Manic Mumbles. Or Mumbles About Being Manic. Or Something.

Manic-ness, that's what it is. Complete and utter manic-ness. For those of you without those pesky things we parents call 'ankle-biters', I'm talking about the summer holidays. Those almost-seven weeks of stress-inducing, hair-pulling, voice-going-because-we're-constantly-yelling-at-our-kids, school-free days. I can never understand why Britain keeps the overly-long summer break going. I mean, it's not as if we have lovely weather between the end of July and the beginning of September. Sure, we have a few odd days of sunshine here and there. but mostly it's just so-much-rain-we-can't-leave-the-house-without-an-emergency-boat-and-a-flare-gun (I seem to be having a hyphen day today, don't mind me). Unless you have a car (which I don't) and/or lots of money (which I most definitely don't), then you're basically screwed.

The kids are either bored or almost killing each other. That's when they're not avoiding being strangled by their mum. *shifty* I swear, if I hear 'Mum, can we go somewhere today, pleeeeeeease?' one more time I will definitely be up on a murder charge.

Then there's the other kids. In other words, my kitties. Since joining the household around a month ago, little kitty Angel has ruined my curtains, bullied the other kitty (*lights candle for Belle*), given me countless heart attacks when she decides to disappear for a few hours, only to turn up in the sock drawer, behind the freezer, in the (closed) crisps box, or the tumble dryer, and is probably costing me more to feed that the two of my (real) kids put together.

And then we have The Job. If the lottery machine is going to die, it will be on my shift. If the milk delivery is going to turn up with ten leaking bottles of milk which subsequently leave a series of puddles all over the floor AND cover the rest of the delivered stock in milky messiness, it will be on my shift. If the newspapers are delivered late causing a bunch of Angry Old Men to shake their fists at you and bend your ear about What A Sad State of Affairs It Is When You Can't Even Get A Paper At 6:01am, then it. Will. Be. On. My. Shift.

*screams*

On a happier note,  I am now fitting into a size twelve in the trouser department, the tax people have finally sorted out my tax credits (so that I actually have some money now, imagine that!), and I've found two people who are willing to babysit for me (I almost fainted with shock at that one - honestly, two people who are willing to watch over my monst- er, kids? Wow!), and because of this I now have a social life. Who'd have thunk, eh?

Now, if I could just get to blogging a bit more often, and finish editing that novel that's knocking around on my hard drive, then I could maybe call 2010 The Year of Yayness. Or maybe The-Year-That-Started-Off-Lamely-Then-Gradually-Improved-Around-Midway-Then-Really-Got-Better-By-The-End. But's that's not nearly so catchy....