31st July - Maracas and American Footballs.

Hubbie and I were just attempting to play tennis with a pair of D's maracas and one of his soft squidgy toy balls (which happens to be american football shaped.) It wasn't the most easy of games and quite frankly, getting a rally going was hard work. Particularly as hubbie kept sending the ball sailing into my oesophagus. (was it deliberate? Should I be worried?)

Why, one may ask, were we playing this rather silly game? Well, I think the answer to that lies in our location at present. We have now returned from the safe, warm, inviting havens of the in-laws, to our detritis filled hovel of a house. And really, in all honesty, only two of the rooms are half way habitable. And one of those is D's room, which isn't really all that fun for two adults, though thankfully D seems to like it.

So we are holed up in the lounge, searching fairly vacuously for things to entertain ourselves with, and the maracas and the football was about the best we could come up with. It lasted all of about thirty seconds.

The house is looking somewhat eerie. The kitchen, now a fully fledged shell of a kitchen-diner, resembles a working garage rather than a swish cooking / socialising arena, but I suspect it'll all come right in the wash. The den is a mass of hugely inconveniently placed kitchen appliances, plates, bins, food products and badly labelled boxes, all covered in a horrid layer of thick, insipid dust. Miss Havisham's sinister, uncleaned chambers have nothing on this room. Even the spiders wouldn't dare enter the mess and chaos in there. (and yet this is the room I happily prepare our meals in. Eek!)
As for our bedroom, well, it more closely remembles a jumble sale than anything else at the moment. Heaps of dirty clothes piled up all over the furniture, footprints on the floor, rugs so laden with dirt that they've ceased to be black and are now a jaded charcoal grey.
BUT... we have a bath. And hot water. Ahhhh...the bliss of a bath this morning! Never mind that the neighbours probably copped a good eyeful of the naked Mrs B's flabby little bod as she clambered in eagerly. Never mind that the sodding pipe in the kitchen below leaked water all over the floor when I took the plug out. Never mind that I promptly got dirty again as soon as I got out, thanks to the airbourne dust. Nope. It was bliss at the time, and I shall enjoy the same again EVERY MORNING until we have a shower installed.
We're getting there.

My big sister, husband and our neice and nephew came visiting today. It was fab to see them and to play with them all in the park, it really made me desperately wish they lived closer. Boo. I suppose the only way we'd live close together again is if we moved back to the South East. Hmm. Let me consider that for a moment. Crapper scenery, more miserable, rude, ill mannered people, dour, grim little link towns that are basically just built for people to commute from into London and for no other purpose...yes. Thanks but no thanks.

I recommend Dorset very highly indeed...