Z skips

I couldn't take the pressure any more. I've "marked all read" - over 500 posts that I shall never read. Sorry, really I am, but as I kept trying to keep up with them, more came in. So many excellent blogs, you either have to delete one every time you find a new one or accept that you can't take too many days off from reading them. I hope you didn't write any of the deleted posts, I didn't check whose they were.

Not that I'm anything but relaxed and cheerful, I just want to keep that way. We're promised snow here - friends South of here say that it's arrived with them, but we'll see if we receive more than a sprinkling. I do appreciate a good snow, but it's a little inconvenient. We have a long drive, with a bank and a hedge on one side, and usually the snow all gathers on the drive in a big, 100-yard-long drift. Many's the time we've had to dig ourselves out. One year, there was a snowfall with a strong wind attached. All the snow in the village congregated in our drive. Friends walking past on the barely-whitened road stopped and had to hold each other up, they were laughing so hard at the sight of us with our shovels when everywhere else was clear. Chester (my late and still much-lamented dog) adored snow and used to dig tunnels through it. He ended up with clods of it, frozen hard, on his leg "feathers" and between his pads. If I didn't clear it quickly, he melted into the carpet and left puddles on the floors.

Which reminds me. Tilly disgraced herself yesterday. I went to sit on the sofa after dinner to make more holly wreaths and something was wrong. I felt cold and clammy. At some point in the day, Tilly had been caught short and had not bothered to make a bolt for the door, as they say, and had Done It Right There. Fortunately, there was both a throw and a rug which had caught most of it (there for frequent washing, as the covers are so old that they can't be washed too many more times without disintegrating entirely). There's no excuse for her. She hadn't been left alone for long at any time, she doesn't normally have problems of continence and in any case, if an accident had been inevitable, I'd rather it had been on the floor, frankly. At least then I wouldn't have sat on it.

I'm sitting looking at a pile of ordered stuff that's been turning up over the last couple of weeks, that I haven't got around to opening. It always seems a trial, this bit, checking it all against the orders, making sure it's all there, then being responsible for ensuring I don't forget where I've put it between now and Christmas. Yes, I know it has to be done. Of course it will be. Any time today. Well, not between quarter to two and half past five.

I've got a bit of spare time now, haven't I?

Ah, saved by the incoming email.

Oh. It seems that a meeting I've committed myself to is on 19th March. In Bury St Edmunds, which is nearly an hour's drive from here. This is fine, except I don't know if I'll be driving on 19th March.

Do you know, I don't believe I'm going to think about it for a while yet. I shall prioritise.

Right. Still only quarter past one. I shall open parcels.

Ooh, update at 20 to 2. How interesting. I'm not at all sure whom I've ordered some of those for. I really should have made a note. And I managed to order two copies of the same book in one parcel.

Still, at least I know I have something for everyone now, even if some of the family are going to be more surprised than they expected.