I Am, As My Foreign Students Used To Say, Preoccupated

http://www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com/ for the latest on the A Graceful Death coming to London in Febrauary
http://www.antoniarolls.co.uk/ for my website
antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com to email me

Angel Practicing Dancing on the Head of a Pin. Expect she was a bit preoccupated too.

Preoccupated Today, And No Mistake


I had a slow gloomy day yesterday. I woke this morning and the slow gloom has gone but it is replaced by a sense of rather undefined anxiety. There are Things To Do today, People To See and I feel all of them are slightly in the way of me Getting Things Done. Let us examine this.

• Again, I am cycling to Barnham for a meeting. This takes about 3 hours, as Barnhan is a good 6 or 7 miles there and a good 6 or 7 miles back, and the meeting is about an hour. Taking the car would mean I am not getting any exercise and will explode with a bang, like a balloon filled with too much air, and be doomed for ever to be a dissapated blob.


• My mother comes for lunch an hour after I return from my meeting. I have food but no idea how to combine it for a lunch fit for a Queen, as is my mother. My mother can cook so well and is so clever with all household things that I am almost tempted to get a catering company to come and do the lunch, make a mess, burn it a bit and make it look like I did it while I was on my bike to and from Barnham.


• 19 Year Old Daughter is home. Her shifts at the hospital are 13 hours long, she is, as the medics say, pooped. So she will sleep till I get home from Barnham and won't be able to do a lunch in my absence.


• She needs a new passport urgently. I said I would help and this afternoon is the only time we can do it


• BUT. I have a dentist appointment with 13 Year Old Son at 3.30 in Chichester, and we have to do that or God will strike us down.


• How to tell Wonderful Mother to go home by 3pm (she is sensitive and may be extremely full and not able to get to her car as quickly as I make her due to the dentist appointment and my fear of missing it)


• How to persuade Daughter to come with me and do the passport in Chichester


• I have some cards to deliver to 2 shops. The cards are slightly different to the ones they ordered. What if they look at the cards, look at me, mutter "Typical" and call for security to assist me from the shop? What will I do with the cards then?


• I have lots of invites to send off for A Graceful Death in London. This is fiddly, takes time and does not seem to fit in with today, and certainly not before last post today.

So there is a feeling of unease and time management issues mingle with assertiveness issues. Let us go on. There is more

• I am publicising Art Classes for the Nervous to happen on Saturday mornings. Why has not one booked them yet? Have I wasted my time AGAIN? I only put them up a few days ago but I should be at least fielding enquiries. (Have you got a creche? No. Can I bring my Mum and leave her in your garden? No. If I come for two fifths of the course can I only pay two fifths of the fee? No. Do you sculpt in marble? No. And so on)


• This weekend is stuffed full of fun and games. I have to have sorted myself out by tomorrow evening.


• I have the still life to finish, but can't get into the painting part of the studio because there is so much Stuff to get through to get in there.


• And, not only has 13 Year Old Son broken his wrist, he was sent home on Monday from school (Sent home? Bah, I went to collect him through 3 different sets of traffic works and emergency traffic lights. Bah again, pesky road works) - sent home with a tummy bug. So he has been here for 3 days.

Well that feels better. Now you know why I am preoccupied. A problem (or a thousand) shared is a problem halved. Onwards and upwards.

Here is a Domestic Angel. She says if you ask her to do any more housework, she will thump you. If I am not careful, I will become this by 3pm this afternoon.