Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me...?

It's not been a good couple of weeks: me ill, DS1 ill, car problems etc. so I was really looking forward to my birthday on Friday. I'd taken DS1 to the garden centre after school on Wednesday, given him a tenner and promised to close my eyes so I couldn't see what he picked. He'd wrapped everything all by himself, and made cards - one from DS2 and one from him, So you can imagine, I was really looking forward that morning to opening everything and seeing the fruits of his efforts. I thought, I'll just switch my phone on.... and that's when I discovered that O2 had cut me off - on my BIRTHDAY!!!!

Gran, tantrums and more spiders

The spiders are multiplying, there's now one that lives on the wall above the tv and one that runs across the floor. I tried to frighten off the floor one last night by stamping my foot on the floor, but the idiotic thing just ran towards me and hid under the sofa I was sitting on. Not only are they annoying, they are clearly thick as well. Would it be too much to ask for some intelligent arachnid company? We could share a glass of wine and discuss social realism in the mini-beast world... I need to get out more.

For those of you following the saga of the post-dad-weekend yelling matches with DS1 - and at the time of writing that's probably none, but welcome any future readers who have decided to read the blog from the beginning, I commend your thoroughness - the 'being less hopeful' seems to be working. For me, that is, DS1 is still doing the yelling for a variety of proxy reasons - I'm just not getting angry in return because I'm just expecting it to happen.This is so far working well - who knew giving up hope could improve your life so dramatically? - but it is only Wednesday, so we're not out of the woods yet.

Here is a list of the things DS1 chooses to yell about: