Relaxed on Saturday

Yesterday
Having dealt with death and the angst surrounding it (I told her that people tend to move towards believing whatever suits them best about death so she was perfectly entitled to find a belief that suited her and go with that - so she and I played around with a few ideas, she cheered up and decided that she would come back as a pony and she hoped she would get to choose what colour, preferably silver. We also decided that maybe Grandpa Alan could have come back as a cat and would be sitting in a warm spot somewhere having a snooze right that minute. I mentioned death as 'going to sleep forever' and death as 'the big mystery/adventure that we don't really know about but we can have ideas about', etc. And well done me, frankly, because I wasn't even awake at the time!).
It was to continue to be one of those days when one is always caught on the back foot as I was still in the shower, hoping that Nic would be on YIM when I came out of it, so that I could ask her not to come until midday, when she and Monster and Teeny arrived. F had to call to me and I had to disbelieve her at least twice before I came down and opened the door, still thinking it might just be a 'joke' or a Tesco delivery.
The living-room and kitchen were in fairly horrible states but Mrs MT bravely declared herself undaunted and so I returned to my shower and she made tea. F had used my half-shower time to pour magic sand over half a sofa seat, much to Teeny's interest and delight, which meant I had to hoover before I could even sit down properly and enjoy my tea.
Eventually some kind of equilibrium was reached and promptly disrupted by arrival of shopping. Mrs MT helped me unpack it and in time I even managed to get lunch going, but my head felt kind of fuzzy with sleep deficit so I entrusted the fine art of pesto-ing to her at the last minute.
The children: roboted, stickered, ponied, bounced, spread peanut butter on bread, walked around with the large 'ostrich egg' stone, XBoxed and played ominously quietly in F's room for a long long time after initially being right in our faces and squabbly. At some point F had managed to climb high enough to get my 'out of the way' nail varnish and put it in the craft stacker unit that she has decided is her 'dressing table', where she puts some of her pretty things and the very few items of make-up that she has, from front of comics. I know - forbidden fruit and all that - I just have such an aversion to little girls with make-up (and bigger ones LOL tbh), so I can only be me about it, really. I don't mind nail varnish because that comes in more interesting colours and can be more creative and it's just fun. Predictably, my aversion has resulted in F being increasingly drawn to The Pink Side. Never mind.
The adults: chatted and giggled a bit, sang a few sixties numbers (even though one of them has the cheek not even to have been born in the sixties) and tried a new form of parenting that involves being slightly more childish, annoying and unreasonable than one's annoyingly unreasonable children. It at least has the advantage of surprising them, which is always good. We talked about choosing your battles, when inconsistency is appropriate, how you approach the 'big' questions, parenting differences between partners and what to do about it all and stuff.
F and Teeny are definitely teaming up quite a bit right now and have quite a bit in common, both very able to choose their own paths in life on the whole.
Just before Nic left she whooshed her 'vibes of capitalism' in my direction and hey presto the phone rang with just the chunky kind of job I needed for next week. We will be away at Halloween camp the week after and I won't be working, so this was really needed to try and make up for the current skintness which will not be over till Xmas as it is. I will have to buy Xmas prezzies at last minute, or I guess J will put them on his credit card.
After they left, F painted her nails in several different colours - I have mainly silver, blue and purple nail varnishes. Very good practice for her difficult hand.
We had quesadillas for the first time in months (put home-grown chillies in ours) and watched 2 episodes of Dr Who. In the evening J and I watched QI and HIGNFY and I drank wine and it was nice.

Today
Getting up was hard this morning, despite a reasonably early night. Getting F ready in time to get out just after 9 was even harder. Not too bad though - I think we're doing well with our first ever regular Saturday morning commitment. On the way to drama, we saw a fairly tame robin, beautiful and posing against a holly bush in a cliched or perhaps postmodernly knowing and ironic way. At the hall, I sat and read in the entrance area, while she drama-ed, half-listening. She came running out to go to the loo a couple of times looking so thrilled, I'm very glad we found that drama group. And I quite like my hour and a half reading too.
However the day took a nosedive straight afterwards when we were shopping. Both tired, we got across each other and she had one of those superb tantrums in a shop, because of having to decide which one of two different sets of pyjamas to buy. Oh the humanity...
We managed to make friends again very quickly which was good and I bought her a diary in Smiths as had been promised/planned the day before. She has a number of notebooks/diaries that she has filled up with drawings and a bit of writing and she gets a lot from doing that. She hasn't had a special one that she has chosen before so it was nice to do that. I went a bit mad and bought an armful of mags and a book, a really nice pair of trousers for F (it's getting harder at her age to find trousers without buttons/studs etc.), Cheezly of course, shampoo and conditioner. Not very sensible in current skint state, but mostly justifiable.
While shopping the weather was changing and I realized that I was too hot and had brought the wrong rucksack (not so comfortable and too small) which all added to the fun. Also, due to tiredness we left Dozy Mog behind twice and had to trudge back.
Once we left town though, both our moods improved and we Autumnwatched our way home, finding conkers, berries, helicopter seeds and beautiful leaves. We tested the helicopter seeds, finding they could spin faster when dropped from greater height, so F tried them from standing on a bench. We talked about all these signs of autumn and why the tree wanted its seeds to fly so well, etc. It was very autumnal today, wind blowing conkers down like hail at one point and leaves drifting in every street we walked along.
Paused at the local shop to buy curry for us later (Jaipuri korma, Moong dall, Dudhi Chana, Sag aloo, Veg. samosas and rice) and a few sweets to eat in the park.
In the park, as usual, we met a few people we know, including Mandy with the twins and a boy who was at the party last week, I talked to his mum then and this time he was with his dad. I was on the phone when they arrived, but F went over and chatted and then when I went over the boy's dad said that F had already told them that 'I'm 5 and I'm home-educated'! Good lord!
We chatted and the children played - they had moved from London only 6 weeks or so ago.
We came home and showed J the 'nature collection' from my pocket, did some more flying of helicopter seeds and talked about them a bit.
All blogged out.
Off to watch some telly!