This week has been almost entirely filled with me working, or so it feels. It's fantastic to have a month with more work - this is more like the heady days of 18 mths ago or so! Poor F has been very good about it most of the time - she understands the long-term pay-off but she still obviously is young enough to react to the short-term effects. So she's been a bit volatile now and then - as often happens it was the day on which I did no work, Friday, that produced the most trickiness. Which I completely understand.
So, Tuesday to Thursday vanished in mostly work with the odd moment of proper parenting. Though Tuesday didn't actually affect F, now I think about it, because she was away on an activity day at the Mohair Centre with friend E, after sleeping over at E's on Monday night. She came home very happy and had had a lovely time feeding lambs and kids.
Wednesday and Thursday - more work for me, with F doing various watching, playing, chatting - at least I can chat with her while I work, which does help both of us.
Friday I took the day off and walked F up to drama in the middle of the day. She and E had a good hour doing a hare and tortoise themed workshop in the field near the drama teacher's house. C and I were able to sit on a bench and chat while they did it, which is worth the money alone!
F was tricky before and after though, tearful and wobbly and a bit screechy. Am hoping she wasn't like that during the session but I was too far away to tell! Suspect not.
We had planned to go into town and sit in the coffee shop for a bit but she then had got herself into such a state, I thought she was wearing herself out, so we decided to go home via local shop for ice-cream instead.
Bumped into my friend K there, waiting for shop to open after lunch, and we were able to swap our mobile numbers after several failed attempts! Was lovely to see that her daughter R is still much the same - a character.
Bought F a Solero and headed to the park where we had some nice quiet chatting on the bench and then she had some time playing. Back home we watched some Tracy Beaker together, then I did a lot of recycling washing and other chores - including cleaning some windows (er, for the first time since we moved in) - which led Freya to comment on the sudden invisibility of the glass - "why it's just like air!" - yes she's not seen many clean windows in her life.
So things were all nice and chilled and F and I were reconnecting happily, and heading into evening I poured myself a glass of red wine.
Almost immediately F noticed our long-haired cat with a mouse in the hallway. She didn't block the stairs so the cat headed straight up to her room with it, and we had to deal with whether it still had the mouse or not as we shooed it around, then saw that it didn't and had to find the poor sodding thing. All of which was intensely stressful and F was being a bit crap at understanding what needed to be done and we got stressed with each other.
And then we found it and it was that awful half-dead mouse scenario, where it's borderline but probably going to die anyway, because it looks like its spinal cord has been broken. Just horrible. In the end, F made a bed of leaves and grass for it outside, we got both cats in and put it there to die in its natural habitat, with some bread and water by it, so it at least had a chance of dying peacefully where it had lived. Bloody cats.
And during the intensely stressful cat-chasing and mouse-finding (in mass of toys under F's bed), J was texting and phoning because he had gone to pub after work, so was going to get a curry to bring home. Which was lovely but the phones going added to the general feeling of Not Relaxing With a Glass of Red Wine as Anticipated.
Eventually some kind of peace was restored, comforted F about mouse and had a cuddle. J came home with very nice curry from local place that has just started doing delivery too. So all good, but a bit overshadowed by horrible mouse awareness.
Watched a Smallville, which featured euthanasia, so more discussion ensued. We have also had lots of chat recently about the Christian view of God and forgiveness, hell, etc.
Then got F to bed very late indeed, she was so overtired, I thought she would fall asleep almost instantly but she suddenly got all fidgety and heard her still doing stuff up past midnight.
And then there was another mouse, definitely not the same one, but this one was dead so less awfulness to have to deal with, but horrible anyway. There's been at least one a day here all week. Spring has sprung and all that.
Slept like a log and had a dream about a lovely visit to my dad and his wife. Went to put my arms round F and suddenly realized she was a toddler. Postman woke me up from the dream with a knock and left me all jangly and a bit teary.
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