Exhausted.

Well one of the first things that needs to be organised by Clever Bird, when everyone moves to the other house, is some internet access! Sorry for vanishing again bloggees, but that is why! The little dongle works (vaguely) in one room. Plus, Baggy has been busy, busy, busy! As has Calum. So Creative Clara hasn't had much of a look in. Yesterday lots was achieved. The front door has now had four coats of paint and Calum got all creative with the house name sign. A friend came over to help Calum move some furniture (Baggy just can't seem to lift heavy things since her Lawrence-the-durmoid-cyst surgery). And the house is slowly beginning to look like a home.

Calum has been scraping and smoothing and under-coating.

The builder has been whipping off and re-laying tiles on new felt and insulating stuff.

Baggy feels as though she's packed and unpacked a few hundred crates already, but slowly but surely, it's coming together. Mind you, Freda Fretter is worried how much everything is costing! Now the heating at the other house has decided to pack up, so this week the whole system has to be "flushed". Ah well, Baggy is determined to carry on with her business plan and earn some money from this house.

At lunchtime on Saturday some lovely friends who live in a nearby village treated Baggy and Calum to lunch at their local pub, which was very sweet of them. The only slight challenge for Baggy was that it's the pub that she regularly visited with her Dad and Step-Mother and as they pulled into the car park, Hormonal Hannah got really upset. The memory of the last few times that Baggy had been there had her missing her Dad terribly. But Calum told her to remember the good stuff and Hannah calmed down a bit. Baggy did decide that she needed a drink though - three glasses of wine later, she was sizzled enough to order sticky toffee pudding with salted caramel sauce for pudding. So much for staying totally on her Slimming World plan this week. "Only a pound" to lose, is beginning to feel like mission impossible! Mind you, the amount of work that's been done this weekend, maybe she'll have burnt off the extra calories. Freda Fretter can but hope.

Home this morning to "this" house once again, Hinge and Bracket were more than delighted to see Furry Mama after two days of being "deserted". The Domestic Goddess instantly started re-packing crates so that Calum doesn't go over there empty-handed as it were, when he meets the chappy who will be "flushing" the central heating. It's a nuisance, but Baggy can't go as she has to take Hormonal Hannah to her final counselling session on the same day. While packing, The Goddess found Creative Clara's clarinet, flute and saxophone. She used to be very good on the clarinet, good on the saxophone and she was just teaching herself to play the flute, when her real Mama was told she had pancreatic cancer. Her Mama died three weeks later, and Baggy has never been able to bring herself to let Clara play any of the instruments since - until today that is! Over eleven years since last picking up an instrument, Clara had a little tootle on the clarinet this afternoon. Heaven knows what the neighbours thought, but when they move to the other (detached) house, she intends to start playing all three once more! Neither Calum or Minty Mutt has ever heard her play either, poor Minty Mutt looked most confused. Freda Fretter didn't think that Calum was particularly impressed either, that is until he tried to get a note out of it himself, then he said, "It's not as easy as it looks is it?" Hannah decided to take that as a compliment...........