Maps, mud, Mrs. Cuz, mermaids and maths

The day started with maps, much printing of them and looking at them. Then it turned into not letting mummy trim the www.streetmap.com margins off to stick them together nicely for some unknown reason. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth about this - maybe some superstition that I'll accidentally cut our house in half? I felt like wailing too as I *really* wanted to stick lots of map squares together to make big maps. Still, the looking and talking bit was good.

A bit later we gardened in the front in a bitterly cold wind. We had 6 young plants to put in (2 geraniums, 1 campanula, 1 African Lily, 1 coral flower, 1 Witch Hazel) and some nasturtium and cornflower seeds. F said she wanted to help but then consistently didn't listen to me more than twice out of any seven times and words were had. She did manage a bit of digging but to be honest she just wasn't that interested. Maybe she's a townie through and through. Anyway, I finished off and she stomped off inside. When I got in I found she had stomped absolutely everywhere in the house in her seriously muddy boots, including on our bed. Oh joy, out came the hoover again (anyone reading this regularly may care to note that that makes 3 times this week!) and more words were had.

HH my cuz's wife came for a visit early afternoon, which was nice. F and I had mended our fences by then so a nicer atmosphere reigned. F decided to make a collection of orange objects on the arm of the sofa in HH's honour, having found a few orange lego bricks. HH and I managed to chat quite a bit in an intermittent way. We will try and get over to them to visit and see their chooks sometime in April. A freezing cold trip to the local shop (motivated on my part entirely by thoughts of the curry I would be buying) and brief stop at park. F wanted to ring her grandma and had tried to do so rather a lot earlier (hopefully not ringing Australia by mistake too many times) and her theory was that if we walked slowly it would make time go so that her grandma would be back at home to be able to be called when we got back. It was a nice theory but a cold day to be walking as slowly as you could for such a conceptual reason, and when we got back it didn't seem to have worked either. Ah well. HH and I each read F a chapter of a new mermaid book that she chose at the bookshop the other day, which turned out to be overly concerned with the swishing of golden clouds of hair, in my opinion. Nevertheless I had to promise chapters 3 and 4 for bedtime.

I was mean and chucked HH out at 5pm so that I could sort the kitchen out and get a wash sorted, but it had been a nice visit - HH and I chat on YIM now and then so although we hadn't seen her since October, we aren't long out of touch.

After HH left, F discovered a numbers workbook with star stickers and decided to sit and do 3 pages of it, awarding herself 3 stars for excellence at counting and writing numbers. Then she sensibly decided that she could award herself as many stars as she wanted and decorated her top with a dozen or so just for general excellence at being F. Well, she is good at that.

Now J and I both have 4 days off! And curry tonight! And a client has just paid me! Woo and definitely Hoo.