Well, still blinkin' unpacking the house, for a start. Half a dozen cardboard boxes still in the garage, making me wonder why we brought them over in the first place. It's all the memorabilia - you know, the photo albums that no one looks at. My mother has the right idea, she puts hers all on shelves and every time there's a family reunion, out they come and everyone has a right old laff. It would help if I had any shelves, but that's part of the problem, we have nowhere to put them
I'm also doing untold amounts of laundry for some reason. I'm down two kids and yet the washer is on every day. Probably because it's a very small washer and I have very big people, plus a school uniform for the first time. Perhaps foolishly, I didn't buy five sets of everything so we never get to the end of the week without something having to be washed. Quick question on that - does every British washing machine take almost two hours per cycle? Seriously, I have one mini, 20 minute cycle and then everything else takes at least an hour, and that's when I go for the "saver" option. I have a few cycles that are over two hours! I mean who has clothes that need to be washed for two hours?
But - me and the Ball & Chain did manage to have our first ever kid-free holiday since 1992. Unbelievable. While most of my friends and a few relatives (I'm looking at you Trish, otherwise known as Mum's Gone To....) are empty-nesters and therefore swanning around the globe, we're still tied to the old school schedule. We were supposed to go on a mini-break last year but I opted for the delights of back surgery instead. As you do. This year, Man-Child Mark 2 had a half term trip to Portugal (sparking cries from the older two that they "only went to Indiana"), so I thought "Why not?" After much dithering over the huge array of possibilities (Seville, Lisbon, Prague, Vienna, Rome), we plumped for Krakow and off we went.
