There is joy to be found in the little things, should I need to remind you in the messes of our topsy-turvy world: icy gin and tonics at 5pm to dull the pain of homework insistence, proper coffee after breakfast preferably in eggshell blue Poole cups that you pick up at the Trinity Hospice shop, finding a new tv show that you both actually like (currently Tasmanian hi-jinks in The Kettering Incident) and the resulting anticipation of nights stretched out on sofas staring at screens not talking or moving, the cleaner coming in on Wednesdays to fix up your accumulated filth, the Sunday paper supplements, and pretty much anything to do with eggs.

Also joyful are eBay-enabled collections of stuff to put in dusty corners and occasionally admire. I get all het up about other people’s cast-offs and in my mind I am *quite* the interior stylist – late night eBay scrolling has resulted in numerous babycham glasses and cut-glass jelly molds and button collections. I’m now frantically bidding on (and winning) blobbish 70’s Murano glass bowls and vases, because once I saw a bunch of them in Heal’s and they looked good and it’s clearly going to enrich my life internally and externally if I get some. They look like this and I currently have two, with about three more on the way:

I know what you’re thinking – probably something about my innate and uncanny ability to find the stylishness in something ugly and redundant and how I need my own lifestyle channel (and also, why doesn’t she at least wipe the bench down before taking photographs of it…? Slattern). I know, I know. If only I could find an actual uncluttered surface somewhere in this flat then I could display my burgeoning decorative glass collection, but alas – these are what most of the surfaces look like (just after the cleaner has been – it’s Wednesday, y’all – it’s normally much worse):

Clearly, THERE IS NO ROOM FOR MORE BAUBLE-Y RUBBISH.

Speaking of no-room-in-the-flat-for-unnecessary-trinkets, it must be noted that the Keyboard of Physical Substance has been moved from the dining room table (which is good) and found a home on my dressing table (which is less good). It’s not really a dressing room table as such, because that would suggest we had a glamorous 1950’s boudoir and you know that isn’t true – as I told you last time, our bedroom is a musical instrument purgatory ft. an office and a bed and too many pairs of shoes I’ll never wear because they aren’t flat-soled Converse.  I have one side of the room that is marked out as mine, and it used to have little ladylike displays of glass bottles and broken shiny brooches and notebooks with which to write shopping lists and (potentially) romantic musings but that’s all been pushed to the back to make way for the keyboard. Which no longer gets played now that it is out of the dining room. Anyway.

Make-Up Situation 

This will come as no surprise to all long-time, right-thinking readers out there, but I really fear for my make up collection. As has been recorded – often, over the long, long years of child-rearing – each of my children have been very keen on the misappropriation of my lipstick, but Otis has graduated past the obvious lipsticks to Stage Two of Make-Up Ruination: to mascara, eyeshadows, brow pencils and and eyeliners.

A month ago, it was all about the lipstick, and it went like this: You take a lipstick out of a handbag or from the makeup shelf in the bathroom, the one that you need to drag a stool up to in order to reach high enough (BECAUSE THEY *ARE* ACTUALLY OUT OF THE WAY, THANK YOU), preferably a lipstick that you see your mother using often because she likes it so much, and you smear it on and over and above your natural lipline, graduate to a sort of slasher-y clownish blusher on your baby cheek and then you smash the whole shaft into your fingers and spread it around like some cheap poster paint that doesn’t cost 30 quid.  Then you are sad because your mum is cross and so you pout and cry a bit. This is what three year old self-pity looks like (also, what Clinique Crimson Matte looked like):

Then there was more makeup interference on the weekend. I was called into the bathroom by an older, horrified brother to find an abstract painting on the wall, in browns and blackest blacks, all very smudged and smeared and spiky. The brow mascara (which is proving quite the handy piece of kit now that I am withering and losing all my hair) was very wet – hopefully only dipped into the sink and not into the toilet. BUT YOU NEVER CAN TELL. The new, excellent Revlon brow colour-innerer was snapped, lids missing, the brush of the Chanel mascara sample squashed and deplete of any actual paint, having been so roughly transferred onto the bathroom wall. At, like, preschooler-height.

I got a bit shouty, I made him wipe the walls, I stood over him and got him to rub, rub rub over those new eyeliner-y indents into the cheap paint and a lot of it came off – the paint, rather than the mascara. Because, you know, I only buy the spency stuff that stays on.

Pre-School Hair Situation

It’s not all tears and money-wasting though. He’s now going to nursery in the mornings, leaving me time to write and go to yoga. The writing makes me feel good and fulfilled, the yoga-going makes me feel like I need to get a job. Yoga at 11am – about as shameful as watching daytime TV and going to McDonalds. Anyway, I took him to see George the barber for a little tidy-up, and George found glitter and a large amount of melted chocolate in his ears. None of this makes any sense.

*yesterday’s amusing search term – sorry to disappoint, Accidental Reader.