I wrote this last week but am slack and forgot to post it.

So I find myself with nothing to do at midnight on a Monday night...oh how nice to have the freedom to be up at midnight, knowing I don’t have to get up at ALL tomorrow. If I wanted to, I could spend the entire day in bed. Or at least in my pyjamas. Brilliant.

My week has been mildly interesting. The kids were on holidays, which SUCKS. I firmly believe that school hours should be extended from 6am to 6pm and that holidays should be outlawed. I had forgotten what half-term was like, this last week felt so much harder. I kept telling myself that it was only four days, then I would be on holidays, but that didn’t really help. Not when the week included the difficult experience of haircuts.

I swear, I have never seen anything like the haircut spectacle. I don’t know about you, but I like having my hair cut. I don’t necessarily like having to make small talk with someone I barely know (although my Melbourne hair dresser is fantastic...we have the same birthday and she’s amazing...as a general rule, however, I prefer hairdressers that either do all the talking and I don’t have to offer any conversational fodder, or they just don’t talk at all) but the act of having my hair cut, I do quite like. Abbie was fine with it. She was chilled out about it. But this was one of the things where Jake’s Aspergers really showed through. He hated it. He can’t stand people cutting his hair. He was so fidgety and distressed, and it required downright bribery to keep him in the chair. I had to sit there and distract him while the hairdresser battled on. He kept pulling out the hairclips she was using, and she was quite powerless to stop him. He doesn’t respond to “please don’t do that”. Everything needs to be put into context, and he needs something else to occupy him in order to stop him from doing whatever he is initially doing. I really feel for Laura, I could see how this was one of those things where most people would just assume he was a terribly behaved kid. She doesn’t really advertise his problems, so most people just seem to judge him at face value, and assume there is no discipline there. Except, having lived here for two months, I definitely know that’s not the issue.

Following the haircut was the equally harrowing experience of shoe shopping. Again, let’s not get into how much I actually love shoe shopping. If I had the money, I would have a shoe fetish. Approximately 800 pairs, kind of thing. Nowhere to wear them, but I would just have them. Speaking of which, I saw this fantastic shoe shop on Oxford St a few weeks ago, with the most breath-taking collection of Chuck Taylors...on top of these fantastically cool heels and wedges and shoes with buttons. I had a little moment upon entering the store, though the mood quickly dissipated when I checked my bank account against prices....um, right, anyway, back to what I was saying. Shoe shopping was probably worse than the haircut. Abbie had started her evil little act of constantly provoking Jake, as she is wont to do whenever he is a bit worked up and she can see herself getting the sympathy vote. (She is so manipulative, especially for a four year old.) So I was trying to distract her, which is no mean feat, while Laura dealt with Jake...there were some tears and tantrums, until I finally convinced Abbie to play with me at the other end of the store. Hide and seek is the game of the moment. All it really requires is for you to hide somewhere semi-obvious, then yell out “Abbie, where am I!?” and you’re off. She thinks it’s fantastic. For me, it’s heading the way of I Spy, Mummies and Daddies, and the cow game. (Oh, god, the cow game...that involves her wrapping a muslin around her waist, and making horse noises while I’m supposed to be the farmer/cowgirl/other cow/horse)

So anyway, that was my hardcore Tuesday morning. It turned into a full-day even when Amber came over, and they wanted to make biscuits. In the end, they were nightmarish with the flour and I sent them both to Abbie’s room because they were untenable in the kitchen. They then turned Abbie’s room into a disaster zone, then the playroom into a disaster zone, then there was a Play-Doh episode, and before I knew it, I had two storeys of mess and nowhere to start. Thankfully Jake went down to Louis’ to play, and I didn’t have to think about him. I then babysat that night, and....I just realised that somehow I’ve got my days mixed up and I actually have no idea what happened on Tuesday afternoon, because Amber actually came over on Thursday afternoon. None of you care, I do realise this, but I’m quite clearly losing my mind and suffering from early onset of Alzheimer’s.

I did however survive the week and now find myself with my ten days off. That aren’t really complete days off because there is still work to do. I guess that’s fair enough because I’m still being paid, but I would have loved to have waved them off at the door, run a bath, then spent five days in front of my jigsaw. Now it’s just a matter of finishing the ironing, hosing down the trikes, clearing a few cupboards and stuff like that. Maybe I can rope Ambo into some of this…

I had a spat of homesickness last week, but am pretty much over it...I really did feel like I was not cut out for my job and was really not far from deciding to chuck it in and find something else - or maybe just go to the States. Lovely chats with Annaleis and Sam helped out a lot...oh, how I miss the both of you. Not that I would be with either of you even if I came home...Annaleis is working in Canberra and Sam has been constantly touring with his job, and I would be back in Melbourne. But still, that's better than London.