{Cheese and Beans}

It’s now 10:30, Sunday morning. I’ve been up for about an hour – I arrived downstairs to find the children had made their own breakfast without complaint. They hadn’t cleared up after themselves, but I’m not about to start picking at straws. Little victories.

Both myself and Wendy are ill. I have been ill for most of the last week, but didn’t want to burden anybody with it – I hate the bellyaching that most people indulge in on Facebook. I took my temperature yesterday – nearly 100. The weird thing is I don’t actually feel that bad when my nose is unblocked. In a fit of desperation the other evening I squirted some nasal spray up my nose – I didn’t realise you weren’t supposed to squirt it that hard. It went straight down the back of my throat, and felt like somebody set a fire in my nose, and poured toxic waste into my mouth. Not good.

Enough of the complaining. I am getting better. Slowly. It’s nice to have some impetus to write today.

I’m listening to “February Song” by Josh Groban. While I realise the music snobs of the world will start elbowing each other and sniggering, I think I’ll tell them to go suck it. I don’t mind Josh Groban; he’s good wallpaper music. Pleasant, but ultimately forgettable. If I listen to anything too good, I get nothing done because I just sit and rock out to it.

While trying to think of what to write next, my nose appears to have gone on an extended snot production run again. It’s not funny any more.

I’ll try and have something worth reading soon. Honest.

With the children on half term, and the house seemingly running on autopilot at the moment, something quite unexpected happened this morning – I found myself with a couple of minutes to myself.

I was up, washed, dressed, bag packed for work, coffee in hand, and sat in our study. I could hear the kids waging war upstairs, and the catflap clanking back and forth periodically.

After sitting for some time, sipping my drink and staring at the wall, it occurred to me that this was a good thing to do. Doing “nothing at all” isn’t something I find easy, and it dawned on me while sat there that I should do it more often – or at least make time to do the “normal” things more often.

Watch a movie, listen to some music, play a board game… apart from the latter, I can’t remember the last time I just sat down to watch a movie from start to finish without being distracted by something else – or sat and really listened to a piece of music.

Our eldest daughter has learned to play chess, and will invariably agree to a game if the option is presented. I gave her a game at bedtime the other night, and was seriously impressed – realising halfway through the game that I wasn’t doing the normal parent thing – trying to guide the game towards a draw – I was having to fight.

It’s easy to forget in this era of television, DVDs and video games that board games are more rewarding. You get to make judgements based on a real person you can see sat across the board from you. You see the result of your winning (and their losing).

Anyway – this morning, while sat staring into space with my cup of coffee, all seemed to be alright with the world. I was happy.

While wandering around the house this morning making breakfast, I happened upon three little girls watching Sunday morning cartoons on the television, and playing various Nintendo handheld games. The bit of my brain that switches on when obvious photographs appear in front of me shouted “go and fetch the camera!”, so I did.

Interesting observation – the combination of Mario, Zelda, and cartoons rendered the girls completely unaware of my presence.

Sunday mornings rule…

The eldest blanks all other stimulus in exactly the same way I do – sometimes you have to nudge her to break her focus…

You can see the cogs turning…

Movie stars pay a lot of money for flyaway hair like this…

There are of course more on Flickr.

I'm working from home today. On reflection this morning I probably could have walked the 3 miles across the fields to work, but knowing that further heavy snow was forecast throughout the entire day, and that I have a cold already, I didn't fancy trudging home through it. I can work at home pretty much unimpeded, which makes the decision much easier than it might have been.