A post that is far too long and doesn't even contain a photo

I'm going to be very honest with you. I don't really know what I'm writing. Because usually, when I sit down to write a blog post it has been going round in my head for a day or two before I sit down and write it. Many blog posts have done this in the last few weeks. For example:

• A post about how Autumn took me completely by surprise, coming as it did the day after a gorgeous summery day where I took pictures of the Littlest Latte collecting stones on a sunny beach, and how I was forced to abandon the sewing of my Hawthorn dress in Liberty cotton and get around to finishing the star quilt, which was actually already in use on our bed, still pinned together with safety pins.

• A post about the sheer variety of meals I have made with my unripe tomatoes, after finally giving up hope and dismantling the vegetable patch in a near-blizzard. (For those of you foodies who have come over from Sue's blog, which according to my stats accounts for a lot of you, those meals included Roasted Green Tomato Sauce (a very freezable success), Chicken Thighs with Green Tomatoes (delicious), a green tomato and peach salad for which I have lost the link but which wasn't all that fantastic anyway, and absolutely no fried green tomatoes, because my tomatoes were so tiny that I could barely slice them. There were pictures of the chicken thighs, which are unavailable. (We'll come back to this later.)

• A post about how I cut down a really big plant, along with pictures of the plant and the area in which it had been planted, which would have been really funny because they were so disproportionately sized.

But here's the thing. If you don't get around to writing a seasonal blog post, it makes no sense. It's no good turning up in the middle of the winter to complain about how chilly Autumn was. And progress has been hampered by a number of factors. (More bullet points! My colleague told me today that they made things look clear and punchy. I aspire very much towards clear and punchy.)

• I dropped Baileys on my (incredibly old and already failing) laptop, and it finished it off. I told Mr Coffee to start with that it was Horlicks, but I admit now that it was actually Baileys, and Lidl knock-off Baileys at that, which I had promised myself I wouldn't buy if it wasn't December. (It's nearly December!)

• I had to replace the old, failing and alcohol-soaked laptop with a Kindle fire, because it was so much cheaper and because it allowed me to listen to Bob Harris in the kitchen. I thought I might be able to blog on it too, and read blogs and leave comments. It turns out that to a touch-typist, a miniature touchscreen keyboard is akin to being asked to do delicate needlework wearing boxing gloves. 

• I lost control of the digital photographs. In an attempt to never lose a single one of my mediocre images, I ended up backing them up all over the shop and ending up with multiple bonkers copies that I could never find, in files called things like "early from old phone" and "camera try number 4". Last night I spent an hour in front of the Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder clicking 'delete' over and over again, and I still have 5,163 duplicates still to go. I'm not kidding. Some of them are 10KB, and have been created just to spite me by my phone, which saves every image five times in different sizes. THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY IS SO HARD.

• I don't have time. There. I said it. When I had two days off a week, and I had time to faddle around with my duplicate photos and sit at the big old desktop computer drinking cups of coffee and eating chocolate, I could do these things AND shop for food AND ring the bank. Now I can't. The only reason we have food in the house is because Mr Coffee came home a few weeks ago with a chest freezer he bought for a tenner off a bloke's front drive, which I filled with random things that I threw in a trolley.

This week, I read Fluid Pudding's anniversary post, and I asked myself the two questions she asks about whether or not to continue blogging.

1. Am I having fun? I am. Even if no-one is reading, or no-one is commenting because they're sat in the dark reading on a tablet with droopy eyes. I'll admit that I miss the wholeness of Blogland - the community aspect you only get by properly engaging; I'm sad that I don't have the time. But I work; and I drive Eldest back and forth to her distant school, and I cook, and I do Eldest's physiotherapy and I supervise homework and I dole out Meaningful Parental Advice Which is Then Ignored and I talk to my husband and I get up in the night to deal with Eldest's feet and I play Littlest Pet Shops with Littlest and for at least half an hour a week, I sew. And these are the most important things right now. I love reading blogs. But the time - and the keyboard - I had for commenting is limited.
2. Am I an asshole? Let's not answer that. Look, at least I didn't bore you with the Big Plant post. It's not as bad as it could have been.