Waiting room

Sleep last night was only disturbed by my repeatedly promising myself 'just one more chapter' of my book. Must find some more boring books for bedtime.

Home school was up and down today. Conor had a melt down over the word 'school' (fair enough - I mean what's with that spelling?) but came around in the end and has been re-convinced of the importance of reading and writing to his career choice (palaeontologist). Katherine pottered on in her own little dreamworld - getting hard things right and easy things wrong. Tried to convince her that she's doing well, but she hates making silly mistakes ("Bloody well concentrate then" was what I didn't say.)

Many frustrating conversations with delivery companies who think it's fine to leave my parcels in someone else's shed (one thinks it is perfectly reasonable to ask me to put a note in the 'other delivery instructions' box every time I order something saying "Don't leave in shed - I don't have a shed". I pointed out, with a tinge of sarcasm, that they might find it helpful if I also added "Don't leave in greenhouse of old lady three doors down from me; don't leave in entry lobby of church two streets away; don't leave on park bench at war memorial." I don't think she'd been there for the sarcastic customer training session: she told me that wouldn't be necessary.) Also an interesting conversation with Royal Mail who feel that sending me a book of stamps is perfectly adequate compensation for not redirecting my mail for two months. And no, they're not going to try and figure out who my mail was redirected to (we were getting someone else's during that period). Vodafone have managed to sneakily put me on a new contract even though I said very firmly that I did not want a contract and wanted to switch to pay as you go. That took another 45 minutes of phone calls before I finally found someone willing to do something about their mistake.

A frustrating day then, but that venting has helped. And we've been making sort of decisions about life. We're so tired of other folk (banks, estate agents, lawyers) getting in the way, that we're just going to ignore the whole bally lot of them and get on with things.

Just say no to waiting.

(And no, I'm not sure what I was aiming at with this.)