allotment...last chance before I am on nearly 24/7 childcare for next couple of weeks. And there is a ton of stuff to do on the allotment. How is it that you go through January, Feburary and March thinking you`re all set for the new season and then POW! It`s April and you`re already four weeks behind?

So I went up the allotment, picked up a fork to fluff up the soil in the potato bed a bit and started to feel a bit weird. I don`t faint, but I can do a good dizzy spell sometimes. Eventually I decided to do something a bit less taxing like clear out the shed. This really needed done because it smells of winter mice.

Did I tell you about the mice? Mice on allotments are a fact of life. I don`t mind them too much (I hate the rats we occasionally get) and so once or twice when I`ve found little nests of baby mice I`ve soft-heartedly left them to grow up and eat the peas and beans later on in the season. I knew I had mice in the shed over the winter because of the smell and the occasional dropping (allotment sheds are pretty grubby places) and....I left a big tub of water in there about a month ago by accident. Next time I went up there were two little drowned mice floating in it. I felt really bad!

So I cleared the shed and found three little mouse nests...no starved babies though, thank Gawd! I felt enough like a murderer already. The nests were beautiful. I often put scrap fleece in the compost bins (the stuff with dags and second cuts etc which makes great compost) and the mice had obviously found this and made beautiful soft little cosy nests in finest Ouessant and Blue Faced Leicester fibre.

I ended up with a carload of trash that needed taken to the dump, which was most satisfying. What was not satisfying was the fact that it was a lovely fine day, I had the afternoon free and a ton of allotment jobs to do....and I felt like shit. I gave up. I drove the rubbish to the dump and went home to cough on the sofa.

And today I feel even worse. I have had a lie-in but I still really need to lie on the sofa and do nothing except cough and sniff and whinge. What I`m actually going to do is go to Tesco and get the groceries while Hubby takes the kids to rugby. Then Duncan has two birthday parties to go to this afternoon and Mairi is going to the second one as well. Meals to cook, party outfits to organise, pressies to wrap, children to ferry around. Plus we have a zoo trip planned tomorrow as it`s the first day of the holidays.

Mothers everywhere will empathise. The sofa is not an option!



Edit. (Later the same day.)

I must be looking bad...Hubby has offered to take the kids to the evening party, yeah! Sofa here I come!

And thank you all for the babysitting offers......;-)