I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadna been for those pesky kids

This morning, by 09:15, I had put on a load of laundry, put dinner in the slow cooker, hoovered the two downstairs rooms, washed, dressed and fed myself and Linnea, washed the breakfast dishes, taken my pills, and tidied up generally. So I went to change Linnea's nappy, at 09:15, so that we could leave the house by 09:30.

I've just finished calming her down from her tantrum. The nappy came off more or less ok, but getting the second one on took until 09:35, and then she threw a screaming heebie jeebie and wet it again. She's still in it because I can't face changing her again just yet. I've bribed her with a muffin, and at 10:00 it will be time for Teletubbies, and I'm hoping that if I change her in front of the TV it will be ok.

The reason I wanted to leave at 09:30 was to attend a La Leche League meeting at 10:00 and when I called at 09:45-ish I got no answer anyway, so perhaps it was cancelled.

What. A. Day. She had screaming horrible nightmares again last night; came into our bed screaming in her sleep, as far as I could tell, and refused cuddles, the breast, stroking, patting, and any other consolation for minutes.

Breakfast was fun, though - I had to feed her while she played peekaboo, sometimes covering her eyes and sometimes her mouth. She fed her teddies (a rabbit and an elephant, today) but not herself. No doubt she had her reasons.

It's been a hard day's night

Here I am, in Coffee Republic, using a PC so crippled that I can't tab between fields or view my gmail - I can log in ok, it authenticates, but nothing on the apage shows up. And because of cookies, I can't log out again to see if gmail's website says anything useful about it without being able to view the page.

Linnea and I had a grand time hanging up the laundry and then at 11:30 we left the house. By noon we were at the bus-stop 2 minutes' walk from the house. (This keyboard is so crippled I am not going to correct any further typos because backspacing is hard labour and trust me if anyone knows abou thard labour it's me yesno? yes good glad we sorted that out).

Linnea, drling heart that she is, refused to cross the road. So I made her, So she made me cross it back. So I did. Then she refused to walk. Or be carried. Or go in the buggy. Then she agreed to walk but refused to walk towarsd town. Then she agreed to walk towards the shop. Then she sat down outside the delightful Elle's Baguettes and refused to move until we went in. So we went in. Then she climbed a stool - they have very chic barstools about three times as high as the child, over a hard concrete floor with tiles on - and startnig saying "Num num, num num."

It was over 20 minutes since we'd left the house. I started to cry, with my back to the counter, so that no-one could see, and when they weren't busy, I bought her a banana and I fed it to her and stuffed her into the buggy to eat it. Adn they gave me busfare in my change because after all that there's no way I was walking all the way to town pushing.

I called Rob fmro the bus-stop to whinge and when I reached the point of telling him "But I'm not gonig to kill anyone," the woman beside me in the queue said "That's good," and moved away. The first bus was full. Luckily, because of the nature of queues, no-one noticed me burst into tears at this. I got on the second bus bnext to a man with elderly-man-BO so bad I was transported back to a time when Pat Phaidi was not yet dead and still hooking me around the ankles with his scary walking stick, which hurt but was hilarious. So I cried again.

Then I sat Linnea down in her buggy by a bench in the street and fed her lunch. And I ate some. The chicken and cucumber sandwiches were lovely, Rob, thank you. Then loads of people came and smoked at us so we left and I went into Pumpkin Patch and bought a pair of stripy socks for Linnea. That felt so good that I went to H&M and bought her some tights and mittens and myself a long-sleeved tshirt. Afford? What is this concept "afford"? I can't afford "afford" or I'd have to spend all my time doped up to *here* and drunk to boot.

Then I went to the loo and tried to feed Linnea and couldn't, and then I went to Waterstones cafe adn tried to ahve a cup of tea and feed Linne abut had to chase her around so much instead that I left my tea undrunk. Then I sat on a bench and cried some more. Then I went to Mothercare and took her in to change her nappy and have a feed in their rocking chairs and she -

We were already in there, and a woman came in and held the door open for her toddler, because the door is on a heavy slam-inducing spring and besides, it's a very evyr heavy door. The new toddler just stood in the doorway and Linnea went over to talk to her. The mother had her buggy across the passage between me and Linnea, but that was ok because she was easily close enough to grab either toddler if anything happened.

Excep tthat suddenly, after looking indulgently at the two toddlers chattnig in the doorway for about 30 seconds, she picked her own child up and the door slammed shut, Linnea still ni the doorway.

She missed it by I don't know how much - I screamed "Linnea" and she ran away from me, thank god, into the main part of the shop, and the door slammed behind her. Even her trailing arm managed not to get caught.

The other mother - whom I will now characterise as stupid-looking with a bad hairstyle and nasty clothes and a particularly ugly baby - laughed at me.

I dodged around her buggy and heaved open the door (it generally takes me both hands but I managed it with one today due to adrenalin(e)) and grabbed Linnea and sat on the floor of the shop and - you guessed it - cried some more.

Two members of staff were very concerned and nice about it.

And I changed Linnea's nappy and her trousers and I fed her in the rocking chair and she went to sleep and I put her in the buggy and we came here and that was 20 minutes ago because my internet time is about to run out.

And another thing...

As well as the other two entries today, there's no way Rob can get home less than 30 minutes late today, and Linnea has covered large areas of the house with felt-tip pens.

Please, can someone remind me why being entirely, incapacitatingly drunk is a bad idea now?

Rob is home.

I am off-duty. Linnea is covered in coloured pens, her eardrums are probably never going ot recover from Fred Astaire putting on his top hat, white tie and tails at dance-loudness, her dinner cane to a halt when I realised that I was begging her through sobs to sit down, she has mostly eaten bananas today, but she is still alive, and so am I.

Pop quiz: When you see a mother screaming for her child because she is terrified that the child is in danger, do you:

1. Get out of the way?
2. Try to rescue the child?
3. Wait until it's over and offer sympathy?
4. Laugh at her as she dashes past you to rescue the child?

Does your answer alter if it is partially your fault that the child is perceived to be in danger?

We went to the new corner shop and bought bananas. Linnea insisted on carrying them home, which was fine by me but got us some funny looks.

I bought her an Early Learning Centre portable tabletop easel. I'm going to bring it to the hospital, for a start, next time we have to go. It's much better than the easel we had already and fastens up into a case with space for paper, pens etc. And coloured chalk.

Days like today don't happen very often. Today I was so stressed that I walked past a ladybird without pointing it out to her.

However, today we also had breakfast together, with a couple of stuffed toys and a lot of giggles. We had a great game of hanging out the washing. We woke smiling. We had some fun playing in the Early Learning Centre. We had a lot of fun buying bananas. We danced to a Fred Astaire CD (Linnea is frustrated by her inability to kick in time to the music; balance is tricky). We played wrapping each other up in towels, and the teddy played too.

Linnea played a complicated game of rhythms on the way into town. She clenched her fists up by her jaw and shook them, then clapped. There was a pattern but I didn't dare stop the buggy and pay attention for fear of stopping the game by accident.

H&M have some great colours at the moment, very strong with bags of contrast. I have a long-sleeved orange tshirt for days when it's too cold to wear my short-sleeved one. I must remember to check out H&M 13yo fashions again, as they are huge and the shirts etc will easily fit me. The arms will be a bit long, but then, Linnea's shirts' arms are probably too long for me.

Rob came home, changed and dressed Linnea, and left again to buy me chocolate. I am drinking lemon, ginger and clove tea. I also ordered the week's groceries. Query: Does anyone, when purchasing eating apples, think "I need about so much by weight" rather than "I need about 6 apples this week"? Because I always eat my apples by the appley unit, not by weight. But I have to order them by weight, and I still have no idea how much an apple weighs. Nor a banana, for that matter.

Linnea ate cold potato and bombay mix for lunch (with the peanuts removed, because I still care that much). She could have had apple juice if she hadn't chewed the straw up before we pierced the packet with it.

She recognises the word "muffin".

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( That interests meme )