I'm finding it very hard to keep a straight face here Marla

I went sniffing round Flylady's video archives for holiday advice.

I reckon if I sit down and plan my holiday arrangements, my online shopping, and all the things I want to do before September for fifteen minutes every Tuesday I could just about sort this year's summer holidays out by 2012.

Oh hang on! Did she say December? She's talking about Christmas. Well at least I'm in time for that.

I think.

Wish me luck, I'm going in

This week we are in the Bathroom Zone. And the words that strike terror into my heart: "and one extra room".

Sounds fair enough, doesn't it? After all, there is so much water about in the bathroom that it practically cleans itself, right? We can do another room too, surely?

Except the room opposite the bathroom is the Eldest Latte's room. It is a room of endless bits of paper which appear to be rubbish but are in fact Vital Plans and Special Posters, disembodied Bratz feet (you know when you lost the shoes from your Sindy dolls? This is worse - the whole damn foot comes off) and bedraggled My Little Ponies with bits of string around their neck, which appear to be be either makeshift bridles or nooses, depending on your mental health at the time.

The horror. The horror.

Stop throwing that dust around here, Mr Barrowman, we are trying to get things clean

Today is Home Blessing Day for those of you who give a monkeys about my Flylady month. Six tasks, from dusting to vacuuming, with each taking just ten minutes. The only way I could get a vacuum around my house in ten minutes would be to run around with it unplugged.

I am so very much looking forward to the BBC's new mini-series of Torchwood, which starts tonight, though not for the reason cited by Limecat. Five nights of sci-fi in a row! And there were three radio plays last week, which being the anal type of geek I am, I had to download.

But as to John Barrowman's (cough) charms, I find myself completely baffled. Especially after seeing him on Tonight's the Night, jumping around in a shiny suit with some grinning back-up dancers, looking for all the world like Shane Richie.

However it's a good job somebody fancies him, because practically all the new characters the Torchwood team meet in the radio plays are his character's former lovers. It seems that his - ahem - winkle is one of the main plot protagonists. Where would they be without it? Who on earth would they find to talk to?

(Winner of my blogiversary giveaway is The List Writer, who has the Random Number Generator to thank for her success. Now I need to know what book/ coffee coarseness she requires...)

Let the fun begin

Well, judging by the terror of Flylady displayed in yesterday's comments, I won't see any of you for dust after today.

I'm sorry. But the fates are aligned. Just as I re-read my very first blog post, I got an email from NaBloPoMo telling me that July's daily blogging theme was Routines.

How could I resist! Flylady is all about the routines, and I'm a bit out of control right now. And I always wanted to have a go at posting the hell out of myself. What would happen if I drivelled on pointlessly every day for a month?

Let's find out, shall we? And let's start our odyssey of tedium right here, with an inspiring video from the Flyster herself.



Don't get me wrong. Before I read Flylady's website I was convinced that everyone else cleaned all their house, every week, and there was no way I could keep up. I do like her routines. I just have a problem with the cheeriness, and the Hope, and the complete lack of irony.

Sarcasm is greatly needed in order to keep your house clean, I find.

What is going on in this video? Though I appreciate that someone other than me may find hope in the bottom of their sink (I am too miserable to find hope anywhere if I'm honest) this does not explain why they then choose to put kittens or children in on top of it.

It doesn't seem sanitary at all. Unless of course they are using their kitten as a fluffy cloth with which to apply Cif.

Anyway, in the absence of a dining room to dust (today's Mission) I have given the basement a cursory clean before I trotted down to the Scope shop with a load of old videos that I found in a box.

Why, now if I ever wanted to use the sewing machine I could actually get my legs under the table!

(Still time to enter my giveaway, by the way. I'm going to give you until Sunday.)

Are you ready yet? I'm not

So, it's July, and you're all excited. You fools! Only one of you noticed the label to the last post, which concerns me a great deal. A great deal. I do hope no-one has cancelled any plans over this.

Anyway I don't have time to talk about July today because I have been too busy undercoating a bedside table. And being hot. Hot! Hot! You wouldn't think this would happen in the North of England but we have been melting. The sweaty Littlest Latte spent the day looking as if someone had thrown a bucket of water over her.

Mr Coffee and I have also been occupied emptying and filling drawers since our time trawling round junk shops ended with the purchase of bedroom furniture. Finally! For many years we have been staring resentfully at an ugly IKEA cabinet and some even uglier drawers, the origin of which is best never mentioned.

Now the only thing to decide is what colour to paint my bedside cabinet. Do I choose the green on this left hand wall or the green on that left hand wall?

I know! Such entirely different looks!

Anyway, back soon!

How we scared off Easter

Well, I don't think we'll be seeing that Easter around here anytime soon. It's terrified.

Terrified of the Coffee House and the sheer amount of stuff that went on. Honestly - if you'd been here, you'd have been exhausted just looking at it, and we would have had to feed you cake and let you have a lie down.

Oh yes, there was cake. Ha! We baked fairy cakes and iced them and put Easter eggs on top! Here they are! (Okay, those weren't mine. They were from the Good Food Magazine website. But we were too damn busy to be taking any pictures of the cupcakes, do you understand?) And there was a hazelnut and chocolate cheesecake, and some defrosted chocolate brownies. Actually there was a lot of defrosted stuff, but we'll get onto that later.

So! First thing we do is PAINT THE KITCHEN! Not just paint it, you understand, but sugar soap it all properly beforehand! (This is in line with the famous British tradition, by the way, to spend a rare sunny Bank Holiday cooped up inside doing DIY. Though Mr Coffee did get a blast of fresh air when he went onto the roof to paint the walls around inside of the skylight, so what has he to complain about?) And during this time we go out for coffee and cakes, and go to the butchers and the supermarket and the Post Office, and take the Little Lattes into town twice to buy a new kettle (again, later) and sunhats and shampoo and fish sauce. And we decorate a twig by painting it white and then hanging Eastery papier mache stuff off it. And the Lattes do all kinds of Easter stuff at church as well as having an Easter egg hunt in their own garden.

We go to church three times altogether. I know! How did we find time for that? Also I read nearly half a book!

And then we make a full roast dinner and get The Grandmother round to share it, and just as it's finishing all the electricity goes off! Hilarious! And I get to run up and down the street to The Grandmother's House to put the cake in her oven and check on it, and Mr Coffee sits down to read about household electrics in order to put it all right again. And then since it's already half done, we defrost the freezer, very slowly, since we think the problem is the kettle. And then we make tea with some water boiled on the hob in a pan.

Isn't that enough? NO! NO it's not enough, we are on a ROLL now, so we go to the garden centre and we buy way too many plants and then we come home and we prepare a bed and we plant it! And we cut a hedge! And we sow seeds and we weed and we weed and we weed!

It's too much for you, isn't it? I can see you covering your eyes, and thinking you need a drink.

Hmm. So do we. And we deserve it, don't we? I very much think that we do.

Do-it-yourself parenting

So tonight I settled down for a tedious evening painting the staircase. A tedious evening of painting which followed a tedious morning of painting. Oh, it was going to be so tedious.

The Eldest Latte heard the paint can open outside her bedroom, grabbed her Rainbow Fairy book and her pillow, and came out onto the landing in her pyjamas to read me a story.

But I never heard the story. Instead, my normally taciturn and independent eight year old daughter ("What did you do at school today poppet?" "Nothing") sat down and told me more about her life than she has done in months. As I brushed up and down the spindles I got to know about her friendship dilemmas, the boys in her class who were noisy and made her teachers cross, and who had stuck up for her in the playground. I found out how subtle are some of the problems faced by a child growing up disabled; and how much she needs me to help with them even though she never normally admits this.

In return I told her what I thought were boring old stories about my grandma which made her laugh so much she put her hands over her mouth.

I had a lot of fun.

And I made a sneaky mental note not to ever paint the part of the staircase outside her room during the day, but to make sure I always save it for when she was supposed to be asleep in bed.

Let's finish what we started

I hope you weren't coming here for entertainment. You won't find it. Life in the Coffee House is harsh and real this week.

This is Coffee House Painting Boot Camp.

We moved into the Coffee House - oh lord, the shame - four years ago, and we still do not have a staircarpet. People come to our house, and we tell them we are in the process of painting the spindles on the staircase, and then we can have a carpet. But we have been saying this for years now. And there are several, very good, reasons for this.

1) I was ill for a year. (Did I mention that? Are you bored of that already?) Look back in my archives and I can be found back in the mists of time going on about how ill I am and how I should be painting the staircase.

2) Mr Coffee and I are both idle. I'm not using false modesty here. If it is a toss up between wine and staircase painting, wine will always win. It wins hard, and it wins often.

3) Enthusiasm for the project stalled when we got into a disagreement about what kind of carpet we would be buying. The Silence of the Sisal Runners was a harsh time in our marriage, and though I like to think we will one day be over it, I fear our staircase may always have a tinge of regret hanging around its treads.

4) We have too many damn stairs. Three storeys, four landings, and spindles are really hard to paint, and need so many coats, and, and.... yes, I am just whining now.

But the excuses are over. Today the paint is coming out - when I've had this cup of coffee, obviously - and I am getting down to it. I am 39 in a few weeks. I will have finished this staircase by 39. I am not dragging it out into my fortieth year.

Painting is a young woman's game.