Last week, the day after disappearing in WHSmiths, he ran off in Staples while I was hunting something to keep my diary, notebook and other 'bits' in. As Staples doesn't have stealth lifts, I found him very quickly and explained calmly that if he ran off it was upsetting. After that he stuck fairly close, but while I was queueing for the checkout, he decided to play with the automatic exit doors, which were nearby and visible. I was on edge to sprint if he decided to go anywhere near the road, but he was actually quite sensible. Even when he (inevitably) locked himself out, he waited patiently watching me until someone exited which let him back in.

The next day we were back in Smiths so I could return something I'd bought under the influence of lost-child stress and realised almost as soon as I got home wasn't what I needed. This time he headed for the escalator while I was occupied at the checkout, and I caught him just in time.

This was very shortly after he'd locked himself in the underground garage beneath the flats where his childminder lives, and we'd only been able to rescue him because the bars intended to keep adults out are just wide enough apart to squeeze a toddler through. While J and I were talking, he'd spotted someone exiting without shutting the gate properly, and zoomed off to take advantage. Of course he shut the gate properly behind himself just before I got there, and J doesn't have a car so doesn't have a key to the garage. Actually, I was nearly sure that a) someone else with a car would have been along shortly on a Friday evening, and b) he is sensible enough to stay out of the way of cars, so that barely registered as panic really.

He has been helping me feed some friends' cats while they were on holiday, and particularly making friends with the kitten, which was all very cute.

As summer seems to be settling in, I took him shopping for sandals on Wednesday. For the first time in ages he submitted to his feet being measured without a fuss. I picked out a selection of appropriately-sized sensible sandals, and he not only had a firm opinion on which pair he wanted, he knew the brand name, which I barely knew. It turns out that at least one of his friends at J's has these brand sandals, so that's kind of an explanation. But it surprised me greatly at the time. Luckily his choice fitted well so we didn't have to argue about them. He insisted on wearing them home.

Last Saturday was Verity's birthday party, which was a lovely relaxing party with barbecue. I had fun meeting a new baby (and was amused by Charles's patent lack of interest in the baby until he saw me paying it attention at which point he came over and joined in). I stayed up far too late having interesting conversation and got up hideously early for

... taking James and his friend Pete to Lincolnshire to run in the Seabank Marathon from Boston to Skegness. This was a silly idea they had had at very short notice, right down to James recruiting me to drive at Verity's party. The weather was dreadful - very strong headwind and lots of rain. I had quite a lot of fun navigating to checkpoints, and less fun waiting in the rain to see people come in. (I also, finally, got my new 3G dongle working on my tiny laptop, but that is a topic for a different post.) Pete ran fast and mostly beat the rain; James ran slower and came in soaked to the skin and shivering. Shortly before he arrived, the organisers shut down the marathon due to the high number of people arriving in similar condition.

On the way home I voluntarily ate McDonald's for the first time in years (opinion: boring but not actually unpleasant), the passengers went to sleep, and I had to stop at Peterborough for a break, a drink and a wake-up walk as the early start and lack of sleep were catching up with me. I went to sleep not long after getting home.

The week has been pretty busy at work, and I've really not got much done around the house after getting home, leading to temptations to stay up too late to improve that. It doesn't work, and intellectually I know it doesn't work but apparently I have to learn it in practice every few months. I've spent a lot of my 'spare' time reading the Great LJ Rape Discussion, and also thinking a lot based on what I've been reading.

And so somehow it's Saturday again and in about 30 minutes I'm off to see a play with Tony: a local am-dram company is staging Bedroom Farce by Alan Ayckbourn. One of my colleagues is in it, and so quite a few of us from the office are going along, including our lift.

I've spent a lot of the day feeding CDs to Tony's newly restored Mac Mini so I can finally have a digitised music collection again for the first time in a couple of years. I've been rediscovering all sorts of music I'd half-forgotten I owned, and shortly I shall be loading it onto Tony's old iPod and listening to it e.g. on the way to work or when I need to shut out the office noise. I've also been filing away the many cds bought since Charles was born, which is deeply satisfying in a nerdy alphabetising kind of way.

I am very spoiled by the polling station being literally a minute's walk away from home. There was a small queue as I hurried past running late for work this morning. There was a large queue as I came by with Charles around 7pm. The queue was even bigger when I went back shortly before 9pm. I waited nearly 30 minutes to vote, and the queue had grown again as I left.

I hope they let all the queueing people vote.

We have had a lively, high-leaflet campaign in our ward for the County Council, between the Independent who was elected to the City Council last year, and a relatively new LibDem activist. I wonder if this drove a higher turnout that usual, or we just have a high percentage of office-hours people in the ward.

The European ballot paper was huge and included quite a few parties of which I had never heard before.

Last Friday Tony & I had a hot date to see Star Trek at the cinema (summary: made of squee, must see again one day, possibly after rewatching my favourites of the older films)

The previous day, Charles was a bit too lethargic with a cough for me to be happy about swimming, so instead I indulged his love of buses by riding a double-decker to the end of the line and back to near-home again. We then toddled home to check the post, and were encouraged out again to the pub by James.

We spent the long Bank Holiday weekend visiting my mother, stepfather & youngest brother, and were joined by my step-niece S, about a year older than Charles. S & Charles played together delightfully, and we managed to get in a memorable trip to the local swimming pool.

This week I've booked the train tickets for our big holiday in August, and am excitedly looking forward to it, and there's a week's holiday to look forward to at the end of this month.

I changed mobile phone networks, so now I can pick up messages and phone calls at my office desk rather than having to walk across the carpark to get enough reception. The number remains the same. The handset was getting very flaky, so I got a refurbished newer one, which is roughly the same length and width, but about a third the depth. I love it and have already customised the wallpaper with a cute picture of Charles.

Yesterday I temporarily lost Charles in a shop. He had rounded a corner and disappeared by the time I followed him. I ran up and down the floor looking for him, out onto the (crowded) street, back in and up the stairs. I asked a random staff member if they'd seen a small boy, who said "er yeah, just up here, oh where's he gone?" and passed me on to a colleague. I fought tears to answer questions like "what's he wearing" and tried not to panic at the thought of the big wide open doors and the road outside.

A few minutes later, the original staff member herded a cheery boy towards me who said "Hello Mummy! I was in the lift!" I cuddled him and had a bit of a cry, and then we finished our shopping. Some extra comfort food made it into the basket on the way out. It took me a long time to stop shaking, while Charles was quite happy with his little adventure.

I think we will start having some more conversations about the importance of not running off, and maybe some gentle experiments in "I'll meet you here". I was too upset at the time to do more than say "I lost you" a bit incoherently into his hair.

I should write a little thank you note to the shop. I wish I'd noted the names of the people now, I can't even remember their faces.

Or so you might think from scanning this Times article promoting the author's book on raising boys. I counted five uses of "feminism" or "feminist", all in a generally derogatory way, including the age-old favourite antifeminist dig at women who kick up a fuss about having doors opened for them. And the wonderful idea that today boys are "growing up in a sexually equal world".

Focusing on reasons why non-paternal mentors are hard to find, she doesn't mention at all the large numbers of families without a father to start with (the charity Gingerbread says 9 out of 10 lone parents are women, and there are about 1.9 million lone parents in the UK). The closest she gets is the throwaway line that "boys need the consistent presence of a father figure, providing examples of acceptable male behaviour as they grow up." No exploration of the effect of those 1.7 million absent fathers, or even why there are so many to start with.

She does reference Steve Biddulph, whose book "Raising Boys" I borrowed from the library, and tagged as something to reread as Charles gets older. She mentions some interesting issues: the fall in popularity of scouting and cadet forces for older boys, the hoops anyone wanting to work with children has to jump through, the fact that just when boys are at a peak of hormonal activity we try to make them sit down and pass exams, and the depressing thought that reality tv shows and highly-commercialised sports provide the only male role models for many boys. But always it seems to be women's fault.

I expect the book will be more of the same. One for when my blood pressure gets too low, perhaps.

Yesterday: beer festival. Drank good beer, supervised Charles for hours in the "Family Room" play area, chatted to assorted lovely people who helpfully either sat with me or camped conveniently nearby the play area, rebuilt plastic children's climbing frame, ate lovely cheese, got home too tired to think straight.

Notable cheese: Wobbly Bottom, a fairly sharp hard white sheep's cheese.

Climbing frame: it was a plastic thing consisting of sides that slotted together, along with a slide and a platform in the middle. It was clearly put together wrong: gaps too small for toddlers to get through, the slide didn't fit properly, etc. I tried to take it apart so I could assemble it correctly, but it was a bit too stuck for me to manage on my own. A man came along, offered his help, didn't listen to me and decided I was wrong so undid our limited progress and wandered off again. An hour later, another mother commented that it didn't seem right, and this time the two of us had it disassembled and correctly reassembled within 10 minutes.


Last Thursday I took Charles swimming for the first time since DWCon last August, and it went remarkably well. He seems to have retained a lot of his confidence from baby-swimming lessons, even though we stopped taking him nearly a year ago. I'm taking him to Chesterton Sports Centre, which is on a plausible route home from the childminder, and has a convenient Thursday evening general swim session. We met an old friend of mine there too (a fellow New Hall alumna), and it turns out to be her regular swim night. Charles was furious at getting-out time and let the entire world know so, for an extended period of time. (Several days later he was still talking about "I don't want get out pool".)

Just off the direct route from pool to home is the pub, so we dropped in for some potato-based refuelling. I was planning to go on home, but then got into conversation, and Charles was reasonably well-behaved and eventually fell asleep without major tantrums. So I ended up having the rare pleasure of staying till chucking-out time.

Today I suggested swimming again, which got Charles's enthusiastic approval. We saw my friend again, Charles was even more confident, and time whizzed by. This time I put more effort into preparing for getting-out time, talking about the time on the clock and giving warnings at 10 minutes, 5 minutes and 1 minute. It seemed to work, and we got changed much more quietly and happily than last week. We were both tired so I thought home was the best destination, despite the competing lures of beer festival or quieter-than-usual pub. Charles was asleep early by his standards.

I am very-tentatively hoping to make weekly swimming a habit. We shall see.

Tonight and possibly tomorrow night are my only chances to take in the Cambridge Beer Fesival. I pick up Charles just before it opens in a conveniently nearby location. How late we stay will depend on his behaviour and just how laughably small my alcohol tolerance has got.

I lack a beer usericon; this should be remedied.

Me: "Tony, you know the prawn sandwiches Charles didn't eat? I forgot to put them away last night, and I guess so did everyone else because this morning there are a lot of bits of bread all over the table, and a very smug-looking cat."

Tony: *laughs*

Charles: "Oh dear, naughty cat ate all prawns" *giggles*

--

Me: double-takes 5 minutes later at Charles's language comprehension

Reported by J:
Charles: "I cross with Daddy at home today"
J: "Oh dear, why was that?"
Charles: "He has to learn to be more patient!"

---

"You're not Daddy! You're not Granny Lou! You're Mummy!"
(and other variations on the theme of who I am not ...)

---

At swimming pool, cross about getting out.

Me: "We'll come back next week"
Charles: "We GO HOME next week. I want to go in pool."

---

Several days later, he is still commenting on the swimming pool and going home next week, and also that he wants another caterpillar (after seeing me give away his old caterpillar).

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My will power utterly failed and I mooched 5 books to fill the gaps in my Michael Connelly collection. I wish I could say this was before I loaded down the orphanage lady with all my tat. I also had fun stalking spotting friends and friends-of-friends on the BookMooch site using the find-person-by-location tool.

nwhyte recently mentioned BookMooch, and I had some fun listing books and making my first symbolic mooch on Saturday. At first it was just the slightly-too-tatty-for-Oxfam books that I still think someone will love. And then I found myself looking at my books and wondering which ones I'm never going to read again.

I also reminded myself again of BookCrossing which is rather more altruistic, informal and social than BookMooch. I think on the whole I prefer BookMooch - it's quicker, it's simpler, and the points system formalises the benefit-to-individuals that happens informally with BookCrossing. I find it interesting that the very simple reward scheme of BookMooch has prompted me to seriously look at my permanent book collection in the way that my use of charity shops and BookCrossing has not.

The funding model for BookMooch appears to be partly Amazon sales referrals, and partly a tipbox. I do wonder how sustainable this is.

[Note on Amazon: while the gay books teacup-storm has died down now, and apologies have been made, various people pointed out other reasons to avoid Amazon which matter to me, and of which I had not previously been aware. So I am hesitant to leap back into giving them money, even though they make it so very easy to do so. I also feel I have to check on any alternative that they aren't doing the same kind of things of which I disapprove, before I definitely spend money elsewhere. The whole thing just makes me freeze up on buying new books, which may be no bad thing! But then where does that leave using BookMooch, which appears to be financially dependent on at least some people spending money at Amazon?]


But back to the weekend of books: for some time now we have been meaning to make a slight adjustment to the bookcases in our bedroom. The bookshelves are deep enough to double-stack but to discourage this we had placed the books at the front of the shelves. The inevitable hideous build up of dust behind the books took place. In the meantime we had accumulated a great many books to insert into the alphabetically-sorted shelves. The trouble with a large book collection and alphabetic sorting is that insertion takes a lot of effort, so I like to save it up for months at a time.

I therefore spent a lot of Sunday afternoon and evening moving books around, vacuuming books and shelves, filtering in newly-read books, and putting aside books to give away. With the exception of the top shelf (because otherwise I can neither see nor reach the books there), all the books are now at the back of the shelves, which will make it easier to dust regularly. It also makes it easier to stack books ready to filter in.

My cull resulted in a small pile of books to give away immediately, and another pile approximately 3 times bigger to read one more time to decide whether to keep or give away. I had to find somewhere to put these two new piles, so I implemented a plan I've had for a while to swap my to-read pile in the living room with the anthologies in the study. This means when people look at those shelves in the living room, they see nice interesting books grouped sensibly together, rather than my haphazard never-shrinking to-read pile.

This involved more vacuuming, and the drafting of the dining table as swap space. I took the opportunity to roughly sort the to-read pile into:

* non-fiction
* Mills & Boon
* "last chance saloon" fiction culled from my permanent collection
* all other fiction

I'm hoping this will make it easier for me to find the kind of book I'm after when I want something new to read, which in turn might make the to-read pile seem more like a source of entertainment and pleasure than a burden of guilt.

The immediate giveaway pile is slowly going onto BookMooch as I have time, and I'm already receiving and responding to requests. The main problem I foresee is resisting the urge to acquire even more books with the points I'm earning. Apart from that first mooch, I'm going to try to only mooch books when I'm ahead of my 1-item-per-day decluttering target. Let's see how long that lasts.

I was only just keeping to the net 1 item per day out at the end of April, and an awful lot of stuff has come in since. Just the nebulous feeling of falling behind has inspired me to sort out books, list things on Freecycle and check if the charity bag is full yet.

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It's a nice summery morning and I've opened up both the patio doors into the garden. The old patio door was sliding, and you could only have half the window space open, and that off to one side of the room. The new doors open outward, making much wider open area, and it's central within the room. Having both doors open makes the living room feel like an extension of the garden, or vice versa.

I've put Charles's ball tent outside. He's got freedom to run in and out and I can supervise from the sofa.

Even if it's only for warm days in summer months, I love this. It's one of the little "lifestyle improvements" of the new doors and windows, above and beyond them simply being double-glazed.

"I have a lovely face," reported by J on Tuesday. I blame Granny.

"That's a horrid car," pointing out an SUV, on several occasions. I blame fanf for this one.

"We're on the number 5 bus," from inside the bus, no number visible from the inside, and me not having mentioned the route number (though I did a few weeks ago). Hypothesis: he read it on the outside 10 minutes earlier as we caught the bus, and remembered.

He can open the child locks on most of the cupboards now.

He often prefers to pull his buggy from the front, than ride in it or push it from behind. This is frequently accompanied by shouts of "No Mummy, don't push! NO PUSHING."

And longer post.
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1 bottle of "Karmatherapy Tranquility Ritual" Jasmine & Vanilla Relaxing Milk Bath, 250ml bottle barely used.
2 flannels, originally from John Lewis, bought 2.5 years ago and almost never used.
1 unopened 500g bottle of Johnson's baby powder.

I think I'll add the bath stuff to the accumulation of bubble bath in the main bathroom (it lived for ages in the shower-room, no wonder it was never used), and maybe try if scheduling myself a weekly relaxing bath is a) plausible b) beneficial.

The flannels could probably be downgraded to cleaning cloths, I will ask Tony to ask the cleaner when she is back (calloo callay) next week.

I could empty the baby powder into the green bin and recycle the empty plastic bottle. Except one of the neighbours has nicked our plastic bottles box after today's recycling collection *humph*.

On holiday I spent a happy evening reading all of Jo Walton's reviews of the Vorkosigan books, in publication order, and was inspired to reread.

Can anyone lend me The Warrior's Apprentice and/or Mirror Dance? Those are the only ones I don't have on the shelf.

Edit: Solved, thanks to hilarityallen.

"The site's FAQ also states that the data will be used for a "secret project", though Mr Steinberg was not prepared to reveal what that would be."

That would presumably be because it's a secret.

(For those who cba to read the bbc news link above: the site concerned is a new mySociety project, Scenic or Not. Disturbingly addictive.)

Yesterday's walk home was less fun. I was cross/tired from work and staying up too late on Thursday night, Charles was cross from nappy and I inadvisedly let him have chocolate so he was manic too. End result: a lot of screaming on the way home. At least this time we had enough nappies he wasn't naked too, and then he spend the entire evening being clingy.

At one point I walked out of the living room saying to Tony "I'm about to lose my temper". Luckily Charles didn't follow me for a few minutes.

Today is better: more sleep, more sensible food, more perspective. Also no work.

This week has been a trial for Charles - the Easter holiday was great fun and he hasn't adjusted back to the "normal" routine of parents working and going to J. He's been giving me the full-on guilt-trip experience each morning: howls, sobs, demands "NO MUMMY WORK 'DAY" and I depart with a trail of distraught wails following me down the driveway. The most ingenious was I think Thursday when he brought me my sling and said "Charles go work on Mummy's back!" Tony assures me he calms down soon enough, and he's clearly happy playing with J and the other children when I arrive to collect him. But it is all rather wearing.

Today Charles was very happy when I said there was no work today. He rewarded me by tangling up my knitting yarn so that it took me an hour to detangle. Luckily for our continued harmony today, he didn't pull the current project off the needles.

First I was late picking up Charles due to work (J was lovely about it when I rang and asked for an extension).

Then Charles was particularly distracted walking home, and then cross/naughty in the very characteristic way he is when he needs a nappy change. So I changed him at Quayside ... only to discover there were no clean nappies in the nappy bag.

And his trousers fall down without a nappy on.
And he had already taken his tshirt off and refused to put it back on.

So I walked the rest of the way home with a toddler naked apart from sensible shoes, who spent the bulk of the time running shortly ahead of me and climbing steps wherever possible. I was the recipient of a great many grins of mild embarrassment, all of which I returned with interest.

The nice bit was that hilarityallen randomly ran into us, and I was able to catch up a bit with her in between toddler-herding.

Because the Christiana wasn't expensive enough for me to lust after, fanf has pointed me at the Taga.

I think the Christiana is probably the more practical for our uses. But the Taga looks rather lovely. And in the real world Charles will probably be riding his own bike before we actually sort ourselves out with either of them.

Amazon are removing sales rank information from a wide range of books with gay or lesbian content, claiming it is for "adult content". Except that books with no sexual content whatsoever have been targeted, while such gems as 30 years of Playboy centrefolds have their ranking intact. (as it were) Why does this matter?

Removing the sales rank information effectively removes the books from search results, hiding the books from anyone trying to find them. Such filthy books as pregnancy guides for lesbian mothers or a teenage suicide prevention manual are blocked, while straight "erotica" remains available.

I am in the process of cancelling every open order I have with Amazon (Edit: total value 37.87) with the following text in the comment box for cancellation reason:

"Amazon's homophobic policy of removing sales rankings from books containing lesbian & gay themes. I will not spend any more money with you until this policy is revoked and publicly apologised for."

I'm also removing all content from the wishlists I maintain there (things for me, parenting books for me and Tony, books/things for Charles). I don't want my family spending money with them either.

(More info:
the publisher who got the form letter about it being 'adult content'
List of books with sales ranks removed
And all over Twitter, tag #amazonfail. Because de-listing Stephen Fry's books is the way to get the internet on your side.)

Nowhere near Inbox Zero, but there is a completely empty intray on my desk. This doesn't happen very often.

The shredding tray is bulging, as I've been decluttering files or folders as I file away some of the paper out of the intray. I managed to convince myself I didn't need to keep:
* payslips from previous jobs (I've had the current one for over 8 years)
* notices to complete tax returns once they were done
* documents from expired, unclaimed-on travel insurance
* milk bills over 2 years old, apart from the very first one so I know when we started (I'd throw away more of them, but there was a weird few months where me and the dairy disagreed about how much I owed them, in my favour, so I'm keeping those just in case there's ever any comeback)

The out-tray has a number of letters to post. Tomorrow. My paper-processing may be going really well, but my Sensible Sleep plan has failed badly tonight.

Yesterday I had the very great pleasure of attending a celebration at the home of 1ngi & sion_a. Tony was sadly unable to join us, but Charles and I got there just in time for me to witness the renewal of vows in the garden and the planting of a rosebush, all in the gentlest of soft rain. The couple were beautiful and beautifully dressed, the readers were clear and the readings heartfelt. It was a very moving little ceremony and I felt privileged to attend, and missed Tony very much.

The party then moved indoors and drinks and nibbles were consumed as well as an Easter egg hunt. There were small chocolate eggs everywhere. Ingi very kindly asked people to "leave a few" for Charles, who was just waking up as we went indoors, and he took full advantage of this once he'd figured out the idea of the egg hunt. He also tinkled on the piano for quite some time, which I allowed so long he treated it gently. I had some lovely conversations with people I don't see enough of, although all too often I was interrupted away from them by small boy, but overall it was a very pleasant afternoon and I'm very glad I went.

Charles's play with his toys yesterday and today has been full of chatter about pianos and chocolate eggs, so I think he had a great afternoon too.

I now have enough shirts that ironing them takes longer than one Now Show. Bah. But on the good side, I now have enough shirts! And pretty much enough everything, though one more pair of smartish trousers wouldn't hurt. My mad spending spree is probably coming to an end (just in time for my bras to need replacing).

Decluttering update: 5 shirts in, 1 small bookcase out. (running totals - Out: 223, In: 120, Net: 103, day 100)
I've started a new charity clothes bag, and gathered together unwanted clothes hangers for freecycling. My flickr uploading means I can delete photos off my camera card which means there's enough room to take some photos of freecycle stuff, but actually I should probably wait to offer that until we get back from Wales and concentrate instead on clearing enough space to take holiday snaps.

I've started using a Flickr account and catching up with posting my enormous backlog of digital photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmc28/

Charles fans can just go straight to the relevant tagged photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmc28/tags/charles/

Eventually I'll upgrade the account to a paid one, but I'm just getting the hang of it for now. I've still got my fotopic account but I think new photos will go on Flickr from now on.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed rust on the outside of the boiler. We're on British Gas Homecare, so a gasman was dispatched with pleasing promptness, and diagnosed a leaky heat exchanger inside the boiler. That part was also covered on Homecare, and replaced within a few days. However, the rusty case is cause for concern. At the moment, the boiler is ok. But if the case rusts through, and is no longer airtight, it has to be replaced. And the boiler is sufficiently old that apparently replacement cases aren't made any more, so we are looking at a new boiler.

The house is 19 years old, and I have no reason to be believe the boiler to be any younger, so I was planning a replacement in the next few years anyway. But this is a bit sooner than planned.

I did a brief bit of research into heat pumps, as mentioned in the wonderful Sustainable Energy - Without The Hot Air by Professor David MacKay of this parishcity. A heat pump is a reverse air conditioner and is much more efficient than a traditional boiler - 300%-500% efficient, i.e. it uses much less energy to run than it moves around as heat. It runs off electricity, not gas, so converting the heating of housing to heat pumps is a step along the "electrify everything and green the electricity supply" grand plan of How To Stop Emitting Carbon Dioxide, as outlined in MacKay's book. It should also cost less to run.

Unfortunately the heat pump market is still customised expensive solutions for people with large gardens and lots of money. Too much technical information about "choices" is still presented (ground-source or air-source? heat only or domestic water too? change your radiators or not?), and too much obscure information is requested by companies before they'll quote. Why no, I don't know the area of my house in square metres, or my garden for that matter. Why can't I just give the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, as I do for getting a home insurance quote? Why aren't there easy ways to estimate the space I'd need in the garden for a ground-source pump like "about the size of two garden sheds" or similar?

Philip Pullman is promoted as a "satisfied customer" by one of the companies I contacted. That's lovely, but I am not a bestselling novelist. What I want is the easy quote for the suburban family with a small garden, but no-one's doing that yet.

Here's my free tip for someone wanting to do well by doing good: found a company that will do mass-market heat pumps, persuade the govt to subsidise installation on carbon reduction grounds, and make contracts with the big energy companies to sell to their customers, in the same way insulation has been recently. If boilers need replacing after 15-20 years, that's a lot of British people each year in the same situation I am right now.

Putting heat pumps aside, I got British Gas to send a man round to quote me for a new boiler, which happened after work on Wednesday. The chap was pleasant and low-pressure, but the cost is significantly above Which? Local price guides for the same sort of work (about 33% more). Still about half the price of the best guess I got for a heat pump. I have contact details for a couple of local companies but even the Which? Local price would blow all our emergency reserves, and then where are we if something else breaks? We just spent most of our readily-available money on windows and a fence.

More sensibly, we can save up over the next year, plan to mitigate the possibility of boiler failure during the next winter, and get a range of quotes this time next year. That gives another year for the mass-market heat pump to arrive too. Come on invisible hand, get a move on.

Charles has spent the week slowly getting over the weekend's tummy bug - off his food, horrid nappies, very subdued. Today he was almost back to normal. (Yesterday, he locked me out of the house when I put the recycling out, and Tony was in the shower. Oh how I laughed - when I'd got him to let me back in again.)

I've been off my food for the last few days, but not quite ill enough to stay off work; Tony started getting ill a day or so after me. I'm getting better now, so I hope Tony will be tomorrow.

This evening I took Charles out for a long walk (by toddler standards) over to Cat's house. After a short stay there we went to Ben's house for his pre-birthday Thursday pizza+film gathering. (I carried Charles most of the way for that part). At Ben's, I managed eventually to divert most of the manic toddler energy into going up and down the stairs, and eventually he collapsed into sleep over some pizza after determinedly trying to make friends with rjd4.

I am now away from work for 11 days, and next week we are heading to the British seaside for a few days. It will presumably rain, but I expect we will have fun anyway. Jonny has found some beach toys for us to pack.

It has been a week of goodbyes. One of my colleagues finished today to go back home to Madrid. I'm going to miss her, both as a lovely person to spend time with, and as an excellent reliable software developer. On Tuesday Charles's best friend H had his last session with their childminder J. I swapped phone numbers with his father, who should also have our address and other contact details somewhere. They live a few streets away so I will try to arrange regular playdates to keep them in touch. Charles talks about H almost every day.

Sleep deprivation on Friday plus nursing clingy child all Sunday plus stressy Monday morning at work = migraine Monday lunchtime.

I thought the drugs were working, but was very very zogged this morning. And then there was a nappy disaster, and I walked to work trying to figure out if I was queasy from the cleanup, from the migraine, or had caught whatever is upsetting Charles's tum.

I'm really hoping it's just oversensitive post-migraine wossname. Still tired but not too stupid to work.

We went to a lovely party on Friday evening, for sonicdrift's 30th, complete with chocolate Star Destroyer cake. Charles was fairly mellow, if very clingy-to-me throughout, and eventually went to sleep on one of the many comfy sofas.

Unfortunately, shortly after we got home, he was sick. And he continued to be sick at 20 minute intervals for the next 12 hours. We had planned a party for his 5/2 birthday, and Jonny's recent birthday. Consulting Tony the next morning, we decided to go ahead, on the principle it probably wasn't norovirus, but to warn off young children, pregnant women, and other lowered-immunity people. And as I'd done all the nursing so far, to keep it that way and to keep me out of food preparation.

The party was thus a bit quieter than planned, and a bit less organised, but otherwise I found it enjoyable and quite sociable, even if the "birthday boy" spent half the party asleep and the other half determinedly hiding from everyone in my arms. My father brought his stepchildren, my oldest brother made it up by (very cheap) coach from London, assorted friends came by, and nice food and conversation was had.

I went to bed at a sensible hour and got quite a lot of sleep, which I thoroughly appreciated. Today has been incredibly lazy, and Charles has been incredibly clingy, though at least not otherwise unwell. I hope for an early night tonight, hopefully I will catch up by then.

He can walk half a mile, if he wants to. He can probably walk further than that; I am not sure if the limit is his legs or my patience with toddler meanderings and distraction. He actually prefers to run, and best of all to run holding hands with an adult who is also running. Even if said adult can keep up by walking fast, running is better. He is getting pretty good at staying on the pavement without intervention.

He has discovered standing on the front of the buggy rather than riding in it, and thinks this is tremendous fun, although likes the person pushing to stop and start on demand repeatedly.

His English vocabulary continues to develop in new and surprising ways, using more and more complex words and sentences, and echoing anything interesting he hears. His adult carers (me, Tony, J, Jonny) generally have amusing things to tell each other each day. This morning, as I bagged up some broken computer bits to be freecycled to a local artist, he complained to me "That's my keyboard, Mummy".

He is still a bit confused about the difference between "me" and "you", "mine" and "yours" but is now right more often than not. He can count to ten, read numbers 1-12, and is beginning to talk about people being big or small, low or high. He is starting to "read" his favourite books to himself, quoting the pages from memory as he turns the pages, and occasionally asking an adult to join in.

He has just had a new haircut with no trauma at all. The secret ingredient is watching Jonny's hair being cut first (by Jonny, and then tidied up by me).

He can change volume and replay recordings on the PVR using the remote control.

He eats a wide variety of foods in fairly large portions, but is getting fussier about what goes together. Generally he prefers to eat one food at a time (e.g. cucumber and then cheese, not together). He is also still breastfeeding at least 3 times a day, more at weekends.

He knows how to use a potty and the toilet (with appropriate seat), but doesn't want to, asking for a nappy every time instead. He can put on his own pants and shoes, but likes to have help with other clothes.

He still can't say G properly, so a favourite snack is now known as Dalek bread.

Since the neighbours trimmed their leylandii, the sun is on the garden 2-3 hours earlier. This morning I replaced the hook for the extending clothes line in the new fence (the fence man lost it, Jonny found it yesterday), had both lines up and a load of sheets in feeble sunlight by 9am 10am.

By 11am the clouds had finally given way to proper sunshine, and I decided to tackle erecting the outdoor rotary airer. Digging the hole for the spike was quick, hammering it in took longer, and annoyingly the spike was most of the way in before I realised it was no longer perfectly vertical. On the principle that perfect is the enemy of good enough, I continued, and in another 20 minutes we had a working airer at a slightly jaunty angle with another washload hanging on it.

I ran out of pegs, so the last of the load went on one of the indoor airers transplanted to the patio. It should all be dry by now, or very soon. I love outdoor drying for clearing laundry backlogs like that.

The workmen finished on Friday with new front and back doors. We are all still getting used to the doors and their funky multipoint locking systems. On the whole they are much more secure but Charles found the biggest insecurity feature within 2 minutes: he can open the front door from the inside unless we explicitly key lock it. This then leads to amusing faff trying to reopen the door later, and remembering the right sequence of actions to do so.

I am delighted with the new windows and doors, both aesthetically and functionally. I need to clear some space on my camera so I can take some "after" photos to go with the "before" ones I took last week. We have a bit of tidying up to do on two of the windows, which had secondary glazing fitted: a bit of filler and paint required to make them nice. And two windows have been waiting for blinds for over a year, and our en suite blind badly needs replacing. Actually I am fed up with all the curtains in the house, which we inherited from the previous buy-to-let owner, but haven't yet found time to think about replacements or budgets for same.

The ladies from the houses either side were having a gossip in the driveway on Friday evening, so I wandered outside to say hello and allowed my arm to be twisted into showing them the patio and back doors, and the new fence. "Have you won the pools?" joked one. If only.

I renewed the house insurance last night. Comparethemarket are the only big comparison site to explicitly cope with the concept of lodgers. The best quote I found was £150 cheaper than last year, though sadly this doesn't seem to be related to the improved security of the windows and doors (I experimented to check this) so I can't claim it as a saving from installing them. Most likely the saving comes from insuring the expensive bike elsewhere and having another year without making a claim.

Yes I know it was yesterday, but I fell asleep before I could write it.

Some "women in technology" whom I admire:

First a historical figure and one of my personal heroes back when I thought I was going to be a physicist. Lise Meitner worked with Otto Hahn to discover nuclear fission; he got the Nobel, she didn't. An Austrian Jew, she escaped Germany in 1938 and eventually moved to Cambridge.

Julia Riley is a researcher in radio astronomy and a lecturer in physics in Cambridge. I remember her lectures in my second year as utterly inspiring; she also supervised the associated practicals and was friendly and approachable. For a brief period I felt I really understood Fourier transforms, thanks to her.

geekette8 first drew my attention to Ada Lovelace day. She does really clever stuff with embedded software; she's also a working mother like me and I take inspiration from her ability to balance parenthood with pursuing a deeply technical career.

chrysaphi combines an impressive software development CV with a just-completed D.Phil thesis on Armenian history, and some really interesting work on digital humanities.

Finally, in my job I have the privilege of working on a team with 4 other female software developers (and 5 male). They range in age from mid-twenties to early sixties, and they are all talented, committed and hard-working. It is a pleasure to work with them and I admire them all.

Yesterday the gasman cameth, and fixed our boiler for now.

Also yesterday the glaziers came, and replaced 5 windows. I think it will take them until Thursday to finish doing all the windows and the three doors. I spent some happy time playing with the new windows and admiring all the features, and most of all admiring that we had BIG WHOLE PANES rather than mock-Georgian little panes. It makes a surprising difference to the light in the room, not having those wooden dividers, and much nicer view outside too.

This week we have a new lodger arriving and the current one leaving, and assorted shopping arriving, including a groundspike for the rotary airer that ghoti and cjwatson gave us ages ago, so I will finally get that into use, so we can dry clothes without taking over the whole garden.

(Also expected this week: catfood, nappy soak because John Lewis stopped stocking it the week after I found they stocked it, washable potty-training pants, and some frivolous books.)

Dusting and putting the furniture back in our room after the window was fitted meant I did a nice declutter of old paper off my bedside shelves, and vacuumed the dust off the rolling boxes and suitcases stored under the bed.

I unearthed my old stereo which had such a thick layer of dust I vacuumed it too. I decided to try installing it in Charles's room: it was my pride and joy at age 18, but I haven't listened to it since Charles was born. He has figured out the on-off button and I have it tuned to Radio 2 for now. He danced to the music. Later I will teach him about playing CDs and supply him with ones I don't mind being broken.

I finally gave in and joined Twitter, to see what the fuss was about. I think my internet habits don't quite fit the standard twitter patterns, because I check about twice a day rather than constantly. The volume got more manageable when I stopped following Stephen Fry (yes I know this is heresy).

Charles wouldn't let the dentist look in his mouth, which limited what they could do. He was in less pain, so we were told to keep an eye on it, avoid sweets, especially chocolate, and sweet drinks and basically don't go back unless he seems to have a lot of pain.

He opened his mouth a bit for me so I could see the chipped tooth, which is more than he would do for the dentist. The majority of the tooth is still there, so it will probably last ok until it gets replaced. I talked to our dentist before about when we should start bringing Charles for regular appointments and they said they prefer to wait until about 3.5, when apparently it starts being easier to explain to small children what is happening and get more cooperation from them.



This morning Charles said "Oh look. Jonny ha' socks on and Mummy ha' toes on."

Charles is not only old enough to stop pulling on my earrings, he has figured out how to very gently take them out and put them back in. At least the ones on hooks. Unfortunately he got a bit overconfident and started stabbing me in the ear with a hook, but I persuaded him to be more careful again.

I got congratulated on my "lovely charming boy" by a random lady on the bus a few days ago. He was being very chatty about buses and whether they were big or small (double- or single-decker) and were they going the right way and were we getting on them.

He was eating some Quavers (yes, I was EVILLY feeding him FAST FOOD) and said "Oh look Mummy, NUMBER TWO!" and waved a vaguely 2-shaped quaver in my face.

He likes to dismiss our demands that he come and have a nappy change or get dressed with "No, I bissy."

This morning he broke a tooth. Tony is taking him to the dentist later and I am trying not to worry too much about him being in pain and me not being there.

I read Games of Command by Linnea Sinclair yesterday and found it rather "Mills & Boon in space". To be fair, it's longer and more complex than standard M&B, but the character and relationship development hit all the usual cliches, as did the sex scenes. The sf background was interesting but didn't grab me any more than the mainstream M&B settings of small-town America.

I was in the right mood for that kind of reading yesterday but I think the book was a read-once for me and I won't be keeping it, though I will look out for more by the same author.

Clearly there should be a Mills & Boon space romance imprint, but what to call it? Their existing imprints include "Historical", "Medical", "Intrigue" (spy/police thriller), "Special Edition" (family romance) and "Desire" (lots of sex scenes).

Charles: Have Mummy drink?
Rachel: No, it's my drink.
Charles: Have some Mummy drink?
[answer varies depending on what I'm drinking]


Charles: Plaster, plaster [reaching towards plasters out of reach, for good reason]
Rachel: No darling, you can't have the plasters
Charles: Have one plaster?
Rachel: Oh alright then, just one.
Charles: Jus' one. Dat good idea.
[5 minutes of messily disassembling plaster and packaging ensues]

The LJ pingback bot is carefully letting me know when I link to my own blog posts.

Woke up dehydrated, coughing, and bunged up. A day at home, mostly in bed, and hopefully I can get in tomorrow for a Very Important Meeting in a healthier state.

Charles quite clearly tried to play parents off against each other this morning to avoid going out to J's for the day. I responded by pretending to go to sleep (it wasn't much of a pretence).

The gardener came and finished the fence, and emailed me the invoice. Edit I'll try to post the cheque on my way to get Charles this afternoon I've paid direct to the bank account as they helpfully included that in the invoice. Woot.

I've just realised that they've put it up with the rails on the other side, so by convention it doesn't look like it's our fence but rather the two neighbours whose gardens we border on that side. Looks good though.

Oh well, we all know whose fence it is really so I'll just have to make sure any future occupant of those houses knows.

Moans:
British Gas Homecare, whose helpline people are trained to attempt to upsell you more of the homecare service whenever you ring. At least they don't do it until after arranging the engineer visit. If they do it a third time I will point out they already asked me twice in the last week and I haven't changed my mind.

HSBC Credit Card, who continue to staff their phone lines with American-accented non-native English speakers and train them to tell lies about the British banking system. They have no capacity for passing you up to a more senior person, though I did get an email address to compose a complaint to. The lie: they claim they need a new direct debit mandate to switch me from making minimum payments by DD to full payments by DD, and that this is because they need to change the setup with my bank. Explaining that this wasn't how direct debit worked actually got me blank incomprehension and repetition of the lie. I could well believe HSBC's own systems are so rubbish they want different paperwork for full payment by direct debits, but other companies manage such switches just fine without making the customer jump through hoops unnecessarily.

I was going to keep them as the joint spending account, but now that's not happening. 6 more months maximum (I need to do other credit-card juggling in the mean time) and then they get no more little cuts of our spending.

TwoLeftFeet, who took my money for a shipment of nappy soak and then failed to communicate with me for 2 weeks after saying it would be delivered in 3-5 working days. Their "after-sales service" consists of email-only contact to which they say they will respond within 3 working days, with dire warnings on the website not to email again as it will "reset the timestamp". Their responses were generally at least 4 working days, ended up in the spam folder without fail, and consisted of telling me that they were just waiting for an order and it would be a few more days, and generally ignoring everything I'd written.

I cancelled the order 6 weeks after first making it (having found the stuff I needed in John Lewis) and got a reply saying they'd refund me within 30 days. That was 21 days ago, why no the money isn't back on the credit card yet. Never ever ever shopping there again.


Cheers:
The local pet shop, DJ Pet Supplies, who take phone orders for giant bags of catfood, and deliver it as they shut before I can collect it on a weekday. When I discovered the next day they had delivered me a small bag of kitten food rather than a large bag of middle-aged-cat food, they were very apologetic, and sent round two young people (the Saturday help?) to sort it out within the hour.

Little Possums who delivered two slings I very much wanted within 48 hours of the order, at no extra charge. So I was able to take one of them with me last weekend where it proved very useful.

The double-glazing deposit was cashed a bit over a fortnight ago, so I'm expecting fitting in the next 2-4 weeks.

Our side of the neighbour's leylandii has been cleaned up. The gardeners took away all their own mess plus the festering woodpile on the driveway that's been there since Jonny and I took down the elder threatening the house last summer. The same garden company came back on Thursday & Friday to rebuild the fence; at the moment it is in an amusing intermediate phase with the framework up but the fence panels themselves only 1/5 done. I assume they are coming back to finish on Monday ...

The boiler is in trouble. I spotted some nasty rust on the casing and called the British Gas homecare people who sent someone out to confirm that there's a problem with the heat exchanger, which he can fix with a part covered by our policy, but that the casing itself is safety-critical and so old they can't get the parts any more. So when it rusts through, we need a new boiler.

Now would be the time to find out if heat pumps, as mentioned in Professor MacKay's talk, are a realistic possibility for replacement. Once I've worked out where the money is coming from. I was hoping for another year or two before having to sort out the central heating.