Making it through: 5 things 20.1.19

• Survived M’s birthday party on Saturday, marking the official end of the festive & birthday season (PHEW AND YAY). We held it at one of those indoor soft play centres that bill themselves as a “Kinderparadies” but leave unspoken the fact that they’re Elternhölle. I’d vowed never to have a party there – just picking C up from other parties was quite enough to convince me – but with Armin’s hand still out of commission, he wasn’t up to his usual Partymeister performance and I definitely wasn’t. So we packed the headache pills and headphones and headed off. Ticked that one off – never again, but hooray, he did enjoy it.
• As it turned out, I managed without using either the phones or the pills, but C very happily borrowed my headphones to do some studying amid the chaos. Actual studying. For a test, yes, but that’s almost incidental; it’s only on Tuesday and not significant in any way. Studying is simply her new hobby. Some weird conjunction of influences: BuJo-inspired lust for organisation (and of course basically the only thing in her life that needs planning is studying), plus a suddenly powerful determination to get into Gymi and get to university to study plants. I expect this phase will last about five minutes but I am quite a fan of it while it lasts. And if we’re lucky, she’ll build some good study skills to draw on later.
• I did get that design submission in on time (more or less), but it wasn’t accepted. Totally fine with that but it leaves me once again without immediate design plans. Again, that’s totally fine; good even; but it’s funny how weird it feels. There is a huge amount I could and should be doing, it just requires me to get organised, and I am not very much in the right headspace for that. But that’s good maybe? Time to sort out some other stuff and then make plans? Hm. At any rate I do have a lot of basic knitting obligations (not designs) and it’s good to have time to just plough through those.
• I’ve been remarkably slow to work on the long list of things I do need to Sort Out – starting with finishing up in my craft studio, which is about 85% organised, but that last 15% is a problem. This is kind of my thing, I suspect. Get almost there and then have a wibble. Not great. I might need to work on focusing on Just One Thing at a time. But how dull.
• Thoughts in the back of my mind: it’s funny how buying a house at last has made me feel more aware of our limits. I mean: we have this house. Not one of those bordering on the nature reserve, or up on the rise. There was always a little fantasy that we could somehow get a bargain fixer-upper… but now we are in this house. And I don’t think I’ll ever want to move into a bigger place, frankly; even if we could upgrade at some point, I wouldn’t want to take that on. I’d be more likely to opt for a flat with a view. It’s just odd feeling like that fantasy is now closed off. I am very sure that I am not a gardener, and don’t want a house that’s bigger than I can clean myself, and really our house here is more than great. But, damn, somehow there is a little pang in thinking that there’s no big house on the hill for us. Brains are weird.

4-5 of #52recipes: root veg gratin, which was sadly not a hit with the kids, though I enjoyed it. Not mad about the breadcrumb crust though. And for the party, Nigella’s old-fashioned chocolate cake (but with cream cheese icing). Absolute winner here, so easy and perfect in every way.