The End of the Rain

The dogs scratched at 5am this morning, wanting out, which is not that unusual at the moment but is still annoying. My normal tactic is to lie there and pretend it isn't happening, eventually my patience runs out. Nicole's patience runs out sooner.

On the bright side it gave her a chance to engage the booster on the hot water, which is solar heated and so not that hot after the last couple of cool overcast days.

I slumbered, vaguely aware of showers happening and breakfast TV, the next I knew Squeaky was squawking to be let up.

She hasn't been eating so well at breakfast recently which we put down to having it too soon after getting up, so we footled about for a while, I can't remember doing what... I may have been in bed at the time. Eloise probably handed me my glasses, shouted at me, pulled my hair, or all three. I could convincingly construct a memory to that effect anyway.

So we got up... watched some telly... played with the random animal cubes... put some croissants on, ladled out some yoghourt... and the croissants went down a treat while we watched Little Princess, Little Robots etc. I switched over the Channel 7 for Breakfast TV but Eloise didn't find that enjoyable so we watched Peppa Pig and Charlie&Lola instead.

After a while I started to attain what might obliquely be referred to as consciousness and observed in a dispassionate way that it seemed no longer to be raining, though the cool and overcast continued.

Then off we went to the forest for what I hoped would be a trek and a half, but Eloise began flagging after climbing up and down too many hills so we opted for the shorter version after all.

After a kip and lunch we tootled off to the library and were joined there by Nicole. We borrowed many books. Which is good, as we were short on fresh reading material.

We played at the playground for a while until Eloise slipped out of the swing whilst in full effect, which was a bit frightening at the time but she doesn't seem to be damaged other than a little bump on the head. Oooops!!

She was well enough to non-verbally chat up a little boy at the playground anyway and play on the slides.

Later, Nicole did experience a tantrumette (which sounds like some Buddhist ritual doesn't it?), which she tells me she failed to take seriously though it didn't look like that from where I was lying.

Other than that it's washing, washing, washing, cooking, washing, hanging, drying, cooking.