Plans and preparations, both sensible and silly

I'm writing a book at the moment, so consequently my blogging output has suffered. After spending two hours a day at the keyboard typing in the early mornings while the children sleep, I'm pretty much all typed out for the rest of the day! And today I'm going to put time aside to respond to some government consultations, although the sun is shining and enticing me outside.

Luckily one of my madder thoughts about funding lone parents (sharing resource revenue) was gently but sensibly laid to rest by someone last night, when they asked me which of our country's remaining natural resources I was proposing to share? Hmmm... good point. Back to the drawing board, then. I guess I won't bother including that idea in my consultation response...

Today's other, more realistic plan is to install our first rainwater harvesting system. That possibly sounds quite grand (or at least a bit technical), but between you and me it's a piece of troughing, a downpipe and a water butt all connected to our newly-fixed garage roof. Someone else was telling me today that it's possible to install a mini water turbine in the downpipe from which to charge a battery also though, which really would be impressive, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Educationally (as if a rainwater harvesting system wasn't that!) we've been trundling autonomously along. Lyddie's doing lots of reading, writing and number stuff as well as the usual prolific quantities of artwork. For someone who freely confesses to not 'getting' the concept of art for art's sake, I seem to somehow manage to produce amazingly arty children! This is not deliberate, I assure you.

The teens have been busy rearranging their banking facilities and college courses and building hobbit holes, respectively. Everyone's also done a lot on the garage, about which I probably will blog pictures elsewhere at some point. Essentially, we had to make it wind and rain-proof before winter and I think we've finally achieved that - or we hopefully will have by the end of today.

I've also got a PC to set up in the dining room. I went down to Tom's basement earlier to collect all the parts I needed for it and thoroughly enjoyed being able to find everything after our recent clear-out down there. It's like an equipment library now, or the equivalent of a sweet shop for computer parts! I strolled around filling a laundry basket from the various organised boxes saying, "I'll have one of those, and one of those..." I'm not sure if Tom appreciates it quite so much, but at least the system works.

Also, we have Hallowe'en preparations underway. Zara's attending a party involving the ubiquitous dressing-up and Lyddie has been scaring herself by seeing ghosts in the stairs. There have been lots of deep discussions about the reasons and history of the feast.

Oh, and we've got the car to fix today as well! I'm hoping the problem is only a disintegrating rubber washer on the oil filler cap, rather than something more serious - and expensive. I'll change it for a new one and we'll see.

And the baby is very close to taking her first steps. Is there a government-prescribed curriculum box I'm supposed to tick for that? *Rolls eyes..* It's autonomous walking: I don't care what they say.

Onwards and onwards... ;-)