A bit of a moan

Before I go any further, I know I have nothing to complain about really. But sometimes I just don't want to get out of bed. I mean, would you if your entire day consisted of chasing people up and fighting fires. Here's what I had to look forward to this morning:

- my cleaner is coming (see, I told you I had nothing to complain about really). She cleans but she doesn't put anything away, which means I need about two hours beforehand to race around like a whirling dervish stuffing things in drawers etc. I might as well just clean while I go along.

- call Hornby USA for the third time to see if they can do something about the fantastic Scalextric Top Gear track (complete with two Stigs). First the red Porsche died after about two hours. They were very nice about that which makes me think that the entire batch of red Porsches was dodgy. Two weeks later we got a nice new orange car. Less than two hours of playing (on two different days) Little Guy calmly informs me that there's smoke pouring from one of the controllers. Great. That was over a week ago and no one has called me back.

- chase up Enrique, the nice man who put the shelf up again in the coat cupboard (the one that came down on my head) and who made me an iron (locking) gate for the back so that the world and his wife didn't feel entitled to come into our yard/garden to see if the BBQ was worth nicking. (Too heavy). He's supposed to be patching up all the dings in the wall (mainly done by the Ball & Chain carrying things at odd angles) and repainting almost every wall downstairs. It's 6 years since it was all done, and I have worn the semi-gloss thin with all the scrubbing. Anyway, I spent a good deal of time yesterday finding the exact colours I had used (I'm not going through the agony of choosing a new colour palette) and he didn't show up "sometime after 5.30pm" as promised.

- ring the ceiling fan people for the third time. It is hotter than Hades over here, my bedroom is on the third floor and well, heat rises if you'll remember. We do have air-conditioning but it peters out a bit the higher up the house you go, so we do what many people in the US do, and supplement it with ceiling fans. Unfortunately ours is only going at one speed, and if I leave it on for more than ten minutes I'm afraid the roof will come off and end up on the Sears Tower! I'm sure they are inundated with ceiling fan emergencies as people all over the city remember their's is also malfunctioning, but they have that irritating message on their machine telling me that my call is very important to them. Apparently not!

- e-mail the Queenager's school to remind the person who enrolls them in different classes, that she hasn't been able to get on to the photography course for the past two years, really wants to do photo journalism at university, and might benefit from having something to put on her application form to show she'd actually covered it at school. (My tone will be deferential of course.)

- research the bus routes to the downtown photography school (where Queenager is taking a summer course to boost her resume/CV) and take Queenager for a trial run sometime today. If I sound like a helicopter parent, the bus system only runs horizontal and vertical meaning that you usually have to get off and change even if you're only going a couple of miles. I highly recommend trial runs when your grades are at stake.

- wheel the shiny new, blue recycling bin, that was dumped at the front of my house, down the street, round the corner and up the back alley. Stare at the lack of spaces for about ten minutes, then leave it right outside the garage door, meaning we will have to move it every time we come in and out. The fabulous City of Chicago, (that thinks it can run the 2016 Olympics) delivered these bins all over the city, but decided it couldn't possibly remove any black ones. If you don't have room for extra bins, you can call the City "hotline" (word used loosely) to have them removed. That will probably only take about three weeks, but hey - we need to create jobs here. The more departments and personnel involved, the better.

- take all the coats off the bed in the guest room and hang them back in the coat cupboard. Since we won't be wearing them till at least the end of September, I am very tempted to just leave them there and make our guests sleep on top of them.

- but first I must hang around to make sure my cleaner turns up, get the Little Guy off to his theatre camp, find (and iron) two golf shirts for the middle child's golf tournament, and check on an Amazon delivery that hasn't shown up.

A bit boring wouldn't you say? Perhaps I should look for some roses to smell.

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