Heavens above, it's May

I had great plans to be much more organised and relaxed, but you can take this as confirmation that I have managed neither.  I really have no idea how people do manage it.  Some people seem to be machines.  Me?  Not so much.  Maybe I need to take a run at organising everything, and then just start drinking (to either relax after the fact because I managed to organise everything or, failing that, to forget that I haven't organised everything which will then lead to relaxing)?  Organised works ok if I make plenty of lists and stop long enough to plan out what I need to do and by when (no, it doesn't, I'm lying.  I keep hoping it will but generally I end up, week by week, just tranferring my lists onto the new week page in my diary and then adding to them, while I run around in circles trying to work out what I'm supposed to be doing and wondering why none of those things involves crossing something off my list), but I'm beginning to suspect that my mind and body are incapable of relaxing.  I'm horrible at managing the stuff I want to do, around the stuff I need to do.

Maybe it's small children.  Can I blame them?  I'm sure I can.  It feels like I should be able to.  A few days ago, I was sitting down enjoying a cup of coffee in a state of complete bliss (no, I wasn't, I'm lying again.  I think I might have been accessing my work email with one hand while trying to chip spaghetti remnants off the dining table with the other (there's a good reason our kitchen table top is a spectacularly strong laminate-on-wood), inhaling said coffee in bursts and waaay faster than is seemly.) when the not-ginger wandered inside carting one of those Cookie Time cookie buckets filled with dirt from out the back.  This dirt is brilliant.  I'll remind you that we live on the Coast, so it's actually more sand than dirt - it has the same dirty effect as dirt, but it's so fine that it spreads spectacularly.  So anyway, there she is wandering up the hallway and I look up from whatever it is that I am doing in time to register the bucket, the dirt, and that she has just tripped over her own feet, as the contents of the bucket goes sailing across the living room.  I have no idea if my children are especially talented and inventive when it comes to mess, but they do it very well and very often.   Thank heaven for black carpet and an excellent vacuum cleaner.  The yellow and white wool chevron rug ... slightly different story  (yes, I did buy a yellow and white wool rug, knowing full well it would be sharing a house with the husband and the children.  Live and learn.).  Organisation pales in the face of it all.

Still, in the midst of this, I have maintained a feeling of guilt over not progressing my Global Baker project and so here you go ... my latest attempt.  I have a feeling it could take me the better part of a decade at this rate to get through the book, but get through it I will. 

Chocolate custard gloves.  The chocolate custard bit is awesome.  The glove bit needs work.  I'm fairly sure it was too dense.  It came out more like a risen pastry, and Dean (via Twitter) was so kind as to confirm that they should have been more bready (well, he said they should be bready, which I felt meant that what I'd made should have been more bready.  He did also say they looked excellent though - win!).  Still, no hardship to give those a go again at a later stage.  There's not much I'm nailing first pop out of this book.  I just keep reminding myself when I'm in fits of despair, that it IS about the learning.  And one thing that apparently I'm completely crap at is dough.

I need to go and hunt down some pics of the little ginger and the not ginger.  They're big.  Getting bigger all the time.  I enrolled the little ginger in school the other day (I know, right?  One minute he's being mixed up in a lab ...), and he starts school visits in just a few months.  There was a bit of an awkward moment on the phone as I was giving details to the school - they asked me his date of birth and I had to get the husband to roll up his pants leg to confirm I had it right, which I didn't (if you don't know the husband or I and that sounds very odd - he has the kids' birth days tattooed up the backs of his legs.  It comes in handy.  Earlier this year I caught him turning in circles trying to read the dates to put in his diary).  Oi.  The lady on the other end of the phone, bless her, took it in stride with only a bit of a snigger.

Pics - this is a real favourite in the meantime.  They're always ending up in the sea in their clothes.  Every time we go to the beach they get told a hundred times that they're not to go in the water and generally, this is what happens after they've solemnly agreed.

And this came back with the kindy photos.  There were so many lovely shots to choose from, but this one ... so much love.

Heh.  My kid alright.  That's his I'm-not-allowed-to-call-you-an-idiot-so-I'll-give-you-this-look-instead face.

The not-ginger in a cage.  And her hair looks like that all the time.  It's not even remotely unusual.  If I try to put it up in a ponytail, she will tear it till it comes out (often with a fist full of hair as well).  So, I just brush it in the morning and what happens from there, happens.  The crazed look suits her well though.

Slightly less crazy looking to make up for the craziness of being in hospital for, pretty much, teething.  (Transient sinivitis (which may or may not be spelt right) as part of a chain-reaction to cutting a canine.  Not joking)