I’m either too busy or part of me has entered a state of mind I usually associate with middle age… how do I know? I currently say “Oh-deary-me!” a number of times a day. Every day…
Truth of it is that I really HAVE been rushed off my feet lately. I’ve represented both my better half and myself on most days in the course of the past 2 weeks to help my in-laws to get ready for their house move. The good news: they’ve moved. The bad: they’re both so exhausted from the upheaval that I think it’ll take them months to get properly settled…so I’ve kept going and kept helping after the move as well. Which I really can’t afford. In terms of time stolen from the rest of my life that is. Even my better half commented that, “although I really appreciate all my hard work you do for my parents, I wish you were as motivated  do that kind of work in our own place…” Bit of jealousy there, how funny! Still, the man’s got a point; we’ve had a list of things to do in and on the house as long as my arm for as long as I remember. And he very nearly DID run out of ironed shirts last week.

More importantly though and a bit closer to my heart, I “borrowed” a knitting machine from a friend of a friend MORE than a year ago, with the solid intention to try it out and, if it’s in good working order, buy it. The owner of the machine is an elderly lady. I’ve now had the machine for so long that even I am starting to give up on the mere idea of even finding the time to try it, let alone keep it to work with it. But, what’s more worrying, I now wonder whether I have kept it too long to even contemplate giving it back, but paying for a machine that may not even work seems daft. And what if she dies before I stop procrastinating about it…?
So just before I go mental, talking myself into a complete tailspin, I rejoice in the fact that, if this is the most important of my problems, I’m still a very lucky, spoilt brat. On that note, I count my blessings and distract myself with a happier thought…
My new toy for example; a second hand laptop that I scored on eBay. As I’m rushed off my feet, I still haven’t finished installing all necessary software on it (most notably, the software that drives this blog!), let alone transferred my most important files, folders and emails. Hence the dead silence here on the blog since my WWKip celebration – and, no surprise, I have not figured out how to upload my Kip-pic!

My chronic lack of hours in the day takes its toll though. I even got cranky with the head of the school, who was fretting about the sex-ed video for the year 5′s as he’d had some critical feedback from some of the parents and wanted my input as a Governor. “I’m from Holland, where the teenage pregnancy rates are one fifth (!) of what they are in the UK. I consider my 6 year olds ready for this year 5 material. I’m not the right person to ask. I can’t get my head around these British hang-ups!” Oh-deary-me, indeed. I’ll have to find out his shoe size and knit him a pair of socks as penance at some point.

Oh, talking about (finally!) knitting – I’m working on a design for a Throw (or an Afghan, as I’ve seen them called in the US) to put in the book. Because despite not having enough hours in the day, not spending enough time on the costumes of my little boys for their Class Assembly and wondering whether the dustbunnies in the corners of the room have started rivalling our daughter’s bunnies in size, I somehow manage to find just enough time every day to push on at least one of my book-knitting projects just a little bit. If my better half were to read this, that last sentence would probably be met with an end-of-tether remark on his part about how nice it would be if my motivation to work out would abe as big as my motivation to work on this book…

Coming back to my choice of daily priorities, I may have to try to bluff my better half into believing that the solid coloured sock yarns I’ve had on that knitting shelf in the living room are two tone self patterning yarns…Hmmm, little white lies…a form of creativity? Or desperation? Middle age? Oh-deary-me…