Spoilt

Thanks to a handy reminder on blip, the advent calendars were in place and filled only a few hours late. Well, filled up to tomorrow anyway - with eager chocolate hunting rodents* in the house I don't like to fill them too far in advance.

I didn't have an advent calendar when I was a kid - and I don't mean that in a 'woe is me' kind of way, it just wasn't one of the Christmas traditions in my family. I quite enjoy filling them with little treats, though my kids are on such a lazy kick at the moment that I might start adding in notes with chores on them too.

Today saw a very frustrating shopping trip with all the staff at M Bricolage doing their very best to make me come through on my several vows to never shop there again. However, reality dictates that I must spend a lot of time in DIY stores, and this is the only one within 30 mins of the house that ever has stock of anything. And yet again no-one apart from me remembered how to drive properly.

Some decisions made on the bathroom floor (yes I know, the excitement levels around here sometimes mean I need a little sit down to recover) and then it was time to act tough with the nuns. Of course they were totally lovely and, by chance, I discovered that the nun I've been told I should speak to about the English woman who used to live in this house is still alive (and, in fact, 86 today). So I will have to try and meet her.

The meeting was fine, I don't seem to have spoken total nonsense, and I think I politically said the right things. The whole thing was a little bit scuppered when I discovered a document that everyone has been telling me for a year doesn't exist, actually does. And then 30 minutes before the meeting I was given a six page lease (in French) to review and approve. I firmly declined that delightful opportunity and will review it at the speed at which I can look up all the big words (and a lot of the medium-sized ones) in the dictionary. Which reminds me, I need a better dictionary as the one I had for O' level French may not be up to the job.

And TallGirl told me that the Christmas Fair I have to bake a million things for is next week, not this week. Good job I hadn't baked a million things already.


*Just to clarify, I do mean actual rodents rather than the kids.