Catching up.

Ahhhhhh. Lovely. Two children at nursery, one sitting on the sofa with a big pad of drawing paper and large supply of freshly sharpened pencils, a cup of tea within easy reach, a fully charged laptop and novel-writing equipment at the ready. Perfect. I've missed this - just sitting in peace and quiet (I say peace and quiet, I'm tuning out the sound of 'Dogtanian and the Muskehounds' on the TV - but it's nice to be busy working alongside Thomas all the same). It seems like I haven't blogged, or worked on my book for such a long time - it's been a whole week since I wrote anything of length. I do like to do different things from time to time, but it's good to get back into my routine of mumming and writing.

This weekend was great - Go Ape was very good. It was a shame that the difficult section of the course had been taken out - those were the bits I had been looking forward to - I was going to challenge

myself to take the hardest routes. But it was still lots of fun, and we have many, many photos and videos. The video clip I love the best is the one of me on the Tarzan Swing, and the scream that comes out of my mouth completely involuntarily is very funny! It's so loud! I had no idea that I could scream like that.

The party in the evening was nice too - not going to dwell on that too much though, as I drank two full bottles of wine and can't remember everything. I did say when I gave up drinking that I would drink at the Beer Festival, and on my birthday. No shame - everyone's had nights when they've made a prat of themselves. It's in the past now, and I'm moving on! :) One very positive thing to come from such a terrible hangover is that I'm definitely sure that giving up drinking is the right thing to do - I don't want to drink anymore, it's just stupid.

I was completely ruined on my birthday, on Monday - I was not expecting the most amazing present that Kev got me. My very own electric guitar?? Oh yes, my very own. It's just beautiful, and sounds so nice. I'm really not very good at all yet, but it does take rather a long time to become a maestro! I can play about ten chords, and my changes are getting a little faster now. But I still can't change between two chords without looking - oh, yes, I can change between an Aminor and an E without looking, but that's probably the easiest. I asked Noomski what sort of things he could play at the end of his first year, and he showed me some basic chord changes. I was pretty encouraged by that, as it didn't sound too fast or too complicated. But I'm enjoying playing the guitar a lot - it's much easier to pick up than the piano. It takes years to be able to sound impressive on the piano, but the guitar can sound impressive very quickly. Or maybe I'm easily impressed! Well, whatever. I love it. But I have no aspirations to fame and fortune with the guitar, ha ha - no, don't even want to be in a little band. I just play it for me. It's wonderful to have my own now.

Well, that was our weekend. Well, actually, we packed in quite a bit more as well - a trip to Barton Grange garden centre to see some birds of prey (that was actually very disappointing, as the bird handlers were very disorganised and seemed to be annoyed that there were so many people there to see their birds!). And yesterday we took the boys out to the park for a well-deserved Run Around. We took bikes, a frizbee, the stomp rocket and a football. We climbed trees (Noomski and I had been missing the heights, had to get up a tree and feel the wind in our hair again!), rolled around on the grass getting muddy, and breathed the fresh air in very deeply. It was very refreshing. I should try to remember to get out in the fresh air every day if the kiddies are going crazy over these holidays - we stay in the house too much. It's always the same at this time of year - we stay in a bit in the winter, and get a bit fat and lazy, and forget that there's air and exercise to be had.

The sun's out, it's warming up, and I'm feeling very alive today. Happy Wednesday everyone!