Planning My Escape

After the longest school holiday season we have ever known I am ready for peace and quiet.  Anyone with kids knows that "a holiday with kids" is essentially "same old same old, just in a different location".  Unless you are rich enough to go to places with a kids clubs. or lucky enough to have relatives to go along with you, there really is no rest at all.  Maybe we feel this so much because we have an only child, or maybe because we had him "late in life", likely both of those reasons plus a huge spoonful of our shared introvertion that values silence for a few hours every day. 

I recall when I first realised that I needed to live with and marry this guy - it was when we could sit in silence for ages and neither of us felt uncomfortable or the need to fill the air with words.  Bring a baby into that world, on your 40th birthday, and its noise noise noise from there on in.  I love the little bugger to bits, well both of them really, large and small, but I do need some peace - so I am off to an art retreat in New Hampshire for 5 days, stopping over in Boston for a night on my return "because I can".  Not too sure what to expect at the retreat but its 5 days when I don't have to have debates about brushing teeth; not eating meals in front of the TV, restricting the IPad.  "Oh mum, please let me watch videos on the Ipad, I'll only watch inappropriate stuff, I promise".

Being a planner you'd imagine I had everything organised, but not so much this time.  I booked the retreat before I knew how I would pay for it; I fly out in 2 days and I still have no firm idea how to get from Logan Airpot to a lake side in New Hampshire.  The only preparations I have done is to spend 1 hour in the local thrift store buying 9 T-shirts that I will transform into a wrap; a cardigan and - get this - leg warmers! "Fame!"  In the joining instructions it talks about taking your own sewing machine if you want to.  I'm guessing many folks aren't flying in.  I plan to get all of my stuff in one holdall, but I'll check it in rather than spend 20 minutes at security explaining the presence of knitting needles and scissors.  I think they are less stringent now but better safe than sorry.

In wider news, my husband's work contract was extended another 6 months; the kittens Mogg and Dave are 7 months old now, enormous and all set for the snip in a months time.  The vet talked me through the process of spaying and neutering and I did have to remind him that they are both Female, even Dave.  I guess he'd have spotted that soon enough.  The allotment is at full harvest.  We have 32 pumpkins, a tonne of beans and Sunflowers that reach the sky.  Small person went back to school this week.  He loves it!  Thank goodness.  After a miserable first year, getting into trouble in the pursuit of "fitting in" and being sat in the corridor most days, hopefully he'll enjoy this year.  Fingers and toes are crossed.  (although the downside of him having a group of friends is that our house is full of screaming children every day - downside is for the introverts who like some silence sometimes.  Small person loves the chaos.)

I painted a fabulous picture for the local art show, only to get distracted by my paid work, and forget to enter it before the deadline.  I am thinking about joining the board of the local community farm, as they have some challenges ahead around funding and securing their future and I think I can help.  Small person and I went to family yoga earlier - it was a free demo.  Small person enjoyed some of it and lay on the floor sulking for other parts, especially after he stretched too far and "split his pants".  We won't be signing up for the programme.