This is an emergency last-minute diary writing because I had forgotten all about it until this very minute. Mark is due to be home any time now, we promised ourselves an early night, and I had forgotten all about you.
It is not going to be very early whatever we do because it is half past eleven already.
I have been occupied in the annual task of Christmas card production. This is always challenging because of trying to make sure that things come out of the printer in the right order and not upside down. I had several epic failures before I finally hit on a functional method.
Also, no matter how hard I try, no matter what I do, I always end up with ink all over my fingers, and this year was no exception. It does not matter if I don’t touch any part of the printer at all except the On button, by the end of it I am always inky.
I am inky now. It looks marvellous mingled in with the boot-dye of yesterday.
It is a good job we are not going to be trying to look sophisticated for a while longer. With any luck it will have worn off before we set off for the Midland next week.
I have not been making Christmas cards all day. We have been shopping. It was not very exciting shopping, just the Booths and then Asda sort. It becomes more exciting when Mark is with me because there is an awful lot more chocolate and brandy in the trolley when we get to the checkout.
I am trying not to eat either. It is going to be an exciting Christmas.
Fortunately in a few days it will be time for making the Christmas chocolates. This always puts me off chocolate so much that it is some time before I am interested again. The whole process is so very sticky and sweet that by the time I have finished I do not wish to eat any of them. This is probably the best thing about it, saving me a dress-size every year.
All activities in the kitchen have been a bit curtailed at the moment by the presence of the poopies. They have just begun to be mobile, and Mark has built a large, plastic-lined Poopy Corral between the kitchen and the living room. This means that the greatest care has to be taken in traversing between the two rooms, because there are all sorts of things therein upon which it would be unpleasant to tread, not least the occasional poopy.
Our next door neighbour has helpfully supplied us with a huge stack of newspapers, and we have spread them all over it to absorb the worst of the leakages. They do leak an awful lot.
They try very hard, although not always successfully, to keep their leaks away from their bed, and we are becoming accustomed to watching determined but inept poopies wobbling their way across the corral to the far corners. The bravest of them is already contemplating escape, and keeps poking his head over the fence and waggling a tentative paw. By the time we come back from the Midland they will be all over the place.
We have arranged some Poopy Supervision in our absence. Two very kind ladies from the village are going to pop round and release the dogs into the wild several times a day, and feed them all and make encouraging noises. They came up to see the poopies today, and spent a contented half an hour playing with them. They are very nice indeed, probably rather too nice, as our boneheaded dogs are very good at spotting a Soft Touch, and are likely to take the opportunity afforded by our absence to do exactly what they please.
They are very well behaved indeed, as long as they know that terrible retribution will follow if they are not.
I do not think that these ladies have a terrifying bone in their bodies.
The dogs are going to be complete idiots by the time we get back.
They will have to have a thick ear for Christmas.
