5 things (with agriculture)

1. Sunshine is A Mother’s Boon, especially a mother who is new in town and kinda needs to network. Kids go out to play, mothers get talking. I’m no great shakes at the playground chat-up but it must be done – and is easier when I hear ENGLISH VOICES glory hallelujah. (Armin’s comment: “Oh nooo… you’ll never learn German.” Prat.)

2. Hanging around with kids playing, you see stuff. Stuff like, quite literally, hay making while sun shining. It was awesome! There was one big tractor sucking up rows of cut grass and pooping out big hay bricks…

…and another picking up those bricks and wrapping them up in plastic, very much like those baggage wrap things at the airport.

(We live in The Country. Have I mentioned? But, like, the country with very easy access to The City, and manylots shops in the neighbourhood. It’s pretty much perfect. Functionally this is a suburb of Zurich, but a farming suburb. Cool.)

3. Also for filing in the Good Day drawer: I got some exercise this morning, second time this week, and maybe only the third or fourth time since Dude appeared on the scene. I feel so incredibly pleased with myself every time I manage to fit exercise in – for the obvious virtuous reasons, plus the immediate benefits of strengthening my back, working out kinks, etc, plus the great psychological benefit of feeling that I’ve managed to take about half an hour to look after myself. Which is a rare treat.

4. Speaking of time for Myself, I had a lovely bath tonight, complete with oils and amazing salt scrub and candle and book.* WHAT IS THIS WANTON HEDONISM, HOW VERY DARE I. (And here I am blogging instead of going to bed, even as my eyes are struggling to fall shut. Damn stupid really.)

5. Elfling fell out of bed again while I was in the bath. She keeps doing this. She likes to sleep right on the edge of the bed, and every so often – kadonk. (Never happened in London. Keeps happening here. Possibly something to do with the bed being open on the other side to where she’s used to?) But she just sleeps right through it. We hear a thump, and a bit of a moan, and pick her up, and she has no recollection of it in the morning.

6. It is a measure of how very stupidly tired I am that I am making stupid typos. Like “here” for “hear” above, and now, “typose”. Good night, all.

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* Lauren Beukes’ The Shining Girls. Social media is a powerful thing, folks. I haven’t read her previous novels, but they sound awesome (South African scifi!), and I follow her on Twitter. That makes it almost compulsory (in my mind) for me to buy her new book as soon as it comes out. I feel like I owe it to her, even though serial killer books are seriously Not My Thing… and of course there’s a time travel angle which makes it a lot more my thing. Anyway. Social media done well = powerful marketing. Oh, and the book is good, of course. (Not meaning to damn with faint praise – I’m still early on, and still not sure how I feel about horror.)