It's been a while since my last post... only because there really hasn't been too much happening!

I've spent many hours this week trying to clean out one of our spare rooms (commonly referred to as the "cat room" as that's where their litter has been since we moved in). That room has been the bain of my life for a long time now as it's been the place where we've stored junk, kitty litter, mismatched furniture of all types and even three boxes we hadn't unpacked yet!! Needless to say, it's needed a lot of work for a long time now and James and I have done our best to ignore it... but this week it became all too much for me. Emily and I ventured to Ikea on Monday where I picked up 2 cheap bookcases- eventually we'd love to get a couple of nice wooden ones but for now these ones will do. In between working and babysitting Monday thru Wednesday I put the shelves together and threw myself into a massive clean out! The cats are mildly perturbed as their "pee station" has now been moved to a much better location, and all in all, the room looks a million times better with the removal of the rubbish that had been breeding within- even without the bookcases in it yet. One of the horrible things about this house is the huge amount of dust we get on everything, due predominately to the bad seals we have around the skirting boards, cracks in the walls and an old air vent system- so consequently the room has needed thorough cleaning from top to bottom- I'm almost there though. I'm working all weekend, and babysit again on Monday afternoon, so I'll finish attacking it on Tuesday.

...Emily, Matt and I were discussing the other day those moments when you realise you're just not as young as you used to be... when you feel a twinge or two in your back and it hurts to bend down, when you switch over to the easy-listening station and become excited to hear Duran Duran, Mondo Rock or Big Audio Dynamite playing and proceed to sing along with great exhuberance... and I've just had another one of those moments:
when you realise you've written an entire paragraph on how excited you are about cleaning a room.
Sigh...

James went back to work on Monday, still lamenting over his sore thumb but managing to get over it, hehe. We haven't seen much of each other this week due to our conflicting schedules, so I thought we would get to spend a bit of time together tonight. He went to a course today as he'd been appointed the Contact Officer for Discrimination and Harrassment at work (am I the only one who thinks this is ironic??) and was required to undergo training- and came home just so exhausted he'd put himself to be several hours ago and I haven't seen him since!! Poor boy.

I've been talking about babysitting, but I can't remember if I mentioned whose baby it was that I had been looking after? A close friend of mine who I went to senior school with had a baby in January of this year, and I recently volunteered to look after him since she decided it was necessary for her to go back to work, and as her partner also works strange shifts at times he wasn't always going to be around. Well, her baby's name is James too, which is already becoming confusing at times, but we usually refer to my James as Big James so that usually manages to clear things up! He is just so gorgeous, and I would love to post a pic of him, but I'll have to remember to ask his mum if that's ok with her! I look after James usually once or twice a week for about 4 hours or so, but that will be increasing coming up soon as my friend's hours have increased a bit. Although it does make life pretty busy I LOVE looking after him and wouldn't have it any other way!! Even Big James is feeling quite attached to Little James, and the other day he came to pick up the car from me and he gave him a kiss goodbye! I'm not taking this as a sign that he feels particularly paternal however! I think constant repetition of the phrase: "Having kids means your life is over" indicates he's not feeling quite ready to take that plunge as yet!