.......well, not really but theres a hint of change in the air and with the first few snowdrops and crocus gracing the muddy soil in my front garden I feel optimistic and upbeat for the first time in a while.
I have been spring cleaning inside the home and gardening outside the house - yesterday saw me putting in a beech hedge (ie row of twigs) to replace some of the greenery that our neighbours, mr and mrs blandly bland, removed in pursuit of thr perfect driveway. At some point I shall be tree planting too but at the moment any more gardening, or indeed anything more physical than a little light dusting is out of the question as I am as stiff as the metaphor of your choice. When you watch Alan Titchmarsh on the TV and he blithely talks about digging holes and trenches and excavating this and forking that you don't really appreciate how much physical effort is really involved. I dug and raked for 2 hours yesterday and now feel like I was stretched on a rack and then given a good kicking. My ribs are sore for gods sake! How is that possible?
I have now officially started my ECDL and much to my relief find myself reasonably comfortable with the standard of the work. I am probably the least adept member of the class however - the majority of the students being folk who work for the council, for whom the course probably represents in-service training. The other members of the class are a bit odd. There is a teenager who might well have invented the term "dis-affected" and seems to be catching up on sessions from the last course. An older woman who could make Bet Lynch look demure, a chap who smells strongly of beer and fags and seems to literally 'know it all' (bastard) and a bloke who also smelt strongly of fags and beers and bears a strong relationship to every "nutter on the bus" that I have ever met. He is however clearly very much at home with computers raced through all the exercises that I was slogging slowly through. So I am a candidate for class dunce, but at least I am there because I genuinely want to be - if the grim faces of the council employees are anything to go by, I suspect they would rather NOT be there at all, at all.
The kids and I are enjoying half term - the kids are staying in bed until noon and playing computer games all afternoon. My routine had changed not a jot. I used to look forward to our half terms as I am a great fan of the long lie in. Now we have our 4 legged chum I get a much reduced snooze time at the weekends and none at all during the half term. I feel robbed as my spouse was the prime mover of the dog thing and as yet his contribution during the week is ....... actually, nothing. No walks, no shit shifting, no feeding, no cleaning up muddy paw prints. He walks the dog at the weekend but even then I still end up clearing up the weekends poo. It's sooo like when we had babies - he was all new man enthusiasm and then bugger me if after a few weeks I found myself doing most of it solo and then being put under pressure to get out to work as well.
(Tell me, was it just me and my partner or do mothers always sort out and pay for childcare irregardless of joint responsibilty for making babies?)
