susie_flo | Easter rambles

Happy Easter, fiends. Have you been enjoying this crazy heatwave? I can't believe how hot it was yesterday... 27 degrees of unadulterated sun. In April, for heavens sake!

I love the sunshine, but last night's thunderstorm was a blessed relief - I couldn't have ordered anything better if I'd been goddess of weather. It came at the end of a very long and hot day of hard labour chez Meanie. I'd been awake since 5am and G and I had spent the day sweating buckets up in our hellishly hot loft, lugging stuff around and trying to get rid of piles of rubbish that should have gone to the dump years ago, just to make room to put other stuff up there. I fear it is a job only half-started, but at least we made some headway. (It turns out I am a big, fat cliche and this is indeed the 'nesting instinct')

Late afternoon was spent assembling a large new bookcasey thing for the bathroom, by which time we were half dead and wanted nothing more than to shower and flop with some pasta and crusty bread. The storm suddenly broke just as we were finishing our meal and we sat in the kitchen with the cats watching the blessed rain pelt down outside the open windows. Sigh...

Today *everything* aches. We will reward ourselves with crumpets and Easter eggs. And then G has to get on with some work and I have to spend the day reorganising things and getting the flat back to a semi-acceptable state for receiving visitors tomorrow. Our new bathroom unit is a long overdue replacement for an embarrassingly knackered piece of Homebase tat. Hopefully it will allow me to reorganise the existing clutter enough to make room for brand new clutter ...like nappies. More excitingly, we found some antique apothecary jars in the loft that I had bought years ago and forgotten about. I'm hoping to find some space on the new shelves for these.

I do hope the rest of you sensible people are spending these gorgeous sunshine days on fun and frolics. (Enjoy today - cos according to the BBC, it will be cooler tomorrow and back to normal April weather by Tuesday).

Monday for us will be a blessed day off with guests... probably involving a bimble and relaxing lunch in sunny Richmond. Then Tuesday will be back to chaos again as we have a handyman turning up for four days, to move light switches and make holes everywhere and replaster a ceiling... (cue more MESS and lots of redecorating, sigh!) I can't wait until it's all done.

Please god don't let Ruprecht turn up early.... he's due in 6 weeks, and we haven't bought ANY of the stuff we need yet. If he comes out early he'll be sleeping in a drawer. I was really hoping to cram in a couple of weeks of serious slobbing between all of this DIY and him popping out.

In unrelated news, I can't tell you how much I adore my two little cats. Ok, I suppose this is not technically "news" but having time at home with them has reminded me that they are the best cats ever. Nobody else could possibly have such adorable, affectionate beasties. Harriet is so cute I could eat her on toast. At eight months old, she's still blatantly a kitten. Whatever I am doing, she is in it - head first. Meanwhile Truffle is heart-meltingly sweet and responsive. I love the way she always replies to me with a trill whenever I speak to her. And, without fail, when I walk into a room she does upside-down-head at me and starts kneading the air. Totally adorable. (G fears that poor Ruprecht will never be able to compete with such cuteness...)