Gosh I am an unreliable narrator

I'm currently feeling like a failure. I'm hiding in my bedroom with music on so that I can't hear the children, and I'm trying to drink tea.

Today I got up, got dressed, fed everyone something, cleaned up three children, did the laundry and the dishwasher, tidied about half the front room, set up the Wii so it's usable again (we really do seem to use it for a fortnight a year, but that's ok), and half tidied my bedroom. I've given up on tidying now and have just tipped everything off my desk; if it took longer than 30 seconds to put away I dumped it on the bed. Moving the problem around. Yay.

However, I am going to salvage something. No idea what. Need to turn the music up - I can hear an argument.

It's Shuffle on the iPod. I've never done "shuffle" before. I've been reading about it for years.

I have a bag ready for the charity shop. I think I will add a couple of Astrid's toys - we have some duplicates, and especially where she has a naf one and a lovely one, I want to give the naf one away (oh, I am so mean). There's a size eight wool overcoat in there, though, so that's not mean.

I need a calendar. I think a picture-a-month one rather than a year wall planner, this time. Linnea loves a calendar. I need to sort toys and declutter using as little force as possible. I need to launder bedlinen. I need to sweep floors. I need to plan meals. I need to make a grocery list. I need to make time to read to my children. I need to make time to read to myself.

We almost built a gingerbread house but I couldn't bear the shrieks when they kept carelessly breaking bits, so I gave up. Next time I will build it and they can decorate it.

Astrid hasn't napped all day. This bodes ill.

I'd better finish my tea.

End of year 2011

It's been a hell of a year. I spent all of January and some of the next two months seriously suicidal, as in getting people to sit with me all the time and not keeping paracetamol in the house, but I also started to paint and sell my art, and that has been incredibly enriching for me. Also, I got suicidal and took lifesaving action, which is pretty awesome.

So there was painting and buying more art materials. It's a self-funding hobby, if my time isn't counted as a cost, and it takes up a fair bit of space, but that's ok. As a direct result of painting, we redecorated. I had long hated out kitchen, so we got a new one, in red. And we moved the kids to a bigger bedroom and redecorated the back bedroom for ourselves, and it's all done in a much less beige and respectable style than I would have otherwise; we have big red poppy stickers and an IKEA leaf canopy and all over the walls are paintings.

We went to Ireland three times, once for Linnea's birthday with her cousins (never again, she was very disappointed - she needs her friends for birthdays), once for the now-regular summer holiday with radegund which this year was a three-week Grand Epic Expedition involving three locations, ferries, trains, buses, and an emergency evacuation from a burning railway carriage (sort of). Then we went for my mother's 70th birthday celebrations in November. In fact, this year included a lot of fire - there was the fire on the train, the fire on the electric heater in my mother's house, and another fire in Radz's house.

We didn't get to London. We might in 2012.

The children are fab. Linnea is seven and a half and a bit, and reading, writing, summing up a storm. Emer is five and cooks and makes and arts and things. Astrid is 17 months and learning to TALK like a... talkie. A walkie talkie. She learned to walk, too. She's so great!

We basically have a handle on their behaviour and our expectations. They are endlessly creative and usually helpful and kind. They love each other very much. They seem to have loads of friends.

And no-one was seriously ill, unless being suicidal counts.

2011 was pretty good. 2012 will be better.