Days when only the coffee keeps you sane...

There I was, indulgently mulling over writing a post about the pros and cons of working from home and commuting. It was going to be a largely positive post, waxing lyrical about the pleasures of checking for eggs on my mid-morning tea-break, cutting the grass at lunch-time, watching the swallows swooping past my window as I held a conference call.

But then Sunday night happened and put paid to all that stuff and nonsense.

Lou Loo hasn’t been a good sleeper for a long time. Well, actually, from the word go if I’m honest. If a cow moos in the field outside her bedroom, she could be up for hours. JP, on the other hand, wouldn’t notice a herd of them charging past his bed. Sunday night would easily rank as number 2 in Lou Loo’s Top Ten of Awful Sleepless Nights, number 1 going to a night sometime in the last year (it’s a blur) when we literally didn’t get any sleep.

I think it was her first visit to the cinema on Sunday that probably did the damage. We went to see Monsters vs Aliens in Waterford that afternoon - on hindsight probably not a wise move. I thought it was going to be innocent enough, with cute, funny monsters that wouldn’t be scary at all. And mostly, it was. But the thing about a cinema is that it can be incredibly LOUD to a 2.5 year old. She coped well and cuddled into me for a lot of the movie and seemed to enjoy it overall. But, I’m learning that that is LL’s style. She looks fine, but there can be an internal mutiny bubbling away inside her and it generally breaks through the surface at night.

She started crying at 11:30pm. She finally stopped at 3am. I was due to get up for work at 5:30am.

As you can imagine, by the time I finally fell asleep at 3:30am, I wasn’t feeling too good about the prospect of the Monday commute to Dublin. But the downside of only being in the office two days per week is that you really do need to be there on those days. And with Mr G travelling to London on Tuesday and Wednesday, it made it less of an option to change my days.

So, I dragged myself out of bed at 7am for a later train, threw on some makeup and hoped for the best. When I finally reached the office, 3 hours and 2 coffees later, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. I could feel my legs moving and my fingers pressing the button on the lift, but it was like I was watching it happen from inside a bubble. At the management meeting at 10:30am, I tried to sound together and coherent, despite the fact that my brain was about 10 steps behind everyone else’s. When it was over, I retreated to the nearby cafe and enveloped myself in coffee fumes. By the time I got back to the office, I felt marginally better and began to face the day (by about lunchtime).

When I got home that evening, my ears were ringing and I felt like my head had been packed with cotton wool. Lou Loo and Mr G weren’t faring much better. JP, who had slept through the whole thing, was bounding around the garden looking for someone to play football with him. Oh, you have to smile.

So you see, collecting eggs and taking a tea-break out on the deck is wonderful, but there’s always a price to pay. Maybe one day we’ll have it all sussed, but I have a feeling that day is a long way away.

Rosie catches up

Rosie (our Minorca) has been flirting with the nest box on and off over the last few days, looking up at us with a 'What?' look in her eyes if we opened it whenever she happened to be in there. So, I've been scrutinising the daily egg, wondering if it looks any lighter or different in any way - just in case it was hers.

I needn't have bothered.

It couldn't have been more different to Maisy's. In fact, I think they qualify for first prize in the Eggs That Are Polar Opposites competition. I always knew that Marans produce dark brown eggs and Minorca's white eggs, but I wasn't expecting the difference to be so obvious from the word go.

I don't think we'll have any problem identifying who's pulling their weight.. do you?

Gardens can be scary places..

Especially if you're like me and haven't a clue what you're doing. I try my best, but I don't generally get things to grow with any great degree of success (unless you count weeds). Mr G, on the other hand, gardens with flair. He seems to instinctively know things like what to plant where, how to lay the garden out, what 'companion planting' means in the vegetable beds and whether or not we should pluck some blossoms off the pear tree in order to ensure a decent crop. Things that a couple of years ago would have sounded like a foreign language to me (and sometimes still do).

Last Summer was a bit of a wash-out (read 'rained for 3 months solid') so I felt fairly disheartened at the end of it when none of my shrubs or flowers fared well. However, a couple of small successes, like last Summer's bumper crop of courgettes and peas and this year's gorgeous display of tulips, has given me the impetus to carry on and sow some more seeds.

Our vegetable garden now consists of three large beds, in which we'll grow potatoes, onions, peas, courgettes, sweetcorn, carrots, pumpkins (if the rats don't keep eating them like last year - even they had it in for me), garlic, spinach, rocket and a few other salad bits. I've sown some of these already and it's exciting waiting for the first few shoots to appear.

I'm also aiming to create a sea of scented flowers near where we eat outside this year and have sown tons of cottage garden-type flower seeds in two large beds. Some of these have started to pop up already and we've put some netting over the most vulnerable bed in order to keep the hens from eating the lot. Here's hoping that even some of them survive so that I don't totally lose faith in this gardening business.

One of the things we decided to add to the garden last year was the orchard. It consists of about 10 apple, pear and damson trees and some of these are starting to break out into the most lovely blossoms. Fruit trees are easy.. all you have to do is leave them alone to do their business. Even I can manage that.

On the hen front, Maisy and Rosie are becoming increasingly chilled out in their new home. Maisy is laying daily eggs for us and it's fabulous to find one still warm in the nest box in the late morning. Rosie is becoming positively slutty, allowing JP to pick her up and walk around the garden with her in his arms and generally following us around wanting to know what we're up to. Yesterday, when we were sitting at the table outside, she wandered over, jumped up on the table and even went as far as to try to get at my tea.

I'll have to have some words with her. No-one messes with my tea.

And so it begins...

It was an innocent enough start to the conversation. JP, Lou Loo and I were sitting down to lunch and the subject of our First Ever Egg (produced today with much fanfare by Maisy) came up. Mr G had explained to JP some time ago that the reason the cockerels 'sit on' the hens is to make chicks. We had seen our neighbour's cockerels do this many (many many) times during their visits to our garden.

Over lunch (obviously after much consideration) JP said quite matter-of-factly, 'So, Daddy has to sit on you to make a baby. Or lie on you, or whatever.'

Gulp.

'Kind of', I replied.

Cue bemused glances exchanged between Mr G and I across the kitchen.

'So what does he do - sit on you or lie on you?'

'Whatever he wants,' mutters Mr G, with a smirk on his face.

'So, how does the baby get made?'

Here we go... I thought I'd have another 3-4 years before having to answer that question. But we did it, sticking to the facts and being as light-hearted as possible. JP lost interest almost immediately and moved on to more important things, like battle droids and drop-ships. But I was left feeling amused and a tiny bit sad at the same time. I can remember so vividly being able to fit the whole length of him across my knees and now the sex questions are coming at us already. Did I just blink and miss the last 6 years?