April Fool

I didn't realise it was April Fool's Day today, until I'd attempted to set off for swimming and my car fooled me into staying home by making some scary noises at me, leading me to reverse back onto the drive way and call the AA, who arrived in less than 5 minutes (seriously, wtf?!) and spirited the car off to a garage to have some TLC applied to its coil spring. Apparently potholes+cars don't mix. I recall making some sweary-type noises recently when the car fell into a particularly large pothole, which all roads seem to be riddled with at the moment, following the snowy snow days over the winter. I can't recall where that particular pothole was though, or I'd sue the council.

Anyway, when I noticed the date I thought maybe the car was playing a trick on me, but the £250 bill from the garage seems to add validity to its complaint.

My favourite April Fool of the day is the Playmobil Apple Store. Go and check out the a-ma-zing attention to detail. In particular, the ipod dock where Playmobil Mr Jobs can give a nice presentation as though it were a proper screeny-thing.

I didn't have Playmobil when I was little (my Mum tells me it hadn't been invented. I don't think that's strictly true, I think it more likely that my obsessions for Flower Fairies and My Little Pony probably stopped anything else getting a look-in), so I'm quite enjoying having a second childhood discovering its joys with J-cub.

At the last NCT Nearly New Sale, J-cub was having an AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH-I-don't-wanna-be-here-any-more moment from his vantage point on my back, just as we passed the book stall. I told Jamie to grab a book and give it to him. 20 totally-absorbed minutes later, I finally got to see what had enthralled him for so long - a Playmobil Play Feet book. It cost 20p, it was totally awesome, and we had a good week of fun playing with it. Then J-cub ripped the cover off it, and tore some of the pages out, and I haven't seen it since.

In googling it to try and find a photo for this blog-post, I discover that actually they're fairly rare, and therefore fairly valuable. Oh.

Still, toys are for playing with, and board books are for loving and ripping and fostering a keen sense of reading being the most totally awesome activity on earth. In our house, books are for reading, not for keeping pristine on shelves (Jamie wouldn't agree with me on this point. He would much prefer I used bookmarks, and left his books alone. Whatever.). All of J-cub's books are chewed, and tattered, and torn, and sticky, with broken spines, and creased pages, and cheerios stuck to their fronts, backs and insides. And he loves to read, for hours on end. He reads to his bunny, and to the cats, and to me, and he loves to wrap himself in a blanket and lie on the sofa with a pile of books in happy solitude. He's so much like me in this respect.

I remember being at primary school, sitting outside in the little courtyard thing where we had logs to sit on (which the dinner ladies would tell us not to sit on when it was cold, or we'd get piles) with my whole class, reading our books. A while later, I suddenly came to and realised that it was totally silent, and when I looked up I was alone - my class had been called back in and I was so totally absorbed in my book that I hadn't heard.

So I don't really mind that J-cub destroyed a hundred quid's worth of book, not really ... it's not like I could have brought myself to sell it anyway. Although I think I'll take the time tomorrow to find all the pages and repair it nicely, so it can sit on a shelf for a few days, before I give in to his begging and give it back.

In the meantime, I've been stalking ebay and have started amassing a collection of Playmobil bits and bobs for J-cub.

He especially likes the mummy with a baby in a sling ("Mummy back!"), the mummy with hair just-like-mine ("Mmmmmmummy!"), who carries a bag ("Bag!"), and the guy with a cape and a Fez. Why not.

Playmobil totally rocks. All donations welcome.

17. Sell car

SOMEBODY stood on the laptop. Somebody pretty small, whose weight shouldn't really have cracked the screen, but did, and rendered it useless until Acer can tell us whether or not it can be replaced. This is just a couple of months after SOMEBODY knocked the laptop off the sofa and bend the power adaptor pluggy-bit, so that it couldn't charge any more. Thankfully, it's still in warranty, so it shouldn't cost too much to fix. And extra-thankfully, the laptop which the new laptop replaced, which stopped working just less than a year ago, was dragged out and dusted off and appears to work perfectly well. Yay!

But the argh-factor of having yet another something which is broken and needs fixing sent my head into a downward-spiral and the all-consuming guilt over having an unused car sitting on my drive for 18 months came to a head. Instead of my usual reaction of having a breakdown, I listed the damn thing on ebay with a start price of £50 and no reserve. Less than 24 hours later, a very nice man appeared, dragged it off the driveway and round the village a few times until the wheels unlocked, winched it onto a flatbed truck, handed me a wodge of cash and was gone. Just as easy as that, and I am having NO "Why the hell didn't I do this 18 months ago?" thoughts, because I just don't care any more.

As stupid as it sounds, the car sitting there has been the one thing which has stopped me from finally feeling like everything's okay. Being on the anti-depressants has helped me find my way out of my PND, given me a crutch to sort my head out and CBT myself into a positive-thinking machine. At the back of my mind has always been that little niggly thought of the money-pit that was the car, sitting there and doing nothing. I don't know why I find sorting out things like this so hard, but it has filled me with such anguish that I've refused to look at it for all this time. I hated myself for being useless every time it popped into my head. But that uselessness stopped me from doing anything proactive, like actually listing it for sale.

I'd love to say I won't make the same mistake again, but the uncomfortable fact is that the exact same thing happened with my very first car (and I'm only on my 3rd now, giving me a 100% idiot hit rate). I think the best thing to do is never to replace my current car, then I really can't go wrong.

Today, I feel like a weight has been lifted off my forehead (I don't know why people say they carry weights on their shoulders, mine are always focused on my forehead), and, dare I say it, there is nothing worrying me. It feels lovely. And I've had my AD dose halved, and me and J-cub went to the loveliest park after school today to play. Check out our view.

Car update

It passed the MOT! I'm so surprised and happy, I had it in my head that it was going to cost a fortune and cause much more anguish and guilt about not having sold it sooner.

Got there at 9.20am for the 9.30am appointment, and they said it would be about 45 minutes. Went for a walk as J-cub was a bit antsy, I walked really fast and hard to try and drive out the cold (managed to get blisters on my fingers, which shows how infrequently I push the buggy for any distance) and now have achey legs. When I got back, it had failed, but just on emissions which didn't surprise me as it's been sitting on the drive for 8 months. They put something in the something and drove it around a bit, while I walked for another 45 minutes. Got back, and it passed.

Hurrah! They do advise new front tyres and brake discs or something, which is going to be quite expensive. My sister has said she thinks she'd like to have the car when she gets back from her holiday, so I'm going to wait and see what she wants to do. If she doesn't, then I'll get the tyres and brakes done, advertise it, sell it, and it'll be done. At last. And my nice new car can sit on the drive rather than on the road.

Then everyone will be happy.

14. Fix broken kitchen cabinet door

I realised this morning that there were several list items I was putting off due to not having the materials. I needed to take OldCar out for a spin to exercise its new battery and stomp on the brakes a bit to get rid of the rust in preparation for its MOT tomorrow (then I will have NOTHING stopping me from selling it - yay!). I set off for our local B&Q (our closest 'village' has an odd line in shops - rather than go for domestically useful things like food shop, we have a small industrial estate with garage door salesrooms, taxi offices, car dealerships and B&Q) and bought a silicone sealant scrapey-remover, silicone sealant, houseplant compost and hinges for cabinet doors (I had to buy a pack of 2 - chuh).

We spent the day with Jamie's parents and grandad, who were visiting on their way from Gravesend (where Grandad lives) to Anglesey (where the inlaws live). J-cub was a bit overwhelmed with all the attention, and our nerves were a bit on edge after a 3am screaming fit which came out of nowhere with no apparent cause. We've now pinpointed it to teething, in the absence of any other possible explanation, and I'm going to buy an amber teething necklace, despite Jamie's reservations. I figure it can't hurt, and I know lots of lovely intelligent people who swear by them, so I'm putting my cynicism aside for the sake of J-cub's pain levels. I actually think that it will work, but the evidence-based scientist in me has difficulty believing in things which have no evidence-base.

Teething tangents aside, I discovered that I couldn't simply take the missing screw from the new hinge and fix the old hinge, as they didn't fit. So I whipped the old hinge off, put the shiny new one on, and voila, the door opens and shuts without listing to one side. It even has a handy little cover-plate to prevent any future screw-losing incidents (shame I can't get one of them for me).

Day 30: Mission complete.

6. Post Christmas cards and presents

Posts might be a bit thin on the ground for the next few days - I've got my sister here for the weekend then my parents for the next few days. I will be doing list items, and I will endeavour to at least post the number and title, then I'll update when I have chance.

Cards and presents posted!

AA came out to fix car, car now fixed and the very nice man told me what it was worth and not to let it go cheap.

Went back to Borders sale and bought more baby books, now up to 70% off.

Did Christmas food shop except veg.

Lovely to have my sister here ;)

Day 18: Mission complete.

24. Wrap Christmas presents

Despite having got off to a bit of rocky start re: buying Christmas presents (got overexcited buying baby presents and forgot I had a husband, family and friends to buy/make for too), it all suddenly came together when the last pile of presents was delivered this morning.

And the lovely postlady, evidently hearing the screams (teething) emanating from the house, nicely left the parcels outside the front door rather than making me answer the door at that point or leaving me a card to collect them from the sorting office later.

Usually, I spend Christmas Eve morning anxiously hopping from foot to foot in front of the lounge window, waiting for her to turn up with all the presents I've bought online but have yet to receive. I do then have the pleasure of wrapping them during the day on Christmas Eve, watching Love Actually, which is quite a nice Christmassy spirit thing to do.

But it's nice to have them all done out of the way, so I can give my anxiety a break and relax in the knowledge that my nearest and dearest will be opening their presents on Christmas Day. Evidently my anxiety needed something else to eat away at, as I've been torn up with guilt all day about not having sold the car. I'll see if I can do something about that tomorrow though...

I spent the morning fighting rolls of wrapping paper out of J-cub's drool-covered fists and removing sellotape and scissors from his reach, and finally got a lovely stack of presents under the tree.

By tea-time, J-cub had almost unwrapped most of them several times. Did I mention that he's suddenly started crawling? The speed at which he can move is quite astonishing, and I haven't quite adjusted my baby-monitoring skills to be able to keep up with him at all times. I don't know whether the presents will last an entire week under the tree, but they look very pretty for now.

Day 17 - Mission complete.

Double fail

I had two potentially largeish list items lined up to do today, and managed to fail at both by lunchtime.

#7 - Hire someone to jobshare with me. I've been hitting up the Internet hard, advertising the job, sorting through CVs, emailing lists of questions to applicants and whittling down a shortlist. The three shortlisted applicants were supposed to be interviewed this afternoon, however one cried off due to jetlag having just returned from a year in New Zealand (fair enough), and one emailed at 9.30pm last night to say she's accepted a position elsewhere. It's not really a good use of time to interview one person at once, as there is a lot of explanation of theory and therapy to do, so it's easier to do as many people together as possible. So I've postponed the one remaining applicant (and our first male interviewee - it being a caring type of job means our applicants are mostly female) until next week, so we can do JetlagGirl and FirstEverBoy together.

#17 - Sell car. This car is the bane of my life. Last summer, during a heatwave, the aircon conked out. I was (only slightly) pregnant at the time, and we had to drive to Derbyshire to DJ at the fantastic Indietracks festival. The festival was blissful, with fantastic bands, a lovely atmosphere (at a steam railway! What more could you want), and we met some fantastic people who have become good friends. Driving up and back, on the motorway, pregnant, with no aircon, was horrendous. We had to stop at every service station to sit in the shade and cool down.

Then (well, after a few months had passed), the winter hit, and the heating broke. Approximate cost to fix = £450. I was heavily pregnant by then, and learnt that after driving for 40 minutes, the heating would come on, although by then I had usually turned into an icicle.

After J-cub was born, my Dad wanted to change his car, and was offered a low part-exchange price for his current car. He knew we wanted a new car, so offered it to me for the low PE price, as he'd rather I benefited from it, rather than the dealership. So we had a lovely shiny new car, and I planned to sell the old one on adtrader or ebay or something. But baby things rather got in the way, and I found it was hard to do something like go and clean all the junk out of an old car when you've got a baby stuck to your breast for 20 hours a day. It just sat there, and rusted, and did nothing, and I was eaten up with guilt and anxiety every time I looked at it (which obviously didn't make me do anything about it).

So this morning, with lovely father-in-law here to help, I thought I'd try and get it ready for selling. I knew the battery was flat, as I tried to start it a week or so ago. It's facing the wrong way on the drive, with the bonnet away from the street so I can't attach jump leads to the new car without turning it around. We tried this morning to push it down the drive, and it won't move. We pumped up all the tyres, had 3 of us rocking and pushing and shouting at it, and it's stuck fast. I'm guessing something's happened to the brakes, or the wheels have rusted tight or something (I'm not really good at cars).

Anyway, it's not budging, the battery is as flat as anything, and I don't know what to do. What I really want, is for someone to turn up and give me some cash for it and take it away.

I've paid insurance and tax on it all this time, because I'm an idiot. It's reasons like this, that this list is a good idea for me, I just wish I could have started by selling it 8 months ago. Or at least started the engine every once in a while, and driven it around the block.

Silly Beth.

26. Change J-cub's carseat

Received nice congratulations and a link from the Day Two post on hundreddays.net, big thanks to them. I've also persuaded three other people to join up and get going, one of whom is drawing a picture every day.

The mention on the hundreddays blog made me realise that I haven't made it clear that I'm not going to be doing the items in order. For some of the items (like #7), that would prove impossible, as I have yet to interview anyone so would find it difficult to offer someone a job next Monday.

So today's item was the relatively easy move from a rear-facing car seat to one which faces forward. At just under 9 months, and on the 98th centile for weight and height, J-cub is more than ready. I've been researching a lot recently about which carseat to have. Recent research has shown that it is far safer to keep babies and young children rear-facing until they reach 4 years old. Rear-facing carseats up to this age/weight limit are not readily available in this country though, although a few specialist companies do stock them. They are more expensive than forward-facing ones, and need more room in order to accommodate the child's legs.

We got a new car shortly after J-cub was born, and it became evident that the back seat is much less deep than your average back seat, as his (old) car seat would barely fit. Having taken various measurements and compared them against manufacturers' and specialists' specifications, we realised that there was no chance we were going to get a larger rear-facing seat in there.

So we're sucking it up and going forward-facing as we don't really have any other choice. If anyone reading this is interested in finding out more, there is plenty of information at http://www.rearfacing.co.uk/.

We spent an hour this afternoon in Halfords, we chose the seat, a nice man fitted it, then took it out and got one in a box rather than one that had been on the shop floor, fitted that one, then took it out so I could fit it. J-cub gave it his seal of approval by falling asleep about 5 seconds after we left. It was too dark to get a good photo, so here's a blurry one for now and I'll update it when it's light.

Day 2 - mission complete.